Current Topics.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 7, 14 February 1901, Page 1

Current Topics.

The Otago Daily Times of February 6 publishes the substance of a statement made to the Balclutha Free Press by a returned trooper to the effect that during the fierce big-little struggle j n South Afrjca ' there were times when the .class of warfare waged was somewhat barbarous. Prisoners were not desired ' said the returned warrior, 'and consequently the men were ordered not to hamper themselves with them unless a departure from that course would involve cold-blooded slaughter.' There is an ugly look about this ' barbarous ' order that is strongly suggestive of a proclamation of 'no quarter.' Such an ofder is contrary to the spirit, if not to the letter, of the Declaration of St. Petersburg, which was formulated and published as far back as^ 1818, and which prohibited proclamations of 'no quarter,' as well as the use of poisoned weapons and explosive bullets. We thought we had, in the matter of humanity, stt up a barrier as high as Mount Cook between modern warfare with civilised peoples and the conditions that prevailed when General Monk captured Dundee, when the Butish stormed Badajos and San Sebastian, and uhen, in ISO 2, the Servian troops raised such a red pandemonium in the streets of Belgrade. War at its best and briefest is a hideous game Whenjt is long drawn out, the brute within the fighting man frequently breaks through conventions, as his elbows and knees do through his army clothes. The later events of this wretched campaign, as reported in the columns of the secular Press, go far to show that international legislation is even yet scarcely a sufficiently strong and active living force to restrain combatants from the grosser forms of violence which add so many a bitter drop to the full cup cf the horrors of modern warfare.

The Franco-German war began with a relatively high spirit of chivalry on both sides. But it soon led to the not infrequent shooting or hanging of prisoners by the irregular Franc-tireurs, and of unoffending peasants by the Germans • and its atrocities culminated in the fearful blood -orgie of the enraged human animals in military uniform who shot and burned non-combatants of both sexes in the streets and houses of Bazeilles. Thus far many a savage incident has spotted as with a. leprosy almost every campaign of what is termed ' civilised warfare. Much has been done by international codes in the direction of humanising the armed conflicts of peoples. But much yet remains to be done— for instance, to compel more civilised warfare against barbarian peoples ; to prevent the bombardment of seaports for requisitions ; and to prohibit the wanton burning of farm-houses and villages, such as the Germans were guilty of in their campaign in trance in 1870, the British and American blue-jackets in Samoa in 1898, and' the British forces in South Africa during the present war.

'DHUDEEN ' AND ' CAUBEEN.'

Next St. Patrick's day will probably witness, at sundry so-called • national ' concerts through this afflicted land, the antics, howls, jumps, and epileptic spasms of the usual stage Irishman. We are reminded of the annual resurrection of this strange freak by the query of a correspondent from a northern mining town who wants to know

what's this?

the origin of the legend which has so long associated the dhudeen or short pipe, with the hatband of the ' boy ' from he Lmerald Isle We frankly confess our inability to account for the legend. Outside of stageland and the realm of caricature the combination seems to be about as unknown as the green stockings and the crownless ' caubeen ' of the ♦ Irishman in costume, and his fearful and wonderful 'brogue,' which has never been a spoken tongue on any part of mother earth rom Chiua to Peru. Few persons are better acquainted with the various types of Irishman from Antrim to Cape Clear and vT mvm v , »L m £ Aran of the Saints than the well k nown writer Michael MacDonagh. And in his Irish Life and Character he says of them : ' I never yet met a countryman who, even in his most frolicsome moments, carried his pipe in the band of his

We rather suspect that the custom— if, indeed, it ever was a custom in any corner of the earth—of making the hat a pipe-holder came originally, like saver-kraut and pockmarked philosophy, from Germany. Heine, for instance, tells us of the great scholar and critic, Boxhornius, who died at Leyden in 1653— 10ng before the ' little tube of mighty power' came into common use in Ireland— that 'in smoking he wore a hat with a broad brim, in the forehead of which he had a hole, through which the pipe was stuck, that it might not hinder his studies. The great Anglican Bishop Burnet (1643-171.:) adopted a somewhat similar plan. Like the late Mr. Spureeon he ' smoked to the glory of God ' and let his critics rave The manufactured • great plant 'in use in Burnet 's day was a fullbodied variety like the negro-head of a later time, which, according to Dickens, was powerful enough to 'quell an elephant in six whiffs.' But Bishop Burnet sucked away contentedly at the venemous stuff hour after hour as he turned out the manuscript of his histories and of the other voluminous works that came from his pen. A biographer writes of him - In order to combine the two operations (of writing and smoking) with perfect comfort to himself, he would bore a hole through the broad brim of his large hat, and, putting the stem of his long pipe through it, puff and write, and write and puff with learned gravity.' r

* - * In his Fitthoodle Papers Thackeray makes a passing reference to the partnership between pipe and hat at the close ot the following remarks on the universality of the smokine habit in his day : ' Look over the world and see that your adversary [tobacco] has overcome it. Germany has been puffing or three score years. France smokes to a man. Do you think you can keep the enemy out of England ? Pshaw ! Look at his progress. Ask the club-houses. I, for my part" do not despair to see a bishop lolling out of the Athenaeum with a cheeroot in his mouth, or, at any rate, a pipe stuck in his

THE LATE ftUEEN ON THE IRISH PEOPLE.

The late Queen was one of the many who, on coming to Ireland, were disillusioned of the idea that the natives of the Green Isle were uncouth-looking barbarians with apish i v r fa "s, pug noses, and ear-to-ear mouths—the sepulchres of untold hogsheads of whiskey '—and that the men had a wild whirroo ever on their lips, knobby shillelahs in

their hands, tattered knee-breeches on their nether limbs, and on their heads battered ' caubeens ' with short and black clay pipes stuck in the bands thereof. In his Irish Life and Character Michael MacDonagh says: 'The Queen, in her interesting book, Leaves Jrom the Journal of our Life in the Highlands, gives her impressions of the two visits she paid to Ireland in 1849 and 1 86 1. Her Majesty was evidently on the look-out for the Irishman of the stage and fiction. At Carton, the seat of the Duke of Leinster, she saw the It kh jig danced by the peasantry. "It ,3 qaite difleienl fiuui die Scoidi icei," biie says, '• not so animated, and the steps different, but very dioll. The people were^ very poorly dressed in thick coats, and tne women in shawls," and, she adds, " there was one man who was ,, a ,r, re K ular specimen of an Irishman, with his hat on one ear." The fact that the Irish were entirely different in temperament, manners, habits, ideas, from the English, also struck her Majesty. Cork was the first place she saw on her visit to Ireland in 1849. "It is not at all like an English town, and looks rather foreign," she graphically writes. "The crowd is a noisy, excitable, but very good humored one, running and pushing about, and laughing, talking, and shrieking. The beauty of the women is very remarkable, and struck us much — such beautiful dark eyes and hair, and such fine teeth ; almost every third woman was pretty, and some remarkably SOf

MANNERS AND THE MAN.

Some time ago a report went the rounds of the non-Catholic Press that Lord Halifax, the leader of the Ritualistic section of the t Church of England, had 'gone over to Rome. The report was unfounded, but, says an Anglican contemporary, the ultra- Protestant mind was 'strangely jubilant at the news.' It gave them the opportunity of twitting their opponents with that never-failing argument of the small prophet : • I told you so.' Poor Lord Halifax was bombarded in his laager with a whizzing storm of violent correspondence. Some of the epistolary explosives aimed at him he placed, so to speak, on exhibition in the columns of the Ritualistic Press. One specimen was given as exhibiting the dark fanaticism that rages in the oath-bound ranks of the Orange Society. The precious epistle runs as follows : Bradford, December f>, 1000. My Lord, — I was heartily grlad to see the amiomvement of your joining the Church of Rome. Like .Jud.ia, you have jrone to your own place. Dan f e saya that in hell Jud.w in shuuno] by nil. When yon enter hell, JudiiH will no longer be shunned by ull. 'You and he will be fit companions— two of the choicest tools tli'u devil ever had. There is scarcely anything in that rarclta of concentrated theological abuse, L'LCstrangi-'s Dissenters' Sayings, that can surpass this. Lord Halifax's variegated collection of critics claim, no doubt, the right of private judgment. But it the titled President of the Knglish Church Union dares to exercise it in a manner not to their taste, he will H,id occasion to sing with the poet :—: — Straightway a barbarous noise environs me, Of owls and asses, cuckoos, apea, and dog-*.

STILL THEY COME.

'Since the Holy Father,' says the Aye Maria, ' issued his pronouncement declaring the invalidity of Anglican Orders, as many as twenty-four clergymen of the Establishment, all of them rectors or vicars or curates or chaplains in good standing, have been received into the Church. It was persistently asserted at the time that the cikct of the Pope's decision would be to stem the Romeward current in the Anglican denomination, and to kill off Ritualism. In neither case has the prediction been fulfilled.' The extent of the Romeward movement may be roughly estimated from a wm k published last year by S>van and Sonnenschein, London, which states that since the Tractarian Movement of ISSO the persons who ' have gone over to the Church of Rome include 44s graduates of Oxford, 211, of Cambridge, and ft} of other universities, besides 27 peers, 241 mihury officers, io_> autho-s, 121, I nvyers, and 60 physicians. Among the graduates were 41'"' cLnnmen of the Established Church.'

ANOTHER SH<\M 'EX-PRIEST.'

Says the Catholic Record: 'Another "expriest," one Rannie, has been receiving attention from variou-> newspapers, and incidentally from good people who look upon him as a brand snatched from the burning-. From all accounts he never saw the inside of a Catholic college, but has been a swindler and jail-bird. But whatever he i>, he will find that the business is not so profitable as of yore. The " ex-priest " lecture, which is generally a mass of festering putrescence, is rather too strong for the average Protestant.' We have the facts of this individual's career before us, and should his money-getting scheme induce him to gravitate to NVw Zealand, our readers may count on hearing something mote about him.

HOW TWO CONVERTS FELT.

Coventry Patmore is known to the reading world as the man who filed and polished and burnished his work with the scrupulous and minute exactness of Kinglake, until his Angel tn the House has come to occupy a recognised place among the poetic achievements of the nineteenth century. He is le-s known as a convert and a devout son of the Catholic Church. In his recently-published biography occurs the following passage from his own pen : ' From that time T o f his leception i, now twenty years ago, to this [1888], no shadow of religious doubt has ever crossed my understanding or my conscience; though it was not until' the autumn of the year 1877 that my faith became the controlling -power which for five and thirty years I had longed and prayed to find in it. ... Before and even since my reception into the Church my feelings had been, as it seemed to me, hopelessly out of harmony with the feelings and practice of the best Catholics with regard to the Blessed Vjrgin. I was in the habit, indeed, of addressing her in prayer, and believed that I had often found such prayers to be successful beyond others ; but I could not abide the Rosary, and was chilled at what seemed to me the excess of many forms of devotion to her. Good I hoped might come of some practical contradiction of this repugnance — some confession in act or will of what my feelings thus refused to accept. I, therefore, resolved to do the very last thing in the world which my natural inclination would have suggested : I resolved to make an external profession of my acceptance of the Church's mind by a pilgrimage to Lourdes. This I undertook without any sensible devotion, and merely in the temper of a business man who does not leave any stone unturned when a great issue is at stake, though the proposal of attaining thereby what he seeks may seem exceedingly small. Accord^ ingly, on October 14, 1877, I knelt by the shrine at the River Gave ; and rose without any emotion or enthusiasm or unusual sense of devotion, but with a tranquil sense that the prayers of thirty-five years had been granted. I paid two visits of thanksgiving to Lourdes, in the two succeeding Octobers, for the gilt which was then received, and which has never since been for a single hour withdrawn,' A like freedom from the rackings of doubt and misgivings marked the newly-won faith of another noted English writer and convert, Mr. C. Kegan Paul. Aulus Gellius tells us that poisons proved rather wholesome than hurtful to the ducks of Pontus. In like manner Mr. Kegan Paul tells us in his Confessio Viatoris that certain violent no-Popery volumes such as Father Clement, The Nun, ' and other books of a vehemently Protestant character ' first led his halting footsteps towards Rome. Auguste Comte was a still more unlikely teacher. Vet Mr. Kegan Paul learned from him the apparent paradox that ' Positivism it, Catholicism without God.' Under Comte's directions he read the Imitation of Christ. ' The daily study of the Imitation for several years did more,' he says, * than aught else to bring me back to faith and faith back to me.' ' Those who are not Catholics,' he says in his Confessio Viatoris (p. 13), ' are apt to think and say that corlverts join the Roman Communion in a certain exaltation of spirit, but that when it cools they regret what has been done, and would return but for very shame. It has been said of marriage that every one finds, when the ceremony is over, that he or she has married another. . . . We wed Rachel, as we think, and, in the morning, behold it is Leah. . . . But the Church is no Leah— rather a fairer Rachel than we dared to dream ; her blessings are greater than we had hoped. I may say for myselt that the happy tears shed at the tribunal of Penance on that I2ih ot August — the fervor of my first Communion — were as nothing to what I teel now. Day by day the Mystery of the Altar seems greater, the unseen world nearer, God more a Father, our Lady more tender, the great company of the saints more friendly, my guardian angel closer to my side. Sorrows have come to me in abundance since God gave me the grace to enter His Church, but I can bear them better than of old, and the blessing he has given me outweighs them all. . . . It will be said that 1 am very confident. My experience has been like that of the blind man in the Gospel who also was sure. He was still ignorant of much, nor could he fully explain how Jesus opened his eyes, but this he could say with unfaltering c«rtaint\ : " One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see." '

AN UNBELIE-

' LiK. p. many another unbeliever,' says the Aye Maria, ' Professor Huxley with growing years felt more and more that here everything is but a rent, and that it is death alone which integrates, In the newly published life of Huxley a letter to Mr. John Morley is quoted in which the great naturalist says : " It is a curious thing that I find my dislike to the thought of extinction increasing as I get older and nearer the goal. It flashes across me at all times with a sort of horror that in iyoo I shall probably know no more of what is going on than I did in 1800. I had sooner be in hHI a good deal — at any rate, in one of the upper circles, where the climate and company are not too trying. I wonder if you are plagued in this way." '