ON NO-LICENSE V LIBERTY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13745, 7 September 1908, Page 3

ON NO-LICENSE V LIBERTY.

(To the Editor.) Sir, — The coming fight is casting itb shadows on our mental horizons already, and the cry of liberty is in the air. Verily we aro a liberty-loving folk. If anyone treads on the tail oi our coat, the atmosphere becomes lurid with adjectives. We love liberty so much that some of us will even allow our neighbours to feed our wives and children, while we proud citizens of a free country will drink till all is blue, and sometimes until we can see blue. We are so imbued with the spirit ot liberty in gratifying our baser desires that wo forget we are fathers. We arc so free in following the will-o'-the-wisp of our appetites that everything elst can go to the devil as far as we care— and' it often does. Yet we dare not go to church in our shirt-sleeves ; that would be infra dig., don't you know. I don't suppose there is a lady in Tara- , naki who would be bold enough to appear at church or in a theatre with her sleeves rolled up and her hair in papers. Yet I have known a man gel so drunk at a ball that he vomited all over his partner; and I've known a lady so inhuman through the influence of arink that she has actually forgotten she was a mother of children — ot ontities^the gift of God, and who are th^ sole heirs of the future. I appeal to lovers of altruism, £or the sake of the children, that we lay aside our prejudice in favour of the money there is in the trade and the base desires that the use of alcohol creates, and turn our faces towards the light of reason and common-sense, forgetting the things that are behind, and by looking forward to the future that awaits us make what amends we can for the sins of our fathers. Who may compute the sum total of the agony of the innocent victims of King Alcohol? Who can paint in its true colours the heart-beats of the -wife waiting for the man who promised to Jove, honour, and cherish till 'death do us part," and who, when he does come homo, is perhaps so far gone in his frenzy that he has been known to actually kill the woman he promised to love? A case in point occurred not long ago, when a gentleman was induced to indulge rather freely and somewhat against his better nature, that, on his return home in a state of madness, he spoke so harshly to his wife (who was a cultured lady), it froze the blood in her veins with horror, so | that she died, leaving him to a lifelong agony of remorse and a memory that time could never heal; for out oi | drink he was a thorough gentleman. Oh, for a wider outlook than mere pelf! If only for the sake of the children let us be of the same mind as the Scotchman (who was also an editor) who told me, "We have had no-license for twenty-five years, and our children have all grown up outside the baleful influences of the liquor traffic, and we are not likely ever to revert to the old state of things." Unto you, therefore, who believe in altruism the children are precious; but unto those who disallow- their responsibilities the truth shall become a stumbling-block and a lock of offence. Our greatest blessings come from sacrifice — the giving up of some little and sometimes a great thing we thought we could never give up. Yet in the final analysis we discover how good it was for others that we sacrificed ourselves. All true mothers will bear mo out in this. And so, for the cause of altruism and for our children, — I am, etc., J. A. ROBERTS.