Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVI, Issue 24, 20 October 1898, Page 0

Current Topics

AT JIO ME AND ABROAD.

' Prophecy is a good line of business,' said the '98 Mark Twain, * but it is full of iisks.' Many centenary, doleful forebodings were issued with all friendliness and good intent regarding the effects likely to follow from holding '98 centenary demonstrations in a colony where Irishmen and Catholics form so small a fraction of the population. No colony in the British Empire has held more demonstrations in honour of the brave men — Protestant and Catholic alike —who were goaded into insurrection by military barbarities it "798. And yet not one of the doleful but well-meant proph; .ies has been fulfilled. On the contrary, non-Catholics were everywhere associated with Catholics on the committee ; Protestant chairmen were the rule ; Protestant colonists helped everywhere to fill the halls — at Milton the celebration may be said to have been mainly a Protestant one. In not one instance did any incident occur to mar the friendly feeling which was throughout one of the brightest and most delightful features of the centenary demonstrations in New Zealand.

One of the results of these demonstrations — two of which are reported elsewhere — was the knowledge imparted thereat of a cruciil period of Irish history wnich is little known or much misunderstood even among Irish people themselves — a period, too, the story of which reads like a romance. Like the Catholic Church, Ireland and her people only need to be better known in order to be better appreciated. Father O'Donnell, of Queenstown, has inaugurated a local movement in favour of the study of Irish history. It is a move in the right direction ; one of those good things that deserve — I had almobt said demand — imitation. About ninety-five per cent, of prejudice is based on good, hard, solid, audacious ignorance : the kind that produces adamantine dogmatism both of tongue and feeling. There is, among large classes in New Zealand, a certain prejudice against persons and things Irish. You may make wry taces. That will not alter the fact. And the fact is there hard, solidly palpable, and, unfortunately, not unknown even among the children of Irish parents. We may live it down. But that is merely a passive attitude. Better throw it down. And that is best and most easily done by spreading broadcast a knowledge of the history and traditions of the Irish people. Our Scottish cousins have set us the example. What they have done for their country's history and traditions, why may not we? And the time is surely ripe. Speaking of his early journalistic struggles zola. Zola is reported to have said that • for ten cruel years I fed the furnace of journalism with all that was best in me — leaves cast to the wind — flowers fallen in the mire — a compound of what is excellent, indifferent, and bad, tossed together in the common manger.' Zola's works, ' feeding the furnace of journalism,' is good. They would have been put to better use had they fed the furnace attached to the Press boiler. Ignorance may be timorous. It may also A newspaper be, as Daniel says, 'audacious.' 'John,' homily. said a Scottish minister to a village ' natural,' 'why don't you work? You can at least herd. 1 'Me herd ! I dinna ken corn frae gress.' That was a case of timorous ignorance. The writer of a leading article in last week's Lyttelton Times furnishes an instance of the ' audacious ' kind. One would have thought that by this hour of the day Pope Leo's ideas on Socialism were sufficiently

understood, at least by people who set up to instruct the public thenu >on. These ideas are laid down with sufficient clearness in his Encyclical on Labour and in various of his Allocutions. They are crystallised, so to sp^ak, in the practical interest which he takes in the great Catholic profit-sharing business of M. Leon Harmel. The writer in question takes the Pope to task for an alleged exhortation to 'an assembly of wellmeaning persons [pilgrims] of no particular account in their own country,' to ' trust to the Christian Democracy and to avoid revolution and Socialism.' The writer takes it for granted that the words were actually uttered. He then proceeds to show that the Pope must be utterly ignorant of even the meaning of true Socialism,' and, generally speaking, chews up Leo and spits him out of his mouth. Almost in the same breath he discovers that the ' true Socialism ' of which the Pope is utterly ignorant ' 'is really the same thing as the Christian Democracy which he (the Pope) commends for the solution of all our industrial problems.' One discovery trips the heels of another. The Times writer finds that he and the Pope are, after all, in disagreement about nothing at all. ' Probably,' he concludes, ' when we are able to read the full report of his Holiness's remarks we shall find that, with the wisdom which generally marks his utterances, he has distinguished between the Socialism which aspires to the collective welfare and that which wantonly masquerades under the cloaks of anarchy and Nihilism.' For a one-sided affair it ends wonderfully like the Brentford duel, the parties to which ended a fierce dispute by firing their pistols into the harmless air. The Times writer got an elementary notion of State Socialism into his hear). But he made too much fuss about it. It was not worth the airing it got. War, like litigation, is a costly luxury. It counting drains the blood of the men, the tears of the the women, and the treasure of the nation. cost. The Daily News says :—: — ' The latest rough estimate of the cost of the war to Spain make it £120,000,000 sterling. It is probable not above the mark, for the drain of treasure, like the drain of blood, has been going on for years, both in Cuba and the Philippines. The wonder is where the money comes from. Who would have thought the old decaying State had so much, either of blood or of treasure, to waste? The mind stands almost appalled at the thought of all the good that might have been done with this money if it had been applied to purposes of peace and progress.' * * * These figures are, comparatively speaking, mere bagatelles. The great Civil War of the sixties cost the Northern States £960,000,000, and the South £460,000,000. According to the eminent statistician, Dr. Engel, the Crimean war cost £340,000,000; the brief Austro-Prussian war of 1866, £66,000,000; the Italian war of 1859 about the same; the Franco-German war at least £500,000,000; and the RussoTurkish war of 1877 over £200,000,000. Adding the Indian Mutiny, and the Zulu, Afghan, and other minor wars of the last fiity years, we reach a total expenditure of about £3,000,000,000 and about 2,260,000 lives. To use Napoleon's words, war is, indeed, 'a trade of barbarians.' The Catholic Telegraph tells a story of a an easy berth, youth who wrote a letter to the editor of a Catholic paper asking him for an easy 'berth.' The editor replied as follows: — 'You cannot be an editor; do not try the law ; let alone all ships, shops, and merchandise ; abhor politics ; don't practice medicine ; be not a farmer nor a mechanic ; neither be a soldier nor a sailor. Don't work ; don't study ; don't think. None of these are easy. Oh, my son ! You have come into a hard world. I know of only one easy place in it, and that is the grave.'

A MILITARY CONSPXRAC\.

Dreyfus, on the lonely rock in mid-ocean, the Devil's Island, still wields unconsciously a mighty power in France. Whatever the merits of the case may be, the means employed to get him out of the way — forgery, etc. — must tarbrush with eternal disgrace the high-placed army officials who were pai ties to their adoption. The agitation for and against a revision of Dreyfus's sentence has at length resulted in something like a crisis. A military conspiracy is the latest sensation reported by the cables — a sort of barrack-square revolution. Its object is stated to be to overthrow President Faure, to prevent a revision of the Dreyfus case, and to end, by the cogent argument of bayonet, Lebel rifle, and machine-gun, the fierce criticisms to which the army has of late been not unnaturally subjected. Since the Great Revolution France has been content to rest for a time only and then to heave and struggle again. The ringing changes began with the Restoration in 1815. Fifteen years of relative calm ended in the Revolution of 1830, otherwise known as the Revolution of the three days of July. The King, Charles X., was deposed. Louis Philippe succeeded him. The year 1848 saw another Revolution, and the establishment of the second Republic. The year 1852 witnessed the founding of the second Empire, under Napoleon 111. The defeat of Sedan and the surrender of the Emperor on September 2, 1870, ended, for the present at least; the Napoleonic dynasty. The Red Republicans had, in 1871, a short and frenzied supremacy in Paris, which was m.nked by a war against religion, by the murder of Archbishop Darboy and many others, and by the wanton destruction uf the Tuileries, the Hotel de Ville, and whole quarters of the city. In the following year, 1872. the third republic was founded, und rM. Thiers. In 1887-8 there was a ground-swell of popular enthusiasm for the revanche against Germany which might easily have made General Boulanger, had he been an able man. dictator. Time alone can tell what the present movement may result in. But, according to the usual calculations, another revolution or coup d'etat is already overdue.

CONSUMPTION.

Henry Kirke White yearned for death by consumption — ' Gently, most, gently on thy victim's head, Consumption, lay thine hand ! — let me decay Like the expiring lamp, unseen, away, And softly go to slumber with the dead.' But Henry was a poet, and he softly slumbered with the dead long before] Dr. Koch discovered the bacillus of consumption, and crowned him a new king ol terrors. It took a long look and a big microscope to bring the consumption bacillus out ot his coy retirement ; but here he is now, and it war is sla> ing its thousands, he is slaying his tens of thousands. In this small Colony, in the jear 1896, consumption slew no fewer than 523 persons. Over one half of that number (2SB) had soul and body cut adr ift from each other by the microscopic enemy between the .'iges of 15 and 35. A Cahfornian expert, Dr. Cothran, wiites on the subject in the Arena. His article is sufficiently 'creepy,' but with an occasional glint of comfort here and there at long interval-, like the traditional raisins in a boarding-houbC plum-pudding. * * * Dr. Cothran writes : — ' There are more deaths annually from this disease in California — the consumptive's p.iradise — than have been occasioned by yellow fever trroughout the United States during the last st venleen 3'ears. There are more deaths from consumption in New York City alone in two years than have been caused by smal!-pox in the entire country since the foundation of the Government. In any town o! 5000 inhabitants there are yearly more deaths fiom consumption than there have been caused by Asiatic cholera in all the United States for the past twenty-three years. 'Consump.ion is not a hereditary disease in the sense in which medical men use the term heredity in such troubles as gout, insanity, and various nervous complaints, which are transmitted trom parent to ofTspnng. Tuberculosis is an infectious disease. It is " catching," l.ke measles, whoopingcough, and diphtheria. One member ot a family gives it to the others successively, until it often wipes out a household. The tubercle bacillus is an exceedingly small, low form of vegetable life, which grows best upon <mim.il tissue, thriving only at temperatures near that ot the; normal human body. Its invasion, lodgment, and growth in the lungs of man or other animals cause the diM-a^c consumption. 1 his germ is also the cause oi fistula in nno, ■-cio'ula, lupus, spinal diseases, hip-joint diseases, and ceitam incui.ible indignant ulcers resembling cancer. The tubercle b-icillus contains the seeds of its own life in the form ol exuemely minute bodies called spores. It multiplies with inconceivjble rapidity. • * ♦ ' Professor George Nuttall of California, now teacher of bacteriology in Heidelberg, Germany, has invented a method of counting the bacilli. He estimates that a person with moderately advanced consumption will expectorate from one to

five billion tubercle bacilli in twenty-four hours. With these myriad million seeds thrown broadcast by the wayside, is it astonishing that a few should survive and take root in another person's lung?' The American expert declares that only public and drastic measures will ever successfully combat this dread disease. He advocates nothing less than the establishment of a sort of national Molokai for the segregation and treatment of tuberculosis. 'Such a sweeping measure as here urged, however, should be put upon the broad ground of public health and necessity, just as seemingly harsh restrictions are imposed in quarantine against smallpox and yellow fever.' Despite medical progress, consumption is declared by him to be increasing faster than the increase of population should warrant. When, however, the public at large and municipal bodies are sufficiently conscious of the nature and dangers of infection, such private and public measures will be taken to stamp it out as will postpone indefinitely the formation of even such a pleasant prison-home as Dr. Cothran advocates. * * ♦ As in the case of leprosy, cancer, etc., the heart of Catholic charity has gone out to the consumptive. Father Gamier has devoted the best of his varied energies to the Association for the Care of Consumptives. The pride of place and honour in the treatment of consumptives is, however, held by the Sisters of Marie-Auxiliatrice. Their headquarters arc in Paris. They have a home for the weakly and anaemic at Chnmproseve, and magnificent establishments for comsumptives at Villepinte and Hyc-res, where Dr. Koch's tubercul.n and all the latest remedial discoveries in the field of tuberculosis are applied, and remarkable cures have been effected from time to time. A tuberculosis Congress was held in Paris some time ago, and so much attention is being devoted to this silent destroyer that the near future may, we trust, bring forth a remedy.

Thus the cable-man: — 'The Archbishop of of course not. Canterbury, Primate of the Anglican Church, has issued a charge in which reference is made to the sacrament of Holy Communion. Dr. Temple does not define the nature of the Real Presence.' Of course not. He dares not define it. One section of his subjects believe in a Real Presence, another in a Real Absence. Each party will continue to believe just as it pleases, and will accept only such definitions as will favour its particular ' view.' For ' outside of the Church,' as Dr. Brownson says, ' there may be views of truth — theories, opinions ; but she holds and teaches the truth itself.' The Anglican Church is a compromise between Puritanism and Catholicism. In so far as it is a compromise it must ever be at daggers drawn with the measured words, clearcut and explicit thought, and distinct phrase implied in the word ' definition.'

A BL4CK OU rLOOK.

While a lively controversy was going on in the Auckland Herald over the relaxing grip of the non-Catholic denominations in New Zealand on the masses of their people, a writer was sending the following hne^ to the well-known American Magazine, the Arena: — ' Two years ago four Brooklyn clergymen met, and, discussing informally church matters, one ot them, a rector of one of the largest Episcopal churches in the city, said : 'Gentlemen, I should like to know if my church is exceptional. We have not a single working niin in our membership.' Tiv; pastor of a Dutch Reformed church said : ' That is true of mine' The pa>tor ot a large Congregational church said : ' We have one carpenter in out church, but not a single serving man or woman.' The pastor of a Presbyterian church said : 'We have some master workmen who employ l.ibonr, but of what would be called a working man we have not one in our church or congregation.' ' The-ie statements/ siys the writer of the article in the Arena, ' represent the same denominations in every large city in these United States to-day. " How to reach the masses " is now one of the great problems of our time. It is a problem lhat the statesman, the churchman, and the philanthropist must grapple with. Class churches can never solve the problem of our civilisation.' # « * * Men who have given close study to the subject,' says the same writer, ' admit that less than one-half of the population of the United States profess to be church-goers, and half of those who protess to be church-goers have not darkened the doors of a dun eh for years. It is' estimated that only 33 per cent, of the population attend church of any kind. The working classes are indifferent, if not decidedly hostile, to our fashionable churches, and our fashionable churches in turn seem indifferent to the temporal and spiritual welfare of those classes. Yet there are many noble exceptions.' Greater iNew York has a population of close on 3,200,000. Only about 250,000 of these go to church on Sundays. This is better than Berlin. But it is, in all reason, quite bad enough. The writer in the Arena thus chalks up the causes of this decline of church-going in the

United States: (i) superfluous sects; (2) extreme individualism [private judgment gone mad] ; (3) class distinctions in the churches ; (4) the rented pew system ; (5) the war of -s^eds ; (6) dry and artificial sermons. He might have placed I^kh up in the list the mad rush after the almighty dollar. Wr As regards Catholics : We have no warring sects within our fold ; no individualism in religion, extreme or otherwise ; no class distinctions in our churches ; our central act of worship is something more than a mere sermon — it is the great Sacrifice of the New Law ; and in the rare cases where the rented pew system is in vogue, it has not been found to effect a dropping off in attendance, an ample supply of free seating being provided for the poorer members of the congregation. •' There are no rented pews in St. Peter's in Rome and never have been. Almost any Sunday you can see six or seven thousand workingmen under the dome of St. Peter's. Prince and peasant, rich and poor, high and low, mingle within the walls of that famous temple. That magnificent edifice is free to all without distinction of class, race, or colour. There at least we can see thorough equality.'