WHAT THE IRISH HAVE DONE.

New Zealand Tablet, 6 March 1919, Page 33

WHAT THE IRISH HAVE DONE.

Let the Americans realise that there is ho sympathy with Germany as such in Ireland,” says Shane Leslie in a recent issue of the Philadelphia Public Ledger , “only from time to time an exasperated people are made to feel that it is the only expression of sentiment on their part to which the Government pays no attention. The Irish Nationalists have taken the field in a proportion to which the American critic should pay heed. There are a few homes which have not suffered a casualty in the war. Taking the Irish Volunteers in Ireland and England and Scotland, for there have been just as many Irish in English as English in Irish regiments, it can be shown that 40,000 Irishmen of Irish blood and sympathies have perished in the war, and indeed there are higher estimates. If the American people suffer as many casualties in proportion to their population as Ireland, they will have a right to salute then mourning land as a land of heroes. For these reasons all violence of word is to be deprecated. Far nioie can be achieved by the sympathetic acceptance of Ireland’s cause as part and parcel of the Allied cause, the cause if not individualism, at least of selfdetermination among all groups that by their history of geography or conscious wish and will are countable as nations.”