CANDID CLERIC

New Zealand Times, Volume XLVII, Issue 10896, 10 May 1921, Page 3

CANDID CLERIC

ADVICE TO THE HUNGRY. THE RIGHT~TO FOOD. “Here in Sydney working men paraded the streets, men who were willing to work and yet had no bread to eat,” said the Rev. M. J. O’Reilly, rector of St. John’s College, Sydney, in an address last week to the Workers’ Educational Institute in that city. That was an impeachment of tne whole system behind it. Some one said, and he was not saying it was not Percy Brookfield himself: If it comes to a question of your starving for food go and take it. “Whether it was Brookfield who said it or not, I say it.” He was not a mob orator,. and he was not a demagogue, and he was not taking up a particular case because he was speaking to people who were m sympathy with the workers. His position was a responsible one, and what he said he said deliberately. Furthermore, he told them, on behalf of the great religious organisation to which he belonged, that it stood foi that principle—that when a man’s wife and child:on were starving, and he could not get food, otber-.vi -e 1-.- should go into the first place and take it.