TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20960, 25 February 1930, Page 2

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

(Published by arrangement with the United Temperance Reform Council.) AUSTRALIA’S CRICKET WONDER ADVOCATES TOTAL ABSTINENCE. Don Bradman says:—“Alcohol must necessarily interfere with one’s condition. . . . Total abstinence from all alcoholic liquors is a big factor in success . . . My advice is leave strong drink alone.” DRINK AND MOTORISTS. In last month’s issue (says a Queensland paper) we pointed out our sad record of 1000 persons killed and 15,000 injured in motor accidents during the last year. The drinking drivers is a prolific cause of that ghastly record, and yet we read in the daily press of a Brisbane taxi driver being fined £lO for his tenth conviction. Surely we are more than long-suffering fools when we license habitual alcoholics as taxi drivers, and then inflict nominal fines when persons are maimed, or property _ damaged by t 1 .so irresponsible alcoholics—for it is well known that invariably drivers are not arrested for being “under the influence of drink ” until after the damage is done. In an English paper we read that Sir Herbert Nield, K.C., chairman of the Middlesex magistrates, said:—“ I should not be surprised if a person driving a oar is not eventually prohibited from taking any alcohol whatever within a reasonable time of driving a car.” MOTOR ACCIDENTS IN AMERICA. . The American press agency thought it worth while to cable the fact that there were 21,160 deaths in America last year from motor accidents. The number sounds big until it is analysed, or compared with other countries. It must be remembered that there hre 24,629,900. motor cars in America, as compared with 1,128,200 cars in England. With this comparison we find that there was 1 motor fatality in England to every 118 cars, as compared with I to every 1121 cars in the United States. Had motor fatalities been as great in America as in England, in proportion to cars on the road, the death total would have been 209,674 instead of only 21,160. “Anyone caught driving a motor car while under the influence of liquor will not get a permit to drive again, and will have to face a term in gaol as well. You can’t get too severe a penalty for a man who turns himself out under the influence of liquor in one of these 1J or 2-ton machines.”—Mr, Ferguson, Premier of Ontario. ONE SECOND. Men have run 100 yards in 10 seconds, that is 30 feet in one second. Now, a motor car travellipg at 35 miles an hour, which is a very common pace, travels 52J feet in one second. Experts have figured out that if a sudden demand is made on a motor driver it takes the most alert driver one-fifth of a second to apply his brakes. Very careful experiments have proved that even one glass of whisky on the average person will slow his effort to such an extent that it takes f hrec-fifths of a second to apply the brakes; in other words, he is 21 feet nearer you than if he had been without even one drink. The dangerous driver is not the one who is drunk, but the one who is exhilarated with one drink, or'' careless and unobservant because of several drinks. We have to remember that an Englishman travelled a mile in 18 seconds recently, and while that is a world record, yet it reminds us that whereas 30 miles an hour was astonishing 10 years ago, that 50 miles in the same time is now a comtaonplace. All of my readers have seen a car go by like a flash, "which means anything from 50 to 70 feet to the second, and one drink under such circumstances is fatal. —Everybody’s Monthly. DRUNKENNESS DESTROYS . DEPENDABILITY. EVERY CIVILISED COUNTRY ALARMED. By T. N. Carver, Professor of Economics, Harvard. Nothing short of killing, stealing, and lying so effectively destroys dependability as drunkenness. The country which does not repress drunkenness can no more flourish than can a country which does not repress killing, stealing, and lying. We are so dependent upon one another in our civilisation,, as to make drunkenness, in every rational sense, a most destructive vice. We are becoming more and more dependent upon one another every year. More and more, therefore, does it become necessary that drunkenness be repressed. Drunkenness, in these times, needs a stricter definition than it needed in older and simpler times. In these times, the man who is dead drunk is leas of a menace than the one whoiia only what is sometimes _ called one-fourth drunk. The man who is dead drunk i r dependable in a sort of _a negative sense. You can deE end x on him not to do any mischief until e comes to. But the man who is only one-fourth drunk is a very uncertain person. He will do unpredictable things, to the danger of everyone. If he lived alone it would be different, but in a great factory, in ( a crowded street, or anywhere in an interlocking civilisation, he is a very undependable creature, and therefore a menace.

. A gradual realisation of this situation is coming over the civilised world. The world is sick and tired of drunkenness, and the -more progressive parts of the world are determined to get rid of it, iiivery civilised country is alarmed and is trying more or less constructively to curb \or to get rid of it altogether. They are drawing the lines of legality more or less closely around the drinking custom, and they are going as far as public sentiment will permit. .. the unbiased student of economics it is becoming more and more apparent that the great handicap upon European countries is booze and its consequence drunkenness. They can never hope even to approximate our prosperity until they get rid of some of their booze and thus r \duee the fearful waste of human energy o?drinkers undene^abilfty Each country is aware of this ' and is trying to do something about it. In some countries they are merely limiting the hours of sale, and the number of places where liquor can be sold. Even tE limitations are doing some good. Others are limiting the sale to public disnen S J™, TJ V« also is better than unri stncted sale. In short, the more restrict „Ttfey* £. fl “ “ ls “ £