Playing the Deuce—and Knave

New Zealand Tablet, Volume 19, Issue 42, 19 October 1905, Page 18

Playing the Deuce— and Knave

Some anonymous rhymer wrote as follows in ' The (lamo of Life ' :—: — ' In playing, some throw out their trunip«, •'Their winning cards to save, Some play the kin 15, some play the deuce, But many play the knave.' The gamesters of the Bible-in-schools League have ' played the deuce ' with the Sacred Narrative by the shameless way in which they have hacked and torn and mutilated it into ' an emasculated caricature ' toi the Scriptures. They are ' playing the ksaave ' in various way si— for instance, in their attempts to pick the pockets of Catholic and other objectors for their proposed State propaganda of a spineless Unitarianism ; and in their efforts to misle 1 the paiblic as to the facts of educational life in Canada, in the American Union, and in the Commonwealth States beyond the Tasman Sea. One of them has c\en gone so far as to q.uote the denominatioiial system prevalent in the Quebec province in support of their scheme for Protestant isin.g oiur public schools at Hie public expense ! The following extract from a recent issue of the ' S.H. Re-view ' will enable iihe reader to mark how plain a tale will put the imaginative enthusiast down .—. — 'At the convention of the American Institute of Instruction held in Portland, Me., recently, E. W. Arthy, Superintendent of Schools, Montreal, a Protestant, read a paper on " The Conditions of Protestant Education in the Province of Quebec." He spoke of tho lemarkable fusion of the British and the French, the Protestant and the Roman Catholic population, two races with different languages, creeds-, and ideals, and

dascri'toe-d it as the pa-rtdicular result of judicioius school legislation. The Protestants form only one-seventh of the entire population, and yet all the school privileges of the vast majority are secured tio therm. 1 In proportion to total population, Oatholics in New Zealand are about equal to Protestants in tb/e province of Quebec. Would lhat the Catholic minority in New Zealand were treated with even half the consideration and delicate sense of justice that is extended as a sheer matter of course to vtie Protestant minority in Catholic Quebec ?