Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 20 February 1919, Page 14

Current Topics

Irish items A cable the other day announced that it was now fcertain that the Sinn Fein prisoners had been released. In the following paragraph we read that the Government had no intention of releasing the Sinn Fein prisoners. We take it that the Harmsworth ring believes that any old nonsense is good enough for the readers of our “Daylies.” Not far wrong in that! With reference to the cables about the escape of de Valera let us remark that we have reason to think the news is very stale. We saw a paper three weeks ago in which it was stated that letters sent to de Valera in gaol had been returned with the notice; “Present address unknown.” The comment naturally was that the Sinn Fein leaders had escaped. The paper in question was an “orthodox” Irish journal, printed early in December. We have ceased to wonder at the shameless effrontery of the Welsh schemer in keeping innocent men and women in prison. We know that there is nothing he would stop at in the pursuit of his own selfish ends ; and we know that one day his punishment, will be in keeping with his guilt. But we wonder that there are not Englishmen left with enough respect for the good name of their country to save England from the disgrace which the lawlessness and treachery of the renegade have brought on it. Think for a moment for what England stands under Lloyd George government, and reflect if Ireland is not already avenged ? Lloyd George declared a few years ago that the hands of the Tory lords were dripping with the “fat of sacrilege.” Now he has put himself into these hands, and one day they will break him mercilessly and completely. Whither will he turn when the Tories hunt him from his office ? He has betrayed the Liberals; he has betrayed the Irish ; he has betrayed the British Democracy.

The Sinn Fein Flag

In reply to a correspondent who asks why the Sinn Feiners have adopted a green, white, and orange tricolor as the National Standard, the following notes may be of interest to our readers. The deliberate policy of the English has been to keep the various sections of the Irish people in opposition to one another and prevent a union of Irish forces for the common cause. Internal divisions, fostered by the English misgovernment, have done more than anything else to retard self-government for Ireland : and but for the malignant interference of British politicians there is little doubt that all Irish parties would long since have made common cause against the common foe of their land. The majority of the Irish people have always remained Catholic, but though the Catholics were the worst treated and the victims of the cruellest tyranny, still there have always been noble-minded Protestants who hated the oppressor of their country and who yearned for liberty just as much as the Catholics. One has only to mention the names of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, Henry Joy McCracken, Jemmy Hope, John Mitchel, and Thomas Davis to make this quite clear. The leaders in almost every movement for Irish freedom have been Protestants; and the names of those heroes are household words in Catholic Ireland. Nationality is not and never was a matter of religion, and Protestants have always been found in Ireland ready to resent any insinuation as to their loyalty and devotion to their own country. Indeed, from our own experience of the friendly relations between Catholics and' Protestants in the southern provinces _« x-• i_„ ano. xvxunsuer, we are prepareu lo vnu;ca ui j_jt;iiiSLt;i' wu xvxunsiici, wc tiitj jjiepttreu lo stand by the assertion that the sole cause of sectarian trouble in Ireland is the Orange secret society, backed by unprincipled politicians whose sole object is to keep the Irish divided at any cost. As far back as 1791, Wolfe Tone aimed at uniting all Irish classes and creeds into one grand national party whose sole object should be to secure Irish freedom. Tone was a Pro-

testant, and none knew better than he that the religious strife among his countrymen was woi*king all the time against Irish interests and for those of England. He embraced the wrongs of his Catholic fellow-countrymen, calling on all those of his creed to imitate him tor Ireland’s sake, and under his guidance was formed the United Irishmen’s Society which, as all Irishmen know, had a very numerous Protestant membership, and was Protestant in its origin. The men of “Forty-Eight” were inspired by Tone’s principles, and they too advocated a party for all Ireland, irrespective of religious differences. It was then a -national flag was chosen, in three colors, green, white, and orange. The green was chosen by the Catholic provinces, the orange by Ulster, and the white was the emblem of that unity which the party aimed at attaining. So that as far back as seventy years ago, Irishmen were banded together, pledged to fight for freedom, under a banner of green, white, and orange. In the Irish Felon, which succeeded the United Irishman after the arrest of John Mitch el, the following poem appeared on July 22, 1848: —• Gaily our banner is over us streaming GREEN as our hills is its emerald light; WHITE, snowy, pure as our noble cause gleaming; . ORANGE, that waves as a harvest field, brightCalling to mind by its tricolor blending— On as we dash with defiant hurrah— Never forget it, our war-cry unending Freedom, the Felons, and Eire-go-Bragh. Come —you from iron cliffs hanging o’er ocean; Come —you from valleys that sleep in their green ; Come, like your own rushing torrents in motion; Come, as the lightning-flash, felt when ’tis seen. Marching like brothers still, hand in hand grasping. Discord fling down and with gallant hurrah, Back let the echoes ring, till we’re laid gasping in : Freedom, the Felons, and Eire-go-Bragh. Sein Fein We may take it for granted now that there is no Irishman in New Zealand who does not understand what Sinn Fein means and why it has captured the whole nation, as was so gloriously proved by the overwhelming victory of the Sinn Fein candidates at the elections. Sinn Fein is now the Nationalist Party in Ireland; and, indeed, as we shall see in a moment, the Nationalist Party, tintil it “stained the green flag red”—to quote the Bishop of Killaloe —was in substance, if not in name, Sinn Fein. The basis of Sinn Fein demands is very clear and very simple—so clear and so simple that not even the millions of Harmsworth and his army of liars who control the Jingo press have been able to obscure the issue. Those who wanted to . believe lies believed them, but men of common sens© and honesty were not deceived. The free press in New Zealand never had any part in the campaign of lies; when that campaign was raging bitterest the cheers that greeted the toast of “Sinn Fein” at a banquet of Railway Delegates from all parts of Australia shook the roof. Only for men as foolish or as malignant as the editors of the “Daylies” was it possible to advocate frank and unabashed Prussianism while they were condemning the same thing in other columns of their papers, and the shame of our press is so great that all the waters of the ocean can never wash it clean as long as it is controlled by the same people. The elementary principles of the whole matter are: (1) Ireland is ruled by England in virtue of a fraud and by an administration maintained by brute force ;•,/ , (2) The Irish people have rebelled in every generation against the tyranny of that unjust rule ; (3) The greatest English statesmen have admitted, time and again, that there is no bloodier and more shameful page in human history than the story of English barbarism and English treachery in Ireland ; (4) In accord with the very principles for which England says she is fighting, Sinn Fein asks that the

•-tr.W--::-- - -'■ -• • .--•-. pledge once given to the Irish people, that they should be governed only by their own laws, be kept. That is Sinn Fein; that is the sedition, the rebellion, the murder denounced by every pressman in New Zealand whom Harmsworth'6 gold could buy. That is the cause which has been calumniated and misrepresented in our daily papers from Auckland to the Bluff. That is the cause which has won now, and which England can no more defeat than she can kill the nation which she has tried in vain to kill for seven centuries. And that is no new cause : it is the old cause, though too many of the old warriors became degenerate and turned their backs on the flag. Hear the words of those who represented Ireland a few decades ago and judge if they, too, were not then Sinn Feiners: **

"Ireland, marked out as she is from the very first by the finger of Omnipotence as a separate and distinct nation, had all the attributes of a nation long before the Norman invasion and from the date of the Norman invasion to this moment there has been age' after age one long and continuous struggle between this national sentiment and overwhelming odds. Why, it may be asked, are we on occasions such as this asked to toast 'lreland a Nation' 1 Well, it seems to my mind there is one very cogent reason. It is well for us at this time of the day to reassert before the world what it is that this national movement means. What is the truth underlying this movement ? I beg leave to say that this movement to-day is the same in all its essentials as every movement which in the past history of Ireland has sought by one weapon or another to achieve the national rights of this land. The truth underlying this movement to-day is precisely the same principle as that for which other generations have fought and died. It is the principle that the sons of Ireland, and they alone, have the right to rule the destinies of Ireland."—John Redmond in the Mansion House, Dublin, April 23, 1889.

"The principle embodied in the Irish movement is just the same principle which Owen Roe O'Neill vindicated at Benburb: which animated Tone and Fitzgerald, and for which Emmet sacrificed his life. The Irish leader who would propose to compromise the national claims of Ireland, who would even incline to accept as a settlement of our demand any concession short of the unquestioned recognition of that nationality which has come down to us sanctified by the blood and tears of centuries, would be false to Ireland's history, and would forfeit all claim to your confidence and support. Such a contingency can never arise, for the man who would be traitor enough to propose such a course would find himself no longer a leader. No man can barter away the honor of a nation." —John Redmond at Chicago, 1886. "I say to you, men of Tipperary, that we would be untrue to our country and untrue to those who begot us, if we rested content until every vestige of English rule was swept from the fair face of Ireland." —-John Dillon, 1888. And if you think the Sinn Fein policy of remaining away from Westminster is anything new consider the following opinions of those who ought to know: Gladstone: "Whenever the people of England think one way in the proportion of two to one they can outvote in Parliament the united forces of Scot-

land, Wales, and Ireland." . Parnell : "The air of Westminster would de-

moralise anyone, no matter how imperceptibly. As the air of London would eat away the stone walls of the House of Commons, so would the atmosphere of the House eat away the honor and honesty of 'the Irish members."—(Dublin, 1878). "I feel convinced that, sooner or later, the influence which every .English Government has at its command will sap the best party you can return to the, House of Commons," — (Limerick, 1880.) Davitt: "I have for four years tried to appeal to the sense of justice in this House of Commons on behalf of Ireland. I leave convinced that no just cause, •no cause of right, will ever find simnnrt. in this House of Commons unless it is backed up by force."—(lß9-9.)

Dillon: "Our position in this House is made futile. We are never listened to."—(Commons, December 3, 1917.) Devlin: 'I do not often come to this House, because I do not believe it worth coming to."—(Commons, December 4, 1917.) ""I. know perfectly that anything we say is unheeded here, at any rate in the ultimate adjustment and determination. , . .It takes a rebellion and things of that sort to bring home the grim realities of the Irish situation to these gentlemen."—(Commons, April 15, 1918.)