HOW IRELAND IS SLANDERED

New Zealand Tablet, 12 June 1919, Page 34

HOW IRELAND IS SLANDERED

The ’English propagandists are still busy in ' slandering Ireland (says ah exchange). These highly-paid agents u of ; the Lloyd' George 5 / Government have . their headquarters/in ‘ London, and they have hundreds of representatives throughout the ‘ world, 1 and - particularly in the United States. '* In Australia, ; it may be remembered, hundreds of ’ thousands ' of lan Hay’s Oppressed English were' specially printed and J circulated. -y The pamphlet contained so many infamous lies that it was excluded from Great Britain and ’lreland: The Government, when challenged in regard to the publication, made this admission- in‘the House of Commons. It was calculated to gull people abroad, -who didn’t know any better. All through the war we were told that German gold was at the root of Irish discontent in Ireland. Now we are told it is Bolshevik gold. The Russian Bolsheviks, it was cabled to the Sydney Sun recently, have set aside £50,000,000 monthly for propaganda work in foreign countries, and the first instalment of many millions has been set aside for Ireland. Where the Bolsheviks get all this money no one has explained. Already, if the papers are to be believed, they have spent enormous sums in Germany. Yet other cables tell us the Bolsheviks are .bankrupt, and are turning out paper-money by the cartload. Are we asked to believe that this paper is negotiable abroad ? “For this year the money for the ‘secret services’ has amounted to no fewer than £1,010,000 sterling. Thus Mr. J. G. Swift Mac Neill, K.C., ; opens an article in th q Contemporary Review , on “The Agent Provocateur in Ireland.”'' It traces the work of the service in Ireland, and exposes the terrible system which led to ■ so many young men being induced to commit deeds for which they were subsequently punished. The names of many of -the agents are shown and the description of their work is well given. ' In the 1848 movement, spies revealed to the Government every project■ and plan of the young Irishmen. Mr. John Blake Dillon, the father of ; the" late leader of the Irish Party, when advising against an armed outbreak at the meeting of the Young Ireland Party, was denounced by a fireeating patriot, who declared that Irish liberty could only be obtained by the shedding of blood. “It is blood that the country wants for her redemption.” Mr. Dillon heard that outburst with patient dignity, but when the crisis came Mr. Dillon risked his life in an insurrection, whose wisdom he doubted, while the patriot who reproached him with timidity was perusing his briefs in the law courts in confident expectation of a place from the Crown, which was bestowed-on him. The agent provocateur was in evidence in the Fenian insurrection in the persons of -the informers Massey and Corydon, who both urged insurrection when in the pay of the Government, and of an indescribable wretch named Talbot, a. head constable in. the. Irish Constabulary; who actually swore some, 1500 persons ints the Fenian Brotherhood, which he persuaded them to enter, and, in order to increase confidence in himself, partook, although he was a Protestant, of Holy Communion in. Catholic churches. A notorious agent provocateur who figures prominently in Irish history, though he operated chiefly in America, was Henri'Le Caron. Of a swarthy foreign complexion, he passed for a French-Canadian ; but he was really an' Englishman named Beach. ; He took an active part in the Irish revolution of the United States, and was one of the three men known as the “Triangle,” before whom came all the most serious, and sometimes tragic, ; issues. He was nominally a chemist -in-' a small town near ! Chicago ; but attended to the ■ revolutionary organisation with the most scrupulous care. Many important proclamations and other incriminating , documents came into his ‘ hands, and by the next post were 'sent -to a 'private address in England, and •> within % a few hours afterwards were in the hands of Sir Robert Anderson, then head of Scotland ‘Yard; - Le Caron enjoyed the confidence of Parnell but

I attempted on occasions to 8 trap the Irish leader 5 into some dangerous ’and, perhaps, fatal admissions, which might have landed him •in gaol or dragged 7 him- to the gallows. -He played Ta' great part • in-the-' Parnell Commission, where it 7 was shown, when [Parnell was fighting for his life, that every' interview he had given Le Caron was communicated s a : few? minutes ' afterwards ?to Scotland Yard/- MW't-..-.b'ahla?l.

Mr. Dillon, speaking in the House of Commons oh-July 30, on the Secret Service vote; said --‘I? will relate an anecdote in reference *to myself <as to the Secret Service fund of this : country, when the -Land League • was busy, and when’ that money ? was used by the Government of that?? day to suborn ■ men to swear that I had organised a conspiracy in Clare to get a man murdered. The agent who worked ‘that plot- was brought up in the court in ‘ Clare, and put into the witness-box; he was examined by the police. He gave evidence that he was present at a meeting of one of the secret societies which were then rampant in Ireland' and that it was there and then agreed, under the - circumstances stated, to carry out the murder. ;= He said that the circumstances which decided him to go on with the murder were that one of the young men present said that he had Mr.-Dillon’s special instructions to carry out this murder. This man was put into the box, and my life was in imminent danger. The counsel defending the prisoner had got a dossier of the gentleman in the box, and on cross-examination it was proved and admitted that this man in the box had been in the pay of the police for several years, that he had been convicted over and over again v of the most scandalous crimes, including unnatural crime, but that the police still kept him in their pay. On the night on which the murder was planned the police had sent him out to plan it, and had paid him. ' They , then went on patrol duty, and found him lying drunk in the gutter with the money which they had paid him to go out and plan the murder. They picked him. up, washed him, and put him to bed until he was sober, and then sent him out again to plan the murder. What happened? The police and their agent were waiting in a house. The police rushed down from behind the door, and in the struggle which ensued the head constable was killed who had planned the whole iniquity. It was a judgment of God bn. him. ! Afterwards the whole of that iniquity came outthat this was a deliberate plot. This was done by the Secret Service. They tried to take my father’s life and the lives of many of my colleagues in days gone by.” In August, 1901, it was admitted by Mr. Wyndham, in the House of Commons, that two men had been convicted of crimes of which they were wholly innocent—crimes which were perpetrated by police witnesses, who bore evidence against them, and were complimented by the bench for their ' zeal in the public service, while a third man pleaded guilty of a . crime perpetrated by the police ‘ by whom he was arrested, in the hope that his confession' of guilt would shorten the term of his imprisonment. ; ’ “Ireland- to-day,” said Mr. Dillon, “is honeycombed with spies.” The facts stated in this article, which are incontrovertible, and taken, haphazard, out of a vast category of sinister occurrences, demonstratethat agents provocateur have been employed in Ireland’ at times directly by Prime Ministers, Lord Lieutenants, and Chief Secretaries, and- at times by*,, subordinates,

for whose -action the Government of the? country was responsible/;- The present state of- Ireland, where a policy of exasperation has ; been adopted, - aimed at the destruction of constitutional agitation in order to maintain -the discredited regime? of Dublin Castle] makes everyone acquainted with : public affairs 7 ' view with the very gravest apprehension • the placing at the disposal of the Irish Executive of- sums of public money for secret servicessums' whose amount and contemplated expenditure are unknown, which are capable of being appropriated/* as; history proves, 1 to purposes of indescribable infamy.; : ? b?? 5 , ox* Mr. Shortt, the late Irish' Secretary,' speaking in the House of Commons on July 30, 5: a few’ weeks ’after

his appointment to ; the. Irish Secretaryship, not having had?; any previous experience ,of Irish - administration, said ; —“I am the person , responsible for secret service in Ireland. There is no, underling who/is able to spend secret f service ; money ;: in Ireland, at , his \ own ■ discretion. There has ; not been, since I knew ; anything about it, any agent - provocateur •or f anything j approaching it in Ireland. What there may have been in the past Ido not .know, ; and am not answerable for.” i\] I make no imputation on the absolute honat fidei of ,Mr., i Shortt and on his belief in.the truth of these words. In view, however, of Mr. Shortt’s ignorance, of Irish affairs, and of the character -of; the instruments with whom he had to deal, the position, in my. judgment, of the Irish Executive in reference to secret service expenditure is more' accurately ; described by Mr. Dillon in , the same debate. ■ “I do not believe,” said Mr. Dillon, “that Lord French goes into the details of this secret service in Ireland. ;i:D am; quite sure the Chief. Secretary (Mr. Shortt) does not, because he would not have the knowledge to do it. How in the name of goodness could he handle secret service ; money ? He would not know the agents. He must be some individual who' is acquainted with the dark places and the dubious characters of Irish life, and has/all the threads of it in his hands. ... If unknown sums ;of this secret service money are to be placed in the hands of irresponsible officials, they may in the course of the next six months produce a condition of things where no man's life or reputation will be safe if he is /obnoxious to Dublin Castle.” .