We are disposed to fear that there is a good deal of ground for the complaint that many members of the Expeditionary Force, now in camp at Tahuna Park, are drinking a great deal more liquor than is good for them on their nightly visits to the city.
The spectacle of men in uniform reeling through the streets on their way from hotel to hotel or staggering to the car that is to take them back to the camp is not one which reflects very favourably either upon the city or upon the Expeditionary Force.
The public will generally desire to make many allowances in favour of the men who have volunteered for service in the greatest war of which the world has had experience, and it would not be censorious regarding the foolish indulgence of those members of the Force who have been too frequently entering the hotel bars and spending too much of their time there if it were not that the whole proceeding must be somewhat subversive of military discipline.
Moreover, there is reason to suppose liquor is taken into the camp by some of the men and that not a little drinking goes on in the tents.
It is to be regretted the general leave which has been granted for some evenings past should be abused in the way we have indicated, and it is not suggested that the benefit of this concession should be withdrawn from the men in camp, in which event the innocent would suffer along with the guilty, but it is certainly desirable that the city should be spared the sight of numbers of more or less intoxicated members of the Expeditionary Force disgracing their uniform night after night.
We do not ignore the fact nothing is being done in the town to provide entertainment for the men who are on leave.
It seems to us to be unfortunate that the members of the Force have to so large an extent been left ''at a loose end''.
•At the Hanover Street Baptist Church the Rev. R. S. Gray, in a sermon on the text, ''Whether it be right in the sight of God'', in which he dealt with the righteousness of Britain's participation in the European war, referred to the number of Territorials who were to be seen about the streets under the influence of liquor.
He had been informed that hotels in the city were supplying liquor to the members of the Expeditionary Force without charge, and while he could not vouch personally for the statement there was some evidence of it. In any case, the action of hotelkeepers in supplying men who had already had more than sufficient was deserving of the severest censure.
The thing was a public scandal, and could never have happened if the hotelkeepers had any sense of the gravity of the present situation.
He referred to this as a citizen, and not in any sense as a prohibitionist. He had, indeed, been approached by public men, not in sympathy at all with prohibition, who urged that the hotels should be compelled to close at an earlier hour, as they were doing in Great Britain.
•It has been suggested local bodies should bring into operation a by-law in vogue in Australia, that when motorists are approaching intersecting streets they should indicate with a movement of the hand, stretching it out in the Australian and English custom, whether they intend going straight on or turning into the intersecting street.
This has worked very advantageously in cities like Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. - ODT, 3.9.1914
