IRISH NEWS

New Zealand Tablet, 3 November 1921, Page 35

IRISH NEWS

LOYALTY IN THE N.E, CORNER. Seumas Ceannt in the Self-Determinator writes: —■ It has always been the claim of the self-styled “loyalists” in the N.E. Corner of Ireland that it is they, and they alone, who are, par ‘excellence, the quintessence of loyalty. Apart from them, every other political body is a rebel one, should it favor any policy that cannot be altogether approved by themselves. Only when it has both the blessing and the sanction of the N.E. "Ulster political autocrats and arbiters can any political policy be pronounced loyal. The English Labor Parties are rebellious and disloyal to N.E, "Ulster, because they have not been cap in hand to the Belfast autocrats. Even the English Tories and Primrose dames, if there is the slightest suspicion that they would seem to desire to grant the least travesty of justice to the oppressed majorities in South Africa or Ireland, are immediately dubbed rebels. Or if a “Liberal” Government in England should find it to their political convenience to talk of giving Some small measure of Home Rule to the Irish majority, then the “loyalists” of Belfast spring into open rebellion against the English Government, because, according to them, the English Government has become a rebel organisation. Thus it is that the “loyalists” of N.E. Ulster state the case for their open defiance of the English constitution, their assault in arms against England and at the time of the Larne gun-running. N So also they have all along justified the collusion of their political leaders with German agents about the year 1913, the conferences in Germany between their political chief and the Emperor of Germany as late as 1914. They maintain, and brook no denial of the claim, that at that very moment they only were the real loyalists, that the Government of England was itself a rebel constitution. Thus they claim that their traffic with England’s potential and declared enemy was as much loyalty to England as their later open rebellion against England and repudiation of the laws of England was loyalty to a something they called England. That their rebellion was two-fold only serves to strengthen their contention that they were therefore doubly loyalists. . . Now, at last, however, the people of England have seen not only through these pretensions, but also through the deceptions of their political rulers; and they, with many other world-forces, speaking through diplomatic and economic channels, have demanded that the claims of N.E. Ulster shall be put to the test; and the political autocrats of England have been compelled to bow to the inevitable.

THE RIOTING IN BELFAST. It is significant that the recent rioting in Belfast broke out only two days after Mr. Coote had made his provocative speech, in which he said that “the murder gang were coming and were already in Belfast. Orange lodges ought to be more aggressive. Two days after that speech was delivered outbreaks occurred, and definite attacks were made on Catholics, and at least 17 deaths have taken place. The ideal for which Mr. Coote and his followers stand is out-of-date, and about three centuries behind the time. It looks upon Catholicism as a menace to the peace of the State, which must, therefore, be kept down at any price. In accordance with the ethics of this ideal it is one thing for Protestants to offer violence to Catholics; but for Catholics to offer violence to Protestants is in quite another category. Sir James Craig’s task is not made any easier by this faction which has not only proclaimed its profound distrust of him, but which is pursuing a line of action warranted to make a settlement out of the question. Its latest political move is a public condemnation of Mr. Archdale the Northern Minister of Agriculture, for' appointing Mr. Coyle to an important post in the Ministry. Nobody

criticises Mr. Coyle's fitness or ability for the post. But he is a Catholic, and on that account Mr. Coote and his friends have accused Mr. Archdale of "going over to the enemy." The Minister of Agriculture has let it be known that a man's religion is" no disqualification for a Governmental post; but since then Mr. Coote has urged the Orange lodges to be more aggressive, and the echo of that speech has been heard in Belfast.

IMPRESSIONS OF A VISIT TO IRELAND. Mr. William Hurd, an American with no Irish relations and a Protestant, has been contributing to the Metropolitan, a New York magazine of wide circulation, a series of articles based on the impressions of a visit to Ireland. In one of these he tells of what he saw of the young men of the 1.R.A., and the men who worked as couriers for the Sinn Fein organisation in Ireland. He writes of . his own consciousness of “the gulf that lay between him and them in race and religion,” but he expresses the highest admiration for them. “They virtually invariably refused intoxicating liquors. They rolled out no war-like oaths, nor any - other oaths of even a mild drawing-room sort. They told no off-color stories. From among these young men I happened to hear not one profane word and not one obscene word, and not one word or story that even the most squeamish person could call even vulgar. They were by far the cleanest-spoken string of young men that I had ever anywhere encountered.” With this experience, Mr. Hurd felt ho had for once found an army that was strongly opposed to drunkenness and licentiousness, and greatly given to religious practices, and he was quite ready to accept what Bishop Fogarty told him as correct when he said that “the soldiers of the Irish Republican Army in his diocese were drawn from among his best young men from amongst' the most intelligent of them, and the most devout and most temperate and chaste,” .

THE CENSOR AT WORK IN IRELAND: HOW THE PRESS IS HAMPERED. The London Nation says; “We are bound to protest against the irritation power which military rule in Ireland keeps-up at this critical moment. In Co. Wexford, for example, the military censor’s-industry is omnivorous. We find that he excluded from the local press—(l) Parliamentary questions dealing with the arrest and ill-treatment of prisoners. (2) Passages from speeches of Mr. Asquith and Sir John Simon. (3) Criticism of the Partition Act. (4) Criticism of Lord Carson. (5) The names of persons arrested in the district. (6) Particulars from an official communique from G.H.Q. (7) Leading articles from the Times and the Daily News. (8) Proposals at a Poor Law Guardians’ meeting not to put into operation compulsory provisions of the Vaccination Act.