THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE TRANSPLANTER

New Zealand Tablet, 10 March 1921, Page 9

THE GRASSHOPPER AND THE TRANSPLANTER

~,.. .The Catholic Bulletin (Dublin) for November 20 comments editorially thus :—-; > V- , "It would be a very good thing to have a national Lent. The Catholic religion is, I think, based on the most complete study of human nature that has ever been presented to the world, and, when it declares its Lent, there is a good deal in it. It is not merely good morally, but it is good. physically." So spoke Mr. Lloyd George when in the a critical stages of the war, the national food supply gave 'England serious concern.

"When the devil was ill the devil V monk would be, When the devil, is well, the 'divil a monk is he."

Now that the war has gone against Germany, neither England's food supply nor the inviolability of her shores remains any longer a cause, of anxiety to English statesmen, and the political grasshopper is once more free to gratify his bigotry. ' Since last we went to press All Hallowes College, the De la Salle Hostel connected with University College, Dublin, the historic abbey of Mount Melleray, and other Catholic institutions have been raided.' Father O'Reilly, of % Feakle, Co. Clare, has been thrashed by men in the uniform of Britain, and his house bombed; Father Harrington; of Kerry, intimidated; Father. Burbage, of -Geashil, fired on. Three other patriotic Western priests— Meehan, of Castlebar; Father Flanagan, of Roscommon ; and Father Morley, of Headford, have been arrested, some' of them with attendant circumstances of insuit, indignity, and misrepresentation. While Dean Macken, of Dunmore, celebrated Mass at a station in his parish, military entered, interrupted the service, and would have expelled the worshippers were' it not for the courage of their fearless pastor. A Catholic church in Cork city was the scene of a more infamous outrage still. While the remains of Michael Fitzgerald, Ireland's first martyr to the sacred fast for national liberty, lay in the church, four armed British soldiers unexpectedly entered and interrupted the devotions, to convey a warning to the officiating priest in a tone which left little doubt that England's instruments to-day seem ready to emulate the four Norman knights who just seven centuries* and a-half ago murdered the priest,"' Thomas a Becket, in the chapel of theTßlessetjl Virgin, in the Cathedral of Canterbury, at the instigation of King Henry 11. on the eve of his coming to Ireland, armed with a Papal Bull, to bring the Irish people more truly under the jurisdiction of Rome, mar dheadh. So solicitous has England always been for the well-being of small nations. % "God has chosen little nations as the vessels by which He carried His choicest wines to the lips of humanity, to rejoice their hearts, to exalt their vision, to stimulate and strengthen their faith," said Mr. George in the course of: one of his war-time speeches; "and if we had stood by when two little nations were being crushed and broken by the brutal hands of barbarism, our shame would have rung down the everlasting ages." - "This speech," said "An Independent,Liberal" who edited the Premier's addresses, "was translated into more than a dozen languages, and has been read by millions of people. It was more than a speech; it was an event." Elsewhere in the volume from which we quote, Lloyd George arid the War. he is reported to have said:.

“Belgium must be a people, not a protectorate. We must not have a Belgian scabbard for the Prussian sword. The sceptre must be Belgian, the sword must be Belgian, the scabbard must be Belgian, the soul must be Belgian.” And of Russia he is reported, in the same volume, to have said in Bristol in September. 1915 before the rise of the Bolshevik: r y fJf y rJ 7 j r - . = L .. r .,,. & . t “The emancipation of Russia means more for humanity than we can describe. The -Russian 'is not merely-, a man of brain, but a man of heart; and when you get heart and brain together, woe to the oppressor in all lands. >>^^ Speaking in Welsh at Bangor about the same time, he J further proclaimed-his undimmed faith

in Russia: "The enemy in their victorious march know not what they, are doing; .Let" them beware, for they are unshackling Russia. * With their monster artillery they are shattering the rusty iJ bars that fettered" the strength of the 1 people of Russia. ■ '" ■■ . . They • are hammering a sword that will destroy them, and are freeing a : great nation to wield it with a jnore potent stroke and a mightier sweep than it ever, yet commanded." This prophetic utterance (says the editor) drew a remonstrance from the ex-Tsar.

So much for Russia, while it served England's interests, and for Belgium when it was no longer politic to parade "Belgian Atrocities in the Congo." Speaking about the same period of "German militarism," Mr George said:

"If militarism were not crushed throughout the whole of Europe, the whole of the British blood would have been shed in vain. It must be put an end to, and he certainly would be no party to anything which would end in having a military system here." Again: "I hate war, I abominate war. I sometimes think, am I dreaming? Is it a nightmare?"

In the light of these professions regarding militarism and the rights of small nations, let us examine his recent "coarse, cowardly, and cruel" tirade against Ireland before a packed meeting of sycophantic Welsh—in the words of the London Times, "a handful of estimable Aldermen and Councillors of the County *of Carnarvon'; in the estimation of Mr. Harold Spender, who went there to paint the lily: "a small audience, not more than 400 in all," who applauded most rapturously, for they know that though the world may claim him, he still belongs to Wales." To do the Grasshopper full justice we quote from his own organ, the Daily Chronicle, which prepares its readers for the diatribe by means of an absolute fable in double-column heavy type, "Army Lorry Blown Up in Ireland. Eight Soldiers Believed to have been Killed" to open its front page; on the far column "The Gang of Assassins Denounced, Dominion Home Rule Impossible" ■; and embellishing the centre, a picture of the Prince of Wales, whom, even the London Times, which so often urges us to forget the past, could not permit to return home from Australasia without recalling in most offensive terms one of the bitterest chapters of Ireland's history. . :•- "The Prince of Wales," said the Times weekly edition of ; October 8, 'yesterday landed at Montserrat. where he was received by the Commissioner and f other leading inhabitants of that pleasant island, which is at present prospering with the good prices offered for its famous sea island cotton. The Prince was shown the

boiling sulphur springs, and was cheered by crowds of colored folk, who still retain in their broken English a distinct brogue inherited from one side of their ancestry, which dates back to the Irish immigrants who accompanied Sir Thomas Warner in 1632." "Wherever you go in Wales," said the Grasshopper at Carnarvon, "you have the feeling of a wellgoverned country and a happy, contented people." We submit he had not long to wait for the refutation of his flattery. But, he continued, with his accustomed disregard of truth:

"Go up the hill there at the end of this county and look across the water, and you can see another country, part of the same kingdom, the same realm, under the same crown, associated for hundreds of years with us in a common partnership, and none of those adjectives or epithets which I have applied to Carnar-' vonshire would in the least apply to that country." Although, mark you, "during the past 30 or 40 years more has been done to redress the evils of the past in Ireland than in any other country in the world." , ; We.pause to observe that Ireland repudiates the redress here alleged, unless it'be regarded as- redress of an evil to have the revenue contributed to England raised from less than ten millions —which was held to be Ireland's highest conceivable yield during the Home Rule discussions before the war—to little less, than 50 millions as at present contributed. Perhaps, indeed, the'Wizard suggests that the Irish people should regard it as equivalent to the redress of an evil to reflect that between the years 1849—memorable for

the Black Famine which England created and 'Turkey helped to relieve—and 1915, Irish evictions aggregated about- 130,000, an average tof about 2000 a year for two generations, with -corresponding reduction of the land; under cultivation. • It may ; be, on the other hand, that he would have the world regard as a special bounty the Irish Convention by which in 1917 it was designed to keep the Irish talking the while their right of public meeting was proclaimed' and their organs of opinion rigorously censored. Or it may, rather, be that he would have his audience interpret as "the redress of an evil" the success with which in 1918 he rendered the camouflaged Convention abortive; proclaimed 40 and suppressed 80 public meetings; suppressed almost a dozen newspapers, .and with the instinct of the savage proclaimed all fairs and market in the areas that unequivocally declared for national liberty. Doubtless it was to redress an evil—the evil that manifested itself when at the close of 1918 the remnant of.the Republican leaders who escaped deportation swept the country at the General - : Election—that 335 meetings were suppressed or proclaimed in 1919; all national organisations declared illegal; participation in the proceedings of the elected Government decreed a criminal offence; fairs and markets suppressed in Tipperary, Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Clare, Galway, and Mayo. And it was, unmistakably, to redress the other evil that became patent when at the municipal elections in the beginning of 1920 the Republican policy was everywhere - endorsed by the people, that last spring was marked in Ireland by hundreds of arrests and deportations; thousands of houses raided, many wrecked and looted; towns sacked, people murdered; transport paralysed as far as feasible; a blockade attempted; the systematic destruction of creameries initiated, in April, to be followed by the wrecking of mills and factories. Finally, it was, of course, to redress the crowning evil of June, when the rural elections showed over 80 per cent, of the people in favor of the Republican policy, that the terrorism was intensified by the instruments of Mr. George. In the interval of 14 weeks between the June elections and the end of September,' according to returns industriously compiled for the world's press, 74 towns and villages were sacked as against 16 in the previous 14 weeks, and 43 innocent Irishmen murdered as compared with 13 in the previous corresponding period. Flogging of men, attacks on women and children and torture of prisoners have also become more marked since, to avenge the elections, the : servants of Mr. George, in the words of his Eminence Cardinal Logue, began "to run wild through the country, making night hideous by their- raids." . But what cares the tyrant ? -..'.. ..... ; ..-.-•

"You know me," he said airily at Carnarvon. "I have been a Home Ruler all my life. . . But there are people now who want something far beyond anything which would have been regarded as possible within the category of Home Rule. Mr. Gladstone went to what he considered the safe limit in his concessions to

Ireland. . . . The same applied to Mr. Asquith in 1912. But there are men, and responsible men, who would go far beyond anything Mr. Gladstone ever thought safe, far beyond what Mr. Asquith himself thought safe in 1912. . . Why are we asked to go further? I protest against the doctrine that you should go further and give more, not because Ireland needs it,'not because it is fair to the United Kingdom, but because crime has been more successful. . :WI??'•••""

"There are men who would say, ' Give Ireland Dominion Home Rule.' I have asked repeatedly in the House of Commons, on the platform, of deputations of Labor, of deputations from "Ireland, I have asked them to name a single Irishman who has. got the, authority to speak for his countrymen who would say he would accept Dominion Home Rule. There is one, Sir Horace Plurikett, and he' cannot even speak for his creameries. He does not represent anybody. ... You ask Mr. -Arthur Griffith, .Mr. de Valera," Mr. John Mac Neill, the men who for the moment can speak on behalf of the majority of Irish nationalists., There is not one of them who will tell you they will accept Dominion Home Rule. 2 -t So if satisfying the present

opinion of Ireland is an essential condition of settlement, there is only one thing you can do: cut Ireland adrift; cut the painter; let them'set up an independent Republic, an absolutely independent nation. And even that will not satisfy them. - They will" want Ulster. But; Ulster: will have something to say to that." And then in an ignorant effort v to make an impossible parallel with the Southern States of America, he demolished the Ulster case by adding: "There is a limit, as Abraham Lincoln discovered, to the disruptive rights -of a minority." Not content with that, in , one devastating passage he insulted the whole manhood of England— such there still be— exposed for the most obtuse the utter futility, so far as he is concerned, of further discussing Dominion Home Rule: "Well, just see what that means," he suggested. "We have done without conscription here; but if there is Dominion Home Rule in Ireland there will be conscription here too. You cannot have an army of 500,000 or 600,000 in Ireland, commanded by Mr. ArthurGriffith and Mr. Michael Collins, who vowed the destruction of this country,'and only ; an army of about 100,000 here. It certainly means conscription here." The man who does not hesitate to insult the whole English race by trying to frighten it with the bogey of a phantom Irish army of half a million or more, and a phantom Irish fleet of submarines to girdle the Irish coast with British wrecks as the Germans did, could hardly.be expected to credit the Welsh pawns that cheered him at Carnarvon with the intelligence to see through the contradictions that made up his whole speech. Before holding Sir Horace Plunkett and his dupes up to ridicule he had said in reference to Ireland :

"You cannot permit the country to be debased intoa condition of complete anarchy where a small body of assassins, a real murder gang, are dominating the country and terrorising it, and making it impossible for responsible men to come together to consider the best way of governing their country. They are intimidating not Unionists . only, not Protestants, but men of their own race, men of their own faith, who would be only too anxious to discuss the.sanest and best method of restoring order to their country if they were left alone." „ \ In other words, because the Irish people can no longer be kept talking about the phantom of Dominion Home Rule, or the farce that now gives Westminster , the sleeping sickness, the Welsh Grasshopper and the. Welsh Transplanter, who serves him as Chief Secretary for Ireland, seek to brand the young men of this country as a "murder gang" whose sole diversion is stabbing police in the back. And hence he asks: : "What is the case here? A harmless-looking civilian passes a policeman in the street. There is nothing to indicate that he has any murderous weapon upon him, nothing to arouse any suspicion in the mind of the policeman that he has any murderous intent, lie passes the policeman and when he has done so pulls out a revolver and shoots the policeman in the back. Five scores of policemen have been killed in this way. ... Are the police in Ireland to stand to be shot down like dogs in the streets without any attempt at defending themselves? ... If a policeman were shot down here in the streets of Carnarvon every depend'" citizen who witnessed the outrage would deem it his duty, at pnce to give evidence. That is not the case in Ireland. It is not the case, in my judgment, because Ireland would not like to see these,,assassins caught.-, . It is because they dare not. There have been many murders there of people suspected of giving information." When men are suspected of murder and they escape, it is often impossible afterwards to arrest them, be* cause of this conspiracy in a population organised and , enforced by intimidation and terror. w ti&emficm'- sine "Now when men attempt to escape and jj refuse .to. g ; stop, then undoubtedly the police fire upon them. -Can '..:. you complain. of it ? , Why should that be characterised 'x as murder ? It is the only way in which these men can defend themselves. I will give you one case. Five i policemen were driving along a road in Ireland. They'"'' were suddenly fired on by civilians. If a policeman

had seen the assassins ten minutes before., he would have thought they were- harmless farmers looking after their flocks or crops; They used soft-nosed explosive bullets. A second car with police came up in two minutes. \ It is what the assassins did not reckon with. Finding these_ not' merely killed, but mutilated almost beyond description, torn—'could not give you the horrible details of what happened. The men saw their comrades not merely murdered but mutilated. They found the men who undoubtedly were the assassins, and they shot them. Are you surprised?;; That is called reprisals, and that is called murder when the police do it." . , ■ :: .x..x-...xi ■: x : *

' Let us see how far these allegations, square with the facts—though refuting the Grasshopper, in the universal estimation, is scarce less unprofitable than throwing water ,on a drowned rat—how far the outrages committed in Ireland by men in uniform can be shown to be reprisals for nolice shot in the back? In 1917 no police were killed in Ireland save an Inspector fatally injured ,in leading a baton charge in Dublin. Nevertheless, the houses of prominent Irishmen were forcibly entered and searched. 349 Irish men and women were arrested for alleged political offences, and 34 leaders of opinion deported without trial to England. Two innocent civilians were murdered by the armed forces of the Crown; five died of maltreatment in prison ;,upwards, of \at hundred were wounded in baton and bayonet ' charges. So far as the public are aware, none of the armed forces guilty of these offences was brought to justice, on the contrary, at least two of the offending police were promoted by their authorities.

In 1918 no police 1 were, killed in Ireland. Yet private residences to the number of 260 were raided at night by the armed agents of the, English Government. 1107 Irish men and women were arrested for alleged political offences,. and 77 leaders of the national movement deported, in May, without charge or trial. Later many others for .whom warrants had been- issued were deported, as seized. One of the prisoners died as the result of his maltreatment. In addition, five civilians were killed; by England's armed forces, ■ and the culprits, so far as the world knows, suffered neither •punishment nor reproach. In the January of 1919 it was that the first policeman was shot, and instantly the cry was raised in England's press,that: the Republican movement, which had just swept the country at the General Election, was led by murderers and terrorists and should be sternly suppressed. ' During the year some* 14,000 residences were raided at night by, the armed forces of the Crown; 476 armed attacks were ? made "upon peaceful meetings of ,citizens,;; 260 Irish, men, ,women, and children were "wounded ; by bayonet' s thrusts;' rifle fire, or the blows of rifle butts; 959 arrests were made for alleged political offences; and 20 leaders were deported; eight civilians met their death at the hands of. military and police, and again, so far as the public have been able to ascertain, .no effort.was made to bring the .guilty to. justice. In the course' of the year, it is true. 16 policemen were killed ;in, conflicts between armed bodies of men endeavoring to secure arms and police altogether better

, w . ; , _ . ... . . . Returns for 1920, issued as we prepare.for press October 14, t show that in ..attacks oh 1 barracks', with the object of securing arms eipdit police were killed, 33 wounded, while seven attackers^' were killed" and 47 wotmded. In attacks : on?'patrols and other' conflicts, 70 police were killed, 93 wounded; IT military killed, and 95 wounded, while 34 attackers were-killed,and 160 wounded; 99 police and military were captured in the barracks attacked; 92 police and militarv in conflicts; wi% : police and. military „ patrols: 250 police and military other ways. Not one of the 441 police and military .thus captured' has been harmed ; whereas 63 alleged attackers captured -by,- the police and military in connection with these enterprises have all been sent tt^prison ,as criminals,., Apart from these, '7B Irish men and women, none of whom-was killed in armed conflict with _ ; English military and police, have been done, to :

death. Will Sir Hamar Greenwood say whether more than one "of'.'the police and military here involved has been dismissed the service of the English Military Government in Ireland. This is the answer to Mr. George's callous allegation that five scores of policemen have been shot in the back in rural ■ Ireland; none know better than the military and police how far his statement is applicable elsewhere. In the interest of truth the pages of the Catholic Bulletin will be available, within reasonable limits, for the substantiation of the Premier's charge.

There remains this further reckless passage from his speech:

"In 1914 we entered the war with the unanimous approval of every Irish representative. In 1916 they were shooting down in the streets of Dublin British soldiers. In 1917 and 1918 they were conspiring with German submarines, and we discovered documents in the pockets of men who were arrested in 1918 showing they were prepared, within two months of a German offensive that they knew of, to raise a huge force in Ireland to stab Britain in the back."

The Irish Parliamentary representatives' approval of England's entry into the war, as all the world now knows, was absolutely unauthorised. The alleged Irish conspiracy with German submarines in 1917 was a characteristic English invention. When the men then deported challenged their accusers to bring them to trial the virtuous accusers shielded themselves behind the coward plea that a trial would disclose information certain to prove of use to the enemy. The "German Plot" by which it was sought to give semblance of reality to the alleged conspiracy of 1918-was branded by Lord Wimborne and others as bogus; arfd the evidence at the trial of Dowling, the mystery man taken on the Clare coast, proved Premier George to have publicly uttered a conscious falsehood in reference to Eamon de Valera.

Mr. George's sneer at the idea of a navy under the influence of Arthur Griffith will only recall to men's minds the insane adventures .of Napoleon Churchill, whose "challenge to the jats to come out of their holes" and exaggerated daily returns of arrivals at and sailings from British ports during the submarine campaign were mainly responsible for "the sunken British shipping that girdled the Irish coast." His whole speech—even to the hypocritical claim that Tngland "has done more for human freedom than any other country"— have been better unuttered. He insulted the entire people of Britain by suggesting that its vast population had need to feel in hourly dread of the few unequipped soldiers an unshackled Ireland could muster. He brought the contempt of a watching world on the British race by setting the headline for their parliamentary representatives to mock the unprecedented fast for national liberty which is destined to place the Lord Mayor of Cork and his peerless comrades among the outstanding martyrs of the world's history. "Woe and pain, pain and woe" to the unspeakable Executive that forcibly ejects the sorrowing sister of the martyr from his death ward. Mr. George has not only treated the Irish people with ghoulish brutality, he has implied that national honor is not to be looked for in Ireland, and otherwise insulted and maligned her in his every breath. But. Ireland and her people will survive his venom, as well as the bottled -bile of which.his colleague Bonar Law may be regarded as the incarnation, the flood of falsehood in the .direction of which our Review pages show Lord Northcliffe to be such an adept, and the litanies of lies which constitute the repertoire of the adventurer dubbed "buffoon" by the .Daily News. Slanderers of their type . would do well to reflect on "the man who was in favor with, the princes and magnates and even with the king himself, because be was a flatterer and garrulous : and mighty in tongue." But a day came when "the evil-smelling tongue swelled /and, became putrid and worms swarmed from it. He vomitted them forth incessantly for well nigh seven ? days, and at length with them spued' out his wretched soul."