THE DRINK TRAFFIC.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 49, Issue 15048, 28 November 1923, Page 5

THE DRINK TRAFFIC.

CHURCH AND PROHIBITION.

A LIVELY INTERLUDE,

(By Telegraph—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, Tuesday. A deputation from the New Zealand Alliance waited on the Presbyterian General Assembly to-night. In welcoming the deputation the acting-Alodcrator (the Rev. N. Ale Ara) said: “I assure you that the Presbyterian Church is in sympathy with the great movement for the freeing of New Zealand from tho fearful curse of the drink traffic. The Presbyterian Church is quite sound and solid on this matter.” The Assembly passed the following deliverance: “We appoint the second Sunday in November as temperance Sunday. We renew our recommendation to Sunday school superintendents and teachers to give attention to the training of the young in total abstinence principles, and to give them an opportunity of signing the temperance pledge. . . **We request the Government to troduce legislation eliminating the State purchase and control issue, so that a vote may be taken between prohibition and continuance. <‘ We strongly protest against any attempt to introduce licenses into the King Country, and earnestly call upon the Government to keep faith with the Maoris by maintaining the compact made in 1884-85, and to take all the necessary measures,,for the preventing of the illegal sale of liquor m that against the effort being made to have the question of ‘corporate control’ placed upon the ballot paper as a third issue, and request the Parliament t 0 resist the effort, in view of the fact that there m no evidence of any demand for this any considerable section of people.’’ During the debate, the Rev. J. Milne (Thames) moved as an amendment that the clause requesting the elimination o State purchase and control issue be erased. The first ground of his request he said, was justice. Thirty thousand people had voted for State control, and it was a surer thing than ever that, m God’s good time, they would yet see the liquor traffic under State control. (Cries of “Never; never!”) It was a question of justice to the 30 000 that tho State control issue should be left in. Prohibition was right down in the teeth of liberty. The Rev. Milne tried to continue after the Alodcrator had rung tho bell, but there were cries of “Time, time!” and the stamping of feet, so he had to retire. No one seconded the Rev. Alilnc a amendment, and it was dropped.