THE CONTINENTAL SUNDAY.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLIII, Issue 97, 22 April 1909, Page 2

THE CONTINENTAL SUNDAY.

(By Frank Morton.)

The other day, I was trying to explain to a- French friend what was the attitude of the Council of Churches in regard to Sunday observance. I failed utterly. I tried to explain that the Council held that all men should go to church on Sunday. "But," said he, "all men will not go to church on Sunday. It is too late in Time. Have those who will not go no rights remaining?" I tried again. I was really very fair to the Council of Churches. But my friend (he never spoke a word of English till three months ago, poor heathen!) would have none of it. "In France," he said, "the Protestants are more sane. They do not tell the peoplethat they must be sad on Sundays. They dare not. The people of France will no longer tolerate priestly interference with popular liberty. The monastic orders were expelled by a Catholic nation, because they used their position as a means of coercion in matters that did not at all concern them.'-' He was quite hopeless. Even when I told him how anxious we all were to avoid the least appearance of the Continental Sunday, he scoffed. And this, in free but fair translation, is what he said:—"You need not fear. You have not the Continental Sunday. Your Sundays are so dull that one cannot even sleep them away. I have known the Continental Sunday in France—especially in Paris and in my own good town of Lyons. I have known it in Germany and in Russia and in Spain. It is the day when the people are glad. They meet each other and go out to the rivers and the woods. It is the day on which they ventilate their souls. It is not drunken or disorderly, because we have not your British vices. Ah, but you should see our people on the Sunday—the fathers and mothers who are so happy with each other, such good children, the happy faces everywhere! Germany is Protestant, but it loves its Sunday. Tiie people go to church, but they go also to the gardens and the concerts. They drink beer genially under the trees while the bands play. It is the day on which they get to know each, other best. They must have good music, those Germans; and one sees, that they can never get enough of it. What music do you have on Sundays? In France and Germany the music is good in the churches. But in Wellington—ah, mon ami, I have listened, I have suffered. You talk too easily about our continental wickedness, you English. Of all the cities I have lived in or visited, I think the wickedest is London, because the vice there is so sordid, so banal. In Paris we have naughty things*-yes; but there are so many English visitors. It is nonsense that you talk about the Continental Sunday. Work? Of course many people work in Europe on the Sunday. " Waiters in restaurants— yes. Why not? Many of them pay t for their places. Why should they i

lose their best day? We say that a man shall not work more than six days a week if we can help it; but we do not care which six days. You English have no humour; you maue a fetich of your Sunday. But tell me, these goods pastors of your Council of the Churches; do their servants not work on Sundays r1 Do the pastors not ride in trams .or trains on that clay? Do the caretakers ot the churches not work? Do not you good newspaper-men work, so that the napers shall issue on Monday morn-ino-s? It is a great farce, this that you tell me? You English are very droll." Now, what can one do with a man like that?