REV. HOWARD ELLIOTT’S ADDRESS.

Evening Star, Issue 17706, 6 July 1921, Page 3

REV. HOWARD ELLIOTT’S ADDRESS.

, TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —The Rev. Howard Elliot must have pleased his audience immensely on Monday night. Apparently no one questioned the veracity of his statements nr his rigid to make the following statements; —“ New' Zealand for the New Zealanders and all Roman Catholics out of it. But that was not what we asked. Wc were quite prepared to give them house room and rope.” Oh, are we, Mr Elliott? And. also, who may “we” bp? the New' Zealanders? In my mind Mr Elliott is an agitator, and a dangerous one. He is stirring up a long-dead religious hatred which existed when we were not so civilised as we are to-day. “If Henry VIII. had not lucked the Pope out of England ’’—rubbish. Pone, the poet, was the only Pope in England, and not in Henry VIII.’s time. Anyway, Henry VITI. was no paragon of virtue. Hardly a fitting head to any church. Mr Elliott forgets that during the late war New Zealand sent soldiers of many denominations to the front, and that Roman Catholics were there in their, proportion and at the. front. Another thing I never heard of, and defy any of Mr Elliott’s soldier satellites to mention a case of ill-feeling or injustice caused through a man’s religious denomination in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force. At the war a man did not quarrel with his neighbor as to how to get to Heaven. Rather did they put that journey off as long as possible ; and the least known about it the better was the general feeling. Mr Elliott will remember that all Great War memorials and the Anzac Day services are in honor of the Protestant boys as well as the Roman Catholic and Hebrew lads. If Mr Elliott had done service at the front with “ Captain Tommy Taylor ” he would have had a grand education. Hoping the Diggers who were at the great struggle will remember and not fall for the Rev. Howard Eliott’s eye-wash.—l am, etc., Protestant Anzac. July 6.