IRISH NEWS

New Zealand Tablet, 10 July 1919, Page 31

IRISH NEWS

,ac, : -GENERAL.: ...Ai . r Mr. -do Valera has given -formal - and ; emphatic denial,to the statement that communications have passed between him and the Government' with n regard to the situation in Ireland. The - thing, he s said, “was too ridiculous to - discuss. .- There have been - arid there are no such negotiations with , reference to > the government of Ireland or any other question.’-’ - - rpcsj? , ; i.-i The following letter from Colonel Laurence Roche, of., the Munster- has been published in the Irish papers. Colonel Roche is a cousin of Mr. de Valera, M.P. : —To-day’s issue of your paper contains an article taken from the English Daily News, commenting on the action taken by the officers of the Irish Bri—who took part in the great —in forwarding a petition ,to his Majesty the King tasking That the claims of Ireland to national self-government should be determined by the Peace Conference. : As one of the officers who signed the petition, I take exception to the following: “That the support of. Sinn Fein was not desired by the signatories.” To my- mind we are all united in proclaiming that Ireland is a nation, one and indivisible.—Yours faithfully, Laurence Roche, R.M.F., late 47th Irish Brigade, Bruree. Co. Limerick, March 10, 1919.

EDUCATION IN BELFAST. ' //_ Sir Edward Carson, in his speech in ..the. House of Commons recently, dwelt on Irish educational requirements, referring especially to Belfast, where the school accommodation for the Protestant children is bad and insufficient, (says the London, Catholic Times). There were, he said, thousands of children for whom accommodation was not found. The teachers were not receiving the treatment that ought to be accorded to them, and the conditions were generally far from satisfactory. The Government should allow an education rate to be levied. Mr. Devlin, the speaker who immediately followed, said : How long has the right hon. ' gentleman been asleep? He constitutes himself to-night the vocal Rip Van Winkle of British politics. How long have teacher’s in Ireland been badly paid ? Sir E. Carson : Haven’t I often asked for better payment ? Mr. Devlin But you were the master of the situation. We had' no power. You were the .master of successive British Ministries. The late aide-de-camp of the right hon gentleman, the late; Marquis of Londonderry, was Minister of Education in England, and the right hon. gentleman, the Leader of the House, was Chancellor of the Exchequer. If he could have secured the services of the Leader of the House to assist him in his Ulster campaign! surely he would have sufficient influence with him to endeavor, to extract from him some of those golden British sovereigns that would have brought some comfort to the shivering children, and some advantage to the bad schools. May I. point out to the right hon. gentleman, because I think I am justified in making the position of the Catholic minority in Belfast perfectly clear on this educational matter, that the Catholic schools in Belfast are as good and well equipped as you would get in any of ; these islands. Sir E. Carson; Not all of them. , . Mr. Devlin: I know some 'are , imperfect. ; I am taking them on the whole. In addition to that, there are no Catholic children in Belfast who have not got school accommodation. They got that accommodation, and they are the poorest element in the community, by putting their hands in their pockets and paying for it. Why do hot the rich constituents of ; the ! right. : hon i gentleman do the same; ; They could raise money to organise a rebellion, but they, cannot raise money to educate their 'children. Every ( farthing that, can be secured r ’. for ; improving Protestant ~ schools((' for securing the attendance of Protestant children, for making the schools more sanitary, for enlarging the playground accommodation,' for paying the teachers' better isalaries,

for developing everything of which an educational system can be composed,' will have my hearty support. But one thing will not have my support, and that is that Catholic schools in ; Belfast., should be controlled by the. Belfast Corporation. r ;./•/./, * msarild \q itol Sir E. Carson : I never asked for that. : '-1 IA Mr. Deylin: That is all the better. The right hon. gentleman may rest assured that I am not making that statement without , good -. reason. - There is ,a; sanatorium arid, school for, tuberculosis; children r a few miles from Belfast, controlled by the Belfast Corporation, in which, 56 per cent,, of the children are Protestants and 44 per cent. Catholics. A vacancy occurred for a teacher, and they appointed a Protestant. Nobody objected to. that. There was a vacancy ; for another school teacher. ■ A; Catholic , was proposed, ! but she was defeated. So two Protestant t eachers ( were appointed ; - at this ; school, although .44 r per cent, ,of the children were Catholic,irl-B am very glad, to know that one of ; the most I notorious bigots in . Belfast, when .face to face with . the Corporation the other day, was compelled to get up and say he was ashamed of it. But do not imagine that where the religion of ; the children is so - sacred ..to. the;, parents of. the children in Belfast and in Ireland we are going to j allow/ the religious interests of the Catholic children to be put at the mercy of , the Belfast Corporation. I . tell the right hon! gentleman that any attempt of that character will receive the most violent hostility from those ho constitute nearly 30 per cent, of the population, and not only that, but a large percentage pf, the toiling, masses of Belfast, whose labor and whose toil have done much to build up its greatness. .. ...

FAITHFUL IRELAND. //A The Right Rey. Mgr. O’Riordan, - Rector . of the Irish College, Rome,' in a sermon he preached last St. Patrick’s Day, pays this tribute to the steadfast faith of his countrymen:—And their supernatural. life has become also the mainstay' of their national life. The soul of a nation can never die, except of moral corruption. Brute force, may r grind to powder the material elements that compose it, but if it rests on the moral law it will revive and. put out its activity again.;- A/ nation that lives in God,. lives by-, purity, by justice, by fortitude, by hope. It. may have to pass through its winter of bleak distress.; but its spring and summer are sure to come; round, and it will bloom again, like every tree that growls. That leads us into the : secret of this striking tact. By the middle of the - eighteenth century, the Catholics, of Ireland had been reduced to about two-thirds of the population. By the : middle of the nineteenth they were in-a majority of six to one. In spite of the consequence of the , Famine of 1847 a famine , not because there was not food, but because it was taken from those who . produced; it, and under the sanction of the law—in spite of; wholesale. evictions, of the dispersion of families, and other causes of ; the continuous depopulation ; which . has , been going on- for the past 70 years till now, the Catholics are .still in a majorty 9? three to one. There has been a systematic design to destroy the race j and yet the race lives • on.' There may be more than one cause of .that striking phenomenon, but the chief one has its root! in the faith of the people. The teaching of the Divine Motherhood of our (Blessed! Lady, which Si." Patrick took to Ireland ’ as it came fresh from the Council of Ephesus; the ideal of her virginal purity, which that teaching stamped on the souls arid hearts of the women of Ireland, reverence for the sanctity of the marriage state: these.have saved Irish Catholics from , those two growths of,, our fashionable civilisation—the divorce court arid! the suicide of, race. (' Their faith has saved them from that filth. Their faith is not a mere philosophy ; .’’it!: is a life They ;> live : by their ( Catholic faith /( they hold .hr// their national ideals which that faith has ! helped them to form z r.d to: keep. And they have never been forgiven for it—r no, not from the day when Giraldus Cambrensis lied in the twelfth century, to the politician and . the news correspondent ’ who lie to-day without scruple and without shame. " V- •/ .' V v