IRISH AFFAIRS.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVI, Issue 43096, 23 May 1907, Page 4

IRISH AFFAIRS.

The difficulties of tbe Irish question do inot -lessen, and the resolution, of the Executive of the National Council, calling upon Irish members to withdraw from the House of Com-, mops and appeal to the Hague Conference, as cabled recently, will not help matters ‘ much. It is interesting as a side issue, to note at this juncture . a reference to the Sinn Fein, movement, which appears ini the “Belfast Telegraph,” which paper remarks that ‘‘those who have brought about! the retaliation cannot reply that they were nob warned of what they were bringing upon themselves and the -country. It has become fashionable in certain quarters in Ireland to refer to everything coming into the country as ‘foreign.’ It may dome to us from Glasgow, from Liverpool, or ever from cmr nearest point on the opposite -shores —Stanraer. It matters not, it is foreignl, and according to the Sinn Feinr cars is ‘foreign,’ and therefore to be boycotted. Our summer visitors from the same parts of the world are ‘foreigners,’ and it would even appear as if°the term' were made to cover the returned sons and daughters of Irish . parents, settled across the • narrow channel that divides Ireland from the sister countries. Nothing bearing the markrof such origin! may be purchased id Ireland, but conversely it. is not decreed that nothing made in Ireland ‘ . shall be sold to the detested ‘foreigner.’ The latter, however, is doing off his own ba-t what it was here said he would do. He- is retaliating., and Ireland is certain to come worst out of the arrangement. A Correspondent writing in - the columns of a London contemporary, whose • order book! had fallen in a, single journey from £ISOO to £SO in- consequence of the boycott, points o-uti that there are many well-known Irish articles which have a. large sale- in England, and a boycott can be applied by two. What, for instance, about our Northern linens'? Of -Course, that is an Ulster industry, -and Ulster deserved to be punished for its loyalty to Great Britain and the British Crown-. But there is the Irish bacon and egg in-

dustry. Irish tweeds, lace, etc., etc. Ireland left to herself with the markets closed against her through her own fault, would he in. a deplorable plight-, and it is to be hoped the foolish campaign! will be terminated be- * fore it is too late.”