The Henson Journals

[575]

Wednesday, January 5th, 1916.

520th day

I received some letters with reference to my "Times" letter. The following wrote in terms of warm approval: Fawkes, Gamble, Knowling, Gee, Bp. Mitchinson, Sir Dyce Duckworth, & several strangers. Per contra, I received two post–cards insultingly expressed, one from the Vicar of Grantham. Certainly a zeal for total abstinence seems strangely consistent with an absence of good feeling, and good manners. It is a fact which challenges explanation. Partly I suspect it arises from the isolating effect of an arbitrary discipline or habit of life. The total abstainer (like the Papist) lies outside the main stream of the national life, & his points of view are not the same as those of his neighbours. Then he lives in an atmosphere of eager proselytisim, the most morally perverting conceivable. Everything is seen in connexion with the dominating interest. Total abstinence becomes the shibboleth of a sect, & the standard of all moral reckoning. Hence the familiar tokens of sectarianism exhibit themselves in the Total Abstainer – rancourous bitterness against opponents, a lop–sided view of life, & an enormous vanity. "We are they that ought to speak, who is Lord over us?" – that is the attitude of the Total Abstainer to the world. And all the while he is in a small minority. He represents the tyranny of the few over the many.

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