WHET AMERICAN JOURNALS SAY ABOUT IRELAND.

Taihape Daily Times, 7 August 1919, Page 2

WHET AMERICAN JOURNALS SAY ABOUT IRELAND.

A CATAOLYSMIC CHANGE OF OPINION.

Ireland remains the perplexity and the tragedy 01' British politics, and the Sinn Feiners, like the B'ourbons, learn nothing and forget nothing. But. one of the incidental ‘results of America partnership ‘in the war against Germany is a. complete revolution in American opinion about Ireland. When ' "‘eriean sailors were mobbed in Cork because they were fighting against Germany, that circunistnnce had an illuminating effect. upon the American mind. The Sinn Feiners were in treasonable league with Germany, while ‘America was spending her treasure and her blood in fighting Germany! This showed to the pnarcticail American intelligence that there must’ be something fatally wrong in the Sinn Fein policy and mind. A «CONVERSION.

A well-‘known American, Mr W. R. Moody, visited Ireland last November, and conversed with men of all parties. “He Was,” says the London Spectator, “a Home Ruler in principle when he landed; before -he left Ireland he had changed his mind. He and his companions seem to have been converted to Unionism mainly by their interviews with leading Sinn Feiners. Mr Moody was astonishedlto find that the Sinn Fein-ers would not have Home Rule or anything less than complete independence, which he rremarkcd, was, of course, ‘unthinkable.’ He found, too, that they had no programme of )9: democratic or practical character. They repudiated, for instance, (the idea of public secular education "on the American plan, and took it for granted. that the Roman ‘Catholic Church must control the schools. They asked the Americans ‘to promote the investnient of American capital in Irish mines, and produced geological maps sixty years old in ‘support of their arguments:

“ "There are certain phrases which constantly recur in their conversa- \_ tion. For example, we were informed frequently that “Ireland was under the heel of a despotic tyranny,” and was entitled to the privileges of ‘ ‘ self-determination. ” When asked whether, in the event of national independence, or as a condition of secession from the TTnitodKingdom,i they would apply this principle of ‘ ‘ self-determination ” to Ulster, which is opposed to Home Rule, or consent to her continuance in the United Kingdoni, they frankly and emphatically dissented.’ “The American visitor sought for evidence of the ‘despotic tyranny,’ and naturally failed to find it. He remarked that the British taxpayer was helping to buy out the Irish landlords for‘ the benefit of the peasantry. He observed that Ireland had been exempted from conscription, and from foodrationing, alld"he began to think that ‘lreland ’s ills are not dissimilar to the

i:21::gIn:‘;1-_y cmozc of .‘;>:‘i".it child.’ On Arxnistice Day, when he arrived in Dublin, he saw :1 Sinn Foixx procession flauuting its siditious b{IIHICI‘ without inte:'f()'ro-nco from fhe police‘, and he questioned wh_otller the American Government'- would 11a*.»'o displayed such patient folorance. He found all pmtigy, agreed t.h?.‘r Ireland It-ad never been so prosperous as it is to-day, with high wages and cheap living.”