Notes

New Zealand Tablet, 18 September 1913, Page 35

Notes

A Correction Referring last week to the kind of criticism to which the Prime Minister was exposing-himself by the multiplicity and inconsistency of his'statements on the referendum question, and quoting from memory, we wrongly credited the N.Z. Times with dismissing Mr. Massey as 'a political acrobat.' - Our quotation was from- the Christchurch Star, which employed the expression in the course of the • following \ comments: When Mr. Massey first negotiated his way into the Prime Ministership it was proclaimed of him that he was a dauntless man so enamored of principle that .nothing could turn him from the stern path of duty. It is abundantly evident that that confidence was misplaced. A gentleman who on"" the 9th of August is staunch for secular education as the result of twenty years' contemplation, and who on the Ist of September is in favor of religious teaching in schools as the result of twenty-one days' serious heart-searching, cannot be seriously regarded as a statesman, or even as a politician. He is an acrobat.' The N.Z. Times, though not employing the actual expression" which we had attributed to it, gave utterance to similarly severe criticism of the Premier's attitude. The Irish and the Jews The Hebrew Standard reprints the following interesting communication which was recently contributed to the London Daily News by Mr. J. G. Swift Mac Neill, M.P. , 'I desire,' wrote the Nationalist M.P., 'to remove from the public mind the impression that the Irish people are prejudiced against the Jews, and disposed to treat -men and women of the Jewish race with lack of fairness and liberality! The best refutation of this calumny is furnished by a remark of the late Rev. Dr. Adler, the Chief Rabbi, who visited Ireland in the eighties of the last century. In reply to an address presented to him on that occasion, he said that he had long desired to see Ireland, since Ireland was the only land in Europe which was free from the . reproach of having persecuted the Jews. When Sir Moses Mohtefiore celebrated the centenary of his birth, he sent a special message full of affection to the Irish people, who had always been the friends, and protectors of his race. In no Irish city is there a trace to be found of a Ghetto, and nowhere in that country has there been any disposition to place Jews in a position of inequality, or to refuse them the fullest rights of citizenship. *. ' O'Connell, the emancipator of Catholic Ireland, never lost an opportunity, in season or out of season, of urging the imperative necessity for the removal of -all Jewish disabilities, and in this attitude he was supported by the Irish people. Mr. Butt, who was subsequently the leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party, in a speech made in the House of Commons on December 10, 185,7, on the Jewish Disabilities Bill, which he supported, said: "So long as we followed the principles of Christianity in our conduct towards our fellow-men, we should better uphold our national character and set a better example to other nations than by the retention of a useless phrase (the ' true faith of a Christian ' in the Parliamentary Oath) which a man who had no Christianity would use, but from the adoption of which a man of a sensitive conscience might shrink." At a later period in his career, Mr. Butt compared the Irish race, which maintained its. own . distinctive character in every portion of the globe, " to God's chosen people of old, who remained separate and distinct among the nations." It is but just to state that feelings of kindness to the Jews are shared by all Irishmen, whether they be Nationalist's 'or "Unionists. To give an illustration. Before the abolition of the Tests Acts in reference to university degrees

at Oxford and Cambridge, a gentleman of the Jewish race won the high distinction of the Senior Wranglership at Cambridge. That University was unable to confer on him its degree, but the University of Dublin instantly did itself the honor of giving him a degree honoris causa. The Irish and the Jewish races should not be severed by the stirring up of racial and religious animosities for political purposes which never existed between them at the time when persecution, of the Jews was the policy of every Christian country, with the glorious exception of Ireland.’ :