LOYAL ROMAN CATHOLICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 August 1915, Page 6

LOYAL ROMAN CATHOLICS.

To the Editor. Sir, —Would you kindly grant mc space in your valuable columns for the following, which is clipped from the Dundalk Democrat of June 20, 1915, as showing the part ii. history that Roman Catholics have plav ed for the Empire. In a letter to Irish Times, the Bev. Courtenay Moore, rector of Michelstown, quotes this remarkable utterance of the great Duke of Wellington:— "It.is hardly known to your Lordships that of the troops which our gracious Sovereign did me honor to entrust to my command at various periods of the war—a war undertaken for the express purpose of securing the happy institution and independence of the country—at least one-half were Roman Catholics. . . . Yo::r Lordships are well aware for what, length of period and under what diiilnilt circumstances the Empire buoyam. upon the flood which overwhelmed the thrones and wrecked the institutions of every other people- • how they kept alive the only spark of freedom which was left unextinguished in Europe. My Lords, it is mainly to the Irish Catholics that we ow? all our proud predominance in our military career, and that I am personally indebted for the laurels with which you have been pleased to decorate my brow. . We must confess, my Lords, that, without Catholic blood and Catholic valor, no victory would ever have been obtained, and the first military talents might have been exerted in vain." This speech was very probably delivered in the debates on the Catholic Emancipation Bill in 1829. It is the speech of a man wlio was no friend of the Catholics, but who, in speaking of the part they took in the wars that ended with Waterloo, spoke of what he knew and had at least the grace to acknowledge. Two thoughts are suggested by the passage above quoted. One is that had English statesmen not shown countenance to the landlord and Orange clique whose operations sent millions of the Iriarli peasantry into exile in the later years of the last century, there would be nine millions of the best fighting material in the world from which to draw men of the same type as those who "kept alive the old spark of freedom that was left unextinguished in Europe'' a hundred and odd years ago. The other is that history is repeating itself in the part played by Irish Catholics in the present war. The Irish regiments and soldiers have covered themselves with new glory, from the day the Munster Fusiliers, cut off in the retreat from Mons and surrounded by countless enemies, fought till the rifles fell from the exhausted hands of the handful of survivors, down to the day when the Dublins and the Munsters shelled in their boats, shelled on the bare and open beaches, dropping by scores in the bloody water as they waded ashore, shot down amidst the rocks of the sea beach, unsheltered against the withering blast of rifle and machine-gun fire, forced their way up the cliffs, stormed the trenches, seized and silenced the guns, and once again, as Irish soldiers so often did in the past, achieved the apparently impossible. One other fact worth recording is that the 10th Irish Division, composed of battalions raised since the outbreak .of war, is at the front or oil the way there: The renowned Ulster Division, composed of Carson's Volunteers who were reported to be "drilled, armed, and grimly resolved," and ready for war at home before war abroad was ever thought of, is still at home and reported to be unready for service ''because thereare no reserves " 1 am, etc, IRISHMAN.