Notes

New Zealand Tablet, 26 October 1916, Page 34

Notes

To Our Readers We draw the attention of our readers to the serial story, 1 hilens I ox, Attorney, which, by an arrangement with the Ave Maria, we commence in this issue. This story is written by a well-known Catholic authoress, Anna Sadlier. We feel sure that it will prove interesting. What the Men Want A Territorial officer, in the firing line in France sends a letter to the 11 estjninster Gazette, which seems to show that our political solicitude, for the men at the front is very largely misdirected. * It seems so ludicrous to me out here in this nightmare country to read in the papers of all this agitation and fuss about the new register and a General Election and One Gun, One Vote, and so on. If people at home really think that our men are worrying about being temporarily disfranchised they have got the whole show in the wrong perspective. My men are worrying about

rats and mosquitoes and pipsqueaks and woolly bears and things like that (and certainly in that order of worry!), and if you took a referendum out here you would get about two replies out of a, hundred —and they would probably be spoilt votes, because the lads express themselves crudely at times. The things they want are home and wives and children and sweethearts and clean clothes and a bath and some English beer —quite simple things like that. Not votes at all. They are quite content to leave all that to the people who are carrying on at home. When you are serving a gun day and night in a place like this it seems Edmund-Lear-like to think of a Tommy worrying himself about vofine/. He’s too busy sendingand dodging — The Terrible Circle The number of the belligerent Powers is now fifteen, the Allies numbering eleven. The following list gives the names of the belligerents and the dates of their entry into the war:The Aeries. The Enemy Powers. Serbia, July 28, 1914. Austria-Hungary, July 28, 1914. Russia, August 1. Germany, August 1. Belgium, August 2. Turkey, November. France, August 3. Bulgaria, October, 1915. Great Britain, August 4. Montenegro, August 7. Japan, August 23. Italy, May, 1915. Albania, January, 1916. Portugal, March. Roumania, August. The end is not in sight, and who shall say how many others may yet be drawn into the maelstrom. Mr. O’Brien on the Situation Mr. William O’Brien, in an article contributed to the Nineteenth Centura , asks the question, ‘ls there a way out of the chaos in Ireland?’ After criticising the recent negotiations and the Irish debates in Parliament, he observes: —‘Ireland’s hopes, however, are imperishable, and will always have to be counted with by peace or by the sword. Is Mr. Duke, who cannot do worse than his happy-go-lucky predecessor, likely to do very much Joetter ? Upon two conditions he quite possibly may. The first is that the Partition nostrum, in any guise, must be frankly and once for all given up. If Mr. Duke pursues the road beyond Mr. Asquith’s ill-omened “milestone” he will find it the certain road to ruin. The second condition is that any new project of settlement must not be left dependent upon the professional politicians of any stripe’. The cry of “Trust Asquith” or “Trust Redmond” will never be heard again in Nationalist Ireland, nor the cry of “Trust Carson” outside the boundaries of his Orange Free State.’