CORRESPONDENCE.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2301, 21 September 1908, Page 1

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE CHALLENGE TO THE LIQUOR TRADE. [To the Editor.] Sir, —I am somewhat surprised that tlie licensed victuallers have not taken up the challenge made by Mr. Black last week to’a public debate on the liquor question. Surely one of the publicans, on their eloquent organising agent here, should have ample material at hand (“cold, solid facts” about Ashburton, for instance) to gain an easy victory. Perchance the sultry time the latter gentleman is getting at the hands of the ladies of Gisborne —whom he is trying to convert—makes him not anxious to face a public audience.But Gisborne electors are proverbially fair, and the liquor party damaged their cause seriously by declining to come out into the open. It seems to me—who am not a New Zealander —that the no-license party have fir the most satisfactory position.—l am, etc., “ONLOOKER.” NO-LICENSE. [To the Editor.] Sir, —Dr. Gerard Smith has given to the press an article on the evils of intemperance, and although the Doctor disavows any connection with either side on the no-license question, it has not prevented the No-Licenso party prom appropriating the Doctor’s effusion as welcome evidence of the truth of what they assert. The Doctor’s article in question has nothing whatever to do with the rights or wrongs of uo-Jicpnse, but is simply a medical statement of the’effects of intemperance on the human system. The great point that condemns nolicense is that it does not prevent consumption of liquor in large quantities in those districts where it. has been carried, vide Ashburton. The removal of the consumption of liquor from the hotel bars to the nrivate homes, lyitli the ( 'jj gallons installed,” can bo nothing else (If I may besmirch your columns with a quotation of platform oratory) than a device of the infernal one to entrap wayward souls. Let the mothers and daughters of this electorate stop this, for it -is in their power to do so, and keep their homes as heretofore, bright, sweet, and pure, apd free from anything that piay causo t 6 cilfeinl.—l am'etc. QUID NUNC.