PULLING DOWN STATE SCHOOLS.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 August 1919, Page 6

PULLING DOWN STATE SCHOOLS.

(To the Editor.) Sir,—T notice in your issue of the 7th. inst., that your old'friend, Mr. John Diggins, is just as anxious to pull down the State schools as Major J. B. Hinc was the other day in Stratford. Mr. Dine must feel flattered at having been known to Mr. Diggiiis "for over twenty years now," and although they were opposed to each other in politics," Mr. Diggins always found Mr. Hinc a gentleman, alHo a man who "always was foremost in Church matters and holy religion." If that is really true, it must be painful to your readers to reflect that these two saints should have been so long opposed to each other in politics! However, it looks as if we have got them into the one boat at last, as they seem equally anxious to rid the country of the State schools, to make room for religions toaening in schools. Mr. Hine will now find that he will have some .difficulty in getting a majority of Stratford electors to cast their votes for him "as being a fit and proper person to represent them in Parliament." The secular system is the only one that is fair or just in a State school, where the children of any and every religion in the country can meet on an equal footing. It is the established system in this country, and all the St. Johns that can be collected (including the Lepperton missionaries), will not avail against it. Mr. Diggins means well; but he is narrow, bigoted, and inclined to be venomous. He talks about Mr. Hine being a gentleman, but he forgets to be a gentleman himself. His letter proves him to be a vicious pragmatist. He might have been an able and useful man had he been born under favorable circumstances; but it is clear that as an infant his little baby head was bound up in the iron-clamped blinkers of a dwarfing superstition, and there it remains. The consequence of this is that he knows really nothing of I what he prattles most about. He does not seem to know what religion means, what God means. His definitions of these would be those of the dark ages. The man in all these matters is still the baby in the blinkers of superstition. In his letter he goes out of his way to proclaim that the State schools breed criminality. Statistics are absolutely against him in this. The native-born New Zealander is the lowest in crime in proportion to his members in this country. Were his argument good, Ireland should be the clearest of crime of any country, because it is steeped up to the eyes in "Holy religion"; but what do we find there? Why everybody knows that it "takes the cake" in crime. It takes a large force of police and a standing army to keep those good .people in order, and then it is only queer order! Then, again, take the criminal records of New Zealand, and what do wc find here? We find that for thirty years, to my knowledge, the Government annually published tha religion of each crimina'l put in gaol during the year; but now the publication has been stopped at the request of the leading authorities of a certain church, because their religiously trained children "topped the pole everv time," out of all proportion to their number in the country. The State schools may want improving in many ways; but their records are the best so far. ' Please note how accommodating our very plastic Government is to be some people!.— I am, etc., . J. 0. TAYLOR, Lepperton, August il, 1910.