"GLOVES OFF."

Auckland Star, Volume LVIII, Issue 277, 23 November 1927, Page 8

"GLOVES OFF."

BIBLE IN SCHOOLS DISPUTE.

PRESBYTERIAN ANGRY

NATIONAL CAMPAIGN PLANNED

(B.\ Telegraph. Own Correspondent.)

CHRISTCHURCH, this dav

"The time has arrived to take the gloves off," declared the Rev. John Paterson, of Wanganui, in a speech at last night's session of the Presbyterian General Assembly on the Bible in schools question.

I Mr. Paterson, who presented the | report of the assembly's Bible in Schools [Committee, said that for many years past those who had conducted the campaign in New Zealand had refrained to the utmost from stirring up strife in the community, but to-day the situation had changed. Their opponents, led by Bishop Cleary, had used every means of defeating them. The time had now arrived to take the gloves off. and at the beginning of December a stirring campaign from end to end of the Dominion would be launched.

j Because their opponents were loudmouthed and full of abuse, said Mr. Paterson, they had been given consideration by Parliament out of all proportion to their numbers. The Bible in Schools Council had taken a referendum of parents from end to end of New ZeaLind, and by overwhelming majorities the parents bad declared that they wanted this thing. He had now to ask whether the fathers and mothers of the children of New Zealand were to be granted their wishes, or whether those wishes were to be flung on one side. Were they going to be dictated to bv the ecclesiastics of the Roman Ca'tholic Church and a handful of secularists centred in Wellington? It was absoutely ridiculous that boys and,girls living in New Zealand should be denied the rights of being taught the contents of the English Bible.

BISHOP CLEAStY'S REPLY.

AWAITING DEVELOPMENTS

I Bishop Cleary, wlien informed of the contents of the foregoing telegram, said: "There is nothing new in all of that. We have heard it many times before. It does not touch at any point nnv one of onr four well-defined and oft-stated objections to the Isitt Bill. These stand firm. We shall await developments with confidence."