ABOVE: An amateur poet penned this ode to the unsuccessful Bibles-in-State-School League campaigner from across the Tasman.
It appeared on page five of New Zealand’s “Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette”, on 12 August 1914.

A GARLAND RE-WREATHED.

[By ’Arry Stottle.]

There came a man from a land afar,

To raise in our Islands a “holy war”,

To stir up strife in a land of peace,

And set us squabbling like silly geese

To make our happy Isles a warland,

Such is the mission of Canon Garland.

He went to the South, to the North he sped,

In haste a Sectarian feud to spread,

And not content with a war of strife,

He prophesied too, that the future life

Would be roasting hot in a fiery far land,

For those who opposed his Lordship Garland.

To the cabinet room in haste he dug,

And got Jimmy Allen’s complacent lug,

He drafted a Bill which Jimmy grabbed,

And after the title his cognomen dabbed.

But New Zealand arose in a righteous rage

In defence of her children’s heritage.

And now there is grief in the camp,

The war flag went up in an atmosphere damp,

It hangs from the pole like a shrivelled rag,

The Priest in the school has “his head in a bag,”

The Canon can’t score as he did in the far land

New Zealand has wreathed him a suitable garland.

Away let him go with his platitudes dreary,

His vision of Tophet and hatred of Cleary,

New Zealand can to her own business attend,

We call every brother not foeman, but friend.

And the man who would usher an era of hate in,

May well speak with glee of the brimstone of Satan.

– from page 5 of New Zealand’s
“Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette”,
12 August 1914.