WITH OUR DOMINION PRESIDENT.

White Ribbon, Volume 32, Issue 376, 18 October 1926, Page 6

WITH OUR DOMINION PRESIDENT.

Our Dominion President has been busily engaged attending District Conventions. It is a great stimulus to the workers to have her with them.

During Auckland Convention, she gave the following address at the Public Evening Meeting: Mrs T. E. Taylor, who gave the address, said it was a joy to realise that such a large number of the young people of New Zealand were corning under the influence, not only of the Bible Classes and Sunday Schools, but of the Band of Hope, which was one of the most important sections of the Temperance movement. She said people wore deploring the fact that young men and young women of the present day were drinking liquor, but why should we blame them. It is not their fault. For lack of knowledge the people perish, and our young women in particular, did not know. It was our fault that during the past twenty years we had not worked as we ought for a Cradle Roll, a Band of Hope, and Temperance Instruction in our Public Schools. We had not taken advantage of the opportunities we had of. C aching our young people the ter. s !c thing that alcohol is, and its effect upon the human body and the br\in, and on the moral and spiritual life. She also spoke on the Report of the Commission which sat recently in New Zealand to enquire into the question of Mental Defectives and Sexual Offenders, pointing out that it was a shame and disgrace that in this small Dominion, possessing almost unrivalled climatic conditions, and one of the finest educational systems in the world, there should be between 4,000 and 5,000 mentally defective and epileptic children. Speaking of the burden of these upon the State, she cited only three cases, being the descendants of drunken and degenerate parents, who, in two cases, were costing the State £IO,OOO, and in the other £13,500. A terrible indictment that such things should exist in New Zealand, and we were responsible. The Liquor Traffic, she said, was one of the most strongly entrenched of vested interests, and they would not give up their 12 per cent, and 15 per cent, dividends

without a bitter fight. And, we must fight, and we must teach the children and the young people, the future voters, to get rid of this terrible traffic. In concluskn, she quoted Frances Willard who said: “Ah! it is women who have given the costliest hostages to fortune. Out into the battle of life they have sent their best beloved, with fearful odds against them, with snares that men have legalised and set for them on ever} hand. Beyond the arms thrt held them long, their boys have gone for ever. O! by the danger they have dared; by the hours of patient watch ing over beds where helpless children lay; by the incense of ten thousand prayers wafted from their gentle lips to heaven, I charge you give them power to protect, along life’s treacherous highway, those whom they have so loved. Let it no longer be that they must sit back among the shadows, hopelessly mourning over their strong staff broken, and their beautiful rod; but when the sons they love shall go forth to life’s battle, still let their mothers walk beside them, sweet and serious and clad in the garments of power.”