Rev. L. M. Isitts Open Letter to you.

Men and Women of New Zealand,—We are not a wealthy folk, but shilling by shilling several hundreds of pounds have be-cheerfully contributed in order to send you this guide. Bead It, we beseech you thoughtfully, earnestly, prayerfully. Remember we have no personal interests to porve—the publicans and brewers fight for gold—we plead for humanity, and at prompted only by the desire to save the drankard and belives from drink-induced misery hundreds of suffering women and children. For their sakes we entreat you Strike out the top line and vote no license.

To-day there are over seventeen hundred licensed liquor bars in this country. "Week in, week out," they do their work with deadly sameness. One of our opponents has admitted that there are seventeen thousand five hundred drunken men and women in New Zealand, and day after day your newspapers chronicle crimes, suicides, deaths, and accidents, as the fruits of the traffic.

This morning the liquor bars were the first shops opened, and before you were ap, miserable men, impelled by an awful thirst—men with palsied hand and broken nerve and aching head—crept into these places to call eagerly for the drink that is destroying them body and soul.

This evening these liquor bars will be the last shops to close, and will then bolch out into the night scores of drunken men and women; and in many a drink-cursed home the wife and mother will lie down, not to sleep, but to weep and pray and think—think, over and over again through the long hours—My God 1 my God ! what shall I do ! He is drunk again I What will become of us! And children little children, will be roughly awakened to conscious hunger and fright, and perchance kicks and blows. I say it is horrible; that it maddens any compassionate heart to realise faintly the suffering drink occasions, and yet it has gone on for so long. Is it to go on for ever? God forbid. To-day it rests with you whether, in your electorate, it shall go on any longer. Yet vote may decide the question—may license the bars for another three years to wreck homes, ensnare your sons, ruin women, and work wrong and wretchedness to helpless children, or close these centres of temptation, and stop their ruinous inflonace, to the heart-felt gratitude of many a poor drunkards wife. Which shall it be! In this struggle we are crying to God to give us the victory. Thousands are praying that he will hear the wail of the children, and mark the tears and agony of those who suffer, and move the hearts of the people to put greed and selfishness under foot, and vote as righteousness and pity prompt. Can you ask God to guide you, and then vote license I In a few hours, voting paper and pencil in band, will you rote to promote good or strengthen evil? By one stroke of the pencil you can license these liquor bars to make more drunkards—break more hearts—or you can do your best to restore many a drink-victim, and bring peace and happiness to many a wretched home. I would to God I know how to influence you to vote aright. Whether you are a teetotaller or net, you cannot be blind to the hurt the liquor traffic [unclear: does]. Remember, no one knows how you [unclear: vote]. Never mind how you have spoken, be true to your own higher and better self now. If you have never struck a blow for righteonsness and the people before, do it now. In the name of God and humanity I plead with you—Strike out the top line and vote no license.—Your sincerly.

Leonard M. Isiter