A PEW MORE REMINDERS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7, 15 February 1900, Page 4

A PEW MORE REMINDERS.

We have just a few more brief reminders for the critics of the Catholic body. (1") No troops have fought more gallantly or suffered more severely in the present campaign than the Irish regiments, which are Catholic almost to a mau. Mulhall's Dictionary of Statistics for 1899 is the authority for the statementtaken from the military returns — that Catholic Ireland, in proportion to her population, contributes 20 per cent more troops to the defence of the Empire than England, and 50 per cent more than Scotland. We have already published a very lengthy, though very incomplete, list of the Catholic officers now at the front. A further and still more lengthy instalment will appear shortly in our columns. (2) A large number of Catholic volunteers went 10 South Africa with the contingents from the various colonies of Australasia. From New South Wales so many left that Cardinal Moran sent a chaplain to accompany them. (3) In New Zealand the fund for the innocent victims of the war — the orphans and

widows of the dead British soldiers — was considerably swelled by the contributions of the Catholic clergy and laity. (4) At a time when men, women, and children were scurrying off by train-loads to places of safety farther south, the Catholic Bisters of Nazareth, the Sister* of the Holy Family, the Dominican nuns, etc., of their own free will remained behind to tend and nurpe the sick and wounded defenders of Mafekiug, Kimberley, and Ladysmith, and to face the terrible risks of war, famine, and worse, in the midst of an uncivilised black population, in order to feed and tend the 700 to 800 orphans and old people— mostly British subjecs — who are at this moment in Johannesburg. And the Mafeking correspondent of a London daily is responsible for the statement that the local nuns are perfectly reckless of shot or Bhell and are setting ' a splendid example ' of bravery even to the fighting men. And these noble Sisters are doing their good, work without fee or reward, but solely for Christ's dear sake. When our critics have gone to the front and done as much of the bleeding and the nursing as Catholios have done, then let them come back and fling the first stone at vs — if they can. Till then, the golden silence and the modesty that become demerit would sit gracefully upon them. There is a commandment in the decalogue with which some of the so-called 1 religious ' papers have scarcely a nodding acquaintance. It runneth thus : ' Thou shalt not bear false witness againßt thy neighbour.' Our Protestant friend in Wanganui would do well to get it framed and send it to the editor of the Sydney weekly to be suspended in his office. But, from the number of falsehoods contained in the article quoted by us, our Wanganui friend will probably have realised by this time that the eighth (Protestant ninth) commandment has been long ago suspended in that office.