GENERAL

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 12, 25 March 1909, Page 468

GENERAL

The Irish Trade Mark The Irish Trade Mark was registered On December 8, 1906. Since that date the Value of the Trade MaiOc has been recognised in every part of Ireland. Fully 400 firms, ranging from the largest employers of labor in Belfast to a small association of Kerry homespun weavers, are now using it, and not a week passes but the secretary receives applications from other Irish firms at the registered offices of the association,. 13' Marlboro' street, Cork. '■ To symbolise a nation's trade,' writes Mr. John P. Boland, M.P., 'is a new conception.-' To Ireland, alone, of all the nations of the world, belongs the credit of giving effect to it._ And just as the country flies its flag on days of national rejoicing, so should every citizen who takes a keen pride in his country's commercial welfare seek to make known far and wide the national symbol for probity in trade.' President Roosevelt's Appreciation President Roosevelt paid a notable tribute to the Irish race on January 16, when the members of the American-Irish Historical Society were received at' the White .House. ' Many different strains from the beginning,' he said, 'have contributed to make up what is now American citizenship, and from the beginning .the men who themselves or whose forefathers came from Ireland have played a great and leading part in the affairs of the nation.' A Doomed Aristocracy • Qfeovgp A. Birmingham ' (tlje Rev. James 0- Hannay, Rector of Westport), writing in the Westminster Gazette on ' A Doomed Aristocracy,' says : The Irish aristocracy is perishing; perishing, not as that other Irish .aristocracy which fought for the Stuart cause and went down like a stormy sun in a blaze of romance; not like the French noblesse, men and women, who, if they could not live wisely, at least knew how to die with a sneer or a jibe on tlieir lips, contemptuous, even, in the tumbrils, of the canaille which had conquered them. This aristocracy of ours is passing unsung, unlamented, in such a way that tlie world, cherishing a last vision _of it, will* think of it hereafter as a class of higglers driving belated bargains in a falling market. They have lived, these gentlemen of Ireland, aloof from their people and their land. They are dying aloof from them now. They have earned in the past no love. Humble folk have not gathered round them for shelter and protection. No beauty of service or sympathy has won the heart of Ireland to them. And yet they were men, and strong men. They are, in their isolation and tlieir decay, strong men still. No other class anywhere, perhaps, has bred such sons. Read the roll of them — Wellesley, Gough, Napier, Nicholson, Dufferin, and a hundred more, the greatest of the great, the strongest of the strong. In spite of all the honor they have won, they are going to extinction without honor. Their houses are scattered about Ireland — fair houses, with green" demesnes in the midst of desolate boglands, or stately among the mountains and lakes, or halls with varied ' gardens and fine trees, where the pasture land is rich in Western Leinster. There are pictures on the walls, battle-pieces and portraits of the men who won the battles. There are old arms stored, and curios from the East, trophies of 'the courage and skill of fathers and grandfathers who went empire-building, and to whose credit;" more than to that of any other class, it stands that an empire has been built. Across the Channel in England, traders have grown rich by exploiting the countries which these Irish gentlemen of former generations won for them. And now the descendants of the great soldiers and administrators sit and grumble amid the gathered witnesses of old triumphs, the tarnished loot of many fights^ the prizes of high energy .in governing. They could win, these dead heroes, any land 'under the sun except their own, rule wisely everywhere excpt in Ireland. Their children pay the penalty; sit solitary in tlieir great houses, complaining bitterly over their wine in the evening, staining the white honor of their pride now and again by whining to the leaders of a contemptuous bourgeoise, or the chosen spokesman of a ravenous proletariat, new „ generations who .know nothing of the older men and their deeds care nothing for them and their privileges. These gentlemen- of Ireland, who have nev.er cared for Ireland, sit grinding out the monotonous tale , of "their grievances while politicians laugh at them.