state of affairs in America:

A non-Catholic Bible used to be read in the public schools of America
down to the year 1888. A Catholic agitation against this Bible reading
was begun in 1885, and in 1888 the custom was finally abolished. From
that date to this there has been no religious instruction of any kind in
the public schools of America.

Bigotry and intolerance won that victory. The Catholic Church, in its
folly, destroyed religious teaching in the schools of the country.
Catholics themselves are now looking back on that agitation with
religious repentance and political regret.

The result of this abolition is that Catholics and non-Catholics who
believe in the importance of religious instruction, and who see the
pagan effect of purely secular instruction, do not send their children
to the public schools.

"These schools, for which Christians are heavily taxed, are in the
possession of the Hebrews. If nothing is done to alter the existing
state of things Americans themselves assure me that in five-and-twenty
years America will be a pagan country. But a fight is to be made to
avert this disaster at the Constitutional Convention to be held next
month.

"What we have to do," my Irish friend told me, "Catholics and
non-Catholics alike, is to appeal for schools representing Catholic and
non-Catholic teaching. Instead of the various churches fighting against
each other they must fight together, helping one another to get the
schools they demand. Only in this way can we save civilization."

This is how the Irishman, breathing the free air of America, and in
America rising to positions of extraordinary power and responsibility,
views the foundational question of religion; while England allows
herself to be dragged at the heels of the frothing fanatic who has
actually dared to raise the unholy battle cry of "Rather the Kaiser than
the Pope."

Let the Unionist Party hesitate before it seeks to revive this hideous,
utterly irrational and most unchristianlike spirit at the very heart of
the British Empire. The sower of hate is the reaper of death.

TO MELOS, POMEGRANATE ISLE.

By GRACE HARRIET MACURDY.

(Destroyed by Athens, 416 B.C., because of her refusal to
break neutrality.--Thucydides V., 84-116; Euripides, "Trojan
Women.")

O thou Pomegranate of the Sea,
Sweet Melian isle, across the years
Thy Belgian sister calls to thee
In anguished sweat of blood and tears.