SINISTER SECTARIANISM

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVIII, Issue 90, 13 October 1914, Page 6

SINISTER SECTARIANISM

The Bible-in-Schools League is making up for lost time. After sharing with other agitators the benefits of a two months’ truce, it has returned to the fray with a determination to do or die, and a blissful confidence in its own powers almost worthy of the Kaiser himself. “My dear Fellow-Worker," writes the Bible-in-Schools League, “Mr. informs me that owing to pressure of business he cannot stand for He. desires me to express his thanks for the honour which we did him, and wishes us every success.” ’ Though the persons addressed are many ■ and . the name of the League is also Legion/ it is to be noted that it speaks in the person singular, and in terms of personal intimacy : “My dear FellowWorker.” Those who are familiar with Canon Garland’s methods are aware that when he professes to speak for the League the alias is often, so ill-sustained that the lapse into the.singular pronoun is by no means unusual —another Kaiserlike touch. The particular honour that they or he, as the case may be, had devised for Mr. —— was to run him as a candidate under conditions which would assuredly have’ condemned him io be the laughing-stock of the constituency and. to forfeit his deposit. The shrewd Mr. —— fully appreciated the honour, but he is not taking any just now, thank you. So the job is still vacant for somebody with a thicker skin or a greater craving for notoriety than this level-headed citizen. Referring to the sitting member, the League writes: —“Many would not have voted for a member if they had imagined he would have become an active agent on behalf of Romans and secularists in his refusal to allow the People”—[with a capital “P,” of course] —“his employers—a right to vote.” The member’s brilliant services to his country are to be entirely forgotten, and he is to be told, in the Canon’s most pontifical style, to depart from political life as the accomplice of Romans and secularists because he desires to separate religion and politics, and not to. submit the right to oppress to an irregular and unconstitutional counting of heads. If members of the League really felt any responsibility for what is done in their name, they would surely put a stop to the attempts of their clerical mouthpiece to inflame sectarian animosity by these disingenuous and offensive appeals. A circular of this kind in every constituency would surely kill their cause.