Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXII, Issue 43, 27 October 1904, Page 1

Current Topics

Reform or Revolution in Russia ? The heavy strain imposed on the patience, patriotism, and pockets of the people by the war is producing its naLuial cfiect in Russia The spirit of unrest and disafiecuon, whi-.h has for so long formed part of the normal condition of the country, has of late been fanned mt>o a blaxe of irritation, and the bureaucracy and ruling men, feeling their position glowing weaker, are making something like a serious efloit to conciliate op mi oil. The first instalment oi reform was embodied Vi an important manitesto issued on the occasion of tine recent clmsteaimg of the Czar's sk ii ar.id jheir According to the cabled summary of its provisions the manilesto grants a gtnetral amnesty in the ca^e of all political oflendeis except those charged with muider, abohs'has corporal punishment among the ruial dashes', asd for iirst onejicevs among the sea and land iorces ; remit-, arrears owing to the State for the purchase of land and other direct imposts , sets apart £3(;0,00'0 from Hie State money for the purpose of forming an inalienable fu/rd for the benefit ot landless people in Finland , grants amnesty to those Fin'anders who have emigrated without authorisation , remits the fines imposed upon the rural 1 and urban communes of Finland which refused to Blubmib to military conscn<ption in I'JO2 and U9(M , and remits; tho fines imposed upen the Jewish communes in the ca&es of Jews avoiding military service. The ma-i-ifes'Ho also provide:; for a general reduction in sentences for common law oilences. '1 his has been followed up by an announcement made by the C'/ar himself that he will deal with the ' subordinate nationalities '— i c. Poles, Finlanders, etc —with a greater lenity th.iji has ever been before displayed, and as a further guarantee of his earnestness and good faith he has appointed as a successor to M. dc Plehve as head of the police a>s< well a s Minister of the Interior, Prince Svietopolk-Miiski, who belongs to the moderately liberal pa:ty and who was very popular at Wilna, where he was Governor The new Minister has already announced his policy, the key-note to which is greater leniency of administration. He will abstain' from persecution, will grant to the Jews e\ cry thing except equality with Ru^ians 1 , and, will treat rebellious students with lenity, as persons who are young enough to repent.

Ihese reforms are considered as befog unusually generous concessions and are received in Russia with a

considerable amount of gratitude. It is still very much open to doubt, however, whether they w,ill p:ove sufficient to a\ert a revolution in the event of a disastrous ending to the present s-tragigle. It is to be noteid that in all tbese palliatne measures the Oar has not partod with one iota of his power nor given to the people m the slightest degree any increased say in the government of the country. Moreover the recent reforms do not so miuh as touch the two points on whion the disalTected in Russia feel most worely. These are the des'poiisn, v. him eius'he.s ovi"* the rig.ht of free discussion, and the tyranny of the ' administratne order ' s,} stein. In spite ol the remedial meastures now anrjoimccd it is si ill a serious oflonce few tlhet I he prc\ss in Jiusk la to discuss- the war fieely, t^> hint that it has l;ccn in isp aiiA&cd, or to ask for inquiry iait-o the corruptions Hie e\istence of -which even the great Oimciials .vdmit Still mmc hatefiul ts the gnndnvg injus'tiee of tiie ' administrative order ' system In m^ny cases 1 the la^"i m Jiu' sia is in itself fat r'taietory enouj.-^, but ' an admuiustiatne order ' is Independent of law, and a man is suspected of having progressive ideas, or who has one>nc!ed a erewt oflicial, may lind himself, without tiial of an\ kind and svilhol.it opportmnity of defence, packed o r i as a convict to Siberia. Under this sys-_ tern, hundreds even of the educated and respectable (•la-sews, w'bo were not only not guilty of crime, but were not e\ en suspected of anything but disiafiection, wero sen I off by M de Plehve to wear aut the remainder of tIKMr lives as prisoners in Siberian towiy?. Oh these two speciuJly fccrc points the new reforms, as| we haivo said, atlord no measure of relief. The concessions granted a% il l probably serve to appease present irritation and to induce all classes to wait until the war is finished, but slu v jld the struggle end in fimal defeat the position oi the great Empire will be critical in tine extreme. Carlcatur'ng- Irish Brogue Ihe only consolation that an Irishman can extract from the nauseating parodies on Irish brogue that are being continually peipettratod In the prcisis anid on the stage isi the ieflccticn that there must be something particularly good about the original when the imitators are so numerous. And truly the Irishman needs some eotnsolatk.n to enable him to endure the infliction. The Aipostie exhorts usi to ' suffer fools gladly ' ; but to bear patiemtiy with this particular brand of fool— the fool who thinks he is giving, an exhibition of Irish dialect and! Irish humor by filling his talk or hie writing with

' Begorra ' and ' Bejabers ' and ( Be Hivins '—would tax the capacity of Job himself. A happily-written article m our vigorous contemporary the San Frantisco ' Monitor ' gives some entertaining illustrations of the grotesque gibbeiish that it palmed off on the public as ' Irish brogue ' aivd at the same time adinmistcis a much needed ea^tigiatjo'n to the perpetrators ''1 he dialect spoken by the lone; procession of Dooleyite« is, sajs the writer, in most cases a thing to shudder at. 'They don't believe— they " bcUue." They don't lcad^-tl.oy " rade." They don't send for a priest— they send for a " praste." They don't sleep— they " slape." They dotn't riso in the morning.— they " rotze " For them the fragrance of the Irish hedges- and meadows is nol sweet — it is "'swate." 'lhey don't know what's w.ha/th-they only know " phwat's phwat." For them a cailin ieproves her lover's ardor with " gwan over thot," accompanied by a few pounds of rock. For them a Shclsnialflere farmer &ays " Oi know iv a neighbor who has a poike that wuz at Oulait " instead of saying " I Know a neighbor who have a pike, etc.' They make a man from the Glcnties use the slang of the music halls translated into 'Xrrglo-In^h dialect, ignoring the fact that in nine cases out of ten he expresses himself only in Irish and not in any dialect of a foreign language.'

'In one Dooleywed production we have a County Clare priest alluding to God not as the Supreme Being, boit( as the " Shooprame Bay in." In an alleged "Irish" tale with which I wa*> favored some woekis- ago I read a dastardly libel on that intelligent, patriotic, and sclfsacrihemg body of men, the National Teacheis, a sample passage of winch was as follows : " The sdioolmaster^ with the typical bumptiousness amd ignorance of his class, lrowned at his rival and s/aid, ' Littheia schripta manish ducks monday seculaa s'aealorum Theie, yer sowl, put that into English if yoiu can.' " And Uhi,s| goes down with many as the " Insli toiuic v h," " the Celtic note," or " Irish humor." It is vile burlesque, and it is an insult to the intelligence of t(he Irish reader.'

•It is not easy— on the principle of seeking t 0 ' make the punishment Jit the enmc '>— to say exactly what is the pro.per penalty toi those literary manners, but the ' JVT,onitor ' article's siuggostum is near enough: ' It is so dithcult to write dialect as it is spoken and so difficult to use it with judgment that unless a writer has* heaid it in childhood and jaut'h and learned all its variations of pionuneiation and the difleient siha,des, of thought expressed by words and terms apparently the same it were better for him or her that a mnll, including the millstones andi laln-stones (not toiles), were tiqd a,rqund his ot her neck, and tftat he or she were cast headlong into six or seven thousand fathoms of salt water than to be allowed to gp around loose on the earth trying to make people " J^lave " that she or he " wroites Oirish diolect." ' What to do with the Orangemen Although the day is doubtless still far distant when the Oraaige and the Green will be found floating peacefully togetheT there is daily increasing evidence tnat the old-time virulence of feeling, if not weakening all roupld, is at least being more and more confined to one side in the fa-ctic/n. Thus a late issue of ' Reynolds's Newspaper '—a thoroughly impartial authority— has the following pointed observation in answer to a 1 correspondent : ' Have you noticed that) when Cardinal Vannutelli visited Armagh the Protestants created a moat disigaraceful riot ; that the Orangemen in Belfast and other northern towns are always attacking their Catholic fellow countrymen, who happen to be in the minority,, whereas in the middle, south and west of Ireland, ■where the Catholics are in the majority, you never hear of atttacks upon Protestants'?'

A further illustration of this spirit of greater tolerance on the part of the Catholic Irish is furnished by a noteworthy utterance made by Mr. J. Redmond at tike great convention held recently at ' New York. After ex]t ics'Sins; his respect for those who honestly differed w it'll him, and his readinef-s to concede to them the same ficodom ol opinion which be claimed for himself, Mr. Redmond continued thus, as :eported in the ' Catholic Press ' : \uule I would cut on my right hand before I would do anything to attack or to weaken such men, I claim in tjie name of li eland that no attempt should be made to thwart or to weaken me and my friends. (Applause.) A Voice : To hell with the Clan-na-Gaels and tdie O.'angemen. Mr. Redmond : No. 'To hell with 'no honest Irishman. (Great Applause.) My friend here says 'To hell wilih tihe Orangemen.' No. No. Far foe it from me to tolerate such an expression. (Groat applause.) No. (Great cheers, the audience rising, cheering and shouting 'No, no, no.') rr l he Orangemen are Irishmen. They are mistaken Irishmen. (Applause ) They are, to a large extent, uneducated Irishmen. I admit they are intolerant Irishmen. What is our duty? Wihat is and what should be ou,r mission? To drive those ftieiii' from Ireland ? , No. (Applause.) Dd'ucate them. 'Great applause.) Enlightcai them . Teach them the history ot then own foietalhers, -when Belfast was the centre ot the United Irish movement. (Great applause.) Andi when Nason and Henry Joy M'Cracken— (applause) and the other gallant Protestants of tilie North made their cfloits. (Applause.) No. Parnell ne\er said a grander word than when ho said : ' Ireland cannot anord to lose a single son.' (Great applause.) Let us m God's name, be tolerant to one another. (Applause.) Intolerance has been the curse of Iceland. Let us give one another crqdit for honesty of intention and of motive. Let us tiunv our gwns against the common enemy, and not ag<ainst one another. (Applause). That is at once magnanimous and patriotic— a sentiment, m lact, to use a hackneyed expression, alike or editable to Mr. Redmond's head and to his heart. The soundness of the advice is b'cjo'nd qtuostioin ; biut as in t&ie case ot most good advice, there may be some difficulty in carrying it out. Thanks partly to heredity and environment, and thanks also to steady practice, the Orangemen have become particularly good haters. Consciously or unconsciously they have for years been acting on Hie lines of philosophy laid down by the genial Dob ley. ' I'\e been thiivknn' it over,' says the fca^e, ' an' r.ve argued it owt that life'd noti hf worth lnin' if we didn't keep o>ur inimies. I can have all the funds I need. Army man can that keeps a 1 liquor sthore. But a rale sUirong mimy — wan that hates ye ha-ard, an' that ye'd take the coat off yer back to do a bad tur-rn to— is a luxury that I cah't go without in me ol' days ' It may be possible to educate arid 'enlighten the Orangeman, but the luxuiy of having sjomeone to .hate is one that he will cortafi'nly never part with without a pang.