POINTS TO REMEMBER.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7, 15 February 1900, Page 3

POINTS TO REMEMBER.

1. In the first place, it is quite true that the serious religious disabilities of Catholics and Jews formed a genuine portion — the

most genuine, in fact — of the Uitlander grievances in the Transvaal. But it is equally true that these grievances were not even the oc a<uon, murh less the chief or sole cause of the war. The war, iv fact, is not even remotely a religious question. It was a question ot politic and political expediency. And such it should be permitted to iem..in. The man who setks to make it the occasion of an iij peal to sectarian pussion and endeavours through it to set caucus, ot one cieed 'against-, citiz ns ot -another cr. Ed, is a worse, 11 "- 1 """■•' <''*w uflly ;ni(i hypocritn ;il em-my to his country than U ho sa-aightforwaruly shouldered a Mauser rifld and marched and fin;_;h T vm'li-r .Tonberf

-'. Ihe Catholic Church haa her known and definite voice to spiak htr vi'ws She has not pronounced, either officially or unofficially, directly or in irectly, upon the merits of the present war. She is not the Church of one race or nation. H -r mbjeots are everywhere, m Holland and Germany and the i'raubvaal, as well as in Great Britain. The Pvpe did what lay in his power, in a friendly way, to avert war. He has proved himself long ago a man of rare enlightenment and a past-master in the knowledge of diplomatic usage. And to take sides on the lines suggested by the screaming little weekly from Sydney wculd be— to put it on merely political grounds— a blunder of the first magnitude. For the rest, the Pope is entitled to be judged by the repeated public writings and utterances in which he has expressed his admiration of the British people and their sovereign. As to the Oxservatore Romano, it is not the organ, whether official, semi-official, or unofficial of Vatican opinion. And, moreover, it never gave editorial expression to the opinion quoted in the extract with which we are dealing. The little Sydney ' religious ' sheet is simply retailing at tenth hand a clumsy calumny that was exposed months ago in the London Press. Its editor evidently needs a tonic.

o. It is not true that there is among Catholics or their Pressorgans any special unanimity of opinion as to t- c war more than among Protestants. Catholics are as tree as people of other creedß or of no creed to hold, aud in due moderation to express, their opinions on the war, ]ust as they do on otht r questions of imperial or national politics. Aud in the exercise of that freedom they have ranged themselves freely and, we are glad to say, without intolerant bitterness or recnmination, on the side of the various political parties to which they owe allegiance. For, as we have said, the nutation is a purely political one, and in Great Britain the various opi .ions upon the justifiability of the war follow closely, though not auMjluttly, along the hues ot party cleavage. Thus, practically the whole Liberal Press and party, together with a section of the Liberal Uniomnr>s held, a«we did, that the war with the Transvaal was unnecessary, impolitic, and honourably avoidable. This view was forcibly urged m Parliament, in the Press, and on the public platform by prominent Englishmen ot such diverse creeds and no-creeds a-, Su 11, nry Campbell Bannerm,ui, Mr John Morloy, Sir William Ilar.ourt, Larl Spuicer Lord Ki.i berley, Mr Herbert Spencer, Mr. Labouchere. Mr Philip Stanhope, Mr. Stead, Mr. U. W. .Mas-mgham, and by Liberal Unionists like Mr. Leonard Courtenay and lr Edward Clarke A like view was taken b> at Least two prominent British General", Sir William Butler and Sir Revivers Huller The English pulpit generally was opposed to the war on the same grounds. So was at least a large and healthy section ot the Piotestant r< ligious newspapers of these colonies, conspicuous among which is the temperate and scholarly Outlook, the organ of the Presoyterian body of New Zealand. The same wew is held generally, though by no means universally, by the Catholic Pre*s m the Umpire Thus, two of our Australian txehanges hold themselves neutr.il on the question. And the London Tub' it and s inie other English Ca + hohu p'lpfrs adopt fully the attituue of the Conservathe p-»rty and stoutly maintain the original necessity of the war. But whatever various views as to the neel or otherwise of the present war have been adopted by the Catholic Press and public, they have been adopted quite irrespective of the mere religious beliefs of the contending parties. The fact remains that there has nevt r been a war in English history on the original justifiability of which British opinion, irrespective of creed, has been so profoundly divided. As to the Continental and American new-papers, whether Protestant, secular, Jewish, Agnostic, Freemason, or other, the voice of the vast majority of them has been against the war. It is the merest nonsense for any newspaper to hint or state that 'a minority of Piotestants' stood for the unwisdom of the present struggle. A great majority did. We are not over-squeamish, and we are no supporters of the principle that ' there never was a bad peace or a good war.' But war is, even at its best, a fearful calamity. And it ill becomes a religious paper to stand forth as its advocate unless on the clearest and most cogent grounds of public necessity.