PROHIBITION IS NOT TEMPERANCE.

Waikato Times, Volume 104, Issue 17533, 15 October 1928, Page 8

PROHIBITION IS NOT TEMPERANCE.

It is a very significant thing thai the majority of the Bishops and Ministers of the Protestant Episcopal Church of America should have come out in favour of mollifying the prohibition law. They have found by experience that it is the enemy and not the ally of true temperance, and they have sanctioned a national campaign | for altering its repressive features. ] Increased drunkenness, an alarming j development of the drug habit, political corruption, and a hypocritical attitude towards.the Whole question are the outcome, "they declare, of an impracticable law which time has proved t»> be inimical to the lif; of the nation. True temperance, they add, is an educational rather, than a legislative problem. That conclusion is strongly supported by the report of the Royal Army Temperance Association. Although our standing forces at home and. abroad number over 202,000 there were fewer than 260 magisterial convictions for drunkenness on the part of Army men. Yet there is no prohibition in the English Army, but something far more valuable—sobriety. And this sobriety has been attained by teaching the men selfrespect, self-control, self-knowledge, and by providing them with healthy open-air distractions. That is true temperance because it is founded on character. A moral reform that is evolved from within stands some chance of permanency. 13