NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13355, 8 December 1906, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

CIVILISATION AND THE CONGO,

j Major AlifHtiß. Giaw Leonard, writing in. i the Imperial and Asiatic Quarterly Review, says:—"Europe, the centre awl stronghold of civilisation, lias grown indifferent ; age and luxury have nourished the fungus of apathy among its people., and apathy has made them callous. Civilisation appears now to bo no more compatible with humanitariatiism; an excess of dogmatism, added to the limitations of sectarianism, have choked those sympathies which spring from the germ of a common origiu. All that is highest in them, the humanity which can soar above life's sordid inhumanities, until it- reaches almost to the Divine, lias been clogged by the lower and more material instincts of self-interests, those interests which, as Ruskin says, warp a man's mind. Even England, once the champion of liberty, has fallen from her high estate into the coma and silence of a mental sleeping sickness, Indeed, although she has an Imperial Empire at her back, she is no longer disinterested, and the once glorious term Liberal is now merely the label on a glue-pot that sticks fast. Sympathy, that truer sign of breeding than mere kindness, has atrophied. So Jews are massacred in Russia by the hundreds and thousands, and the natives of the Congo arc not only slaiia, but mutilated mercilessly and without restraint; and Europe looks on and does nothing. Yet it is the Great Powers of Europe which are responsible for a condition so truly deplorable, : and of all those Powers; England, which took the initiative in the mattl-r, is most of all responsible, if not culpable. if, then, the humanity which was once her proud boast is not dead, if she will only, as her own immortal bard said of her, remain true, to herself, this

jjfttTti responsibility which is on her »honl» fie'> will prick her t« the quick," arid aro-ise ' jfcll hat moral ami «piritti.*l energies to »c----j'fcion. lint for Heaven'* soke let it be * whoh'-hiarled ftit) nnstiatpcl Act eon, for this alone will -save those millions in distress, whoso voices are uplifted in silent agony; this alone will Ifiaw the world that the now el timbering humanity of England; .Is still capable of rising- to the sublime heights of equity and disinterestedness/'

CMUBCfI BMOLVtfKNTS IN ITALY.

The annuai "incomes of Italian prelates lire not in all eases no insignificant as i* generally mippoßed. Referring to th< Parliamentary commission on the subject, the Avanti gives the incomes til some of the best-endowed diocese*. The figures in some eases compare quit*' respectably with the sums allotted to some of th*> mot. ordinary Anglican sees, especially when th* relative extent' of an fci igliah ami Italian diocese i* considered. The Avariti'Ji figure? ore as follow*:— of Eleggio (Calabria), | £1295: Pisa. £ ? 600: Capua, £1635; | Naples, £1675; Melfi, £1400: Taranto, £1.455: Mik-tu. £1190: Catania, £254-1; j Girgcnti. £1825; Palermo. £1658) fcteaj zara, £2406: retain. £5500. His Lordship j of Ccfaln has just been retired without ft I pension inter a long tern 0 office.