PROHIBITION IS DISHONEST.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 45, Issue 14005, 16 December 1919, Page 5

PROHIBITION IS DISHONEST.

ITS ADVOCATES PHAEASAICAL.

SOME STEONG CBITICISM.

(By "The Critic")

The Eev. E. S. Gray said the Prohibitionists agreed to paying compensation in order to get a referendum in April last. They put it forward that they wanted to get Prohibition as a win-the-war measure. Now that the war has been won without Prohibition, what are the Prohibitionists doing? They are now putting forward the proposal to get Prohibition without compensation. First, they would pay compensation for Prohibition, and now they want it for nothing. The Eev. E. S. .Gray says they are actuated by honest and humane motives. Is it honest to offer to pay compensation and then try and get what you want for nothing? Prohibition is a dishonest proposition. Prohibitionists would destroy their neighbour's property and rob their fellowcitizens of their individual rights, and then thank God, that they are honest and not as other men are! Then they say they are humane! The attainment of their species of humanity would throw out of employment 15,000 breadwinners, with 50,000 dependents. These Prohibitionists would wreck the industrial organisation of the Dominion and glory in the labour cataclysm just as Nero gloried over the burning of Eome. Prohibition is neither honest nor humane; it is a destroyer, a breeder of crime, of industrial unrest, and proved in Eussia the harbinger of revolution. "That is the reason," cried one Prohibitionist in the writer's hearing. "That is why I am going to support it.':' Yet the Eev. E. S. Gray says a la Lenin and Trotsky, "I am an honest man, actuated by pure, honest, and deeply humane motives!" "They know not what they do." That saying is equally applicable to Prohibitionists to-day as it was to the persecuting Prohibitionists of a far-off time.

PEOHIBITIONISTS AND SOL

DIEES,

The soldiers were aggrieved that the Prohibitionists should raise an internal party warfare in New Zealand while they were absent fighting a common enemy. In that the Prohibitionists were unpatriotic. The soldiers knew that the Prohibitionists had wanted to deprive them of their rum rations in the trenches, where the rum ration saved their lives and helped them to win the war. The soldiers knew that the Prohibitionists prevented the jwe,t canteen, so that the soldiers would not enijpy the same privileges under arms as i; fcheso remaining at home were able to enjoy. The soldiers knew that in spite of the opposition of the Prohibitionists they did get wet canteens and did get the rum ration, as Lord Kitchener and every other commander worth* his salt had ordered as necessary to the officiency of fighting men. And the soldiers knew that the Prohibitionists were wanting to dominate New Zealand, as the Hun wanted to dominate Europe, and so they, by a five to one majority, would have nothing to do with prohibition. But the Eev. E. S. Gray says: "We were willing that all soldiers should vote on the question." But they only passed that resolution after the soldiers' friends and relatives in New Zealand had compelled the Government to make that provision for soldiers. Prohibition makes men and women sly, intolerant, dog-in-the-manger persons. They say they don't drink themselves, and because of that they say, '' We will prevent, if we can, anyone else —soldiers and all—from enjoying a little alcoholic stimulant." One of their leaders has said, "I would rather see my child dead than give it brandy," and when the judge said she would be liable for manslaughter she brazened it out. What did the Prohibitionists care f* winning the war, or for the health and efficiency of our fighting men, so long as they could carry out their fad and stop the rum ration. Yet the Eev. E. S. Gray says he is honest, humane and patriotic. But he advocates a dishonest, inhumane and unpatriotic policy like Prohibition. HERE IS ANOTHEE THICK. Speaking in Dunedin on December Ist the Eev. E. S. Gray says:—"Another ,way they could get it (i.e., State control) was not by paying any compensation at all. They could vote Prohibition this time, give it a trial for three years, and then, if Prohibition was a failure and the country wanted State control, they .could have another vote. ,,. Apart from the palpable dishonesty of Hi is proposal, as already exposed, it is a suggestion of a political trickster. This reverend Pussyfooter of Prohibition knows there is no such thing as a "three years' trial" of Prohibition. The Licensing Act specifically states that in the event of Prohibition being carried "No Licensing Poll shall at any time thereafter be taken in any disiriet." (See Section 64, Licensing Amendment Act, 1918.)

Prohibitionists always mislead the pcoplo. Theirs is a dirty game of political trickstering, their object being to foment strife, class hatred and ill-will in the community. Therefore, stand for continuance and strike out the two bottom lines on election day.