THE GENTLE ART OF PROPAGANDA.

Southland Times, Issue 18836, 1 June 1920, Page 2

THE GENTLE ART OF PROPAGANDA.

To the Editor. Sir, —In your leader of Saturday you imply that 1 accused you of writing in heat on the subject of De Valera's supposed departure from veracity. Nothing was farther from my thoughts. What struck me was the cold and deliberate manner in which you seemed to be adopting the tactics of some of the Australian press of singling out a sentence or a phrase in a speech and making it appear a key to the whole line of action of public men. A case in point is known to readers of the Australian press, in which a phrase of Dr Mannix, in which he referred to the war as “a trade war” was made the peg on which was hung an endless tirade of abuse. His loyalty was impugned and every’ effort made to discredit him as a good Australian. His great offence consisted in his refusing to be cajoled into helping the Premier of Australia who sent a Cabinet member to him to enlist his sympathy in the cause of conscription. Because he refused to be a party to what he considered an enslavement of a free people he was made the object of an unjust and unmerciful campaign of calumny. The result of this unmerited newspaper war was to give him such a triumph as is given to few men. On March 17th last he marched at the head of the largest procession ever seen in the streets of Melbourne, with a mounted body guard of fourteen V.C.’s and some ten thousand returned troopers of all creeds and nationalities in a solid phalanx behind him. The scenes at his departure for the Old World a fortnight ago, both in Melbourne and Sydney, constituted pne of tile most extraordinary outbursts of enthusiastic devotion and love that ever was given to a man. Such was the result of a newspaper war carried on with bitter and relentless hostility. In taking a sentence or two from alleged utterances of De Valera, which I did not doubt you had seen in American papers, you reminded me of the action of a section of the Australian press. Personally though I see American papers and extracts in Australian and New Zealand papers I did not come across the words you quoted, and I have too much respect for the well-established character for accuracy and calmness of utterance for which he is remarkable, to pass judgment without a knowledge of the circumstances and the context. To call him a liar as you infercntially do is pretty strong. After all, the facts he mentioned are not impugned, and only the motives he alleges are properly the subject of discussion. Presuming that you have some knowledge of the history of the dealings of successive British Governments with Ireland, are you not aware that the wholesale destruction of the Irish race was again and again attempted by the dominant power. Have you forgotten the clearances in the North in the reign of James the First? Have you forgotten Cromwell’s campaign with all its horrible and brutal massacres of women and children ? The exportations of many thousands to the Barbadocs as slaves and the final choice given by that apostolic savage to the miserable remnant left, after he was done, of going to Hell or to Connaught? Have you forgotten how in more recent times the mouthpiece of the governing class, the London Times, gloated over the results of the dreadful famine of '47. which many still remember, when the people died in thousands and tens of thousands of starvation by a famine which was engineered for the purpose of decimating or entirely destroying them? Whilst all the time food of all kinds was sent out of the country to feed the favoured class across the Irish Sea. The Times wrote then with sardonic satisfaction that the Celt was going with a vengeance and soon an Irishman would be as rare a sight on the banks of the Shannon as a Red Indian on the banks of an American river. Have you read the cables that keep us informed of some and only some of the doings in Ireland, at present, of the army of occupation, which is being every week increased, and which is, on the word of some of the wearied officials, proclaimed to be meant to goad the people into insurrection in order that they may be mowed down in hecatombs, unarmed and defenseless as they are? You make a strong point of Lloyd George’s interpretation of the meaning of self-determination by which he used his hypnotic power on the Labour members to make them see red. The Irish people had determined to appeal to the Paris Conference as other small nations had done to get their autonomy recognised. To help them in their appeal they saw the necessity of forming themselves into a definite republican nation. The results of the last general election in Ireland proved that the vast majority of the people were united in their desire for that form of government. They were driven to adopt this attitude by the paltering manoeuvres of the Government that refused to give them a measure of

Home Rule similar to that enjoyed by the overseas dominions, and to which in the opinion of the legislatures of almost all the States in the Empire, they were entitled. Had a generous measure of autonomy been offered to them we would not have heard probably of this further demand on their part. It is not yet too late for the British Government to make the Irish race a contented and loyal portion of the British commonwealth, but instead they offer a double parliament which is- meant to divide the people and will if enforced against the wishes of ail classes and political parties in Ireland only have the effect of accentuating a hundredfold the present artificial divisions. “Government of the people, for the people, and by the people,” as far as such can be attained, is the foundation of true, stable and prosperous rule in any country. Selfdetermination is not such a bogie as you would make out. It is the term introduced into Wilson’s fourteen points, and on which a number of small nations in Europe have already got the recognition of their sovereign rights. Better have Ireland a friendly and free neighbour than perpetuate a slate of hostility and dissatisfaction, that is a chronic source of weakness to England.— I am, etc., lONA..