“A WHIFF FROM HELL”

White Ribbon, Volume 47, Issue 9, 18 October 1941, Page 1

“A WHIFF FROM HELL”

In July, 1895, at a State Convention of the “Ohio Liquor League” the President in his opening address said: “We all should never forget that our present customers will soon die; and also that nickels spent in treats for the hoys now will come hack in dollars to our tills when the appetite is formed. By all means create appetite.” A Methodist minister, seated at the rear, reported this statement to the Editor of “Anti-Saloon,” and the heading of the story read “A Whiff from Hell.” Since that time we have had many whiffs from the same place. Let us look at a few: Sir Edgar Sanders, Secretary for British Liquor Trade, said in an address: “We must face the fact that the hulk of our customers are middleaged people. As to whether the young people drink depends the future of our trade. We must create the appetite for drink in thousands and milions of young people who have known its taste.” If ever a doctrine came straight from the infernal regions surely this one did. Create appetite! why? Will young people he better, finer, saner when this appetite is created? Read our daily papers for an answer. Create appetite! why! “Our trade is in danger.” The old cry first voiced in Ephesus. Create appetite! why? To fill the pockets of liquor sellers. Now com€s a statement from the Editor of the “Brewers’ Digest” (U.S.A.) that the sale of heer in the camps will result in the largest group of customers in the nation after the taste for beer has been formed. With devilish cunning “The Trade” is e\er seeking to debauch the youth. No clause of the liquor law is more frequently broken than the one forbidding the sale to those under 21 years of age. And why is this? It is the one clause the liquor trade dare not keep. If all our youth were abstainers until 21 years old how many would form the taste after? Very many less than now, and the

trade would lose customers. Why were canteens allowed in our N.Z. camps ? Because they made the hoys more efficient soldiers? Made them better airmen? NO! They were put in our camps solely and entirely to create appetite and provide future customers for the liquor trade. It is said that men are not allowed to get drunk in the canteens. Quite so! But it has a more deadly menace to our hoys. It teaches them to drink, it does what the trade requires—creates appetite.

The Menace to the Race.

That alcohol is a “racial” poison is proven to the hilt. The ancient Romans attributed the lameness of Vulcan to the drunkenness of his father, Jupiter, when he was conceived. The mother of Samson was enjoined' during her pregnancy. “Now therefore, beware, 1 pray thee, and drink no wine or strong drink.” (Judges xiii.—4). In 1816 freedom was gi\en for home distillation of brandy in Norway, almost every farmer distilled brandy from his own corn and potatoes. Among these communities the number of feeble-minded increased from 1816 to 1835 more than 100 per cent. The country was alarmed once the home distillation was stopped in 1848. Dr. Mjoen, a leading Norwegian authority, w rites: “The enormous increase of feeble-minded came and went with the brandy.” Sensible people arc becoming alarmed at the increase of juvenile crime in our midst, also the abnormal increase of serious crime. A warder crippled for life and others injured by prisoners, and even as I write a manhunt is going on and already six lives have fallen to the gun of a criminal. The police have not 1 <en protected. If a government licenses a trade to make feeble-minded criminals, it should at least protect its police and its law-abiding citizens. But why not take the better course? Begin at the other end and cease to breed from the unfit.

White Ribbonert. In U.S.A. at their Annual Convention the NV.C.T.U. voted approval to an appeal asking selectees to do for themselves what Congress has not yet done for them keep liquor away from the defence army. The message asks the men to do just one thing: “Think for a moment of what you know liquor, including 3.2 per cent beer, does to you, of what you have seen liquor do to other men and women, and then yourself if the hangover has any place in the army or navy. “If your personal decision is that you prefer sober judgment and sound thinking all the way down the line from Washington to the combat maneuver, there is only one thing you can do—the next time you go into the canteen or into the tavern down the street, say ‘make mine a soft 9 99 one. Reconstruction. Much talk of reconstruction is in the air lately. Truly the world wants rebuilding. Should not Christian men and women ask themselves, “Are we going to allow the Liquor Trade, Drug Trade, Trade in Armaments to exist in a reconstructed world?” These should all be dealt with internationally. We close with a quotation from a leading economist not from a religious leader. It voices what all White Ribboners are working and praying for.— Roger Babson, recognised as one of the nation’s foremost economists, recently said in an address before a businessmen’s conference in the Willard Hotel, Washington, D.C.: “No system of national defence can save any nation so long as the unfit are breeding more rapidly than the fit. This is the primary reason why our national income has decreased 100 dollars per capita since 1932, while the economic loss through liquor, gambling, indecent publications, misleading broadcasting and other commercialized vices has increased so rapidly. “The present war will bring about great reforms which otherwise would

have taken a century. I am optimistic because the world war is to lay the foundation for a great spiritual awakening. Our troubles to-day are not due to lack of man power, or brain power, or electrical power. They are due to a lack of spiritual power The world has been trying to get on without God. As the world learns this docs not work, we will witness a spiritual renaissance arising from the ruins and ravages of war.”