THE EARLIER CLOSING OF HOTELS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17113, 19 September 1917, Page 4

THE EARLIER CLOSING OF HOTELS.

The report which we have' received of the speech delivered by the Prime Minister last night, in moving the second reading of the Sale of Liquor Restriction Bill, may leave the community in some doubt as to why the Government proposes to legislate in the matter at all. There was nothing that we can find in the speech to shew that the proposal that the hotel ba.rs shall be closed at 8 p.m., instead of at 10 p.m., is based upon any considerations of national

efficiency and national economy. Mr Massey seoms to have assumed that Parliament would take it for granted that the Government was influenced by considerations of this description. But there was no direct recognition in his speech of the need for a decrease in the consumption of alcoholic liquor for the purpose of promoting both national thrift and national efficiency during the currency of the war. There was no oxpressod appreciation of the need for adjusting our national custom and our social habits to the extraordinary conditions into which the world has been thrust and of conserving our energies to meet the economic strain that will certainly bo placed upon them if the war continues for many more mouths. Mr Massey may have felt that he would have been treading upon dangerously insecure ground if he had emphasised the relation between national efficiency and a reduction in the consumption of drink. If, however, it was his aim to avoid this

treacherous ground, the basis upon which he apparently put the proposal contained in the Bill was not happily chosen. He professed to view the Bill as a measure of temperance reform. He claimed for the National Government that it had "done its full share" in the direction of temperance reform and instanced the introduction of the antitreating system, to which he attributed a material diminution in tho number of arrests for drunkenness. A proposal for the curtailment, during the war, of the facilities for the sale of drink is placed, however, upon a false footing when it is presented simply under the guise, of temperance reform. It is, in one sense, ,of course a measure of temperance reform of a temporary character. But, however much it may suit the purpose of tho Government to represent it as a measure of temperance reform, it is not in this light that a large number of the most earnest advocates of the earlier closing of hotels during the war regard any proposal that is directed to this end. A false colour is, indeed, given to the movement for an abatement of the national waste that is involved in the expenditure of huge sums of money on drink at a time like the present when the fact is ignored that this movement is prompted by a desire to maintain as far as possible the efficiency and to conserve as far as possible the resources of the people. Mr Massey, basing his recommendation of the Government's proposals on the ground we have indicated, advanced no reasons why 8 o'clock should be chosen, in preference to 6 o'clock, as the hour at which the hotels should be closed. From his point of view it was perhaps unnecessary that he should do so. Nor does it seem that the members who spoke in favour of G o'clock closing offered any reason for their attitude to the question other than the fact that closing at 6 o'clock sents the minimum demand of an exceptionally large number of petitioners to Parliament. Since, however, the reports of their speeches are severely condensed it is possible that in this respect they do not do justice to them. As far as it has gone the debate on the Bill has been disappointing. Mr Massey, in opening the discussion, was almost apologetic for having to introduce such a Bill, and the public will hardly gather the impression that the private members who expressed their views on the inadequate proposal of the Government rose to the level of the occasion.