“CIVIS” AND HIS PUSSYFOOT STORIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3557, 16 May 1922, Page 55

“CIVIS” AND HIS PUSSYFOOT STORIES.

TO THE EDITOR. T Sir,— -“Civis” in Saturday’s Passing ■Notes, in dealing with the coming “Pussyfoot” Johnson campaign, gives what he terms “a stock joke with President Lincoln,” no doubt meant —whoever was its author—to show 7 up the insincerity of temperance lecturers. Dr Saleesby, chairman of the Birth-rate Commission of England, and inventor of the steel helmet so greatly in use in the late war, has stated that there is a b-ig lie factory in 20 languages for the express purpose of discrediting American prohibition in the eyes of the world. It is likely enough this stock joke of President Lincoln is from this factory, for “Civis” does not state whence he derived it. Here is another of the spurious Lincoln utterances from the Morning Advertiser (London), perhaps the extremes! liquor trade organ there is. It quotes President Lincoln from the record of the sixty-third Congress as .having stated that “Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance.” Unlike “Civis,” the Morning Advertiser Was unwise enough to give its authority. History informs us that Lincoln died many years before the sixty-third Congress had its birth. Verb sap! Here is a quotation from a speech by Mr Harding, the present President of the United States, and vouched for by Senator Willis: In every community men and women have had an opportunity now to now what Prohibition means. They know that debts are more promptly paid, that men take home the wages they once wasted m saloons, that families are better clothed and fed, and more money finds its way into savings banks. The liquor traffic was destructive of much that was most precious in American life. In the face of so much evidence on that point, what conscientious man would want to let his own selfish desires influence him to vote to bring it back ? In another generation I believe that liquor will have disappeared, not only from " our politics, but from our memories. If “Civis” has a better and later authority of the failure of prohibition in the United States than President Harding’s testimony to its success, then undoubtedly there are quite a number of your readers that would welcome it.—l am, etc., Prohibitionist.