Notes.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 7, 20 February 1908, Page 22

Notes.

Football Cable messages in last Tuesday's daily papers record some pretty rough-and-tumble work Hn the professional football in which New Zealanders are engaged.. We hope that these are only passing incidents of the game, and that they do not mark a drift towards" the methods which, as set forth on p. 10 of (this issue, characterise football under the Stars and Stripes. A Mare's Nest One Mr. Robert Dell, having failed to run- a little paper (the ' Surrey Mirror '), into the sunshine of success, has been for some years past devoting his valuable energies to reorganising the Pope and running the Universal Church— chiefly through ttie columns of the.Anglican ' Church Times '. A few weeks ago he, in an incautious moment, ventured to carry on his work in the limelight of the London ' Times '. Ho confided to the *• Thunderer ' pf Janpary 2 how gjreatly he was shocked, that Pius X. should have said,- in the course of has address to the members of the Anti-Slavery recently held in Rome : • A Government, in order to govern well, must be despotic and tyrannical . Abtboti Ga®q;uet, writing from Rome, declared in a subsequent issue of the ' Times ' that the Pope never made use of the words referred to, or expressed the sentiments attributed' to him by the reorganiser. And, finally, the discredited story was blown to smithereens by the publication of the following Reuter telegram :— 1 The Vatican has received many letters from England asking whether the report is true, according to which the Pope, while addressing the members of the Anti-Slavery .Congress recently, said: " A Government, in order to govern well, must be despotic and tyrannical." On learning of the report the Pope expressed his indignation, and remarked that such words could not pass his lips, as the idea was totally opposed to his principles. His Holiness has given instructions for the issue of a categorical denial.' Mr. Dell has "found a good many mare's nests in his time— when the old mare was off them. But this is 1 one of the prettiest of the whole collection. A Foolish Commission Despite a report to the contrary, the iriystery of the missing Dublin Castle regalia is (as Artemus' Ward would put it) ' mysterior ' _ than ever. The most comlical — incident in the whole investigation was>, no doubt, the manner in which (according to Tuesday's cable messages) the grave and reverend segniors of the Commission of inquiry allowed themselves to be fooled by an interesting collection of clairvoyants, fortune-

tellers, and such-like artful dodgers, who are always willing to get a _ cheap advertisement when there is a mystery about—from the theft of a mace in Melbourne to the \ horrors of Jack the Ripper. With portentous gravity, the Commission seems to have listened to and recorded, the mouthings of a mountebank that- threw unmerited suspicion upon an honorable and well-known Dublin citizen ; and they took so seriously the ' secondsight. ' of a professional charlatan that they tore through the country and fossicked for the baubles in the weeds .and tombs and long grass of two old graveyards in places that are ♦ remote, unfriended, solitary, slow '. .Then, to drown it all, they, with apparently serene unconsciousness of their egregious folly, set these proceedings down in a report and presented it to the British Empire. B This, ludicrous abuse of what may be terrred in a way judicial functions is characteristic of an age which, shuffling off religious faith, puts in its place an unreasoning and stultifying belief in the silly occultisms of West and East. History repeats itself in the childish and credulous superstitions which overlay people and periods that are marked by scepticism or a decline in religious belief. Our day can ill afford to smile at the folly of the old pagan Roman, of the decadent imperial days, who spent his day in an agony of *fear, because he "had put on his right sandal before his left, or who would not buy a horse or take a bath till he bad ascertained the moon's position in regard to the Crab. In no previous age, for instance, could the world have witnessed a more curious exhibition of gob'emoucherie than that which is manifested in tMs present year of grace by the nation wjti'ich, of - all others, prides itself upon its advance. It is the spectacle that elicited one of the most scathing works of Mark Twain— a spectacle which, in the twentieth century, is the counterpart of " one which Macaulay described as follows in the nineteenth : ' We have seen an old woman with no talents beyond' 'the cunning of a fortune-teller, and with the education of. a scullion, ■ exalted into a prophetess, and surrounded by tens of thousands of devoted, followers, many of whom were, in station and knowledge, immeasurably her superiors '. ' • - Poison in Printer's Ink By the majority of young people (says this week's ' Outlookj '•) l books are not regaTded as sources of' information, but as fountains of temporary pleasure. And among the innumerable authors who are catering for " these legion devourers of fiction axe many who are not patterns of delicacy in language or suggestion. And the insidious peril of their books is that they whet the. increasingly insatiable appetite. Thus the /prurient taste is being created ; and increasing demand will mean ' increasing supply. This is -one of the gravest perils - of youthl to-day. 1 -The surest human safeguard against such dangers (adds our esteemed contemporary) 'is a sweet and exhilarating atmosphere in the home. Let the home be made attractive, and its interests satisfying to the boy, and he will not prefer the street. Let wholesome literature be provided ffn the home, and unwholesome books will not be so likely to be read elsewhere.' *- In this age of printed poison and- ' literary oleomargarine ' (as Twain calls it), the Catholic newsipap&r is one of the best and readiest antidotes and truest tonics 'for youth and middle and later age alike. In the course of an audience accorded "some weeks to the editor of*the c Croflx de Limoges '.Pope Pius X. said : ' Ah, the press ! Its importance is not yet understood. Neither the faithful nor the clergy make use of it as they should. Sometimes people will telL you that the press is an innovation, and that souls used to" be saved without newspapers in other times. In other times ! In other .times ! It is easily said, but 'they do not remember that in other times the poison of the

bad press was not spread everywhere, and that, therefore, the antidote_of the good press was not equally necessary. We are no longer in those other times, we are in the times of to-day, and to-<lay it is a fact that the Christian people is deceived, poisoned, destroyed by bad newspapers. In vain will you build churches, give missions, found schools — all your works, all your efforts will be destroyed if you are not able •to. wield the defensive and offensive weapon of a loyal and sincere Catholic press.'

And (says ' Rome ') ' the journalist describes haw the Pope grew animated', as he spofce, how, with, a characteristic movement of his' shoulders, he showed his compassion for the people who fail" to " comprehend - the importance of using the' press on "behalf of the Church, tow his bearing recalled' the spirit of sacrifice that animated Cardinal Sarto, Patriarch of Venice, in his efforts to support his .paiper, " La Difesa ", of which he used to say : "If nothing else were left me, I would sell my pectoral cross rather than permit this necessary work to fail." '