The Imperial press., 1905-03-25
OUR CITIZENS DUTY
Timely communication From Pres.
 w. A. Edgar of the City Trustees

1 carefully. They would not have dared to reopen had it not been for the appar- ent balk upon the work, which Farr in the Anderson case imposed. say Zap parent bak." It is only a temporary baking, as the supreme court will have chance to reverse the decision with a fair probability that it will do so.
 We need not feel discouraged at slight signs of defeat at the outset, even though many of our citizens have appeared to desert us upon the eve of battle. Re- mem Der the case in our late war with Spain, when companies of our raw re. cruits in crazy fear fell down and could not he moved forward to battle? Later these men were among those of San Juan Hill.
 In this, our first battle with the liquor business in our little town, 1t Is true some of our best citizens, through mis- understanding of duty or for less worthy reasons, made all sorts of excuses not to serve upon the jury. Others were very fearful of having to help furnish evi- dence, and some of them hid away while others apparently forgot what whisky is, for they say they do not know what it was they drank.
 All this is simple evasion of duty through fear to stand for the right and face the enemy or else erroneous con ception of duty. But these apparent cowardly raw recruits will make good soldiers in the end, and those of our officers who are trembling today for fear of the outcome should calm themselves and be ready to lead to victory.
 High license advocates and whisky topers were at the back of Farr in all this affair, and when he seemed to have baked us they at once quietly set to work to systematically scatter the seeds of Encouragement among those who may be easily influenced. They hold before them pictures of streets "paved with gold" out of the license the whisky business is willing to pay.
 They do not show the other and true picture of novels, ragged children, bare ables and starving mothers, which fol- low the liquor business every where. Their statement that it is economy to license the sale of liquor is false, as may be shown with abundance of statistics. Their work is the work or the devil whereby honest prohibitionists are made to turn against themselves
 They tell us the majority is in favor of high license, and you let it appear so | by your luke-warm attitude.
 | A lady said she was a prOhibitlonist but she would about as soon live in a salo; town as here. Surely she would not favor licensing wrong simply be- cause we have not yet fully succeeded in prohibiting.
 T. P. Banta, as we'll as many others of our most prl minent citizens have told me that they want the whisky business cleaned out. We expect them to make their words good. They will not be heard talking in favor of high license. They will rather be heard saying "You have made a good start boys; keep it up and we will help you" They are think ing of the welfare of their boys @hen they say "I want to see the whisky bus- ness cleaned out" They were standing near their home and their children when they said it.
 There are very few who occasionally talk of well regulated saloons to control the liquor vice That at best is only very slightly less impossible than is ab- solute prohibition, and in ordinary cases it is worse failure than prohibition has ever been. It is practically impossible to lessen the liquor vice by means of the regulated hIgh license saloon because no honest upright man with high degree of moral perfectness will run such saloon, and if you put your regulated saloon in the hands of one less honest, upright and moral your regulation of the liquor vice becomes to that degree a failure.
 It will take as much careful attention l