Charles Lewis Neibel to James Hugh Moffatt

N Y N, Negley Ave., Pittsburg, Pa 9/4/-99

My dear Moffatt: Your kind letter of a recent date is at hand. Yes I am still in the Anti-Saloon work & have had a glorious summer. I have two Sabbaths yet to work.

Regarding the Missionary Com., your ideas are good. Surely the least we can do is to pray for guidance in our coming work, - I shall secure the book as soon as possible.

As to delegation work next year, if you can use me in any way I shall count it a privielege to do my share I fear that I did not do all, or by any means what I should have done for the Y.M.C.A. last year, but I am sure if you knew the circumstances you would understand. I trust I may be more interested and helpful this year.

There is a matter that has been on my heart all summer, Moffatt, and has been flung in my teeth wherever I have gone in my work. It is the attitude of Princeton men on the temperance question. Now I believe and know that our good christian fellows stand right in this matter, and yet I feel that we have not taken the decided and definite stand that we should take. Too often we have turned things off with a smile & a shrug and regarded the situation as necessary & as a matter of course. I think I have a true

appreciation of the situation and realize that drinking is not only regarded lightly but is in reality sanctioned by some of the trustees & faculty. Yet public sentiment in the student body, if it were but elevated & directed could surely do as much to make drunkenness & debauchery decidedly unpopular as it has done to make our examinations clean and honest.

I know of no place where this duty more properly belongs than in our Christian association. It seems to me that a permanent Committe on Temperance should be established to look after this work, and that not a few of our evening meetings and Thursday night lectures should bear directly on this subject. I have been in temperance work long enough to know that it takes some agitation for us to see things as they are.

If we can take hold of this matter earnestly, in a practical manner, and with a "Love that worketh no ill to his neighbor" I am sure we can do much for the fair name of Old Princeton, and the salvation of our weaker brothers. Can we not have the matter brought to the attention of the workers?

With kind regards, I am, Sincerely your friend & classmate, C. L. Neibel.

P.S. Do you know any entering freshmen whom you would care to recommend to my club? I enclose a couple of cards. C. L. N.