Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 22, 31 May 1900, Page 1

Current Topics

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

Theological fiction is well enough in its an Auckland way for religious weeklies or monthlies. It newspaper is a rather risky ' line ' for the secular Press story. — and prudent editors will shy it over the fence, especially if it is at the same time controversial in purpose and offensive in form. Of this latter kind is a story entitled ' The Purple Robe ' now running as a serial in the Auckland Herald. For those who have followed the literary history ot the past few years, it is enough to know that the story is from the pen of that Pope-c.it ing, Jesuit-devouring Cornishman, the Rev. Joseph Hocking. He is a clergyman of the Free Church, and for some years past has been notorious for the amazing depth and credulity of his bigotry against the Catholic Church and her religious Ordets. Only a few months ago he committed himself to ceitain "-tauments of f.iU regarding his Jesuit-stalking expedition to In land w Inch 1 Hided him in a rather unpleasant predicament. He has evidently been a constant and not discriminate de\ourer of the literary garbage of cheap no-Popery screamers, and his too much cony( rse with mean and lurid writers ot this class led to the publiliration of that extraordinary anti-( athohc, anti-Jesuit romance, The Scarlet Woman — this being, as all the world knows, the title still given by the Orange fraternity and suchlike violent intolerants to the Catholic ( hurch. The writer introduces into his book the ' rescued nun ' and the horns and tail and hooves and much of the other must) paraphernalia ot the old no-Popery penny show. * * * The later perpetration] of the Rev. Joseph is of a piece with The Scarlet Woman. If is controversi.il through and through; its plain purpose is the promulgation of the older and cruder Protestant ideas regarding ' Popery ' ; from the beginning it has been hacking away persistently at Catholic doctrine ; and it is peppered liberally with oifensive questionbegging epithets regarding the ' superstition,' ' idolatry,' etc., of the Church of Rome. Like most of his class, this reverend romancer betrays a generous — not to say amazing — ignorance of the Catholic doctrines which he dares to condemn, and much of the story is occupied with the cheap theological clap-trap and misrepresentation which one finds in nauseous abundance in tracts of a certain kind. The first essential of good fiction is truth to nature. Hocking's ' Purple Robe 'is based on falsehood, inculcates falsehood, and falsehood runs all through it like the trail of a serpent. Sir Arthur Helps says in one of his admirable essays :—: — In considering the subject of fiction, the responsibility of the writers thereof ia a matter worth pointing 1 out. We Bee clearly enough that historians are to be limited by facts and probabilities ; but we are apt to make a large allowance for the fancies of writers of fiction. We must remember, however, that fiction is not falsehood. If a writer puts abstract virtues into book-clothing. and sends them upon stilte into the world, he is a bad writer ; if

he classifies men. and attributes all virtue to one class and all vice to another, lie in a false writer. . . , He may be true to his own fancy, but he is false to Nature. A writer cannot, of course, get beyond his own ideal ; but at least he should see that he works up to it , and if it is a poor one, he had better write histories of the utmost concentration of dullness, than amuse us with unjust and untrue imaginings. But the Rev. Joseph Hocking is false to Nature, without being amusing; the ideal he sets himself in his fiction is a poor one; and his imaginings are an outrage on truth and charity. ' Ihe Purple Robe' is nothing more or less than a vulgar tract m a (hrn disguise, and its perusal can only give grave oftence to Catholic readers and promote ill-feeling between creed and creed. The Rev. Mr. Hocking probably Hung out Ins tinselled theological clap-trap to catch unwary Papists just as your fisherman hooks the gullible mackerel and Inrracouta w ith such unsubstantial and deceptive bait as bits of threadbare and gaudy rag. But we are surprised at the Herald turning tract-distributor for the bigoted little minister of Bumlf). 'The story is through and through an insult to C .itlioln s, and they should take effective steps to prevent its en mining in their homes. The remedy lies with themselves.

Last week the ugly story of the Rongahere the outrage entered upon a fresh — perhaps its Ro\(,\iihßK final — stage, when it was turned over and oi'iKVGi discussed by the Otago Branch of the N.Z. a<.\in. Educational Institute. Our readers are probably familiar with the miserable facts that have given such an evil savour to the name of Rongahere. That now notorious district -' remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow ' — is plagued with the presence of a knot of fanatics to whom the Pope is the Man of Sm, the Catholic Church the Scarlet Woman of Revelations, and a Catholic civil servant as great a calamity as the bubonic plague. In our issue of October 12, 1890, we said: 'The appointment of a Catholic lady teacher — Miss Annett — to the Rongahere school aroused the fury of the interesting little menagerie of local intolerants. The sense of chivalrous respect for woman is strongest in the manly Christian man. It diminishes in proportion as you approach the savage state. In the Rongahere bigot, or knot of bigots, it has quite vanished — if it were ever there. The first outrage on Miss Annett was a disgusting and indescribable one which a clean savage would not have committed, and from which her sex ought to have protected her at the hands of even the lowest white. It was followed by a running fire of persecution that culminated in the malicious burning of the school and the complete destruction of the teacher's effects — valued at £s°-' These, we may add, were uninsured. But the matter did not end there. A Papist teacher, however efficient, was not to be tolerated in Rongahere. The young lady was still threatened and terrorised in what the Otago Daily Times characterised as • disgraceful manner ' until she was compelled to resign and seek safety in another district where human beings live and where an unprotected Catholic girl is permitted to earn an honorable livelihood in peace.

The worst feature in this bad business was the manner in which the vile authors of this ' reign of terror at Rongahere ' (as the Dunedin livening Star termed it) — who appear to have been well known — were shielded by the local residents from the legal consequences of their savage persecution of a defenceless girl whose only crime was her profession of the Catholic faith. Through this cowardly or criminal conspiracy of silence, the dirert authors of the Roneahere outrages were enabled to carry out to a successful issue, and with perfect impunity, a disreputable cchcmc which hi* fire-branded the district with an indelible disgrace. In the first hot fervor that followed the outrages on Miss Annett, the Otago Branch of the N.Z. Educational Institute unanimously carried the following resolution at its meeting of July 1 1 , 1 899 :—: — That this Branch of the N. Z.E.I, expresses its sympathy with Miss Annett in regard to the cowardly treatment she received on taking charge of the Ronpabere school, and regret 9 that the police have bo far been unable to trace the perpetrators of the act. The Branch also wishes teachers to know that they may alwayx rely on the moral and financial support of tit s Inxtitute when placed in positions requiring such support. All this is \ery correct — and very pretty. It is also very cheap. And the Otago Branch cf the N. Z.E.1., when it indulges in the luxury of sympathy, imitates John Gilpin's spouse when indulging in her rare holiday — it has a frugal mind. The ' financial support 'so magniloquently promised to Miss Annett reached, a grand total of £3 19s 6d ! Over £3 of this munificent cash sympathy were raised in the Lawrence district. The other six districts of Otag-o (including Dunedin) 'sympathised' to the extent of some fifteen shillings ! Confidence in the earnestness of those noisy promises of ' financial support ' led, as we are informed, to the rejection of proffered contributions from other sources. As to the 'moral support ' which was to have buttressed up the outraged teacher's rights • it has not been of the value of a damaged jack-straw. • • • The gang of ruffians who drove Miss Annett from Rongahere have scored easily and all along the line. They have destroyed a large amount of Government property ; they have inflicted a serious personal loss on their victim ; they have compelled her removal from the district — this was the direct object of their cowardly and criminal persecution of the young lady; they ha\e made the appointment of a Catholic teacher to Rongahere impossible until the bones of the present knot of bigots are six feet under ground ; they have set a dangerous example to rampant intolerants elsewhere ; and — through the disgraceful connivance or reticence of the local residents — they are now walking abroad as free men instead of being under lock and key in her Majesty's gaol with the broad arrow brand upon their backs. Briefly : the perpetrators of the series of outrages on Miss Annett succeeded far beyond their original aims. The Mducation.il Institute has been, in view of its resolution of last year, singularly, not to say mysteriously, indifferent. At their last week's meetings an indolent discussion on the subject wagged its tongue lazily for a brief space. One educational luminary blamed Miss Annett for not having insured her effects — as if that affected the inherent rights or wrongs of the case, and as if he did not know that the little property that was her all were not safe enough from all ordinary accidents in sleepy Rongahere ' And there the matter was tied up and bundled away and put to sleep or rot in a dusty pigeon-hole. The Rongaheie business afforded the Institute a golden opportunity for protecting ill-used teachers. It has failed signally, not to say disgracefully, to rise to the height of its opportunity. And the moral of the whole wretched business is just this : there is no effective protection for Catholic teachers in districts where their co-religionists are few and far between and bigots and their sympathisers numerous or organised or energetic. In other words : the field of possible or workable appointments for Catholic teachers in Olago is in grave danger of being narrowed down — to what extent we know not. And for this the Educational Institute is, in its proper measure, responsible. The lesion will probably not be lost on those who, for any other unworthy motive, may desire the removal of teachers from their distucts. We may appropiately close these desultory remaiks with the following words from our issue of October 12, iSgo 'Itis a good tiling that we Catholics have a secular Press to remind us that we live under a Glorious Constitution and equal laws. But for such reminders there are times when we might forget — we might forget.'

We gravely doubt if there is any quill-driver the catholic in all creation that gets quite so much of taper. tar-and feathers and of blanket-tossing and

half-hanging as the editor of a Catholic paper. He has an amazing variety of tastes to cater for — from that of the \oung 'blood' who wants all the columns rammed, jammed, and crammed lull of sport, sport, and evermore sport, up to that of the eager devotee who will have them loaded to the Plimsoll-mark with a form of piety that is too fefe|^ntly nothing more than mere tawdry and sentimental We have met them all, and wrestled with

them in the spirit as patiently as we could. But our experience is by no means singular. Beyond the wide Pacific the Catholic editor meets them in battalions. The editor of the Midland Review, for instance, relieves his mind of the subject in the following terms : ' Frequently an editor is asked to resign because his opinions do not suit everybody, or because he does not give news enough to suit John Jones, stories enough to suit Miss Samantha Squint, poetry enough to please Mr. Peter Penphrast. jonadab imuggs objects to the paper because it talks too much about Catholic matters ; Ezekiel Smole writes in to say it is not Catholic enough. For all these reasons, although they do not agree with one another, Jones, Squint, Periphrast, Smole, and Smuggs do agree that the editor ought to be retired, and then — " Off with his head. So much for Buckingham '" ' There are others, however, who know better the true scope and purpose of a Catholic paper, and — as stated by our Hawera correspondent in this issue — are highly appreciative, and that, too, in an eminently practical way, of the manner in which it maintains and improves the Catholic tone and spirit in every home to which it is a regular visitor. The Milwaukee Catholic Citizen suggests the use of the Catholic paper as a prophylactic against, or a remedy for, spinelessness or practical indifferentism in religion. It says : 'We know of no better means of bringing religion to those who fail to come to it than the silent missionary of the Pi ess — the fifty-two-times-a-year visit of a Catholic paper, speaking to every member, young and old, and speaking by every device from the insinuated Catholicity of the story to the five minute sermon. No Catholic father or mother can better ensure the Catholicity of their children than by cultivating among them a taste for Catholic reading. It is difficult to induce them to read books, but this is the age of newspaper reading, and a good Catholic newspaper is a power for good at this time we live in that no one has as yet begun to realise.'

The world keeps moving along. In some how some things the whirl and bustle of the motion is things have enough to frighten staid, old-fashioned people altered out of their wits. In other matters the rate of progress, if slower, is, on the whole, satisfactory. Witness, for instance, the change that has been wrought in public feeling during the last half-century regarding vagabond no-Popery lecturers. When the wretched Achilli was pouring out the torrent of his indecent rage against the Catholic Church in England, Cardinal Newman said of him : ' The Protestant world flocks to hear him.' When another itinerant lecturer with an Irish surname, roved and raved through England in 1867, denouncing the Catholic priesthood and the confessional in terms of coarse and brutal invective, he set the whole country by the ears from the Solway Firth to the Straits of Dover. At Wolverhampton, Wednesbury, Birmingham, and elsewhere, his unclean tirades led to desperate riots — in Birmingham they lasted for two or three days, and, says Molesworth, ' could only be paralleled by the Lord George Gordon disturbances in London during the last century.' Even the Government of the day was compelled to take notice of the wretched imposter, and he ' received from all quarters invitations to repeat his lectures, and encouragement to persevere in his mischievous career.' He stirred up the dirty waters of bigotry to their foulest and deepest depths. Thirty years later Slattery, Riordan, Widdows, and other vagrant imposters failed, with the utmost aid of the Orange Society, to do more than raise a slight ripple here and there on the calm surface of the social and public life of the country. * • • This liberal trend of decent public opinion was manifested in an altogether splendid manner in New Zealand. Advices received by the latest mail from Tasmania go to show that the wretched Slattery imposters were, at Hobart, refused the Town Hall (by unanimous vote of the Council), the Masonic Hall, the Tasmanian Hall, and the Mechanics' Institute. The local papers also decline to report his lectures, and the Pink Pamphlets — reprinted by the Monitor — are everywhere upon the tracks of the fraudulent pair. With the solitary exception of New Zealand, the public peace of every country visited by this wretched couple was more or less seriously disturbed, owing to the brutally insulting character of their posters and of the hand-bills distributed broadcast by them at every door. At Hobart Slattery declined, as usual, to answer questions put to him upon the platform, and a riot was narrowly averted by the prompt action of the police, who, on the first sign ef danger to the public ptace, cleared the hall of all its occupants, suppressed the meeting, and closed the doors, before the expnest's tirade of abuse had begun. This we learn from the Mercury of May 16-18. For his Orange supporters and the prurient -minded Slatteiy and the sham nun will still, of course, Weave fine cobwebs, fit for skull That's empty when the moon is fall ; Such as take lodgings in a head That's to be let unfurnished.

Like Lowell's ' Pious Editor,' Slattery has found even his own clumsy lying to 'hey a solid vally,' and he can say to himself, as he chuckles inwardly at the splendid gullibility of his dupes : — This heth my faithful shepherd been, In pastures sweet heth led me ; An' this'll keep the people green, To feed ez they hey fed me. 4 Traffic's ihy god, and thy god ccn f ound ♦hoe/ <=ay<; Shakespeare. The roving impostors will cling to their present speculation so long as it offers better financial pickets than turning to earn an honest livelihood with a small allowance of brains and slender education. But the days of vagabond noPopery howlers is, thank God, well nigh past. People that use soap and water and wear clean linen avoid, nowadays, contact with such cattle. Moltke was not so much a soldier as a the woRK.tR slayer — the two offices are distinct, though and the \v\r. slightly overlapping. He was one of the last of that school of cold-blooded and longeared political quackheads who used to hold that the periodical phlebotomy of war was a social necessity to every wellconducted State, and a moral agent of high value to every self-respecting people. Governments no longer pretend to set men in uniform hacking at each others' carotid arteries on the plea of the moral good of the community. But the policy has long been recognised and acted upon of engaging in armed conflicts abroad for the purpose of diverting public attention from political miseries that cry out too noisily and persistently at home. By far the greatest part of the British wars of the past century and a half — ever since the early rise of the industrial revolution — have, however, been struggles for commercial or territorial expansion : the nation's veins have been opened and its pockets rifled chiefly in the interest of capitalist manufacturers in search of fresh markets for their iron pots and cheap cottons and the rest. In every case the chief share of the * piper's pay ' was drawn from the veins and picked from the pockets of the workers of every degree. The £898,000,000 spent by Great Britain upon wars with white peoples in the present century, and the vast sums spent in conflicts with dark and yellow and other variegated ' inferior ' races, created vast fortunes for industrial proprietors. But the blood-millions brought little direct benefit to the British industrial or agricultural workers. They remained ill-paid and half-starved helots in their own land until by force of combination they painfully and by slow degrees won some of the elementary rights of freemen. # # * Nobody has less reason than the working man to huzza. when the sword is on the grindstone and the sparks are flying that set alight the flame of war. In due course bejewelled fingers will be feeling in his pocket for coins to pay the cost of the splendid blaze. We are, therefore, not surprised that the British worker set his face from the first against the war that is now dragging its slow length along — like a wounded snake — over the South African veldt. In the North American Review for April, Mr. F. Maddison, M.P. for Brightside (Sheffield), point out that the British workers are neither pro- Boers nor jingoes; that their attitude towards the war is calmly this : ' that so long as an inch of Natal or Cape Colony is held by the Boers, there cannot and should not be peace '; but that there has never existed among them ' anything which could fairly be termed enthusiasm, much less any mad frenzy, for predominance and conquest. 1 The Trades Union Congress — an important organ of industrial opinion — ' passed a resolution protesting against asserting the British demands by force ' ; the London Trades Couneil — ' the mouthpiece of the organised workers, skilled and unskilled, of the metropolis ' — ranged itself on the side of peace ; ' without any party ties or any arranged action every workman member ot the House of Commons, with one solitary exception, condemns the policy which led to the war, and has marked this disapproval by his vote. This solidarity,' Mr. Maddison adds, ' is significant, and to many of us is the sure indication of the ultimate verdict of the democracy.' * * * The British workman's grounds of opposition to the war are stated in some detail by the Liberal Labor Member for Brightside. They are, briefly, as follow: — (a) 'The British workman fails to see why the doctrine of patience so persistently preached to him during this century while he has been agitating for reforms, many of which are still denied him, should not be applied to the gold-seekers of the Transvaal, especially as they were foreigners in an independent State.' For the fife of him he cannot understand why England should, at the point of the bayonet, assist her sons to become citizens of another State, and to renounce their own nationality, in a few years, seeing the long, long years and the hard struggle that it took them to win even a partial franchise in the land of their birth. Again : (6) The war is regarded by the workers as ' a Stock Exchange affair' — from the point of view which led Mark Twain, after his South African tour, to say of Mr.

Rhodes- ' He i^ a very interesting man, and when he dies I should like to pet a bit of the rope as a souvenir.' ' For this view,' writes Sir. Maddison, ' the Rhodesian capitalists are responsible. They have made it plain that the war has a commercial value. Mr. Hays Hammond, the engineer of the Consolidated Goldfields Company of South Africa, estimates in his report to the shareholders that the Companies on the Rand will add £2,250,000 annually to their dividends, his own Cnrr\ pa ny netting- over £ 1,000,000 of this extra profit.' Part of this tidy fortune — as stated by this enterprising engineer — would drop into the shareholders' pockets as the result of shortening the pay and lengthening the working hours of the toilers, and by the introduction of the' compound' system prevalent in Kimberley, ' with its over-worked and low-paid black labor, and its state of semi-slavery whereby the Kaffir belongs to his employer during the whole period of his contract.' Without counting the extra-taxation that the war involves and the perilous approach of conscription which it portends, we can well understand that plans of future operations "-uch as those mapped out by Mr. Hays Hammond should not be pleasant reading for the British workman, and that, in Mr. Maddison's words, 'if it has to be Kruger or Rhodes, British Trade Unionists prefer the Old Dutchman, with all his faults, who, at any rate, is a better friend of white labor than the millionaires in a hurry to be rich, who reduce everything to the level of dividends.'