Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 27 August 1908, Page 9

Current Topics

Ca^e. or Bird ? . . • • ' They who pink and pamper -the body, and .neglect the soul, . are,' says Sir Matthew Hate (in his Contemplations, Moral and Divine), 'like o"ne who, having a nightingale in his house, is" more fond "of the cage than of the bird.' No Backbone "" " : Friend or employer can put_ little trust in the Catholic young man who, in the presence" of persons of other creeds, is so spineless as to be ashamed of, or apologetic for, the faith _ which should be his glory and his pride. To sup with' Satan you need a long spoon j and you need to keep your weather-eye lifting if you have dealings with a •young4J»man who has so - little backbone that he can be wagged about by a bulrush or fi straw. The « Yellow Peril ' There may be a measure of 4 )'ellow peril ' for us' in the placid, slant-eyed son of the Hwa-Kwo (Flowery Kingdom) or in his voluminously active neighbor from the other side of the Sea of Japan. , But the peril is not so urgent as other ' yellow perils ' that we wot of. Such, for instance, are the ' yellow ' journal and the ' yellow ' book of fiction. One of our secular contemporaries has recently been uttering a sharp note of warning about some of the vile fiction that is now being dumped upon the shores of New Zealand and indiscriminately exposed for sa«or placed in the hands of girls and boys and hobbledehoys through the medium of the circulating libraries;. Frankland Lewis once said ol the serious books of his son George : ' I wish that George couldn't write or that I couldn't read.' A similar remark might well be made legarding some of the vile or-sug-gestive trash that, to our knowledge, has of late been placed within the teach of ' the young person ' in some of the larger centres of New Zealand. Much of this more or teti, foetid rubbihh is retailed at sixpence per copy. It wduld be well for the morals of young people if it were .as difficult to procure as the volume of German manuscript sermons for which — in 'iie days before the printing press — the Countess of Anjou paid two hundred sheep, a load of wheat, a load of rye, and a load of millet. Emerson suggested a professorship of books. We badly need something of -.he kind — say, an extension to fiction of (he legalised British censorship of plays, a whip for the backs of the writers of corrupting and degrading fiction, and a snaffle for the publishers and booksellers who act as if the business of money-getting were divorced from conscience and the moral law. The • Battle of the Fourth * Americans take their pleasures sadly — the day after. At least they do so in connection with their deadly annual celebration of ' the Glorious Fourth ' of July, or Independence Day. T. A. Daly, in the Philadelphia Catholic Standard, makes a doubting patriot sing of the annual noise and slaughter :—: — ' Och I the Fourth o1o 1 July ! Shure, I wonder will I Ever grow to be glad fur its deafenin 1 . thunder. Will the cannon by day An' the rocket by night Ever whisk me away - On a spree o' dejight? Now, I wender. ' The celebration of Independence Day has been well named ' the' Battle of the Fourth ' ; for there was not a single battle in the South African war that for loss Lof life and injury to limb can compare with a strenuous celebration of America's Independence Day. The Chicago Record-Herald of July 5 gives the following casualty list of the' Battle of the Fourth for the past five years :— 1903, 466 killed," 3983 -wounded ; 1904, 183 killed, 3986 wounded ; 1905, 182 killed, 4994 wounded ; 1906, I*sß killed, 5308 wounded.; 1907, 164 killed, 4249 wounded. A ' safe and sane ' celebration of the great national festival was promised for 1908. In St. Louis the police seized the deadly toy^pistols and cannon-crackers, and other death*dealing contraptions - arid tossed them into the Mississippi. Bur. these were merely local ;lnd temporary manifestations of regard for the public safety. Very incomplete returns compiled by the Chicago Tribune cf July 6 showed (says the New York Tribune) that '72 persons

were dead. and 2736 were seriously injured as results of the celebration, while the fire" loss amounted to 525,935 dollars. The fatt thatinstead of * being, 'conce'ntratfeci" in- one place" the ' Fourth of July, horrors are distributed .over.* the country jmakes-them none the less dreadful. The case is greatly aggravated by, the consideration that^ these casualties were incurred- gratuitously and defiantly, with' the record \>f the past 'and its warnings in* full view, but deliberately disregarded.' , " ' > ... Controversy Then and Now When Pantagruel went into the Land of Satin, he saw corpulent elephants 'tossing men. high into the air in fight, and -making them burst with laughing when; they came to the ground. ' Thanks to the gentler times, in ..which .we live, the rough-and-tumble Papist-tossing of* the old-time controversy" is gone very, much out of fashion:: In fact, it may be said' to be practically confined to. the dime-Shows of" mid-July ;.- and even . then it seems to us that the sport is, indulged- in,, not so" much for its own, sake as for (.he opportunity it gives^to sundry reverend gentlemen of whooping up their diminishing congregations, or of airing old traditions and preventing them falling to pieces through the joint ravages of time and moth and'bluemould. , - _ " ' , '.'.*■"' - Butler, in his day of strenuous and ungentle controversy, wrote as follows of the ' apostolic blows and knock's ' which fell to the lot of those who were" then in the minority,:—- ' Some. have, been beaten, till* they know^' . What wood a cudgel's of by'th' Wow'; " ' ' Some kicked, until they can feel whether A shoe be • Spanish or neat's leather. ' But the old, knotty war-club of the controversy known to Iludibras rests in the museum, or hangs amidst dishonoring cobwebs on the wall — to be taken down in the dog-days, just as uncouth or drunken rustics may still engage, once in a way, at bouts of quarter-stave. The kindlier feeling of our day is well reflected in a recent sermon by the Methodist revivalist preacher, the Rev. ' Billy ' Sunday,- which we quote -from the Milwaukee Catholic Citizen. ' Somebody asked me,' said he, 'why I did not attack the Catholics. Not much, while we have so much filth and dirt in our own dooryaids. It keeps me busy with a muckrake in the yards of the Baptists and the Methodists and the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists. . The Roman Catholic Church is the Church of God and will stand for ages. . . No, sir, you will • never hear a word against the Roman Catholic Church from me. I will rebuke the sins of its members, but ,you will not hear a word from me against any Church that stands for the word of God and the truth of Jesus Christ. I want you to be Christians. That :s: s all I ask. Go to the priest and confess if you wish. Tell him how mean you have been, and that you will da better. Jf.ybx are converted at these meetings, ' I will send "your name "to the priest if you want to join that Church. ' " Race Suicide ' - The restricted family and the canary-and-bull-pup household promise to save Germany the trouble of wiping France off the map of the nations of the earth. In 1907 the deaths in France outnumbered the births by 19,920. But' while France is lapsing into national degeneracy and decrepitude, the cradles" in Germany are filling at the rate of 800,000 a year faster than the coffins. A !. simple calculation in mathematical progression wili suffice to show . approximately when France will be no longer fit to ' t alk ' in the counsels of the ruling Powers, and to back her talk with the big battalions with which she once, dictated to. Europe and acted ■ as the arbiter of the world. How. are the, mighty" fallen 1 And how true.it is the poetic aphorism' of Frederick von Logan, which - Longfellow did into English in the well-known lines :-=—

' Though the nulls of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small ; . . ./ - ' .- -».<•.,•■• Though with patience He stands waiting, with "exactness grinds He all.' ' ( - The New York Freeman's Journal has the 'following editorial remaik in connection with "France's degeneracy* "and decay :"—* ; ,. % .-, v " ' ■*""-• ".-' v " - j " ' Since jßoo the death-rale ih'France 'has exceeded the-birth-' rate only on six different occasions, ;,npl" counting, the years 1854 and- 1855, when cholera raged arid .the' two years 'subsequent' to the war of -1870-1. - The years when the' number 'oLdeatfis'exceeded the number of births, were. 'subsequent "to- 1890.'.' They were the very years the enemies of "thfc Church in France were

actively engaged laying the train of events that led up to the expulsion from French soil of members of the religious Orders, -to the shutting up of thousands of Catholic schools, to the confiscation of church property to the value of. millions of dollars, and finally to 'the abrogation of the Concordat and the separation of Church and Stated . How curiously the course of divine- retribution recalls ' Hiki's end . ■ • ' Wedged in that timber which- he strove to rend.' * It is the tendency of vice, 1 as of tyranny, to go to the point of exhaustion. path of the Rake's Progress which • Puritan New England has trod, France is now, fast treading. And in their rear, with the springier stride of youth, New Zealand marches along the trade that leads to racial degeneracy and social dry-rot and national decay. -Many are the remedies suggested to combat this blot on the life of our young country. - The latest comes from Blenheim, where Mr. George Turner (a candidate- for the Wairau seat)- has - formulated . what- he- calls ' a. young-age pension ' scheme. He advocates (says a newspaper report) 'giving to each child a pension of, say, five shillings & week, payable to the mother or such person as may be. discharging the duties of a mother,- who <will be -required to - nurse, feed, and clothe the infant according to a medical officer's advice, whos» duty Lt shall be to see that they are fairly: carried out, or, under the inspection of a certificated nurse. lam of opinion,' he continues, ' that the effect of, this .pension system would be in every way beneficial ..as regards; the- welfare of the people, physically,, morally, and -numerically, that the pensions to children will be. a step towards .the distribution of the national wealth more equally among, the people, . .especially among, the poorer paid classes.' *Mr. Turner contends that his proposal would considerably augment the number of marriages, and fill the land with the pleasant prattle of children. . , ' Women of marriageable age will be more sought-after, if that is possible,' he says. ' Widows and old maids will decrease in number. It is fhe ambition of, a wellconstituted woman to-be a happy wife and mother cf a rollicking family, and the . family life for both is the happiest state that can ever be attained by either in this world.' He is willing to see a modification of hi 9 scheme, if the means of the country will not permit the full scale. The idea "of a young-age pension scheme presents many attractions and some ..possibilities of usefulness. But a moral declension is to be radically remedied by moral means alone — there must be a return to right principles and teachings" in regard to the marriage bond and its sacred duties and responsibilities. Moral dry rot is no more to be cured by a money-bribe than Is incipient gangrene to be cured^by sprayings of rose-water. The Cable-man Artemus Ward was accustomed, to living in what he called ' a sunny.. climb.* .When. -he went to England there were, for weeks on* -end, log and rain galore, and one fine morning his ' pults went down to ten degrees .below zero ' . with the . joy of seeing a brief half hour's sunshine breaking through the murky monotony of the atmosphere, of the -British capital. A similar shock of joy vvould the ' pults \ of Catholics vibrating if the European cabitrrnan so - far broke the dreary monotony of his policy of misrepresentation of Catholic and Irish happenings as to shed upon, them, once in a way, the gentle sunshine of-truth-fulness and fair dealing. According to Chesterfield, one of the. requisites of a politician is ' dexterity enough to conceal a truth without telling a lie.' But in the matter of the news-items here under" consideration, the cable agencies trouble themselves but little abf»ut' J a«y finely adjusted or (so to speak) engine-turned balancing of truth 'and fiction, and make themselves too often the' medium of circulating ,.thp. outright inventions of coarse -and; conscious prevaricator^.. Our columns have full many a tinie borne ample witness to the extent, to, which the cable agencies are — especially in France and.\ l ta]y-^~pn trolled: by interests, that"are'more or less savagely hostile, to the Ancient Faith<-. --Ximttafid again we have also demonstrated, by. reference to particular instance's "of peculiar . flagtancyr haw far- the cables .from . tte British Isles "are. made the sounding-board- of the Orange^Toryor 'carrion crow " faction are "-making, political capital out of the exaggeration, and outright fabrication of ' Irish outrages '■ gp*~* •: - ' ..>.;.... . - .- .Our. protests against the ding-dong of cable misrepresentation have been frequent and free. Yet, despite a long procession of ..illuminative- instances, we have been more than once treated as guilty of a -sort of journalistic' "leie-rnajestS or Macedonian

atrocity for declining,- on stated grounds-, to- accept the.-quasi-infallibility of the cable agency. In all the circumstances, it is interesting to" find so prominent , a. secular journal as'the'Dunedln Evening Star, a few- days ago, protesting against some- -Cable Contortions' that have been sent, to these countries for some time past. .One of these was. an 'amazingly inaccurate*'presentation of the facts of- a humorous -speech by Senator Foraker at the Gridiron Club at-. Washington ; the other, was a summary of a recent .speech by Mr; - Lloyd txeorge" ' (Chancellor of tha Exchequer), of so -* extraordinary ' a nature that, its genuineness was doubted by some, and it was omitted- by -some,,of the daily - papers and by others published with a qualifying note. '"It now turns out that the really did .Jtylr. Lloyd-George, an in justice. His exploit" of swallowing without salt, "arid'cablirig^ the fantastic fabrication about Cardinal Logue is a matter of recent history. ' - ■ • ■ Religious Inequality in U.S.A. There has always been an arriere-pensee in the -French Republican motto of * Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.' --And so\ too,- there "has been in the boast that the land r which flies the star-sparigled.7 banner is the land of equal opportunity for aft; If (say) the negro in the Black Belt pressed his claim •' to~~equal electoral opportunities with - the meanest white," he would fintl the risks of so doing much greater than -the" red" meat.- A military fiction , placed -an imaginary marshal's baton "in the knapsack of the First Napoleon's' army f and TThe Unwritten , Law of the' United States places the dignity of President or j Vice-Pfesident of the American Republic within " the possible reach of a citizen of any creed or no creed — unles he be a Catholic. - ; Theoretically, the Catholic citizen under the Stars' , and Stripes" is the- equal of any other; by Jong-established us6ge, however, there" are 'two citizen dignities* barred to him "to whicn any A of his fellows "of other creeds may aspire. ' A "Catholic,' r ' said Thomas D. O'Brien, of St. Paul, in a recent discourse, ' gave this whole hemisphere fb civilisation. ' Catholic mission-, aries and "explorers opened it, Christianized it, civilized it from Hudson Bay to Cape Horn. Catholics fought at Bunker Hill and at Yorktown. They founded our navy with Barry and the O'Brien boys. They helped make^our constitution and signed the Declaration of Independence. They fought with Jackson at New Orleans and they marched through Mexico with Scott. They died in every battle" of the civil war from Bull Run to Appomattox. They were with Dewey at Manila and with Roosevelt at San Juan. If need were,* the Catholics of the United States would melt the sacred vessels of their'altars for the defence of their flag. But .with all this, you know that it a Catholic were nominated at the grea"t convention just held in _ this city, he could not be elected President of the United States no matter what his qualifications. I wish I could say, and I hope and pray that I soon may say, that alPmy fellow-citizens' were above such ' prejudices. '" """"_" •" '' ' " ' In this connection, the Philadelphia Catholic Standard of July 4 quotes from the" pleasant free-lance- wrifer, who , PVJ* the ..position, frankly and straightforwardly in the Evening Bulletin, during the previous week. r Penn.' wrote as follows *:~' . - ... - - - - _-~ " ..„,„...■. -i>:^.--•i jTl>eT?j Tl>e T? has b€en one Paramount religious test -that has pre- , vailed uniformly in our Presidential campaigns and in canvasses for Presidential nominations— tha? the-' candidate must "hot be a member of the Roman Catholic Church. ' ' This -has long been* virtually an axiom among the -politicians of both the" great parties. There are Roman Catholics in the Senate -and the House at Washington ; there' is at least one on the bench of th« Supreme -Court, ■ and another in Mr. Roosevelt's Cabinet, as there was in Mr. McKinley's. In 1892 we had even the somewhat curious sight of one at the. head of the National Democratic - Committee and another at the head of th"c Republican National .-' Committee. \Biit~ when it comes to the Presidency, the line. .of thevunwritten'Taw "is" drawn as tightly upon them as" if it were : in the , Constitution itself. : When" I Francis* Kernan? "who "had thY - reputation of. being one of the -purest- DemocfatVc- statesmen of New York, sat in-^the United States.. Senate, in-, the late* 70 VanS" early 86 |s, some of his "admirers .thought _tha.t -he. .ought •to be considered 'as a Presidential candidate, but most of the..pemp/«-. cratic f . press .promptly tabled the -proposition Vn account of his : religion. Daniel: Dougherty, who formally named .Hancock,' and also, _ -eight years, .afterward, Cleveland -for a second -term, f oncesaid" that he might speak as .much, as .he pleased! on, behalf of the aspirations of other, men for the Presidency, but. that -hecould- never* aspire to it himself if" he lived to be as old as" Methuselah. Even the fact that a candidate niay. have Roniau Catholics in his family has been a- barrier. - r It was ' generally" believed that General Sherman *s_ religious opinions were of' a decidedly free and easy character, and he .turned down repeatedly and- as emphatically as language couid put it every suggestion that he should be a Presidential candidate; but whenever such

a suggestion was made, it was invariably met by what was considered the unanswerable objection that there were Catholic; in his . household and that he had a son who was studying for the priesthood. " In 1888, when, the Republican field was "full of candidates and General Sheridan was brought- out as a possibly-promising'-'dark ho"rse, ' some! " discovered" that he was % bf Catholic - stock -and affiliations,-.- and. immediately- the boom for ". Little PhilV vanished like" a pricked bubble.' - v