MARTIAL LAW

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 September 1920, Page 5

MARTIAL LAW

« «<s>PROCLAIMED' IN BELFAST. A VERITABLE INFERNO, HEAVY CASUALTIES. (Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.’ (Received this day at 10.30 a.m.) LONDON, August 31. Martial law lias been proclaimed in Belfast. There have been eighteen deaths and over 200 people wounded since the rioting started in Belfast on Saturday. Sir Edward Carson is appealing to the Unionists to assist in the preservation of order. He states that peace negotiations have been proceeding with the Government, and an important announcement is expected on Friday. LONDON, August 30. Rioting continues in Belfast in half a dozen centres. There are rival mobs, who are sotting fire to some shops and looting others. Five were killed and 53 wounded during the morning, including a woman, A’child of’eleven was killed while trying to get home to lunch. The Sinn Feiners are outnumbered. Many of them are armed with revolvers. The Unionist mobs used paving stones, rivets, and kidney shaped pavers, weighing a pound apiece. These they piled up ready for" attack and defence. Additional troops were ordered out. The police made repeated baton charges. Men and women workers had to run the gauntlet of street firing and baton charges before they leached workshops and offices. Most of these had to close down. Workers returned home or joined rival mobs, thus increasing the confusion. Distressing scenes are to be witnessed in the Catholic quarter. Many families are taking advantage of any lull in the rioting to put their furniture into lorries and hand-carts. Many families, headed by fathers and mothers, and followed by young children are walking behind the carts. DUBLIN, August 30.

Belfast is a vei!itab.\e inferno ol strife and riot. Never before, it is stated, have such scenes been witnessed. Fighting proceeds all round the clock. Business has been suspended and shops barricaded. Armoured cars with police, patrol the areas, bat no sooner do they get control in. one area than fighting, intense and ferocious, breaks out in another. Some Sinn Feinevs were the attackers to-day. A bad melee followed their stone throwing at workmen’s tram cars early iit the morning. Stones flew in all directions, and for the remainder of the day some streets were delivered to great mobs of Protestants and Catholics, who harassed the soldiers and police. Confusion was rendered worse by the screams, of the terrified women and girls. These had been prominent combatants, descending to hair-pulling. Indeed their aggressiveness even excelled the men’s “COOL, DELIBERATE MURDER.” His Eminence Cardinal Logue (Primate of Ireland), in a letter that has been published, condemns an attack made on police at Dundalk, in which one was killed and two dangerously wounded. The Cardinal says; —No end, however high, and no plea, how ever plausable, could justify such outrage. I know the poor victim who has gone to eternity. He was a good, upright man, who never gave offence to anyone in the discharge of his duty. I will be told it is an act of war—that it is lawful to shoot at sight anyone wearing a policeman’s uniform. 1 prefer to call it by another term, namely cool, deliberate murder. Any one who plans, encourages, abets, or even smypathxses with such an act participates in its guilt before God. 1 am reminded by an anonymous correspondent that .there are worse faults on the other side. I know there are. I denounce and condemn them, most heartily. We are living under a harsh, an oppressive and a tyrannical regime ot militarism and brute force, which invites, stimulates and nourishes crime, but crime does not excuse crime. We must not do wrong because others do.” CASE OF McSWEENEY. LONDON,- August 30. Sir James Long has telegraphed to Lord Stamfordham, requesting that His Majesty the King shall remove his (Long’s) Knighthood, owing to the Government's treatment of Mayor MeSweeney and the other hunger strikers. The whole of the Labour leaders representing all Organised British Labour have appealed against the treatment of Mayor McSweeney. They have requested Mr. Lloyd George to do the ‘‘b : g thing,” and release Mr. Sweeney. . (.Received this day -at 12.15 a.m.) 5 LONDON, August 31, Incendiarism spread over fourteen streets in Befast. The fire brigades were called out forty times. Sir E. Carson appealed to Loyalists .to cooperate in quelling the distur bances. NEGOTIATIONS WITH GOVERNMENT. % The Ulster Unionist Council announces that peace negotiations with the Government are proceeding. A FRENCH OPINION. ' PARIS, August 31. Le Matin, in an article headed “Appeal to England,” says : —“lt would be a breach of loyalty to our Allies not to warn them of the peril they are incurring by permitting a struggle between England and' civilization. Each refusal of clemency enchances the importance of McSweeney, whose death will spread Ireland’s teachings and convince the world that England, is implacable and is making no distinctions between criminals and saints.”