IRELAND’S FRIENDS

Hokitika Guardian, 21 December 1920, Page 3

IRELAND’S FRIENDS

MESSAGE FROM AN IRISH AUSTRALIAN .

MAINTAIN THE EMPIRE.”

MELBOURNE, Dee. 3 ’.Much use has been made by Sinn Fein propagandists of the fact that the Australian Senate lias on two occasions agreed to motions in favour of Home Rule for Ireland. This fact has been interpreted by the Sinn Feiners for foreign consumption, as an indication that the Upper House of the Australian Legislature approved their whole policy. As the senator who - moved the motions on both occasions, Senator Lunch (W.A.), is entitled to give a more reliable interpretation of what the action of the Senate meant. In the following cable message, which he lias sent to Cardinal Logue at Armagh, be tells the world where the Australian sympathies with Irish Home Rule stand:— I

, “Your Eminence,—As a lowly member of your flock, please accept riiy deep- sympathy in your trying ordeal during these eventful times. -To do justice to your efforts in rightly guiding our motherland will require the perspective of later days. You have been as a rock against the raging waters. I feel the hour has well-arrived when the ice should be broken, and, if it matters Irishmen in Ireland made aware of the true feeling here in Australia respecting her present situation. As one who was responsible on two occasions for inducing the Commonwealth Senate to consider Ireland’s demands for selfgovernment, and having it overwhelm-

ingly endorsed by that chamber, may I offer a word of information and advice to tlie Irish people through you ? The ill-wishers of Ireland, once so powerful in this country,' have been reduced to harmless impotence through your persistent appeal to Australian democracy down the years to ' recognise the natural justice of the Irish case. “At length that democracy came to Ireland’s aid in her constitutional demands ; but it has not, and will not, back tlie demands for separation. If Ireland’s present advisers, therefore, calculate on the support of .the Australian people they had better be unde-

ceived, and at once. This country has its own peculiar problems, puzzling and momentous in themselves, but there is no conviction deeper than that the maintenance of the Imperial power and connection in all tlieir vigour is vital to its safety. “Michael Davitt lived bis life to enlighten democracy outside Ireland on the merits of Ireland’s lesser demand in the belief it could not be won without its consent. What chance then lias the greater one for independence being won when faced at the outset with the antagonism of Ireland’s otherwise constant friends. Cannot sweet reasonableness take up once more in the minds of men, recreate the best spirit of the Parnell and O’Connell movements, and repeat to-day the bloodless victories of those times, working in conjunction with British democracy? “Must we believe that Ireland’s problem is insoluble? Ido not believe it. Can the people be assured of unity,and an enduring peace issuing from this terrible mutually destructive warfare? I doubt it. The clamant call is to the divergent shades of patriotic fervour to get reconciled. Come together as men inspired with good faith and forbearance ; cease lidding tho sincerity of the man suspect who fails to conform to the dissolving political formulates of the hour. Let them reconsider their objective and shape a wise course of national policy that would fully satisfy the time, vindicating the aspirations of this and previous generations.”