IRELAND AND THE WAR.

Taihape Daily Times, 19 October 1918, Page 6

IRELAND AND THE WAR.

Two articles were recently published in the London Morning Post from a correspondent who had visited Ireland for the first time since the war began. Commenting on his observations, the - “Morning Post” says

the picture he presents is of a counYtry “where the war does not count;** I a country of .- abounding plenty and ample leisure; a country to which the agony of Europe is a matter of supreme indifference; a country which eats, drinks, makes money, and takes its ease, while others fight its battles. If any shade of anxiety ever crosses ■ the Irishman’s mind it is lest he should, by inadvertence, do anything to help. It is a positive grievance that .Irish labour cannot come to England ..for the fine wages that are offering for fear lest it should “get took.” In all her chequered history Ireland has never cut a sorrier figure nor played a more contemptible part; and it Is some satisfaction to know that the truth , about, her is at last likely to be revealed where it will produce the most salutary impression. There are American and Dominion soldiers in Ireland; men who have travelled thousands of miles to fight for the cause ‘which Ireland deserts. What they see with their own eyes will hardly kindle sympathy for what they had been taught to regard as “a poor, oppressed nation, groaning under a tyranny worse than that of Russia in Poland.” It is not for “oppressed nations’ ’ of the Irish type that they have left their homes and dedicated their lives. ;In the past it has been difficult for the 'easy-going Englishman to understand ’the animosity of the Irish temper. is the future the difficulty is likely to disappear, for the animosity will not be all one one side. If Ireland prefers her ease to her self-respect that is her affair, but if she Imagines tnat ‘England, and not only England but America—will forget the choice she has made, Ireland is vastly mistaken.