ATHLETICS. EDUCATION AND BETTER HOUSES WILL MAKE SOBER PEOPLE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18189, 23 June 1927, Page 15

ATHLETICS. EDUCATION AND BETTER HOUSES WILL MAKE SOBER PEOPLE.

13 y Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright. A.P.A. and Sydney “Sun*' Cable. LONDON, June 21. “It is really an outrage to call England non-sober. We are, broadly speaking, a sober people. There is far more drunkenness in America,” declared Lord Dawson of Penn, when attacking the Bishop of Liverpool’s Prohibition Bill in the House of Lords. lie added that it was unlikely that civilised people would ever banish fermented liquors. It was impossible to draw out something which had been woven into the fabric of people’s lives for centuries. “ What really matters,” he said, " is what people under thirty-five do. A hospital test of 1500 unskilled labourers showed that 51 per cent were under thirty-five, and were abstainers or temperate drinkers. The fact is, that women’s athleticism and more suitable clothing has encouraged men’s desire for physical fitness.” Lord Dawson added: “Improve education, housing and playing facilities, and I am sure that within ten years, especially if sane lecturers, not fanatics, teach when it is good to take alcohol, you will achieve greater success in temperance than through a Bill of this kind.”