POLITICAL MORALITY

Evening Post, Volume CIV, Issue 74, 24 September 1927, Page 11

POLITICAL MORALITY

(To the Editor.) Sir, —I read- with interest your report of the deputation to the .Prime Minister concerning fiie very much discussed subject '"Bible in Schools." I have no intention , o£ raising or taking part in a discussion on th:s passionful subject, but on reading the Prime Minister's reply to the deputation I was thunderstruck to see this statement: "Mr. Coates recalled that he had promised before the elections that if a private member introduced a Bill and it came up on the Order Paper it would have an opportunity for discussion." Could it be possible that the Prime Minister had made use of these words? I waited till this morning, when reference to your contemporary confirmed your report. Whither is our political morality tending? The Prime Minister, as he allows, at the last election issued a manifesto that bound him, his Ministerial colleagues, and all members of the Reform Party to maintain our system of education free, secular, and compulsory. He now calmly announces to the members of the public that, behind their backs, lie had made an arrangement with possible members (I presume of his own party) that if any one of them introduced a Bill to destroy the educational system that the Reform Party in its public manifesto had pledged itself to maintain, he would bind himself to give them an opportunity of doing it. Does the Prime Minister realise the gravity of the •offence he has committed? Is this the beginning of a new moral order that it is noped will become universal if the Religious Exercises in Schools Bill be passed? —I am, etc., 23rd September. ' TRTJTH>