Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 10 March 1921, Page 14

Current Topics

What are we Going to IDo About It?

. "Tt seems that Winston Churchill; newly appointed Minister for the Colonies, wants to hear what the Colonies think about : England's dealings with Ireland. What are we going to do about it? Are we going to permit a Past-Master of an Orange Lodge to speak for us? Are we going to allow the tool of the bigots to misrepresent *us at Home as he misrepresents us as Prime Minister of New Zealand. The people of New Zealand'never elected him. He crawled into power by the path of sectarian' strife, engineered by those who pay the salary of a horsewhipped calumniator of a dead nun, and he has already proved that he ! will do no justice to us if it would cost ; him the support of his P.P.Ass friends. We heard him stand up in the House and tell the people that the Kaiser's friend, Carson, who was rewarded for his treason by a seat in the British Government, was a true patriot, while he denounced the man who is leading the movement for the freedom of a small nation. Is he going to speak in the name of the Irish people, in the name of the decent people who hate the crimes of the Brithuns in Ireland, in the name of the men and women who gave their sons and brothers during the War for the cause of small nations He certainly will speak for us if we do not do something to make it very obvious to Mr. Churchill that no Orangeman has any right to represent self-respecting people in New Zealand. We note with great satisfaction that-the Catholic Press in Sydney is also taking up this important matter, urging the people there to make their opinions clear on the Irish Question, and not to allow Hughes or anybody of his class to misrepresent them. Australia, Canada, South Africa, will all see to it that the Government will know that they are not going to support the murders of priests, women, children, and old men by the thugs of Lloyd George and his Orange and Jewish masters. What are we going to do about it Remember the seventeenth of March is at hand, and it will be a splendid opportunity for an united protest from Auckland to the Bluff Make your protest strong and unmistakable, and cable it Home to Churchill from every single district in New Zealand. .

Help for Ireland

The Brithuns have destroyed Irish industries and they are trying to make the people who suffered pay for the damage done. Shops, houses, creameries have; been burned down by the "Black-and-Tans." At first the Brithun Ministers and their Colonial press-liars; denied that they. had.done such things, but now the evidence is so strong that they are unable to hide .•; behind a lie and -they frankly try to defend. the coaduct on account of which they denounced every man = who would not give his life for the destruction of i Germany. The British Government is waging an economic and a religious war upon Ireland. While industries have been destroyed in the South, Orange savages have driven women and children from their burning homes in the North. Our Dunedin, : Wellington, Auckland, and Christchurch day-lies have not a word of blame for the Orange thugs, but they' are ready to spread every foul lie that the Government asks them to spread about the men who are fighting for a small nation. f There are thousands of women 6 and children starving in Ireland, as the result of Brithunnism. r. Pay no > attention i to Prime Minister or pressman who tells i you that this is not the case. The Irish Bishops—who are not British liarshave told us the truth. The American Cardinals and Bishops have appealed to their i people to come to the aid .of the people -of Ireland, of whose sufferings they are aware. . Cardinal Gibbons, 1 Cardinal O'Connell, and Archbishop Hayes are -on the American Relief Committee and already they a have sent a ship laden with, supplies to Ireland. Read what the American Bishops say: n <yft Mm fav.&ini'.ivysi?? \ •U "To meet this appalling situation, and to : cope

with it before it reaches a point where it may menace the very existence of .;the Irish people, the American Committee for Relief in Ireland has been formed. This Committee is a non-political and non-sectarian body, solely humanitarian in aim,, which seeks the co-opera-tion of all those in whom human suffering evokes sympathy. This American Committee purposes to supply relief to the women and children in Ireland, without regard to political or religious distinctions, through trained relief workers, distributing foodstuffs, clothing, building materials, and medical stores. The suffering and the helpless in Ireland seek aid from the American people who have never yet refused an appeal from the suffering and helpless. To relieve the bitter need of the Irish people, the undersigned therefore confidently appeal for aid to the humanity of America. . . Ireland is virtually the only place in the world where the destruction of resources has been continuous. To-day industry is paralysed in Ireland and the greater part of the able-bodied of the male population is leading a hunted and fugitive existence. If present conditions continue unrelieved, the Irish race in Ireland faces virtual annihilation. We are confident that Americans of every class and creed will respond promptly to avert the terrible fate menacing; a people to whom they are so closely bound by ties of kinship and of a common heritage."

The Nonsense of Chautauqua

A coterie of spouters under . the name of Chautauqua have been touring the Dominion for some time past, What they are and what . they are driving at one can hardly tell. We have heard various theories proposed to explain their activities. They pose as enlighteners of the public, and if we judge from the report of one of their lectures in Palmerston North last month that is the very last thing they are doing. In fact one might well conclude from that report that there is a foundation in the rumor that they are a, clique going round in order to do their bit towards binding together the fragments of the tottering British Empire. At any rate there is no question as to their total and profound ignorance of the subject taken in Palmerston North. A person" called Captain Norman Allan Imrie dealt, we are told, with the Irish problem; and if what he said is a fair sample of the knowledge and intelligence of Chautauqua, we are not surprised that poor benighted New Zealand was selected as a proper field for the activities of the Chautauqua chatterers. Seldom have we found in so small a space so many gross and glaring misrepresentations, and such brazen misstatements concerning Ireland. Even the editor of a New Zealand day-lie would do far better than this Chautauqua gentleman. He boosts the Ulster . Province in true Orange fashion, and he trots out the old and out-of-date assertions about Ulster wealth and prosperity, unmindful of the recent howl raised by Ulster and the protest that the Orangemen are not the wealthy people they pretended to be. Everybody except a Chautauqua lecturer knows well that Ulster is not the richest province in Ireland, and that if it has an advantage over the rest of Ireland that advantage is in the direction of bastardy, ignorance, and brutality. Even the British returns inform us that the province of Ulster. is valued at a twenty-two per cent, lower valuation per head than the province of Leinster. The valuation of Ulster is given in the Census, returns of 1911 as £3. 9s 9d per head of the population. The ])er cdpitum valuation of Leinster is given at £4 9s Id. Since then the Sinn Fein boycott has been so telling that Ulster Orangemen are. actually crying in public over their poverty. The chatterer also speaks of a Nationalist Party in Ireland, as if the British atrocities have not driven almost every Nationalist into;the Sinn Fein -camp and as if even Southern Unionists are not coming in .large numbers v as time goes on and they see : what union with ; England means.;. for their country. 3 But it is when v the lecturer comes to deal with the Convention that he hits the , roof for sheer misstatement. fo| According to him the object of that Convention was to give the Irish people a chance to settle their own affairs. Does he not know Aha* before

the Convention ever ' sat Lloyd George 3 said that the only chance they had was" to Settle Irish 'affairs;- not on Irish lines but according to his wishes ?. yT Does he not know, that Lloyd George refused to allow Irishmen to select their own representatives for that packed gathering ? Does he not know' that even Lord Arran admitted that the whole object of the fraud was to fool the Americans and get them into the war which was going against England ? Sinn Fein, he tells us, means "ourselves alone." It means neither that nor Chautauqua, and it means the one as much as the other. He parades the old, bogus, pro-German plot which an Irish LordLieutenant killed with ridicule. He glorifies the Kaiser's friend Carson and tells us that the man who organised the movement to burst up the Empire and to hang Cabinet Ministers on London lamp-posts was a supporter of the Empire. Since 1916 British statesmen have, according to the Chautauqua gentleman, done their best to bring peace and prosperity to Ireland. Probably doing their best is what he understands by doing their best to drive the people to rebellion by methods that, the savagest Junkers of Prussia would condemn as barbarous and inhuman. He quotes some prominent fool as saying that the Irish do not know what they want and won't be satisfied till they get it: Has he never heard that by a sweeping majority the Irish people have not only made plain what they want but got it too ? New Zealand must have a bad reputation abroad when ignoramuses like the long-named captain have the cheek to speak in it.

Lloyd George’s Murderers The cold words of the printed page are eloquent enough, God knows, of the crimes of England in Ireland at the present day. But it has been our lot to meet recently one who has returned from Ireland, and who describes horrors seen there with the passion and indignation of an outraged Christian under whose eyes the champions of small nations did their devils’ work on innocent' people. It was not a Sinn Feiner, it was" not an Irishman at all but a New Zealander who saw the following: One morning the Catholic men, women, and children of Cork were assembled in the .Cathedral for a Requiem Mass for a dead patriot. During the solemn moments of worship a gang of “Black-and-Tans” burst into the church. They did not remove their hats; they did not remove their cigarettes; they showed no reverence and no respect for a place of Catholic worship. An officer, determined to outdo his savages in : .brutality, disdained to walk up the nave and climbed on a pew and strode from the top of one pew to the top of another until he reached the altar, brandishing his Brithun proclamation in his hands, ... No British liar had imagination enough to invent a crime like that about the Prussians in Belgium. That crime was left for the champion of small nations under the Marconi schemer who told the Irish' people that the war was for Ireland’s rights'as well as Belgium’s. . | The next atrocity our friend witnessed was in Dublin. One evening on coming out of St. Saviour’s Church a cry of Halt” was heard.’ The New Zealand visitor stood still.' Then a boy about sixteen years old came along. .There was a second cry of ‘Halt Then a brave British officer caught the t poor boy and putting his back to a wall shot him dead. Our New Zealand friend picked up the body, and said to 1 the Brithun: “You have shot him.” 1 The : Hun replied: “I , have, and I will shoot you too unless you get away quickly.’’

. We expect our New Zealand day-lies will store up this statement of a fact and tell us later on that it describes a Sinn Fein murder. , : . .: "'"'." jj !"" «-third- British crime was this; ,; It was again in Dublin.■ ! Our friend was passing along a street, wheii a lorry' laden with the beastly "Black-and-Tans" appeared. Some boys seeing the brutes ran away. The champions of small nations began" to fire v wildly They killed a girl eight years old. '}; Our New Zealand friend lifted up the body and told ' the "Black-and-Tan" officer that they had killed, the little ' child. u "Oh it was only an accident,":said the Hun. ; \ n . ; gamar GreenwoodrFreeihmdtiaiid liar, refused permit that child's

mother to be. legally represented at the. so-called inquiry into the murder of her <^dif^..|.|f|y? ,' ' These are but three incidents that were forced -upon the notice of a New Zealand visitor "to Ireland. That visitor is well known in Dunedin. And we do -hot hesitate to say that no-man or woman who knows our friend would take sworn testimony of any person in the British Cabinet before this honest, , God-fearing New Zealander's simple c word. These three incidents give you a faint idea of what the. Irish Catholics are suffering. They also give a faint idea of what lies fare being told you by ? the editors of the daily . papers throughout . New Zealand. These debased : journalists who cloak murders and calumniate the Irish; people are morally as guilty ; as the savages who have stained their hands in the blood of the women and the little children, nay, of unborn children, of Ireland. Go, after reading this testimony, and read your daily paper with its mutilated speeches that a dishonest editor twists to suit himself, and its mutilated. letters, , cut and hacked in the defence of a forger. Go and read the calumnies of an ex-editor of a blasphemous Australian weekly who is invoked for the purpose of calumniating a brave people by an editor whose articles on Ireland have made a lauphing-stock of him before he has had time to warm the editorial chair. Is it any wonder that a certain daily paper recently turned down the application of a qualified man because it was alleged that he was married to a Catholic ? Where such dirty work is wanted,, Catholics or their friends need not apply. Thank God for that!

A Britfsh General on Sinn Feiners

We have published the splendid testimony of the English Quakers to the peaceful conditions obtaining under Sinn Fein and to the fact that crime in Ireland is due to Lloyd George and Greenwood. We have also quoted the verdict of the Labor Commission, stating that the crimes of England in Ireland are making the name of England stink in the nostrils of the whole civilised world. Hear now what an English General has to say in favor of the brave men whom our disreputable day-lie 'editors calumniate, day after day, as zealously as they once decried the alleged brutalities in Belgium. Greenwood denied the reprisals until his lies became too obvious '-'to everybody. : Here is what General Sir Henry Lawson says of the reprisals which the Canadian bounder denied: :

There is no doubt in my mind as to the general accuracy of the reports of the* reprisals which have reached this country through the press, and there can be no question whatever that this form of remedy was extensively: and generally carried out:. . ,<<■.;,/; ' ,: This honest ..-man,i..who made investigations on the spot-bears witness that the evidence goes to show that the reprisals. -were* more '. than; tacitly approved by , the Government. He compares the conduct of the » English soldiers to that of the Germans in France in 1870 and in-Belgium-in 1914. Does *he think that England is crushing the brave Irish people? Here is;his opinion: -They have.done more than has happened for centuries to increase the numbers who dislike England's rule. In this way—a little-dreamt-of way—they have served the cause of self-government in Ireland*. ■ -. I -Does' he blacken the character of the soldiers of the Irish Republic, as the ; arm-chair warrior -; who def ends.the ■. forger* lor that other i who borrows from the ex-editor of a smutty Australian paper material wherewith to ; insult the Irish i people of Dunedin tries to, do? He does nothing of the kind. « He denies that there is any truth in the sort of lies we read in our daily papers about murder gangs in Ireland;:; He gives thus the lie to Greenwood and to his satellites in Dunedin and elsewhere throughout the Empire. Here are his words: The Sinn Fein organisation and the Irish Republican Army seem to be free,' particularly free from ruffians of the professional type, and the killings t of police and others were almost certainly done by members of the I.E.A. acting under military orders, -young men imbued with no personal feelings against the victims, with no crimes to their record, and probably then shedding blood for the first time of their lives.

In accordance . with Lloyd George's -war-aims the Irish people elected their own Government and they stand by it and recognise its right to function." They kill spies if they are ordered, just as the soldiers of, any Government would* 'But they leave thel assassination of aged priests and of unborn babies to the soldiers of England. There was peace in Ireland until the Lloyd George Government began its system of lies and oppression, kidnapping children and throwing into gaol innocent men and women, often for singing an Irish song, oftener for no cause whatever but to exasperate the people and provoke a'rebellion in which armed English soldiers might prove their bravery and chivalry by shooting down unarmed Irish people. That scheme did not work out according to plan. Here is the General's' testimony to the splendid character of Sinn Fein soldiers * ''■■'- 'V'"'

The captains of the volunteers appear to be always quite young men, farmers' sons for the most part, some of them schoolmasters, as a class most of them with a good deal of education, ignorant of the world perhaps but TRANSPARENTLY SINCERE AND SINGLEMINDED IDEALISTS, HIGHLY RELIGIOUS FOR THE MOST PART, WITH AN ALMOST MYSTICAL SENSE OF THEIR DUTY TO THEIR -COUNTRY. These men gave to the task of organising the volunteers their best in mind and spirit. They fought against drunkenness and self-indulgence [which they leave to the English], and it is no exaggeration to say that as a class they represented all that was best in the countryside.

Thank God for another honest Englishman to shame our N.Z. press-liars.