WOMEN: W. C. T. U.

Two thousand sweltering women from 36 countries gathered in Constitution Hall in Washington last week to participate in the 16th triennial world meeting of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. World President Mrs. Ella Alexander Boole, as a prelude to her reelection, told the meeting that drinking by women is one of the great "causes of maternal death," praised Germany's Hitler because he gave the beverage concession at last summer's Olympic Village to the Deutscher Frauenbund der Abstinenz (Nazi W. C. T. U.). is a total abstainer, supports restaurants which serve no beer. Mrs. Ida B. Wise Smith, national president of the W. C. T. U. reassured the delegates "we have no objection to tea and coffee. We do have a . . . program against cigarets." Mrs. James Mabon of Montreal sketched the world-use of intoxicating beverages, said "under present conditions the world over not a single child is safe." Mrs. D. Leigh Colvin, W. C. T. U. president for New York and wife of the Prohibition Party's candidate for President of the U. S. last year, censured the U. S. Government for having "invested $2,500,000 of taxpayers' money in rum distilling in the Virgin Islands. This is the first instance in history that our Government has gone into the business of manufacturing liquor. This Government-manufactured rum has been shipped recently to the United States for sale." A message to the convention from President Roosevelt omitted all mention of alcohol, urged world peace.