BELGIUM AND THE PAPACY.

Evening Star, Issue 16198, 21 August 1916, Page 2

BELGIUM AND THE PAPACY.

TO THE EDITOU. Sir,—The salient point in this controversy is that, a public speaker can talk on a subject about which ho is obviously ignorant. I don't blamo the Rev. Mr .Jenkin for his ignorance of the Pope's ideas, statements, and actions, for he doesn't get much enlightenment from the Homo papers he consults, nor from cables, which frequently retail other people's views about the Pope, but fail to tell us what the Pope himself is really saying and doing. So far it is only a case ol the blind leading the blind. But it. gets on one's nerves to find a public speaker airing that ignorance. It is not, ns Mr Jenkin would have it, "a matter of the authority and veracity of our respective sources of information." He, qitite clearly, had no sources of information at all. So I had to present him with a few scraps of news. For example, he thought that the Popo had done nothing to help Belgium ; yet the truth is that Benedict has shown not hot-air sympathy, but practical, generous sympathy, for which he is officially thanked by the Belgian people—and they ought, to know. He thought, that the Pope did not. trouble to stand by Cardinal Mercier, yet the Cardinal himself publicly declares his supreme satisfaction—and again he should know. So, too, the Minister of the Belgian Government who declared in the Press that even "the Pope could go no further" ought, to know what he is talking about. Mr Jenkin complains that the Pope has stood all the day idle, making; no protest, etc.: yet the Pope is actually found to have protested against the violation of Belgium's neutrality and against, certain barbarous features of submarine warfare; and, wonderful to relate, his protests are directed to the Power to which ho is supposed to be in bondage—Germany itself! All this, and much more, is ancient history, which should be familiar to anyone who attempts to speak intelligently on the subject. These protests, for instance, wore made publicly j as far back as January, 1915, and were published at once in the semi-official daily paper | and the official uionlldy magazine of the Vatican, and by Catholic papers (I am only speaking of what I know personally) in Italy. Prance, England, Ireland, America, and Australasia. \ May T now notice two minor points? First, the word Romanist is now considered a vulgar controversial term, and has quite j,'one out of fashion. Secondly, when 1 spoke of the Pope as a ruler and sovereign I was speaking quite plainly. If a man is robbed of his money he is still entitled to be called its owner. So, too, the 300 million Catholics of the world think it only natural to consider the dispossessed Pope as a-ruler, seeing that he was most unjustly deprived of possessions which he had acquired peacefully and had held for over 1,000 years.—l am, etc., James M. Liston. August 21. "Vepretarinns claim that hair grows less