CONSCRIPTION IN IRELAND.

Taihape Daily Times, 15 May 1918, Page 6

CONSCRIPTION IN IRELAND.

THE ONE-DAY STRIKE. ACTION OF THE HIERARCHY. LONDON, April 23. The “Times” correspondent at Dublin states that the conference of Nationalist leaders expressed satisfaction at the success of the one-day strike. The Lord Mayor was requested to convey to Archbishop Kelly their appreciation for the Australian hierarchy’s message. The Lord Mayor applied for passports for himself and his secretary to go to Washington and New York. The “Times” states that it would be impossible for President Wilson to receive the Lord Mayor of Dublin, who probably would not be allowed to land. Nine-tenths of Ireland —employer;! and men alike —shared in the strike. The crowds were good-tempered and orderly, and spent their time signing the anti-conscription pledge. Dublin, Limerick, Cork, and Waterford were quieter than on a Sunday. It. was impossible to buy even a cigarette.

A few Great Northern trains ran, connecting Dublin and Belfast, but elsewhere all sorts of locomotion was suspended. Travellers were held up in Dublin. Hotels were filled with fashionable people and turf followers were unable to reach the Punchtown races, 25 miles away. The cutting off of electricity from the hospitals was a serious handicap to hundreds of wounded soldiers needing Rontgen rays and massage. Several additional thefts of gelignite are reported. The “Times,” in a leader referring to the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Ireland placing themselves at the head of the anti-conscription movement, says;—“lt says much for the forbearance of the British people that so little protest is made by the public against this action, which raises an issue of tremendous gravity. It gd&s far deeper than a mere question of the expediency of enforcing military service on Irishmen. It is nothing less, at the bottom, than the old claim of a powerful religious organisation to defy the law of the land in a matter which is net even remotely religious. The responsibility of the Irish Gathdie bishops is incalculably serious, and must not he forgotten. In throwing down a challenge to the Imperial Parliament the Roman hierarchy has done far more than repeat their old obscure interruption as individuals in the Home Rule controversy. They have openly assumed the right to interfere as a church in politics, and so doing they have shaken to its foundations the whole edifice of religious toleration in tliese islands.”