A "LOFTY IDEAL."

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LXIV, Issue 11561, 9 January 1913, Page 7

A "LOFTY IDEAL."

WHEN IS A MAN DRUNK? Mr Keir Hardie. though a great temperance man, is prepared to advocate a strike to assert the right of the working classes to get drunk in their leisure time, says "Ariel" in the Evening Star. It would certainly be a noble cause in which to plunge the nation into disorder, and it would exhibit to the world a lofty ideal of a popular holiday. The Patagonians believe the bliss of the hereafter will'consist of being eternally drunk in the caves of their ancestral deities. The ideal seems not to be wholly confined to Patagouia. . The legal fraternity appear to find great difficulty in denning drunkenness. Even Sir Robert Stout once gave a t judgment-which seemed to mean that a man was not drunk so long as he could swallow any more.' Under such a rule the accused would wish to be put to the ' test there and then and often. A nonprofessional once told me that he did not consider a man -drunk till he could neither sit, stand, lie, nor hold on by the grass. In Mugland a definition seems to be wanting too. and a special Commissioner has even been appointed to find that a certain man was not drunk, so that _000 men could go on with their work. Now, for everyday purposes I hold that a man is drunk when he is not fit to be trusted in his employment. "Punch" has a nervous passenger who remarks anxiously, "The train is surely going at an unusual rate!" "Yes," rejoins a cheery woman, "my Bill's a-drivin'; and when he 's got a drop in he can make her go. " Now, Bill may not have been drunk enough to satisfy 9000 men, but the public have a right to object to his even having a "drop in."