“LIQUOR AND FUN.”

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVIII, Issue 1049, 14 April 1910, Page 20

“LIQUOR AND FUN.”

SOMETHING THAT WAS NOT SAID. THE CABLE CRAMMER AGAIN. The Press Association should exercise greater care over the news it disseminates through the telegraphic columns of the daily and weekly papers of this country. A statement, cabled by its Sydney representative on March 30th last, has gone far and wide and, of course, been eagerly seized upon by the Prohibitionist and No-License party, as a means of discrediting the Trade in New Zealand. According to the cable referred to The president of the Licensed Victuallers’ Association, addressing the annual conference, stated that prohibition had wiped out happiness and comfort in Canada and New Zealand. In the latter place the tourist traffic had fallen off by 60 per cent. Tourists could not have fun when they could not get liquor.” By the last Sydney mail we received a verbatim report of the address which is supposed to have been thus summarised, and, nowhere in the report is it possible for us to find the least justification of the summary cabled through the Press Association, the only element of truth it contains being, as we propose to show, the reference to the falling off in the tourist traffic. Canada is only incidentally mentioned in the report, the president’s statements referring more particularly to the United States and to New Zealand, and the words “Tourists could not have fun when they could not get liquor,” are conspicuous by the absence. * * * ♦ WHAT THE PRESIDENT DID SAY. Mr. J. B. Sutton is not a gentleman who is given to flippant speaking. He evidently realises his responsibility as President of the New South Wales L.V. Association, and weighs his words carefully and well. Speaking of Prohibition he said : “I do not think that the people of New South Wales want to ruin their State, but if they vote in favour of Prohibition they will do- so. Prohibition ruined every State of the United States in which it was tried from a business point of view. The same results were felt in Canada and in every other part of the world which came under its influence. New Zealand has only had a small dose of it, but her tourist traffic has fallen off nearly 60 per cent. I must tell you that New Zealand has not Prohibition but NoLicense, but they are closely related. Tourists do not want to find out where the sly grog shops are, or the man who has a private cupboard. When he wants to have a drink he calls for a bottle of wine and throws his money on the counter. When a man is on a pleasure trip he does not want Intrigue. Therefore the vote in seven or eight districts in New Zealand has militated against the tourist business of the whole country. Nowhere else in the address is the tourist traffic referred to, so that it is easily seen how unreliable and misleading the cabled statements are. We feel justified in referring to the matter at length, because a very unfair advantage is being taken by “our

friend the enemyover this business, the statement that was not made, except by the “cable crammer,” having already formed the text of more than one address upon the alleged depravity which marks the Trade as a whole, and which is exemplified in the supposed opinion of the president of the New South Wales L.V. Association that fun is impossible without liquor. The attention of the directors of the Press Association should be drawn by the New Zealand Licensed Victuallers’ Association to misleading arid wholly impossible summary of a speech that deserved far better treatment, assuming that it was thought necessary to cable a resume of the statements it contained to New Zealand. i ' - ■■■