The Fulton County news. [volume] (McConnellsburg, Pa.) 1899-current, 1905-07-19
THE GREAT DESTROYER
SOME STARTLING FACTS ABOUT
THE VICE OF iNTeMPERANce.

Student Drinking Customs n Relic OF
Barbarism - Idiotic Features of the
German Beer Commers-Cosrsest and
Most swinish Conduct Excused.
DIR. Forel, at the last meeting OF the
International Temperance Society. de-
llvered a powerful address, entitled
drinking Customs and Their Rela-
tion to the Academic Youth"
He begins by classifying student
drinking customs with other relies Of
barbarlsm. such as torture, cannibnlism
and slavery. He then describes Pro-
fessor Demme's experiments with
large number of school children from
ten TO fifteen years carried through
many months of both cold and warm
seasons. first without alcohol, then
with very moderate amounts of wine
(one-third of a glass of light wine for
the younger, one-half glass for the
older, mixed with water and taken at
dinner and supper. The constant re-
suit was that during the time they
drank the wine these children were
more sleepy. less attentive, less capa-
BILE, and rather more nervous than dur
ing the time of abstinence. Then
comes some brilliant scientific exposi-
tion and reference to the economic
waste caused by alcoholism. Thus
Germany spends every three years for
poison the milliards received from
France as war indemnity, employs an
nually arabic land for it's manufacture
equal in extent to the kingdom of Sax
ony, and sets apart from first to last
one-tenth of the male population for
the prosecution of this semi-crimlnal
t,1. ftwv Itsnf sol
says:
"The role which alcohol plays in stu
dent life is unfortunately one of the
darkest features of the dark alcohol
history. In Germany. in Switzerland,
in Austria and even in France, a
great part of the intellectual power of
the academic youth is drowned in beer,
wine or abslnthe. The ridiculous COM
pulsion and idlotic features of the Ger
man beer commers belong without
doubt to the most hateful growths of
our civilized time. They constitute
Testlmonium paupertatis, an intellec-
tual vapidlty of such character that
the academic youth who ought to con-
stitute the intellectual hope of the ma
ton could hardly invent anything more
stupid.
"They name these customs Fidelitaet
Yes, beautiful Fidelitaet with it CAB
blings, its fightings, its vomitings, its
after-headaches, in which the most
colossal Stiffness is considered genial
and the coarsest and most swinish con-
duct is excused.
"How attractive might student asso-
Citations and gatherings without drink
| be made devoted TO ideal interests
music associations, art clubs, dramatic
! societies, athletic, belletristic fellow
ships. We wish TO see no head-hang-
ing ascetics, but lively. fresh, active
youths who can sing, ride. box-de-
voted to higher hygienic and ethical
aims, freed from the wretched drink
customs in which everything noble is
stifled, paraylzed, corrupted, made raw
and vulgar.
alcohol which destroys, and degen'
crates in the germ the generations com
ing after us Is by far the worst enemy
of the future race. We must declare
against it a war of determination and
not rest until we have definitely and
finally banished it to the chemical lab
oratory where it belongs with opium
and other polsons. For the attainment
of this end we need the help of the
more gifted spirits-before all, Of the
studying youth, who represent the in
tellectual capital of the future"