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New Zealand Tablet, 23 September 1920, Page 11

A TRIBUTE TO ARCHBISHOP MANNIX. > Rev. John Talbot Smith, the greatest dramatic critic in America, and a writer of powerful articles on Irish affairs, says of Archbishop Mannix:— Archbishop of Melbourne, the hosts of America* salute you and thank you for the golden words booming across the far seas ? It is not often an Archbishop talks nowadays in public. Manning of London is dead and Croke of Ireland; Mercier speaks like an angel at times in righteous and stormy protest; the rest are silent, doubtless with good reason, for silence is always golden. None the less do Catholics love to ear the ringing voice of the men whose words can sting mankind, or lift up their hearts,' or cut through the fogs of pompous prejudice like the sun, at the very moment when the world seems darkest. So Thomas of Canterbury spoke, and Stephen Langton; so John Hughes of New York spoke five years • ago, not once but often, in the press, in the hall, from the pulpit: so Cardinal Mercier spoke in tones that strengthened nis people and shook the cruel German grip upon his Avil7i. Ah, for a score of such voices and such Archbishops, to shatter the sneaking conventionalism ot the world, to silence the squeaking persistency of the cowards, to shame the mediocrities in high places, and to fill the earth with the sonorous music of courage, intelligence, justice, eloquence, and power.”