''We desire,'' he said, ''to live at peace with all men and to remain, as we have ever claimed to be, the friends of all, the enemies of none. We have no wish to these days of sorrow and strain and crisis to provoke bitter sectarian strife. But a militant Romanism must be met with a militant Protestanism.
There is an urgent need in the dominion for a federation of the Protestant forces, but that federation must be built up, not by attacking what may appear to us to be the errors and abuses of another church, but by the assertion of those great political and religious principles which lie at the foundation of our Protestanism.''
Troopship secrecy
Officials at the local Defence Headquarters complain that a great deal of inconvenience and annoyance is caused by a section of the public who is either unaware of the regulations enforcing secrecy about the movements of troopships or intends to defeat these regulations as far as possible.
The office is sometimes bombarded with questions as to the movements of ships about which it is bound to say nothing, and the questioner generally assumes a very aggrieved air when told that the regulations cannot be broken for his special benefit.
Perhaps it would be more correct to say ''her'' special benefit, for we learn that women are the worst offenders in the matter of seeking to obtain unauthorised information.
Prison honours system
Some of the prison reforms that have been affected in New Zealand were referred to by the Minister of Justice (the Hon. T. M. Wilford) when replying to a deputation at Napier (the Hawke's Bay Tribune reports). We have a prison at Waikeria, he said, working on the honours system. Every morning five men start out with three-horse teams roadmaking. They take their billy and lunch, and they are away from the time they leave camp until they return with their teams. They go two miles from the prison, and if they do their work fairly they get so many good conduct marks. Twelve marks is a day off their sentence.
Earthquake tides
A strange phenomenon in connection with last week's earthquake was recorded at Togaporutu, a coastal town north of New Plymouth. According to a correspondent of the Daily News the tremor in that district was very severe, and a strange occurrence was noted at the wharf.
The incoming tide ceased and there was dead water. As the tide was due at full about 4 a.m. the correspondent stayed to make observations. For the next two hours the tide did not make, but remained at the one level for nearly the whole of that time, when it commenced to recede.
Taking particular measurements at the wharf, he states the tide was from 12 to 15 inches lower than at ordinary tides.
Cheap horses
''Horses are so cheap this year that we have been offered the use of them for nothing, if we would feed them,'' said a witness at the Defence Expenditure Commission at Palmerston North on Saturday.
- ODT, 1.3.1918.
