A Conspiracy of Silence.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 1, 5 January 1905, Page 1

A Conspiracy of Silence.

There is a Celtic proverb which saith : ' Melotiious is tihq closed mouth.* All over New Zealand the mouth of the secular press is humming an inaudible melody about the fierce and searching proscription which French Freemasonry has, with the criminal cooperation of the War Office, been for years past putting into operation against Catholic officers in the Army of the Thifld Republic. The facts of this great national aoandal were set forth in our issue of last week. But, so far as we are aware, no whisper, not a breath regarding it has been permitted to appear in the seciular press of New Zealamd, How is it tfoat tine papers —wtiidh ' tore round ' like wounded sperms in the fury of their last ' flurry '—over the Dreyius case—are as tame and silent and undemonstrative as door-mats in tjie face of wnat is, perhaps, the greatest and most far-reaching scandal in military history. Artemus Ward once siaid to a meeting of his fellow-citizens of Balidi/nsville : 'We should be weak in the knees, unsound in tiie heart, milk-white in the liver, and soft in tihe tied, if we stood quietly by and saw the Gloflus Giavyment smashed to peecee.* Our seoular pjajpers split their cheeks with shrieking over the wrongs, jreal or Supposed, of one Dreyfus ; now, with 20,000 Dreyijuses before them, they look hard at their boottoes, tainn ohifcralrously to the right about, and serenely march away. What is the matter ? Weakness of fanee ? Unsoundness of heart ? Whiteness of liver ? Softness of the head ? Or is it that persecution and espionage are meritorious when practised agjainst Catholic officers ? Or that French Freemasonry must be pro-, toctod at all costs against $ie indignation of honest men in New Zealand I - , ! : r . i" The last-mentioned question has been suggested to us Ijy an editorial paragraph in the Liverpool * Catholic Times.' It is scoring the apologetic reticences of the English secular press, which, however, had sufficient saving grace to make at least some passing mention (fcho)ugh of tfie pooh-pooh order) to the degrading system of espionage practised by uniformed Freemasons beyond the Strait of Dover. • Are the Paris correspondents Freemasons ?' asked our English contemporary* ♦ Wliea* we Rut tfais question we refer to the Paris ■ correspondents of the great English dailies. We do not Mnow whether tbey are or we not Freemasons, but

-hhis m-udh we do know— that they have left the British public in ignorance of the iniquitous anti-religious practices of IJhe French War Office. We defy any one to gather from their reports an adequate idea of the unjust and corrupt policy conducted by General Andre and his subordinates. Even the " Times " which is usually so informative on foreign affairs, does not enable its readers to form anything like a proper conception of the dimensions of the scandal. The corres-i pundeints write around the subject, but avoid its heart— the documentary proofs. They have all sorts of-apolo-gies for tihe Government and ehamjpion it in the attempted flefance that it is not guilty because the Catiholics were equally black. The correspondents may not be Freemasons, but they are evi'dqntly pliable as wax i/n tlhe bands of the French Ministers who are the obddient servants of the Grand Orient. If it had been a Catholic Government that was in power the correspondents woulld i*ot only bring out all the documents and explain all' the malpractices, but woultt wax eloquent in increasing the gravity of the offences by stuggestions and inuendoes.'