IRELAND RE-VISITED.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 December 1918, Page 8

IRELAND RE-VISITED.

Signs and portents ~. (RURAL ■PEOSPJERITIfj 4 Ten days ia my native Dtfbim and visits to old haunts in Cork, Limerick, and their neighborhoods have enabled me to take stoeK of tue ureaeut Irish situation, writes Mr. Alfred P Uraves in an English newspaper. The housing question in the Irish cities is an acute one— • an abiding difficulty in Dublin, which serves as the dumping-ground of the un-' employed or the casual laborers from the neighboring country parts. These have degenerated into a peculiarly dangerous slum population, whose stronger elements took part with Connolly and his citizen army in the Easter rebellion of WIS, and whose half-starving residuum broke out of the slums to pillage in its wake- But a fine example of what might be made of derelict Dublin is afforded by Lord Iveagh's tenement houses and their green surroundings in the neighborhood of St. Patrick's Cathedral. This social evil cannot, however, be radically dealt with until the slum children are rescued from the "blind alley" occupations into which, when not half-edu-cated, they escape from ineffective school attendance officers and over-indulgent police magistrates. Another instance of the still piecemeal social progress of ■Dublin is the pleasant use of St. Stephens Green as a people's park and a children's playground, while the fine spaces of Merrion and Mountjoy Squares are only open to and scarcely used by the comfortably-oft folk who reside around them. Mount joy Square, in particular, would be of untold value to the dense population of the laboring classes who live about % and have no gardens within walking dintance of them to frequent. Here the tired workman might sit or stroll with his wife and children, or take high tea with them in such kiosks as are to foe found in the Phoenix Park, instead of helping to fill the public houses with them. AIR OP PROSPERITY. ~ Outwardly the country parts of Ireland have never looked more prosperousKeat cottages with concrete walls, slate roofs, and trim gardens, have replaced the thatched hovels with untidy potato patches. The dress of men and women of the agricultural classes has noticeably improved, the jaunting-cars and country carts are smarter and cleaner, the horses better groomed and harnessed, and the waste lands about the country towns, before full of rubbish of all kinds, have been converted into well-kept allotments, while wherever you look fine fields of corn and potatoes and crops of bay. good in quality if somewhat light in quantity, meet the eye. Even the turnips, which threatened to be a failure, are giving quite good promise- Farmers of one hundred acres are likely to realise as much as £ISOO for their hay, and as I walked round his fields with a distinguished farmer recently, I saw some seventy acres of wheat, barley, oats, and potatoes of the most approved kinds and in the most flourishing condition Moreover, an hour and a-halr spent with him at a meeting of the Limerick Farmers' Association, which he had helped to establish proved to me that a great movement was on foot to bring the 450,000 Irish farmers together, iiidepend- , ently. of creed and politics, for their common good and for that or the laborers employed by them, with whose own union they might establish an agreed scale of wages. This farmers' organisation is being promoted largely with the object of re- : straining the almost autocratic power* proposed to be conferred on the Irish j Board of Agriculture through the recommendations of the Selborne Committee, | which are so drastic as virtually to make that Department State landlord of the Irish soil. If wisely guided, it is bound to do even more for the _peaceftble progress of Ireland, because on more genuinely co-operative grounds' than Sir Horace Plunkett's great agricultural • scheme of development. POSSIBILITIES OF ORGANISATION Such joint action ou the part of lierfarmers ami laborers if not a panacea for Ireland's morbid condition would do much to restore her health, especially if backed by the establishment of farmers', if not lauorers, institutes, supplied witu I suitable libraries, reading and showrooms, and opportunities for testing together the latest developments in agricultural machinery and discussing in common the latest methods of culture. Irish farmers, the 1.A.0.5. notwithstanding, have still much the same reputation for aloofness from one another ,and suspicion of novelty, as those of England and Wales. Closer association would, moreover, tend to improve their stan- ! da rd of living and household amenities, which now, in spite of their greater prosperity, show little to distinguish them from their own laborers- Again, a better and more vocational education of their children woiild help them to improve their professional as well as their ' social position. Outwardly, no doubt there is quiet in j the face of tlie large bodies of British j soldiery that keep the peace. The Irish regiments have been removed from the , country; to have called on them to re- j press by force the violence of their fel-low-countrymen would have been unthinkable- All attacks oh small knots of British troops or individual soldiers by combinations of corner boys have been met with the severe handling that they deserved, and have, in consequence, ceased. But there is a strangely incurious, not to say callous, attitude on the part of the population towards the war and its representatives, the British soldiers, who tell me that at present they feel like a garrison in an enemy's country. Indeed, while jocular remarks pass from one to another of the Saturday street crowds, and race meetings and such Irish games and sports as are permitted are attended by large foodies of interested