NOTES FROM MRS DON.

White Ribbon, Volume 30, Issue 356, 18 March 1925, Page 8

NOTES FROM MRS DON.

I sailed through heavy seas, high winds and snowstorms every’ day on our way to London, and never knew until I arrived there, just how bad the weather was. Several ships had been wrecked and many lives lost, while all over England the rain descended, the winds blew, and the floods came, followed by fogs said to be the worst in years. The only Sunday service arranged for me had to be cried off, for all traffic was suspended in London, you could scarcely see your hand before you. In spite of bad weather. I had tea twice at our Headquarters, once with the English Executive officers, and once with a group of friends new and old that met to hear Mr Courtenay Week’s lecture on the disastrous effects of alcohol upon tile unborn child. The Headquarters is a memorial to the life’s wcrk of Lady Carlisle, and makes \ e long more than ever for a similar building in New Zealand. There is a combined shop and wffice on the ground floor, with commodious office at the back, and up-to-date lavatories and toilet accommodation. Below' are huge cellars for storage, and on the top flat a good sized Assembly Hall, with very nicely furnished parlours divided by folding doors. An up-to-date kitchenette with every facility for making tea for one or one hundred. Knowing by experience what a boon these Headquarters mean to our work, I wonder how in all the world we manage so well without one. I purchased goods at Evanston, including two dozen “Torch Bearers,’’ written by Miss Elizabeth Gordon, some more serviettes, some novel promise boxes, also cardboard collecting boxes that fold like an envelope, most suitable for putting on table at meetings, and other dainty novelties. I tranship to the “China” at Aden for Bombay. From there I go to Mukti, and know’ not yet whether to journey on to Ceylon by boat or train, but I have secured a reservation on the “Kvber”which is timed to reach Sydney sometime about the 6th or 9th of March; surely I ought to reach Dunedin in time for the Convention on the 25th.

Mr Wayne Wheeler, in sending out his New' Year’s greetings says, Uncle Sam gives in Charity 25 million dol-

lars at home, and four million dollars in gifts to wet Euiope, pays three million dollars off the public debt each working day. He stores 15,053,077 automobiles, seven eigths of the world’s total, daily spends over one million on the movies, another million on the radio, another million on outdoor sports. He has cut off half-a-million from the yearly arrests

for drunkenness, decreased alcoholic insanity by two thirds, and lowered his almhouse rates from 91 per 100,000 to 71, the smallest in their history. His industrial accidents are 250,000 fewer per year than when beer made men clumsy. He erected homes for 205,193 families during the first 6 months of the past year. Few of his children are poor. Instead of beer he buys bonds until one in five are security holders. Uncle Sam has 14,346,701 telephones. He saves 74 million dollars per year once spent to relieve drink-caused poverty, and is at heart determined to stand by the 18th Amendment.