It Doesn’t Concern Me

White Ribbon, Volume 26, Issue 7, 1 November 1954, Page 5

It Doesn’t Concern Me

The common reaction to consider the drink evil is “It doesn't concern me. I couldn’t touch the stuff. It would not make any difference if every public house in the land were closed tomorrow, or if they kept open 24 hours a day.” But that it timply NOT TRUE. We are all concerned in this matter, even those of us who have never tasted alcohol in our lives. How many people are there with a familv circle in which there is no individual, no * / family group that has not been injured or spoiled by the c\il of intoxicants? We cannot escape being concerned. Who Pay* the Bill? . . . Who can calculate what it means in human sorrow, in wrecked lives and ruined characters. A drunken man staggering along the street may be only a figure of fun, but what does it mean when he gets home ? How would you feel if it were your home? Who pays the bill 5 Suppose that money had been spent on his home! Who pays the bill for spoiled material and an unsteady hand, the effects of a hangover? Did you ever hear of a doctor saying to a patient, “You would stand a far better chance of recovery if only you had not been a teetotaller”? Who pays -the bill, when this thriftlessness makes him a burden on the State? Who pays for the police force, the Courts, for the maintenance of those committed to prison, or for assistance to maintain their wives and families? Set all this o\er against the contribution to national revenue supplied by the taxes on intoxicants and on which side is the balance? Where You Come In In the end, the problem i> not National, but personal. Said a character in a recent novel, “There is really nothing in the world, except the individual. No matter what people say, nor what kind of theories they work out, good or bad, they mean nothing until they are a reality in the lives of ordinary people. This is true of this problem of intoxicants. We are the people who are likely to suffer. Consider the tragic list of road casualties. Anyone who passes the crowded car parks outside hotels at closing time knows that many of the drivers will be unfit to drive their vehicles. They will not be under the influence of drink as the police court interprets the phrase, but will be influenced by it nevertheless. Even a single drink may make a difference of six feet in the distance a driver needs to pull up in an unexpected emergency. . . You will not be saved because you are a teetotaller, nor will your child be saved, if the driver has had a drink or two and travels that extra six feet. IT DOES CONCERN YOU.

What guarantee have you that your child may not become a drunkard ? The brewers are spending millions of pounds to bring up a generation of new drinkers. There is no way of telling in advance which one out of fifteen or twenty social drinkers will become an excessive drinker, hut one will. Suppose that one should be your boy. Suppose your girl is betrayed because she has had two or three cocktails at a dance You will not always be able to keep her under your wing. DOES THIS MATTER CONCERN YOU? What We Can Do We need to recognise the e\i! for what it is and cease to go on living and speaking as if the drink evil no longer matters. It matters as much today as when Hands of Hope were popular and Temperance Societies flourished. Drinking has not ceased to be evil by becoming fashionable. It still wrecks characters, lives, homes. “Ye are the light of the world," Jesus said. If we do not hear our witness, who will ? We are to declare its evils and to seek to restrict its influence. Our example counts, and we that are strong ought to bear the burdens of the weak, that we may save the people wdio boast, “I know when to stop," from going on until they have to say, “I know when to stop, hut 1 can’t.” And we all knowhow often that happens. Our VOTE counts too. What are we going to do about that personal responsibility? My vote is desperately important. If we are members of the body of Christ and one member suffers, the whole body suffers with it. IT DOES CONCERN ME. (By Rev. William J. May, in “Joyful News.”)