Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 5 March 1914, Page 21

Current Topics

Cautious ‘Patriots’ ■ 'ft From time to time we are treated to glowing accounts of the amount to which the ‘ Ulster Indemnity Fund’ has now been subscribed.’ Such statements are a sheer fraud on the public. No money has really been subscribed for this fund. All that has happened is that certain people have guaranteed to find certain amounts of money if called upon. But many of these cautious patriots, according to the London correspondent of the Irish News, have taken the precaution of having their undertakings under-written, which means that they have paid an insurance fee which transfers their liability to the Insurance Company. ‘ The fee is not' high,’ says the News, * the Insurance Company not taking a very serious view of the liability.’ The Fool-Proof Flying Machine Now that we have our own Government aeroplane and aeroplanist—if there is such a wordtogether with amateur flyers such as Mr. Scotland, who, on Saturday last, gave a delightful display at Dunedin in his Caudron biplane, rising from Tahuna Park like a bird, circling the city again and again, and finally volplaning down to the park again with great ease and precision, the definite and authoritative announcement that Mr. Orville Wright has invented a ‘ stabiliser ’ or automatic balancer, which, in his own words, renders flying ‘ as nearly fool-proof as anything can be,’ has more than an academic interest even for distant New Zealand. Mr. Wright has described his invention in a special telegram to the Daily Mail. ‘ The new “stabiliser,” he says, ‘ in principle resembles the automatic governor of the steam enginethe action of which is familiar to all. When the engine races the balls of this governor fly up by centrifugal force and throttle the steam valve, reducing the steam and thus lowering the speed. When the engine lags, the balls drop, admitting more steam. So— modifications “stabiliser” works. When the aeroplane rocks or pitches a vane or pendulum moves, throwing into gear a small device driven by power from a windmill revolving with the rush of the’ aeroplane through the air. This device warps the wings and controls the elevator. The sharper the roll or the pitch the greater the power that is brought into play to correct the movement.’ ♦ The most important matter in connection with this announcement is *the statement that the invention has worked with complete success when subjected to a fairly severe test. According to the Daily Mail, seventeen flights were made by Mr. Orville Wright recently in an aeroplane fitted with the stabiliser.’ He was closely watched in these flights, and it was noted that he never used his hands except to turn the machine. And this notwithstanding the fact that a gusty wind was blowing. Evidently, the days of safe flying are at last drawing appreciably near. • The Churches and ‘ Ulsteritis ’ Thoughtful and fair-minded Protestants are * becoming disgusted and ashamed at the way in which, in Ulster and even in England, the pulpits of their churches are being used in a reactionary attempt to set back the clock of progress and to oppose the cause of freedom and democracy in Ireland. One of the leading and most influential Presbyterian journals in America— wit, the Continent — as quoted in our Presbyterian contemporary, the Outlook, thus voices the feeling of democratic American Presbyterians towards the attitude adopted by some of their Ulster brethren. Presbyterians that Presbyterianism from "Reformation days onward has constantly promoted popular rights and self-government—has in fact been the steadiest element in the gradual liberation of English-speaking

peoples from imperialistic rule into the freedom of democratic independence. But the boast dies on one’s lips these days. It can’t get into voice now. The spectacle of Presbyterian,-Ulster fighting Home Rule for Ireland is too much for it. Ulster has certainly reversed history.’ -N ■ , „ . - * In England, about Christmas time, several Anglican dignitaries used their pulpits to trench upon party politics, and in almost express terms threw in their lot with the anti-Home Rule political party. On behalf of democratic members of the State Church, Reynolds's Paper enters an emphatic protest against such methods ; and under the heading of ‘ Impudent Clerics ’ administers a severe castigation to the dignitaries referred to. ‘ It is time,’ 'it says, * that some protest should be made against the stream of nauseous cant and transparent humbug which has been poured out of so many Anglican pulpits this Christmastide on the subject of Ulster. Many thousands of genuine Democrats may be counted among, those within the fold of the State Church; and in their name it is necessary to repudiate,, clearly and emphatically, the wretched partisanship which has induced some of the Anglican bishops to throw in their lot with our discredited landed aristocracy in its impotent struggle against the advance of Democracy. The harangue which the Dean of Westminster preached in that venerable edifice under the guise -of a sermon, was nothing but an impudent incursion into party politics. Although its language was carefully chosen, it was an unmistakable repetition of all the balderdash savoring of treason which Sir Edward Carson has inflicted on the public for many months past. “No experiment in the nature of a reconstruction of. our Constitution,” said the- Dean, according , to newspaper reports, “ could * justify the passage of a Bill that must lead to bloodshed.” This is the sort of stuff that causes the average Democrat who takes an interest in political controversy almost to despair of the alleged intelligence of those personages who are described in the Anglican Prayer Book as his “pastors and masters.” What is the real meaning of this organised attempt to harness the pulpits of the State Church to the very rickety chariot wheels of Lord Londonderry and Sir Edward Carson? Toryism, in its wild impotency and its helpless fury, has not hesitated to drag the Crown into the dust and din of the pairty arena; and it is now setting its hands to the task of prostituting the pulpits of the State Church for party propaganda. A citizen has no more right to insult the religious beliefs of a Catholic than he has to spurn those of a Primitive Methodist. The present outcry about Ulster which is raised by the Tory leaders and the Tory press, has no more to do with the eternal verities of Romanism or Protestantism than it has with aviation. To the eyes of the Tory the uneasiness of Protestants in Ulster is merely a stick with which to beat ■ the Government. If the Democracy has been strong enough to break the backbone of the peers, it is not likely to yield to the querulous fatuities of curates and canons.’ A Protestant Woman’s Testimony One of the sanest and soundest statements that has so far come under our notice as to the present position of the Home Rule movement, as to the significance, or insignificance, of Carsonism, and as to the possibilities and probabilities of the immediate future, is one which has been furnished by a Protestant woman of Ulster in a recent letter to a Dunedin resident. The lady resides in the province of Ulster, is the wife of a Protestant clergyman, and has, according to the Dunedin Evening Star, unusual opportunities of . testing the true - state of public' opinion in the North of Ireland/ The Evening Star has been permitted to make some interesting extracts‘from her letter, of • which we gladly avail ourselves. ■ '• A .. * V Writing under date January 9 last, the lady says: * We are certainly making history, and if some of the

Ulster dailies are to be' believed the Government are deliberately bringing ruin on the country. , But there are two sides to every question. And the brewers, distillers, landed proprietors, etc., who have hitherto blocked all progressive legislation, say: “We have always had the ascendancy, and we shall ‘ rule whether in power or out of it.” For myself I am intensely interested in all that concerns Ireland and her wrongs. We Presbyterians have suffered persecutions in the past and we suffer it still. lam writing this letter in our drawing-room, which has a bullet hole in the centre pane of its front windowa sequel to the signing, or rather, our not signing— Sir Edward Carson’s precious Covenant a year ago ; a mark of spite by the Orangemen. We live in a small town or village of 1000 inhabitants hotbed of Orange intolerance and bigotry, though more than half the people in the town and surrounding country are Liberals. The principal industry here is a large weaving factory, and the employees are forced to enrol as Ulster volunteers or leave the works. That was not enough, but the manager of this factory went to another smaller firm—a hardware and contractor’s business—and said to the head of the firm: “Your men must join the volunteers and drill,” and join they had to ! And this is the glorious liberty of conscience we hear so much about in the papers and on the platforms ! • ‘ But the working man is beginning to think, and is at last waking up to the fact that he is being made a tool. Still he is ignorant and uneducated, he does hot know history, and his politics are just what his employer tells him, and what he gleans from the Tory papers, if indeed he reads a paper at all. The farmers are more enlightened, and in this neighborhood very few indeed have joined the volunteers. Very many shopkeepers, who are strongly Liberal in their views, are rated as Tories because they dare not express their views—this in Belfast especially. It would mean that their trade would sufferindeed it would spell financial ruin to many of them—therefore they say nothing. No doubt there may be some * trouble getting matters adjusted, but it is ridiculous to talk of civil war. There will be riots— has there not been in Ireland ? And the Ulster volunteers do not impress us. As a working man said to us the other day: “ It wouldn’t be hard to hunt them boys!” There is a lot of fun mixed up with it all. There are signs at present that a compromise will be arrived at, perhaps in the nature of federation, but Mr. Asquith has pledged his word that he will not, disappoint the Irish people in their wish for self-government. Some people in Ulster are doubtless sincere in their fear of the ascendency of the Roman Catholics, but the majority of those who rant and rave about the terrors of Home Rule are only playing a political game. Home Rule has been such a useful bogey in the past, especially at election times, that when it becomes a reality, and the world still moves on with no great unheaval, the ascendency party will be left without a catchword. The Roman Catholics are behaving with great restraint, good neighbors, and peaceable even in the much distorted South and West. I know manv Protestants there who all say so. The troubles reported are chiefly agrarian. The religious question scarcely ever crops up, and yet outsiders are led to believe that all hangs on the religious Question. The truth is so distorted in the Tory papers that unless one is “in the know” it is impossible for outsiders to tell how things stand.’ * . That is a plain unvarnished tale from one who is on the spot, and who : has no axe to grind and no inducement of any kind to speak other than the truth. We hope that the old women—-of both sexes— this country who try to make themselves and others believe that cataclysm and catastrophe will follow the moment Home Rule is inaugurated, ; will take this utterance to heart. ' ■ > • •; * ■ . . ....

A Bogus Saint v The following cable, dated Vienna, appeared in our New Zealand dailies of January 8 last: ‘ A woman miracle-monger has been sentenced to ten months’ imprisonment at Laibach, Crowds' of pilgrims visited the woman at a priest’s house to witness her sweating blood from her head, hands, feet, and side. She also practised the illusion at the Capuchin Monastery at Fiume and elsewhere. She kept part of the pilgrims’ donations and gave the rest to the monastery.’ There is here, it will be noted, not the slightest hint that the Catholic authorities repudiated or disapproved of the miracle-monger; on the contrary, the impression is distinctly conveyed that they connived at her frauds, and even were sharers in her ill-gotten gains. The* full facts of the case disclose a very different state of affairs. Even before the trial at .Laibach the Austrian Catholic papers had put the real story of Johanna Jerovsek before their readers; and the public exposure of the fraud in the law courts was directly and expressly due to the action .of the ecclesiastical authorities. * The facts have been gathered and supplied by a special correspondent to the Liverpool Catholic Times, to whose contribution we are indebted for the following summary. Johanna Jerovsek was born at Krain, in the diocese of Laibach. As a young girl she was subject to fits of hysteria. She was supposed to have outgrown these troubles when she left Krain and went into domestic service at Vodica, near Laibach. She was regarded as a good pious girl. About eighteen months ago it was reported in Vodica that she had ecstasies, and that blood appeared on her hands and feet and a sweat of blood on her brow. For a very short time the parish priest of Vodica, an aged man of seventy-three, seemed inclined to believe that it was a genuine case of supernatural manifestations, but he did not long hold this opinion, and from the first all the rest of the priests declared that it was a case of wilful or hysterical imposture. It was not, as stated by the London Daily News, the ignorant South Slav peasants’ who flocked to see Johanna, gave her . money, and asked her for revelations. • Her clients were largely made up of ladies from Laibach belonging to the irreligious class that runs after spiritualists, palmists, and such like impostors. Non-Catholics imagine that priests and pious Catholics are eagerly ready to accept any and every story of the miraculous. So far from this being the case, priests are much more ready to suspect delusion or even wilful imposture when such reports are current. The Prince-Bishop of Laibach, at once ordered an investigation .and sent a well-known Austrian specialist, Dr. Dolschak,, to Vodica to report on Johanna’s case. His report was that it was simply a case of hysteria. In such cases delusions and more or less wilful impostures are common features. ‘ All the parish priests of the district, including the pastor of Vodica, now warned their people from the pulpit that there was nothing but imposture in the affair of the alleged ecstatica. As Johanna persisted in her statements and her pretended manifestations, and continued to attract visitors to Vodica; she was, summoned before the Bishops’ Court at Laibach, and warned to desist from a course of action that was becoming a scandal. The president of the court, speaking of her conduct before it, said that even apart from the report of the specialist no one could for a moment believe that there was anything of the supernatural in the matter, ‘ she was so proud and disobedient.’ She returned to Vodica, -where she lived on the money supplied by her dupes. Needless to say, all. good Catholics refused to countenance her in any way. She found her following among people of a very different kind. At last, to put an end to the scandal, the Bishop sent Dr. Joseph Valjavec to Vodica to make a complete investigation in order to unmask the fraud; In k few days he had collected evidence that showed how Johanna imposed on her dupes, and

gave proof that the imposture was deliberately organised. It was on the evidence thus obtained that the civd authorities took action. Johanna was arrested, and the cablegram above quoted gave us the result of the trial. • >