THE P.P.A.

Southland Times, Issue 19510, 9 May 1922, Page 6

THE P.P.A.

AUSTRALIAN VISITOR’S ADDRESS. A visitor from Australia, the Rev. D, Ditterich, president of the Australian Protestant Federation, delivered an address id the Municipal Theatre last night under the auspices of the P.P.A. The inclement weather no doubt accounted for the fact that the attendance was not so large as on previous occasions when meetings have been called by the P.PA., there being many vacant seats in the stalls, while there were few occupied in the dress circle. The Rev. H. G. Gilbert presided and introduced the speaker. He explained that they had no intention of attacking any denomination although having, perhaps, to deal with the fruits of the activities of certain denominations. He declared that they were entitled to take any legitimate measures to safeguard the Empire and the flag (Applause). Mr Lfitterich’s subject was “Protestantism and the Empire.” He opened his remarks by a reference to the part played unitedly by Australia and New Zealand during the war, stating that, although the two countries were developing their own destinies they were resolved to remain an integral part of the Empire. The Protestant Federation had been formed to protect those inalienable rights and privileges that were available to all sections of the British community. There had been a Catholic Federation in Australia for six years before the Protestants had organised and from the Catholic organisation had eminated all sorts of propaganda. The Protestants claimed equal rights. Mr Ditterich also dealt with the attitude taken by some prominent Catholics in Australia during the war. The priests had said “Australia for Australians, and never mind the Empire,” but the Protestants knew that this really meant, “the Papal flag in place of the Union Jack;” the Catholics did not desire to see Australians great Australians or New Zealanders great New Zealanders. At the Federal elections two and a half year ago, Archbishop Mannix had assumed the role of leader of the opposition, and when the Prime Minister delivered his policy speech, Dr Mannix had criticised it sentence by sentence from the standpoint of the Catholics and had urged the people to vote the Government out. That was a sample of the part the Catholics took in politics. The Protestant Association subscribed to no party. Its test was: Is he loyal to God and King? If the Labour Party that was returned in 1914 with Mr Andrew Fisher declaring that his Party stood for the Empire to the last man and the last shilling had stood by those principles it might have been still in power, but it did not stand by them and the attitude of its leaders to the war had resulted in Federal politics. To-day there was only one representative of the party in the Federal House. To take the recent New' South : Wales elections, went on the speaker, of the eight Ministers in the Labour Cabinet seven (Ministers were Roman Catholics and the eighth during the elections had been ati tacked by the priests. The Profiteering i Commission was dominated by a Catholic ■ and Catholics abounded in the public eer- ' vice. The people of New South Wales had ! awakened to this, and, recognising that ( they were being used as a cat’s paw to ; pull the chestnuts out of the fire for the : Roman Catholics, had ousted the party that was not really a Labour Party but a Roman Party by a clear majority of 100,000 (Applause). Next, Mr Ditterich drew attention to the fact that it was only in Ireland among all the English speaking people of - the Empire that there was rebellion. Were they to believe that England was just to all other parts of the Empire and became tyrannous in Ireland? The bulwarks of all the national privileges were a free press, a free Parliament and a free pulpit. Every liberty came to them not through the Roman Catholic Church or through the influence of any Catholic monarch; they came to them in the reign of William the third, Prince of Orange. He declared that Romanism was the enemy of those liberties. Re-

peating quotations from bills and decrees, which he claimed had never been refuted, Mr Ditterich set out to show that leading authorities in the Roman Chruch had claimed that their Church had supreme temporal power. Rome was the inveterate and pledged enemy of industrial and national liberty. On the other hand, Protestantism stood for those things. The very word in its origin meant positive witness—one who said what he knew. He asked them to do away with the nonsensical notion that Protestantsm merely meant a protest against something; it meant a witness for something Protestantism made for freedom, and, because of this, it made nations great. There was not to-day a first-class Power that recognised the Pope of Rome. Before the war there was one, and he asked them to remember that it was Austria-Hungary, which, unstayed by one word from the Pope, had precipitated the war. And now Austria-Hungary lay starving and bleeding. Spain, once the greatest nation in the world, was now of little importance; France, at one time called the oldest daughter of the Church, recognised a Catholicism that was not permitted to enter into politics, and she had been saved from annihilation only through alliance with Protestant Britain and America. Italy had become a secondrate power only when she overthrew papal temporal power. And the Protestant nations had emerged triumphant. But some might ask, why did the Protestant power of Germany go down? There was no exception to the rule that nations blessed by the Pope sank and those cursed by him rose. Before the Pope and Kaiser Wilhelm began to write complimentary letters to one another and before the Kaiser began to give way to the Pope, German commerce and art was permeating the world to such an extent that it looked as if she was going to over run the earth by peaceful penetration. But the Pope had influenced the Kaiser find privilege after privilege was conferred cn the Catholic Church and the greater part of the German Navy was built by money voted by the Catholic political party. Mr Ditterich concluded amidst applause, with a strong appeal for unity among Protestants in order that the Empire might be protected. Mr J. Harford, vice-president of the Dominion P.P.A., had something to say about local conditions. He explained that some subscriptions had not been collected for three years but he would see if this could be remedied. He went on to say that it cost something to bring a man of Air Ditterich’s calibre to New Zealand and when here they could not, like the nuns, travel free on th® railways, and the theatre and 1 advertising cost them a good deal. He held up a pound note and asked that , others should be subscribed. One was donated and then the collection was taken up. A vote of thanks to the speaker was passed on the motion of the Rev. H. Sharp and the Rev. E. Gardiner.