Britain's Welfare Depends on Ireland's Freedom

New Zealand Tablet, 13 October 1921, Page 11

Britain's Welfare Depends on Ireland's Freedom

Tho opinion that much of the welfare of society as well as of religion in Great Britain depends upon a satisfactory solution of the Irish demand for freedom, was expressed by Prof. Stewart Miller, of Glasgow University, in a lecture recently in the Glasgow Catholic Institute. Prof. Miller suggested that if Ireland were given her freedom, she might develop a democracy of a specially free and high type, which would he a great contribution to the social fabric of the times. Prof.'Miller is a convert to the Catholic faith and a patriotic Scotsman. He stated that the Irish question is fundamentally a moral problem. He spoke of it as a Scotsman concerned with the good of his own country. He suggested that, in the system of Europe, Ireland has a unique function to discharge, and that function she could discharge only in freedom. Ireland differed from Scotia the speaker said, in her economic condition and ideal. He suggested that there was a real chance that, if left to herself, Ireland could work out a well-balanced economic system within which there might grow up a democracy more real than any yet known—at once more free and more responsible. Furthermore, her example would react beneficially on others. Again, Ireland is Catholic, while Britain is Protestant. The speaker suggested that the example of Ireland was bound to react on others in the Empire. The self-complacency which had been the great obstacle to the reception of Catholic truth in Britain was giving way. Men were becoming conscious that the social fabric in .Britain was disintegrating. They sought to remedy "this by tightening the bonds of State control, but a merely external framework was bound to fail them in the long run. ' J -