Evening Post. MONDAY, JANUARY 30, 1911. DANGER!

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 24, 30 January 1911, Page 6

Evening Post. MONDAY, JANUARY 30, 1911. DANGER!

We have referred more than once lately to the evidence of a revival in this country of the claims of denominational education. There are two ways in which the present system of primary education — free, compulsory and secular — can be attacked. That primary education at any rate should be free of charge and should be compulsory is fortunately a position which is now accepted by everybody as axiomatic, but the secularity of the system has had to face attacks from two sides. There are, in the first place, those who desire to leave all the teaching in the hands of the State, but to add religious instruction to the function of the State school teachers ; and there .are others who desire to see the State •maintain its present attitude of detachment from any direct responsibility for religious teaching, but -to incur the same responsibility indirectly by subsidising, denominational schools under private management. For the last fifteen years at any rate the chief danger to the national system has come from those who repudiate any desire to see denominational education either administered or subsidised by the State, but insist that with the safeguard of a conscience clause 'for both teachers and parents, element--ary religious lessons of an undenominational character should be given in the State schools by the ordinary staff. For several years this demand made a considerable stir, and when\ it was put in the plausible form of a proposal that 1 Parliament, instead of detei mining the matter on its own initiative, should sub--mit the issue to a direct vote of the people, the idea assumed so moderate and plausible an air as to become a very serious -danger. What democrat can refuse his consent to a proposal "to trust, the people" to decide the issue ? Such was the form in which the issue waa pressed upon Mr. Seddon's last two Parliaments, but largely through his finntista the attempt fnil«i3. At the last general election a action which had

once been a terror to the politicians hardly troubled them at all, and nothing has taken place since to suggest that it will in this form have any more power at the general election thai, is due at the end of this year. But the menace now comes from the other side— from the line of attack which had recently been in abeyance. When the Anglican and otner Protestant Churches combined to demand the introduction into the State schools of a Biblical text-book, the Roman Catholics did yeoman's service in resisting what they justly regarded as an attempt to secure the patronage and endowment by the State of Protestant religious teaching. But Roman Catholics themselves are ' now leading the attack on the State- schools along the second of the two lines above indicated. The attack was opened by the Rev. Dr. Ken- ' nedy and others shortly before Christmas, and it has now the approval of the highest authority of the Roman Church in New Zealand. At the opening of the new Roman Catholic School in Tasman street yesterday, Archbishop Redwood sounded the call to a political campaign of a kind from which this country has long been free. Our Roman Catholic fellow-citizens have, of course, never ceased to protest against what they regard as the injustice of the present system, but in recent year* their political power has been rather directed to resisting the proposal of the Pro-test-ant Churches to increase that injustice than to pressing their own ideas of I reform. They have been a Conservative force in opposition to the attacks that have been organised by the Anglicans and the Presbyterians, but they are. now out to smash the system in their own way. The zeal and self-sacrifice with which the Roman Catholics have been pursuing their own ideals of education outside the State system are certainly beyond praise. If the Churches which have conscientious objection to the State system had devoted a tithe of thesames enthusiasm to supplementing that system by organising religious teaching in the State schools on voluntary lines, there would have been no occasion for anybody to denounce the "Godless" nature of the education which those schools are providing. These Churches have, however, preferred the line of religious agitation, but that they have egregiously failed affords no guarantee that tho line of attack along which the Roman Catholics are now preparing to organise will not be more successful. According to Archbishop Redwood's estimate, the Roman Catholics, by undertaking at their own cost the education of children for whom the State would otherwise have had to make provision, have saved the State in working expenses alone no less than a sum of £1,100,000. We have no means of checking this estimate, but are quite prepared to accept it as substantially correct. The question of principle would, however, be unaffected even if it were proved that the estimate errs largely on the side of liberality. If it were possible to make distinctions, it cannot be disputed that the Roman Catholics have established a higher claim than any other sect to special treatment. But is it possible to extend to them any treatment which would not be open to every other denomination on the same terms? As Archbishop Redwood makes his appeal to justice, we are astonished that he should hesitate to answer this question by an emphatic negative. He is, on the contrary, emphatic in the opposite direction. To the argument that other denominations would make similar claims to that of the Roman Catholics if it was recognised, and that the result would be to shatter the secular system throughout New Zealand, Archbishop Redwood replies : — "Nothing of th<j sort ; it is a false and groundless fear." In our opinion every denomination will have to be put on an equal footing, and that we are satisfied is the opinion of an overwhelming majority of the public. While no religious teaching at all is subsidised, and the secular teaching of the State is available to the children of every denomination without fee or favour, the fact that one denomination objects more than the others' to the system established by the State may be a hardship to that denomination, but it is not a grievance of which the State is under any obligation to take cognisance. In New South Wales, where religious lessons are given by the State school teachers, the grievance has been enlarged into an injustice. Here, fortunately, the State has resisted the beginnings of evil, and has refused to admit the thin end of the denominational wedge. The Roman Catholic demand is for nothing less than the substitution of denominationalism for nationalism in education, and the people are likely to resist it as stubbornly as they have resisted every previous attempt to tamper with the cardinal principle of the Education Act, which has now stood for more than thirty years. But as a political campaign is now plainly threatened, organisation must be answered by organisation, and there must be no delay. To assume that victory is assured is the way to court defeat. Sir Joseph Ward would relieve the public mind if he would declare in unmistakable terms that the j Government will stand faithfully by present law.