Irish News
:j - GENERAL. ; The Lord Mayor of Dublin is to present In person an address to his Holiness the Pope from the Dublin Corporation. •' ■ . - Dublin Corporation has removed from its roll of honorary freemen the name of Dr. Kuno Meyer, a German savant, who formerly was very popular in Ireland because of his interest in the Gaelic revival. Owing to the high prices charged for coal to the Dublin poor, the Local Government Board has prepared a scheme by which a bag of coal, weighing ten stone, shall be supplied for one shilling to persons earning less than £1 a week. The difference in the cost is to be made good by a Government grant. At the last meeting of the committee of the Limerick City Regiment, National Volunteers, Mr. E. Me* Namara, V.P., presiding, a resolution was unanimously adopted expressing sincere sympathy with Mr. John F. Power on the death of his nephew, Lieutenant Power, who was killed in action at the front. Lieutenant W. A. Redmond, M.P., Royal Irish Regiment, son of Mr. John Redmond, Leader of the Irish Nationalist Party, is now stationed in Tipperary, being attached to the Irish Brigade. With Lieutenant Redmond is Dr. Esmoude, M.P. for North Tipperary, who belongs to the R.A.M.C. of the Irish Brigade. Mr. Ernest A. G. Ellis, J.P., Wellington, Spanishpoint, Miltown-Malbay, has obtained a commission in the Army. Mr. Ellis is the second son of the late Captain Robert Westrop Ellis, formerly High Sheriff for Clare, and son-in-law of Dr. Ellis, ex-Local Government Board Auditor. Mr. Ellis was in training with the local Volunteers. The annual meeting of the Freeman’s Journal shareholders, Dublin, received a report that the net profit for the year amounted to £6197. A sum of £1440 was voted to pay debenture interest. The remainder of the surplus was mainly utilised in writing off certain items, and the balance remaining carried forward to next year. No dividend was voted to the ordinary shareholders. On St. Patrick’s Day thousands of women sold shamrocks in the streets of London in support of a scheme devised by the Countess of Limerick to provide free refreshments for troops at railway stations. The Queen sent a message of sympathy, and among the sellers were Lady Jellicoe and the famous French actress, Mdme. Rejane. This year Queen Alexandra sent her usual gift of shamrocks to the Irish Guards, but it was despatched to the front instead of being distributed as usual at their barracks in London. Second Lieutenant Roderick de Stacpoole, R.F.A., who was killed in action 'near Neuvc Chapelle on March 10, was the youngest son of the Duke Stacpoole. Born at Mount Hazel, County Galway, in 1895, and educated at Downside, Wimbledon College, and Woolwich,- he was gazetted in August last, on his nineteenth birthday, when he joined the Ist Battery Royal Field Artillery, which went to France in the Bth Division. One of his brothers, who had been three years in the Connaught Rangers, was killed in action on the Aisne, and his 1 two eldest brothers are at present serving at the front in the Connaught Rangers and in the Leinster Regiment. to. ■ —— \ /, . ■ MORE IRISH HEROES. Among those mentioned in Sir David Beatty’s despatch for distinguished conduct in the Battle of the North Sea on January 24, when the Blucher was sunk, are Frederick Daly (chief carpenter, Lion), Patrick O’Callaghan (chief stoker, Lion), and James Keating (chief stoker, Meteor), and Michael Flood (stoker, Meteor). They have been awarded the Distinguished Service Medal. Amongst Irishmen mentioned in Sir John French’s despatches is Major Edmund J. Mc-
Allister, Army Service Corps, son of Mr. Patrick F. McAllister, Dublin, and brother-in-law of ’Sir Joseph McGrath, Registrar of the National University. He was educated at Belvedere College*, S.J., and University College, Dublin. C . - ULSTER UNIONISTS AND THE W4R, A Articles have been written in many countries and in different languages to account for the origin of the war, but a correspondent of the Northern Whig, a Unionist journal published in Belfast, points out that the views and theories put forward so far are all wrong. The war, he states, was arranged by Providence, in order that the Ulster Unionists might be protected. Ulster was on the verge of war and had prepared for the maintenance of her liberty. 1 The very uniform of the women of Ulster was ready. ... By a stroke, as it were, of lightning, war on the Continent, instead of in Ulster, broke out. Belgium became the scapegoat of Ulster. The latter to-day dwells in peace and security. It was the hand of God that did it as miraculously now as in Bible times.’ That is to say (remarks the Catholic Times), the lives of the Ulster Unionists are so precious in the eyes of the Lord that by His design nearly the whole of Europe was set aflame and Belgium devastated to save them. If the suggestion is rather blasphemous, it at any rate serves to give an inkling of the vast importance the Ulster Unionists attach to their preservation from danger. Is this the secret of the Ulster Volunteers’ slowness in going to the front ? DEATH OF CAPTAIN BELLINGHAM. General sympathy will be extended by his fellowcountrymen to Sir Henry Bellingham, Bart., of Castlebellingham, County Louth, and to his family, on the death of the distinguished baronet’s second son, Captain Roger Bellingham, who has met on the battlefield the gallant fate that has befallen so many men of his race and creed during the course of this momentous worldwar. Sir Henry Bellingham is a brilliant and patriotic Irishman; the son was worthy of the father. Captain Roger Bellingham was a true lover of his own country, an ardent Home Ruler and Nationalist. It may be recalled that when he addressed a meeting of Irish National Volunteers in his native county some months ago, several Unionist members raised an angry agitation in the House of Commons, and clamoured for ‘ drastic measures ’ of some kind or another because the young officer was an A.D.C. to Lord Aberdeen, then Viceroy of Ireland. Every movement that made for the advancement of Irish ideals and the promotion of the people’s welfare obtained Captain Bellingham’s enthusiastic support. Now, in the flower of his age and the prime of his manhood, he is lost to the relatives and friends who loved him; but his memory will live in their hearts while life endures— and his actual services to Ireland and high aspirations for the nation’s future will not be forgotten by his fellow-countrymen. A writer in the Freeman pays warm tribute to the piety of the late Captain Bellingham. He was one of the Irish pilgrims to Lourdes, and at his own request he was given charge of a blind man there, whom he was to lead about everywhere, to Mass in the morning, back to breakfast, then to the Grotto, then round the Stations of the Cross, and so through the whole day’s routine. The Captain discharged his duty with the devoutest fervor, and tried on his retun to Ireland to provide for his blind friend in a home in Dublin. The tribute concludes: J And now he sleeps in the sunny land of France ! Well, he was ready to go, for his soul was white and pure as a child’s, and his heart ever burned with the love of the poor and the afflicted. Some will. remember him as a companion in arms, some as a friend, some for a nearer and more sacred tie: but for me his name shall ever recall one picture—that of a soldier of our Lady, erect before her shrine, holding a blind man by the hand,’
THE NEW IRELAND.
Ireland’s position in the war was the subject of many interesting references in the speeches delivered at the annual St. Patrick’s Day house dinner of the Irish Club in London. The gathering was a most successful and enjoyable one and afforded still further testimony to the high place which this popular institution holds in the Irish life of the English capital. Viscount Gough, the president of the club, was. in the chair, and included in a distinguished company were Lord Mac Donnell, Mrs. J. R. Green, Lieutenant T. M. Kettle, Sir Robert Hadfield, Sir Horne * and Lady Gordon, Lady Muir McKenzie, Mr. M. Joyce, M.P. ; Mr. H. W. Thornton, general manager of the Great Eastern Railway and Very Rev. Father Murphy (Provincial of the Marist Fathers). ' Among the speakers was Lieutenant T. M. Kettle, who said that in the great assize that was searching all the world Ireland had done a great thing and done it greatly. She had put her money on the counter, and its clink had been heard throughout the world. The only uniform worn in his family under the King’s auspices before was the uniform of the convict. But times had changed, and to-day he was 011 the side of England, because England was on the side of God. He was proud, and he was glad to say his father shared his pride, to wear his present uniform and to put his money on the table and join in this great gamble as his predecessors were in the old days. He had been personally to Belgium, and he saw what the Germans had done there. At Termonde he saw the roofless walls of a town that was; and as he looked upon the poor Belgian women searching amidst the ruins of their homes he said to himself, ‘ When you go back from here you have got to join an army, whether it be the French Army, or the Belgian Army, or the Russian, or the Servian, or the British Army, and you must do your part against these barbarians of Berlin.’ That was the attitude of all of them who had taken this step which they thought it their duty to take. Coming from Holyhead that day he talked in the train with the Irish Lord Abbot of the Benedictine Monastery at Namur, who was a North of Ireland man, hailing from the constituency of which he (Mr. Kettle) had once the honor of representing in Parliament. The Abbot told him that lie had seen with his own eyes two of his priests shot down when bringing the last Sacrament to dying soldiers. And yet they were told that these atrocities were inventions. Ireland had always been on the side of just causes, and if they were losing causes, what matter. They did not take up this cause for anything but honor and justice, and wherever honor and justice called, Ireland would go. Whatever the issue of this gigantic struggle might be, he joined in the dream of Lord MacDonnell —if it were a dream —that they in Ireland might have a sense of reality brought home to them, and that after the war they might discover that there was some better way of putting their own and their neighbors’ heads together than by smashing them against each other. He hoped that when Catholic and Protestant blood had mingled on the battlefields of Europe, and when Nationalists and Unionists had fought and died together, they might on their return to Ireland be able to find a solution of their differences which would not necessarily involve a parochial war as a sequel to a. European war. Life had now been reduced to its clear, clean last essence. People were finding that, after all, money and luxury did not matter much. Irelandor at least that part of Ireland for which he spokehad taken her stand, and whether the war lasted six weeks or six years, or, like the Napoleonic wars, twenty-three years, Nationalist Ireland would abide by the position she had taken up. They had given blood and treasure, and they would give -more. They would give the new fidelity that the new regime had brought them, and they would carry on this war until it would be no longer in the power of diplomatists or gun-makers or financiers to throw the shadow of death over the whole world. Honor, justice, and, if need be, a losing cause, were Ireland’s traditions, and Ireland would see out to the last this great gamble and this great adventure.
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New Zealand Tablet, 6 May 1915, Page 39
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2,042Irish News New Zealand Tablet, 6 May 1915, Page 39
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