Page:The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1.djvu/129

 other acts tending to disturb or injure others and yet out of a thousand smokers scarcely

Source is damaged here.

one will hesitate to fill with noxious fumes a room the atmosphere of which is being breathed by women and children who do not smoke.

Indeed, this nuisance is so much felt that, in railway carriages, special compartments for smoking are reserved. In orderly houses smoking rooms are set apart for young men who are never allowed to smoking in dining-rooms. A friend was taken to task for smoking in a shelter on the staircase of the house he was living in. Says the Court further:

For the more a man stupefies himself with these stimulants, narcotics, the more stolid, quiescent and stagnant he become intellectually and morally.

We all know what deeds are committed by men in a drunken state. As to the wines, the above quotations are sufficient to show what a man who used to drink fearfully thinks of them. It is not necessary to quote extracts to prove that wines are injurious and that we are not required to drink wines in England. There are hundred of societies to convince you of the fact that wines are not necessary. There are many members of Parliament who do not drink at all. In fact, there in a teetotalers party in the Commons, with which are prominently associated the names W.S. Caine and Sir Wilfred Lawson. We have temperance societies in Bombay and many parts of India. There are even Anglo-Indians who are teetotalers. In spite of all this, persons there are, enlightened by then, who believe and refuse to disbelieve, even though convinced, that wines are absolutely necessary in England. A gentleman said: "After reaching England, you may not require them, but somewhere in the Mediterranean sea, I am told you die without them." He was told, I may be allowed to tell him that if the wines were so very necessary, the P. & O. Company would provide wines together with the food for the fees they charge and not make the passengers pay separately for the wines they consume. If the wines were to be taken in England, and that regularly, 9s would be used up simply in drinking and it would be impossible to make the two ends meet for the estimate given by me. So, then, it is absolutely necessary to exclude wines and tobacco from the estimate and advisable to exclude tea and coffee, as the latter can be used at a sacrifice of far more substantial drink: milk.