Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 5, 4 February 1904, Page 1

Current Topics

The Syllabus On next Saturday a conference consisting of an equal number of school inspectors and members of the New Zea/land Educational Institute will meet in Wellington. Their business will be to take the new school syllabus into hand and tease it out and shape it into a workable system of instruction. The result of tha labors of the conference will be awaited with much interest by all who are concerned in educational matters. True Patriots One Lenten day in the early eighties the writer of these lines—t hen a pale and gracile youth— sat among a crowd that thronged the grand old pile of Notre Dame in Pans. The famous preacher, Father Monsabre, was in the pulpit lie spoke with voice and eye and hand, and the rushing tide of his eloquence poured in a high flood over his packed audience, surged through ifcheir braincells and (metaphorically, of course,) lifted his hearers oft their feet. Before hard agnostics— lawyers, budding medicos, university students and professors, and cultivated worldlings of e\cry sort— as well as before tho devout of Paris, he set forth the claims of the religious* Orders to the respect and gratitude of every true son of France Among other things, ho told in' glowing terms the story that was fresh and green in the recollection of many of his hearers— the magnificent devotion of monk and Sister and priest to the) sick and wounded and dying m 1870, during the country's long hfer-and-death struggle with the enemy from beyond the Rhine. And then, in a magnificent burst of moving eloquence, he told them how, if France should ever need it again, patriots in the black soutane, patriots in religious habits of brown and grey, patriots in the black veil and the white cornetto would again march in thousands from school and cloister and hospital all over the land and cheerfully toil and die for their beloved country and their fellow-men. As Pere Monsabre smote them with his burning words, the audience rose to then feet, and, when the last word had been uttered, made tbe storied walls of Notre Dame resound with vibrant applause.

M. Combes and his Radical and Freemason following have chosen to forget the splendid services which the religious Orders have rendered to France from the days when the Benedictine monks set about reclaiming its

swamps and civilising its inhabitants after the barbarian invasion, down to the present time. The Bishop of Perigueux sums up as follows the war which the subverters of public order have been waging against religion in France. ' I saw,' said he at the Catholic Congress of Lille, ' the war of 1870 : I saw happy homesteads set an fire by shells. I saw the house of my father and mother destroyed 'by the German shrapnel, and 1 saw all our fields and vineyards laid waste. It was fearful and .saddening , but I never suffered during that war as I suffered last year. In 1870, we were face to face with the hereditary foe. Now French Catholics aie persecuted and tormented by their own fellowcountrymen It is the revival of the inhuman struggles called the A\ars of religion. For the past fifteen months the Freemasons ha\e caused floods of tears to flow in France, and if the Catholics do not rise energetically and unanimously against their enemies the country isi finished France -will be at the mercy of the first foicign sword whose wielder is ambitious enough to inside the territory. The Catholics are now enslaved; Thousands of them will lose their places if they go i<< Mass, and the Freemasons' will soon prevent the priest fiom giving the last consolation to the dying.' France, under Combes's infidel regime, is running fast for a fall. It is Like a young eagle, who has lent his plume To fledge the shaft by which he meets his doom. 11 The hapless country's star of nope lies in the patriots in the black soutane and the white cornette and the dark veil who ha\e been instilling into the youth ot France those principles of righteousness that exalt a nation But to Combes and his fellow-enemies of religion, they represent the idea of God and of moral i esponsibility to a great Creator and Judge. And for 1 this they are to be banished as enemies of the political atheism that now rules in the high places in France. War and Trade When Robert d'lnsula was raised to the See of Durham in 1621, he provided his crotchety old mother with a retinue of servants and with all manner of bodily comforts that were known at the time. But the old-dame's happiness made her misery. 'In short,' said she, at the close of a long and bitter lamentation to her son, ' all things go on so abominably smooth, thatl my herte is bursting within me for something to spit© me and pick a quarrel withal ' The nations to-day are like querulous old Mistress d'lnsula of Durham. They are never at peace unless they are at war. Commerce rules the political roast nowadays. The nations

have become big shopkeepers and are ever and evermore casting about for fresh customers for their wares. The wide world is all too small for their rivalries , their settled policy is one of grab; and they are constantly in search of pretexts to pick quarrels that will gnu, them the command of the hinterlands of the worlds or the ownership of the rich mines or other commercial advantages which small nations here or there possess Once on a time, wars were mainly dynastic. From they seventeenth century onwaidt, they have bueii uiukitaken almost altogether for the purpose of opening new markets or securing other commercial advantages 01 monopolies In the days when Britain, Portugal, Spam, France, and Holland were exploiting the newly discovered lands in the west and east and south, wai (as the historian John Robert Seeley points out) was a com mercial industry—' a profitable investment into which men put their capital as the most thriving business of the time, and for which they readily ventured then lives '

Holland, for instance, embarked her all in the lut 'plunge' of a war with Spain. It was purely a con mercial speculation For eighty years Don and Dutchman pounded and skewered each other for the trade of the western woild. The war almost bled both antagonists white But it made little Holland one of the great commercial powers of the time Great Britain undertook the conquest of India for a corpoiation of traders called the East India Company She encouraged them to fOlf 01 in a large natne army She stiffened Hie backbone of their white soldiers by bountiful diafts o! royal troops Leopold, King of the Belgians, acquit ed the Congo Fiee State as a commercial undertaking ' Spheres of influence ' in Daikcst Africa, the Peisian Gulf, etc , represent a political euphemism It nieans) the contiol of smh mines and other valuable commeuial considerations as may exist there, and a monopoly o' maikets foi the shoddy clothing, cotton shirts, 11 on pots, and wirei nails of this or that Great Powei Mad his are ' smashed,' not for sentiment, but because they bar the dooi to the commerce of a icgion 01 like the Algennc pirates, render its communications insecure The tiouble lie! ween Russ and Jap m the F..r East is, in its ]a<-t resort, a commercial n\aliy owi the expanding markets and the mh trading possibilities of Korea For Japan it has come to mean something more as well For Russia is the einpne that has never turned back If she once absot bed Koiea, the next and inevitable step would be the ' benevolent ns. similation ' of Japan And so Mikado-land has got its back against the wall

Just six \iais aco the ' herle' of the Ainencan Jingo 01 expansionist party was blasting to find sonic means of picking a quanel \v Hi Spain The pietexi for forcinsr on an open rupture soon came One night in Fobruaiy, ISMS, the United States battleship 'Maine' was blown up m Havana harbor The Jmuo lournals gripped the incident with fierce iov Without the shadow of e\idcnce they charged the Spaniauls with having deliberately destroyed the ship , and night and morning they shrieked about the treachery of the unspeakable ' Don ' and made the land ring with the <r\, ' Remember the Maine ' ' The paity who s< ughi an 'open door' for then iron bolts and enamelled saucepans and tinned tacks and patent wringers in Spam's colonies, wanted war They wanted it, too, without allowing Spam a chance of clearing herself o! I'<e dphonoring ( h.ime of treachery that bad been laid at hei door They dot w liat they wanted Thr ' Maine ' mo dent served its teim Hut no nwn mn\ , cither in 01 on! of Amema, t)e'ie\es that the Spdrards bad act or pail in the blow ing mi ot the ' Maine' Senator To' let, of C'oloiado, \on ( d Ihe sane feeling of e\eiy decent Aniencan when, <> fen weeks .111,0, be said on the iloor of the Senate m \\ aslungton ' N'obodv knew and nobody can pio\e andiiiexci did pro\e, and it cannot be proven to-

■day, that either Cuban or Spaniard had anything to-do with the blowing-up of the ship. I heard one of the* best military men now in the service of the United States say within a month that he believed the ship was blown up by the powder that it Jiad on board, which went off without any action of Cuban or Spaniard either.'

The war in South Africa was the natural, foreseen, and predicted sequel of the Jameson raid. Nobody now pretends that a desire to remedy the alleged ' Uitlander grievances ' was the real purpose of that long and costly struggle. British and German stock-jobbers and Jewish mining syndicates wanted the war. They gofy it. Australia and New Zealand sent their gallant and resourceful sons to protect and secure the property of the Rand millionaires. The men from under the Southern Cross did the ' hoight of the fightin' '. They were! patted on the back. They were praised and flattered for their dash and gallantry by high-placed officers of every rank, up to and including the Commander-in-Chiof Hints or promises of grants of land were dangled boioro their eyes , and the vast mining territories of the Transvaal were to be a new El Dorado where the white Uitlander would never again know the 'grievances ' which were supposed to have torn his hearti under the regime of Oom Paul. All this was in the days when ' blood was thicker than water,' and when 1 the Empire needed strong hands and manly hearts. Then 1 the syrens of the London Stock Exchange told a flattering tale But they sang quite a different song when peace was pioclauued, when their vast concessions; were secure, and when Johnny, came marching home Then came the great betrayal At' Durban and Cape Town, ihe ' loyalists ' refuse to employ Australians or New Zealandcrs'. The Rand millionaires insult the hunger of the gaunt and starving Vitlanders that aie day by day tramping the streets of Johannesburg by tens of hundreds and passing their nights undei the falling rain or the blinking stars The white man is not wanted by the nabobs of the Rand Hordes of yellow pagans are to be mipoited to work the mines which weie secured to them by the toil and blood of Butons, In.sh, Canadians, and Australasians These ate to be boot-toed, out of the country which they helped to win, and their pl'aees aie to be filled by swarms of slant-eyed heathens fiom the huts and kennc's and opium hells of Uang-chow and Canton

The Rand is no longer to be a white man's country. "\et (as the London ' Daily News ' points out) ' it isi neithei the costliness of white labor nor the. insufficiency of black that is the motive for the conspnacy of the mine-owners to impose 3(10,000 Chinese upon South \lnca It is the determination to keep out of the countiy a class of labor that would demand votes and a shaiet in the government of the country The financiers have secured the pn/e through the blood and treasure of this counuy, and they do not intend to share it with organised and enfranchised labor The white man was a useful instrument in deposing Mi Kiuger \ow he is thrown aside like a sucked 01 ange If this monstrous scheme is to be thwarted, it can only be dune b} tiansfeinng the government of the country ■ loin the mining houses to the people'

The morn (ulture the loss jewelry Work, not p'av, is the divme opportunity The Ch'uh aims at realities, the world at decencies. Foil} ( (.UK": unsought-, wisdom only when entreated Povcil;, is the north wind that lashes men into \ ikings What some ,folks call luck js in reality disaster to them Night is only a tunnel to him who travels towards hope A noble character produces no impression on a vulgar mind.