IRELAND AND POLAND.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 16 May 1918, Page 3

IRELAND AND POLAND.

A COMPARISON

BY T. W. ROLLESTON (First Hon. Secretary of the Irish Literary Society, London).

REFORMS AND THEIR RESULTS

On the reforms which have been thus briefly sketched, one or two general remarks may be in place.

It has sometimes been contended that except by violence, or the menace of violence, Ireland has never obtained anything from the English Legislature. It would be truer to say that she has never obtained anything at all. England is not a sovereign Power, and does not administer Irish affairs, nor even her own. What has been gained has been gained from the Legislature of the United Kingdom, in which Irishmen, like every other race inhabiting that kingdom, have had their full share of representation and of influence. And if in Ireland, as in other countries, the necessity of reform has sometimes been made evident by disorder, it is wholly untrue to say that this has been always or even usually the case. Land-reform in its earliest stages, like trade unionism in England, was accompaaied by disorder. But the greatest measure of Irish landreform—the Wyndham Act of 1903 —was worked out on Irish soil by peaceable discussion among the parties concerned, and Parliament acted at once upon their joint command. It was in precisely the same way that the Department of Agriculture came into being ; nor did the great measures of Local Government, of University education for Catholics, of the Labourers' Acts, or the recognition extended to the Gaelic movement, owe their origin to any other cause than the wholesome influences of reason and goodwill.

The internal condition of Ireland already shows marked response to the altered state of things. It is visible, as manytravellers have noticed, in the face of the conntry ; it is proved by official records and statistics, Emigration has declined to its lowest point; education has spread amongst the people. Irish emigrants, when they do leave their own shores, take higher positions than ever before. A population of some four millions, largely composed of small farm ers, has lent forty-seven millions sterling to the Government; and, what is still more significant, the deposits in Post Office Savings Banks have risen from six millions in 1896 to over thirteen millions the year before the war. The new War Loan is reported to have had an extraordinary success in Ireland. On the last day of subscription a single Dublin Bank took in one million sterling. With some self-ap-pointed champions of Ireland abuse of the British Empire is a very popular amusement, but the Irish farmer and the Irish trader put their money in it, and with it they stand to win or lose.

Irish agriculture, partly owing to climatic conditions and partly to the fact that Ireland has a monopoly of the export of live cattle to England, has developed hitherto rather in the direction of cattle-raising than of tillage ; and cattle have inoreased sinoe 1851 from three million tq over five million head, and sheep from two millions to three million six hundred thousand. Poultry have nearly quadrupled in the same period. The gross railway receipts — another significant symptom — were £2,750,000 in 1886. In 1915 they had risen to £4.831,000. The co-operative agricultural associations, in which Ireland has shown the way to the , English-speaking world, now number about 1,000. and do a a trade of well Over five millions a year. The thousands of labourers, cottages which have sprung up, eaqh with its plot of land, have been to the Irish labourers what the L,ands Acts have been to the farmer—they have completely transformed his economic status in the country, The circumstances above set forth do not pretend to be the whole story about modern Ireland But it is oontended that the real facts about Ireland, are wholly and absurdly inconsistent with the picture of that country which the friends of Germany circulate so industriously at the present time. Ireland, is not an oppressed and plundered nation' ground under the heel of a foreign Power, and with her individual life deliberately stifled like that of Poland in the German Empire. Only through ignorance or malice could such an illusion gain currency, and it needs only the couch ot reality—^reality which every one can easily see or verify for hiniself-^to dispel it for ever from the mind of every candid inquirer-1

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