IRISH TREATY.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 December 1921, Page 5

IRISH TREATY.

SINN FEIN’S VIEWS. DISCUSSION CONTINUED. THE DEBATE .-ADJOURNED. By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyrigtt. Received Dec. 23, 7.35 p.m. • London, Dec. 22. The debate in the Dail Eireann on the Irish treaty was continued to-day, and had not been concluded when the sitting was adjourned till January 3. Mr. O. Kelly, Minister of Education in the Dail Eireann, strongly opposed ratification. He could not be false to the oath taken to the republic. Mr. Mulcahy, chief of staff of the republican army, in supporting ratification, said the hour of their defeat was not the time to quarrel about how it should have been avoided. From defeat had emerged powers which after the Dail Eireann had ceased to exist would enable the people Ito follow their national aspirations uni trammelled and unfettered. There were still forty speakers on the i list when Mr. Collins moved and the , Countess Markiewicz seconded the adI journment, which was carried by 77 i votes to 44. The voting is no indicai tion of the strength of the parties. Mr. i Collins’ supporters generally voted against the adjournment, while many of the irreconcilables followed the Countess Markiewicz’s lead. After the vote there was a dispute as to whether a member I representing two constituencies should have two votes, but this was ended when Mr. Collins impulsively cried: “I refuse ito take advantage of my position.” Mr. Moylan. in an angry speech, said: -If Mr. Lloyd George wants a war of extermination let him declare it. I may not see the end, but by God no loyalist in my brigade will see it either. Instead of a republic Ireland has been offered an oath of allegiance, a GovernorGeneral, a new army entrenched on her flanks and a treaty to consolidate British interests.” ’ Mr. McNeill left the chair in order to address the assembly. He said the majority of the speeches against ratification should have been made before the negotiations were commenced and not now. Each nation of the Commonwealth had a right to complete national sovereignty in her own domh’ns Be suggested ' the oath commencing: swear to be eternally associated etc.” The decision to adjourn w is received with considerable dissatisfaction by the general public, but is regarded really as reference of the matter to the people, though somewhat irregular and unsatisfactory. The daily Chronicle's Dublin correspondent says the adjournment will have an advantage in that deputies returning home will be bombarded with appeals not to vote against the treaty. The present parties in the Dail Eireann are equally divided.

THE FOUNDER OF SINN FEIN. ARTHUR GRIFFITH. Arthur Griffith, who heads the opposition to De Valera, is himself the founder of Sinn Fein; it was he who first drafted the Sinn Fein programme, and he has all along organised and directed the party and its policy. There is no more interesting figure in contemporary life than this strange, taciturn man, himself in almost every particular the exact antithesis of what a typical Irishman is popularly supposed to be. A San Francisco journalist has described Griffith as “the most mildmannered and retiring gentleman who ever organised a revoution and got himself into gaol.” But behind his apparent diffidence and lack of power of expression are concealed qualities which have induced his followers to regard him as “the ablest Irishman now alive, the coolest and best brain in Ireland.” The Freeman’s Journal, by no means an unqualified admirer of Griffith, has shown how, through his revival of the teaching and use of the old Irish tongue, hi? historical researches, his political pamphlets, his careful avoidance of emotional rhetoric, and his elaborate organisation of judical, political and military systems, he has revived the national spirit and made a purely Irish Republic at least temporarily possible. A man who could do all this in a few years, struggling all the time against insuperable difficulties, must possess personal and political ability of a high order. And it is important and instructive to note that Griffith, on his own testimony, -does not believe in physical force.” It is here, probably, that we arrive at the explanation of the strange developments that have within the past week concentrated the attention of the civilised world upon Ireland —the spectacle of the founder and organiser of Irish Republicanism as it exists to-day, deliberately calling a halt to his followers, declaring in favor of a compromise with the alien authority which he has taught them to resist and disown.