CHRISTCHURCH AGAIN.

Free Lance, Volume XV, Issue 802, 12 November 1915, Page 8

CHRISTCHURCH AGAIN.

Parsons and Soldier Boys.

§NB naturally looks to Christchurch ■fco provide ail-exhibition of, fddtlißm and narrow-mindedness. When, a, Christchurch man, especially of the "wowser" variety, is not \ busy iii Cathedral Square starting a' new religion, or meeting with two others—a half-cracked female friend and a- dog, in some back room in the suburbs, .there solemnly to form a "League" and, pass a "resolution'.'—he is really miserable. This mania for protesting and passing resolutions, and kicking up a bobbery generally about quite harmless things has found its latest, exemplification, in the action of the Christchurch. clergy— of which particular' sect not stated — who have protested against the farewell parade of the Eighths being held on a Sunday. '

But 'why not on a. Sunday? Surely this is a war against- Evil, against the foulest, most horrible, most deadly Evil that the modern civilised world has ever known, the Evil' of German military power, that same power which, if successful, would, by the way,' clap every Christchurch parson who "protested" against the acts of a German Governor either into a straight jacket or a jail. Do not our friends the parsons attack the Devil every Sunday, smiting 'him hip and thigh with their verbal weapons? And are not the Eighths going to the front to fight the Evil One and his tools and agents, and to smite them, if they can, both hip and thigh, anywhere in fact, with bullets and shells and bayonet thrusts?

Our "brave soldiers are only going to put into concrete effect the verbal denunciations of the parsons. Then,* why should the latter grumble about a farewell Sunday pai-ade, a parade of men who are off to fight in the cause of National Righteousness against that, vile and horrible thing, the German military power, which, if there be a. Devil at all, is surely His Satanic Majesty's specia l and pet invention. The Sabbath was made for man (and not for the parsons) and not man for the Sabbath. And, even, admitting that the Sabbath should be kept holy, how could men be better employed than in encouraging and heartening and . applauding those of their countrymen who are off to the front to combat against those very powers of Evil which every Sabbath are so ■righteously denounced in the churches ? Have these Ohristchurch parsons no. sense of logic—or humour?