Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 21 April 1921, Page 14

Current Topics

Greenwood Breaking - : :r ; r A man cannot fool all the people all the time even under the Union Jack, and it seems that so many people have now found Greenwood out that he is losing his' brazen impudence- and showing signs of breaking as every petty despot like him broke on the Irish Question; When towards the end of February, he was accused by Captain Wedgewo6d Benn of four gross violations of the usages of civilised warfare he had not a word to say in self-defence. He tacitly admitted making a scrap of paper of the Hague Convention inasmuch as he could not deny that his forces in Ireland had (1) taken and exposed hostages, (2) inflicted penalties on innocent people for offences for which they were not responsible, (3) destroyed public property in revenge for private offences, and (4) seized private property with no justification. He could not defend the murders committed by his men; he was silent when confronted with the verdict of an Irish judge who stated from the Bench that the forces of the British Crown had committed 139 criminal offences in Co. Clare alone. He was told on the authority of Cardinal Logue that a camp of his men was a "nest of bandits and homicides." He could not. deny it. Before the Parliament of England such things were said in arraignment of a representative of the English Government and everybody who heard them knew that such things were true. Who was it that talked so much about scraps of paper and the rights of small nations five years ago? Who talked about hanging the Kaiser for such things as Lloyd George and Greenwood are now doing- ? o _ S Public Opinion Unless we are to believe that the English people are as rotten at heart as their \ Cabinet Ministers we cannot believe that \ they will stand for such crimes against humanity. The fact that" men like Captain Benn and Commander Kenworthv have been able to draw with them such notable Tories as Lord Bentinck and the Cecils is proof that Lloyd George has not the decent people of England behind him and that honest men are sick and ashamed of the criminal policy which is now, everywhere in Europe, associated with the name of England. The reports of various Commissions of Inquiry, the protests of English bishops and clergymen, the revelations in the British press are all having a slow but certain effect on the public mind One proof of it is that, on the occasion of the last debate on the Irish policy of the Government, marked coldness was shown even Coalitionists and Tories many of whom absented themselves altogether rather than vote. Commenting on the lack of support extended to the Cabinet The Nation says- "There is a breach m the Government's ranks which will widen as the public dangers of its Irish policy develop, and its scandals like that of the resignation of General Crozier, multiply. V Take the City. For the first time for generations its tone is markedly liberal, freetrade, and even pacifist. The other night I was at a big West-London music hall. All the topical references were decidedly disrespectful to the Government, : to the ..Minister, and to Mr. Churchill; and there ran through the jeers a certain cynical by no means unsenous, criticism of the war and the poMcal war-figures. For the-first" time in my experience of pleasure-taking London it seemed tc/me to have a rebeilior s a " ISI ?* mos P he F 6 ' sce P and even a little rebellious. Public opinion in England can be with maiolj^T'rT l7 ° n HhG su PP that the majority of Englishmen are as great hypocrites and savages as the politicians who are at the head of affairs here, at present. , AS for public opinion in ffl&'SlS said 'that' S A° n 6St ? P ressed its trend when he said that England is regarded everywhere as the one r great ; obstacle to the peace of the ' world ?

The Child and the State —^_ : -., 'Personally, a I * must confess to \ a certain • oldfashioned prejudice against the tendency of 'our times. I would be glad if we' could see our way clear to maintain the traditional relations of father, mother, 1 children, and the home." " The man who spoke these words was considered by the millions ; of the United States fit to be their President for the next three years. If we knew nothing else in favor of Mr. Harding these words alone wduld lead us to think that he was a thousand times more fitted for his position than most modern politicians who throw principles to the winds in order to hold positions. The traditional relations are based on the Law of Nature and on Christian teaching. Only persons who are incapable of grasping elementary principles, or who are blindly determined to "ruin the State in their ignorant hatred of Christianity, try to subvert the traditional order and to place the State in loco parentis to its children. Only tinkers such as we have in New Zeaalnd, men ready to make a foul compact with bigots 1 " in return for their support, as did many members of the present Massey Party, only atheists who know that the traditional relations are sanctioned by Christian principles, only spectacled pedants behind desks and shut out from all practical knowledge of what they talk and write about, are in opposition to the old and sound system which obtained everywhere before pandering to a mob became the almost sole quality required in a Prime Minister or in an Attorney-General. The moral training of a child primarily depends on the mother; and to attempt to overthrow the relations that exist at. present is to attempt to introduce an unmoral, and therefore, immoral, State. The brute beasts will fight fiercely for their young, and the parents who will not fight determinedly against all sorts of State interference with the family are in a sense more ignoble than/the beasts. A mother ought to resist by every mean's that God gave her all attacks made on rights that came to her from God who made her and gave her children to train up in His love and service. Parents have a natural authority over children, and children have a natural duty of obedience to their parents. There is a natural union between them, a natural order of relations that no power on earth has any right to \ destroy. What natural and moral relations can there be between the State official who represents the State as step-mother and the children wrested from their mother's breast and placed under his care One might as well expect children to love, honor, and obey a sign-board, or the cow a hundred miles away from which their food comes to them over a State railway and through the hands of their State step-mother. There are signs that further attacks on the rights of parents are contemplated. by our New Zealand Muddlement , and its tinkering, ignorant officials. There are signs that efforts are going' to be made in order, to take children even from religious institutions in which needy parents, or parents who for some definite reason were. compelled to hand, over the children to the care of persons whom they could trust; have placed their offspring; , It is becoming apparent thatj {certain amateur male istep-mothers are about making an attack on private Homes which are the next best thing to real homes, and unless all the religious bodies unite and make common cause against. such a perverse and stupid aggression the attack may be launched sooner than most people imagine possible. We have had evidence enough" in the past that there is no such thing as government for the people and by the people in New Zealand, and it is time that the public should make it quite clear that politicians and officials are servants of the people and that we will no longer tolerate the folly of carrying into effect the idiotic and expensive whims of brainless and inexperienced theorists. v - : ■■■'-'■'. ' M -: Relief for the Victims of the Orangemen ...: s> f J „ We have been asked to tell all the v readers of the Tablet something of ; the terrible sufferings which the fury and the ; blind bigotry; of the Orange savages; of Ulster have, brought-on our CatHolic people.pi In an-

other column there will be found an. appeal sent out to us from Ireland, and we have merely to call attention to it in order to excite the pity of our generous people for, the poor sufferers who have been persecuted because they are Irish and because they are Catholic. In a cable sent to Cardinal O'Connell, the Bishop of Down, and Connor says that fully fifty thousand Catholics are on the verge of starvation in his diocese, inj that . nameless satrapate made up of the. six mutilated counties. A bloody pogrom has gone on now for more than half a year. It began last July with the sound of Orange drums and has been pursued with relentless violence. Catholics have been expelled from shipyards, railways, factories, mills, warehouses, offices, and shops, bv the same Orange Society of which the members out here are such an eloquent specimen. Bishop Macßory tells us that "religious fanaticism inflamed by ascendancy politicians has been once more let loose in all its violence against the lives and properties, of Catholics of every class; and the horrors of the riots of 1864, 1872, and 1886 (condemned by Government Commissions of Inquiry) have been renewed and savagely surpassed. In Belfast, Catholic churches have been attacked; in one instance nuns had to fly in terror from their burning convent; nearly 2000 Catholic families have been driven from their homes, their furniture in many cases being wantonly and maliciously burned, in others smashed up and looted forty Catholics lost their lives, many of them in defence of their homes and churches or merely to glut the fury of a rabid mob, and 200 others have been wounded. In the neighboring town of Lisburn 600 Catholic families were driven from their homes and most of them became miserable refugees in the Catholic districts of Belfast, thus throwing new responsibilities on the overtaxed energies of the Committee. The Priest's house in Lisburn was attacked by an infuriated mob and burned to the ground, as were many other Catholic dwellings: the Catholic graveyard there was desecrated; and from Lisburn, too, its nuns had to fly for their lives. . . Dromore and Banbridge have had to endure somewhat similar savagery. _ . . All this took place within the area of the ' Six Counties' which it is proposed to hand over to the tender mercies of the Political Party, whose followers, unhindered and unheeded by their leaders, have wrought all these horrors." The Belfast News tells us that "nothing like it was charged by the worst enemies of the Germans against the Kaiser's forces in the field during the course of the war." The story of the shame of the Orangemen and their backers has spread throughout the civilised world. Public bodies in France, Spain, Belgium, and England have taken it up and collections for the v relief of the victims of Carsomsm have been raised everywhere. The Catholics of America,, England; and Scotland have nobly responded. Australia is beginning to come into line too.; Surely, we in New Zealand, who know so well what lengths bigotry and Orange savagery can go to will not be deaf.' The whole thing is, the shameful work of the Orange gang in Ireland. One honest, Government condemned the Orangemen dishonest Governments, here and. elsewhere, use them to-day Help their victims at home. Help because it is our own kith and kin that are calling. Help because you are Christians and because you have charity. The Truce that Might Have Been _, Just before Archbishop Clune left England for Rome we were told that he was invited by M? Lloyd ™S\ t 0 de !? 7 A is d ? arture in order that an effort might be made through him to bring about a settlement of the Irish Question. We know now that a truce : was on.the point, of; being arranged and that matters had gone so far that even the draft of an announcement of the terms of agreement was .prepared for the press. At the last moment everything P that 1 b6 n ei V done ,™ Undone and 'the Sinn Feinerf went back to their hard way more than ever convinced that there .was no honor in British statesmen ".common sense in Irishmen who* imagined that it might be possible at any time or under any conditions to Spec?

honorable dealing :' from them. We; are in a position to state that the breakdown was riot' because of any breach of faith on the part of Sinn Fein: the breach of faith was where it has always been—on the part of the English. Archbishop Chine found the: Sinn Fein leaders eminently reasonable and if he did nothing else he was able as a result of his interview with them to go on to Rome and tell certain people at the Vatican that they were being hopelessly misled by the John Bulls in the Curia and out of it. President de Valera has now issued a statement concerning the negotiations, and from it we leaiin that a truce on the following terms was practically completed: . -. "The British Government undertakes that during the truce no raids, arrests, pursuits, burnings, shootings, lootings, demolitions, courts-martial, or other acts of violence will be carried out by its forces, and that there will be no enforcement of the terms >of the Martial Law proclamation. We, on our side, undertake, s to use all possible means to ensure that no acts whatever of violence will occur on our side during.the period of truce. The British Government on their part, and we on ours, will use our best efforts to bring about the conditions above mentioned, with the object of creating an atmosphere favorable to the meeting together of the representatives of the Irish people, with a view to bringing about a permanent peace.'' The truce was to last for one month, and it was full of possibilities. Why did it break down . President de Valera replies: •"""' "The whole thing ended, as I am sure many of you anticipated it would end, by the British Premier's running away from the terms he had himself ' suggested." One more proof that Lloyd George is incapable of doing an honorable thing. One more proof that no country can trust the word of a British politician—as a writer in the Contemprory Review warned the world three years ago. What a light that incident throws on the wisdom of the great Archbishop of Dublin who not long before his death publicly declared that no man was a friend of Ireland'who would under the present circumstances give to the British politicians any excuse for temporising and beating time. The experience of his long life taught that true Irish churchman that fair play and honor were terms unknown in the vocabulary of those who govern England. Thus, once again, Lloyd George was true to his own nature and false to the world. Let us hope Irishmen will everywhere profit by" the lesson. We might remember it ourselves -when we are dealing with statesmen of the type of those who pledged themselves to pass infamous legislation in New Zealand for the support of the P.P.A. The whole incident is also one more blow at the good name of England, and one more victory for Sinn Fein. . England is becoming more and more like the picture she drew of ■ Prussia with' what results Mr. Chesterton thus tells us: "It was touch and go with us even when all the American republics and all the Australian colonies regarded us as fighting against despotism. And we are piling up 1 a:tradition against ourselves that will make them "regard us as the last survival of despotism. Every tiny South American State will be proud to be counted among our enemies. When one of the hundred entanglements of Imperial politics brings us again into a war, that war will become a crusade. The defeat of England will be the defence of small nations; the ruin of England will be the reconstruction of the world. The nation we love will be the one obstacle to a League of Nations.- The war that will end us will be the war that will end war. That we think this wild and exaggerated, 'that we think when all is said that we are better than Prussia, 1 that we think there is a case for us that foreigners do 1 hot see has nothing to do with the point.; ■:: It is not r a question, of what we think, but of what they -think. It is not a ;question, of what ♦they ido not see, but of what they do see. And what they see, • when they see the black-and-tan uniform in Ireland, is what we ' saw when we saw the black ] and • yellow ; I flag flying \' over Belgium. They see the last and least tolerable of the ancient tyrannies of the earth, . N When once the free

nations, for whatever original cause, had got their teeth into that Prussian • tyranny, ~they .were resolved never to let go. They hung on until it dropped. Absit omeii. x "Those who foresee these things have no pleasure in 1 foretelling them: They love their country and not their prophecies. There will be no triumph in which they can share; no foes of England whom they will ever call their friends. We who would warn England would never war against her, but war to the last for her, however wrong she might be. If it be written that these things come, even then I hone that to the last we should be with her, to take our share in the hatred of humanity and our portion in the wrath of God."