CLIPPINGS FROM OUR EXCHANGES.

White Ribbon, Volume 26, Issue 312, 18 June 1921, Page 5

CLIPPINGS FROM OUR EXCHANGES.

TEACHERS’ NATIONAL PETITION. A teachers’ national petition is being circulated in all schools in England and Wales, asking His Majesty’s Government to take steps to prohibit the serving of intoxicating liquors of all kinds on licensed premises or in registered clulis to young persons under the age of 18 years. PRESIDENT OF THE WESLEYAN METHODIST CHURCH ON THIS “ACPI RSED TRAFFIC.” The President of the Wesleyan Me thodist Conference, in referring to the Temperance question, said that twenty years ago their temperance machinery had been ready to be sold for scrap iron; to-day it was bright and burnish ed and up-to-date. America had gone dry. Scotland was limping after her. and England would have to bestir herself. or she would be swept from the markets of the world. “Pussyfoot” had not lost one eye for nothing. The British lion was asleep. “Wake up. England, and sweep this accursed traffic from your midst,” he said.

LHJUOR CONTROL BOARD In the British House of Commons the Prime Minister was requested to change the personnel of the Central Liquor Control Board by requesting the resignation of representatives of the liquor trade and temperance organisations, and replacing them by w-orking men who use ihe public-houses. Viscountess Astor asked whether he would also con sider the advisability of putting on the Board of Control the victims of the pub lie-houses, who are generally the wives of those who use t hem regularly. PROHIBITION IN THE USA. Viscount Astor, who has just returned to England after a prolonged visit to th* United States, said that he had been misled by the reporta in English pr.pers ns to the condition of America under Prohibition. He found homes happier, the people more prosperous, and a widespread feeling that the country had gained enormously under prohibition. It was true that many people in places like New York evaded the law. but over mest of the country it was being ooeyed, and he was struck by the fact that hardly anyone w-anted to repeal it.

Mr Harold Spender, the well-known journalist, after a six weeks' visit to America, said, in the "Westminster Gazette’’: ”1 shall never forget the spectacle of a sober people, which first met us when we landed in New York. U(‘ saw hut a single drunk man in America for three weeks, and then he was a politician going to Washington. There is, of course, illicit drinking, but it amounts to very little. The great fact is that all the saloons have disappeared. public drinking has gone, and the secret drinking in New York is a mere fraction of what is used to Ik*. I lo* efficiency ol the people has gone up immensely, the prisons are going empty all over the country, anu are being sold. Charitable institutions are closing- In all schools the children seem a good deal better clothed *and better fed. Sir Jonn Faster Fraser, in the course of an address in London, dealt with the question of prohibition in America. Ho saiii that from his observation during a tour from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Canadian border to Mexico, the conclusion he had come to was that, light or wrong, America had gone “dry,” and would remain “dry.” Wandering about the country, ho saw howhealthy the people looked, how well the men, and particularly the women, carried themselves, how delightfully healthy the children were. When he came to Liverpool and London, he kept his eyes open, and he had not been particularly happy since. The physique of our people was not to he compared with that of the general masses of the Americans. In the immediate future there would be severe commercial competition between the two nations, and whilst we might think we should hold our own—although we were as well mentally as the Americans —we were not going to do it unless the physique of our general population !**• rane letter than it was to-day.

I « 'k to you in medical terms, and 1 say drinking alcohol is a racial poison. That, worse than that, it is a cursed confederate of the worst racial poisons, syphilis and gonorrhoea. And I say. therefore, that woman is no woman who betrays her sex. if by voting for alcohol she thereby betrays the future. —Dr. C. W. Saleeby.