Ourselves

New Zealand Tablet, 8 November 1906, Page 9

Ourselves

The hopes entertained by us in enlarging the 'Tablet' and introducing certain new features into its columns, - have found ample and .gratifying fulfilment in the^greatly • increased and. still increasing ranks of our supporters,not alone at home, but also beyond the seas that wash the shores of New Zealand. In its issue of September 15, the Sah Francisco ' Monitor ' devoted its first editorial paragraph to ' The New Zealand ~ Tablet ', which it over-kindly describes as ' one of the most brilliantly edited Catholic newspapers in the world.' And by the same mail there came direct- to us from an archiepiscopal reader— ar great and learned American Prelate whose name is a household word among Catholics wherever the English tongue is spoken— this encouraging comment : ' The " Tablet ", as I judge it, is an ideal Catholic paper '. Similar kindly and encouraging .words have come to us from the British Isles and from every State in the Australian Commonwealth. It is no small thing ' laudari a "virb laudato '—to gain the kindly cony mendation of ' men who stand among the vanguard of our Hierarchy and of Catholic journalism. But we cherish no illusions— knowing our ideals, feeling painfully how far we fall short of them, and realising the extent to which a Catholic paper for popular perusal must ever be an effort to compromise among a thousand incompatible tastes. Yet we thank our friends afar and anear that they are to the ' Tablet's ' few journalistic virtues very kind, and to its larger catalogue of journalistic faults a little blind. Our cis- and transoceanic friends have furnished us with numerous muchneeded pads and buffers against the onsets of the exacting and generally emphatic class of critics who regard the Catholic editor chiefly as a convenient punching-bag. For the which, and for all, thanks, and evermore thanks.