Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 17 February 1921, Page 14

Current Topics

A Leather Medal Awarded It has been suggested by unkind persons who read the editorial on Ireland in the Dunedin Evening Staton' Wednesday, February .9, that while the editor was having an afternoon off and seeing Royal Stag win the Cup, some mischievous person got into his sanctum and perpetrated a practical joke by writing a farcical and ludicrous leading article for the purpose of proving that the Star has not the remotest notion of the realities of things in Ireland. Whoever did the trick makes great and amusing capital out of Dr. Cohalan’s fulminations against Sinn Fein, and adds to the fun by representing the Bishop of Cork as an extremist. In support of this wild and roaring fable a silly report that he is a cousin to that Judge Cohalan, whom all true Irishmen despise, is adduced, in spite of the fact that that lie was killed and exposed about four years ago. We are told also that Sir James Craig is likely to be more acceptable to Irishmen than Sir Edward Carson, whereas the wonder of us all is that Sinn Feiners never disguise that they have always had a sort of sneaking admiration for Carson, who, great rascal though he is, appeals to them ,as a great fighter, while Craig is nothing but a stupid ass for whom they have undiluted contempt. Now, to come back to the Bishop of Cork, it might interest people who are credulous enough to be taken in by the Star’s joker to know that the Irish people attach almost as little importance to the pronouncements of Dr. Cohalan as they do to those of the Dunedin Star, which is surely saying a great deal. It is significant that in an American Catholic paper we have recently seen Dr. Cohalan compared to the notorious Bishop of Beauvais who delivered Joan of Arc to her English murderers. Not another word need be added to that. Ik only remains to congratulate the Star on its leather medal. Michael Collins Killed and Brought to Life Once More Michael Collins has a habit of being killed and coming to life again. A few months ago the British cablegrams killed him with intense determination. Quietly and imperceptibly ho came to life again, and we were soon told that he was more of a terror to the Black-and-Tans ’ than ever. Last week, he was killed again by the cables. There was no doubt about it this time. The time, the place, and the circumstances were given with a detail that put the matter beyond doubt. It was as a matter of fact in one of those wonderful battles in which hundreds of Sinn Feiners fight for hours and fire unnumbered rounds of ammunition into soldiers and police without hitting a man that Michael was killed. It was in such a battle as was fought on Slieve-na-mon a little time ago, when our cables told us that drilling Sinn Fein battalions were surrounded and a great fight raged for days and no British were killed, as usual. It was in such a fight that Michael Collins fell, exactly as the men fell at Slieve-na-mon. For we know now that there was no such fight on Slieve-na-mon, and that the whole thing was a British he cabled out to the fool-journalists of New Zealand We know also that Michael Collins was not "killed a few months ago, and we are now being told that in spite of being killed dead with British thoroughness the other day, it is not certain that he was killed at all, at all. ■■ After that, it is surely no wonder that people are saying that Lord Limavaddyis going home as soon as he can to become Prime Minister of Ulster. Carson has grown tired of the game and Craig is an ass. The wealthy Ulster we used to hear about now howls that she is really a poor Ulster and that she has not a man of common or garden ability—no, not even a man with the little common-sense and the modicum of intelligence required in a Prime Minister under the British flag. Perhaps, in their despair in Ulster, they are saying: “Well, Lord Limavaddy is an Ulsterman, and a Past-Master of an Orange Lodge, and if he is no

better he can be no worse than the asses we have here, so let us send for him and give him the job.” Economics and Ethics Nowadays the merchant who looks for an ethical principle to justify his dealings with his fellow-men is rare indeed. The false, ignoble, material views of the English schools of economists have filtered through every stratum of society; and commercial morality is no more. Buyers and sellers now resemble opponents rather than neighbors inspired by Christian charity the object of a deal is rather to outwit than to exchange commodities. David urn’s well-known axiom for horse-dealers rules in every sphere of business : Do to the other man what he would like to do to you, and do it first. There is no thought of moral right or moral wrong : the policeman has been elected to replace the Ten Commandments. Man has to take a secondary place in the philosophy of modern economics ; indeed, if he is considered at all, it is as a mythical, impossible sort of homo econo micas round whose nebulous form theories* with no foundation on right reason have been woven by sophists. Man is now subordinated to money, as consumption is to production. We have become pagans ; we have lost the grasp of Christian principles; they no longer exercise their healthy influence on society. Utilitarianism, Materialism, in a word, expediency, have brought us to scraps of paper, to government by traitors, to the exploitation of the lives of the proletariat in order that the riel? may become richer. The Great War and its countless concomitant scandals may be traced back to the pagan ideals of English Political Economy. It is a hopeful sign that modern thinkers are examining the origins of the accepted system, and finding them unsatisfactory. It is encouraging to think that recognition of the need of going back to older and nobler foundations is becoming widespread. It is the general opinion to-day that the theories that have passed unchallenged in modern times have been nothing less than disastrous, and that the saner principles of a science of Political Economy based on Ethics must be revived. In this department as in so many others we have much to learn from the Middle Ages. Medieval teachers made no mistake concerning man’s proper place in the universe; they did not subordinate human lives to money: for them, man was infinitely more than gold. They rightly regarded production and gain as accidentals which are only good inasmuch as they are for the good of man. “Production is on account of man, not man of production,” says Antoninus of Florence summing up in one sentence the condemnation of modern views. For the medievals the regulation of consumption was the important study; for us production and profit alone seem to matter. They subordinated the economic to the social order,'* just as they subordinated the social order, and families and individuals, to the eternal principles which regulate man’s relations to the Creator; we subordinate truth, justice, charity, individuals, families, societies to self-interest and the acquirement of money. The influence of right morality over economics was noticeable in the past; the outrage of . the moral order for the sake of gain is the note of the present. When Christian principles guided men in business the sound principle that no man can justly become rich at the expense of his neighbor or of the State was never forgotten ; to-day it is never remembered, and in almost every kind of dealing there is an effort to overreach the neighbor or the State. Nowadays price is fixed , rather with a view to get as much as can be got from our fellows than in conformity with justice, and nobody condemns gains at the expense of others. In fact most ■ modern governments exist precisely because they protect and favor a number of unscrupulous persons who are making money at the expense of their neighbor and of the State. 4 Christian principles directed, and influenced Political Economy in the Middle Ages, and rightly a profiteer was regarded as a . thief; to-day the profiteer—or the thieves—succeeded in buying .the governments and- persecuting schools which try to teach Christian principles to the plundered public, Ay ' '■ c*' ' =

Modern Demoralisation A distinguished French priest, Abbe Ernest Dimnet, who is now visiting America, recently contributed to Harper’s a paper conveying his impressions of the’ people—especially of the young people—of the United States. . His words are well worth reproducing as they contain for us in New Zealand a very salutary lesson and a much needed warning. Of France, where in spite of atheists and secularists good mothers have preserved the home and its Christian traditions, he says: “French people still cherish the lesson handed down from the past generations, that you stand a good chance of being well if you keep ‘ your head cool, your feet warm, and your heart cheerful. But cheerfulness to the French of those wise epochs was the same thing with content and content is terribly near resignation. The French girl was (and still is) taught that il faut souffnr pour etre belle, and neither she nor her brother was much surprised to read in their religious books that we must suffer in order to be happy. Happiness in its highest was regarded as something sacred, the initial stage of the celestial bliss. The crude modern notion which we express by the word happiness was condemned as an idol or a mirage born of the heat of passion, and was branded as mere pleasure. . . I should advise American mothers to keep the pursuit of happiness out of their daughter's’ constitution if they cannot keep it out of their country’s. A girl who is given to understand every minute that she has a right to a good time is sure to declare before long that she wonders when the good time is coming, even if she has it at every hour. Do not make .fastidious artists in happiness. Keep on the safe Puritan side; it does not always mean thin lips and spectacled eyes shooting reproach around at random. I am afraid the idea of happiness is made an obsession by a great deal of apparently moral literature. There is certainly a relation between the mushy advice daily doled out to hairsplitting girl questioners by dozens of ‘ Aunt Margarets ’ or ‘ Cheery Mabels’ and the stuff we read last March m the pitiful diary of that Ruth somebody who killed herself in Chicago because, she said, happiness was only a word. . . I s one very much surprised to hear an experienced American magistrate say that sixty divorces out of a hundred are not caused by any real incompatibility, or, above all, by any cruelty and would never have taken place had not one of the’ parties had a more or less sudden vision of greater happiness in a new venture. The fact is that in America a s well as in France, we are confronted with the substitution of the right to happiness for a moral or religious principle.” What he says applies to New Zealand and to every country m which Christian principles have been attacked by atheist politicians. Our New Zealand State schools have banished God and taught the children that leligion is a matter of less importance than having a good time. The result is the demoralised home and he flapper with her latch-key seeking her good time no matter whether it be from a married or single libertine who will .take her for joy rides and pay for wine or lollies _ What that result means for the people may be aseertamed without any difficulty by any man who eads the daily chronicles of vice and corruption that spring like weeds on a midden-heap from the hearts and minds of a generation of unfortunate people who are never taught to remember that their business here is not to gratify every inclination but to serve God by ways of self-restraint and purity. It is true of the HI 1 \ an .y rate that beauty must be rooted in suffer* ing, and, if it is, we know what to think of the interior lT ble El l d mortal parts of the poor deluded ? n ! h , ° are at such pains to decorate the pampered Mies, that must wither like grass and nearly as quickly We Catholics are saving the country a large sum yearly y our schools but we are doing more than that': we are, almost alone, making a stand for pure homes pure morals, pure marriages, and true social well-being! Back to His Vomit ‘ . MeLm vavLmm It would be an omission for. which we could not

readily forgive ourselves were we to omit complimenting the Directors, the Editor, and that weekly correspondent, “Givis,” of the Otago Daily Times. On : February 5, we had a number of bishops and priests from all parts of New Zealand in Dunedin,. More than one of them said to us that the “Passing Notes,” written by “Givis” in the Times of that date, were the most consummate piece of journalistic blackguardism they ever saw. While reporting their remarks for the benefit of the Directors, the Editor, and the anonymous correspondent who supplies the blackguardism, we beg to call the attention of our readers to a still greater achievement by the same daily in the same low sphere. Civ is ’ once described Dr. Moran and his Catholic people as old Moran and his pigs. “Givis” was detected in a brazen forgery which he perpetrated in his anxiety to calumniate the Irish people. But there is even worse than that. The Editor of the Otago Daily Times, who published the passage, and who also published the latest blackguardism of “Givis,” had not the gentlemanliness or the common honesty to publish a letter calling the attention of the public to the dastardly thing “Givis” had done in his paper. That action was in our opinion more dishonorable than anything Givis has ever done. After the recent outburst of “Civis,” the man who had exposed the forgery wrote to the Editor to refute the latest calumnies of forger. Again, the cultured and gentlemanly Editoi refused to allow a defence of the attacked and calumniated Irish people to appear in his columns. There is room enough for the forger, “Givis”; but there is no room for one who exposes his lies and insults. The Editor who permitted, the forger to use his columns and who refused to publish a defence is worthy of “Givis,” and “Givis” is worthy of him. We congratulate the Directors, the shareholders, and the people who pay twopence for the Otago Daily Times on their successful support of a dastardly bigot who, sheltered by his anonymity, stops not even at forgery; we cannot congratulate them on anything else. Here is the letter which the Editor who once refused to expose the forger refused last week: “The Editor, “ Otago Daily Times. “Sir,-—After reading , ‘ Passing Notes’ in your issue of this morning one is tempted to think that the Irish, far from being objects of pity on account of the campaign of slander that is being carried on against them by the hack journalists of the Tory press, are to be envied as a people with a cause so righteous that it calls down the sneers and vituperation of forgers like ‘ Givis.’ Not that anyone takes notice of ‘Givis’ (no one heeds a forger), but I merely mention the fact to show how just the claims of Ireland must be when it is only persons of the standing of ‘ Givis’ who oppose them. “Your contributor presents an added glitter to his notoriety as a forger of historical testimony when he shows us to what a depth of the ridiculous he allows his passion for licking the boots of the rich man to lead him. Because de Valera cannot go openly into Ireland owing to the fact that Lloyd George and the other stock-jobbers are overrunning the country with mercenaries, butchering old men, women, children, and unborn children, sacking, burning, looting, torturing prisoners, outraging females, and firing on unarmed crowds, it is, according to ‘ Givis,’ proof positive that Ireland’s claims have no moral force. It would be equally logical to say that the morality of claims depends upon the physical strength of murderers. It is the doctrine that Might is Right, which was so unpalatable to our jingoes when the .Might was Germany’s. That our rulers use it unblushingly to-day is evidence of the fact that they have no longer a morality, but only an etiquette. Of course, it is only* a circumstance that Lloyd George recognised the justice of Ireland’s claims while the war was on, and if;.it suited him to recognise them to-day, ‘‘Givis h would again agree with him, for, as a, penny-a-liner, he has no opinions of his own, but like a poll-parrot,t echoes the slanders of the boss-junkers. It makes no difference if - : all the - decent public men in ‘ England are" sickened

and disgusted with what the British Government is doing. Persons like * Givis ’ are always to be found earning,thirty pieces of silver. It is, however, a cause lor satisfaction, that where there are so many bellicose and vainglorious jingoes, none of them have the courage and decency to speak their lines on the open road, but must needs skulk behind the hedge of an anonymity to declaim against those who suffer death for their principles. How proud our pseudo-patriots must feel when they contemplate that the chief defenders of the junkers in England are anonymous pin-prickers and forgers. And what an Empire it must be that it needs such defenders!— am, etc., “J. Robinson.”