MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1912.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIV, Issue 139, 9 December 1912, Page 6

MONDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1912.

was to be taught as a classic, and even so a conscience clause was to be provided for the protection of teachers who might find difficulties in giving the prescribed lessons on these comparatively simple lines. Now the pretence of a purely literary selection is abandoned, yet at the same time the teacher is entirely deprived of the benefit of a conscience clause. He must either do what he is told or go. Ono need not be surprised that in these circumstances the hostility of the profession to the Bible in schools appears to be more acute during its latest phase than ever before. Mr. Clement Watson, who has been teaching in Wellington for the last thirty-seven years and had previously had experience of the different conditions of the Old Country^ said that religious differences had hever yet arisen to interfere with the, working of his school, but he knew that happy state of things could not continue if the Bible-in-Schools League had its way. It was also stated by Mr. Watson— and on this point he was supported by Mr. Robert Lee, the chairman of the Education Board— that from the teachers' point of view the proposal to expect the mere readlhg of a text-book to have any effect without something much more than a detached supervision/on their part was "one of the greatest farces imaginable." The National Schools Defence League might consider whether Mr. Watson should not be asked to write out and revise his very weighty speech with 'a view to its publication as a pamphlet. Another device^y which the Bible-in-Schools League seeks to minimise the gravity of its demands 1« by asking for ft referendum— or, more accurately, a plebiscite— on the subject instead of immediate legislation. We are amazed to find the fairness an<J .the logic of this proposal commended this morfling in a quarter where we are accustomed to see questions tested by an appeal to principle. Referring to the Defence League's agitation, the organ of the Reform Party in this city asks, "Is it not quite it-logical-thus to appeal to the democracy and at the same time to endeavour to avoid a decisive verdict?" In other words, any appeal to public opinion against the submission of a particular question to a plebiscite is a sort of contradiction in terms, because a plebiscite is the best test of public opinion. The Acceptance of this reasoning will carry us far, for it implies in the first place that every public issue is a fit subject for determination by plebiscite, and, in the second place, that the only duty of Government, Parliament, the press, and other supposed leaders of public opinion is to see that the counting is done correctly.^ Neither of these propositions will be maintained in this extreme form by any reasonable man. Obviously somebody must determine whether or not a particular question should be submitted to a plebiscite before a plebiscite is taken. If the proposal were the establishment of a Protestant State Church or the expulsion of Roman Catholics from the country, no politician would' seek to evade his responsibility by the extreme form of the "trust the people" cant which suddenly finds favour with our contemporary. So in the present case the contention of the National Schools Defence League is that the Bible-in-Schools programme involves the endowment of a particular form of religious teaching and the application of coercion to matters on which the individual conscience should be left absolutely free. This contention is not to bo brushed aside by saying that ■ the people must decide. It must be proved to be erroneous before the people's trustees should allow the issue to be put.