The Orientals have been total abstainers for thousands of years. The Germans have been drinking beer for two thousand years. They challenge the world for deeper thinkers, greater philosophers, better brewers or braver men. SOME PUMPKIN Daniel O'Connell, the great Irish Liberator, said: "I have seen many a merry company around a table, but never around a pump." THAT SETTLES IT Liebig, the famous German chemist, described beer as "liquid bread." The introduction of beer in America has done more for temperance than all the temperance societies and all the prohibition laws combined.-HENRY WATTERSON. Beer has received the hearty endorsement of leading medical and scientific authorities the world, over. Beer is not only a popular beverage, but a health-giving food that has appropriately been called "liquid bread.” A Turk by the name of Haroun, To one who asked "why?" He made this reply, "To drink is forbidden, you loon." DRY SOBS FROM OKLAHOMA These were followed by the "Oklahoma Empties," a slide entitled: "Dry Sobs from Oklahoma. What Prohibition has done to the State: A Story Without Words," preceding the collection of empty business and office buildings of Oklahoma City, the largest city in the State. These pictures served their purpose well, and the story they told, was freely commented upon by the press, in reports of the convention. The other two machines gave prohibition statistics and illustrated hop culture on the Pacific Coast. LITERARY TREATMENT OF THE LIQUOR QUESTION Italy's Work for True Temperance-Monumental Work of Swedish Association of Physicians-Death-rates of Abstainers and Non-Abstainers-Status of Liquor License Legislation-How Sane Little Switzerland Regulates-Campaign Against the Saloon-Use and Abuse of Alcohol, etc., etc. THE ITALIAN TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT AND THE XIVth INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS AGAINST ALCOHOLISM TH 'HE avowed object of the international meetings against alcoholism is generally misunderstood. A striking proof of this lies in the fact that the brief cable despatches published in American newspapers relative to the 14th Congress, held at Milan, during the fourth week of September, 1913, appeared under such captions as "Anti-Alcohol Congress," "Foes of Alcohol," and others of like import, instead of "Anti-Alcoholism Congress," and "Foes of Alcoholism," as the real object of the meeting would have required. The texts of these despatches were in perfect keeping with their headlines, and, strangely enough, although perfectly truthful so far as they went, they were, nevertheless, positively misleading. The New York Times of September 23, 1913, and the New York Herald of September 22, 1913, are here referred to. It should not be necessary to state that neither the editors nor the correspondents of these great newspapers are capable of wilfully misleading their readers, even if there were any reason why they should do so, which is not the case. The likelihood is that the Press Committee of the Congress had a hand in the drafting of the news designed for circulation. A single illustration must suffice. In the despatches here in question the Assistant Secretary of the Italian Department of the Interior, Signor Falcioni, is correctly reported as having spoken in eloquent terms of the misery caused by drunkenness and of "the holy cause whose supreme object it is to save mankind from a vice destructive alike of all ideality and of personal and social welfare;" but not a word is said of Mr. Falcioni's equally eloquent utterances concerning the proper use of stimulants, "the proverbial sobriety," of the Italian people, who during centuries have consumed wine as part of their daily diet; nor is there the slightest intimation of his emphatic statement that the exclusive object of these international meetings is to combat the abuse of alcoholic beverages, not the proper use of them, and that heretofore this object had been misunderstood in Italy, the people believing that these congresses are also opposed to the proper use of wine, |