The Cardinal's Cruise

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 25, 18 June 1903, Page 1

The Cardinal's Cruise

A rare treat is in .store for the privileged travellers who are to take part in Cardinal Moran's approaching cruiso through the summer isles of the Western Pacific, whose gilded romance has been tokl to the world by Beck and Ste\enson. The voyagers are to wander for over six thousand miles through ocean and coral sea, \isit the quaint, broii7e-sk,inned tribesmen in their homes, witness their ' mekas,' their festivals, and their Wu>s. get an insight into the trials and triumphs of missionary endea\or, visit the shrine at Poi, whei o the Blessed Peter Chanel, the St. Stephen of the Pacific, was mai tyred two and sixty \ears. ago, witness the opening of Suva's new Cathedral, and feast their eyes upon the glorious tropical vegetation by the circling reefs where the wa\es break la/.ily and -The palm-tree 'standeth so straight and so tall, The moie the hail beats and the more the rains fall.' The tour is arranged for weeks when, in these Western Pacific seas, the climate is at its most gracious mellowness and the winds and wa\es me asleep It will, altogether, bo a memorable e\ent m the history of the Church in the islands One ot the results we may look forward to is the full oflicial confnim.tion of the alieady published facts which will consign to a final onri decent burial, a hundred fathoms deep, some of the anti-Catho-lic romance which has been reaching our shores of late from the Fiji group.

The Servian Tragedy Five hundred years of injustice, serfdom, and barbarous repression by fanatical and coarse-grained Turkish pashas and their ruthless soldiery made a fcad training in ways that are gentle and civilised. This has been Servia's lot. Its history has been chiefly a longdiawn chronicle of thrust and parry with the unspeakable Turk. The conquered, but fierce and unsubdued, people first felt their feet on firm ground when Kara George the swine-owner chased the ancient enemy out of the country in 1804. The good work was completed by the dashing herdsman, Milosh Obrenovich, m 181.">. Since then the Government of the country has changed hands with almost as much frequency and storm and bloodshed as that of a South American republic. In 1868— when Servia was still a dingy little Principality—its ruler, Prince Michael, was waylaid and shot 'fatally dead' by a rh al faction whose leader was a Lineal descendant of the Kara George, who first swept the Turkish janissaries out of his nathe mountains. iiut last week's dread tragedy— or rather massacrefinds no counterpart in later European history except in the Great Tenor of the French Revolution. It adds two more to the long list of the heads of States that ha\e fallen to the assassin's knife and bullet since the dawning year of the nineteenth century No fewer than thnty-two attempts were made since then Jtipon the lives of rulers. Fifteen of these were happily unsuccessful. Of the seventeen victims that died by the assassin's hand ten were royalties : Paul 1., Tsar of Russia (in 1801) ; Prince Daniel of Montenegro (1860) ; Prince Michael of Servia (1868) ; Abdul A?iz, Sultan of Turkey (1876) ; Alexander 11., Tsar of Russia (1881) , Nasr-ed-Din, Shah oi Persia (1896) : Empress Elizabeth of Austria (1898) ; King Humbert of (Italy (1900). The hapless King Alexr ander and Queen Uraga of Servia complete the halfscore of crowned heads that have met with violent deaths since 1801. The list of rulers mu,vdered in the same period comprises one Prime Minister (Canovas del Castillo, of Spain, stabbod to d.eath by Rinaldi in 1897) and six Presidents of Republics : President Lincoln (1865) , President Garfield (1881) ; President Carnot (1894) ; General Borda, President of Uruguay (1897) : President Barrios of Gautemala (1898); and President McKinlev (1901).

* Tn the meantime, the Servian military assassins,

' with twenty mortal murders on their crowns,' hold, unabashed, the reins of power and gloss over the foulness of their cowardly crime with lying excuses and finespun phrases. The common murderer goes to the headsMan's block or the hangman's halter. The successful political assassin of yesterday is often, especially among Eastern or semi-Eastern peoples, the crowned k,ing of to-day And thus Juvenal's words come true : ' Ille crucem, pretium scelens, tuht ; hie diaclema.' Which, being freely interpreted, meaneth : ' Crime sometimes

meets with due chastisement ; but it is often the highway to honor.' Yet ' Murder may pass unpunish'd for a time, But tardy justice will o.'take the crime.' at last. ' Say not,' says the Wise Man, ' I have sinned, and what harm hath befallen me ? For the Most High is a patient rewarder.'