The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, AUGUST 21, 1919. TOWARDS THE CEMETERY

New Zealand Tablet, 21 August 1919, Page 25

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, AUGUST 21, 1919. TOWARDS THE CEMETERY

N accordance with the orders of our . lords and masters, we celebrated PEACE like * II the humble, dutiful people we. are. ■ Because we were told to do so we squandered )/OPc thousands of pounds of our own : badlyneeded money to make believe .we . were glad that Mend, Eckstein, Speyer, George, * > and the rest of them “did” us while .-we did our bit. Our press, as in duty-bound, supported the masters and shrieked its shrillest, at the Labor Party for questioning the grounds of • mafficking Just now. And once again, there was something to. do for the white-feather brigade of spinsters on ..whose hands is so much blood of other women’s sons, brothers, and husbands. Our plutocrats had reason enough to maffick, for the war made them more secure; .the supporters of bureaucracy had - reason to maffick, for rthe Peace Conference ; gave them a new. lease .of life; T the traders and the jobbers—from Lloyd ; George down-

wards—had,,reason to maffick, for, .the war. enriched them. , For the people— those.who.fought and who will , now set;, themselves .. .to pay-—the., .proper course would ; have been to spend three days in prayer and penance, supplicating , God to deliver them'from "the evils amid which the war has left them. ' . ’ ’ *

Now, for an Irishman who sees at the end of the war for the freedom of small nations the heel of John Bull on the neck of Erin it would be natural enough to find no cause" rejoice and to dance to order like any Jingo marionette. Ireland is the test by which . we judge the sincerity of all the promises and by which we estimate whether the war has been won or no. However, Irishmen are not the only ones whose eyes are open to the fact that the war has not been won, that democracy has not been saved, that the pledges have not been kept, that right and justice have not been the ideal of the Allies. For thousands let one speak. Father Bernard Vaughan is as loyal an Englishman as any on earth to-day ; but he is not so blind as to say that black is white like so many other people who think they are loyal and that those who will not say that black is white are disloyal. Here, according to the Manchester Guardian-, is what Father Vaughan thinks of our great victory: “There was a section of the communityhe thought they must be the families of the profiteers — who seemed to live on snapshots and headlines and the jazz. One would think God Almighty had made them to be glorified spinning tops. He should think the punishment of such people in the next world would be to be whipped round when they were too tired to move. The divorce courts of the country were congested, the nurseries were empty, and the undertakers had more than they could do. We, as a nation, were travelling towards the cemetery. And the present state of things was going to be worse, because we had the happy knack now of making out that whatever we liked was right and that there was no sin except being dull and no remorse except being found out. . . . Referring to the Peace Conference, Father Vaughan said the Big Four had parcelled out God’s earth, as though it were an allotment field. God had not been consulted in the matter. They had settled the business without God, and God would unsettle it.” Father Vaughan speaks of conditions in England, but his words are true for all the Empiretrue especially for New Zealand. Here certainly we have the gospel of eat and drink, for to-morrow you die, worked out to its limits. Here are the empty cradles and the full coffins. Read our -papers and see how our little population keeps the Divorce Court busy. Read our papers and judge from them if religion is not dead and if expediency is not the highest principle that appeals to a good Jingo. Here more than anywhere, the schools having boycotted God, the creed of the masses is that whatever we like is right and there is no sin except it is found out. We all know what rottenness obtains in every one of our towns, we know that the insincerity of our press is but the reflex of the insincerity of our lives. We are travelling towards the cemetery! * . “The Big Four had parcelled out God’s earth, as though it were an allotment field. God had not been consulted in any way; They had settled the business without God, and God would unsettle it.” Note the word “business”: it sums it all up neatly. Can anybody doubt that the Jewish financiers who represented four Christian countries at the Peace Conference regarded it otherwise ? Who were they, you ask: lOotz (France), Gompers- America. Reading and Montagu (England), Hymans (Belgium). In addition to these, you have in Germany Bernstein, -Haase,- Heyman, and Hartmann. ■ ■ ■ ; ■ ■ .. . ■ M Who shall blame, -: ' i When the slave enslaves, the oppressed ones o’er ■ The oppressor triumph for: ever more?”- - ■ - • Lord Jellicoe issues a message to be prepared ! Jlaig’s peace note is a warning to all to learn to shoot.

The Tory Observe?- says the Peace Conference has sowed Europe with dragon's teeth: "They settled the business without God, and God would unsettle it!" "Eat and drink, for to-morrow you die," is the lesson taught this- Dominion by our Education Boards. We have learned it as; a people. Therefore we were ready <to maffick instead of doing penance and setting ourselves to reconstruct society on the lines for which the war was once alleged to be waged. The mafficking is over, and one thing remains: it is the truth that God is not mocked.