The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 1920. THE HARVEST

New Zealand Tablet, 26 August 1920, Page 25

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 1920. THE HARVEST

N the bad days of Ninety-Eight an old HjljLt rhyme was going round the country in *j!lL)\ Ireland. People used to repeat sadly, as vJffcN' if they found a consolation in thinking BftLW *that what had happened had been foreGfrkk told: A wet winter, A dry spring, : .. . K A bloody summer, And no Icing. -' Looking round the world .to-day we wonder if the people who truly realise what is happening derive any consolation from the fact that they have been warned time and again of what was coming. ' How many times has the warning been repeated that a' Government that educated the children on material lines and drove

God out of the schools was \ sowing for a ; terrible ■ reaping „ ! How. many /times' has >itv been t proclaimed by words and by facts ; that decay and rottenness must be the fate 5 of the country that undermines the sanction of conscience and the respect 1 for the Law "of God How many times has it • been ' told that the outrages against 'justice and charity "committed by the rich against the poor would one day bring a fearful punishment? ' In ; spite of lessons and warnings, the game went on merrily. Rem, rem quocumque modo rem, — Money/ get it how you can —was the only law of those in power. Eat and drink for to-morrow you die was the philosophy of life that children were taught. And, from their tin temples" and tabernacles, blatant parsons shrieked in rage against the Catholic Church, which, like a voice crying in the wilderness, never grew tired ,of telling the parents that they had souls to save, and the children, that justice, truth, purity, and charity were the only stepping stones to salvation, and the rulers that only on foundations of justice and charity was it possible to build up a State that would last ; when floods came and washed away the shallow sands of Utilitarianism and Hedonism. *' The tide has turned. The workers have rebelled against their tyrants; anarchy is rife in every community ; respect for law has gone because the conscience has been torn out of the people; they who have been taught to mock God are asking why they should respect the rights of mortals. They have learned their lesson well, and they are not to be blamed for having done as much. The Italian anti-clerical, Guglielmo Ferri, was right when he said that the social upheaval of to-day is the consequence of the bad example of the bourgeoisie. "Have they not," he says, 'beheld the Tables of the Law broken by those who were above them and ought to have respected the Law of God." Statesmen and politicians have ignored God and made Him an exile. They made unto themselves laws of lust, avarice, and ambition. They ruled the people with iron rods instead of with justice and charity; and what marvel is it that the people are everywhere eager now to pay them back in their own coin. The general disorganisation, the welter of confusion, the rampant vice and anarchy, are all the harvest of the seed that has been sown by our Militarists, our framers of secret treaties, our State-atheists, our Marconijobbers, our "Dope"-profiteers, our pledge-breakers, our oppressors of democracy, our traffickers in human blood, our society women, flaunting their vices and their extravagance in the hungry faces of the starving poor, our corrupt judges administering the law in favor of the powerful and the rich. Red Russia, betrayed and calumniated, has hit back in blind fury. All over the world there is a tendency to imitate her. God alone knows what time and what space divide us all from a blood-deluge compared with which that of the French Revolution was insignificant. The rulers abolished God and made their provisions as if He did not exist. Can they wonder if the masses imitate them and ignore justice and charity in their dealings with capitalists? Can those who drove conscientious objectors to fight and be killed wonder if there is no mercy in the hearts of the men whom they outraged so barbarously Can they who broke faith so often expect that their victims will keep faith with them Can men who have been public examples of dishonor and injustice expect honorable and just treatment in return? Our Governments have robbed the people of their faith in God, they have taken from them not only their hopes of comfort on ear,th but their hopes of peace -and happiness in Heaven.-. They have undermined the Natural Law : as well as God's Law; and they have blindly established schools which were nurseries of atheism and anarchy. Now they are about to reap as they have sowed, and who can pity them? " '.',, ' l ' '■ .■„!'," ". ..-'-■ ~''.'"f\ v */' .. .■'*./ '/^ : ■• t They . who have \ oppressed the Church; I who : have done, all j in their power to undermine its influence,

now ask why i does not the : Church help them. - They appeal to the Church to save them , from the people whom they have set b against the Church. . Too late they come to recognise that the solidity and soundness of the social - fabric depend on / those - very laws which they have denied and outraged in their private lives as well as in their public - actions. The whole trend, of modern unrest is the logical result of the political corruption of the men in , power, and of , the bigotry of the -parsons who have so ably seconded them. . The clergymen of the Protestant Churches .see the grass growing on the pathways that lead to their places of worship. They know that this is because their children were trained in schools that taught them . that if religion was not a mockery it. was at any rate a very indifferent matter. They know this, and yet their bigotry ranges them on the side of the atheists and the materialists and the Jews whose aim is to , eradicate Christian -principles from the communty. They do nothing ; because they prefer to unite and strike in fury against the One Church That does something to save souls; and now they are reaping their harvest. They too, are guilty of deceiving and blinding the people; they have always taken their stand on the side of the rich and the powerful they have been ready, as we saw at the last election, to do their part in calumniating Labor. They, also, will pay the penalty. Is it too late now to stay the torrent ? To all human appealances it is too late. The one thing certain is that the sole hope for all lies in a speedy return to Christian principles. Let us add that the tactics that were common at the last election leave us small ground to hope that Christian principles ' are likely to appeal to many people in this Dominion at present. We may be wrong, but we fear that under the administration of a Government, constituted and elected as ours, instead of reform we shall see another vigorous seedtime of disorder andunless a higher power than any on earth intervenesa social earthquake. The only hope of salvation for the politicians in the saddle is to pass an Act making Proportional Representation the basis of Parliamentary representation; and then to get out immediately. Otherwise the blessing of the P.P.A. will avail them little.