UNANSWERABLE TEMPERANCE ARGUMENTS.
THE following paragraphs are taken from the Pacific Ensign, official organ of the California W. C. T. U. They are worthy of earnest consideration. "We hear considerable of 'duty taking hold on destiny' in our dreadful war in the Philippines, and of a 'benevolent assimilation' of the people. Does this mean that the Filipinos, now a temperate people, are to be made drunken, subject to leg-cuffs and hand-cuffs, like our soldiers? Is the 'benevolent assimilation' to be a general union of Filipinos and Americans in insanity? Mr. Long, Secretary of the Navy, by a quiet order, put liquor out of the navy at the beginning of the war. As a result, the 1st of August, 1899, there had not been one death in the navy from disease, while in the same time 5,277 had died of disease from the canteen-cursed army. In the navy, men were shut up in ships in tropic regions; in the army, there could be freedom of motion, some chance for comfort; and it is fair to attribute the difference to the morality of the navy induced by Secretary Long's order." "A friend, waiting in a Wyoming depot for a few hours, saw fifty-nine car-loads of beer pass, marked Manila. Our government transports carry quantities of liquor. It is openly sold on the voyage. Chaplain Frank M. Wells, recently returned, volunteered a letter to the Union Signal, telling of the constant drinking by officers and soldiers. And the canteen method of dividing the profits among the messes in proportion to the amount drunk by each mess, makes a strong public sentiment, against which the temperate man must struggle; for the more he drinks, the more comes to his mess in luxuries; and drinking men know how to make him most uncomfortable. If we have any Christianity in the nation, it seems the proper time to apply it. The Filipino is really suffering less than the mothers of our own soldiers." "Cunningham Geikie says: 'The Parisians have now the evil repute of being greater victims to alcoholism than either the English, Dutch, or Germans. In a great Paris hospital it was lately found that, out of a thousand patients, seventy in a hundred men, and thirty-one in a hundred women, were hopeless alcoholists.' A German scientist says that the temporary help of alcohol as a stimulant, even in sickness, is more than offset by its effect as a paralyzer." "When the soldiers who have recently returned from the Philippines, were to receive their discharge medals of honor, the powers that be in Oakland placed the medals in the care of saloon-keepers, and issued orders to the soldiers to go to the saloons to procure them." "An official in Los Angeles says, confidentially, that no one can get public work in that city without bringing to the city officials a 'character' from some saloon-keeper in his ward. A temperate man applied for work; he was told that he must have a recommend from a certain saloon-keeper. In desperation, he applied for the recommend, and was told, with much swearing, 'No; you never patronize me.'"