"Son of Holy Church"

Penitent perfume in the black nostrils of Malta's Italian Bishops is the following apology made recently by the island's British Premier, whose mother was a Maltese:

"Lord Strickland. Count Delia Catena, sincerely regrets that in debates in the English and Maltese Parliaments, and, on other occasions, in defending himself against his political opponents, he clashed with the church and her authority and used words that should be withdrawn, and which he does, in fact, withdraw, for which he humbly and unreservedly asks pardon.

"Further, he is anxious to declare emphatically that during his whole lifetime he was always fully determined to be a faithful son of the Holy Church, in whose fold he desires to remain."

When he thus apologized Premier Baron Strickland hoped he had ended his feud with the Bishops (TIME, May 19, 1930 et seq.), a feud so bitter that His Majesty's Government found it necessary to dissolve Parliament and to rule Malta for the past two years by royal decree. To hold an election was something Baron Strickland dared not do unless the Bishops would withdraw their pastoral letter of May 1930 warning Catholic voters not to vote for his Constitutionalist Party. The Bishops, having received the Premier's apology, withdrew their letter. Breathing easier, Baron Strickland announced an election which sent Maltese to the polls last week for the first time since 1927.

Result: the Opposition or Maltese Nationalist Party was returned victorious last week with small majorities in both the Assembly and the Senate of Malta.

This meant of course that Malta's Italian Catholic population had slapped His Majesty's Government as hard as they were able--not very hard since Malta's external and imperial policies are subjects "reserved" to His Majesty's Government in London. No matter how Maltese vote, they cannot secede.

During the campaign Lord Strickland's Constitutionalist Party charged that the Nationalist Party which proceeded to vanquish them is "linked with Italy, with the Church and with the Fascist declaration that Malta is a part of Italy unredeemed." Nationalists retorted that if Baron Strickland were really a "faithful son of Holy Church" as he claimed in his letter to be, then the British Premier ought to be working zealously for return of Malta to the temporal as well as spiritual fold of Rome.

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