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Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 18, 15 July 1911, Page 4

THE KING AND IRELAND. Some people predicted trouble for the King during his visit to Ireland. The people of Ireland have no quarrel with the King either as a potentate or a man. The people of Ireland love warmly and hate hard. They suffer under the weight of age-old prejudice and injustice; they are quicker in mind than any other people in the British Isles and feel more acutely than all the others put together. They have been practically told time after time that although the people of new lands under the British flag may be permitted to govern their internal affairs, the people of an old land (which supplies the brains to govern many lands) are incompetent to look after their own home. The man who knows the Irish people on "the ould sod" knows also that they are as loyal and devoted to the cause of Empire (personified in George V.) as the other units. Partisan ill-feeling there was in Dublin. Partisan ill-feeling and "disloyalty" there has been, too, even in the House of Commons—and not from Irishmen. The King met with a warm greeting from his Irish subjects, because there is absolutely no reason why people should empty their very real grievance against the system and mae* understanding that keeps the Green Isle undeveloped on to an innocent monarch. In examining even the more recent history of Ireland one conclude that the wrongs suffered by the Irish people have had their uses. They have depopulated Ireland, but, released from the irksotneness of an intolerable subjection, the Irishman has gone forth into all the world carrying the lamp of his genius to its furthermost ends, doing incalculable service for men. To presume disloyalty on the part of the Irish people is to insult the British army. To suggest that Ireland is incapable of managing her affairs is to accuse many of the earth's brightest leaders of being unfit for their positions; to believe that the head of the nations under the Britkh flag is less likely to be kindly received by the people of Ireland than by the people of New Zealand or of any other country is to misunderstand the people with the finest manners in the Empire. In short, the Irish "peasant, who will fight to the death to redress a grievance, is still a fine gentleman—and he has no grievance against the person or position of King George V. One feels that the people who persistently believe in the innate "badness" of the Trish, don't know any Irishmen, and if the English people in England and elsewhere who look upon the Irish as foreign savages of a specially virulent type, took example by the King and invaded the green sod just to see if "iv'ry hand held a bomb and iv'ry fut a cutlash," they might understand better. Here's a simple fact that we would like to repeat: "There is less crime in Ireland than in any country in Europe." Here's another: "The standard of morals in Ireland is higher than the standard in any of the King's dominions." Is the King safe in Ireland? "