The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, MAY 21, 1908. CARDINAL LOGUE'S ALLEGED PREDICTION

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 20, 21 May 1908, Page 21

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, MAY 21, 1908. CARDINAL LOGUE'S ALLEGED PREDICTION

♦ K.W ZEALAND -pressmen, and a few of the smaller fry of New Zealand politicians, owe a vote of thanks to Cardinal Logue, or to the iran who manipulates the signals at the New "York end of the electric cable-Tit is not yet clear to which of the two the, debt „ is due. For one or the other has favored:

our newspapers, . in the depths of the dull season, with a mild snap of sensation and furnished

them with an occasion for a protest that varied from the good-temipered a-n>d the dignified to the jumps and spasms of aji ultra-jingoism; that, in two or three instances which came under our notice, would have been amusing but for its somewhat disagreeable 6uggestiv«-

ness of epilepsy. An ice-bag and a bucket 1 of' soothing • syrup would, we rather tMnk, be useful adjuncts *to two or three provincial newspaper " offices that we wot

of. To a few politicians on tour, the cable-man or the Cardinal— whichever it may be— supplied an opening for flag-waving and spread-eagleism that was promptly seized and neatly worked up into the remote preparation for the electioneering tussle that is to • mark the close of the present year.

• There is a good deal of tow In our composition. We take fire rather easiily ; but tibe flame is not hot, and is soon spent. Which la-tter is at times a irercy to ble thankful for. A few d a ys suffioud for press and politicians to burn themselves out over Cardinal Logue —or the cable-man. And looking back over the incident with feet warm and heads cool, it is not so very easy to see what the tow-blaze rose so very high about, after all. The cable message that lit the fire ran th-us :—

' The Archbishop of Armagh, his Eminence Cardinal Logue, Roman Catholic Primate of All Ireland, is at present .visiting the United States, and was interviewed here yesterday. Speaking of British Imperial affairs, hi® Eminence declared that he saw signs of the Empire's certain dissolution. " The colonies are already restive," he proceeded. " Australia to-day is practically independent, and c.cry moment the trend of affairs is more and more in the direction of absolute rebellion. New Zealand is indifferent, while Canada is legislating In such a manner as to show that the Dominion desires 1 to conduct its business in its own way." Referring to the agitatiom at present Causing such unrest in the Indian Empire, Cardinal Logue said : " The fires of rebellion are lighted in India, and men and women are hanged for daring to advocate the doctrine of never-dying freedom." " When England sits alone," he concluded, " as the result of misgovernment, it will be the day of reckoning for the children of Ireland ! " '

Journalists and politicians alike fell unanimously into two chief errors in dealing with this cable message. In the first place, they gulped down the message without ' nosing ' it, as a cautious man ' noses ' a suspicious oyster ; and, in the second place, they ' went off ' too quickly to give their memory time to blow a cool bre a th upon their super-heated feeling. Pressmen at least might be expected, from a long experience, to distrust American newspaper methods sufficiently to reserve judgment upon the question of fact as to whether Cardinal Logue actually used the words attributed to ihim,, or as to whether these words were given witih sufficient context to represent fairly and properly the mind of the speaker. And with this radical and (in the circumstances) prudent doubt, they might be expected to pass a verdict, with grave qualification and with due reserve, not trusting ovor-much either to the journalism that is ' yellow ' or the journalism that is ' blue '. And this on general principles learned by experience, and quite apart from any special knowledge of the character and personal history of Cardinal Logue. He is so noted for his great prudence, his practical wisdom, and his reserve in dealing with questions of party politics 1 ,, that, on a-priori grounds, those who have the honor of his acquaintance (and we have known Mm for thirty years) would be less disposed to attribute a blunder to him than to the error of an American journalist— and, aboive all, of an American 1 journalist reporting an 'interview. And this a-priori distrust is based upon a knowledge of the notorious errors of the past and ■of the error-producing conditions of the present. Australian and New Zealand journalists might not unreasonably be expected to know enough of these thiings to reserve judgment on the question of fact before plying . their office flaiis.

The whole incident furnishes a curious illustration of the old adage that one man may steal a sheep, while another may not look over the fenoe. The ' signs of the Eimpire'si certain dissolution ' have been a politic a l shibboleth or commonplace ever since it became an Empire. The visions of dissolutions are sometimes clearer, sometiimes fuzzier, sometimes nearer, sometimes more remote ; but, like the poor, they are always with us.

Some (chiefly naval and military alarmists) see the dissolution coming at* the hand of the stranger. Liberals find the seeds of the "Empire's political death in the application of Tory principles „ Tories i n , the application of 'Liberal principles. To Unionists, the placing of Ireland on an equal political footing with the Isle of Man or New Zealand, or the Transvaal, would spell the immediate < disintegration of the Empire ' ; to Orangemen, it would furnish a justification for rebellion—perhaps precipitate the crack o' doom. George 111. and his plastic Ministers held, as one of the first articles of their political faith, that the dissolution of the Empire would come to pass unless ' the fatal compliance ', the Stamp Acts of 17G6, were repealed and the discontented American colonists treated as rebels in time of peace. Catholic Emancipation, it was, in effect, confidently predicted, would disintegrate the Empire and shake the very foundation of things ; so would Reform • so would iho Disestablishment of an alien Church in Ireland ; so (as stated) would Home Rule. And to prevent (or, rather, to help on) the threatened dissolution, great bodies of men armed north of the Boyne ; at one time (in 1835) 300,0,0 Orangemen were under arms, the fidelity of forty-two regiments of the line was systematically corrupted, and the legal order of succession to the throne was menaced. In 1868-69 the Empire was again to be ' disrupted '. The brethren armed and organised to save the moon from the wolves —to rescue the Empire from dissolution by kicking the Queen's crown into the Boyne. Again in 1886 they threatened civil war, when Gladstone's first Home Rule Bill was introduced. Lord Randolph Churchill and Lord Salisbury proceeded to Belfast to throw benzine upon the flames and fan them to a higher fury ; and a number of ' r ye'low ' papers published the name of a distinguished British general who (it was alleged) had declared his willingness to ' Keep the game alhe By killing ali he could '— to preserve the ' integrity ' of the body politic by cutting off a leg, to ' maintain the integrity of the Empire ' and to save it from impending dissolution, by heading a civil war in Ulster. In like manner, the doom of the Empire was full rrany a time foretold during the Reform and Corn-law agitations ; and there were those who saw, in the breaking down of the Hyde Park railings, the beginning of the end. We have failed to discover that any of our newspapers flared up to any great extent over the threats of armed rebellion, or over these predictions regarding the ' dissuption ', disintegration ', or ' dissolution ' of the Empire. And we have a shrewd suspicion that one needs not to travel far back through their files, or througdi (say) tlhe literature of the Na\y League, to find diirect or implied predictions of the approaching dissolution of the Empire unless England is prepared to lay down two ' Dreadnoughts ' for every one that is laid down by Germany. As regards India, the unrest does not seem to be much over-stated in the cable message from New York. We are disposed to an, optimist view of things in general, but we cannot fail to see there a situation that, in several important respects, looks even graver than that of 1857 to 1860— partly because of its wide extent, partly becjuisc of its seeming intensity, as evidenced "by the forms that it has assumed, partly by reason of what we may call the Dublin Castle methods adopted foa: ' driving the disorder in ', but chiefly because of the new spirit that has been quietly obsessing the East ever since the series of triumphs over the West tlhixt closed with the coruscating victory of Tsushima. Even Egypt has (as recent events and recent . cables, show) been rocked by the wave of feeling that has 'lapped all the Orient since the close of the Russo-Jap-anese war. There was a time, when the extension, to Canada, Australia, and New Zealand,, of the practical

independence which they now enjoy would have led to predictions of impending dissolution to the 'Ermpire. Canada had its three or four rebellions ; Australia had one, when the flag of a new southern republic floated over the Eureka Stockade, and in the early nineties the policy of ' cutting the painter ' produced quite a little literatture of its own. And only two or three days after the alleged intcniew of Caidinal Logue, the following cable message appe a red in our daily papers, from the same source (New York) :—: —

* At a meeting of the Canadian Club at New York Mr. Justice Longley (of Halifax) predicted that Canada would ultimately bvcomo an independent State in| alliance with Great Britain.'

We have been through Canada practically from end to end — especially in those parts that have been most overrun by the tide of immigration which has flown so abundantly froim northern and central and eastern Europe. We have had some opportunity of judging of the extent to which the old racial balance has been upset by colonists to whom the Union Jack irakes no special appeal - and imperial sentiment/ can have, as yet, little meaning. We realise the perils of independent nations, with small populations, rich resources, and long, unguarded frontiers, and we should regard as an evil day for Canada the day on which, with less than 50,000,000 people,, she won her independence. But we arc neither prepared to accept or to deny the prophecy put into the mouth of Mr. Justice Longley. We merely note this curious fact : that the alleged prediction of that high-placed Canadian Government official met (so far as we arc aware) with none of the hotshot fusillades that greeted the prophecy attributed — whether rightly or wrongly remains to be seen — to Cardinal Logue.

As regards Australia and New Zealand, British statesmen have had sufficient wisdom to discover that bonds of silk are stronger to bind a subject people tium gyves of brass or triple steel. It will be a. happy day for the Empire when these same statesmen discover that a good principle applies all round, and that the method of rule which has produced such exoellent results in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and the Transvaal cannot fail to promote peace and goodwill in the Cinderella nation to the west of the Irish Sea. Whether Cardinal Logue ever made the allusions to Australia and New Zealand that the caibleman crediits him with, remains to be seen. If he did, he has confounded past with present conditions. That is about the penn'orth of it all. A:id if he did so (and this is, in all the circurr stances, a pretty big assumption) it is a case for '.setting right, not for hysterics. The fact remains, that the imperialistic sentiment is strong in these countries simply because of their practical independence. And there exists among us a spirit of sturdy liberty which is the best earnest that we will hold fast, to that whidh we have won. For the rest, whatever lingering feeling may have remained in the Commonwealth or the Dominion in favor of ' cutting the painter ', must have been pretty effectually smothered by the lessons of Pert Arthur and Tsushima. With the rodent ulcer of race-suicide keeping these two nations in a puny and anaemic condition as to population, our only hope of preservation and of a measure of national strength and progress lies in our remaining under the protecting guns of the Empire. The day that protection fails us, and we are left to stand or fall alone, Australia and New Zealand would speedily become the prey of the first capable cornerprobably mere Crown colonies of China or Japan.