THE PAST AND THE PRESENT.

Southland Times, Issue 18850, 16 June 1920, Page 4

THE PAST AND THE PRESENT.

After the spilling of much ink and after pressing heavily upon our patience, our correspondent lona has at last come from the past to the present. His letters are so diverting that we have refrained from applying the guillotine, but we must in future insist that the problems of Ireland belong to 1920 and not to 1641 and 1795. livery werd that lona has written on this subject, and till of it has been interesting, has served to confirm what we have said more than once: that the Irish live too much in the past to give the present a chance of doing justice. But in his reference to present day events he puts forward a suggestion that it is impossible for us to let pass. After giving us the old, old story that England’s aim in the dark, dead days was to exterminate the Irish, he tells us that the police work that is going on in the distressful country at present is designed to provoke the country ”as it was in ninety-eight, to au insurrection that could

have only one result considering the relative positions of the tyrannical Castle authorities and the unarmed people.” ’Tis havin' a game wid us that lona is! In the first place to suggest that Britain is anxious to stir up insurrection in Ireland is to ascribe to her a desire to do something that has already been done by money and advice from oversea. Even lona will admit that a few days ago he was telling us that de Valera was trying to exploit the American position so that the British would have pressure brought upon them to grant Ireland independence. It is well known that the anxiety of those in authority to preserve good relations between the United States and Britain has been one of the things that the pro-Irish have been ‘‘banking on.” Now wc are informed, however, that the government in London is throwing all its energies into the work of increasing the trouble in Ireland! It is too thin.

lona cannot mean us to take it seriously. If he does he will have us viewing his statements about the past in an entirely new light. There is some deep humour, some subtlety of wit concealed in those last words of the passage that we have quoted, “the tyrannical Castle and the unarmed people,” though the recent remonstrance from the Vatican regarding Sinn Fein outrages mayenable us to place the proper emphasis upon lona’s statement. Wc have no desire to seem harsh, no wish to be disrespectful, but we say frankly that lona when ho blames a “tyrannical Castle” for “provoking” a gentle “unarmed people" into insurrection is dealing in hocus-pocus and upon wholesale lines. De Valera may continue to use ammunition of this sort upon the simple Americans, but we expected something better from lona, some higher estimate of our intelligence; for here is what the pursuit of past in Irish history under the guidance of lona has brought us to, here is—in a word—bosh !