AMAZING SPEECH.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 March 1922, Page 4

AMAZING SPEECH.

IRISH BISHOP’S OUTBREAK. AUCKLAND MAYOR ACTION TO BE TAKEN. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Auckland, Last Night. In a speech at the St. Patrick’s Day concert on Friday evening, . Bishop Liston, coadjutor Roman Catholic Bishop, said his parents were driven from the country in which they were bom and in which they would have been content to live, because their foreign masters did not "want Irish men and women peopling their own land, but wished to use it as a cattle ranch for the snobs of the Empire. He was a native of New Zealand, and loved his country. They could «.ot say that Ireland had got all she asked, for and all that her sons had died for, but she had got the first instalment of her freedom and was determined to have the whole of it. (Applause). The omnipotent Hand of God had made Ireland a nation, and while the grass grew and the water flowed there would be many to fight, and even die in order that God’s desires might be realised. It seemed to him providential that the man who had faced the difficulties and carried them so far was there to see that the rulers of Ireland were not duped by England. He referred to the men and women who, in the glorious EaMer of 1916, were proud to die for their country, murdered by foreign troops. They could not forget these men and women, but In order that their dream about Ireland might coms true, they could forgive. The Mayor (Mr. J. H. Gunson) publishes the following: “The speech of Bishop Liston calls for immediate action on my part as Mayor, on behalf of our citizenship. I wrote to the Bishop on Saturday morning asking him to advise me whether he had been correctly reported, though my long experience of the Press in Auckland gives me no cause to doubt the accuracy of the report. The speech, as reported, is avowedly and openly disloyal to King and country, and is an affront to our citizenship. It is seditious, and designedly calculated to cause the disintegration of all that Britishers hold dear. It is a studied insult to the citizenship of the Empire to which New Zealand is proud to belong. 'The repudiation of England, and the sneering reference to her as ‘‘a foreign nation,” and an entire dissociation with the disdain of the speaker and those for whom he said he spoke*as “a right,” from all that pertains to the Empire, is a challenge to all loyal citizens to raise their voices in protest. The reference to British soldiers as foreign murderers is especially offensive and unwarrantable. “I take this first public opportunity of saying, with all the emphasis possible, that the citizens of Auckland will not tolerate for one minute such a studied and deliberate act of disloyalty and of insult to British manhood and womanhood, and, in making this intimation, I wish to say that such seditious and ruinous speeches will not be allowed in the Auckland Town Hall, or in any place which the city administration controls or licenses. The Bishop, and others holding views such as are reported; are not fit to any longer enjoy the privileges and rights of our British Commonwealth and the protection of the British flag. This speech will be brought undei* the notice of the Attorney-General, and it will be my duty to advise the City Council to take other appropriate action. In the meantime, on behalf of the citizens of Aukland, I enter an emphatic protest in the foregoing terms.”