Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 5, 1 February 1900, Page 1

Current Topics

A T HOME AND A It HO t />

ki \dkrs of Russell's oi Foi bc-s\ or Dr. Ryan's suMfi descriptions of the battlefield, the captured KPALi'i n s casemates nf a besieged town, or the horrors of oi the militarx hospital will r i^e tioin their perusal war. with at least a sneaking sympathy for the

Peace Society and a strong contempt for Lord Raines's dictum that an oi casional war is a real blessing, because ot the valour and endurance that it stimulates. 'A fire,' said grufi old Dr. Johnson to the noble Lord, ' might as well be considered a goud thing. There are the bravery and the address of the fiiemen in extinguishing it ; there is much humanity exerted in sax ing the hxos and property of the pooi sufferers. Yet, alter all this, who cm say that a fire is a good thing '' ' Some of the most atrocious agonies of the battlefield fall to the lot of the xvounded who are left unaided to drag the slow hours of suftering under beating rain or free/ing blast or burning sun or through the lingering watches ol the night. The story told by the Tunes correspondent of a xvounded officer at Elandslaagte lifts a little corner of the curtain and gives us a sufficiently heartbreaking glimpse of the horrors of war. This officer was, says the account before us, ' badly xvounded at the close of the fight and lay on the ground between the txvo forces when a Sergeant Murphy pluckily picked him up and rallied the men, xxho were sutlering ftom a momentary panic. A doctor dressed his xvound and, putting his helmet under his head for a pillow and giving him a blanket taken from a dead Boer, left him to attend to others. Night came on, and he is not likely to forget that night whilst he lives. In addition to the agony which his xvound gave him, he had two sh.irp stones running into his back. He was soaked to the skin and bitterly cold, and he had an awful thirst. The tort ents of rain never stopped. On one side ol him xvas a Gordon Highlander in raving delinum, and on the other side a Boer who had his leg shattered by a shell and who vent to the most heartrending cries and groans. At daybreak the wounded officer was taken to the nearest railxvay station on a " doolie." was dropped twice on the xvay, and fainted each time. His xvound xvas dressed seventeen hours after he had been hit, and the beef tea then given to him was the first food he had tasted for twenty-seven hours.' Here is, indeed, a lurid little pictuieof the barbarous realities of war which outnxals the painted horrors of Witrt/'s pictures in the famous Musee at Brussels. The Peace Society might do worse than have 'June* story of the wounded British officer entcied among its stock of leaflet, literature.

Dr. Li ster, Bishop of Achonry (Ireland), Tin: Catholic deserves well ot humanity if there is an) tommy truth in Ruskin's motto that a mrin who sees

VI KINS

a thing clearly and tells it to others in plain

terms is a benefactor of his kind. Speaking at Wolverhampton (England J recently he drew a forcible contrast between the attitude of the present English Government towards, the Catholic body in Ireland and that of the Irish Catholic soldier towards the British Hag in South Africa. He reierred to the refusal — at the clamour ot a noisy minority in the north-east corner ot the country— of a University in which young Catholic Irishmen might graduate without shipwreck to their faith or danger to their religious piinciples ; and this, too, at a time when two costly and worthless and inoperative State-supported colleges cumber the ground at Cork and Galway, and aie being maintained in luxury for the benefit ot a small clique by money drawn Irorn the pockeis of the taxpayers. ' Kven Mr. Balfour ("-aid Dr. Lyster), and he has been our best tnend, has admitted that it is to the tact of our being Catholics he attributes the lailuie to give a University to the Irish race. Over there on the Alncan veldt, on the 2uth of October, the Dublin Fusiliers — a band of beardless bo_\s — sturdily stormed the fire-swept hillside at disastrous Glencoe, and while the dying General was borne away on his litter, as

his life-blood xvelled from his mortal wound, his dying ears were housed by a ringing Irish cheer, his mist-covered eyes were gladdened as they looked their last on those Irish soldiers box, s scaling and cai rx ing the hill. And these were Irishim n. and these xvcre Catholics; and England points to them as her glory with one hind, xvhile with the other she crumples and ci ushrs the charter that would give justice to their brothers in their lai-off motherland. A few weeks have passed since the lush Fusiliers stepped on the African coast. They numbered rrore than iooo strong ; only 300 now remain — "all that is lelt of them, lett of ten hundred." All the rest are gone — killed, wounded, captured, after their last cartridge was fired — all gone doxyn — the brave boys of the '• Faugh-a-ballaghs," fighting lor the English flag, battling for England's name. And these are Irishmen! And these are Catholics! And while their shattered corpses are mouldering shroudless and colhnle^s in Alncan gt ivo% and while their wounded bodies aie tossing in camp beds m Alncan hospitals, and while they sit grimly, without arms, prisoners of the Boers, the Empire for which they fought and sultered and died is denying- to their comrades and their countrymen, not merely some paltry prix dege, but the God-given right which every other nation under God's blue sky gives to and provides for its humblest citi/en and its lowliest child.'

' My sympathy (he said) is for the poor Dublin boys, for the hardy heroes of our Rifle Brigade, for the shattered survixois of the Irish Fusiliers, fighting fiercely amidst the foremost at the front. My sympathy is with our own faithful lads of the Connaught Rangers, most of whom were summoned suddenly from their Connaught firesides, many of whom shall never see thtir Lonnaught hill-. My sympathy is for that poor widow xx horn I looked upon la-t night as I hastened over here, when I saw Kit wan and worn and wistful face, and loosened, dU'ievt lied hair lifted by the xvind , xvhen I saw her wringing her poor, thin hands in the agony ot her agony ; waen I heard her shriek, xvild, weird, and woeful, go up to the blackness of the night because they had told her her only son xvas missing - -her only son xvas gone, stretched upon the African hill-side, with a bullet through his heart.'

Some explanations don't explain — to any

\N great extent. Mark Twain, for instance, explanation once went to witness a Thibetan dramatic thvt performance. A Chinaman explained the pxruiNS. pirce to him in ' pidgin EnglUh 'as it went

along. '1 he play," said Mark, ' was obscure enough without the explanation ; with the explanation added, it xva^ opaque.' It is a pleasant, though by no means very u^ual, expeiience to alight across an explanation of things which makes them clear in a brief, practical, and business-like way We have si ldom seen more ot meaning compressed into a brief compass on a point of Catholic ritual than in the following excel pt from the Catholic Wn/chm.m, a weekly paper published in Madras (India) : — ' See those two little Tamil-speaking boys on either side of the priest. Transport them to another altar, in any part of the globe, and they are ready to serve Mass in Latin. Transport the priest himself to some alien land, where his fellowpriest lies sick and lonely. In Latin will he console, help, and absolve his brother. We once made part of a large congregation in a cathedral in Burmah — a congregation composed, in great part, of Burmese, but with a sprinkling ot English, French, Italians, Portuguese, natives ot India. We should have been unable to converse with each other outside the church, but once before the altar all joined in the Benediction service, ending, with a glorious chorus, m the Laudate DuHiiiium unities It was a thrilling proof of the unity of the Church. Supposing Mass had been said in English in England. How it would have been altered ! We can hardly understand the English of a few centuries ago. Spelling and meaning have alike changed. English varies even in different parts of England ; and Londoners find it hard to understand the dialect of the shires. Had the Church made use of living

languages, the words of her liturgy must have been changed, time after time, in every country. Now, the M iss, the form used in the administration of the Sacraments, the hymn,, all our glorious inheritance fion the saints and their M -ister is crystallised in Latin, is unchangeable, is imp rviotii to err or , is firm and sure as the rock on which the Crurcli is b.ult '

A curious mistake is reported from tint HorvriNc tub little Mecca of Victorian Orangeism, IJrunsaui.EN. wick. At a public meeting 111 thai -.eething suburb one Mr. Hamilton was called upon to speak. He is an orator of the prosy and never-ending style, and his party, too, arc not thought over-well ot by the Brunswickers. They refused to listen to him, and forthwith proceeded to make the rafteis ring with the stiainsoi ' Soldiers of the Queen.' But Mr. Hamilton wis not to be altogether balked. At the close oi the song lie called for ' three cheers for the Oueen.' ' Some of the atuhemv (s i> s the Ailvomte) thought that he called for " cheers for McLean," his political chiet, and accordingly hooted most lusiilv. When they found out their mistake they donned sackcloth and ashes for the offence they had unwittingly committed.' However, the brethren have rrnny a time and o)t hooted hi_r Majesty's name in fierce earnest, and without the subsequent rep ntance that marked the open meeting at Brunswick. Most reader;, ol English history will easily recall trie foul plot of the ' Loyal Orange Institution ' to set aside the succession of the Princess (now Queen) Victoria in favour of thr-ir Imperial Grand Master, the infamous old roue, Ernest, Duke of Cumbeil'-ind. The plot, too, had been carried so lar that it would have succeeded but for the activity of Mr. Hume, the vigorous support which he received from the Irish Catholic Members of Parliament, and the shock of deep alarm which the discoveiy of the conspiracy aroused in the minds of the British people. The revelation of what is now known in history as the Cumberland Conspiracy led din ctly to the suppression ot the Society in 1536. It was reconstituted in I S4 s • During the agitation for Disestablishment in Ireland the brethren again reached a high pitch of fury against the person ot the Oueen. At a meeting of the faternity at Newbliss on March _>(),'" IS6S, a clergyman known as the Rev. ' Flaming ' Flanagan declared, amidst frantic cheers, that it the Disestablishment Bill received the royal assent they would ' kick the (J icon's crown into the Boyne.' This saying became the witenword of the Otangcmen during the remainder of the agitation. At the s-nnj Newbliss meeting Mr. Flanagan likewise said, amidst vehement applause : ' We must toll our most graciou-. Ojc n that if she break her oath [ by signing the l)isestabhs~,m nt Bill] she has no longer a claim to the crown.' Other members of the fraternity — even Grand Lodge otlkers — m ide use o! language quite as forcible during the stirring tliys of iftoS and 1869. In a much later dly and nc irer to our own shires, Queen Victoria has been made the object of coarse attic k by the brethren — as, tor instance, at the X) neton July demoiisti it ion in ISSB, at the Rochester demonstration in iS<>}, and in the columns of the Vutonnu Standard, tho otgin ot the Orange lodges in these colonies. E\-pricst Sl.itl.ery i, one of thi bright particular adornments ol this disloyal and turbulent association, and it is at their imitation that he and hi-> tcrmle companion have inflicted their presence on our shores. ' l'neir purpose,' says the Auckland Observer, 'is to rnkj m the dollars, and rake them in quickly, and when this rs done they will hurry off to some other crty and stir up the evil passion, oi bigotry and religious fanaticism.'

The Jews, like tho Catholics, h no long been THE ritual — though in lesser variety — :he butt ol gross murder calumnies such as those against which, as ch\rgi,. Napoleon once said, even innocence lo^es

courage. We reter in particular to the charge of ritual murder, which has been recently revived in connection with an alt iir that took place some tun? ago at Polm, in Bohemia. At a moment when New Zealand Catholics are the object of a systematic campaign of degrading falsehood, we can recall with pleasure the fact that their organ, the N.Z. Tablet, was, of all Christian and secular papers in the English-speaking world, the first to prove, by a lengthy and detailed appeal to the facts of history, the utter falsehood and malignity of the foul blood accusation tint has time and again been flung at those who are of the Jewish race and iaith. Our efloit in the cause oi truth and justice has been m ide the subject of grateful recognition in the columns of the Jewisli Chronicle. Since then other Catholic paper-, — and notably the London Tablet and the Weekly Register — have descended into the arena to do battle for the slandered and outraged members of another faith. We have now before us the Latin texts of the various Papal Bulls referred to in our article as bearing upon the odious charge of ritual murder brought against the Jews. They are the following: Bull of Innocent IV., July 5, 1247, addressed to all the archbishops and bishops of Germany ; Bull of the same Pope, in the same year, to the Archbishop of Vienne ; Bull of Innocent IV., September 25, 1253; Bull of Gregory X., October 7, 1272; Bull of Martin V., February 20, 1422; Bull of Nicholas V., 1447; Bull of

Paul 111., May 12, 1550, addressed to the bishops and clergy of Hungary, Bohemia, and Pol md. X teh and all of these qinhfy the charge of 1 1t.11 il murder against the Jews a-, a dovvn-no-ht calumny. Mr. 1 ho'n is Canning, in a letter to the London Tablet, adds to tlu> list the 11 line of ,m earlier Pope ■ dre^ory IX —who ».h the immediate prcdeces or oi Innocent IV., and who not alone displayed a strong sense of justice towards the Jews, but also extended his powerful protection to their confrires in Kn<rl,nul at a time when the unhappy people Vvc.c L^m^ p!.;;-.d^; i. t^r'-i'M, nnrl "v,,. n p,, f to ( \ eA \h hy the worthless King John. In connection w.th thi -. subject wittily state that the 'jean,/, Cluu.^L ol D^.c.nUi °, cont lins > translation of the I'linvin granted by the Sult.i.i Abd 00l Medjid to the I -.t .n_la< s in hi. Kmpite in N'ovcm >er, 1840, on the occasion of the u'Liulc-cnco ol the bloxl accusation at 1) ima^cus ,md Rhodes. Were we nH, by sad experience, iwaie ol the marv. lions gullibilii y of la 1 I'uism, we should be amazed th it such eh ir^c-, could be curicnt, aim >st at the close of the nin> teeth centm y. Persistent relut ition, and the circulation of p'Tbi^tent refutation are the only means ot at last removing moss-grown charges which have come to rank, in a way, among the settled convictions of any considerable class. Kn^lish-speaking Catholics have, by this means, outlived many an evil tale. And for this they owe more to Gother, Challonpr, and Milner than most of them are aware of. Given only a due and full exposure of their discreditable antecedents we shall in like manner witness the passing of the unfortunates who turn si iiider-monging into a source of personal revenue. And thus the words ot f/udibras will be verified in our case, and

' . . . Those poltroons that fling dirt, Will but defile, but cannot hurt ; And all the honour they have won, Or we have lost, is much at one '