To the Editor of the "Nonra-Cuma Datty News."
Sim,—Your leaders on the Moral] Welfare League have split the community into two very definite camps. Every thinking man must agree with you. In fact, I will go so far as to say that I cannot imagine any reasonable human being hoping for immediate success in crushing a vice that. has been outlawed since Babylon, and has, none-the-less, persisted.
But I do agree with Mr. Spencer when he says that no good can come of deliberately legalizing vice. And I do agree with Dr. Polk in saying that the "combines behind the affair are appalling." There is somewhere in that little sentence an element of the Agony in the Garden. It strikes bedrock} and the bed-rock is money—worked by the perverted soul of man. If we have perverts amongst us, as of course we have, and since we have money—this is a premise, then it follows as a logical conclusion that the money will be misapplied for all the hellish purposes of wickedness by those same perverts. Iam open to correction. Am I right?
Every great moral reformer throughout the ages has aimed a blow at one or other of these two underground rhizomes—money and perversion. But they acted very differently to the Moral Welfare League. It is not on record that Jesus turned Magdalene out of her house, but it is on record that He turned the money-changers out of the Temple.
Who has ever heard of any moral reformer asking for aid from a Government? Did Moses? Jesus? Paul? They one and all condemned that help. Luther believed that all Governments were possessed by the devil. John Knox died "'fighting wickedness in high places." The Jesuits were chased all' over the world by the various Governments! How then can the moral Welfare League ask help of a time-honoured and declared enemy, or at best a lukewarm friend?
But I have an axe to grind, and a suggestion to offer. Dr. Rawlinson's letter strikes one very arresting note, viz., youth being ruined by ignorance. This, at least, is preventable—for if one sins against light, nor God nor man can prevent him; but, if through ignorance, the blame lies wholly with us. Let all schools have inserted in their curriculum one, perhaps two, lessons a week of some form of moral education—progressive with age and form tillzsuch time as a boy normally leaves school, when there would be no possible room for ignorance.
May I add that I am not posing as a moral reformer? Candidly, I am not worthy. May I say also that the much-abused confessional has its. uses in Catholic schools? Advice and warning. But the non-Catholic school must have some sort of "advice-bureau" to allow fresh air to percolate through this grave matter before we can hope for improvement. There will then be no need for "countless thousands of young fellows going home ruined."
Teach morality as a subject; possibly in the form of a clear, graded catechism, which may be learned by heart and digested in time; after a nine-days' wonder, the subject will automatically take its place as part of the curriculum. But as for asking the Council, or the Police—well, in a word, fostering strict purity has never been the accepted function of Government, except in a very limited sense, neither in Nineveh yesterday nor in Moscow to-day.
T am, ete., J. J, Porr.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.