Also Some Religious Views From Our Own Correspondent Kirin, July 25.
Yesterday when at a certain Government building in the city, 1 was invited by one of the officials into his private room for a cup of tea. This gentleman surprised and in. terested me by his frankness. After the usual polite inquiries regarding my age and place of residence, he suddenly launched out the. two big questions—the one Political and the other Religious. "So Iveland is to become a Republic," he said quite confidently. "Oh," I said naively, "Gs that so, I had not heard that it was decided." "Why, yes'" he continued, "the American Senate has passed a resolution in its favour." "That hardly settles the question," I ventured, "England may have something to say." "Why, what can England say?" was the quick rejoinder. "Did not England accept President Wilson's 14 points at the Armistice nearly two years ago and one of these points was self-determination?"
After a few words in which I tried to show that the Irish Problem was not one that could be solved in such an academic fashion, my host with quick versatility, changed to religion.
Negative any Posrrivr.
"What is the difference between Roman Catholicism and Pro-restantism?" he asked. "That can hardly be answered in a few moments conversation," I said.
evoked the illuminating definition "Roman Catholicism is a negative and Protestantism a positive religion."
He could not listen to my pleading that this definition, while certainly concise, was hardly true, but proceeded to prove it thus: "The Roman Catholic Missionaries here never come to me to make me engage in social service in benevolent work, but the Y.M.C.A. comes to me at least once a year, durin, their membership campaign ant insists on my giving a subscription te help the young men of my country. Surely that is a positive religion."
After a few more breezy remarks from Mr. Young China, I took my departure feeling the better of the whiffs of freshness T had inhaled.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.