“BUBBLES”

Waikato Independent, Volume XX, Issue 2317, 12 October 1920, Page 5

“BUBBLES”

rOM THE “THINK TANKS”

OF OUR PARLIAMENTARIANS

“We know it is proposed in many quarters to establish cellars and lay down liquor supplies that will last a man’s life. Is that fair? That is making one law for the rich and another for the poor, and it is not a fair thing.”—Mr McCallum.

“One speaker referred to the fact that fifty years ago land was not of much value. Perfectly true. He knew a district where thirty years ago land could be obtained for £2 or £3 an acre, while the same land was being sold at £3O and £4O an acre to-day, and a great deal more.”—Mr Edie. <s><s><s>

- “It seemed that young New Zealanders were not appreciated. By importing men from outside to fill the high positions, they were offering no inducement to young New Zealanders to qualify for the service of the State; and by not promoting those who were well qualified they were clogging the ranks of the service generally. ‘He considered that the experiment of importing a General Manager of Railways had not been a great success, and he was afraid that a similar result would obtain if they went outside for a Director of Education,”—Mr Statham, ❖ * $

have stated in the House before, and I repeat it again, that no-license only increases drinking. In support of that statement I offered a challenge to the Prohibition party at Gisborne, and they accepted it, and we agreed to take Invercargill as an instance—l said to them, “If you can show me that by Prohibition drinking has been decreased, I shall not raise my hand against you as a party, and I may help you.” The Prohibition party there accepted the challenge in the spirit ih which it was made. We appointed an arbitrator, and we selected Invercargill as a test of the facts; and agreed to ascertain the aqiount of liquor consumed there for the two years prior to nolicense being carried and the two years after it was carried by way of compari-

son. The result proved beyond all that more liquor was consumed in Invercargill during the two years after prohibition than was consumed during the two years prior to prohibition. ’ ’ —Mr Lysnar.

.Extract of portion of letter read by

Mr J. A. Young, and recorded in Han-

sard:—“The average Englishman in fails to understand the people he helps to rule. His own religion is of the practical and common sense sort—“Honour the King, Do Good and Fear Not, and possibly, Fear God”—and so he fails to appreciate the fact that to the Eastern his religion forms his every fibre, physical and moral, guides and controls his every action from rising to sleeping. You may use the name of his God in vain and the Englishman takes no notice; insult him and he knocks you down. Trample on, spit on, and abuse the native, and he smiles and salaams; abuse his religion and you have a life enemy. And such a religion! It lies like an awful pall of hellish sin over the minds and consciences of the people of India. A religion that inculcates lasciviousness; that sets up •the symbols and teaches the worship of the human sexual organs. A religion that drives the widow to the suttee pile; that throws the surplus offspring to Mother Ganges; that teaches merit in the. suffocation of aged parents by a throatful of sacred mud; that encourages the worship of Kalee, the goddess of murder and thugism; that enjoins the good action to acquire merit or future reward; that laughs at altruism that surrounds its temples with debauch ery and prostitution; that has more terms for the expression of carnal pleasure than any other language I know; that insists on the sacredness of animal life and. animal excrement, so that vermin and filth abound; whose “holy” men are living objects of vermin, filth and degradation; that condones lying, deceit and torture; that condemns its womankind to child-mar-riage and the after-life of a chattel, and makes bestial satyrs of its mankind; and that teaches its devotees to drink the water in which the feet of a Brahmin have been washed and which allows sacred tanks to be used for bathing, washing and drinking. ... I take my Tamil lexicon, and what do I find there? The ruins of a noble, ele|fc**gSlw”and wonderful language, whose roots were in the ages before Christianity; but over it all I find the slime of sin and superstition which has eaten as a canker into the very being of the people. For every word of purity I will turn you up two of bestiality and sensual worship.—Now, can any thoughtful or sensible person, any truq Englishman stand up and urge that this or any other Christian White Country should opgates and welcome, or even allow of numbers of people whose minds and habits are so tinged and mouldeed by the forces of ages of superstition.*?