The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1908-11-28
BY WILLIAM T. ELLIS.


BY WILLIAM T. ELLIS.
Once every year the Sunday schools
of the world celebrate temperance
Sunday This company of twenty-five
millions of people is REINFORCED IN
the observance of the occasion by
still larger host of attendants upon
the church. For many years past
temperance Sunday has been a reg
Mar feature of many church cal
endars. and it has served as one of
the forces which have nodded the
present radical sentiment upon the
question of strong drink.
Many men are rubbing their eyes
and wondering where all this zeal for
Temperance has come from They do
not themselves go to Sunday school or
to church, and so are not aware OF
the steady siege that has been laid
to the hearts and minds of impress
sionable youth upon this great theme.
The variety of the arguments and
agencies that have been enlisted
against intemperance are unknown to
men professionally engaged in the
liquor trade, and to multitude of
those who indulge in strong drink:
Yet one does not need very vivid
Imagination to perceive that the ac-
curnulated result of these years of
Sunday school teaching upon this one
special topic must necessarily be
prodigious.
The On-Sweeping Tide.
There is need to remind some per-
sons that this temperance movement
is a world movement. 1t is bigger
than the great crusade which has
swept over Ohio, eliminating, within
a few months, more than a thousand
saloons by the county local option law
1t is bigger than the state prohibition
movement which has added six new
states to the three in the Union al
ready arrayed in favor of total
prohibition. 1t is bigger than the
themselves to reform their business.
The latter is one of the rather
ludicrous features of the present
agitation, reminding one of the
old lines:
"When the Devil was sick, the Devil
monk would be;
When the Devil got WELL the devil
a monk was he"
The present on-sweeping tide is
bigger than the license reform move
ment that is stirring England today.
1t actually comprehends the whole
world. The latest Oriental mail
brought news from Ceylon that the
arrack monopoly has been attacked
in the legislative body, and that this
action recognized as the formal be
ginning of a temperance crusade in
the land where every prospect
pIeases, and only man is vile" In
Japan there has arisen distinct and
hopeful temperance organization.
Switzerland. one of the two countries
which have been the source of the
production of that dreadful drink.
absinthe, has within recent weeks
totally prohibited the manufacture
and sale of this profitable product.
The highways of France may be
found placarded with posters portray
ing the evils Of strong drink, and
many public men in that land of the
vine are siding with the newly
aroused sentiment. Thus it is appar-
ent that no Sunday school or church
rightly celebrates temperance Sunday
unless it is given a vision of the vast
ness of this globe-circling movement.
Getting the World View.
The time for telling bairnly tenn
perance stories is past. No longer is
the total abstinence movement to be
founded chiefly on basis of The story
of drunkards' broken homes That
was the necessary kindergarten stage
of this reform. Now the world sees
the subject more broadly. There has
arisen before the imagination of Civili-
cation the vision of society no longer
drunken. Some men see this ultimate
goal from one point of view, and some
from another. The intense economic
stress of the day has taught many men
that temperance is essential to COM
mercial or industrial efficiency. 1t is
too expensive for organized society.
Thus, according to the American Pro-
hibition Yearbook, the total amount
of money spent for intoxicants in the
United States in the year 1907 was
$2,275,070,S 57. In contrast with this.
the total expense of the United States
government was $57s, 100000, and the
total expenses of state city and local
governments was SLOTS, 100000. That
is to say, there was paid for liquor last
year in the United States an amount
exceeding by half billion dollars the
entire expenses of national, state, city,
and local governments. Economically,
this is intolerable in an enlightened
age.
A still more fundamental basis for
this temperance tidal wave is the in
creasing sense of world brotherhood
which Is taxing possession of the
mind of civilization. The temperance
crusade is really of piece with all the
significant expressions of humani-
tarianism and socialism which are now
looming so large upon the worlds
horizon.
An. Up-to-Date war.
Even more deeply does the present
movement indicate that the Christian
church, which has so long been "buck-
ling on its armor" for the conflict with
the forces of evil, is now throwing its
medieval arnor into the junk heap
and getting down its Krag Jorgensen
rifles, its automatic machine guns its
twelve<ineh rified cannons, and equip
ping It's submarine boats and prepar-
Ing Its aeroplane batteries.
This up-to- dateness of modern
militant Christianity is one of the
striking evidences of the changes that
have been at work in the church No
longer will the captains of the king
dom stop to squa bile over shibboleths
while q common foe holds the field
The great meeting of the federated
protestant church of America, which
Is to be held In Philadelphia at the
beginning of next month, typifies this
new state OF mind which has come to
possess the churches. Disregardfng
nonessentials, and overlooking minor