Current Topics AT HOME AND ABROAD.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 4, 25 January 1900, Page 1

Current Topi cs AT HO ME AND ABROAD.

During the great American Civil War a catholic wounded officer was brought to a hospital at nuns Obanninville. It was under the charge of and the \v\r. the Sisters of Mercy. The officer was a Protestant. A thick, rugged bark of prejudice had grown round his heart, and lor some time he viewed the Sisters with a suspicion and dislike which — for an officer — he took wondrous little trouble to conceal. ' Call them Sisters?' said he to a fellow-patient. 'Sisters! No! They're no sisters of mine, and I should be sorry they were.' ' I tell you,' was the reply, ' you'll find them as good as sisters in the hour of need.' ' I don't believe it,' was the sour reply. And there the matter dropped. But he came to believe it, after all. The unfailing patience and gentleness and kindness and self-sacrifice of those model nurses reached his honest heart at last through the hard prejudice that had grown round it from his boyhood. Under their gentle care he recovered from a dangerous wound. The day he lett the hospital, sound in body, but with an altered mind, though still a staunch Protestant, he said to his other fellow-patient : ' Look here ! I was always an enemy to the Catholic Church. I was led to believe that these Sisters were all bad. But when I get out of this I'll be darned if I don't knock the first man head over heels that dares to say a word against the Sisters in my presence.' And he went his ways. * * * Well, the Sisters are doing the same grand work for the British soldier where the bullets sing and the shells fall in Mafeking and Kimberley and Ladysmith. And there is not a fighting-man within or without the redoubts that displays more nerve and pluck than they when the ' Long Toms ' of the Boers are at work. Under the heading ' Splendid Example of the Nuns,' the London Times of December 2 pays a tribute to the bravery of the Sisters at Mafeking and their unflinching devotion to duty. The news was from its Mafeking correspondent, and was dated November 18. ' The convent,' he writes, 'has been hit eight times. The nuns retuse to leave their post beyond taking refuge in the bomb-proof shelter adjoining the convent. These heroic sisters take their share in the hard work.makingand distributing coffee and tea to the neighbouring redans. Their gallant conduct has set a magnificent example.' In a previous issue we told how the 13 Sisters ot Nazareth at Johannesburg remained behind of their own free will and accepted the risks of war and famine among a demoralised population made up chiefly of uncivilised Kaffirs, with a dangerous sprinkling of low whites — and all this for the sake of ministering to and protecting to the best of their power their 700 to Soo helpless charges : orphans and aged poor of all creeds, and neatly all of them British subjects. A cable message dated December 3 was received by the MotherGeneral at Hammersmith: 'Sister and charges in excellent health ; sufficient provisions.' This is news indeed. For famine, with its ' sharp and meagre face,' was the spectre that haunted the daylight thoughts and the nightly dreams both of the Sisters who remained behind for sweet chanty's sake, and of the others who stayed in Johannesburg because they could not find the means of flitting. But the gentle Sisters had long ago touched the rugged heart of the official Boer, and after the war had broken out, ' the Government ot the South African Republic,' says the London Tablet ot December 9, ' gave them the welcome announcement that it would afford them supplies if their own failed.' And against this good deed no voice has been raided in all the land of the Boers. Hard upon this comes from France the news that the Monthyen prize for heroic endurance in nursing the sick has been presented to a Catholic nun by M. Brunetiere, of the French Academy. Were Monthyen prizes the rule elsewhere, what a wealth of awards would tall to those noble Sisters who are engaged in the beautiful, if repulsive, work of nursing the victims of yellow-

fever at Now Orleans or Memphis, and gently tending the lepers in the Seychelles and Burmah and British Guiana and in that fearsome island of death that Charles Warren Stcddard's book has left photographed upon our mmd — lonely Molokai ! And all this — in South Africa as elsewhere — without fee or reward, but for Christ's sweet sake alone. • • • And these are the people the pious Joseph Slattery — after being dismissed by his bishop for intemperance and imprisoned at Pittsburg for the sale of indecent literature — and the female impostor who accompanies him on the dollar-grabbing tour, are now denouncing in Auckland (for so much per night) as monsters of phenomenal wickedness ! Oh, the shame of it ! For ' who is it,' says freethinking editor Braun of the Texas iconoclast, ' that visits the slums of our great cities, ministering to the afflicted, comforting the dying, reclaiming the fallen? When pestilence sweeps over the land and mothers desert their babes and husbands their wives, who is it that presses the cup of cold water to the feverish lips and closes the staring eyes of the deserted dead ? Who is it that went upon the Southern battlefields to minister to the wounded soldier, followed them to the hospitals and tenderly nursed tb<em back to life ? The Roman Catholic Sisterhoods. God bless them ! One of those angels of mercy can walk unattended and unharmed through our " Reservation "at midnight. She can visit with impunity the most degraded dive in the Whitechapel district. At her coming the nbald song is stilled, and the oath dies on the lips of the loafer. Fallen creatures reverently touch the hem of her garment, and men, steeped in crime to the very lips, involuntarily romove their hats as a tribute to nob*le womanhood. The very atmosphere seems to grow sweet with her coming, and the howl of all hell's demons is silent. None so low in the barrel house, the gambling den, or the brothel, as to breathe a word against her good name ; but when we turn to the Baptist pulpit, there we find an inhuman monster, clad in God's livery, crying, " Unclean ! Unclean !" God help a religious denomination that will countenance such an infamous cur ''

Catholic Sisters neither look for nor desire womfn any recognition of their services to the State. on But the devoted services of Catholic nuns in the l IELD. attending to the sick and wounded soldiers in South Africa reminds us that Great Britain is more chary than France in her recognition of galImt services rendered to the country by women in time ot war. During the Crimean War the newspapers sang hosannas to Miss Nightingale. They almost completely ignored the splendid services rendered to Tommy Atkins by the Sisters of Mercy— for even then the country had scarcely recover' d its sanity after the no-Popery fury and the Kcclesiastical Tit'es Bill of a few years before. But in France women, as well as men, are eligible for the magic red band of the Legion of Honour. M. Alesson's records of the Legion, published in ISB9, tells us that up to that time thirty-four women had received the decoration. Among them were several who had been carried into the ranks by the war-fever and distinguished themselves for gallantry upon the field. One of these was Virginie Guesquiere. She took the place of a brother who wis unable to endure the hardships of the military lite, enlisted in the 27th regiment cf the line, fought like a tigress, and attained the rank of sergeant. Another was a Belgian ama/on named Marie Schelhng. She distinguished herself at Austerhtz, was wounded twice at Jena, and received no fewer than six sabre-cuts at Jemmapes. She rose to the rank of sub-lieutenant m 1806. Two )ears later Napoleon, with his own hand, decorated her with the cross of the Legion of Honour, and at the same time gave her the more substantial recognition of a State pension. But the best woman's work done on the battle-field was not that of such slashing and slaying amazons as Guesquiere and Schelling. The Sisters of Charity and similar religious Orders do a vastly great r service to their country in the military hospitals or on the battle-field than that abnor-

mality, the female soldier, does in the fighting-lino. From M. Alesson's book we learn that many of the seven decorations accorded to women for services on the field were granted to nuns. Of this total of thirty-four that had been awarded to wemen when his book was written eleven years ago, no fewer than twenty were given to Sisters ot Charity, who, like the noted Sister Martha in 1815, had rendered noble services to the wounded in the military hospitals and to the plague-stricken poor in their homes.

So ml five }cars ago a clever Anglican the clergyman in Melbourne wrote a weird and bubonic creepy tale bearing the title of The Germ I'Laguk. Growers. The scene of the story was placed in a secluded valley in the wild and barren heart of Australia, walled round about by an unchmbable barrier of mountains — a sort of devilish duplicate of the valley of Amhara. Well, the valley of the Australian story was inhabited, not by a mooning Risselas who pined to see the world, but by a colony of diabolical sprites who cultivated a choice collection of virulent germs and sent them out from time to time on invisible wings to spread disease and suffering and death among the children of Adam all ov' r the earth. The bubonic plague would seem to be one of the latest and most fearsome variety of human ill devised by this interesting collection of demon bacteriologists. The ' black death ' and the 1 sweating sickness ' were tolerably sure man-slayers in their way, but the bacillus of the bubonic plague— it is always a bacillus — seems to be to them all pretty nearly what a lyddite shell is to the variety known as ' common.' The literature on this king of microbes is scanty ; for, although the microscopic destroyer has been separated and identified and pigeon-holed and labelled, its habits and behaviour have not been as )et sufficiently investigated. Last year Dr. Hevdon, of Warrnambool (Victoria), received an interesting ' cultiv ttion ' of these bacilli irom India, in a hermetically sealed tube, with a view to investigating their wa>s. E3ut the Colony went into hysterics, the newspapers shouted so loudiy that they woke up the Health Department, and the Health Deptrtment, after it had done yawning, sent down a bacteriologist and two policemen with a writ of habeas corpus lor the uninvited guest-* from India. And the upshot ot it all vv is thi-, : a strong furnace was lighted and the tube of dreaded bacilli was thrown into the hottest pirt thereof. They hive not been heard from since. But a fresh lot of their confreres have male their wa> into several parts of Australia within the pisl two weeks — thi-> time m the unsealed and more dangerou-, medium of sundry human bodies from Noum a. And medical men at ' t'other side ' are beginning to think that, after all, the cremating of Dr. Hcydon's parcel of bacilli was not the wisest course that could have been adopted. It. piobably killed the microbes ' fatally dead,' as Artemus Ward says , but it also destroyed the opportunity of a local scientific investigation of the dreaded disease, and has left the medical faculty across the water no choice but to learn trom expenment on human subjects what might have been learned long since by expeiiments on guineapigs and grey rabbits. Short of stringent precautions at the ports, we are now face to face with the possibilities of an early visit of the bubonic plague to the shores of New Zealand.

Dr. Molyneu\ — who saw and treated the plague in Hongkong — has a lengthly article on the subject in a recent issue of the Australasian Medical Gazette. He defines it as follows . ' The bubonic plague is a specific bactlUrv infectious disease, characterised by the presence of a definite bacillu-,, by inflammatory altections ot the lymphatic system, severe nervous symptoms, and necessarily epidemic in nature.' From his description ol the cases treated by him it appears that, as the disease progresses, the tongue becomes dry and sore, the lips hard and cracked, the skin burns, the temperature ranges from 103 to 105 degrees, and remains so until the seventh day, and the bubo or inflamed swelling of the lymphatic glands (from which it takes its name), is always" present 'The predisposing causes to its development,' he says, 'are overcrowding, dirt, and probably a moist and increasing]) warm atmosphere. Ventilation and sunlight are inimical to its development ; but none of the predisposing causes will generate the bacillus de nova. It must be introduced into a medium of culture from without.' Dr. Mulyneux gives us the comforting assurance that while the plague was overwhelming the undertakers with business 111 Hong-kong, no attendant in the Kuropean hospitals was attacked by it. This immunity he attributes to sci upulous cleanliness, a plentiful supply of Ircsh air, and a bountiful use of disinfectants. For the country, as for the individual, that is in a good sanitary condition, the bubonic plague need have no terrors. But what does this imply? Well, it implies many conditions that are not p-esent in every part of New Zealand. Dr. Molyneux describes a sanitary country by saying ' that it must essentially have good water supply, good drainage, good food supply, and sanitary dwellings. If these conditions are not present, then quarantine must be employed to keep the disease out.' Vessels from an infected port should be detained for an observat.on period

'which ought to extend over 12 days.' It appears that, as mosquitos convey malaria, so rats are the chief agents in the spread of the bubonic plague. It is not stated, however, how the ship-rats are to be settled with. But the Doctor is clear on the point that the 1 inding of c irgo ol any kind coming from tainted ports should be the subject of strict precautions. ' Passengers, upon landing, even a'ter a period of at least 12 days, should be disinfected, and their luggage as well, 1 and 'should any disease have been observed, ol ccurse the period of attention ought to indefinitely extended.' » ♦ * Dr. Molyneux would resort to heroic me isures where the danger of infection is present : rigorous isolation ; the proclamation and walling-in of infected ire is , disinfecting p irties to attack houses, clothing, lurniture, drains; the destruction of wooden fl >ors and infected clothing by fire ; and the cremation of the bodies of the de id In Hongkong, he tells us, search parties went around, acting with the police. Plaguestricken houses were entered and disinfected , houses certified as unfit for habitation were cleared of everything movible. A big bubonic bonfire was made of its contents, and the house itself was disinfected, barred, and securely nailed up. The bubonic plague is evidently not to be trifled with.

You will find few who are more opposed to the widow war than, say, the Quakers and the Sisters and of Mercy or Charity. At the same time you the ori'hxn. will find few that are prepared to make greater sacrifices for the sake of the victims of armed international strife than the Friends with their honest hearts and open pur-.es. and the Sister-, with gentle hand and happy face and the cheerful yielding up ot life itself, it necessary, to bring sun_e*se of pun to tlie wounded and feverstricken soldier on the battle-field, or in the camp, or in the military hospital. We'hn^ton himself, soldier though he was, was, in Scripture word-*, 'am in averse Irom war.' And, just because he saw wir and knew its w lys and its results, he declared th it he would leave nothing within the bounds of hum in possibility done to make sure that his country should not be, even for one shoit week, the the Ure ot armed strife. It is this tcthng of Ihe honors of war, and chiefly the thought of the tears ot the widow-, and 01 phans at home that have united all politic il parties — even the great body of Knghsh and other Liberal-, who did not and do not believe that the present camp ngn in "vm'h Afiici w is en her politic or necessary — in contiibutmg to th. 1 Fund whic'i is being raised for the innocent victim-, of the present struggle between the Briton and the Boer. Mi. l.abouchere, in frut'i of November 30, thus deals with an Knghsh provincial Conservative paper which endeavoured to make political capital out of the success of the Fund : ' \n ordinary mortal might have supposed that the more men mil v mien disapproved of war in general, or of this war in puiiuil w, the more cag-'r vvoald they be to do v hat was in thur powe. to mitigate its horrors, and to save innocent persons from its consequences. But, according to the Birnu.igliaui /'ost, this is impossible. Kvery one who, by the ordinary impulses of humanity, is prompted to come to the succour of the sufferers thereby conveys that the war and all that has led to it commend-, itself to his conscience. In the same way, presum iblv, the contributors to the Indian Famine Relief Fund signified tlvir approval of famines, or those who subscribed to the Vnt>ria Relief Fund their approval of the otd tofth ' Vl r mr il wtici brought about the catastrophe. The argument woul 1 be iidn ulous 1! the insult to the motives of every sulv-cnb-r to the W ir Relief Fund-,, Tory and Radical, jingo and Little Knglander, were not so abominably offensive.'

I'hk Rev. S. Blagden, of Washington, D.C., *,prh[) is a model of the lair minded and intellectual 'i hk i ighi' Protestant, clergyman. As a result, he has on iiik no patience with King adventurers like the slu'lkk\»'. SI uterys v\ ho career over the surface of this planet setting the workers of one creed against the workers of another creed, and profiling by it — as in Melbourne — to the tune ot £Son in three weeks : a tolerably good dividend trot) a capital which i-> represented by a re-hash of old calumnies and — plenty of brass. 'As I labour for Christion unity,' s lid Rev. Mr. Blagden, 'I have for years taken p mis to ferret out the truth or falseness of such charges.' And he tells us that m every solitary instance he ' found them to be wholly and absolutely false. Now,' he continues, ' this is a crying shame, and unspeakable disgrace to people calling themselves Christians, to be thus diabolically attacking, maligning, tiaducing, and bearing false witness against our fellow-Christians ; and it is time that it be stopped, and for Christ's dear sake.' Undoubtedly. It is high time. Catholics, in Beaconsfield's words, have waited for this ' with that patience which insulted beings can alone endure.' We have been too long content to bear in silence the worst calumnies that itinerant professional slanderers and gaol-birds have, for money, flung against the virtue of our priests and the honour of our women. The policy of unresisting silence has had just this result: (i) We can testify from a personal experience of

manyyears in Australia that even well-disposed Protestants have mistaken our silence for a tacit acknowledgment of gross and infamous charges which, if true, would justify our fellowcolonists in rising in their wrath and driving us into the sea. (2) We have time and again met with Catholics who, long after campaigns of the Slattery kind, were left with an uneasy sense of there being, after all, a vague ' something wrong.' (3) We have left our Catholic young men and worrten and others in shops, factories, public departments, without an answer, and compelled them to hang their heads in silent shame or to break out into impotent anger when the co.iise calumnies and innuendos of the platfoim were flung at them. We have made them the helpless butts of the gibes and sneeis ot malicious or rudely sportive fellow-emplo)es. All this our well-meant but mistaken silence has done. And again : (4) Our patient silence so emboldened the itinerant slander-mongers that the tribe increased beyond measure — lured by this easy way of coining bigotry and pruriency into golden shekels — until their ranks weie thinned by the police and criminal courts and the pamphlets of the Catholic Truth Society. * * » Few of our people are aware of the immense good that has been achieved by the Catholic Truth Societies of England and America in letting in the light upon the criminal careers of those professional caluminators. The free circulation of their pamphlets has p.oduced the following happy results : (1) It has banisued from the lecturing platform and relegated to their native obscurity even genuine ex-nuns like Edith O'Gorman and Kllen Golding. (2) It has compelled even the once powerful A. P. A. association in the United States to discharge from their service a horde of genuine and sham expriests an ex-nuns whom they had employed to do the devil's work of arousing sectarian rancour in that great country. It has, moreover, been the indirect means of placing many members of this malodorous fraternity in locum suum — under lock and key in gaol. (3) It has not, of course, been able to restore to the seclusion of private life some of the most brazenfaced impostors, who are as insensible to shame as they are regardless of exposure, but it has so eifectually extracted their fangs, that it is now largely the fault of Catholics themselves if such crusades effect any permanent harm. (4) It has supplied to Catholics in shops, factories, public departments, ' etc., a ready and triumphant reply to jibes and sneers and innuendos against the Church. (5) It has made a strong appeal to the spirit of fair play of all decent Protestants on questions of fact affecting the veracity of those well-paid slanderers. And that appeal has not been made in vain. Elsewhere in to-day's issue we have shown how the circulation of such pamphlets has led to the denunciation of the Slatteries by the non-Catholic Press and pulpit, and by public bodies composed chiefly 01 altogether of persons who do not belong to our Fold. * * * What has been done with such success in the I'nited States, England, Scotland, Wales, and elsewhere, it is now in our power to do here in New Zealand — at least so far as regards enlightening the non - Catholic public as to the thorough-going worthlessness and unreliability of the Slattery pair. We have placed the means of effecting this at the disposal of every priest and layperson in the Colony. But we strongly appeal to both clergy and laity to see that the work of pamphlet distribution shall be thoroughly done in every place that is even threatened by the Slattery invasion. Such distribution should be done, in advance of his visit, to the nonCatholic clergy, the Press, and reputable citizens of every degree. And steps should be taken — by committees or otherwise — to effect a searching distribution of pamphlets to every person frequenting the lectures of this unhappy pair, and to every householder within reach of the evil influence of their widely-scattered circulars or posters or advertisements. Our pamphlets should be scattered by the thousand in the small towns; in the cities, like the Slatteiy hand-bills, by tens of thousands. The almost nominal charge which is made for our new pamphlet (ready on Fuday) will place adequate circulation within the reach of the Catholic body everywhere. We have endeavoured in this painful matter to do our part as Catholic journalists faithfully and fearlessly and thoroughly. And whenever in the future any other such adventurers touch upon our shores, our confreres of the clergy can rely upon it that, in Shakespeare's words, we shall ' . . . Put in every honest hand a whip To lash the rascals naked through the world.'

Dunxtan Times says :—": — " Messrs W. Gawne and Co. have forwarded us a bottle of their Worcestershire Sauce. The sauce is quite equal in quality to Lea and Perrin's, and is only half the cost of the imported article. It has also a delicate piquancy all its own, which must make it an epicurean's delight and a joy for ever. We asked a number of people to sample the Sauce sent us, and they were charmed with it. Our readers should ask for the Sauce and try it for themselves. — %*