STARTLING INDICTMENT

Waikato Times, Volume 91, Issue 14241, 16 December 1919, Page 5

STARTLING INDICTMENT

BISHOP CLEARY SPEAKS OUT, WELLINGTON, Monday. The recent issue of Auckland's Roman Catholic Magazine "The Month," has just arrived in Wellington, and one of the most surprising features is a powerful editorial by His Lordship Dr. Cleary, Catholic Bishop of Auckland. Dealing with the forthcoming poll on Prohibition one paragraph is headed, ''Human Wreckage." . Dr Cleary writes thus regarding the liquor trade: — "Herein lies one of the'tragedies "of the traffic in intoxicating "drink: the antagonism between "the monetary itneetests of a "large section of 'The Trade" "aHd the welfare;, of the indi- ._. anu 'tJie nation. Out in "No Man's Land, close in front "of the trenches where he "served as a military chaplain, "there laid the piled up or scat"tered bodies—all unburied—"of over 3000 gallant colonial "storm troops that had been destroyed by a sudden whirlwind "of fire from the near-by Ger"man lines. That moving spectacle of battered bodies does "not represent a tithe of the "human wreckage left all over '"this Dominion by the sins of a "considerable section of 'The "Trade," whom neither moral "suasion nor the civil law nor "the appeal of pity has been able "to bring within control. And •the less appeal there is to •'conscience in 'The Trade' the "more must the State rely for "reform upon its power and "right of repressing a traffic, the "evils of which it has hopelessly "failed to reduce to the limits of "tolerance or moderation. 'As "to the right of a State to suppress the liquor traffic,' said "the great Catholic, Archbishop "Spalding. 'There can be no "question, since the right to "suppress crime involves the "right to suppress its chief "cause.' It is the sins and the "sin-making and crime attendant "upon the operation of "The "Trade' that have, created the "movement for its abolition; "they have furnished it with its "chief driving force; they have "made it (it is our personal "view), a wholesome necessity "in a land that would give its "best to the shaping of the new "and belter era dial is (we "hope) at hand."