WHAT ARE YE FIGHTING FOR?

Taihape Daily Times, 16 May 1918, Page 6

WHAT ARE YE FIGHTING FOR?

FREEDOM AND RIGHTEOUSNESS. APPEAL BY AMERICAN PRIEST. “When men shall ask: “What fight ye for? said Rt. Rev. Mons. J. E. Cassidy in an address to an Irish battalion of the U.S.A., 4 ‘you shall say; For Freedom, Liberty and Righteousness. ” 1 ‘ ‘ Out of the loins of a Fenian, arrested in arms against England, I came. I was nursed at the breast of as true an Irishwoman as ever came out of Ireland. . . . Incidentally, and accidentally, we may be fighting for England, just now, as England is now fighting for us, but essentially and fundamentally we are not fighting for ourselves. “'And God forbid that there should be any so base, and low and blinded, as to wish to strike at the heart of England through the soul of their own country. God forbid that there should he any who would rejoice at the losses of nny of the Allies, when they know that such losses mean only greater losses and multiplied deaths among you. Let this insanity pass, for ever, from us.

“As you leave this place, some perchance, neved to return, I would stamp upon your soldier souls the most heroic figures of all these ' terrible times. Cardinal Mercier, wan of countenance, and worn of body, yet with spirit unbrciSa and undimmed, he stands amidst th© ruins of his devastated and desolated country, his sons murdered, his daughters violated, his children carried into ciaptivity, his homes laid waste, every lash that fails on his conquered people cutting thrice deep into his very soul, yet he faces his oppressors and says to them: ; . . After three years of coercion we are still as proud of cur fidelity as when we first declared: “Thou sbalt not pass. . . . ’