Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 6 March 1919, Page 14

Current Topics

Earnshavv on the Rampage According to the Timaru Post that cultured gentleman and scholar, Mr. Earnshaw, referred to the Archbishop of Melbourne, in the course of a P.P.A. kennel-chorus, as “the scoundrel Mannix.” Nothing remains for us but to pass a hearty vote of thanks to the speaker who has so ably aided Howard Elliott in showing the decent people of this Dominion what the P.P.A. stands for and of what kidney are its protagonists. What the foul-mouthed bigot says or does not say in no way concerns us; we are concerned by the fact that this thing of light and sweetness is one of the members of our Upper House, chosen by what means and for what purpose only William Massey knows, to represent the highest interests of the people If the other members continue to sit under the same roof as the man who has disgraced their House they have less sense of shame than we believe possible. What a Government! What a -people to stand it! Massey, Premier, hand to nose Earnshaw M.L.C. a gargoyle —Oh, New Zealand ! German Pianos and Other Things We recently read in Truth a list of the German nobles supported by the British taxpayer. About the same time was brought under our notice a statement made by one of our educationalists to the effect that he would rather see indecent pictures on the walls of the schools than have a German piano in the rooms ! The poor German piano is a thing that cannot hit back. Any weak-minded person can kick it with impunity. It was built to make music and it will neither bite nor scratch, nor will a horde of wild editors come to its rescue when it is put below indecent pictures. A German royalty, German nobles, German Jews that are made Cabinet [Ministers in return for *'services rendered'’ are a very different proposition. Instead of preferring to them indecent pictures we pay them money and hand over to them the government of the mere British. But a piano ! a dreadful instrument that is capable of playing the Lieder oh tie II 7 orte as well as the discordant National Anthem at which we take off our hats to do reverence to German blood ! Take it away from our schools and get some atheistic scroll or some smutty pictures to replace it in the name of what is called education in New Zealand. Why not hang up in its place a life-sized portrait of the honeytongued Earnshaw? Poor German piano! Perhaps the Rothschilds, or Moritz Mond, or Lloyd George, or some of the Kaiser’s cousins who live on the British taxpayer will accept it as a gift. The Christian Brothers* Jubilee We were delighted to receive this week a beautiful volume which is a lasting' souvenir of the Jubilee of the Christians Brothers in Australasia. On the artistic cover we notice the emblems of faith and fatherland are set forth in orange, green, and white. The letterpress and the format are creditable to the publishers. There are many interesting articles, contributed by admirers of the good Brothers, who have done so greatly for Australasia during the past fifty years. Looking over the pages and seeing the illustrations of the magnificent schools, spread , over the southern world from Perth to Dunedin, one has a compendious view of the progress of religion during so short a period. The testimonies gladly borne to the part played by the Brothers in uuat progress are well worth preserving in so suitable a form as the present Jubilee volume. From the Archbishops of Sydney and Melbourneboth proud to recall that they were “Brothers’ Boys” in other days, in distant Ireland; from the other archbishops and bishops of Australasia there are gracious letters, expressing joy and admiration for what has been done in the past and for what hope the future. holds. Here in Dunedin we cannot forget how much good we owe to the presence

of the Brothers. They came here at the invitation of Dr. Moran, the great bishop who gave Dunedin its Catholic boys’ and girls’ schools long ago, and founded the first Catholic paper in New Zealand. In March, 1876, Brother Bodkin and three companions arrived at Port Chalmers. There they were welcomed by the Bishop and a number of prominent laymen, who conducted them to Dunedin, where a residence had been secured for them. At first, two classrooms were all the space they had. Soon it became necessary to look for more as the number of pupils quickly increased. Under the patronage of Dr. Moran and of his saintly successor, Dr. Verdon, the Brothers did their work in Dunedin, quietly and silently, during all those years. To-day, instead of in the little - school in which they began, they are teaching in one of the finest schools in the Dominion, erected, mainly through the zeal and energy of the present Administrator, at a cost ‘ of £IO,OOO, every penny of which was paid off by the friends and the admirers of the Brothers on the day of the opening. The Brothers have, like the'two great bishops who are gone, left their mark on the people of Dunedin, and no boy ever left their hands who did not receive a thorough grounding in the principles of that faith which is the one saving force in the world to-day. All the past pupils, whether they went to schools here or in Ireland, will join with us in congratulating the Christian Brothers and in wishing them in the future even a greater field and a fuller harvest. They want no other reward. . They are not hirelings who work for pay. They are content to take up the arduous round of their duties without any anxiety or worry, knowing that the people to whom religious principles mean more than money will provide for them. Their lives are devoted to that grandest of —preparing boys to become Christian gentlemen. And they go forward on the only lines which ensure success, knowing that the most important thing in a boy or a man is a character formed on the eternal principles of the Gospel of Christ. While so many disintegrating factors are at work our schools are a bulwark against the materialism which threatens to undermine social well-being and to destroy even the home and the family on which the whole fabric of the State is built. While Mr. Hanan and his tinkering amateurs talk, our teachers educate ; while the former are wondering why their system is cursed by sterility, our teachers are showing them the only way to mould the men of the future into such citizens as the age needs sorely. While the Kingdom of God comes first with the Catholic teachers the secular studies are by no means neglected. Our boys in Dunedin can challenge comparison with those of any school in the Dominion. Witness the scholarship records for this year ; witness the record of examinations year by year; witness the results of athletic competitions against all the other schools of the district. Honors won by brain and muscle testify to the fact that our schools are second to none; besides these honors remains the greater fact that the boys who go forth from them have learned the lessons • of the Gospel which enable men to walk strong and pure and honest all the days of their lives and to keep their eyes in all things fixed on the light of the stars of heaven which beacon for them the promise of the life beyond the veil. No good Catholic parents will ever turn their backs on the brave Brothers ; and those who support them will have the best reward— of sons who will be a source of pride and consolation to them., Irish Affairs The cables have reported that at the Supreme Court, of Philadelphia Judge Cohalan ruled that the Irish assembly or convention in Dublin had the right of self-determination. One does not look for superabundance of light in the cables sent here about Irish matters; but it is obvious that the Judge has asserted the principle that Ireland has the same right as other small nations to select her own form of government. Not long ago the Committee for Foreign Affairs in congress passed a resolution calling on the President

to bring the case of Ireland before the Conference and this resolution was backed by the united voices of millions of Irishmen and Americans in assemblies held all over the United States. We have good reason to believe that already prominent members of the Sinn Fein Executive have arrived in France and that they are bearing living testimony to the terrible misgovernment of-Ireland under British rule. We have seen how Cardinal Mercier spoke for the Continent and asserted the right of Ireland to be heard at the Peace Conference. In addition to this, remember that when Germany and Turkey and Austria come in they will not be slow to use Ireland as an answer to * the charges of misgovernment and atrocities brought against them. All things considered, we have reason to hope that at last the united powers of the world will compel the Orange gang and their mercenary tools in the Government, to do justice to Ireland. The plea we read in our own pitiful press is that Ireland’s affairs are a domestic concern and that outsiders have no right to interfere. The same plea might be made with equal reason by Germany and Austria; it is as dishonest in the one case as in the other. And granting for a moment that the Irish problem were domestic there would still remain the obligation of America, and with America those nations to whom justice is dear, to deliver a persecuted and brutally oppressed country from the grasp of her Prussian rulers. And on that plea alone President Wilson, with the call of a free American people ringing in his ears, could not remain silent. We are told again by our own press' that he has no right to speak and that he carries no weight, as if he had not saved England and as if her own politicians were not forced to admit that he had saved them. There is no healthier sign at present than the howling of the Jingoes who resent Mr. Wilson’s manly stand on the basis of truth and right, and we can have no doubt, knowing what we know from America and from Ireland, that he who was strong enough to win the war for the sake, not of England but of universal peace, will see to it that Prussianism is destroyed in England as well as in Germany. The men of his father’s blood surely are as dear to him as the Poles and the Serbs ; the Prussiaxxism that killed Sheehy-Sketfington and drove his wife to exile in America, where she told a, maddened people what things were being done in Ireland by those who were asking the Irish people to fight for small nations, is surely as detestable and as criminal in his eyes as that of the hordes that overran Belgium and burned Louvain. The time has come at last when the trickery and the chicanery of Lloyd George must be exposed and when all the world will know how a nation has been plundered and drained of her life-blood for the sake of a bigoted fraction of the people of one little province. America knows it; France will know it; Russia and Germany know it ; and they will not stand by at the end of this war for worldfreedom and sanction the further martyrdom of the oldest and bravest people in the world. A domestic question forsooth! Ireland, persecuted for centuries, never submitted to the foreign yoke : all the world knows that, and all the world knows how hypocritical is the plea by which Lloyd George and his friends of the Ulster pro-German army now attempt to shield their crimes from punishment at the hands of those who are sincere in their desire to extirpate despotism and oppression from the world. Ireland is a small nation ruled by an English misgovernment just as Poland was by a Prussian and a Russian; Ireland has as much right to govern herself as any nation in Europe, and all Europe knows it. The world knows too that never again will Ireland submit to the outrages of the past and to a government which sent over lunatics like Cplthurst to murder the people. If justice is not done now there is little room for doubt that the people will be. goaded into a rebellion which can only end in. extermination or complete victory. We know that extermination, would be the Government’s way of rewarding Ireland for the lives of the 40,000 men who died; like Tom Kettle; but it is just possible : that

4,000,000 people might succeed where a handful of Boers failed. The West Coast Hibernians On St. Patrick’s Day this year Grey mouth will be the Mecca for all the children of the Greater Ireland on .the West Coast. Par back in 1869, there were formed branches of the Hibernian Society at Addisons and at Greymouth. In matter of time, Addisons was the first branch formed in New Zealand, but now that it is defunct Greymouth has the honor of being the oldest in the Dominion. The Grey branch was officially opened by delegates from Australia in 1870, but as it was in being from the previous year half a century has now passed since its inauguration. Unfortunately the local records have been lost; but one of the pioneer members, Mr. T. O’Donnell, is still active- and zealous in the interests of the society and his mind is the repository of the history and traditions of the old days that are gone. The Greymouth Hibernians are to celebrate their jubilee on the 17th March, and the event will be an Irish demonstration worthy of the society and worthy of the Irish spirit of the men of the West Coast. It was from a West Coast priest that we received a reminder of the neglect of duty on the part of all of us here -who care in truth and in deed for the cause of small nations, and who have no part in the policy which holds that Prussianism is wrong only in Germany. On the West Coast the priests and people have felt the shame that has been put upon us by the silence of our Government when the representatives of the freemen of the whole world are calling on England to prove her sincerity by ending forever the oppression and the plunder of Ireland. During these past days we have seen how a Judge of the Supreme Court of Philadelphia declared that Irishmen were perfectly justified in establishing their own Parliament in Dublin as they have done; since then a monster meeting of the sons of the Greater Ireland in America, over whom the venerable Cardinal Gibbons presided, demanded in the name of justice and honor that the Irish nation be restored to her rightful place and that the liberty which is her due be granted her. While all over the world every man who hates hypocrisy and loves justice is protesting against the shameful conduct of England we alone have kept silence, and by our silence have been so far partakers in the shame of England. There ■were many among us who were at one time so misled by faked fablegrams as to utter words of strong condemnation for the men who were the victims of Maxwell’s cruelty and Tory duplicity; if no others make a move surely these people will endeavor to make a little reparation by doing their part to swell the protest that the whole world is making now. Greymouth, we are assured, will do its part on St. Patrick’s Day, when motions in favor of the freedom of Ireland will be carried, and when we hope the men who asked Irishmen to fight for the freedom of small nations while oppressing the oldest nation in Europe will be rightly censured. Every Irishman in this country who was told in the press and from the platform that he was bound to fight for the extermination of Prussianism and for universal self-determination among the nations has a right to demand that the Government of this country which invoiced the aid of Militarism in order to beat Germany shall prove its sincerity by advocating, as Australia and Canada and South Africa did, the freedom of the Irish people. What Greymouth does we ought all do. We should have done it long ago; but if we do nothing now, then in heaven’s name let us never again pretend that we are Irishmen or that we care a jot either for the freedom of Ireland or for anything else beyond our own selfish interests. The number of people in this countryprobably as a result of an environment begotten of materialistic schools and politicians without principle or. backbone that are incapable of realising what it is to be bound by a principle, and how shameful it is - to compromise and quibble when principles are at stake, is legion. Could We see ourselves ; as others see us, could we feel with

wHat contemptuous pity we are regarded by Australians, we might realise how we have fallen and how far the true spirit of freemen is from us. There will be many seonin Irishmen, temporisers, people who always ask how much will it cost, ready to throw cold water on any, movement even if it is a movement for Ireland’s sake. The Greymouth Hibernians are not of that kidney, and surely they will find all over New Zealand thousands of others to unite with them on the feast of St. Patrick in demanding Ireland’s freedom, and in compelling our own wretched placemen to demand it. We are very far from holding that the latter care anything for small nations or that they are capable of feeling the shame of their insincerity; but we have no mind that they should involve the decent people whom they are supposed to represent in their own ignominy.