HOME RULE FOR IRELAND.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVII, Issue 86, 11 December 1913, Page 7

HOME RULE FOR IRELAND.

AMERICAN LESSON FOR ULSTER.

Mr Irvin S. Cob'), one of the most distinguished among the younger American writers, is now paying Ins first visit to England. In the Daily Mail he gives aii effective picture of what civil war means.

Ever since 1 arrived here in London and that is more than two weeks ago—l have been reading in the daily papers of a lively prospect for civil war in a nearby island of this archipelago, and hearing men discussing, quite casually, the possible and probable outcomes of that war.

' As a plain and simple and excessively untutored tourist, newly come to your country and confessedly ignorant of your politics, 'I have not the slightest intention of taking sides or indulging in idle and no doubt erroneous prophecies regarding the lesults if out of all this talk actual hostilities slioud come. But 1 am strikingly reminded of a civil war that Ave had once not so very long ago, as people measure time, in my own country.

From what I have gathered I judge the situation in Ireland to-day bears several points of resemblance to the situation which existed in the United States of America in 1860. There, as here, the division was between North and South; there, as here now, the question which divided the people of the country was a question of government purely. The South was agricultural, the North was manufacturing. The raw materials mostly came from the .South, the finished product from the North. *f He Struggfe Between South and i North. The Southern people called their Northern neighbors a race of selfish and intolerant bigots. The Northern press —and pulpit—proclaimed that Southern'public opinion'Was made and directed by a group of reckless rule-or-niin demagogues who, to gain their own'ends, would wreck the Confederation of the several "States. Compromise after compromise was suggested, was tried—and was discarded. The breach widened and deepened. People in both sections began to talk of civil war. The masses of the people Wanted no war; at least at the first they did not. It was the political leaders, men of wealth and influence mainly, who raised the clamor for a civil war and kept it raised until it became a thundering chorus of hate and-defiances in which the still small voice of moderation was entirely swallowed up; At the outset—and here once more I believe. I perceive similar parallel in the .attitude of the factions in Ireland—the people of the United States, North and Soiith', rather thought "a civil Avar was to, he, short-lived, adventurous, pleasurable, stimulating pastime. .They, took the causes of the Civil "War. seriously, but not the war itself; Both 1S T oxth and South the young men enlisted under, the idea that the whole thing \yas to he merely •a plea&ant outing under military auspices into .new, territories,_ ,a new ; and exciting kind,of vacation. , Four Years of Horror. i So we had our civil war. It started out to las"t 90 days. It lasted more than four years, and was followed in turn by the horrors of the reconstruction period, which lasted 10 years longer'. It costs hundreds of thousands of lives and uncountable billions of treasure. It fotun'one half of the country a flower garden and a granary and left it a dosolution and>a waste. It peopled the Union with widows and orplums and-cripples. It fattened every graveyard from Canada to Mexico. It furrowed the continent -with scars of -war B.Q deeprgrooved that after half a century they still remain. 'lt irrigated the kind with blood and ploughed it with, cannon and sowed, it; with dead men's hones; and from thjs ploughing and thissowing there sprang up a harvest jof sectionalism and hate and misunderstanding wjiich lasted until the Spanish. War re-united -.the , sections Not until last year, when Mr Wilson was elected, was it .politically possible, for either party to choose for our highest, elective official a candidate who had, been born south of the Ohio River,,:' A new generation of Americans had to grow .up, and an old one had to die off, before such a thing could come to pass, Ivwas bprn and reared in Kentucky, a State which, though of .the South geographically, was divided within itself in the'Civil War. To the two, I armies ; Kentucky furnished more solkdiers than it had legally enrolled votjers. Towards'the last boys of 15 and men of 65 were hearing arms,.and. when ■ hostilities had ended it was. said that j there was scarcely a white woman in I the State hut wore mourning for some 1 kinsman killed in battle or dead in military hospital or prison. On both the maternal and the paternal side my I people were ardent Secessionists; this one family alone lost nin« men, all stalwart young men.

The Orphan Brigade. The famous Orphan Brigade on the southern side came from , Kentucky. My father served in it for a short while', an uncle served in it for the full term of the war. It was partly recruited in the section where I was horn. It has been claimed, that this brigade was the most typically American body of troops ever organised. Almost to a man they bore surnames bespeaking English, .Scotch, or Irish ancestry; probably Irish, names predominated. Shortly after the beginning of hostilities this brigade numbered more than 500 men. In less than three years death and disease and capture—not destrtion, for the orphans had no deserters—had reduced

the 5000" to 1200. 'Only skeleton legi-

uieuts were lelt. \\ lien Sneihiau began ms memorable campaigu winch history Knows as '"iiie Ai<u°cu 10 tin" .Sea the campaign whicn broke me oourederaey in two across us spine—tne 01 pnaUo it ore uiiOiv-u 'jticiv Oi me i<jLiciuixig oOiicnerh forces io act as u icargiuiia Shu to eiieeii me enemy iu outer time tne beaten auny mignt »a»e useii— men against oU.Uuu. iiieie lofloSi eu x_j Uaysoi constant iigntfng, lighting by day ana by mgni, iuxu ai ine end of those 120 hays me brpnahs nail sustained u total oi moie tnan one disabling wound, lor every man,and'at roli-cail on tne morning of tne less than oOU .of au'in were left to answer their names. All the others wvrc lulled, or captured, or wounded, or missing. Out of more than 5000 less than 300 were lelt. Soldiers from other States fared as diet the soldiers from Kentucky. One North Carolina regiment was practically wiped out—not, reduced, not decimated, but destroyed. At Gettys-

burg, a Confederate regiment came back to the lines after Pickett's magnificent but disastrous charge commanded by a second lieutenant. Every officer above him had fallen, and the regiment he commanded had fewer than 90 men left to those who had an hour before marched up the bloodiest hill in history to storm the Northern position. These are detached fragments of fact, plucked at random from the record of the American Civil War — that same war which began? as a 90day picnic.

One of our great orators said once that it was the Irish blood in'the Civil War that put the North in a .pension and the South on crutches. It is a truth that a large proportion of the leaders on both sides were Irish born or of unmixed Irish decent. There is something in the Celtic temperament which makes the Irishman fight harder when he fights another Irishman than when he is 'fighting an outsider.

As an Irishman by descent living in America I hope that come to civil war in Ireland.