Notes

New Zealand Tablet, 15 March 1917, Page 34

Notes

A Timely Query Who is to settle the question of a magazine contributor's nationality, asks Ave Marin —the contributor or the editor? After reading 17 pages of an article in the Nineteenth Century, entitled ' An Englishman in the Shrine of Imam Reza at Mashad,' we find on page 18 this statement: c . . . I finally reached India. . . on a very appropriate date for an Irishman —the 17th of March/ Had the writer, Colonel H. S. Massy, C.E., been arrested for some flagrant crime, we wonder whether his iniquity would have been imputed to ' an Englishman.' Parochial History A correspondent has sent us some notes about the Wairarapa parishes which we are happy to publish. Similar notes dealing with the history of other parishes will be always welcome. Much interesting information of this kind can be collected in every parish in New Zealand, and it would be of considerable assistance to future historians. As years go on, first hand information will be harder V> get, and many details lost. At present there are still living in almost every district people who were acquainted with the pioneer priests and who would willingly supply the outlines for an interesting and comprehensive sketch.

The Jesuits In a thickly populated country like England it is not surprising that there still remain some bigots who readily believe the wildest tales about the machinations of the Jesuits. English clergymen as a rule no longer encourage the propagation of such ridiculous charges as are still made in New Zealand by men of the type of Elliott, and as a reward for their fair-minded views on Catholic questions are sometimes told that they are Jesuits in disguise. In America such men are liable to hear the same nonsense. Dr. Washington Gladden, pastor of the First Congregationalist Church in Columbus, Ohio, once defended the Catholics against certain slanders, and was attacked by an enlightened Orangeman (he would have become a Cabinet Minister in New Zealand), who asked him why he had not the courage to proclaim openly that he was a Jesuit. The pastor's reply is delightful: 'My dear Sir, —How did you find it out ? It- is marvellous—the enterprise of your fraternity. But you hadn't heard that I am to be the next Pope had you? Well, you'll hear that pretty soon. It's part of the bargain. But don't tell it till you're dead sure that, it's so. There's another little piece of news that you'll be glad to get. .lust as soon as lam elected Pope that massacre is going to begin which Leo ordered, you know, but which the faithful hadn't the backbone to carry out. . . . But when I get there it's going through, sure pop. We have engaged the public gardens at Washington, down by the monument, and we are going to make a pile of corpses of Protestant ministers, in the form of a pyramid, higher than the top of the monument. It will take, according to my figures, 346,927 ministers to make this heap. There are not enough now in this country, but several new theological seminaries will be started at once (by the Jesuits of course) to furnish the supply. We've got the railroads chartered to haul 'em from all parts of the country. Aren't you a minister yourself? Well, you'll be in it. I'll try to keep a place near the top for you. Apex reserved for former admirers. And when the pile is complete, I'm going to mount to the top, and sit there and howl !' Advertising Hitherto the Yankees had the record. We unhesitatingly withdraw the belt from them and transfer it to a Wexford gentleman whom we have seen in other days driving a cab in Naples, and who narrowly escaped getting his D.P.H. for his report on the sanitation of Pompeii. The following is his introduction to an advertisement for bread: