TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Otago Witness, Issue 3899, 4 December 1928, Page 9

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

(Published by arrangement with the United Temperance Reform Council.) THE CHRISTIAN “ URGE ’’ AGAINST ALCOHOLISM.

By

R. Ambrose Roberts.

The modern movement against alcohol is baaed upon modern findings resulting from researches in almost every field of human thought and action. It gathers to itself also the reinforcement of the age-old experience of a humanity cursed through the centuries by enslavement to a drug habit: the sins, ignorance, and blunders of the fathers veritably being visited upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation—nay, the hundred and fourth generation! For this is the pitiable truth that stings us to protective action to-day. A TRUISM. It is a truism that “Every child has a right to be well born and equally true is the statement that, because of the alcoholic habit, millions of cilildren have been born to a heritage of sorrow, doomed before birth to a losing gamble with life, because “ the dice have been loaded against them ” from the very start. SLOW TO PROTEST. Yet the human race is proverbially slow in its developmental movements, cither physical, mental, or spiritual; slow in voicing its protests against iniquities and inequities practised upon it. Slower still in putting a “punch” into its protests; in reaching the “sticking-point,” beyond which, in the matter of dumb suffering, it refuses to budge an inch. Such a sticking-point was bound to be \ reached sooner or later, in the course of the human race's struggle against alcoholism. .

M9DERATIONISTS OF TO-DAY

Mpderationists of to-day, who so often i rail- at advocates of total abstinence, because of their alleged narrowness and intolerance. strangely overlook the fact that it was the failure of the early temperance policy that gave rise to the modern total abstinence movement. The “temperance ” theory has been tried and found wanting. In individual cases, of course, the policy of temperance has frequently been practised with praiseworthy persistency and consistency. FINDINGS OF MEDICAL SCIENCE. Medical science played a most important part in the process of enlightenment that produced the new attitude of alcohol —an attitude, not of caution, but ofabso--lute hostility, of abstinence instead of temperance. I can only touch upon this point, in the briefest possible way, with a view to illustrating just how the impact of new truth concerning alcohol played an important part in creating in the minds of Christian men, a new attitude towards alcohol; for the progenitors of the total abstinence movement of to-daj’ originated the temperance crusade as a Christian

movement. Let us. for a moment then, glance at one or two arresting utterances of the type that once for all justified and demanded total abstinence as an attitude ethically defensible and scientifically sane. It may add interest, if I quote modern authorities in agreement with those early findings. For example, I find that — Professor Osborn has s-aid:—“ I know brain workers who take alcohol, but not one. of them prepares himself for work by taking it. As Professor Welch, of Sydney, has wisely said: ‘An expert who takes alcohol ceases to be an expert! I have never known one man of science who would enter his laboratory after taking even the most minute dose of alcohol, because he knows that the very highest levels of his brain will be affected by it.’ “Alcohol certainly increases the flow of gastric juices into the stomach, and thus may be called a stimulant, but the appetite thus created is frequently a fictitious one, causing a man who has had several whiskies to crave for food that is indigestible, and inducing him to eat a large meal that he cannot digest, and often cannot retain. So that, eventually, as far as the stomach is concerned, alcohol may be classed as an irritant, and not as a stimulant.”

Dr J. F. Mackeddie says:— “ Drink seems to grease the skids on every track that leads to perdition.” The late Sir Thomas-Anderson Stuart (dean of the Faculty of Medicine, Sydney University) : — “Alcohol is the most soul-destroying, body-destroying, nation-destroying substance ever known.” r Does not this, in itself, constitute a most terrific indictment of alcohol? Dr Purdy, chief health officer of Sydney, said this: — “Alcohol increases the susceptibility to disease. . . . Every physician knows that alcohol not only predisposes to tuberculosis, pneumonia, typhoid, and other infectious diseases, but that these diseases are more fatal, or run a more severe ■ course in alcoholic subjects. It is also claimed that there is a distinct relation- • ship between the incidence of alcoholism, insanity’, venereal disease, and crime. ’ Professor Berry declares; — “When men were examined, in order to test their fitness for active service, there was comparatively a small proportion who were physically fP and capable of being made efficient. Drink was not the only cause of this, but it could certainly be said that 50 per cent, of the physical unfitness was caused by drink. The medical men know of the trouble it causes, and every medical text book has well-known terms, describing one or other of the ailments that result from the use of alcohol.” We thus see that the comparative tolerance and complacence of a few de cades ago, with respect to the alcoholic habit, has been transmuted by the toucl of modern science into a reasoned anc reasonable hostility. The principle ol “ Safety first ” left no other course opei for men of sound sense and Christiar sentiment. THE SECOND FACTOR. Then the second factor came quickb into play—the obligation to our fellow. If self-preservation be the first law o Nature, the preservation of our fellow i hurely the first law of grace.

Total abstinence, as a personal practice, and as a fool-proof “ Safety first ” device, has everything .to commend it: but the Christian cannot and must not stop there. As he looks back across the centuries and sees in imagination that long trail of broken hearts, broken hopes, broken humanity strewn along life’s wavside, all marred and maimed by alcohol, he must surely register a swift resolve never to rest until the alcoholic habit has been driven from the earth for ever.