Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 48, 30 November 1899, Page 1

Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

There seems a strange incongruity of assoSunday ciation between the ' peaceful Sunday mornbattles. ing' and the noise and fury and hot red work of war. From the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries the Church succeeded to a great extent in preventing bloodshed between Wednesday and Monday in the many private wars of that stormy period. Nowadays the grim work of war knows no cessation beyond the brief truce that follows a battle in order to give succour to the wounded and burial to the dead. And Sunday is no more sacred than Monday to the fighting man. Quite a notable percentage of the naval and military conflicts of the Spanish-American War took place on Sunday. A correspondent points out to us that the battle of Ladysmith, which ended so disastrously for the Royal Irish, the Gloucester, and the tenth battery of artillery, began on a Sunday evening. The inference that the disaster was due to the day selected for action is scarcely sustainable. It is a curious coincidence that many of the striking victories of what is a Sunday-resting, if not a Sunday-sanctifying, people should have been won on the seventh day of the week. Thus, in the Marlborough campaigns, during the War of the Spanish Succession, the great battle of Ramilies was won by Marlborough on Whit-Sunday, May 23, 1706; Oudenarde on Sunday, July 11, 1709; and Malplaquet on Sunday, September ii, 1709. Sunday battles led to Sunday victories for the British troops with tolerable frequency during the long struggle which raged between England and France from 1793 to 1815, and which involved the belligerents in the enormous expenditure of £1,250,000,000, and 1,900,000 lives. At least five such Sunday victories are recorded. They are :— Vimiera, Sunday," August 21, 1808; Ciudad Rodrigo, Sunday, January 19, 1812; Orthes, Sunday, February 27, 1814 ; Toulouse, Easter Sunday, April 10, in the same year; and Waterloo, Sunday, June 18, 1815. One of the decisive battles of the First Sikh War— that of Ferozeshah— was won by Sir Hugh Gough on Sunday, December 21, 1845. Two important Sunday victories marked the progress of the Second Burmese War. Rangoon was stormed and captured on Easter Sunday, April 14, 1852 ; and Pegu met with a similar fate on Sunday, November 21 , of the same year. And, not to mention later dates, the hard-fought * soldiers' battle ' of Inkerman was won by the French and British allies against the unexpected onslaught of the Russians on Sunday, November 5, 1854. The list might be greatly extended by any one who has time and patience to wade through the military annals of the British Empire. According to Mulhall, Great Britain has in less than 300 years expended £1,359,000,000 on war. A goodly percentage of this enormous waste would, undoubtedly, be piled up by military occupations that broke ' the peace of the Sabbath morn.'

A correspondent asks us to give a who pays ? forecast of the probable cost of the Transvaal

campaign in blood and treasure, and wants to know who is to pay the little bill when it falls due. As to the first query : We are not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, and are satisfied to await eventualities and let others add up the butcher's bill for us. The second question is more easily answered. The brunt of the cost in good red blood will come out of the veins of the British working and industrial classes, and in minted sovereigns out of their pockets. And the end of it all will be that Thomas Atkins will win a certain bedraggled glory, and the capitalists will pocket the profits. In the very unlikely event of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State retaining their independence at the close of the campaign, they would naturally be mulcted in a pretty heavy war indemnity. Great Britain, however, has not done as well as some of the continental countries in the matter of war indemnities. She received two indemnities from China— one

of £4,000,000, and the other, in iB6O, of £2,000,000, or less than one third of the vote of credit for the war. China paid to Japan for the late war £37,000,000— a sum which works out at £460 for each Japanese soldier engaged in the campaign, or 11 121 2 per week per man. France's indemnity to Germany for the war of 1870-71 amounted to £200,000,000. Leaving out of account the ceded territory, this vast sum was equivalent to I] per man per week for every German soldier engaged, or £1600 for every man that was killed in battle or died of wounds or disease. A few years before fobbing this enormous indemnity Prussia had received £8,350,000 from Austria, as well as £750,000 in requisitions, for the brief campaign that ended at Sadowa in 1866. The Prussian losses were 11.000 men, so that the indemnity meant £850 for every man lost, and £5 per week for every man engaged. The present struggle in South Africa will be an enormously costly one both for Boer and Briton, and will probably so cripple tlie resources of the two republics that the payment of a war indemnity by them will be out of the question. The other alternative is the loss of their independence. And this was the cry of the British ]ingo party all along.

Dickens's 'golden dustman' gives, but a cancelled poor idea of the thousand and one uses which stamps are found nowadays for the supposedly waste and other products of the dust-heaps and the dust-bin. ' refuse.' Boxes, old iron, rags, 'breeze,' paper, glass, br oken crockery, etc., are separated and put to hundreds of industrial uses, and the refractory residue is, at least in London, fed into furnace boilers and converted into electric energy. There is an unfailiner demand for the residual bones of the joint which you have discussed at table. The great wealth and manufacturing activity of England has attracted towards herself the old bones of half the Continent of Europe— and not merely the bones of the lower animals, but even human bones, are said to have at one time formed part of the trade. For Simmons, in his Waste Products, tells how many an ancient battle-field has been searched and turned over for their valuable remains, which have been duly ground down, treated with sulphuric acid, and turned into fertilisers to grow our wheat or furnish grass to fatten our beeves. And thus the old bone goes to form and nourish new bones, and the threat of the giant to Jack is, after all, no fairytale :— Let him be live, Or let him be dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread.

The cause of religion and charity has been notably and directly advanced by this new spirit of enterprise which finds a use and purpose for a thousand unconsidered trifles which our fathers would have cast into harbour or river to defile them. Thus, a great hospital at Munich (Bavaria) is entirely supported by the sale of old steel pens and nibs. They are collected from all parts of Germany, sold to manufacturers, and in due time are turned into watch-spring=, pen-knives, razors, etc. In one of our issues of last year we showed how a great charitable and educational institute in Belgium is kept afloat by the sale of all sorts of odds and ends, such as old iron, rags, bits of glass, etc., which are daily brought or forwarded to the place by the pupils and friends of an enterprising and zealous community of nuns.

The stamp-collecting mania has, however, been turned to still better account, especially in connection with foreign missionary effort. The Society of the Holy Childhood rescues great numbers of female infants in China from death through the sale of postage-stamps. At least two Catholic missionary colleges are wholly or chiefly supported by the same means. One of these is the ' Bethlehem,' which educates poor children for the foreign mission ; the other is the Congo Mission department cf the Catholic Seminary at Liege, Belgium. In the one year, 1896, over 30,000,000 used stamps were received at the Seminary from all parts of the earth, and the income from their sale amounted to about £320. As many as 13,000,000 cancelled stamps have been received in furtherance of

the great French missionary work of Mary Immaculate, whose operations extend over China, India, and other portions of the the East. Here in New Zealand a spasmodic support is given to the Maori missions by small donations of used stamps, which the new postal regulations have tended to make as much a burden as a help to the Mill Hill Fathers. Unused stamps and postal notes would be both more welcome and more serviceable to the hard-wrought priests who have left their native land to cast their lot with the Maori for the Maori's sake. Fortunately, there is little danger of the usefulness of this source of revenue being impaired for a considerable time to come. The stamp-collecting hobby is said to be spreading, and hundreds of prominent people are taking it up in Great Britain and elsewhere. An enormous value attaches to some of these ' square inches of waste paper,' asthe Philistine would be inclined to call the collector's rows of cancelled stamps. According to Mulhall, four Mauritius stamps were sold in London in 1895 for and one blue Mauritius twopenny stamp for £140. A thousand pounds is said to be the highest price that ever changed hands over the transfer of a cancelled stamp. The purchase was effected in Berlin some time ago — we think it was about the beginning of the present year, and the tiny bit of printed paper that fetched the price was an insignificant-lookiner two-centimes stamp of British Guiana. , There are two old stamps in existence which are said to be worth £2000 — they are specimens of the penny and twopenny Mauritius issues of the date 1847. Mulhall gives in his Dictionary of Statistics for the present year curious evidence of the enormous money value that may be represented by first-class stamp collections. One collection was sold in Pans in 1880 for £8000. The purchaser was the Duchess Galiera, who is so well known for her princely benefactions to the poor of Genoa. The other sale was effected in London in 1897. It is described by Mulhall as ' a collection of Australian postage-stamps, begun in 1872 by Mr. Castle, of London.' The stamps were purchased by Mr. Stanley Gibbons for £10,000, £2000 more than the price paid by the Duchess of Galiera for her acquisition 17 years before. We have read somewhere that the Prince of Wales is the owner of a collection of stamps valued at The mania has had a long run ; a whole literature and a big trade have grown up around it ; it has well outrun the short span of life usually enjoyed by fads ; and thus far it shows no signs of abating. There was one soaring reach in the flight of trials ov patience to which Mark Tapley failed to editors. attain through being born under the wrong skies and living so far back in the century. The editorship of a Servian or German newspaper in the closing years of this model of all the centuries would have planted more crows-feet about the corners of his eyes in one week than all the work and worry that he went through in the miasmatic swamplands known as the City of Eden. ' Within the last two years,' says a London contemporary, ' one weekly paper in Servia has had sixteen editors. Fifteen of them are in gaol for too keenly commenting upon Government affairs ; and the sixteenth has just been hustled off to join them for the same offence ? In France and Italy newspaper proprietors have struck upon the expedient of appointing a gerente risponsabile — usually a man of straw whose chief function is to suffer for the editor's sins, and go serenely to gaol when the Government takes offence at what it considers a too free or disrespectful or inconvenient criticism of its doings. In Germany an editor may treat the Deity with as much irreverence as he pleases; but he must be careful to avoid the most distant token of disrespect in speaking of the Shouting Kaiser Wilhelm. The dread charge of lese-majeste hangs for ever like a drawn sword over the heads of German editors. During the months of August and September no fewer than sixteen of them were brought up under this charge. Every man of them was convicted, and their sentences amounted altogether to 139 months' imprisonment. ' During the first nine months of this year,' says a German paper, 'as many as 246 people were brought before the courts on the charge of wounding the emperor's dignity, and the sentences of imprisonment amounted to eighty-three years.' A few years more of this policy ought to make the German people weary both of their spineless courts of justice and of an over-sensitive imperial master who is simply a bundle of palpitating nerves. Catholic priests have their little afflictions | ' the rear in New Zealand as elsewhere, and one of the guard.' small blisters of the lives of many of them, both in town and country, is the action of the groups of youths who congregate just within the church doors on Sundays and festival days at Mass and Vespers. The trouble is a wide-spread one. Some time ago it existed in an aggravated state in the church of the Paulist Fathers, New York. The nuisance continued unabated until the Fathers inserted the following five-minutes' sermon in their parish magazine, and distributed a copy of it to every frequenter of the church. Then the trouble abruptly ceased. The little sermon

is worth reproducing here, and might, perhaps, be read with benefit to Sundry congregations that are afflicted with the ' rear-guard ' trouble in New Zealand :—: — ' To Young Men — We are annoyed and pained to see so many young men standing at the end of the church, and especially crowding around the doors, during the Masses on Sundays. We cannot believe that it is because they do not want to pay for a seat, for we know in many cases that their families have seats regularly in the church. They have gotten into a slovenly habit of just getting inside tne door, so as to get out quickly when Mass is over. Then some of them seem to be ashamed to go up the aisle, afraid people might consider them pious or hyprocrites. Young man, there is no danger of anyone considering you too pious because you give half-an-hour a week to God. You are bound to do that, whether you do it at the door on one knee, or up the body of the church, among your friends and relative 1 ? on both knees. Maybe you think people will consider you a hyprocrite? Well, your life must be pretty bad during the week if you are afraid to be seen near the altar on Sunday. Some stand around the doors because they fancy they are not well enough dressed ; some, indeed, because they have not enough to spare to make an offering for a seat, and therefore will not take even the free seats at the end. There is one class, however, for whom we have no sympathy ; well-dressed and intelligentlooking fellows who have just enough conscience left that will not allow them to stay away from Mass on Sunday, but who fancy they are paying quite a compliment to the Lord and to His Church in deigning to enter the church at all. They stand there like great gawks ; if it were not for the fact that they get down on one knes during the Consecration, you would fancy they were curious Protestants who dropped into the church and were afraid to take a seat, lest they might stick to it and be made Catholics by force. Now, young men, no matter what your reasons have been for standing at the back of the church, do us the favour and honour yourselves by coming right up like men into the body of the church. If Mass is worth attending, it is worth attending well.' We commend to the earnest attention of ' civis,' ' Civis,' of the Otago Daily Times, the catholics, following little bit of dialogue from Lewis and the Carroll's Through the Looking Glass. At elections, the close of a discussion on birthday presents, Humpty Dumpty triumphantly says to Alice :—: — ' There's glory for you.' ' I don't know what you mean by " glory," ' Alice said. Humpty Dampty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't — till I tell you. I meant " there's a nice knock-down argument for you." ' ' But " glory " doesn't mean " a nice knock-down argument," ' Alice objected. 'When / use a word,' Humpty Dampty said, in a rather scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.' • Civis,' in his ' Notes' of last Saturday set about bullying the English dictionary after the manner of Humpty Dumpty. He had the courage to say — but, with commendable prudence, did not attempt to show — that the series of impertinent questions put by him the previous week to the editor of the N. Z. Tablet were ' innocent and addressed * with all due civility.' Such a statement can be only true when he has forced a new meaning upon the words ' innocent ' and ' civil. 1 We, for our part are accustomed to use words — the tools of speech — in their plain and obvious sense. Angry as he is, ' Civis ' grants that we seem to have ' enjoyed to some extent the advantages of education.' At any rate we claim to know the face meaning of plain English sentences — his own included — quite as well as he. We have been at pains to point out the rank offensiveness of those questions and remarks of his which provoked the comments in our last issue. Not one scintilla of our direct remarks on this point has been denied, explained, or set aside by him. The animus and the offensive character of his whole ' Note ' lay thickly-encrusted on its surface, like evil-smelling marsh-weeds upon a swamp. Its objectionable character is fully recognised not alone by many Catholics who were led by our remarks or otherwise to peruse ' Civis's ' * Note,' but, as we directly know, or are credibly informed, by Protestants of position and high culture who are resident in Dunedin. * ♦ * 1. From beginning to end there was not even the thin pretence of pleasantry in • Civis's ' offensive ' Note.' His ' due civility ' opened with an undisguised sneer to the effect that the N.Z. Tablet had been engaged in a very doubtfully successful attempt to ' whitewash ' the Catholic Church over her alleged connection with the Dreyfus case — a remark that was as untrue in fact as it was offensive in iorm. For the rest the ' Passing Note ' we complained of was, through and through, a bit of thorough-paced and brazen-faced electioneering. 2. His series of impertinent questions included these : (a) Had the Catholic ' ecclesiastical authorities '—presumably the

Bishops — come to an ' understanding ' with the Government to influence all the votes they could in its favour? (b) What ' had been offered by the Government ' in return ' Tor this ? 3. 'The Tablet editor ' is supposed by ' Civis' to have a guilty knowledge of this little conspiracy between the Government and the Catholic Bishops. And to ' the Tablet editor ' therefore * Civis ' goes, not for the purpose of getting information to which he was not entitled, but just to point out to his scanty readers that we dare not reply to his questions. His questions were, in fact, not queries, but impudent challenges which, despite a worthless verbal disclaimer, were plainly flung down with hostile Intent with a view to benefit his party by arousing sectarian feeling. 4. ' Civis ' twice distinctly states that he expected no reply from us. And he was entitled to none. But ' Civis's ' mind was quite made up and his verdict given on the matter \ beforehand. For he says : ' Failing authoritative information [and he quite expected it to fail] we shall be able, putting two and two together, to form for ourselves a pretty accurate judgment.' Let it be borne in mind that even when our categorical reply was given to his questions, he, as we expressly anticipated, affects to regard our statement as untruthful. And this, too, when we are repelling a charge against our Bishops which, on the face of it, looks remarkably like a charge of political corruption. 5. The whole purpose of his queries is clearly manifested in his closing lines : ' These are questions upon which electors of all parties may with advantage chew the cud of reflection.' Just so. The questions are the main thing. They are sent out, with their replies predetermined, to soak into the minds of voters, and to create and spread the impression which ' Civis ' conveys not merely by bold insinuation, but, in effect, by open and direct accusation. And the impression which his 'Note' has left is just this : that, in return for certain • inducements,' the Catholic episcopate of New Zealand have entered into an arrangement or secret conspiracy to influence all the votes they can in favour of the Government. Nobody who is acquainted with the temper of New Zealand politics needs to be reminded that the merest hint of such a compact is highly calculated to arouse serious distrust and suspicion of the Catholic body throughout the Colony, and that the bold statement of it as conveyed by ' Civis,' is nothing more or less than the attempted introduction of sectarian strife and bitterness into the coming election contests. 'To touch politics is to touch pitch,' says Cardinal Newman. But an electioneering campaign becomes worse than a famine or a war when partisans on any side raise directly or indirectly a sectarian cry against 100,000 people for the benefit of a handful of politicians. And this is precisely what ' Civis's ' * Note ' is, on the face of it, calculated to do. To call this ' innocent ' and • civil ' is to do greater violence to the plain meaning of words than even Hutnpty Dumpty ever attempted. We venture to express the hope that there is not another journalist in New Zealand who would have written and sent for publication a ' Note ' couched in the terms of that of ' Civis.' There is only one Church in the Colony that is a * safe ' and likely subject for electioneering tactics of this kind. But, even with* the knowledge of this fact full before our minds, we would see our right hand lopped off joint by joint rather than address to the editors of the Outlook and the New Zealand Guardian the perky and vulgar and offensive challenge issued by ' Civis 'to us. And we venture to say that even ' Civis ' would not have dared to address them as he did us. And nevertheless he dares to lecture us on the matter of journalistic propriety. * • * The N.Z. Tablet and its staff, the Catholic bishops, and the Catholic voters are as fair subjects for fair comment a anybody else. Had ' Civis ' limited himself to this we should have gone on quietly ignoring his existence, or have received his remarks, as we have done twice before, in perfect friendli- j ness and good humour. If we had differed with him we would have differed inoffensively — as we have also done before. Thus we have smiles for his smiles and fair feeling for fair comment. But when he comes against us and ours with set face and naked steel, by naked steel we will meet him and cleave him down. In the case of tactics such as those of his i ' Note ' of Saturday week we neither give nor ask quarter. It is war to the knife. If our words cut him deep, we meant it. Our language was strong, designedly strong, but its necessity made it wholesome — just as the lash is often both necessary and wholesome. He fully deserved the chastisement he received, and we can never regret inflicting it. He has put himself in the unenviable position of unprovoked aggressor, and must abide by the consequences of his folly. Is ne to issue his swaggering challenges to us and raise a popular clamour against the heads of our Church and the people whose feeble voice we are, in order to further the cause of a knot of politicians; and must we drug ourselves into unmanly feebleness and meet his bold attacks with whimperings And whisperings and apologetic lispings, lest, forsooth, he deem us lacking in politeness and sweetness to him ? And this, too, in the face of his expressed determination to make use of our anticipated silence as a fresh argument to condemn

us ? Politeness is good, and cleanliness is good. But a man may push urbanity so far as to cease to be a man, and he may rub the skin off his face in washing it. It disagrees with ' Civis 'to have certain truths put forcibly. We knew it would disagree with him. Strong language is foreign to us, both by natural temperament and by acquired habit. But we recognise the fact that circumstances may arise which demand the use of strong, naked words that never knew a scabbard, even though they cut to the marrow or blister like pellets of molten lead. And in proportion as the evil is malignant and aggressive must the warning cry be strong. Writers in the Otago Daily Times do not content themselves with saving that the stench from the Dunedin foreshore is 'slightly disagreeable.' They say it is deadly poison, and a standing menace to the public health. If the assassin is coming to take your friend's life, you do not say that he sometimes displays a little temper. No. You cry out that he means murder ; and that the hand behind his back grasps a loaded revolver, and you say it loud enough to be heard. In the same way when an unjustand unprovoked attack ismade,asby f Civis,' upon the peaceable and unoffending Catholic community, we will arraign him, we will do justice upon him according to the measure of his offending, and that, too, in fair round words that will hit with the impact of steel-tipped bullets. ' Kind words,' says a great, but little-known author, ' are like sweet draughts in the cup of life, like " a concert of music in a banquet of wine." But the sick man's potion is often bitter, and the trumpet blows a shrill blast when the enemy is at the gate.' * * * •Civis' flatly denies the statement that any verbal transcript from ' Oriel ' ever appeared in his columns. We were at one and the same time readers both of ' Civis ' and of ' Oriel.' We do not know whether ' Civis ' is in a position to speak with as enthusiastic positiveness of the work of his collaborators or^tontributors as of his own. At any rate, we have no hesitation in accepting his statement of fact to the fullest extent that his personal knowledge goes. But we must protest against his giving a general statement of ours a purely personal application to the editor of the Otago Daily Times, and by this petty trick making it appear that we were guilty of an ' obvious falsehood.' The only remarks we made of the Times editor in that connection were that he had opened his columns to certain correspondence. We added that we suspected the bona fides of a part of it. The first is an undenied and undeniable statement of fact. The second is an expression of opinion which may be warranted or not, but which in no case can be shown to cast any imputation upon the editor of the Otago Daily Times. We have since learned that there is a rule in the office of at least one New Zealand daily prohibiting letters to the editor for publication from any member of the staff. We shall be quite prepared to believe that a similar rule or custom exists in the office of the Otago Daily Times. In the meantime we have to acknowledge the fair amende which the editor makes in putting a stop to the correspondence to which we referred, and which was simply calculated to arouse sectarian feeling and suspicion and to injure, instead of serving, the cause it was intended to promote. On the other hand, we were entitled to assume that ' Civis's ' ill-meant and ill-advised paragraph of November 18 passed under, and met the approval of, the editorial eye. If it did, then the editor's responsibijity in allowing its publication is even greater than 1 Civis's' in writing it.