TEMPERANCE ALLIANCE METHODS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 9335, 28 January 1892, Page 3

TEMPERANCE ALLIANCE METHODS.

TO THE EMTOB,

Sin,—ln your sub-leader on Saturday last re the work done by the Temperance Alliance, you question whether the methods at present adopted by the advocates of temperance are the best possible. In my opinion they fall a very long way short of being so. They are trying to crush out the liquor traffic by taking away licenses. This may bs done, but I am inclined to think that they will find the trouble breaking out in other places. Private clubs, sly drinking shops, &c. will have much more debasing effects than public houses. I fancy a great deal more gcod would be done in the interests of temperance if they were to try to educate the public, and provide places that would act as counter attractions to the public house, where men could go in and have an hour or two's enjoyment witho-.t the necessity of taking intoxicating drinks. Say, form a club or open a cafe on a large scale, whore one could enjoy a game of billiards, cards, draughts, &c. with the necessity of drinking nothing stronger than coffee or aerated water. As it is, the temperance party object to men visiting public houses, but do not give them any means for obtainng healthier enjoyment. Frequently I have heard young men, when remonstrated with about frequenting hotels, exclaim, " Well, what is a fellow to do ; there is nowhere else to go to." I think the funds collected in aid of temperance could not be better laid out than in subsidising or even starting clubs and running them on these liberal lines.—l am, &c. January 25. Onlooker.

— The possession of Constantinople by Russia would make that empire, already vast, a huge mass of conflicting elements, half Muscovite, half Byzantine. Moscow and Constantinople would pull in opposite directions, and would end by tearing the empire asunder. —Speaker. *

— In the current number of the Engineering Magazine, Albert Williams, jun., expressed thl opinion that the limit has been reached in armoured warships, and that the tendency now is *o. build ships of steel with less thickness of fm<m and a grcftter capacity for speed.