Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 23, 14 June 1923, Page 18

Current Topics

Mussolini and the Popular Party Towards the end of April Mussolini broke definitely with the Popular Party, and a number of Cabinet Ministers belonging to the Party handed in their portfolios. At the Turin Congress the Party expressed its willingness to support, the Fascisti Government but would not abandon altogether its own programme. This did not satisfy Mussolini, • who wanted unconditional allegiance to his own platform. . The Popular Party became divided over the question, and at present while Mussolini is faced by the able leader, Don Sturzo, there may be a serious break in the ranks of the latter's followers. Germany In an article in the Deutsche Zukwnft, Drs. Roesch and Krebs describe what they call the "Death Struggle of German Cities." Taking as a typical instance the city of Freiburg, they say that building has almost ceased while the population has increased as the result of the influx of fugitives. As many as forty families, numbering six or eight members, can be found crowded into one small space, without the facility of a single kitchen. Eighty-four persons are mentioned as crammed into twenty-three small rooms of dilapidated rear tenements. The price of wood has risen over 2600 times what it was before the war, and coal is, 2895 times . dearer. All classes are suffering on account of the cost of food and clothes. Important articles such as flour and shoes have gone up from 3000 to 5000 times their old price. People are doing their best to economise, and a workman's family has to live on one pound of meat in the week for all. There is much distress owing to the prevalence of sickness and unemployment.

The Break Down of Protestantism While there is a distinct move towards the Catholic Church in Germany, Protestantism is fast losing ground. Writing in the German press, a Lutheran clergyman. Dr. Steir, says: German Protestants, not excluding even the Protestant conservatives, are convinced that the Catholic Church, will derive great advantage from the political and religious catastrophe of Germany. Thousands upon thousands of German Protestants, whose religious adherence had been strengthened by the official backing of the State Church, have passed to anti-religion or to anti-Christian atheism, since the collapse of the imperial regime. The' truly religious portion of Protestantism, that still boasts of clinging to a Creed and a Church, is in reality deprived, by the downfall of the Empire and of the German National Protestant. Church, of the only basis upon which its religious activity was founded. The religious life, therefore, which- was nourished by the State Church, is menaced with ruin. The need,

moreover, of a force which can assert itself with authority, such as the authority of the Catholic Church, is increasingly felt.

Never can the Protestant sects, despised atoms of the great whole of Protestantism, strengthen themselves under such conditions. The Catholic Church only can do that by means of her unity and authority. For that reason, and for that reason only, do numbers of Protestants seek their way to the Catholic Church, to find there a certain refuge in their distress. -We ought then to own up that the German Protestant Church, so far as it is the State Church, has proved itself a conspicuous failure by the fact of the ruin of Germany in the World War.

Protestantism has been struggling to unifv its scattered forces, but the difficulties apparently "have been too ..great and the transition from State favor to Socialist hostility has been too sudden. Its defenders realise that an authority such as that possessed by the Catholic Church is needed to # save the situation.

Watching the Rhine Writing from Dusseldorf recently, Mr. George Ren - wick, the special correspondent of the Daily Chronicle , says : The French and Belgian policy of expulsion and eviction has now developed into a veritable terror throughout the occupied area. Everywhere people are being turned out of their homes at the shortest notice, arrested or expelled. They are in most cases people in the Customs and railway services.

No reason is now given for what is done, and the demands for expulsion and eviction forms is now so great that they are merely type-written and duplicated on a rotary machine. All that has to he done is to scribble in the names of the persons to be arrested, evicted, or expelled.

The Cardinal-Archbishop of Cologne, Dr. Schulte,, has received a telegram from Treves informing him that 106 railwaymen's families' were turned out of their houses on to the streets by African troops. These colored troops, in order to hasten the "move," began to throw the furniture of these houses out of the windows. People came to the aid of the evicted families, and managed to save some of the furniture from destruction.

In addition, the telegram states that 598 families in Treves and district have been told to leave their homes at very short notice. In some cases 'the families evicted were given only ten minutes to leave their homes. When the colored soldiers saw that it was not possible to remove all furniture in that time, they "came to the rescue" and pitched and pushed the furniture downstairs out on to the pavement. They did a great deal of damage in this way, and more was done when these rough Spahis "helped" the evicted persons to pile their furniture rapidly on lorries and carts.

When the soldiers thought that things were notgoing rapidly enough, they-made free use of the buttends of their rifles.

Then the evicted families and their furniture were hurried out of the town and forced to camp in the open, in weather which had suddenly turned from that of summer to that of winter.

A fund is being opened for their relief. It is reckoned that expulsions from the occupied territories are now taking place at the rate of at least 300 per da The Catholic Newspaper * * Popes, bishops, priests are unanimous on the importance of supporting the Catholic newspaper. Every Catholic family ought to subscribe to one or more, and every pastor ought to feel dissatisfied as long as there was even one family in his parish not taking in a Catholic paper. Here is what an American Bishop has to say on the importance of this matter. The Hight Rev. Dr. Chartrand, Bishop of Indianopolis, in a letter to his flock urging the importance of supporting the Catholic press because of -its capacity to counteract those evil agencies which strive to poison the mind of the public by sowing seeds of discord, bigotry, and hatred, by spreading error and falsehood, as well as immorality, and thus undermine the very pillars of society, writes: The Catholic press, while, specialising in matters of interest to all members of the Church,

fearlessly exposes the enemies of religion and mankind, points out the dangers and safeguards, and provides wholesome, edifying, and inspiring reading matter for everyone. We cannot consider the splendid achievements of this struggling industry and poorly paid profession of Catholic journalism and authorship without awakening to a sense of appreciation, gratitude, and obligation to support, more generously than has been done in the past, this very essential work in behalf of Catholic truth and the betterment of society. ; - To be broad-minded enough to know that editors should be left free, and that as long as faith and morals are not at stake their personal opinions may be taken for what they are worth, is surely not an unreasonable favor to be expected of the reader. '■■/■■ The reading of Catholic literature,, in the home

should be encouraged; it would be most beneficial' to old and young it is only by such mental exercise that the better things of life and true values are discerned and a genuine atmosphere 'of faith and piety is secured. We should be desirous of making the truth better known and zealous in advancing the Kingdom of God among men. If every Catholic were to spend a moderate sum of money each year in distributing excellent Catholic literature among friends, acquaintances, and others not of the household of the Faith, what a wonderful amount of good would be accomplished ! Parochial and diocesan societies of every kind might laudably undertake, in addition to their regular duties, Berious efforts to encourage the reading and distribution of good Catholic literature. The Decline of the Dailies The man in the street has learned to estimate the daily papers at their right value as a result of their unscrupulous war-propaganda and of their flagrant bias in politics. Not only have they lost prestige as far as reliable news is concerned but they have deteriorated vastly from a literary point of view. There is hardly an English daily left with pretensions to style in its editorials, and, as for American papers, they all run to scare headlines. Mr. - Belloc. who is lecturing in America, has been talking frankly to \an American audience. • He predicted to them that newspaper power was passing from the daily press. The papers have not reported him fully, but the New York World gives the following: "If this humble speech, made to a few hundred people, should reach the ears of the great newspaper men, I am afraid that statement will offend them more than any criticism I have made. "he power of the press has reached its peak and is be lining to decline. A preat change came over the newspapers in the early 'nineties. Before that they had been conducted by editors who were not the servants of the owners; also, their circulation contained a much larger proportion of educated people and did not reach so far down to the poorer social level. . The editors were men of a professional type, with certain standards of integrity, culture, and decency, which maintained a level of which we were proud. We still have papers of that type; for instance, the Manchester Guardian. But early in the 'nineties it was discovered that if you owned and successfully managed a great paper you could influence the politics of the country, and men began to play that game. The editor became tine mouthpiece of the owner and did not write what he believed. The new journalism began with Alfred Harmsworth and grew with mushroom rapidity. Up to that moment no man could get into the House of Lords unless he had some sort .of solid position. The first of these new, speculative, gutterbird owners of newspapers demanded a peerage. It was refused with indignation by both political parties. Within three weeks he was a peer. After that there was a cataract, and the institution was shaken and never will be the same again."

At the present moment there is in the American newspaper world one William Randolph Hearst, who is something of a counterpart of the late Lord Northcliffe. He is credited with employing 37,000 persons on his papers and magazines. Two of the latter are published in London. Beginning in 1887 with the San Francisco Examiner, lie now owns eighteen daily papers — eight morning, with a total daily circulation of 1,183,203 ; ten evening, with a total daily circulation of 1,669,511 —and thirteen Sunday papers, with a total circulation of 3,400,060. In the magazine field he is interested in nine publications with a circulation of 2,773,784.. His success has been phenomenal. He boasts that one out of every four families in the United States read a Hearst paper. Yet in the 1922 campaign for nomination for Governor of New York he was easily defeated. He has sat iii Congress as a Democrat, but made no mark. There seems no end to his process of absorption, as two more newspapers have, it is reported, been acquired by him. Mr. Belloc's listeners had much food for reflection even as we have. < '

The Ulster Boundary . The English Government pledged itself to appoint a commission in order to arbitrate on the Ulster boundary. The Six-County Government at once protested that there would be no readjustment made, in spite of the pledge of the English Ministers. And now it seems as if once more Orange persuasion counts more than honor with English Ministers, for, in the presence of Lord Derby, Sir James Craig has unreproved made the same boast. What possibilities all this opens up are evident. If English Ministers will break faith Irishmen will not be bound by the terms of the Treaty, and there is no knowing what demands they may make, being in a much more powerful position to make demands than they ever were before. They have a fully equipped army and the soldiers are trained to an extent unknown in Ireland since the days when the Volunteers won the independence of Grattan's Parliament. It is clear that a breach of faith, such as the Orangemen boast will be committed, will make things very unpleasant for the already unstable Parliament at Westminster, and on the whole Ireland may be well served by this short-sighted yielding to the arrogance of Sir James Craig and his friends. The following comment on the situation by the Nation and Athenaeum's Dublin correspondent throws some light on the problem. Observe that the Nation, and Athenaeum does not hesitate to. publish in an editorial column the assertion that both the oath of allegiance and the existence of a Governor- General are "meaningless and feudal anachronisms": -

"Lord Derby's tour of the Six Counties was arranged as a step in the consolidation of the Northern Government within its present arbitrary frontier. It has had a remarkable conclusion in a declaration of Sir James Craig, made in Lord Derby's presence, that 'his visit meant that the great question of the Border was practically thrown altogether into the background, and probably would never rise again.' It is well that the English people should realise what this means. Most people are agreed that the partition of Ireland will be ended only by an internal accommodation brought about by common sense and a perception of economic facts. In- the meantime the Treaty stands. But Sir James Craig's statement means that a vital clause of the Treaty is to be ignored by one of the signatories against the will of the other. This infallibly opens the way to a revision of the Treaty ending in the deletion of the oath in its present form and of the Governor-General. To preserve the ordinary principles of . representative government, to honor its signature of the Treaty and by doing so to retain these two rather meaningless and feudal anachronisms, the Free State has been driven to war against brother Irishmen. If the Treaty is broken by the abandonment, without consent, of the essential Clause 12, a revisionist programme will unite and sweep the country. Lord Derby's public association with Sir James Craig's statement has brought this prospect perceptibly closer."

Propaganda Exposed Again

A further exposure of the shameful methods by which "we won the war" comes from America, and from none other than Admiral Sims. He tells us that the reports circulated by our truthful editors concerning the inhumanities of German submarine officers were all falsehoods and that so far were they from being true that the Germans treated prisons with humanity and courtesy. Reading this revelation we can look back with a smile on the days when the Tablet was denounced as seditious because it refused to be unfair to the enemy and to join in the pagan hymn of hate raised by the dailies. Hear what this Admiral has to say : "There is no authentic record of an atrocity ever having been committed by the commander and crew of a German submarine. The press, accounts of f the terrible atrocities 'were nothing but propaganda. The British naval records and our own are filled with reports showing that the German U-boat commanders aided in the -resale of crews and passengers of the ships they

sank. If they could not tow the ships to safety, they would always, by means of the radio, notify other ships of the position of the crippled vessel.” The real meaning of that revelation ought to open the eyes of our deluded patriots to what fools they made of themselves what time they were led by a lying press to howl with rage over German crimes that were never* committed. The crime was on the other side which basely attributed acts of barbarous cruelty to men who, we are now told, acted with wonderful chivalry. A representative of the Tribune interviewed the Admiral, who stuck to his guns. In the course of the interview he said: , Ido not blame the newspapers. As far as I know, the newspapers printed the truth as they knew it. Their sources of information were men who had made the passage, letters from the other side, and naval officers on this side. One of the sacrifices a people necessarily must make during war time is of an accurate knowledge of events. You have got to keep many facts from your own people to keep them from the enemy. It would- bed extremely unpatriotic for a- newspaper to tell the absolute truth about what is taking place during a war, even if the newspaper could get the absolute truth. . . If they go into the Navy Department records they will have to stand behind me, but if they just give the offhand impression of some officer based on what he read in the newspapers during the war, they probably would not. . . ■ I stated . . . that, barring the case of the hospital ship Llandovery Castle, I did not know of any case where a German submarine commander had fired upon the boats of a torpedoed vessel; that the commanding officer and two officers of the submarine that torpedoed the hospital ship in question were tried in Germany after the war and punished that the submarine commanders generally acted in a humane manner, and in some instances gave the boats of torpedoed vessels food and water, and a tow toward land, and sent out wireless signals giving their positions. . . • The disaster that occurred to the Lusitania was a great blow to the Germans. It was wholly unexpected bv them L I think, for this reason: If. you had asked any naval officer or naval constructor what would have happened when this vessel' was torpedoed, I am sure that the great majority would have said that after being struck she would have floated for, hours before sinking, and that, being close to' land, she would have been beached, I have never believed that Germany had any idea that the torpedoing of that vessel . . . would have caused' the loss of any lives at all. . . I am speaking, you understand, as a seaman speaking of other seamen. . . If the situation had been reversed, if we had been in Germany’s place, and if we had believed that losing the war would have meant domination of our country by Germany—be sure to make that point' we, too, would have sunk ships without warning. As for the propaganda, most of the things told, I believe, were true, but it was not all the truth. No army ever marched through an enemy country without some thieving, without some violence, even without some assaults upon women. But these things are not true of an entire array. They are just true enough to . permit such stories to be told. The purpose is clear. ’ w