Notes

New Zealand Tablet, 9 December 1915, Page 35

Notes

The Best Joke The cabled accounts of the despatch of 4 Ford’s An. .hake it tolerably clear that the movers in the enterprise are people with a good deal more money than sense. The incident has, however, produced at least one good joke. ‘ Mr. Ford,’ says one of the recent cables, 4 has published with the utmost solemnity the best joke of the peace mission. It consists of a long telegram to the Pope, asking for his good-will and co-operation. It. was addressed “Benedict VII.” Later, Mr. Ford learned that Benedict VII. died in the year 993.’

The Religions of the Tenth

The religions of the Tenth Reinforcements (2609 men) are shown in the following table:

No. P.C.

Church of England ... 1244 47.68 Presbyterian ... ... 663 25.41 Roman Catholic 409 15.67 Methodist - 189 7.24 Baptist ... 52 1.99 Salvation Army 11 .42 Miscellaneous 41 1.57

Three have stated their religion as 4 nil,’ there is one solitary .agnostic, and one who is willing to be entered under ‘any religion.’ The Catholic proportion of population is, roughly, 14 per cent.

Alleged Shirkers Another of those stupid anti-Irish cables the publication of which, especially at the present juncture, calls for the most vehement protest, appeared in our dailies last week. It was dated San Francisco, December 2, and was in these terms: —‘A party of 70 Irishmen has arrived here from New Zealand. They admitted they left because they were afraid of conscription, Mr. P. T. Sullivan said that in order to escape the New Zealand officials the party pretended they were going to England to enlist, while they really intended to make their homes in California.’ * Naturally, the publication of such an absurd and unfounded statement aroused considerable indignation, and at a meeting of representative Irishmen held in Wellington it was unanimously resolved that statements such as those cabled from San Francisco to the effect that a party of Irishmen left New Zealand to escape

/ : r* ■ .... conscription: ought not to be published l at the present ■ , time, when the unity of ; all nations \of the Empire :is pre-eminently to be desired. The feeling in Irish .circles in Wellington, and the probable facts regarding,;*/// the incident, are - thus indicated by the Wellington - correspondent of the Otago Daily Times : ‘ The message : ;;3: was apparently built up out of the loquacity of oneIrishman, and the imagination, -perhaps, of an ■% American newspaper man. In the first place, as prominent Wellington Irishmen argue; there was no party of Irishmen on the Moana. It may be true that men left on the Moana to evade their proper duty of de- ' . fending the Empire, but to say that they constituted ‘i “ a party ” and to infer thereby that it was an or- :';.W ganised affair among the Irish is wrong. It is not true p|| that there were 70 Irishmen on the shin. There were ’ — in all some 50 persons about whose motives for leaving there can be" suspicions. Among, these were 30 men with Irish names, and there is no evidence that many - 3 of these had not good reasons for leaving. Two men, >; at least, named McGrath, had come to New Zealand.- /-'-J only a few weeks previously, and their original inten- 3tion, which they carried out, was to go to California. /.Jj It is argued with some justification that Irishmen all over the Empire have not been failing in their duty to the Empire, that in Wellington- every daily list of recruits published contains Irish names, and - that 3|fl in patriotic work here Irish men and women have taken an active part. They take strong exception to the -3; publication of messages insulting the nation generally : ,3 at a 'time when the unity of all the peoples of the Empire matters so much, and they suggest also that : just as there are doubtless Irishmen who are laggards, 33 there are also laggards amongst Englishmen, Scotchmen, and colonials.’