A CARDINAL AND SOCIALISM.

New Zealand Tablet, 15 May 1919, Page 13

A CARDINAL AND SOCIALISM.

Mr. George Lansbury has been visiting Cologne. In the last issue of a Labor weekly journal, the Herald, he relates his impressions during "the People's Mass" in Cologne Cathedral, where the congregational singing by three or four thousand people was such as he had never heard before, and also during an interview with the Archbishop, Cardinal von Tlartmann. He asked the Cardinal, to whose courtesy he pays a cordial tribute, various questions on public matters. His Eminence, our readers will remember, was the first.. of the signatories of the Joint Episcopal ; Pastoral condemning Socialism which we -recently, published (says the London Catholic Times). Mr. Lansbury enquired if Catholics' could co-operate with Socialists, and the Cardinal replied that the Church could work with them on a particular question or for a certain definite object, the object being clearly defined. That is to say, the Cardinal holds that Catholics can co-operate with them much in the same way as they can co-oper-ate with Tories and Liberals, supporting such definite parts of their policy as are in harmony with their own views and not opposed to Catholic principles. As a matter of fact, this is what the Centre or Catholic party are now doing in Germany, and the result .of the co-operation is a series of democratic measures, including the fixing of an eight-hour day for workers,the adoption of compulsory arbitration, and the confiscation of all profits made during the war. A