THE TOURIST TRAFFIC.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XIV, Issue 824, 21 December 1905, Page 38

THE TOURIST TRAFFIC.

In the November number of “The Tourist ” an article on the value and future possibilities of the tourist traffic, the writer of which gives much space to details of the traffic that has been built up in New Zealand by the State, aided by good licensed houses, and in the course of subsequent remarks adds that whatever may be the opinion of the extreme prohibitionist, the over-sea tourist, accustomed to travel where his freedom of action is not questioned, is not likely to visit a country where extreme laws obtain. The Home Britisher does not understand’ this curtailment of his liberty, neither does he see where the prohibition of alcohol makes a nation any better. For we can have no better example of what may be by looking .on the two pictures before us: Rotorua, with

its well-equipped hotels, under license; and the King Country, with its inhospitable boardinghouses and sly-grog shops under prohibition. The argument that the carrying of no-license would ruin property’, both private and public, in Rotorua may not weigh with extremists, but it should weigh with rightthinking people, as the loss will fall not only On the individual, but also on the State, which has spent so much money on Rotorua, Te Aroha, and other places.