IGNORANT JIBES.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 348, 17 December 1915, Page 5

IGNORANT JIBES.

AT IRISH RECRUITING. STRIP OFF RED TAPE. AND GIVE THEM FACTS. —% (The writer ot this article in the London Daily News is an Irish Nationalist, who joined the Army at the beginning of the war, and who can claim an unique experience in the recruiting campaign.) I do not seek in those notes to criticise any person, or any method. A new order has come into being with regard to recruiting in Ireland as well as in Great Britain, and there must be new experiments. 1. The golden and governing rule is that if you are to hold Ireland as a recruiting reservoir you must firs: hold Irish opinion. It is natural for an Englishman to fight for the Union Jack, whether his country is right or wrong. But it is not natural for the majority of Irishmen to fight under t-he Union Jack without examination of the cause for which it stands. That is on unhappy residuum of an unhappy lystory; but there it is, a tap-root fact, and you must adapt yourself to it. You cannot too often or too amply expound the origin of the Avar and the justitce of the Allied cause.

As far as I know there has not been a single war-lecture, properly speaking, delivered in Ireland. Now the long evenings are with ns. The Irish universities are rich in able and eloquent men. The country at large is at least moderately rich in men of public spirit, who would co-operate in this task. I suggest that the first step should be to ‘ ‘ mobilise’ ’ all these fo.a campaign of enlightment. Let in the light. Get into the mind of IreJaid the capital issues, spiritual and material, that are at stake in this war. If you toll mo the tale is stale — what we call in Ireland stirabout —r tell yon most definitely that it is not. liyßH WAR LITERATURE. 2. As a corollary the,re shotild be developed in Ireland a war literature written from the Irish point of view. Will it bo believed that there is a King’s Regulation which forbids an officer who has left his civil pursuits and joined the New Army, to publish a book explaining his decision? 3. Suppress no anti-war newspaper and prosecute no inteivrnpter at a war meeting. This may sound strange to the English mind, but in Ireland it is fundamental. As a speaker, I have* always found myself terribly hamii-c, capped by the snppoi-t of the police. As my friend the late Robert .Buchanan said: “I want to see the devil’s case fuDy stated because I klow thsu, so stated, it refutes itself.” I want the pro-Gorman, pro-murder case fully stated. T want its advocates to Ido free to expound their foul nonsense so that there may be fixed on them in public the brand of Cain. I would undertake—always provided that I was not speaking under the aegis o? the police—at any free meeting in Ireland by a plain recital of facts to shame pro-Germanism out of tinplace. If interruptions are attempted throw the interrupters out by all means. But do not give them a screen of “legal terrorism ’’ behind which to skulk, and mutter lies. 4. There is universal complaint at the omission—all but complete of Irish regiments from official dispatches. The dispatches are meagre enough in all conscience, but we do not got even a. pick of the bones. Now it may be a national weakness, but we Irish do not like dying anonymcuslv. NO CENSORSHIP NEEDED. 5 In what is spoken and written von will inevitably get a political colouring, Orange or Green. For Heaven’s sake, don’t try to censor it out. If we cannot win this war without what I may call the invoice mini., neither can we win it without passion and poetry. Our souls must be allowed to be alive if the nation is to live. Do not devitalise them. fi. Any newspaper that seeks to set up comparisons between the number of Protestants, and the number of Catholics who have joined should be officially and publicly rebuked. If there is. n’ political point in such comparisons leave it till after the war. Out in t,V they are using a number of new devices, but, although sectarian rivalry is. no doubt, a high explosive at times, it has not yet been adapted to the business of blowing away dfences.

7. The -attempt to crob the work done by Ireland, so general among English journals and critics of a certain sort, is not only disgraceful, it is supremely loutish. Eord Kitchener sues we have'- done magnificently. That is true of North and South. AN INCIDENT. An incident. The first day I was in London this time I was walking at I o’clock on a sunny Wednesday afternoon past a well-known theatre. In the queue outside I counted II young men of military age, apparently fit, waiting for a show which began at 2,15. Had an English critic witnessed such a sight in Dublin? I came to my Hub, and nearly everybody I met said: “Can rc-thing be done to improve re-'vrlhng iu Ireland I ?'' ¥uu Mit.ii SfO'au* by ai l

means, but every jibe costs you its clue quota of potential recruits. Give up crabbing Ireland.

8. I believe that the grant to The new Irish Army of a distinctive badge would help. The colonies all have them, and so has Ukstcvr. It wa* I understood that Lord Kitchener had under consideration a design representing a four-leaved shamrock with the one word "Ireland.” This is a point of minor importance, but it is by no means negligible. All these suggestions reduce Themselves under two heads, two rules which govern all effective propagandist work. You must inform the public mind, You must fire the popular imagination. Ireland is in this tight, at whatever cost, until victory flashes on our banners. Unswaddle all ofliciali tape, and give her a chance.