"A FOUL SUGGESTION

Colonist, Volume LXI, Issue 15043, 10 April 1919, Page 5

"A FOUL SUGGESTION

"The exposure made at the public meeting in the Town Hall last evening of the publication of a leaflet in which it is sought to associate tliose connected with the Prohibition movement in New Zealand with the worst excesses in Russia, is calculated to do as much injury to the cause in which the leaflet was issued as any single incident in the present campaign. The leaflet itself is one of the foulest pieces of electioneering it has been our •ill-fortune to come across in public affairs in New Zealand. It bluntly and grossly states the reported conditionsunder which . the debauching of women /is permitted in Russia under Bolshevist rule, and implies that this was the outcome of the deliberate efforts of tne Bolsheviks to sow discontent by engineering prohibition. The misrepresentation of the facts of the situation in Russia does not concern us. According to the evidence available the Bolsheviks had as little to do with: the Tsar's edict prohibiting the sale of liquor, as did the writer of the leaflet himself. What we do protest against, and what we re sure every decent-minded citizen, whether- he be for or against the Liquor Trade, will protest against, is the foul slander that in New Zealand, those who are workinoin the cause of Prohibition have in view as their goal, Bolshevism, the debauching of women and all that Anarchy stands for, that Prohibition is merely a preliminary step to ■ these vile ends. That there is no doubt that this suggestion is made may be gathered from the closing sentences of the document in question, which read as follows:—

."'The Bolsheviks have their agents at work in New Zealand. They are following the tactics that proved successful in Russia. Prohibition, first Anarchy, afterwards, if you don't wish' to help themj vote continuance.'" If this class of things is to be tolerated in public controversy without protest, then* decent men and women-may well hesitate to take a share in those public-^activities which it is to the interests of all sections of the community to encourage. One does not need to hold the same opinions as the' Prohibitionists to appreciate the merit of their motives.'* •