A WHITE RIBBONER! WHY?

White Ribbon, Volume 33, Issue 400, 18 November 1928, Page 1

A WHITE RIBBONER! WHY?

How often is this question asked by those who know very little of the world-wide organisation which took al; its symbol a bow of white ribbon. According to the report of our Dominion Treasurer, our fully paidup membership in New Zealand is 7,000. To that has to be added the members in Niue Island, and the members w’hose subs have not been collected and whose capitation fee is unpaid, probably another thousand. The Dominion Executive, earnestly desiring to increase this number, launched a membership campaign, which has been taken up with more or less earnest m'ss throughout the Dominion. In pursuit <»f new members, the query often meets us: Why become a member of the W.C.T.U.? The reply briefly put is: “The Union is a w’orld-wMde organisation, it is lofty in its ideals and great in its accomplishments. It was the first Society to attempt international temperance work on a wide scale, ever it has been a pioneer, ever in the forefront of every reform, ever blazing the trail for others to follow, ever making smooth, safe roads for the young feet who follow' after; ever removing the stones out of the path. “We shall not travel by the road w*e make: Ere day by day the sound of many feet Is heard upon the stones that now we break We shall be come to where the cross roads meet.

“And yet the road is ours as never theirs! is not one joy on us alone bestowed? For us the Master's joy, O, Pioneers We shall not travel, but wv make the Road.” “Great oaks from little acorns spring.” When Frances Willard visualised the women of the world, of every race, creed, and colour, united as a solid phalanx against every evil, that threatened the home and the child; when Mary Clement Leavitt started out with the Polyglot Petition —a world-w'ide woman’s petition to be presented to every Government praying for the abolition of the drink and opium traffic —to express that ideal in terms of the actual; who could have forseen the sturdy sapling to which that acorn has grown in less than half-a-century, and who will • dare to predict the mighty oak it will become within the century. Mother love is a beautiful, a wonderful thing, but organised mother love is a force, whose achievements none can prophecy. And the W.C.T.I . has directed that mother love in an organised attack against that trinity of evils —strong drink, war and impurity. In the very forefront of its constitution that band of brave pioneers dared to place their support of the three P’s. —Prohibition. Peace. Purity. Prohibition. —Alcohol, the racial enemy; the destroyer of the home, the child, the nation; the instigator of every evil; must be banished from our national and our social life. Every member of the W.C.T.U. is

pledged as an individual to personal abstinence; as a mother to train her babe upon its Cradle Roll, as an abstainer; as a citizen to unceasing effort for the freedom of our land from the cruel chains of alcohol. Peace. Upon women and children the horrors of war have ever pressed heavily, but under conditions of modern warfare, the non-combatant will be the worst sufferer. Is it any wonder then, that years before President Wilson spoke for a League of Nations, the women of U.S.A. demanded, on behalf of the world’s womanhood, “the establishment of International Courts of Arbitration to abolish war.” The world is slowly following these pioneer women. Purity.- “A White Life for Two.” The double standard of morals must go. To the mother her boy is as dear as her girl, and she follow's the teaching of the Divine Master in demanding the same standard of conduct from each. Hut what has the Dominion Union done? For over forty years it has been a quietly educative force in our national life. It organised and carried to a successful issue the fight for Woman's Suffrage. This Dominion, unlike other lands, never had a Suffrage Society, the Franchise Superintendent of the W.C.T.U. leading and directing the campaign. The Union also worked for the abolition of the iniquitous C.D. Acts, and never rested until they ceased to disgrace our Statute Hook. The Union was a pioneer in Temperance educative work. Every year Convention sent deputations to suc-

cessive Ministers of Education, asking for scientific Temperance teaching in our schools. As long ago as 1917 Convention sent a deputation to Mr Massey, then Prime Minister, asking that pilots, engine-drivers, engineers, should be total abstainers. Again this was in advance of public opinion, but its educative value was groat. It is not unusual no*» magistrates to request motor-drivers convicted of drunkenness to take out a prohibition order, and Sir Francis Bell, the responsible Leader of the Upper House, speaking there said: “If you want to stop motor accidents, carry prohibition.” Public opinion is now ripe for legislation asked for a decade ago.

I)r. Truby King, who has done such grand service for the babies of this land, gave almost, if not unite, his tirst talk in public upon this subject to the Convention of 1911 in New Plymouth. At his ow'n request, he was granted half-an-hour to address Convention, and he condemns in plain language the taking of alcohol either by the expectant or the nursing mother. In Peace education the Union has been equally active. The first Peace resolution to come before Convention was withdrawn, owing to strong opposition. But quietly tlie educative campaign went on. and in 1927 a resolution was passed asking for compulsory physical training instead of compulsory military training. Women realise that it is psychologically wrong to compel the young man to train and be fit that he may kill his fellow-men, hut that it is in accord with the divine law' of love to train him to the highest degree of physical fitness, to serve and help his fellow-men. Later in the same year, church synods and several societies followed the Union's lead and endorsed its resolution. Realising the educative effect of house to house canvassing, the Union has done much Petition work—lts latest effort being the petition for a two-issue ballot paper, which showed how widely spread was the desire for this democratic measure. Is it not a privilege to belong to a Union, so wide in its aims, so devoted in its service, and so prayerful in its working? The Christian womanhood of this land may find a common meeting place here, where, irrespective of

creeds, they can work, believe and pray for the coming of Christ’s Kingdom. They can go with us to the mount of vision. w r here, like Moses of old, we can view the pattern set by God, then, with us come down into the actual and build a character, a State, “according to the pattern which I showed thee in the Mount.”