NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 11543, 30 November 1900, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

What the Boston Morning Star, a Baptist weekly, calls a " shocking regime of vice and shame " that has " darkly disgraced the Americin name" in Manila, is described in the New Voice (Chicago)— by Mr. Woolley, who was Prohibition cand'date for President—by William E. Johnstn. who spent part of last spring and simmer in Manila observing the situation. The most striking part of Mr. Johnson's expose, which has been running in the columns »f the New Voice for several months, is a .'alendar of "liquor crimes." compiled fron the news columns of the Manila Freecbm, an enthusiastic supporter of the Administration. These lists, with names, dates, and circumstances of each crime, make m impressive catalogue. One list of liquor crmes, covering three months, fills two pages. Passing over the repeated drunken invasiuis of the homes of respectable residents of Manila and the result in? crimes, we quot< the following item, which is far from beijg the worst in the list : —" A gang of drunjen soldiers took possession of the Sun Micuelbeer hall on the Escolta. A field fight- was sion in progress. The crazed soldiers were smaihiii!; the furniture and flourishing revolver* when Robert Wallen, a guard of Company 1. Twentieth Infantry, attempted to restore order. Thereupon the drunken soldiers s*t upon him. One hit him over the head vith a chair. Wallen finally fired in self-deferce. Instead of hitting any of the rioters, the lull piourhcd its way through the heart of Corporal \fcGuire. who was drinkincr beer it a telle, but not actually enlaced in the brawl. Tms saloon is run on canteen principle*, and s- i nothing stronger than beer." Mr. bison's transference of these local news itens from the Manila paper to the Now V« : c causes the Brooklyn Eagle (Ind.) to quote sarcastically the statement made Inst .August by Adjutant-General Corbin. that "the arrav is a model temperance society—a praciic.-.l one ; a society whose precepts no l« than its example could be followed by all people in safety and sobriety." The Eagle remarks that- "Corbin's Temperance Society" appears to be in " full possession" in Manila. The New Voice advances the theorv that it was the drunken conduct of the soldiers thfit disgusted the natives and made them resolve to resist "benevolent assimilation" with such a people. President Schurman, of the Philippine Commission, it will be remembered. said that tlife saloon in Manila "has hurt the Americans more than anything else, and the spectacle of -Americans drunk awakens disgust in the Filipinos," and Mr. John Foreman said that the behaviour of the soldiers has had an " ineffaceably demoral : ing effect" on the natives, and has " inspired a feeling of horror and loathful contempt." Captain Edward E. Hatch, of the Eighteenth United States Cavalry, is quoted as saying that " the saloons were directly responsible for more of the friction, disturbances, and estrangements with the natives than all other causes combined." . Says the New Voice :"Two years of our rule in the Orient have become history ; and they are years of blunder, fraud, scandal, outrage, and failure. The people who two years ago stood ready to welcome us as their saviours, to-day hate us worse than they hated the tyrants who governed them for three cen—and with better reason. In these few brief months the soil of the Philippine Islands has drunk the blood of more men than Spain ever killed in all her long years of misrule, and that blood has been shed in the name of the people who honestly intended to be the benefactors 01 the Philippine race. The situation warrants careful, thoughtful study. What is the cause of the failure '! What makes the outcome so terribly different from the anticipation '! The student does not need to look far for a solution. The testimony is conclusively convincing that the Filipinos were alienated from us, lost their respect for us, and their confidence in us, came to look upon us with suspicion and distrust and hatred, because of the drunken violence of our soldiers. . . . As the accredited representatives of our civilisation, clothed with authority liki kings, we established in Manila officers who had disgraced American civilisation by drunkenness in their voyage across the Pacific, who continued to disgrace us by open intoxication in Manila, whose idea of discipline was represented by the army saloon, and whose standard of morals was so low that their installation in the capital of our new possessions was followed by the legalisation 01 the worst of the vices that disgrace our own country. What other result could have been expected than the result that came 'I" " Abortive " is hardly the correct term to use in regard to the result of the Round Table Conference on the Holy Communion, and its expression in ritual, referred to in yesterday morning's cablegrams. It is quite true no doubt that the representatives of the various parties present were unable to come to an agreement that would remove existing differences as to the exact doctrinal significance of the Communion service, and that they failed to arrive at a compromise on the question of ritual. Anyone who expected anything like a final settlement must have been very hopeful. In any case the conference had no power to make a compromise that would be binding on the Church as a whole. It was simply a friendly discussion, the main object being to get the representatives of the opposing parties to see the questions on which they are divided from one another's point of view, and to understand each other better. The names of those present is a sufficient guarantee that the conference was conducted in a courteous and friendly spirit, and the bringing of the advocates of different views face to face, in order that they might see how far thev could agree without sacrifice of principle, must have a good effect. It takes much of the sting out of controversy to find that your opponent is just as conscientious as your« self, and that he has a good deal of reason

on his side. The results of such conferences cannot be tabulated or put down in black nd white, but they may be none the less (perhaps all the more) real on that account. Referring to the Round Table Conference the Pilot says -.—"The time has long gone by when conferences on points of dispute between varying parties in the Church can be gathered together at the commandment and will of princes; and the English Church is not likely to see again anything exactly analogous to the conferences held at Hampton Court in January, 1604, and at the Savoy in April, 1661. Each of those gatherings bore the impress of its time; while the King himself was protagonist in the first, a chorus of bishops maintained the chief burden in the grand debate at the second. The opposition in the one case was called Puritan, and in the other Presbyterian, but it represented in each case a body of people who wished to capture the Church and fasten upon it their own narrow and nncatholic views. To speak of Round Table Conferences in the same breadth with these official gatherings, may be to compare small things with great ; but it is well to recognise that the hope which prompts them is the same hope which led to the great conferences in the old days ; and to remember that, in fact, these did bring a large measure of peace to the sorely rent Church. The reconcilable were reconciled, and if the discussions brought out move clearly the melancholy fact that a certain proportion of the malcontents were irreconcilable, they should not be blamed for this as though they had caused the division or embittered the controversy. Happily, the present state of parties in the Church is widely different from that of 1604 or 1661, and the hopes of mutual understandings are proportionately brighter. The conference of to-day will do much good it it makes for more reciprocal confidence and appreciation and esteem, and more good still, if it can do something to unite all parties in working together fox the really great needs of the Church, both domestic and foreign, which all parties alike recognise as imperative."