A BETRAYAL OF CONFIDENCE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22712, 26 October 1935, Page 24

A BETRAYAL OF CONFIDENCE

The confidence of the child has been grossly abused recently in certain Sunday schools, where a leaflet was distributed among the children. This leaflet, while ostensibly temperance propaganda, contains the following example of typical prohibition verbal trickery:— "You will find,” states this leaflet, “ that neither you nor anybody else can always trust a person who takes alcoholic liquor.” This statement is perfectly true. It is equally true that neither you nor anybody else can always trust a person who parts his hair in the middle or rides a bicycle. To a child, however, the confidence trick goes over, though no doubt causing much painful bewilderment to children whose parents are not strict teetotallers. Instead of instructing children to "Honour thy father and thy mother,” the inference is given out that mother and father cannot be trusted if they have a glass of beer or wine. This perverted fanaticism oh the part of the more militant section of the prohibitionists has been a very great handicap to true temperance. It is by methods such as the above that support given in the past to the " tone dry ” cause has almost entirely disappeared.—Ad vt.