The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 1920. OUR VICTORY

New Zealand Tablet, 17 June 1920, Page 25

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, JUNE 17, 1920. OUR VICTORY

«YEAR and a half ago peace broke out over Europe. The sound of the guns was silent; . the smoke lifted from the earth; the weary soldiers walked home and laid down their ax-ms. We had peace. We have had it for over a year and a half. Its harvest has whitened; the sheaves are tied. Look well at them; look at them, all you who told the soldiers that they were fighting for an era of happiness and comfort and justice all over the world. Europe has been brought to her knees by famine, misery, , disease, revolution, war, and outrage. Nation has arisen against nation, and even the Allies are now a house divided against itself. The foundations of civilisation have b°eh sapped, and social order rocks on its basis. It would seem that the hand of God has fallen on the peoples who refused to learn from, the war lessons of humility and penance. - Although we have starved the women and children of Central Europe; although the name

of England shall go down to history black and stained by the guilt of this cold-blooded crime against women and children, done after the war was over; although the world knows that Clemenceau, George, and Wilson have deceived mankind and rendered in vain all the bloodshed of the war, yet is there no sign of penance, and the death-dance of the nations goes on more merrily than ever. * We have killed in cold blood by the cruel weapon of starvation at least half a million women and children in Europe; we have shot down like rabbits women and children in India ; we have introduced the worst features of the Penal Laws into Ireland, and we have exceeded the excesses of Cromwell and Elizabeth and Pitt and Castlereagh in our efforts to destroy a people whose crime is that Britain is unable to keep her pledges ; we have in America millions of foes who will never rest and never relent in their bitter opposition against the power that is killing their kith and kin. And we have the rebel Smith—the proGerman Ulster "galloper” who ought to have been hanged four years ago for high treasonnow directing the slaughter of the people of Ireland and using British troops to shoot them down for the crime for which he was made Lord Chancellor of England. We have been kicked out of Russia, where we had betrayed and attacked the nation that lost more men to save us from Germany than France and England lost altogether ; and what is more, owing to the Hunnish tactics of our statesmen, we have lost every penny we had in Russia. The map of Europe is at present a document eloquent of broken pledges and bad faith. Chaos reigns everywhere. Montenegro has been sacrificed because she w r as weak ; Ireland is martyred because she is Catholic ; Austria Catholic Austriahas been broken and dismembered, while Protestant Prussia has the support of Lloyd George against the other German States that want to be free. It does not matter that the freedom of these States would be the best way of breaking the Prussian power ; nothing seems to matter now but the wishes of Lloyd George and the capitalists that run him and ruin the Empire. Look at it, then, you loud-throated Jingoes, who told us that we were fighting for small nations, and for truth and justice. Look at it well, for indeed, the world will ne’er look upon the like again. Justice gone; truth gone; charity gone; chastity gone; the very foundations of hope gone; and the affairs of State in the hands of incompetent and unprincipled men : that is the harvest ; that is the result of our victory. * In Rome, the Catholic world is saluting with joy the saints who have been canonised. Oliver Plunket and Joan of Arc were the victims of tyranny and " hatred and they have conquered. , England killed Oliver Plunket and England killed Joan of Arc, and now while England is down in the dust, stricken and diseased as a result of the pledge-breaking and the lies and the greed of her politicians, the martyrs have triumphed. The moral of this is that you cannot kill a spiritual thing; you cannot slay souls, whether of people or of nations. In this truth lies the sole hope for the future. Underneath the' chaos the soul of religion lives still, just as underneath the jack-boot in Ireland the soul of the nation is stronger than ever. In the mysterious ways of Providence the destiny of persecuting England—that killed Oliver and Joan—is now in the.hands of the most incompetent and hopeless people that ever ruined any country. The time is coming when the people of England will take into their own hands the ordering of their own affairs, and when a government of men of principle and honesty will try to set their country right before the eyes of the world by undoing as far as they can the. wrongs that have been done by Mr. George, his Germans, his Jews, his Orange traitors and their satellites in some of the Colonies. At present the chaos is appalling. Read Keynes, read Chesterton, read Austin Harrison,

read Gibbs, and you will see to what a depth of despair and s^ shame the Lloyd George gang have brought the Empire. We believe that beneath the confusion the heart of humanity is sound we believe that the eternal principles of justice, truth, charity, and chastity will come again, like flowers pushing through the dung that hides them for a while. We believe that after her seven hundred years of torment, Ireland will come into her own, and by sheer force of Christian example and principle will lift up crushed and broken England, just as twice before in her history she restored the faith that England had lost.