ALCOHOL, EFFICIENCY AND PROHIBITION.

Southland Times, Issue 17735, 13 August 1917, Page 2

ALCOHOL, EFFICIENCY AND PROHIBITION.

To the Editor. Sir,—Like every other member of the prohibition movement party Mr Hughes will not and cannot stand up to a debate and keep to the point in question, but runs around like an excited hen and writes yards of highly eloquent language which does not affect the subject at all. We do not want him to waste his breath about the German or Russian, or bring Nurse Cavell in at all. That is all apart from the debate. But we do want to know on what authority he preaches that because a man chooses to enjoy the good things of the earth that God has given him for his use he is satisfying a degraded appetite by so doing. “Temperance” said that to make a man a probitionist by force is not God’s way of dealing with man, and Mr Hughes knows it is true, so that he docs not even attempt to deny it. It is you, as a minister of God and shepherd of His sheep who have the care of men’s souls, and because you fail so miserably in your charge you try to shift the responsibility on to the law of the land. Because we don’t think as he does, Mr Hughes calls us champions of vie and sin, or something to that effect, but he is wrong. Temperance is neither drunkenness nor total abstinence, and over indulgence in drinking is a sin, and here is your turn as God’s minister to get at the sinner and show him his folly, save his soul by the grace which is in you. If you attempt force you will do as you are doing, harden his heart and drive him from you, and so fail again. Man was given the choice of good and evil and a free will, and Mr Hughes cannot take it from him. — I am, etc., TEMPERATE.