THE IRISH QUESTION

Hokitika Guardian, 10 May 1921, Page 3

THE IRISH QUESTION

VOICE OF CLERGY

DUBLIN, March i

Opinions on the situation in Ireland ! have been freely expressed by the Roman Catholic hierarchy in their Lenten pastorals. Cardinal Logue has repeated his unqualified condemnation of crime and said that lying in wait and shooting policemen and soldiers was not an aot of war but of plain murder, and that no reason adduced could justify it. The patriotism of the perpetrators was a mistaken claim, and such acts were the greatest obstacle to any settlement bv which any country might benefit, and were more likely to bring about her ultimate ruin. In a clean fight for freedom, universal sympathy would be increased, and success would follow “To destroy that sympathy by crime is to play into the hands of the enemy,” be said. Dr Gilmartin, Bishop of Tuam, who some months ago called for a “truce of God,” said that if the constitutional process o fasserting national claims is slow, it is mild and safer than revolutionary methods, and that those who favoured such methods had certainly got no mandate from the Irish people. The country was going through an agony of anarchy, terrorism, and reprisals, and he called on his people tc discountenance such acts from wni-

thev had up-to the present abstained, with a few deplorable exceptions, although the provocation and violence had become almost unbearable. During the six months’ truce, the archbishop said that his people had shown magnificent restraint and patience under very great provocation. “Arrests, floggings, shootings,- imprisonment without trial, raids and other indinities, have failed to draw them into courses of violence.” Dr Gilmartin denounced as cowardly murderers “the misguided criminals who came from outside this diocese to do a foul and craven deed, and expose innocent people to the mercy of uniformed forces” Reiterating his condemnation of crime and counter-crime, lie renews his call for a “truce of God, and appeals to “the best elements of the two sister nations to call off a state of warfare which is a negation of Christianity, and, which, if continued, may bring disaster to the stronger as well as to the weaker nation.”

Dr Browne, Bishop of Cloyne, said that the way to the attainment of the freedom of the nation does not lie through crime, that present happenings are ruinous alike to Great Britain and Ireland, and therefore “in the interest of both nations, this internecine struggle should cease.” Similar sentiments are expressed by other bishops, who one and all are in accord in denouncing tlm methods and acts of the “gunmen.”