Fighting a Battle Over

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 2, 12 January 1905, Page 18

Fighting a Battle Over

The Right Rev. Dr. Lowther-Clarke, Anglican Bishop of Melbourne, was i n Dunedin last week. To a representative of the ' Evening Star ' he ' explained ' the defeat sustained by the Bible-in-schools party i n Victoria on the first of June last year. Curiously enough, Bishop Clarke persists in calling the Victojian plebiscite a ' refqrendum '—which it emphatically was not. He is naturally s,ore over the defeat of a project in which he took a leading part. But he did not go the length of some of his, confreres of the Scripture Campaign Council and of their Wellington echo, the Rev. Dr. C-ibb, by trying to prove that 70,000 voters are more numerous than 80,01)0 voters. Bishop Clarke and his colleagues expressly regarded as the determining issue the question : ' Are you in favor of the Education Act remaining secular, as at present ? ' But that was ' just before the battle, mother.' They were solidly defeated on it. And yet they are not happy.