The Dominion. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1910. MR. O'BRIEN'S SUCCESS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 995, 9 December 1910, Page 4

The Dominion. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 9, 1910. MR. O'BRIEN'S SUCCESS.

. Having regard to the irritating • fashion in which the Press Associa- , tion has been reporting the progress ; of the British election, there is reason for congratulation that wo , should be given the details of the . fight for the two Oork City seats. : The result of the contest is far more interesting than any of the others that have reached us, and the success 'of Messrs. O'Biuen and Maurice Healey will be hailed with deep satisfaction by all those unbiased observers of British politics who have paid much attention to the split in the Nationalist party. Ever since his return from Italy, Mr. O Brien, as the exponent of "Nationalism informed by tolerance and goodwill, has waged ceaseless war upon Mr. Redmond and the "official" Nationalists, who still carry on the tradition that Home llule must be fought by fomenting racial, social and religious antagonisms in Ireland. At the January election he succeeded, not only in repelling the attack of the Redmondites upon some of his friends, but in carrying the war into fclia ''official" canm Owing to the splitting of the second vote of the O'Bricnites, Mr. Roche, a Redmondite, was elected as Mr. OBrien's colleague. This time Mr. Roche and the other "official" havo been defeated. Wo must wait before we can know whether this notable success for independent Nationalism is part of a large general advance by Mr. O'Brien. Tho difference between tho policies of the rival Nationalist parties can best be set out by comparing the objective of Mr. O'Brien's All-for-Ireland League arid Mr. O'Brien's own speeches with the statements of Mr. Redmond and of the dynamiter Tat" Ford, who supplies the- "official" Nationalists .with fighting funds and whom Mr. Redmond and his friends have again and again thanked and applauded as the.true friend of Ireland. The resolution establishing the All-for-Ireland League reads as follows:— That, inasmuch as wo regard selfgovernment in purely Irish affairs, tho transfer of tho soil of Irelnnd to the cultivators, ami tho relief of Ireland from lmoiorablo over-taxation, as essential canr uitioas for the happiness and prosperity, ot our country, and, further, inasmuch as. wo believe the suvest means'of effect- : ing these objects to be a combination of all tho elements of tho Irish population in a spirit of mutual toleranco and patriotic goodwill, such as will guarantee to the Protestant minority of our fellow-countrymen inviolable security for ■ all their rights and liberties, and win the friendship of tho entiro people of Great Britain—this representative meeting of the City and County of Cork hereby establishes an association to 1)6 called the All-for-Ireland League, whose primary object, shall, bo tho union and active cooperation in every department of our national life of all Irish men and women, who believe in tho principle of domestic self-government for Ireland.

These principles have been faithfully maintained by Mr. O'Brien in hundreds of letters and speeches. In his western, campaign in the first week of November ho delivered some speeches which -aroused tremendous enthusiasm. Whatever chance there now was of Home Rule, he said, was owing -to the extraordinary revulsion of feeling in England, where even the London Times was ready to reconsidor the question. "That revulsion of feeling was due mainly to.the now spirit the All-for-Ireland League had created of genuino unity among all Irishmen, high and low, Protestants and Catholics; it was due to the fact that they were convincing both their Protestant fellow-country-men and the people of England that they could trust them." He. Redmond's friends take another view. Angered by his exclusion from the famous Land Conference that led to the valuable Land Act passed by the Unionists in 1903, and alarmed lest the new spirit of conciliation generated might alleviate Irish discontent, Mr. Dillon set Mn. Redmond to fight Mr. O'Biuen. To Mb. Dillon, the doctrines of conciliation, as Me. O'Biuen puts it in his new book An Olive Branch in Ireland, were "inventions of their old incorrigible oppressors to swindle them and bankrupt them, and pave the way for some heinous plot against the national cause." Mr. Redmond seems to have struggled against the "old guard" of Nationalism, but in vain. v There is abundant evidence that Mr. .Redmond is.at.heart opposed to tho policy of hate and vengeance, but is kept in chains by the spirit embodied in Mr. Dillon. At the beginning of October he gave a remarkable statement to a representative of the Daily Express. He renounced separation or independence. What he wanted was "to strengthen the Imperial bonds through a federal system." Under this system Ireland's Parliament would be subject to the veto of. the Crown, there would be no independent Irish tariff, and Ireland would bear its full share of the cost of Imperial defence. This statement caused a huge sensation, but it was not repudiated by Mr. Redmond until, nearly a fortnight later, it was declared by Mr. Dillon to be a fabrication. Mr. Redmond then repudiated the interview. Yet it is in substance the same policy as had been declared by _ Mr. Redmond in M'Clure's- Magazine, and the same policy as had been advocated in Canada by Mr. T. P. O'Connor, who was Mr. Redmond's companion in tho trip to America to meet "Pat"'Ford and his dollars. Most of Mr. Redmond's utterances, however, have breathed fire and slaughter. At New Ross on June 2J, 1907, he said: - "Wo tell her (England) that we Wexford men to-day hafo her rule just as bitterly as our forefathers. . . . We tell her that wo arc as much rebels to her rule to-day as our forefathers were in '98." At Buffalo in October last, he said: "I havo coma hare to-day to America to ask jpu to give ub your aid in a

supreme and, I believe, final effort to dethrone, once and : for all the English government of our country." The- writings of "Pat" Ford, the paymaster of the "official" Nationalists, best exhibit the spirit against which Mn. O'Brien' is lighting as strongly as he is fighting for Homo llule. Some time ago a leading Nationalist, Mr. Stephen Gwynn, objected to the citation by Mn. O'Brien's friends and by the Unionists of quotations from Ford's papor, tho Irish World, on the ground that they were 20 years old. But Ford has not changed. "If there is any dynamite or lyddite that will blow the British Empire up into the clouds," he wrote in November of 1899, "let it be used, and forthwith." On June 8, 1907, to an article in defence of tho use of dynamite in Ireland, he added a note expressing his entire agreement with the writer, and his agreement with Mr. Redmond. On July 17, 1909, ho took the murder of Sir Curzon Wylie as a text" for an attack upon Britain's "infamous rule" in India. On August 14 he mourned the murderer as the "latest martyr to English tyranny." On February 26 of this year he had an article headed "Bloody Kitchener visits Australia." The villainy of England is his constant theme. This is the spirit, as we have said, against which Mr. O'Brien is fighting, and it is therefore welcome news, and it should be welcome to nobody more than to the true friends of Ireland, that the signs point to an advance of Mr. O'Brien's campaign on behalf of conciliation, tolerance, and goodwill over the forces of hatred and violence.