DRY LAW AT SEA.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19550, 5 August 1925, Page 10

DRY LAW AT SEA.

LIQUOR’S FICTITIOUS GLAMOUR. ' AMERICAN FLEET CASUALTIES. (From Ou.b Own Correspondent.) WELLINGTON. August 4. Captain F. M'Oullagh, a well-known war correspondent, traveller, and author, who is the only British correspondent making the round voyage with the United States fleet, writes as follows regarding prohibition in tho American navy: “Readers will,’’ ho says, “probably like to hear my views about tho effect of pro. hibition in the United States navy. It is, I must say. strictly observed, and here, afloat, tho dry law has something to be said in its favour, inasmuch as while immediately before that law came into operation officers could bring liquor abroad, while bluejackets could not. All are now on an equal footing so far as drink is concerned, but it would have been, much better, I think, if all Americans—those afloat as well as those ashore —had been allowed by their Government to wrestle with their own temptations and to become so'ber in their own way. Prohibition only retarded the strong and rapid drift towards temperance which was certainly talcing place in the United States, and it im parted a fictitious glamour to strong drink. ‘ ‘ln the course of a long voyage in a bone-dry ship the American bluejacket comes to regard such ordinary beverages as wine, whisky, and beer as veritable elixirs of the gods. Consequently he is much more liable than an English or French bluejacket to drink excessively when he gets ashore, and if ho gets ashore in an American port tho only kind of liquor available will in nine cases out of 10 be poisonously bad. If an English sailor got bad liquor at an English port he could prosecute the dealer who supplied him with it, but in the present circumstances the American sailor can take no action, anfl the authorities can exercise no supervision over the quality of the liquor supplied. The result is a high percentage of alcoholic casualties in the fleet. What the exact figures are I do not know, but I do know that the corresponding figures in civil life are appalling. I lived for some months last winter near a- great Brooklyn hospital where the alcoholic ward was always full and where the deaths were 10 times more than in pre-prohibition days, and I do not think that they are leas than that in the navy. “Ihe strongest argument against prohibition is the temperance of the French sailor, who can get all the wine and brandy he wants, and the increased sobriety of the British bluejacket and of all classes of society in Groat Britain during the last century. In the United States there has been during the same period the same movement towards temperance, but prohibition has killed it, and done much evil besides. It has made the American bluejacket with disrespect one article in the constitution of his country and break as frequently as he can a law which he regards as an invasion of his personal liberty. A people cannot be made sober or chaste or religious by an Act of (Parliament. ”