The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, March 4, 1911. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 962, 4 March 1911, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, March 4, 1911. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

A resident who is opposed to the erection of a Municipal Hall for Foxton, in conversation with us this morning said that he objected to the erection of a hall because it was being advocated by one or two who hadn’t any stake in the town and were here to-day and gone to-morrow. He said if the erection of a hall was a good thing those who wanted it should form a company and build a hall; he had worked hard for the money he had got and he was not going to squander it in this fashion. As these arguments may be used by others we might point out, firstly, that the promoters of this movement are men with a very large stake in the community who are anxious to push forward the best interests of the town and add to its assets, attractiveness and importance. The here-to-day and gone-to-morrow ratepayer is an old and time-worn piece of imagination. If the hall is to be a payable proposition for a company then all the more reason why the citizens should build and control such institution. All power to the man who has prospered in the community by honest dealing, but such prosperity should not blind his responsibilities as a patriotic citizen.

The Wellington Post is a pronounced champion of the present State system ot education, and issues a warning note anent the campaign of the Roman Catholics against the Education Act, which it states is being prosecuted with such vigour that even the most confident supporter of the system which has now stood for more than thirty years should be fully alive to the danger. Our contemporary says that the partisans of denominatioalism have no hope whatever if they are met with a determination anything like proportionate to their own energy, but apathy and over-coufidence may ruin the best of causes, and we should be glad to see unmistakable evidence that the case for the defence of the people’s schools is not to be jeopardised in this way. Referring to Bishop Cleary's pastoral which was read in all Roman Catholic churches iu bis

diocese last Sunday, the Post says : “ The answer of the State is that it has undertaken to provide secular education for the children of every denomination, and cannot provide for the religious teaching of any of them. The State has exhausted its duty when it has provided for every child the opportunity of a secular educatihn at the public cost. Religion it regards as beyond its province, and here it recognises no duty beyond that of a strict

neutrality The answer of the Roman Catholics, of course, is that they do not take advantage of the seculur education which the State provides, and that they provide for the secular education of their own children, so that religious instruction may be given in the same institutions and by the same teachers. It is plainly a hardship that the Roman Catholics should be driven by the value which they set upon the blending of religious and secular education to provide in their own schools for the secular education which they are already taxed to supply in the State schools. But the hardship is not an injustice so long as the State puts everybody on an equal footing and sanctions no teaching in its schools which violates anybody’s rights of conscience. To put a Protestant text-book in the schools, as the State is still being urged to do, would be to violate the principle of equality and the consciences of the Roman Catholics. But there is no violation of either in the fact that the State does not include everything in its curriculum that the Roman Catholics desire. The conscience argument has really been made far too much of in this connection. As large numbers of Catholic children are already attending the State schools and there is also a considerable proportion of Catholics among the teachers in these schools, it is perfectly clear that there is not the insuperable objection on the score of conscience which is commonly assumed in the denominational argument. The duty of the State is clear, and we are thankful that the Government fully realise it. Mr Fowlds has put it beyond doubt that in the thoroughgoing declaration which he made at Grey Lynn a fortnight ago in favour of the law as it stands, he spoke for the Government and not merely for the Minister of Education. ‘The policy of the Government,’ he now says, ‘ is against any interference with the national system of free, secular, and compulsory education.’ “The firmness of the Government on this vital question atones for a multitude of wobblings on other matters that could be named.' ”