Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 50, 14 December 1899, Page 1

Current Topics

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

'All things come to him who waits.' So the new runs the proverb. Like many another parliament, expression of ancient wisdom it is not more

than half true. However, some things do come to those that know how to wait. For instance : apropos of the number of grocers in some of the Australian parliaments — a proportion said to be due to their familiarity with soft-soap — we inquired some time ago if some friend with a statistical turn of mind would favour us with a return of the trades and professions of the legislators of New Zealand. Well, a member of our staff has done this for our present issue, and added other particulars regarding the personnel of the new Parliament, which cannot fail to interest our readers.

Thbre are, perhaps, few things that so war effectually knock the starch out of a soldier's AND disease, patriotism as typhoid fever and the other

destroying diseases that are incidental to camp life. To the mind of the average civilian the vast majority of the soldiers who never return from the wars fall nobly fighting for their country's honour upon the bullet-swept field or die or wounds in the military hospital. As a matter of fact, the great majority die by the more prosaic and frequently more agonising way of disease, and not from contact with bullet or bayonet or the other death-dealers whose direct purpose is to dissolve partnership between soul and body. This, however, is a feature of campaigning life which appeals to the military man and the statistician with greater force than to the war-correspondent, the war-poet, and the war-historian. Hence we hear so little of this unpleasant feature of campaigning life. In the Philippine campaigns some of the battalions lost full half of their strength by sickness. The hospitals were crammed full with the victims of disease. But all reference to the condition of affairs was persistently and mercilessly scored out by the military censor. In South Africa at present the tale of the war correspondent is subject to even a keener eye and a more merciless red-pencil or scissors. But yet enough has been let pass along the wires to show that disease is decimating the garrisons both of Mafeking and Ladysmith. We are left to form our own judgment as to the health of the rest of the army. But, as Otto Berndt has pointed out in his Figures and War, the losses through sickness in campaigns are very considerable even in temperate climates. They must be relatively very great indeed in the conditions under which marching, camping, and fighting have to be done in the rainy season of such a climate as that of South Africa. Perhaps we have here one partial explanation of the masterly inactivity which has kept the British troops so long stuck fast south of Colesberg and the Modder and the Tugela.

Where bullet r and bayonet slay their thousands in war, disease kills its tens of thouands. In the 114 days' struggle between the United States and Spain, only 279 Americans were killed in battle, and 1423 wounded. The number swept off by disease was 2086; those stricken by disease were, in round numbers, 40,000. In 1870 some 200,000 Germans corralled Bazaine within the walls of Metz. As many as 130,000 of the investing force were in the hospitals. Out of a total of 467,000 sick men that lay in the German military hospitals during the same war, only 88,000 were there on account of wounds received in battle. In the great American Civil War" of the sixties, the Northerners lost 78,246 men who were killed upon the battle-field or died of wounds. Their losses from disease reached the appalling total of 149,030. The two great scourges of the private soldier are camp-fever and dysentery. Mulhall, however, has shown that rheumatism is not to be sneezed at as a factor in putting men out of action. In his Dictionary of Statistics for the present year we find the following significant

entry under the heading ' Disease ' : ' During the war of 186163 in the United States the Federals had 5,825,000 men under colours, and of these 254,700 were sent to hospital for rheumatism.' In the bungling campaign of the Crimea 362,000 out of a total of 428,000 Anglo-Franco-Sardinian troops were stricken with disease. Of this great host of sufferers, 69,200 died. The deaths from wounds made the relatively insignificant total of 6200. Of the British soldiers, 2755 met their deaths in action ; 1847 died of wounds in hospital. The total of British victims of Russian bayonet-thrusts and sabre-strokes and markmanship was, therefore, 4602. This was, however, a mere bagatelle beside the mighty holocaust of 75.375 men who were cut off in the prime of life by disease. It is the same old tale as far back as military statistics are available. Thus, the long and strenuous campaigns against France from 179S to 1 8 15 showed an annual death-rate in the British army of 57 per thousand. Only seven per thousand of these met their deaths in action. The overwhelming majority of the remainder were swept off by disease. Improved methods of surgery and sanitation have diminished the proportion of deaths from wounds and disease in the campaigns of later years. But despite all this, the experience of the British troops in South Africa will, like that of the Americans in Cuba and the Philippines, undoubtedly go to show that the worst horrors of modern warfare are those of the military hospital and not of the battle* field.

You remember the lyric in which Tom war and Moore represented love, valour, and ' wit, famine. the sprite,' wandering Through Erin's Isle

To sport awhile together, and how he made them 'three godlike friends, 1 inseparable for ever. The bond that holds them together is, we fancy, a very loose and conventional one. For valour, we fear, often breaks away from the pleasant little triple alliance. Let Valour but stand for war, and we find it frequently allied with two grim powers, pestilence and famine, which are at daggers drawn with love and wit. We have already touched upon war's alliance with disease. The Christchurcn Press of last Saturday furnishes us with the following evidence that in South Africa, as in other places, it is associated with famine as well as pestilence :—: —

The war is reported to have driven things to prohibitive prices between Capetown and the Orange River. Horseflesh is at a high premium. Old screws that in normal times would be dear at £30 are now offered at 70, 80, or 90 guineas. A oovered gig with two ponies and a driver can only be hired at a charge of £40 monthly ; a bottle*of the cheapest lager beer costs 2s, a soda and whisky coats half-a-crown, soda and milk Is 6d, whilst 8s is the lowest price asked for a bottle of whisky.

Any doubts that may exist as to the destination of a portion of the ' horseflesh ' is set at rest by the correspondent of another paper who tells us that it is being used as food in some parts of South Africa. If this be true, the story of the premium on horseflesh tells a more pitiful tale than the enhanced price of ' a soda and whisky.' The poor in Paris, Brussels, Milan, and other Continental cities habitually use and relish the tender, nutritious, and not unsavoury flesh of young horse. But the inhabitants of the British Isles raise around their stomachs a sturdy barrier of insular prejudice which admits the foul-feeding porker but excludes the clean-feeding horse. And this barrier they never lower except under the stern pressure of hunger — as in a protracted siege.

During the Cuban campaign last year horse-flesh, muleflesh, and even dog-flesh was in great demand, and at high prices. During the siege of Manila, the following cablemessage appeared in the New Zealand dailies : * The richest people are slaughtering dogs and horses for food. The natives are eating rats and mice.' Messages such as this tell in a few words the story of a thousand concentrated griefs and woes. The garrison of Ladysmith has been for some time on short rations, and when the story of the siege is told we shall

probably hear of many a baggage mule and many a disabled charger being converted into food that Thomas Atkins loathes in time of peace but must learn to tolerate, perhaps to relish, under the stern conditions of war. By an easy association of ideas we are reminded of the things that befel the city of Paris after the German army had cut it off from the outside world with a double line of sullen earthworks guarded with bristling bayonets and menacing guns. Readers of the history of that greatest of all sieges will readily recall the siege-dinner given at the beginning by Baron Brisse to the members of the Paris Jockey Club. The first course consisted of soup of corned horse, cutlets of donkey, mule's liver saute, horses' lights with white sauce, and fried gudgeon. The second course was equally characteristic of siege days — grilled quarter of dog, roast leg of rat, rat-pie with mushrooms, &c

The time soon came, however — in January, 1871 — when Baron Brisse and his merry guests had to subsist on seven ounces of black bread per day and one-third of an ounce of horse-flesh, which looked as if it had been cut out by a tramconductor's punch. To secure this the besieged Parisians had to await their turn for hours at the food depots in snow, sleet, sunshine, or rain, or under the more pitiless downpour of German shells. Sometimes a family contrived to secure from carefully hidden sources of supply a dog at £3 to £8, or a turkey at £5* or a goose at £4, or a fowl at 365, or a cutlet of donkey at 15s, or an apple at 3s, or an egg at 2s. A vigorous trade was done in rats, mice, and ' rabbits ' — the ' rabbit ' being in practically every instance a cat. Adults can tolerate for a period the stinted and unnatural fare of siege-times. Children, as in Paris, die like flies : The war-demon is a Herod that slaughters the innocents.

Long before the war broke out in South

the cat Africa we expressed in fitting terms our out of the strong conviction that there would be no bag. armed struggle merely to compel Oom Paul to enable a certain number of British Uitlanders to give up, on easy terms, their allegiance to the flag under which they were born. We maintained that if war broke out, whatever its pretext, its direct and immediate object would be the reconquest of the South African Republic and the Orange Free State. The jingoes made no secret of this before the war. British Ministers are making as little secret of it now, although they do not set forth their purpose with the brutal frankness of the speculators — chiefly with German names — whose interests lie in the rich mining regions of the Transvaal. Even Mr. Chamberlain, in his laboured and unconvincing defence of the Gorvemment policy, treats the franchise question as a trifling item in the South African muddle. The chief element in the situation, according to him, was the independence of the Boers and their manifest determination to defend the integrity of their Republics, if necessary, by force of arms. Briefly, his speech was, in effect, an admission that he deemed war to be necessary, not for the sake of the Uitlander franchise, but in order to establish or re-establish British prestige in South Africa. A poor justification, indeed, for a war which is to cost such a vast deal both of blood and treasure, which will set back the progress of South Africa by fifty years, and will leave behind it an enduring legacy of mutual distrusts and race-hatreds between Boer and Briton !

From time to time we have published extracts which go to show the marked aversion with which this unhappy war is viewed by a considerable section of the clergy who man the Protestant pulpit. Every mail brings fresh instances in point. Perhaps the most outspoken utterance we have read is that in which the Rev. Hirst Hollowell, in a speech delivered at the Congregational Union at Bristol, on October 19, referred to the war as ' the assassination of a free people. 1 No words of such exalted vigour as these have, so far as we know, fallen from the Irish Nationalist Party, who join with the British Liberals in condemning the war as unnecessary and unjustifiable. In the columns of the Times Mr. Justin McCarthy thus deals with the jingoes who condemn the Irish Nationalists for their attitude regarding the war : ' We Irishmen condemn the war because it is unjust, cruel, and ignoble, and we are entitled to say that the policy which directs this war is not English in the true sense of the word. The best intellects and the highest minds amongst Englishmen are opposed to this war as we Irish Nationalists are. Herbert Spencer, Frederick Harrison, John Morley, Leonard Courtney, Sir William Harcourt, Sir Edward Clarke, W. T. Stead, Philip Stanhope — these are some of the men who have again and again denounced the war. Mr. Chamberlain and Mr. Cecil Rhodes are its principal authors. There can be no glory to be won for English arms in a struggle like this, where the overwhelming superiority of strength on the side of the British force leaves the ultimate issue of the contest only a question of time and money.'

Dr. Rentoul, of Melbourne, is the hero of unexpected the Orange lodges and the oratorical champraise. pion of ultra-Protestantism in the colony atVictoria. Rome is to him the Mistress elf Abominations, and the Pope the Man of Sin. His utterances upon both have been termed grand displays of verbal pyrotechny. They might more aptly be compared to the rush and roar of a forest on fire in a high wind. Dr. Rentoul's prejudice is of the robust quality which often marks the honest and upright bigot who hates, not the Catholic Church, but the hideous effigy with horns and tail and cloven hoof which he erroneously fancies to be the Catholic Church. Dr. Rentoul has, however, at last come to see that there is some good in the Old Church of the Ages. The discovery must have come to him with the impact of a blank surprise. His announcement thereof struck the Melbourne Age with a great astonishment which it did not try to conceal. At the Presbyterian Assembly on November 23, the doughty Doctor figuratively patted his old antagonist, the Archbishop of Melbourne, on the back for his Grace's timely and effective utterances on the sanctity and the moral obligations of the marriage bond. We dealt editorially with the Archbishop's pronouncement in our last issue. The Age of November 24 reports Dr. Rentoul to have spoken as follows : 'He honoured Dr. Carr the more because he had had at times to oppose him, and might have to do so again. They all honoured the Roman Catholic Church for the high estimate that it had always put upon the marriage tie. Perhaps that Church had taken too strong an attitude as to divorce, but it must be honoured for the high standard of morality of its womanhood. He thanked the Archbishop for his courageous utterance, which was made just at the right time. (Applause.) . . . The utterance of the Archbishop struck a chord that would vibrate in the churches — Protestant and Catholic. He again thanked Dr. Carr for his courage and tactfulness. (Applause.) '

PERHArs we shall get back some day to the the laity pre- Reformation plan of parochial finance. and the In those days the laity undertook the task of church. providing funds for the erection, repair, and maintenance of churches chantries, presbyteries, schools, and for church requisites, etc. Nowadays the burden falls almost wholly upon the priest. In many instances he finds it like a millstone around his neck, and a hindrance to much of the good work that he might effect for the welfare of souls if he could devote his energies untrammelled to other fields of activity. The Montreal True Witness has the following lines in point : —

It would be a blessing if the priests did not have to bother or worry about the temporalities of the pariah, but could devote all their time; to the spiritual work of the congregation. When they do, because they must, as circumstances make it necessary, touch on money matters, some, and the leafet generous, say : • Oh, I wish we did not Lear so much about money.' Take your share of the burden and it will not be necessary to bring up the subject so often

Just so. You will find many well-to-do persons who are ready and willing to travel to heaven at their neighbours' expense, just as, according to Sydney Smith, 'you will find people^ ready to do the Samaritan without the oil and the twopence.' In a letter written some time ago to an English Catholic weekly, a poor and hard wrought priest wrote as follows on the subject of giving the laity the part they had of old in bearing the burden of parochial liabilities :—: —

I have no objection to the principle of no taxation without representation ; but if I have laymen, they do something besides contracting parochial bills and then sending them to the rector to pay. So I would inquire if your modern Catholic church- wardens will actually raise the cash and meet the bills like men. It will not • be of any use for them to come to the rector to organise a bazaar ; for the obvious reason that if the rector has to money-grub at all, it is much more pleasant to grub for the debts he contracted himself than for those contracted by his bclovftd flock. To the principle of no taxation without representation I would add another : co responsibility without control. No priest, no man, will accept liability for bills sent round for payment. My own congregation is at present in want of a good organ ; about jCGOO, they say, will do it. Will any group of the laity band together and, with my blessing, get the money ? But they must not disturb me reading The Spiritual Combat. Let us have church-wardens, by all means ; let them foot the bills, and, if necessary, face the bailiffs. But they must not go cheerily into the contract of £(JOO for an organ and send me round 1 to beg from door to door. If any lay gentlemen are willing to be - church- wardens on these terms, they are just the men I want.

We know an odd do^en or two of Catholic priests who are also pining- to find among their flocks such ideal modern representatives of the trusty Catholic church-wardens of the olden time.

The Liverpool Catholic Times tells the follow - THE pope ing interesting incident of Leo's life* at and his Brussels. The story is told by a personage assailant. of high station in the Vatican : — ' Our

Pope,' he said, ' reads character at a glance, and is rarely deceived. One evening when Nuncio at

Brussels, he was entering his carriage to go to dinner at the house of Count de Baillet, when just as his foot was on the carriage step, a workman, wretchedly dressed, rushed forward, insulted him, and attacked him personally. His servants, ready in his defence, seized the aggressor, and proceeded to make things hot for him; but the Pontiff — then simply Monsignor Pecci — stopped them, and, calmly and kindly addressing the man, said : " My friend, I bear you no malice for what you have done ; are you in need ? Come to see me some other time," and let a five-franc piece slip into his hand. Needless to say, the workman, after such encouragement, went to see him, and went so often that the Nuncio eventually took him into his service as a domestic, and even now Leo XIII. retains a benevolent recollection of him, and recounts that he never had a servant more respectful and more to be trusted.'