The Irish practice of censoring broadcasts by Cardinal Hinsley was referred to in the Irish Senate last week in the course of a debate on the censorship.
Attacking the methods of the censorship, Senator Frank MarDerntot stated that Cardinal Hinsley was constantly subjected to it.
The Minister for Co-ordination of Defence, Mr. Frank Aitken. answered that the Cardinal was a very patriotic Englishman and as such makes propaganda in favour of his own country. His statement that " some of Cardinal Hinsley's matter was stamped ' for publication in Eire only ' " has since been officially denied at Archhishop's House, Westminster.
ON A PAR WITH PAID PROPAGANDISTS Later in the debate Senator Desmond Fitzgerald said . " Cardinal Hinsley is one of the highest spiritual authorities in the Catholic Church. He is a mince of that Church. If a German cardinal makes an important statement in reply to him 1 do not see why it should not he given, too. But it is preposterous to suggest that Cardinal Hinsley should be put on a par with, say. a paid propagandist from the other side who might reply to him, and that seems to be the Minister's suggestion."
In the course of his attack on the exercise of the censorship Senator MacDermot deplored the lengths to which the suggestion that there was no moral difference between the belligerents had been carried. Speeches making the suggestion that there was in fact no moral difference between them were allowed.
" Sonic of these speeches," he said, " come from ecclesiastical quarters, to my deep regret."
Stating that if it was a question of keeping down temperatures and preventing offensive things being said, he instanced how a Catholic paper in Ireland had been allowed to display all over Dublin a poster which read :—" Irish Catholic Girls Forced to Follow British Army."
The implication was, he suggested, that " Irish Catholic girls were heing conscripted for immoral purposes by the British Army." Yet thh article referred to Irish Catholic girls from the North having to go to work in England. and there was no suggestion of immorality.
Pierlot Presides
M. Pierlot, the Prime Minister of Belgium, will speak at the inauguration of the *Belgian section of the Sword of the Spirit next Sunday. The meeting will take place in Westminster Cathedral Hall at a quarter to three.