Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXI, Issue 7, 15 June 1894, Page 1

Current Topics

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

A rORLOBN HOPE.

Mb William Fbedebtck Slocttm, junior, who writes in the Atlantic Monthly for May, dißcnssee the question of teaching ethics in the public Bchools of America with a view to the reformation of society generally. The writer is a strong supporter of the system. He denies that the church and the home of the present day are sufficient to establish morality — and looks to the schools to do everything that is needful. He claims a good deal for them, bat admits that they have not as yet solved the ethical problem. What he tells vi of the dangers of the system, indeed, seems to illustrate very forcibly the vanity of his hope. Take, for example, the following. The writer deals with the charge that the system has a tendency to pauperise, that it makes the citizen grasping and selfish, that it ministers to the spirit which ever asks — What Bhall we have ? and seldom— What shall we give ? " It has become only too evident," he says, " that many parents look upon the teachers as if they were servants ; demanding everything from the school, without any idea that they owe anything in return. Such facts as these— and there are many others which might be cited— indicate some of the evil results of the plan, and make it very clear that here is an actual danger to the higher ethical conditions." Take again the writer's statement as to impurity in the schools. He writes as follows, alluding to a training school for teachers :— '• Not many years ago a graduate of one of these school* said that the teacher who gave her class instruction on this subject asked its members how many of them had not known of at least the existence of a vile vocabulary of words among their school-mates. All but two of the large clasß replied that during th»ir early life in the public schools they had heard what they could never forget, though no words could express the longing they felt to blot it from their memorieß ; and, in looking back from their more mature standpoint, it seemed to them the teachers must have felt no special duty in the matter. These were young women from the public schools of one of the older States." The writer claims that a better state of things now existß among teachers. Hp, however, explains that the difficulties of the case are great :— " The two or three children who with an air of mystery, bring information with regard to forma of impurity have great power for mischief, especially when thoy put a base interpretation upon things that are in themselves pure; and the quick imagination of a child, together with the fact that this information is not guarded, as it would be if it came from an older and a wiser person, makes it doubly dangerous. Tha testimony of one teacher, which has been repeated by many, is to the effect that the large majority of children in the public schools know, theoretically, as much about the forms of impurity at twelve and fourteen as they ever will. Thus the situation calls for teachers wise in heart and head, watchful in regard to this danger, and skilful in mteting it; for the sense of disgrace tbat comes to many children from the mere acquisition of this information is a blow to that peculiar delicacy of feeling which exists with the highest morality. In many cases the inherent force of home training preserves the child from radical injary ; but some children never escape the wrong that is done them, others are led into practices that seriously modify their usefulness while still others are ruined." The writer's conclusion is in effect that the reformation of society depends upon the perfection of the schools. "No one," he [says " who examines carefully the present political and social order can fail to notice that there is a spirit of eelf-seeking abroad that is destructive to the noblest virtues and the highest ethical conditions ; that vast numbers of citizens are controlled by the passion for getting rather than for giving. This is the dangerous element in the social problem. It is the bane of that partisanship that is ever ready to sacrifice the state for social supremacy ; it is tha moral obliquity of the pauper and the criminal, who are ever seeking to get something without rendering a fair and' just equivalent." But this, as the writer indeed admits, is the condition of things that has been produced by the schools — the answer, therefore, to bis question is evident. "Is the public Bchool laying

its foundation deep enough ? Has it s'ruck its roota into the moral nature of these thirteen million children ? " It has been fully tried, and found wanting. How can corruption be expected to purify itself. Nay, more, the proposal ia that the society which has been corrupted shall purify the corrupting source. The hope is plainly a forlorn one— the whole paper indeed exposes a condition of things which spcularisna cannot b« expected to rectify.

SPEAKING OUT.

Ottida does not like the New Woman. In the North American Review for May, she speakt strongly on the matter. Were we to say she speaks truly, we should perhaps risk a charge of rudeness. We shall, however, quote enough to enable oar readers to judge for them* selves. The New Woman, then, says Ouida, claims too much. She not only demands man's chair in the University and bis means of earning a living, but she continues to aek for his place in the omnibus and nia umbrella :—": — " She wants to get the comforts and concessions due to feebleness, at the same time as she demands tha lion's share of power due to superior force alone." "It is this overweening and unreasonable grasping at both positions," explains the writer, " which will end in making her odious to man, and in her being pro* bably kicked back roughly by him into the seclusion of a harem." But does not Mr Bider Haggard, in that book of his in which he describes women as ruling among a certain barbarous people, explain the pecessity that periodically devolves upon the men of killiog them off, just to teach them their due place in society, and to prevent an excess of their pride? Ouida is more merciful. To replace the veil upon a woman's face, nevertheless, has been found more difficult than to drown her in a sack. Hare is the writer's view of the use that woman actually makes of her time and opportunities. ''Woman whether new or old, has immense fields of culture untilled, immense areas of influence wholly neglected. She does almost nothing with the resources she possesses, because her whole energy is concentrated on desiring and demanding those she has not. She can write and print anything she chooses ; and she scarcely ever takes the pains to acquire correct grammar or elegance of style before wasting ink and paper. She can paint and model any subjects she chooses, but she imprisons herself in men's ateliers to endeavour to steal their technique and their methods, and thus loses any originality she might possess. Her influence on children might ba so great that through them she would practically rule the future of the world ; but Bhe delegates her influence to the vile school boards if she be poor, and if she be rich to governesses and tutors ; nor does she in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred ever attempt to educate or control herself into fitness far the personal exercise of such influence." Of tho following forecast we have already seen some slight traces in New Zealand, and we have little doubt that, ere Ion?, we shall witness its full justification :— " Woman in public life would exaggerate the failings of men and would not have even their few excellencies. Her legislation would be, as that of men is too often, the offspring of panic or prejudice ; and ehe would not put on the drag of common gens?, as man frequently does in publicatsemblies. There would be little to hope from her humanity, nothing from her liberality ; for when she is frightened she is more ferocious than he, and when she has power more merciless." Ouida does not believe in the unexceptional guilelessness of the •' devout Bex." " The error of the New Woman (as of many an old one)," she says, " lies in speaking of women as the victims of men, and entirely ignoring the frequency with which men are the victims of women. In nine cases out of ten the first to corrupt the youth is the woman. In nine cases out of ten also she becomes corrupt herself because she likes it." With the following passages we conclude. We refrain from comment. We have, in our day, dared much and confronted many foes — but here, as we have said, we leave our readers to form their own judgments. It is Ouida, herself a woman, who speaks. " The elegant epithet of Cow-woman implies the contempt with which maternity is viewed by the New Woman, who thinks it something fine to vote at vestries, and shout at meetings, and lay bare the spines of living animals, and haul the gasping salmon from the river pool, and hustle male students off the benches of amphitheatres." — " The New Woman reminds me of an agriculturist, who, discarding a fine farm of his own, and having it to nettles, stones, thistles and wire-worms, should spend his whole time in

demanding neighbouring fields which are tint W«, The New Woman will not even look at the extent of ground indisputably her own* whioh she leaves unweeded and until led," It would indeed be painting the lily to add a word to this portrait. After all a woman best understands her sex and best d ascribes it.

THB DUNEDIN Star, A DisOBAOB TO JOURNALISM.

We affirm that the Bunedin Evening Star, inasmnch as it bites an unscrupulous va&u, ostensibly residing at Keokuk in lowa, but possibly using this address to conceal his true residence in San Francisco—to forge and garble, and lie, respecung Catholic matters in America, is a disgrace to j ournaliem. Last week w e alluded to a case in which this man — " Ulysses " at be calls himself — and seeing that deceit and tricks were a chief note of the first bearer of the name, it is not inappropriately borrowed — gave what we assumed — and, as it already proves, rightly assumed to be a garbled account of a dispute which had taken place betwten the Rev D, 8. Phelao, editor of the Western Watchman and the Most Rev Dr Kain, Archbishop of St Louis. We have Dot M yet full particulars of the case, but we have, as this "Ulysses" Also had, for his Utter to the Star is dated April 21, and the article to which we allude was published in the Western Watchman of April 15 — the Be? D. 8. Phelan's apology to the Archbishop. " Ulysses," on the contrary, represented the rev editor as refusing to apologise. Here is the apology as published in the Watchman :— " At the request of the Apoitolic Delegate, and prompted by a sense of justice to the Most Rev J. J. Rain, we have signed and now publish the following:— 11 Public Apology and Retraction; I, Rev D. 8. Phelan, editor of the Western Watchman, also of the Sunday Watchman, hereby publicly disavow every utterance which I have publUhad or permitted to ba published in said papers derogatory to the person, or sacred office, of any bishop of the chuicb, and I hereby recall any reflection upon the Most Rev Administrator of this dioceße which has appeared in the columns of those papers and I promise to prevent any such publications in the future in the papers under my control. I also retract the false position assumed in th« article •ntitled address of the editor, and fully acknowledge the right given to bishops over papers that claim to be exponents of Catholic thought. David 8. Phelan. 8t Louis, Mo., March 30, 1894." So much then, for the garbled report concocted, no doubt to order, for the Star, and alto for a paragraph by which it was prefaced— relative to the Catholic Telegraph of Cincinnati and Archbishop Blder, a matter alleged to have occurred some years ago, and which, says this correspondent, " was one of those object lessons which justify the know-nothing contention against the Roman Catholic Church." Thia contention, we may remark in parsing, is justified in Dunedin by the determination of the worse portion of tb« Synagogue to stamp out Christianity among the rising generations.— ln the Evening Star of Thursday evening, we were given a second instalment of this Keokuk letter— if, indeed, it was written in Keokuk — for we have not forgotten the significant agreement between the garbled reports of Miss Elder's paper given by thia " Ulysses " and the San Francisco correspondent of the Otago Daily Times. In this second portion of the letter the anti-Catholic attack is repeated, and we are given some information — which we must necessarily take with many reservations— respecting an inquiry that was being mude into certain charges brought against Bishop Bonacam, of Lincoln, Nebraska, and of which, doubtless, in due time we shall hear the true details. Falsification, in one shape or other, is all we have to expect from " Ulysses." In this portion of the letter, moreover, we find another falsehood. It relates to the apostasy of a certain Father Lambert, a member of the Redemptonst Order, funnily described by this " Uiysßes " — a great authority on Catholic matters — as a priest of the • Redemptionist Order, a Jesuit." Here is what " Ulysses " tells us :— " Fathet Lambert is a man of great learning, intellectual ability, and is an orator. He is well known in the Wtst Indies, Canada, and the United States. He made the keenest, clearest, most logical, and masterful answer to tbe American agnostic Ingersoll in a series of open letters published about two years ago. Father Lambert has associated himself with Father O'Connor, an ex-priest, who has for many years conducted independent services in New York. It is his purpose to devote himself to evangelistic work." Not a bit of if . The apostate is altogether a different person. Father Lambert remains, what he has been for some time, editor of the Catholic Times, of Philadelphia. But of him more anon. Here is what the New York Freeman's Journal tells us of the apostate :— ••He has joined a company of abandoned ex-priests who call themselves 4 reformed Oatholica.' The ringleader is one • Father O'Connor.' The progeny owes its birth to the notorioua fake • Bishop " Macnamara, who recently went gunning for Catholics in tbe A.P.A. campaign, and who for his disorderly conduct was landed in gaol. Their themes are ' awful dieclosnraß ' of nuns and Sisters of Charity, the confessienal, abase of the Blessed Virgin and denunciations of tbe Pope. They are, by their own showing, men of foul tongues and impure minds. Tbiy are persons whose acquaintance no gentleman, Catholic or Protestant, would care to make, and an introduction to whom would be relented by every self-respecting lady as •n insult to her womanhood. It is amazing that any priest who has

J e^er bsrf any standing shonH tnmble do<?n to such squalid depths as thece." Bach then is the correspondent hired by the Evening Star to do its dirty work, and, we admit, performing it zealoußly and most appropriately. Oar contemporary ia not in a position to misrepre^ sent and belie Catholic matters in New Zealand. Exposure would be immediate and inevitable, and possibly rather expensive, if we may judge by past experiences. The expedient, meantime, of acting through an ame J<i»ui£o at a disUaee, »s we have s&id, makes oai contemporary a disgrace to journalism,

THE TRUB FATHEE LAMBEBT.

And now for the true Father Lambert — true in every sense of the word. " Ulysses " hardly suspected that the Tablet would know the truth of the matter, when he penned his eulogium of the good priest. His intention was to glorify a base apostate, and he haa ludicrously failed. Behold another, though a much diminished, Balaam. Father Lambert, then, ai described even by a virulent enemy, " is a man of great learning intellectual ability, and is an orator. He is well known in the West Indies, Canada, and the United States. He made the keenest, clearest, most logical, and masterful answer to the American agnostic Ingersoll in a series of open letters published about two yeara ago." Here, on the other hand, is what Father Lambert has written in the Philadelphia Catholic Times regarding the apostate. "By the grace of God we are not the man who renounced allegiance to the Catholic Church, To us the Catholic Church is Christianity in the concrete. Her divine origin and mission and the truths she teaches are as fixed in our mind as are the eternal truths of geometry. We cannot understand the logic of renouncing the Catholic Church and stopping anywhere short of atheism, of a denial of the supernatural or of absolute skepticism, Once Btart on the inclined plane and there is no logical restiog place till the gloomy depths are reached. Before these ultimate results we stand aghast and shrink as one shrinks who stands on a bottomless precipice. It is an awful thing to lose the faith, and those who forsake it never give their real reasons. There is always a dark mystery back of the act known only to the nnfortunate soul itself, a secret that the pervert never exploits on the lecture platform. We are not the man. We cling to the Charch of Christ with the eager grasp of the infant on its mother's breast, knowing that she is the appointed source of spiritual life as the mother is of physical life, and that through her come to us truth and grace and the merits of our Divine Redeemer. We have nothing to say about the prodigal son, who has betaken himself to a diet of husks, except that he may one day receive the grace to repent the Bcandal b» has given . His name is Van Lobeck, not Lambert ; the latter is his baptismal name. The reasons he has given for his act, so far as scrutable cause, suffer from intellectual blindness. He says there are quarrels and bickerings in the Church. That ie true, as it must be of ev.ry institution that has a human element in it, and as long as man has liberty and ambitions and passions. Would you seek the darkness because the sun shineß on sinners ? Would you forsake the apoatolate because Judas .betrayed bis Master? If you want to avoid quarrels and bickerings you mast go to the moon or some other place where human nature ia not. This attributing to the Church the delinquencies of men is like attributing to the law the crimes of the law-breaker. The fact that the Cnurch has withstood for eighteen hundred years persecutions without and persecutions within is one of the strongest proofs of her Divine origin and supernatural protection. She is the only institution on earth that is impervious to the vicissitudes of time and that has not been shattered by the iconoclastic hand of man," Nothing, we should say, need be added to that in explanation of the fail of the apostate— much less in vindicition of Father Lambert's position. It is worthy of the champion who encountered Ingersoll. Common honesty, we may add, would oblige our evening contemporary to quote this passage — but, then, if our contemporary were commonly honest, or, indeed, ordinarily decent, the falsehoods, garblings, and forgeries of " Ulysses " would not appear in its columns.

" Ulysses l " omissions

There are, by the way, some events of Catholic interest that recently took place ia the United States, but which we do not find mentioned by so eminent and watchful an authority on Catholic matters as the correspondent of the Danedin Star. Why, for example, has not our "Ulysses" reported the sermon recently preached at Harvard University, by Father O'Callaghan, a member of the Paulist order ? This was certainly something of note, the more bo, since the prieat had himself beea a student of the University, where, a few years before, he had taken his degree. Bemarkable was it also that a new departure was thus made in an institution that had originally bien endowed, among the rest, to discountenance the "practices of the Popish faith." The subject of Father O'Callaghan's sermon was "Rationalism in Faith," with which he dealt very ably. In arguing, for example, that the act by which we accept the life of faith is a rational act because it is an act which is necessary for the fulness of our life, he made ÜBe of the following striking illustration. "Suppose a child should be born into this world who refused all the achievements of the race, doubted all the

teaching! of hit masters, threw all books and manuscripts into the fire, who tried to rid himself of all which he would bs obliged to receive from others—would he ever become much more than a child f He could not rid himself of all, ht could not rid himself of himself; and he himself is largely a product of the race. But let him tven try to do it, and he will become a fool. By natural faith in our teachers, by faith in the achievements of the race, by iaith in booka, by faith in our fellow men— by faith only, we become worthy to be members of human sooiety. In like manner it is with our spiritual life. By faith, and by faith alone, can we be saved." Surely thiß Catholic event as signifying a new departure in a great Proteßtant institution might bt thought as interesting to non-Catholics, as anything of the kind reported in the columns of the Star. An event of quite another kind, but also of interest as exemplifying the nature of the evangelists among whom the unfortunate apostate spoken of by "Ulysses" has cast in bis lot, reaches us from Brooklyn. There two graduates of the " Reformed Catholic Church " assumed to be ex.priests, have recently cut a figure at a Turkish Bath establishment, where they were arrested on a charge of pilfering money from the pockets of the bathers. Marked coins had been set for the detection of the thief. "After a while, a stealthy hand was seen reaching for the decoy clothes and rifling the pockets, and the thief emerged from his compartment, and held counsel with bis companion. To the amazement of the proprietor, who had in the meantime called up the police, the detected thief and his companion were none other than the clerical gentlemen who had been patronizing him so faithfully while other customers were leaving on account of the repeated thefts committed in the establishment, The marked money was found in the pocket of the detected " Reformed Catholic," and he was held for trial, his companion was allowed to go for want of legal evidence but not for want of well-founded suspicion." Adds the New York Freeman's Journal of April 21 from whom we have taken our information :—•' The intelligent and extra patriotic congregation who have been accustomed to attend the Reformed Catholic Church in Cumberland street where this precious pair have been accustomed to declaim against the Catholic Church, will need to summon all their

"patriotism" to sustain them in the hour of adversity. But they have the consolation of knowing it is not the first experience of the kind, and that thej who choose the alleged ex-priest as their guide must be prepared at times to visit the police court if they would hear the voice of tkeir chosen leader." Surely thesa are matters that might deserve a corner in the letter of "Ulysßes." He might exercise his garbling powsrs too in making them seem less suggestive . There have besides been other matters of recent occurrence, notable conversions to Catholicism, for instance, of which he has made no mention, not even, as we might expect, in the way of a false denial. Thk object of our contemporary the Evening Star FBUITB OF in employing that respectable gentleman at Keokuk GODLEBSNESB or San Francisco, is, at the expense of the Catholic IN AMBBICA. Church, to glorify the godless schools, with a view of strengthening in New Zealand the determination to support them. We have already quoted, from a writer in the Atlantic Monthly, some details as to what these godless schools produce or foster. The San Francisco correspondent of the Otago Daily Timet, whom, if be be the same, we congratulate on a vast improvement in bis letter — gives ns some further particulars. " I assert briefly," he writes, "that the moral, political, and commercial life of the heterogeneous mass which constitutes the Unittd States of America is utterly rotten ; that its institutions are controlled by, and worked in the interests of, plunderers and knaves ; and that th» faintest mutterings of the coming catastrophe which will topple them all over in one awful ruin can even now be heard in the laad. . . . Thirty-five years of misgovern ment and corruption unparalleled in the history of mankind have done their work, and to-day we are gathering our household gods tround ns preparatory to the end." "There is something in the air," writes our Keokuk friend," that gives manhood and courage to the man. There is something in free schools that gives intelligence and drives away superstitioa and the fear of ecclesiastical assumption." But behold the influences of the American air, and the intelligence bred in American free schools. Their product, according to the correspondent of the Daily

[ Timet, is utter rottenness— moral, political, and commercial. Nay, this correspondent admits, in effect, that the schools partake in the common rottenness :— " Every large city," he Bays, "is so infamously misgoverned that it stinkg in the nostrils of civilised humanity. I challenge the production of any satisfactory evidence ia contravention of my statement. Only this week a lady epesking at the Wooieu's Cungresd aow buag held in this city, &c 'Needed Beform in our Public Schools,' said : 'The disinclination of our best citizens to serve on the School B >ard threatens the stability and efficiency of our public school system.' " The appeal to aoti-Catholic bigotry, therefore, made in support of godlessness by the correspondent of the JSveniug Star ia comprehensible. It is only by arousing evil passions that he can hop* to bolster up an evil system. Even he must perceive the conditioa of things which we have quoted from bit confrere of the Daily Timet. As to the atheistic Bynagogue, in which the godless schools have had their aouice, it recks but little of the destruction of a State when there is a question of stamping out Christianity, its ancient enemy. The Jews have survived the fall of many States and continued to flourish. Their worse part, though it may have lost its religious faith, has preserved the worldly wisdom of its people, and their power of adapting themselves to circumstances and turning them to a profit. However the world may wag, it is secmre of its future. The object and tactics of the alliance repre. sented by the Dunedin Star, in a word, are very palpable.

ODD 3 AND ENDS.

Wb find that the report to which we alluded last week, that Le Owon was not dead, had been iuued for a particular purpose. It was to the effect that a recent attempt on his dwelling place bad forced the spy to seek safety in flight. It was rather late, however, for such a report* Had the spy led the open life in London of which, since his death, we have been told, and were the Fenians and the Clan-na-Gael the men he represented them to be, it is evident that he would have been killed long ago. Some vengeful desperado would have made short work of him. The dilemma remains as we stated. If the man was bold he had offended no one, and there was no vengeance for

him to fear. If he was cowardly he had never played the part pretended by him. The intention of the report alluded to is evidently that of sustaining the spy's reputation, and, at the same time, continuing to defame tlrißh Nationalism. The Btone was knowingly aimed to kill two birds with one blow. But it was aimed too late ; the birds had flown. Prosaic, indeed, is the explanation of the tree-marking in India. Partly it was due to itching cattle, partly to tricky beggars— the' beggare, we may assume, had seen the fright caused by the cattle marks, and had thus entered into the spirit of the joke. The conclusion seems to be that beggars are plenty in India, and but little engaged with the work of their calling. The matter, meantime, recalls to us a scare that took place in Dublin very many years ago, some tine in the " thirties "it must have been. One morning the citizens got up, and 10, on the door of almost every house was chalked a cross. A panic was the result, and as usual there, it took something of a religious tone. Oood Protestants felt the •' Papist " knife at their throats ; good Catholics heard the rattle of the Belfast " kidney," and the Orange bullet. Timejpassed by, however, and nothing caiae of it. Long years after we heard people still wondering what had been meant and nipped in the bud— something they were persuaded it had been, but wbat they could not divine. The myßtery, indeed etill remains as to who the tricksters were, and how they escaped notice. They must have been numerous, for the number of houses was enormous, and they must have baen.'secret, for no one saw them at work— not |e»en the man who had borrowed the " key of the street." Indian cows and beggars have, it see me, been less sucoeiiful. We find another illustration of the progress made by Italy under existing circumstances and especially with regard to the education of her people, in the fact that the Government have been obliged by financial straits, to close six universities— those namely of Messina, Oatana, Modena, Parma, Siena, and Sassari— the number of students beiug respectively from 100 to 400. This, therefore, it an illustration of the manner io which the light of the revolution contrasts with the darknees of the Papal days. The institution* founded by the Popes or other Catholic patrons are oloied by th Q

men of the pariod, and yet the boast is that zeal for education lies with the latter. A chief characteristic of the day is false pretences, and in no c*Be has this been made more evident than in that of Italy. Italian universities, however, being now hot-beds of atheism, the ftodents sent adrift may possibly be none the worse. Some few years ago when the education craze in the colony was ■till warm with the blood of its youth and gushing prediction! hung oo every bash as to all it was about immediately to accomplish, we comforted ourselves and consoled our readers by the thought that the boy would save himself. They might bring the horse to the water, but they could not made him drink— not even of the Pierian spring. A case reported by the I/yttelton Times tends to bear out our prevision. It is that in which some 200 boys who were invited the other day to select their favourite from half-a-dozen famous personages — chose, by a majority of two more than double the number of votes given to all the others together J. L. Sullivan, the boxer. la his favour they rejected Howard, the philantrophist ; Gladstone, tb« statesman ; Livingstone, the explorer ; and Stonewall Jackson, the great soldier. They even rejected the more humane athlete, Searle, the oarsman. But, at least, it is proved that they have oot succeeded, aa was their boast, in making the boys prigs. Perfectly legitimate was it that boys, as boys, should choose the pugilist. What remains doubtful, is whether they are under such training as may lead them, when they have ceased to be boys, to choose better men and discriminate aright. If not, the prig, indeed, may be avoided, but the larrikin will rule in his stead. What may be the meaning of the outbreak in the French Chamber of Deputies against the attitude of England in Africa it is difficult to perceive. The part, nevertheless, taken in it by the Minister for Foreign Affairs gives it a more serious tone. It surely cannot enter into the brain of France to pick a quarrel with England singlehanded. The circumstances of the times, it is true, favour speculation. There is always the fact of the Franco-Russian alliance. It ia reported, too, that Turkey is inclined to protest against England's predominance on the Congo — possibly with reference to the dissatisfaction felt by her at the continued occupation of Egypt. Some talk there has also been of late in Spain, evidently aimed at the occupation of Gibraltar. An eminent Statesman declared that it was impoaaible that any one power should command the entrance to the Mediterranean. Others protested that the fortress must not be permitted to derive ita water-supply from Spanish sources. Is it possible that the Franco- Russian alliance should be increased by the

addition of Turkey and Spain— and that England consequently should b» driven to seek the aid of Germany and her alliep 1 It is at least possible to see the conditions of a very formidable war, If » however, France stands alone — this display in the Chamber may be regarded as a mere foolish outburst of ill temper on the part of individuals and nothing more. It is rather serious news that an epidemic similir to the great plague of London baa broken out in China. Considering that the Russian influenza is said to have originated there some apprehension may possibly be felt ia Europe. Mountains and deserts apparently oppose no obstacle to infection that travtls with the wind — and quarantines offer little chance of safety. Tat horrors of the plague though not so terrible as those of the Black Death some thret centuries earlier — and perhaps not much greater than those of the cholera in our own century — were, nevertheless, extrem*. It may well be a matter for praytr that so fearful a scourge may not return It is, meantime, aa agly illustration of the brotherhood of man — that the filth of a Chineag town — from which the pestilence is said to havt arisen — should seem capable of endangering life throughout the world. Times at the Vatican seem to be more than ordinarily troubled. Necessarily the Holy Father is ifnicted by the grievous condition of Italy, and the doubts, increasing in density, that hang over her future. That there is little prospect of amelioration, the resignation of Signor Crispi appears to indicate, proving, aa it probably does, the failure to amend the financial position or avoid national bankruptcy. Without, also, there in cause for serious uneasiness. In Hungary an attempt is beinsr made, with the support of the non-Catholic and revolutionary element in the country to pass an iniquitous marriage Bill aimed at the destruction of the family, and the demoralisation if possible, of the Catholic people. In France the Government m stem to have taken a new anti-Ca'holic departure. Possibly we shall* find that the signs of a desire for better things recently given by tbe Minister for Public Worship have incensed the atheistic population and made a counter-dtmonatration necessary. In any case a Ministerial protest has been entered against the interference of priests in politics and rudely rejecting the counsel of the Pope — or more probably his bare claims for justice. It seems strange, moreover— but so it is — that the Holy Father has inspired a strong personal enmity. It was first manifested in an article published in the Contemporary Review — and touching among other matters, on this very question of marriages in Hungary. The writer evidently desires to convey the impression that he is a Catholic— and possibly a Oatholie ecclesiastic

kk — of high standing. Blips, nevertheless, have occurred in his writings that seem to deny to him any such position, and point to his being an ordinary anti-Catholic Protestant. Though possibly he may prove to be some ecclesiastic jealous, like Dollinger, through disappointed aspirations to promotion, and, like him also, iuclined by jealousy and discontent towards Protestantism. His latest subject of attack is the Pope's encyclical on the s'udy of Holy Scripture, In this he discharges his accustomed bitterness. Whether the Pope knows of the existence of this personal enemy we cannot say. Probably, though he borrows importance from being allowed an utterance in the pages of a leading periodical, he is too insignificant for such distinction. In any case, the circumstances of the times prove that the devil is busy at his immemorial task of warring against the Church, and that, in private as well as in pablic, he continues to stir up anger ag&inst her venerable bead.