AMERICA’S NATIONAL PRESIDENT BROADCASTS.

White Ribbon, Volume 41, Issue 490, 18 July 1936, Page 4

AMERICA’S NATIONAL PRESIDENT BROADCASTS.

Broadcasting from St. Louis while eti route to the sixty-second Annual Convention of the W.C.T.U. at Tulsa, Mrs Smith Kpok< on the subject, ' The American Home in Our Present Social Order.” Prefacing her remarks with a vivid characterisation of the personnel of the Convention over which she was soon to preside. Mrs Smith said, its to its makeup:— “Our Convention delegates will comprise educators, business women, preachers, lawyers, physicians, writers and u great body of home-makers. “You ask why will more than a thousand women, with a fair sprinkling of men, journey in the prolmbl> hot weather. to the interior of the country? Frances E. Willard was once asked to state in a single sentence the object of the W.C.T.U. (Quickly she said, * 11 is to make the whole world more homelike.’ This Convention is the yearly check-up of the work done m home protection during the year a Conference of planning for next year. . . . clit; women, teacher, young FOLKS - “Who are these women? Some people think of the members of the W.C.T.U. as a peculiar class; set apart, different, aged, militant. Hut arc they? Please come to our Convention and see them, a cross section of every church —Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish. “ ‘How many have l>een or are teachers?* It seems every hand goes up! “ ‘How many are Sunday school teachers?’ Aliout the same proportion. " ‘How many belong to the Federation of Clubs?’ Practically the same. “ ‘How many belong to the Missionary Society?’ All of them! “ ‘How old are they?’ Well, just as old as all women like these are! You will see some on whom the years sit with honour —they have no home cares now’, perhaps; they have served society and their country well in giving their children to good citizenship service. There are many young matrons who are earnestly concerned that the homes over which they preside shall he safe places for their i>est iieloved. women who wisely understand that their homes cannot be safe unless all homes an* wife. ‘‘There also is our youthful auxiliary, the Youth’s Temperance Council — young men and women, college folks. >oung business people on vacation. Oh, how they face life with vigour and determination! Saturday night I shall hand my gavel as presiding officer to the (General Secretary of this Y.T.C.. and she will introduce, one after another, nine young peoople from as many States. In five minutes each will say something worth hearing. *A good time with a purpose’ is their motto, and they do not find it interferes with that good time to lie a total abstainer from

alcoholic leverages. They are living proof ihat health and purpose and ideals are sufficient to promote happiness. 'lheseare the home-makers ot the immediate future. ”'i tie teaching of the alleged huriulessnesa of the moderate use of alcoholics is an exceedingly great danger. The scientists who are studying me automobile situation have proved it is tin* druilung, not the drunken, driver who is the menace, and perhaps this will convince people that alcohol is u drug, dangerous to human tissue. in other words, it is valuable outside the Uidy, to tan leailier, make felt, manufacture varnish, preserve anatomical specimens, Hut it is entirely out of place inside the body. . . . “Most tragic of all is the report of one of the largest life insurance companies that rejections of insurance applications because of excessive drinking has increased since repeal 183 per cent, for thoae under thirty years of age. Youth pays the penalty. “How then can fathers and mothers maintain a casual attitude toward alcohol? How can they use or tolerate it! Cocktail-drinking parents cannot expect their children to avoid the habit which will deprive them of the abundant life Jesus came to the world to bring. I ’rollibition laws may be. repealed, but the effects of alcohol can never be iepeuled. Beverage alcohol is wrong physically, it is wrong mentally, it is wrong economically, it is wrong socially, it is wrong spiritually. Therefore it must be abolished.’’—From Union Signal.”