IRISH AFFAIRS

Hokitika Guardian, 4 June 1921, Page 4

IRISH AFFAIRS

AN INTERNATIONAL IMPOSTURE

(From “The Square Deal” by Owen Wister, an American citizen).

A part of the Irish is risking our voice and our gold to help independence for the whole of the Irish. Independence is not desired by the whole of the Irish. Irishmen of Ulster have plainly said so. Everybody knows this. Roman Catholics themselves are not unanimous. Only some of them desire independence. These, known as Sinn Fein, appeal to us Americans for deliverance from theii conqueror and oppressor; they dwell upon the oppression of England beneath which Ireland is now crushed. They refer to England’s brutal and unjustifiable conquest of the Irish nation seven hundred and forty-eight years

ago. What is the truth, what are the facts?

By his bull “Laubabiliter,” in 1155, Pope Adrian the Fourth invited the King of England to take charge of Irelamf In 1172 Pope Alexander the Third confirmed this by several letters, at present preserved in the Black Book of the Exchequer. Accordingly, Henry the Second went to Ireland. All the Archbishops and bishops at Ireland met him at Waterford, received him as king and lord of Ireland, vowing loyal obedience to him and his successors, and acknowledging fealty to them for over. These prelates were followed by the kings of Cork, Limerick, Osserv, Meath, and by Reginald of Waterford. Roderick O’Connor, King of Connaught, joined them in 1175. All these accepted Henry the Second of England as their Lord and King, swearing to be loyal to him and his successors for ever. Such was England’s brutal and unjustifiable conquest of Ireland.

Ireland was not a nation, it was a tribal chaos. The Irish nation of that day is a legend, a myth, built by poetic imagination. During the centuries succeeding Henry the Second were many eras of violence and bloodshed. In reading the story it is hard to say which side committed the most crimes. During these same centuries violence and bloodshed and oppression existed everywhere in Europe. Undoubtedly England was very oppressive to Ireland at times, but since the days of Gladstone she steadily endeavoured to relieve Ireland, with the result that to-day she is oppressing Ireland rather less than our Federal Government is oppressing

Massachusetts, or South Carolina, or any State. By the Wyndham Land Act of 1905 Ireland was placed in a position so advantageous, so utterly the reverse of oppression, that Dillon, the present Leader, hastened to obstruct t e operation of the Act, lest the Irish genius tor grievance might perish from starvation. Examine tlie state of things for yourself. J cannot swell this book with the details; they arc as accessible to you as the few facts about the conquest which 1 have just narrated. Examine the facts, but even without examining them, ask yourself this question: With Canada, Australia, and all these other colonies that 1 have named above, satisfied with Englau . s rule, hastening to her assistance, and with only Ireland selling herself to Germany y is it not just possible that something is the,matter -with Ireland rather than with England ?

Sinn Kein will hear of no Home Rule. Sinn Fein demands independence. Independence Sinn Kein will not get. Not only because of the outrage to uncoiisenting Ulster, but also because Britain, having just got rid of one Heligoland to the east, will not permit another to start up on the west. As early as August 25, 1914 mention in German papers was made of the presence in Berlin of Casement and of his mission to invite Germany to step into Ireland when England was fighting Germany. The traffic went steadily on from time to time, and broke out m the revolution and the crimes in Dublin in 191(1. l'mglaud discovered the plan of the revolution just in time to foil the landing in Ireland of Germany, whom Ireland had invited there. Were Kngland seeking to break loose from Ireland, she could sue Ireland for a divorce and name the Kaiser as co-respondent. Any court would grant it.

The part of Ireland winch does not desire independence, which desires it so little that it was ready to resist Home Rule by force in 1914, is the steady, thrifty, dean, coherent, prosperous part of Ireland. It is the other, the unstable part of Ireland, which has declared Ireland to be a Republic. For convenience 1 will designate this part of Green Ireland, and the thrilt.v, stable part as Orange Ireland. So when our politicians sympathise with an “Irish” Republic, they befriend merely Green Ireland; they offend Orange Ireland. Americans are being told in these days that they owe a debt of support to Irish independence, because the “Irish fought with us in our own struggle for Independence. Yes, the Irish did, and we do owe them a debt of support. But it was the Orange Irish who fought in our Revolution, not the Green Irish. Therefore in paying the debt to the Green Irish and clamouring for “Irish” independence, wc are double crossing the Orange Irish. “It is a curious fact that in the Revolutionary War the Germans and Catholic Irish should have furnished the bulk ot the auxiliaries to the regular English soldiers. . . . The fiercest and most ardent Americans of all, however, were • the Presbyterian Trish settlers and their descendants” (history of New York, p, 183, by Theodore Roosevelt). Next, in what manner have the Green Irish incurred our thanks? They made tho ancient and honourable association of Tammany their own. Once it was America. Now Tammany is Green Irish. I do not believe that T need pause to tell you much about Tammany. It defeated Mitchel, a loyal but honest Catholic, and the best Mayor of New York in thirty years. It is a despotism built on corruption and fear. During our Civil War it was the Green Irish that resisted the draft in New York. They would not fight. You have beard of the draft riots in Now York in 1862. They would not fight for the Confederacy either. f

During the following decade, in Pennsylvania, an association called the Molly Maguires, terrorised the coal regions until their reign of assassination was brought to an end by the detection, conviction, and execution of their ringleaders. These "were Green Irish,

In Cork and Queenstown during the recent war our American sailors were assaulted and stoned by the Green Irish, because they had come to help fight Germany. These assaults, and the retaliations to which they led, became so serious that no naval men undei the rank of Commander were permitted to go to Cork. Leading citizens < f Cork came to'beg that this order be tcseinded. But, upon being cross-examin-ed, it was found that the Green Irish who bad made the trouble bad never been punished. Of this many of us bad news before Admiral Sims, in the World’s Work for November, pages >3, 64, gave it bis authoritative confirmation.

Taking one consideration with another, it hardly seems to me that our debt to the Green Irish is sufficiently heavy for us to hinder England for the sake of helping them and Germany. Not all the Green Irish were guilty of die attacks upon the sailors not all by : uiy means were pro-Germans; and I know personally of loyal Roman Catholics who are wholly on England’s side, and are wholly opposed to Sinn Fein. Many such are here, many in [Aland; them I do not mean. It is Sinn Fein that I mean.

In 1918, when England with her back to the wall was fighting Germany, the Green Irish killed the draft. Here following I give some specific instances of what the Roman Catholic priests said. April 21. After mass at Castletown, Bear Haven, Father Brennan ordered his flock to resist conscription, take the sacrament, and to he ready to resist to the death; such death insuring the full benediction of God and bis Church. If the police resort to force, let the people kill the police as they would kill anyone who threatened their lives. If soldiers same in support of the draft, lot them be treated like the police. Policemen and soldiers dying in their attempt to carry out the draft law would die the enemies of God, while the people who. resisted them would die in peace with God and under the benediction of his Church.

Father Lynch said in church at Ryebill: “Resist the draft by every means n your power. Any minion ot the English Government who fires upon vou, above all it ho is a Catholic, commits a mortal sin and God will punish

In the chapel at Lilgarvan Father Murphy said: “Every Irishman who helps to apply the draft in Ireland is not only a traitor to his country, but commits a mortal sin against God’s law.” At mass in Scariff the Rev James Miiclnerney said: “No Irish Catholic, whatever his station he, can help the draft in this country without denying his faith.”

April 28. After having given the communion to three hundred men in the church at Eyries, County Cork, Father Gerald Dennehy said: “Any Catholic who either as policeman or as agent of the Government shall assist in applying the dralt, shall he excommunicated and cursed by the Roman Catholic Church. The curse of God will follow him in every land. You can kill him at sight. God will bless you ami it will be the most acceptable sacrifice that vou can offer.”

Referring to any policeman who should attempt to enforce the dralt, Father Murphy said at mass in Ivilion 11 a : “Any policeman who is killed in such attempt will he damned in hell, even if lie was in a state of grace that very morning.”

Ninety-five per cent of those Irish policeman were Catholics and had to respect the commands of those priests.

Ireland is England’s business, not ours. But the word “self-determina-tion” appears to hypnotise some Americans. Wo must not he hypnotised by this word. It is upon the “principle” expressed in this word that our sympathies with the Irish .Republic are asked. The six north-eastern countries of Ulster, on the “principle” of self determination, should he separated from the Irish Republic. But the Green Irish will not listen to that. Protestants in Ulster had to listen in their own chief city to Sinn Kein rejoicings over Gorman victories. The rehellion of 191(5, when Sinn Kein opened the hack door that England’s enemies might enter and destroy her, this dastardly treason was made bloody bv cowardly violence. The unarmed and unsuspecting were sliot down and stabbed in cold blood. Later, when soldiers who came home from the front, wounded soldiers too, were persecuted and assaulted. The men of Ulster don’t wish to fall under the power of the Green Irish.

“We do not know whether the British statesmen are right in asserting a connection between Irish revolutionary feeling and German propaganda. But in such a connection we should see no sign of bad German policy.” Thus wrote a Prussian deputy in Das Grosserc Deutschland. That was over there. This was over here.

“The fraternal understanding which unites the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the German-Ameriean Alliance received our unqualified endorsement. This unity of effort in all matter of a public nature intended to circumvent the efforts of England to secure an Anglo-American alliance have been productive of very successful results. The congratulations of those of us who live under the Hag of the United States are extended to our German-Ameriean fellow-citizens upon tho conquests won by tbo fatherland, and wo assure them of our unshaken confidence that the German Empire will crush England and aid in the liberation of Ireland, and lie a real defender of small nations.” See the Boston Herald of July 22, 1916. During our Civil War, in 1862, a resolution of sympathy with the South was stifled in the British Parliament. On .Tune 6, 1919, our Senate passed, with one dissenting voice, the following, offered by Senator Walsh, democrat, of Massachusetts: “Resolved, that the Senate of the United States express its sympathy with the aspirations of the Irish people for a government of its own ohoioe.” What England would not do for tho south in 1862 we now do against England our ally, against Ulster, our friend in our Revolution, and in sup- ■ port of England’s enemies, Sinn Fein and Germany. Ireland lias less than 4,500,000 inhabitants ; Ulster’s share is about onethird, and its Protestants outnumber its Catholics by more than three-fourths. Besides such reprisals as they saw wrought upon wounded soldiers, they know that the Green Trish who insist

that Ulster belong to their Republic do so because they plan to make prosperous and thrifty Ulster their milch cow. 1 Let every fair-minded American pause, then, before giving his sympathy to an independent Irish Republic on the principle of self determination, or out of gratitude te the Green Irish. Let him remember that it was the Orange Irish who helped us in our Revolution, and that the Orange Irish do not want an independent Irish Republic. There will he none; our interference merely makes Germany happy and possibly- prolongs the exciting chaos; hut there will be none. Before such loyal and thinking Catholics as the gentleman who said to me that word about “spoiling the ship for a ha’pennyworth of tar,” and before a firm and coherent policy on England s part, Sinn Fein will fade like a poisonous mist.