More Audacity

New Zealand Tablet, 11 October 1906, Page 10

More Audacity

' Audacity, more audacity,/ always audacity,' said Danton during the French Revolution. This might -be taken as one of ' the mottoes of the Irish secret society that (on] the principle of ' lucus a non lucendo ' \ styles itself par excellence ' loyal '. We have heard of sundry branches of the organisation somewhere in New Zealand requesting a civic council to proclaim 4 the glorious twelfth ' a local holiday. But the Brisbane ' Age ' touches a more sublime instance of the audacity of the dark-lantern' brethren in Queensland. On last Saturday the lodges sent a deputation to the Home Secretary with a request (as the ' Age ' happily phrases it) 'to have the date of their annual outbreak of Yellow Fever proclaimed *a public holiday.'

But ' qiuesta lor tracotanza non c ivuova '—this is no new outbreak of audacity on the part of the yellow agony. It was an Ulster Protestant poet who hit off in two pithy lines the pious aspirations of the typical lodge member, who made to . the Lord of Hosts a modest request for 1 The crown of the causeway, both sides of the street, And the rebelly Papishes under my feet.' The boycott of * Papishes ' from every elective position, whether State or municipal, is a fundamental duty placed upon every ' loyal ' man when .he first surrenders his freedom by taking the oath of the organic sation. The same searching boycott of Catholics is a bedrock prinoiple of the ' Imperial Protestant Federation ' in England, of the A.P.A, and the P.O.S. in America, and of all organisations that are in league with, or inspired by, the Saffron Sash Fraternity. ;We take from the ' S.H. Review ' of August 25, to hand by the last American mail, the following illuminating case in point., It consists of two resolutions that were sent some weeks ago to the School Board at Williamstown, Pennsylvania (U.S.A.) :—

•' Gentlemen : The r follo<wins resolutions were adopted by Camp No. 154, P. O.- S. of A., in regular session met, which do hereby petition your honorable body, the Borough Directors :— *1. That the Bible be read daily in our public schools, and that the American flag float over the school 'houses. ' 2. That it is the sentiment of these 'bodies that no Catholic teachers be elected for our public schools. 1 Signed as follows, and with the seal of lodges named below: W. C, ' No. 154, P. O. S of A • W C. No. 706, P. O. S. of A. ; Chester Post, No.' 280* G. A. R. ; K. of P., No. 337 ; O. I. A.', No. 370 • I. O. R. M., Dakota Tribe, 207 ; K. G. E., No 175I. O. O. F., No. 675.' " ' The 'S. H t Review ' tells the sequel. 'As a result of this communication,' it says, 'the Williamstown School Board dismissed three Catholic teachers — one who ha/d taught twelve years and t<he others two years. We agree with the Catholics of that town that the action of the various Protestant societies arid the School Board is " un-Christian, unjust; unmanly, unpatriotic, and contrary in every way to the spirit of our American Constitution, which says : *No religious test shall be required/as a qualification to any office.' Also contrary to the school laws of Pennsylvania, which" say : ''Family, . political or Church influence should never be permitted to swerve a director from the line of duty' in the selection of teachers.' " ' • • Our co-religionists in New Zealand would do well to learn, mark, and inwardly digest the lessons of

this fresh evidence of the wholesale boycott of Catholic teachers that prevails in the Bible-in-schools ,p a rts of America— a boycott which (as we have of ton

shown) is nowhere so searching and so widespread as ' in the old New England States. The dismissal or • boycott of Catholic or othpr dissident teachers is the natural' and inevitable cotrollary of the ■official intro-

duction of the Protestant version of the Bible, and of Biblical teaching on Protestant lines, into- the pub-

lie schools. And from < the over-candid utterance of re-

yerend orators in Australia and New Zealand (quoted by us and, by the secular press at the time) it was made sufficiently clear that dissident teachers would receive about as much toleration in this Colony and Victoria as they do in old New England, if the Bible-ki-schools scheme became the law of the land. But the ' Referendum ' League's millennium is a faroff hope— it may, perhaps, approach realisation about the time when New " Zealanders reach the Land of Cockayne, and walk upon streets paved with pastry, and live in homes made of sugar-candy. ;