Notes

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 19, 14 May 1908, Page 22

Notes

Awkward Queries A Wellin'gtonian asks the Dunedin ' Evening Star ' : 1 Why not set to work and find out the most beautifui girl in New Zealand! ? ' The l Star ' answers this one question by asking four very pertinent ones : ' Who •is to be the judge ? And what are we going to do with the most beautiful girl when we find her ? And is the test to be simply physical ? And how are the unsuccessful candidates to be appeased ? '

• God's Own Country ' ' An Auckland firm ', says a contemporary, 'received unique particulars from a farmer who desired to sell his property. After stating its dimensions, he went on to say : " It's God's own country, and it's bounded on tttiree sides by good, pious neighbors." ' The vendor's desirable neighbors remind us, by an ""■easy association of ideas, of Uie neighbors of a wellknown and waggish farmer who lives near the town of Knniscorthy, in the Green Isle. He resides in a district where the surname Fortune is rather common, and where there also reside a few families with a patronymic as lugubirlous as it is rare outside that region.. ' How am I? ' he remarks to inquiring friends. ' How would you expect a man to be with Death on one side, of him and Miss Fortune on the other ? ' Devout Filipinos 1 Bishop Henidricks, of Cebu (Philippine Islands) ', says the ' S.H: Review ', ' who is at present in this country on his way to Rome, as an illustration of the religious character of the Filipinos, ghes the fact that one. of the large tobacco factories in Manila has a chapel where Mass is said every morning for the employees '. Political Anarchy ' Mirabeau '_, says tho ' New World ' (Chicago), 'is credited with the authorship of the saying that the supremacy of political anarchy could only be brought about in France by the abolition of the Catholic religion. In the terrible cataclysm of 1792 his words found ample verification ; nay, more, the Paris Commune, with its attendant horror, pro\ed that the one was not merely the condition, but the effective cau.se of the other. Were Mirabeau alive to-day he could pc'int, with even a greater measure of certainty than that with which he foretold the French Revolution, to a reign ot moral anarchy as an outcome of the French Government's intolerant attitude toward Catholic education and Catholic worsMp.' Expert Knowledge Along all l'mes but four, expert knowledge is respected as a matter of course, and sought, on occasion, as a matter of common human prudence. The exceptions are, politics, military science, Catholic theology, and the art and craft of running a newspaper. In these matters, experience would seem to be a handicap, the expert untrustworthy, and the amateur the know-all. So far has this superstition got a hold of tlhe public lrdnd, that the doctrine and discipline of the Anglican and Russian Churches are determined by courts of nonrthcologian laymen, and the men who really control the British army and are rulers of the King's na-vee are civilians who need* not necessarily know a breech-block from a marlin-spike. ' The soldier ', said Lord Roberts in a recent speech in the House of Lords, ' no matter how groat his experience may be, seems to be distrusted when he ventures to give an opinion upon the subject which he has made his life's study. . . . When preparations are on foot for the conduct of a war for which he has to bear all the responsibility, the soldier is the last person to be consulted. In all other professions the opinion of the expert is sought for and acted upon when a crisis arises. Not so with regard to the army. This may .be accounted for by the idea that the soldier is always wanting to go to war, whether war is justifiable or not, and is always imagdniing that sojmeone else is wanting to do the same, against whom he moist protect himself. This feeling is exemplified in a quotation given by my noble friend Lord Cromer in his most interesting book, " Modern Egypt ", from a letter of the late Lord Salisbury, who wrote : "If they (the soldiers) were allowed full scope, they would insist upon the importance of garrisoning the moon in. order to protect us from Mars ".'