THE CHURCH AND THE WORKER

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 280, 15 August 1918, Page 6

THE CHURCH AND THE WORKER

Sir,—l read with interest the letter of your correspondent, Percy J. Cossum, and I must say more power to Cardinal Manning for giving the credit to Protestants, for the reforms they instituted, and more power to the Protestants who •introduced those reforms. But were not these acts of rectification or an attempted rectification of. tho abuses for which they themselves were largely responsible? Charity was hardly knowu .in England prior to the Reformation, and to see tho havoc the Reformation wrought amongst the masses I refer my friends to tho "History of the Protestant Reformation," by William Cobbett, a gentleman who lived and died a professed member of the Church of England. I am not stung by any sectarian insect, and my only reason for writing is to endeavour .to stop .the spread of sectarianism among a public which generally is not sectarian, but which does not trouble to inquire into the "facts" which appear in your free-for-all columns. I would also like to correct'the impressions given by one of your correspondents re the South American States. The general impression, in ignorance, is that tho South American peoples are an indolent, non-progressive, warlike, priest-ridden lot, and, candidly, some of these attributes I gave them before I travelled there. I was agreeably surprised when I travelled through South America; so was Foster Eraser when he wrote "Amazing Argentine." I would also like to refer your readers to a book written by Professor Moranza, "Over the Andes and Down the Aniazou," a book prefaced by that great democrat ex-President Roosevelt, who has travelled extensively m South America and whose name should, be a hall-mark, for any work. Your readers will then be ablo to find all about tho 90 per cent, illiterates, etc. But to, quote Bolivia. AVhen I was there to 1905 th>> population was estimated at\.one and three-quarter millions. Of these over a million were aboriginal lndiaus, over half a million half-breeds, and the remainder, about 200,000, wore whites _ of Spanish descent. And what do we hnd was the position of education? The books above quoted explain the systems better than I can, but for figures there were 728 primary schools, about the usual proportion of secondary schools, and six universities-quite a good record considering the number of Indians and halfbreeds, who are extremely hard to domesticate. 1 Before another three decades are passed South America will be one of the greatest countries of the world; indeed; she may well claim to be such at present. But with the great influx of population from the peoples of the belligerent countries who will humanly seek fields not burdened by after-the-war taxation, South America will rival her sister continent, besides playing a big part m the international questions governing the Pacific Ocean which must necessarily bo as much a burning question to her as |toNewZealand.-lam,ete., cosMog _