THURSDAY, AUGUST 11,1901. A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 32, 11 August 1904, Page 17

THURSDAY, AUGUST 11, 1901. A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

. ♦ §IIE Dreyfus agitation was one of the most sonoious hullabaloos in history. Jt arose over a doubt as to whether a Jewish army captain was receiving a fair trial at the hands of a French court-martial, and it stormed and rumbled round and lound and round the eaith in a deafening clangor of vociferation. The sec da" newspapers led off and swelled the thunderous din They were convulsed by paroxysms of frothing hysteiia. But to-day, when there are tens of thousands of Catholic Dieyfuscs scattered all over France, the same newspapers are as duuib as tongueless mummies. And here it is no question as to the fairness or unfairness of a trial. Jt is a --'ase of the wholesale proscription of \ast numbeis of people — the pick of the country — the head and front, and, indeed, Ihc sole cause, of whose ofiemding is the faitfli they profess and the religious habit which they bear un honor and a blameless life Their propcity is plundered, they themselves are turned out, often penniless and hungry, and banished like noxious beasts from a land to which they had given the best and noblest service without fee or reward And this, 100, without accusation or tn<il. .v s an act ,ot wholesale proscription aird e^poHation it takes rank side by side with what Jessop calls ' The Great Pillage ' ol I lcniy VIII, and with the historic madness of the French Re\olut:on. But the papers that raved over one doubtful \ictim ot a miscarriage of justice arc tongue-tied and as mute as muzzled dogs when the certain victims of oppression and tyranny count by tens of thousands.

Bui there is a worse depth than tins. And some of the Dreyfus journals ha\c sounded it. When in Dublin, in 18(>tj, John Blight, ' the Tribune ol the People,' filing at tjie ' Tunes ' of the clay the oft-quoted epithet', ' the devil's oi gan *n earth 'In the conflict Ainu is going on in France between religion and the avowed enemies of all religion, some English journals and some leading; newspapers have tinned themselves into ' de\ il\ advocates ' We refer in »orms of special reprobation to Router's Agency and to the Rome and Paris conespondenes of certain great English dailies. These are, in Cowper's phrase, ' an ever bubbling; fount of lies ' We ha\c from time to time evposed in our own columns and in those of the secular pi ess some of the more flagrant and malevolent misstatements that ha\e emanated from these fertile bonnes of misinformation. In a recent issue the ' Catholic Times ' passes the following well-mentcd strictures on Reuter's News Agency : Some ()f the paragraphs on the dispute between the French ( Government and the Holy See which have ?ppearea in the dailies papers reveal in a marked manner the anti-Catholic animus of Reuter's News- Agency. The

province of an agency which is supposed to supply the press with news is to relate facts. Comments it should lea\c to the writers who contribute to the editorial columns. But some of Reuter's correspondents during the friction between the French Government and the Vatican have nearly altogether forgotten the role of news-collectois a nd coolly assumed that of the writers of leading articles. Nor have they made any pretence of impartiality. Hostility to the Holy See and the Catholic Church has been exhibited without dissimulation or disguise. 'J he Sovereign Pontift and the Cardmsil Secretary of state have bec^i openly attacked, motives have been manufactured for them, and in a word their acts have been set forth in the worst possible light. These unfair and offensive communications have been sent not only to non-Catholic papers, but also to Catholic journals.' Hardly a week passes but the fact is unpleasantly forced upon our notice that the mam channels of intelligence— both by mail and cableare in the hands of associations and individuals that &re hostile to the Catholic Church. The great anti-Catholic tradition is in their marrow, and to them we may, in a measure, apply the strong words that Newman ' addressed to the Brothers of the Oratory in the midst of the No-Popery storm and fury of three-and-fifty years ago : 'In this inquisitive age— when -the Alps are covered, and seas fathomed, and mines ransacked, and sands sifted, and rocks cracked, into specimens, and beasts caught and catalogued— as little is known by Englishmen of the religious sentiments, the religious usages, the religious motives, the religious ideas of JOO,0(M,000 Christians passing to and fro among Ihem and aiound them as if, I will not say they were Tartars or Palagomans, but an if they inhabited the moon.'

This far-off bigotry and misunderstanding react upon us heic out on the rim of the world. Our European table messages are merely a rehash of Reuter. And in Catholic matters of European interest the editorial columns of our daily papers aie in great part a restatement of the news and views of the London metropolitan press. This is especially the case c/n the rare occasions when the French persecution forms the subject of editorial remark An instance in point was recently furnished by a southern paper -which, we are convinced, would not be consciously unfair to Catholics. But its version of the rights and wrongs of the colossal proscription of the Catholic Lath in France and of the Franco-Vatican difficulty furnishes, nevertheless, luminous evidence of the curse thai monopolies may become in the matter ofnews as well as in the necessaries and comforts of bodily existence. The presentation of the ' facts ' of the ease followed the good old rule, the simple plan adopted by Reuter and the correspondents of the anti-Cath jlie press • A full and e\en overdone statement of the ease for persecution and diplomatic rupture ; a complete suppression of the other side of the question ; no whisper, not a Lreatn, about what the ' Times ' Rome correspondent admitted was a wanton indifference, on the part of AJ Combes, to all established diplomatic usages in his merit dealings with the Vatican; and, finally, the ama/ing contention that the flagrant persecution, great' and petty, of Catholics in France is merely an internal administrative affair and is no concern of the Head of Christ's Churth on earth ' Yet, good masters, That same journal took a prominent part in urging the right and duty of the British Government, in 1899, to roncern lisolf— even to blood— in the internal affairs of the South African Republic ! But evidently circumstances alter cases. And in this weary world Catholics get many hard reminders that it makes a groat deal of difference whose ox is gored. For the rest, we recommend to the perusal of our readers the article on the Fiench persecution that appears on the fourth page of this- issue