The Feilding Star. OROUA & KIWITEA COUNTIES GAZETTE TUESDAY, MAY 14, 1907.

Feilding Star, Volume I, Issue 265, 14 May 1907, Page 2

The Feilding Star. OROUA & KIWITEA COUNTIES GAZETTE TUESDAY, MAY 14, 1907.

Sedition in Ireland. It is peculiar that just on the eve of the granting of an instalment of Home Rule to Ireland an organisation of a seditious nature of the wildest kind should have gained a foothold in that country. We refer to the "Sinn Fein," which is already obtaining numerous recruits. The amazing feature of the Sinn Fein policy is that it started in Ulster, which has hitherto prided itself on its loyalty to British rule, and it has no more enthusiastic adherents than are to be found among the Ulster Protestants. The Sinn Fein leaders make a special point of declaring that the movement is national and not religious, and of deploring the former religious division among the Irish people. Ulster men and women whose forefathers never knew the Irish tongue are now speaking it, and pride themselves on their Irish nationality as strongly as they did thirty years ago on being the "British garrison" in Ulster. The Sinn Fein headquarters is in Belfast. Sinn Fein is merely another way of spelling sedition, and sedition of a more virulent kind than has been tolerated in Ireland before, even in the days when Mr Gladstone was planning to establish a Parliament on College Green. The Sinn Feiners scoff openly at the idea of an Irish Parliament, with Ireland still a State of the Empire. They demand openly and without any disguise the establishment of an independent Irish Republic to which Great Britain will be as foreign as France or Russia. Another feature of the Sinn Fein policy is the boycott of the Army. In many districts of Ireland recruiting has practically ceased, and a few weeks ago fne "Republic" quoted gleefully from an article by a military correspondent in the Saturday Review stating that recruiting for the cavalry regiments was not now possible in Ireland, because Irishmen no longer came forward in sufficient numbers. The Republic claims all the credit of this situation for Sinn Fein. Dublin and Belfast and all the other large towns of Ireland have been placarded with appeals to patriotic Irishmen not to enlist in the "alien" British Army, and even Irish girls have been appealed to and urged not to speak or walk with any man who wears a British uniform. The following is a sample of one of the mendacious placards which have been handed from house to house throughout Ireland during the last fortnight : — "Pluck that damn weed from your helmet." — Command given by British Officer to Redcoats attending Divine Service on St. Patrick's Day in Dundalk and slavishly obeyed by The Boxing Warriors. God Save Ireland from such Wearing of the Green! The language revival is another strong feature in the anti-English propaganda, and although it may seem purely sentimental, it is making amazing progress. Erse is spoken today in towns and villages where it has not been heard for two or three generations, and many of the urban and country councils make a knowledge of Erse a necessary qualification of applicants for appointments. The Dublin streets are named in Erse as well as in English, and in many smaller places the street signs are printed only in Erse characters.