Note and Comment

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 25, 1902

Mr. W. T. Stead, the well-known English writer, gives in an article contributed to the Independent (New York) the explanation of the serious controversy which has arisen in England over the educational question. The opportunity of the clerical party to secure control of the public-school system, he says, comes through the alliance of the Irish Nationalist vote on this point with the Conservative ministry, which is now in power. The Irish Nationalist party controls eighty votes, which are usually cast in opposition to the government; but this educational measure being of a distinctly papal character and favored by Rome, and the Irish Nationalist party being under Rome’s control, its vote is cast solidly with the government in support of the educational bill. The Irish party in Parliament becomes for the occasion the Catholic party, like the “Center” party in the German Reichstag, which has so often secured concessions to the papacy from Germany. Thus the hand of Rome is laid upon the nations of Europe, and they are forced to do her bidding; and doubtless she hopes to secure a similar hold upon the Congress of the United States.