Mrs Barton said she was glad to see so many young men and women present.
She wanted to enlist the sympathy of every one of them in a great movement.
They wanted strong men with true hearts, great faith, and willing hands.
They wanted to do the greatest good for the greatest number, and they wanted the young men to help them. Were the young men to allow themselves to be slaughtered for the brewer's gold?
No young man desired that. Well, let them beware of the first step. When a young man lost his self-respect he was done.
It had been ascertained that 78 per cent of those frequenting hotel bars in New Zealand were young men under 30 years of age. When that was the position young New Zealand was surely beginning to go wrong, and was becoming depraved. What was wanted was self-knowledge. Let them consider for a moment and get to understand themselves and they would be able to avoid many a danger.
Young men should have self-control, which was said to be the armour of virtue. Of course, what applied to the young men applied equally to the young women. As to this crusade people had said it would not go. Well, it was going, and the liquor traffic was going with it.
- (Applause). She would like the young people to work in this movement. There were only four months to go, but they could do a lot in four months. She believed in a bit of enthusiasm.
Let them all get going, and by-and-by they would so frighten the liquor people that they would not have a word to say. She wanted the people of the Dominion to rise up and assert themselves. How grand it would be if they could have recruiting sergeants everywhere inducing their young men to enlist in the temperance ranks.
To-day nobody wanted the young man who drank. The merchants did not want him, nor the steamship companies, nor the railways. Even the saloon-keeper did not want him in his employment.
Did the young women want him? No.- (Applause).
• LONDON: The front page of the massive Times Empire Supplement is taken up by a fine advertisement for New Zealand. There are pictures of Milford Sound, a bit of Milford Track, Cabbage Tree Grove, Woodside, Tamahere, the dredging industry, and Taranaki, the centre of dairy farming, as well as a portrait of the Prime Minister. - ODT, 22.7.1911.
