Costly Irreligion

New Zealand Tablet, 20 August 1908, Page 9

Costly Irreligion

France is paying dearly for the luxury of persecution. Last week we mentioned, as an illustrative instance, the case of the publ.c hospital at Dijon, from which the nursing Sisters were driven out. The figures given by us in our last issue have to be qualified by those that we take from the well-informed Paris Umvers of June 28. Our gifted French contemporary writes : ' Like many others, the hospital at Dijon has been " laicised." Now, a report on that hospital has just been submitted to the municipal council, and has been the cause of keen anxiety in the city. Four years ago, before the " laicisation," the annual expenditure on the hospital was 275,000 francs G£i 1,000) Today, it is more than 480,000 francs (£19,200). And even -that has not sufficed. It has been also necessary to dispose of rights and properties amounting to enormous sums. Have the sick been better cared? Quite the contrary. In 1902, with the Sisters in charge, the number of days of hospital treatment given amounted to 175,520; in 190? they amounted to only 152,898— a diminution of 22,022. The - Prefect- has had to discharge, wtnout a word of explanation, the members of the hospital commission (of inquiry) -appointed by him. Ah effort is «bein« made to hush .up the affair.- The inhabitants of Dijon ♦ are asking for- explanations. If (they say) the .members of the commission are free from all blame,- let this be stated ; .if guilty, et them be prosecuted. It is, however, much more probably that silence will be maintained as to the abuses of yesterday in order to begin those of to-morrow ' steraay,