IRISH-AMERICANS.

Hokitika Guardian, 17 January 1920, Page 4

IRISH-AMERICANS.

(By F. W. Wile, in the Daily Mail)

How many Britons are aware that there are more Irish in the United States—lrish by birth or by origin—than there are in the whole British Empire ? Their total amounts to something between 10,000,000 and 15,000,000. There is no city in Ireland itself that contains as many of them as New York. The Irish population of places like Chicago and Boston must be a.%. large as that of Cork or Belfast, if not larger. Boston is so Irish that it has been called the capital of New Ireland instead of New England, which is the traditional name of the half dozen States which form the north-eastern-most corner of the United States.

It is small wonder that the resolution adopted by the American Senate last summer in favour of “Free Ireland’s” aspirations should have been fathered by Mr Henry Cabot Lodge, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Senate and the senior senator from Massachusetts. Bostonian himself and type of the American aristocrat, if there is suoh a thing, Mr Lodge is, of course, wholly devoid of Irish blood. But he sits in the Senate for the constituency which is the backbone of “New Ireland.” When he spoke at Washington on behalf of a “Free Ireland,” Mr Lodge gave heed to his master’s voice —the voice of politically dominant Ireland.

It was four years since I was previously in America. I was amazed at the tremendous progress which the Irish cause had made since 1915. British politicians may think it of no consequence that the United States Senate votes for Ireland; that the Legislature of Massachusetts follows suit; that the Governor of New York State and the Mayor and Common Council of New York City fervently “resolve” in Erin’s favour; that a wildly anti-British procession, four or five miles long, parades past palisades of acclaiming fanatics in the metropolis of the Republic; that the largest public hall in the United States could be crammed every night with Anglophobes shouting for Irish independence ; that at every street corner in NeW York and from the stages of its theatres open appeals for funds for freeing Ireland are made, and made successfully; that there is an organised scheme for raising millions of American money for an Irish rebellion; that certain great newspapers in communities like Chicago cater flagrantly to the antiBritish passions of the Irish for circulation purposes. Politicians, sitting placidly in*London far from these astonishing things, may regard them, I say, as innocuous. I tell them, on tho strength of recent face-to-face contact with these developments, that they bristle with danger. CONTROL AT WASHINGTON.

It is not safe to dismiss them as “American politics.” It may be true that the Republican Party, anxious to recapture the national Administration in next years Presidential’ elections, is flirting with the “Irish vote.” It may be that Senator Lodge’s love *or Erin’s cause is purely platonic. But I. ask Britons to contemplate the possibility that Irish votes—and they are a decisive factor in countless American political centres—may assist Mr Lodge’s party to regain control at Washington. What then? May we not legitimately conjure up the prospect of the “Irish vote” demanding its pound of flesh in the form of direct action of some sort?

One of the popular music-hall songs in the United States last summer was entitled “Let’s Help the Irish Now.” It is a frank doggerel appeal for armed American intervention on behalf of Irish freedom, on the ground that Irishmen helped George Washington to win American independence, were Lincoln’s chief military support in the preservation of the Union, and —this a bait to America’s large and influential Jewish community—even recaptured Palestine for the children of Israel 1 The song intimates that the Irish single-handed took Jerusalem. , There is no reference to Allenby or the other British troops. The stuff is always cheered to the echo, and when some “four-minute man” (speakers who may talk for 4 minutes) then appears before the curtain, by kind permission of the management, and begs the audience to make liberal contributions of cash'when colleens in peasant garb pass down the aisles, the result is unfailingly successful, A thousand or two more Americans have become converts to the Irish cause.

ASTUTE ORGANISATION. It is not only the vast and astutely conducted Irish organisation in the United States that is fanning the antiBritish fix-es. An equally potent factor in keeping them burning and flaming is the invincible nonchalance of Britain. At the end of my nightly lectures in the South, the East, and the MiddleWest, I was hckled about BritishAinerican affairs. Invariably somebody wanted to know about Ireland.

I had many things to tell that were new to Americans. Sp'eaking broadly, the American people have no conception whatever of the English version of the Irish question. They do not know, for example, that far from being oppressed during the late war Ireland was the one unopposed portion of the British Empire. Americans have forgotten, if they were ever told, that the Irish were not subjected to conscription or to restrictions on their food and drink. Americans did not realise that Ireland was not bombed by Gorman air raiders or shelled by German warships. Americans did not know that, thanks to Sinn Fein, Britain required to keep on Irish soil tens of thousands of troops who were vitally needed for operatioss against Britain’s—and America’s—enemy; Americans needed to be reminded that Major Willie Redmond and gallant Tom Kettle, Irish patriots to the core, fell in Flanders field fighting for Britain—and for Ireland. ANTI-BRITISH BOOK.

Few of these things are known to the American people. AVhy? Because Britain refuses to stoop to conquer American public opinios on the Irish question ; because Britain seems to ho perfectly willing to let the Irish case before that bar go by default. With magnificent disdain, for example, Britain permits to pass unchallenged and unanswered a book recently issued by one of America’s foremost publishing firms called “Ireland’s Fight for Freedom.” The author is Mr George Creel, late chairman of the American Ministry of Information. Previously it appeared

serially in the Hearst newspapers ■ stretched all the way across the United States. ! The Creel production, which is frank- j ly and directly anti-British," has the • endorsement of Mr Frank P. W'alsh, one of the Irish-American trio who were in .Europe during the Peace Conferesce. Mr Walsh affirms that “the 1 book is worth an army to Ireland.” 1 To the New York World, which is not ' anti-British, its distinguished and veteran London correspondent, Mr James M. Tuohy, a staunch friend of BritishAmerican fraternity, contributed a series of articles on Irish conditions a few weeks ago. Over one of them was this “scare” headline: “Either Gaol or the Workhouse Facing the People of Galway Under the Rule of Britain.” Books and articles of the description just alluded to are manufacturing friends for Ireland in America faster than people in Great Britain dream of. During the war an American organisation previously more or less unimportant sprang into national fame and prominence—the Knights of Columbus. It may be dscribed as the Irish Catholic Y.M.C.A. of the United States. It took the field in France in ' great and efficient force. Its “service” to the doughboys, and to the rank and file of the United States Navy, too, was given free, gratis, and for nothing. “K. of C.” won the affections of millions of impressionable young Americans. The Knights of Columbus, who are 650,000 strong, are, of course, fervid advocates of “Irish freedom.” They have spread its gospel effectively among the “Yanks” who crossed the Atlantic to make the world safe for democracy. I call the special attention of Britons to the influence and ower of the Knights of Columbus. How can the Irish question in the United States be tackled,to the end that it may no longer endanger good BritishAmerican relations? It can most assuredly not be tackled in Sir Edward Carson’s way, by telling the Americans to mind their own business. Ireland is the business of “good” Americans.

There is one way, and one way only, of meeting the issue. That is, to meet it. If the bulk of Englishmen and Englishwomen now agree, as Americans understand they do agree, that Ireland is entitled to a liberal measure of selfgovernment—to as much, let us say, as the Boers received after they had fought a bloody war with Britain—why is self-government stubbornly withheld?

It is the dilly-dally system in London that Americans fail to comprehend. Until Britain “gets down to business” on the Irish question, until she substitutes' action for in action, so long, indisputably, will the British-American barometer register cloudy, with possible storms.