TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20704, 30 April 1929, Page 2

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Published by arrangement with the United Temperance Reform Council. Mr W. Jennings Bryan once remarked that when they discussed other questions they might find themselves • divided, but on this question they need not be careful, “ for God never made a human being who needed alcohol to stimulate his brain or to feed his body.” THE CROWN OF THE YEAR. Oh! This is the crown of the year. The glory and crown of the year; Although you may sing of the joy of the spring, Yet this is the crown of the year. We all know, of course, that the beautiful song, which heartens us all when sung as we have heard it, celebrates the time of harvest, but none the less may we claim the time of retrospect and of anticipation as being the crown of the year. We hope our friends and fellow workers in 'the “ greatest reform movement of this century ” will derive an inspiration from a timely study of its current conditions. There are a good many temperance people who are a bit despondent at the public attitude towards the movement generally, and there are grounds for concern in the fact that even some who were stalwarts in our ranks before the war, in political, medical, and social circles, have considerably slackened on the question of abstinence, although only a few have given up the practice. Mr Charles Dawbarn, the well-known traveller, has something to say on this head in the October Nineteenth Century, which may he applied in some cases, but we rather wonder if it is true that drink reformers lessen their influence by their reluctance to open their pockets.” The reviewer has some other things to say as the result of his travel which are interacting and useful. “ Disinterested business men, fixing their eyes exclusively on results, have acknowledged to me, often with a certain reluctance, that total abstinence is a ‘paying proposition.’ ” Pointing the way to temperance propaganda, “my advice,” he says, “ is, ‘ Get hold of the plain man.’ ” “ I’ll tell you what drink buys, and that is a C 3 population—and' we have got to pay. One of the things we have to pay is breakfast for these kids when the parents soak it away.” said the policeman; but says Mr Dawbarn, “a sober, saving working class England would mean the elimination of the ‘ down and out ’ . . . a pleasant and perfectly realisable prospect.” . This is the sort of argument which we used so largely during pioneer and’ prewar days, but there have been influences at work upon the young people of both sexes who served their country, which 1 makes it necessary for us to commence our work afresh; with an added_ asset of great value, fortunately—the scientific evidence which defines alcoholism. But, as Mr J. A. Steugrt pointed out in the old Westminster Gazette of happy memory, in September, “ a.deliberate and concerted attempt is now ’being made to prejudice the cause of temperance reform in this country. The whole force of the liquor trade is used to that end; moreover, it is supported by a powerful section of the press, whose- aims it would be gross flattery to call altruistic.” With a few honourable exceptions, the papers are closed to temperance matter, but the trade agent can get his curious history and conclusions into their columns, and because the people _ are always “ under the influence of drink ” they believe the statements of these correspondents, who in some cases claim to be themselves abstainers, and who know better. But why should a clever woman like Miss Mary Gaunt follow their bad example, and write about the Mahommedan world and the Chinese as examples of nondrinking peoples, when , she must know the modern reading of the Koran and the drug addiction of John Chinaman? Moreover, does she not know the terrible share of alcohol in the “ Waste of Girlhood”? It was Sir Robert Stout’s letter to the Times on "Alcohol and Waste ” which roused her ire, and also that of others who fear the infringement of their liberty, forgetting that abstinence is purely a matter of individual choice. Only a drink-obsesssed people could be misled by such bodies as the “ True Temperance Association "and the "Workman’s Protection League,” who are busy! A practical illustration <of the advantage of experience and the application of sound common sense is' to be found in Mr Hamilton Fyfe’s illuminating book, “ The Maying of an Optimist.” He describes the line of thought into which he was led during his post-war travels in Eastern Europe and his reflections on patriotism in Rumania. Here he had an uncomfortable and often a hungry time, yet the less he ate the clearer his mind became; he almost gave up meat, entirely gave up alcohol. He proceeds to reason with them thus: “Would they consider a man a crank who said that he believed in drinking a glass of port (or two) after lunch and dinner ? _ Would they dismiss as cranky the advice of a doctor to drink whisky with meals? Would, they look upon a de-' claration that meat three times a day is needed to keep up an office worker’s energy as a sign of crankiness? They certainly would not. “ Yet if they looked at the temples of these ‘ normal ’ beings, they would see little veins standing out, and those little prominent veins are signs that hardening of the arteries has begun, and some day those hardened arteries will cause them pitiful discomfort and a painful death. Do those who call me a crank because I have found out, and because I follow what keeps me well and glad to be alive, do they consider deaths from arterial sclerosis ‘normal’ to mankind? Of not. Well, who is the crank now? ” " That’s the stuff to give them,” as is said in _ another connection, and in'contemplating, for instance, developments in industrial education and the process of “ thinking it out ” which is being adopted among the more enlightened trade union and labour bodies, in view of the’ belief that disputes are approaching the completion of their last war cycle, it is of' urgent importance to show how alcohol is. an enemy of stability. But this is urgent’also in regard to the community as a whole, for as the Rev. Henry Carter shows in a valuable article in the Student Movement (November) : Drink is the chief menace to the mental tasks of citizenship. He points out_ that reason is replacing force as the decisive agent in public affairs; that reason is_ impaired by drink and the sway of _ conscience undermined by it. “ Sustained idealist thinking is impossible to those whose brains are poisoned by alco-. hoi.” It is because we can see a growing conviction in the minds of the men and ■women of vision that “ Drink corrupts the character of men and peoples.” but that “ Science has shown in our day how this tragedy is wrought,” that we realise that we are, at "the Crown of the Year,” reaping a harvest of knowledge, sown by the pioneers of the movement, which, in its turn, will prove reproductive in a greater harvest which “in due season we shall reap if we faint not.”