A NATIONAL DANGER.

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIII, Issue 1444, 18 December 1919, Page 2

A NATIONAL DANGER.

(Bishop Cleary in “The Month.”) A shrill cry ringing through nil the talk of after-war reconstruction in New Zealand has been, “Encourage immigration!” in order that the country may be populated and developed. The cry assumes a cynical sound when it is remembered that the Dominion steadily refuses to do its duty to itself. The birth-rate for 1917 was only 25.69 per 1000 as against 37.32 in 1882, 29.01 in 1891, and 20.34 in 1901. And the end of this ruinous decline is not yet. Meanwhile politicians talk feverishly of a “white New Zealand.” Australia is in no better case. An able and wellknown Sydney priest, the Rev. M. O’Reilly (says the daily press) declares that “Australia is rapidly becoming like Franco, and that unless the nation retraces its stops it will be on the road to extinction.” Wc hear much of the “yellow peril” in our time. But tho white nations’ outrage upon a divine law will not help to remove the menace of the prolific Oriental. Meanwhile sociologists, Departmental officials, “reformers,” etc., strive to find a solution of the evil. Our New Zealand Dr. Mason wrote: “Commissions have sat in various parts of the world, and have discussed the question in all its phases. Voluminous reports have been written, but it/has all been as a beating of the wind.' To my mind, the remedy is not to be found in reports, but in a national awakening and an increase in patriotism. All sorts of cures have been advocated, such as grants of land to parents having over a certain number in the family, but I have little faith in such remedies. ’ ’ The disease is mainly a moral one, and is no more is to be cured by such means as leprosy is to be cured by reciting the multiplication table. The radical remedy is a return to the old Catholic principles. “The Christian ideal,” says G. K. Chesterton, “has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult, and left untried.” It is this exaggerated sense of the difficulties attendant on clean-living domestic life that is mainly responsible for the evil. God’s people of old regarded children as manifestations of divine favour; a decadent modern thought classifies them as “encumbrances.” Tho distinction is quite logical. Where obedience to God’s laws took precedence of all things, children were regarded as a motive for His further service and a moans to the accomplishment of the Divine purpose. But where the world is frankly given over to a hard materialism, or the cult of mere money-getting “efficiency,” or of pagan pleasure, it is no matter for surprise that children should be regarded as a hindrance and an unnecessary evil. And so, in an appalling number of cases, tho sacred dignity of the* marriage union has degenerated into a relationship that aims at securing the greatest possible amount of indulgence with the least possible amount of discomfort or “risk.” ’Tis true, ’tis pity; and pity ’tis, ’tis true. According to Lord Jellicoe and a few other expansive and expensive militarists, tiie Pacific is to bo tho scene of tho next, great war. The war is already in progress. It has been in progress for many a decade. It is a war, not of cannons but of cradles. In every such contest, the cradle is tin' sure- —if sometimes slow—victor. With this all-conquering weapon, the Yellow Man is winning all along the line. And unless we mend our domestic ways, slant-eyed Orientals will yet ait by tho hearths that we, by our sins, shall in due course leave childless and desolate. In the matter of race suicide and its consequent social and national decay, tho mills of God grind quickly, and they grind exceeding small.