DOES PROHIBITION PROHIBIT ?

Gisborne Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 3392, 6 December 1911, Page 3

DOES PROHIBITION PROHIBIT ?

FURTHER EMINENT OPINIONS.

THE KAISER FOR TRUE TEMPERANCE. (Published by arrangement with Mr. W. D. Lysnar.) An Associated Press cable of December Ist, 1910, states: “The Emperor William of Germany’s position is as follows : Of late the total abstinence loaders of Germany have been making much capital out of th© Kaiser’s frequent spoeches in which lie. deplores drunkenness. To-day the semi-official press were instructed by the Kaiser to say that ho recognises the impossibility of securing total abstinence either for the Army or the Navy. The Kaiser’s attitude is that while he dislikes excessive drinking, lie does not intend to combat excessive drinking by excessive abstinence. He is equally hostile to teetotalism and alcoholism. What a large and influential Committee of 50 prominent men of the United States said: “Prohibition is the parent of illicit traffic, which enormously aggravates the drink evil.” Sir Joseph Chamberlain, England’s great tariff reformer, gives his opinion on the subject as follows : “I have been a great traveller, and I have seen prohibition abound in the United States, and it only leads to drinking in more forms than under the old system.” The Rev. W. A. Waason, a prominent cleric, says: “The poisonous influence of this humbug ‘temperance’ is more disastrous than that of drunkenness; for the latter is seen and loathed for what it is; whereas the prohibition propaganda parades in tho livery of heaven.”

Lord Russell. Lord Chief Justice of England: “We have to deal with the world as we find it; with men as they are.” His Honor thus deprecated the methods of No-License advocates.

Mr. E. Crum, Mayor of Memphis, Tennessee: “Prohibition is a total failure in the large cities of Tennessee.” Mayor Coughlin, of Fall River, Massachusetts: “This city, after seven months of no-license and its evil fruits, reversed itself last December by 21-1 S votes. Conditions were bettered by the change, and drunkenness has been lessened.”

Mr. Malcolm R. Paterson, Governor of Tennessee, says: “Prohibition has been a failure in Tennessee, just as it has been in every other State where tried.”

The Rt. Rev. P. J. Donohue, Roman Catholic Bishop of Wheeling, W.Ya. : “While I recognise the evils of the liquor traffic, 1 am, nevertheless, driven to the conviction that prohibition will be a failure in the attempt to cope with such evils. In many States it is already a failure, the net result of such legislation being to multiply illicit bars/’

What Magistrates in this Dominion think —The following Magistrates have had the longest experience of adjudicating in various No-License districts in this Dominion, anti have publicly expressed themselves as very strongly against No-License: Mr. R. S. Hawkins, S.M., and Mr. H. A. Stratford (Balclufhaj, Mr. V. G. Day. S.M. (Ashburton), Mr. H. W. Northcroft, S.M. (King Country). Rev. F. AY. Isitt, the great Xo-Li-cense leader (on a public platform in Gisborne) said “Prohibition was a partial failure, and total prohibition was undesirable.”

Bishop Julius, of Christchurch, whom the No-License people claim as one of the leading lights of the movement, has written to me: “I think prohibition, if local, would be ineffectual for good, and likely to beget worse evils than drunkenness. and I think colonial prohibition to be unnecessary and undesirable, and certain to provoke a bitter reaction.”

The question is, should we not profit by tho knowledge and experience of others ?***