MISCELLANEOUS. A REALIST IN IRELAND

Hokitika Guardian, 26 March 1927, Page 4

MISCELLANEOUS. A REALIST IN IRELAND

(Australia & N.Z. Cable Association.]

A (Hi 1C ULTL'JLAJ. R ESEA RCII. WELLINGTON, .March 2G.

Doctor Henkes, director of Agriculture lias been selected to represent the Now Zealand Government at an Imperil)l Agriculture RtVsearcli Conference to be held in London in October next. The .Minister of Agriculture states that certain questions have to he prepared by the Government lor inclusion in the conference agenda. Dr Ileakes will probably leave New Zealand in mid-August.

LABOR. AFFAIRS. SYDNEY, March 2G. The Australian Labour Party Executive expelled Air Searle front the Labour Movement for defiance of the titles and constitution of the Party. S. Bird, who acted as Secretary of the Executive, which Seale formed when deposed front the Presidency of the Party, was expelled front the executive alleging unfair treatment to an employee. Twelve hundred men employed on the. Clyde Engineering Works have struck, causing a complete stoppage at the works. PICTURE CENSOR. .MELBOURNE, .March 20. Professor Wallace, Commonwealth film censor, predicts when the Victoria n Film. Act passed last year comes into force in July, children between the ages of six and sixteen will' he banned from seeing fifty-five per cent of the picture shows, if pictures id' Luc type now being shown are then screened. JAP FINANCIAL CRISIS. TOKIO, March 25. Both Houses passed a record budget, totalling nearly eighieon hundred million yen. before, there prorogue. The passage of the Budget has considerably n lieved the financial nervousness. The deposits o! the six banks which bpve closed their doors represent one hundred and Ul'tv million yen.

BYE-ELECTION. LONDON. Alarch 25

The Daily Express points out Leith has been Liberal for 150 years, except for one brief interval.

The Daily .Mail recalls that the Conservative vote has lultvily declined at every bye-election since the end of 1f)24. It says that unless this crumbling can be stopped, defe»'.t is ahead. MR AMBRY'S TOUR. LONDON, Alarch 25. Air .-Vinery's provisional programme for the tour is to visit South Africa in August, then Australia. New Zealand and Canada, arriving at the lu.Lt-iiamed at 'Xmas. SWEDISH PREMIER ACQUITTED. LONDON. .March 25. Ex-Prmeier Barge and six fellow Cabinet members were acquitted on a charge of violation of the constitution by momentarily assisting the Bank ef Commerce without Parliament's knowledge or permission. BUENOS AYRES, A Lurch 25. Floods in the Jujuis Province in the extreme north west of Argentine resulted in over seventy deaths to-day. AAIETUCAN NAVAL REINFORCEMENTS. WASHINGTON. March 25. Admirni' Williams ordered three more cruisei's. Peary, Force and Pillbury, from Manila to Shanghai, then to Swatow army and Foochow iu addition to three more already despatched from Honolulu to Shanghai. There arc at present twenty-one TJ.S. vessels at Shanghai or Ynngtse ports. MISHAP TO WILKTNS. WASHINGTON, Alarch 25. A message from Fairbanks. Alaska, states that Captain AVilkins iu his latest Arctic expedition is again experiencing difficulties. The Fokker monoplane Alaskan, loaded with 42001bs of equipment, made three iinsuecesslul attempts to take off and finally overturned in the snow and snapped the ski. it will probably have to he loit behind.

LEAGUE REPORT. A l.'C'K LAN I>, 25, The report of the Joint Managers, Messrs E. H. A fair and ti. 11. Pouc.er, regarding the* recent trouble in the rallies of the New Zealand League football team whi/e on tour in England, will not he published, according to a decision made by the Council of the New Zealand .Rugby League. The report, it is stated, is a very* (omprehensive one, and covered fully* the causes and results of the conduct of the seven players who were later disqualified for fife as a result of refusing to play when selected. A Sub-Committee was appointed to confer with Mr 11. M. Eogerson, the League’s honorary solicitor, and the report was •thoroughly perused before being submitted in full detail to the Council. The proceedings at the meeting were taken in committee, this brief announcement was made later. MAJOR GOODSELD. SYDNEY. March *26. Major Ooodsell in'a letter from Port land, America dated 10th February, seeks information regarding H'aniian’s intentions about the chnllenge lie issued and ('foodsell accepted naming San Francisco as the course and April 10th as the date. He l.ulds he has not hear from Hannan and supposed the latter has given up the idea of racing. Goodsell has started training, but does not wifint to continue uselessly as lie has other races ahead, and wants to know definitely ■ whether Hannan is coming or not. A newspaper points out. it is now too late for Hannan to make the trip and got into form. DEER SEA PORT. IV HANGAR El, March 25. In accepting the tender of £5.200 for the removal o? sandstone bar so as to secure t. low-water depth of ten feet and one of 19 feet at high water, the AYhangarei Harbour Board to-day i took the first step towards making AYhangarei a deep-water port. A more ambitious scheme involving an expenditure of £140.000 was rejected. COMPENSATION CASES. TIM A RE, March 25.

At a sitting of the Arbitration Court to-day, two claims for compensation were heard. In one, a joiner. F. Palmer, of AA'aimate, who suffered an injury to his thumb in the course of his employment, failed in his claim. The ground of his failure was that his injury did not totally incapacitate him, and that the defendant had alreadypaid him £Bl 12s. In the other ease, T. and T. Thompson, drapeds. were ordered to pay £4OO in a lump sum to •T. I?. Cummin, a carter for the firm, who lost his right leg as the result of an accident. .

DAMAGES CLAIM. SYDNEY, March 25

The hearing has commenced of the cases of Thomas AA’alsh and Jacob Johnson, each claiming £20,000 damages against the Commonwealth Government, on the grounds of their wrongful’ arrest and false imprisonment. The proceedings arose out of the.seamen’s strike at the end of 1925. The plaintiffs were officials of the Seamen’s Union, and were arrested with a view to their deportation under the Deportation Act, which subsequently was declared ultra vires, and they wore' discharged. i

The jury to-day gave a verdict for AValsh for £25.

Johnson’s case will he heard on Monday.

(By JOHN LAWRENCE, in the “ London Weekly "'.)

While it cannot be. said that Ireland

as a whole has begun to think imperially—the majority of the farmers in the Free State are more concerned about unpaid rates and land annuities, which total many mili'ions—one detects signs, still no bigger than a man’s hard, that an interest is being taken in the affairs of the British Commonwealth of Nations by people who a few years ago were pre-oecupied with parish pump politics;. This is perhaps best reflected by the news columns ot the Irish daily Press. During the Imperial Conference, to every paragraph which appeared in the London journals, the Dublin papers printed a eoi'iinin, and even if the average man in the Free State showed no wild signs of excitement. Tie was at all events more fully informed than the Englishman, or the Scotsman or the Welshman. The daily doings of the premiers, and then speeches, were reported at length, and 1 the part played by the Free State delegates—of whom Air Kevin O’Higgins, j the nephew of the redoubtable Air T. ] M. Healy, the Governor-General'. was • the most prominent—was stressed. ! The results of the Conference, which ; it is understood owe not- a little to the i Free State arguments, were received I without demonstration, blit if bonfires ' were not lit on the Atourne Alountniiis or the Kerry Hills when' the announce me lit was made of the now status of ! the. Dominions and the proposed change ' in the title of His Majesty, who bei comes King of Ireland on the passing of the new Bill at Westminster, there were no denunciations that mattered. That, at 'feast, is a matter for consid-

erable satisfaction, for a small pebble thrown into the not always placid pool

of Irish politics, invariably produces an Atlantic gale of resolutions from every i'ittic body politically minded guardians and councillors from Donegal to Cork and from Wicklow to Galway, and you will find more Irish hulls in these parochial efforts than in all the pastures of the Emerald Isle. The mere absence of these resolutions must have gratified Air Cosgrave’s Executive* Council, for it showed that they had made a great stop forward iu establishing the position of the Free State within the British Commonwealth of Nations, with virtually no reactions. Even Air do Valera has been unable to make any political capital out of the major decisions. A few months ago ho would have seized oil the fact that Air Cosgrave wore knee breeches and dined with the King at Buckingham Bai'ace, as evidence of the great betrayal of the birthright of the Irish nation to govern themselves and as r. cry upon which lie could rally the disruptive Republicans, who are now split into three fragments, with Alary AfeSweney in charge of. the second group, and a diehard ot the militant parly that still believes in the power of the gun in command of the third. Even the most ignorant and fanatical

followers of the triumvirate of the Re-

publicans are beginning to suspect that a Free State in the making is worth twenty of the Utopias that they are told (be Republic would be, if it could be: a Republic to which many of the leaders still refer to as the “ Kingdom of Ireland.” As a rule Republican arguments are as confused as their metaphors and almost as amusing, and they are lint to be regarded very seriously, although on occasions they make almost ns much noise as the Orange drummers on July 12th. Things might have been otherwise if General Hertzog, who, it is understood, arrived in London full of distrust and left full of enthusiasm, had fallen fouV of the decisions. His whole-hearted endorsement of all that bad been dene at the Imperial Conference left the Irish irreeoncilables baffled and bewildered, especially as it had been stated that most of the decisions with which the Scottish African premier had found himself in agreement had been put forward by the Free State delegates. General Hertzng’s pronouncements came as n bomb-shell to the Republicans and blew sky-high their last chauce of launching an offensive on the Free State Government which would have the effect of driving them from office when the elections take plate next July. How could they criticise a policy that had been endorsed by one whom they regarded as the South African do Valera? There is a good deal in common between frei'antl and Sioutli Africa, and tlie attitude of the Dutch towards the English-speaking South Africans may yet have its reactions in the Free State itself and on that small section of Gaelic-speaking Irish I relanders who have been fed for years bv unscrupulous agitators on a diet of hatred of England. The issue has been put before, them very clearly by Air Kevin O'Higgins, who, above everything else, is a realist: He said that tbo conception of complete separation from Great Britain in

a. Republican form of Government and the conception of the political unity of Ireland were conflicting ideals. AA’liat exactly did Air de A r alera mean by* a Republic? Did- the.v mean a Republic for the twenty-six counties of Ireland (which is now the Free State), with a hostile British statelet on the Northern frontier, or did they mean a Republic for the 32 counties? If the latter, how did the Republicans propose to get it? He put forward the view that if the unity of Ireland (which was a politicial ideal in which most Irishmen believe) was to he achieved, the Republicans would have to face the fact that some form of friendly association with Great Britain would he a necessity for such a union, a condition precedent to such a union, and that they coui’d not approach and maintain their attitude of undying hostility to Great Britain and at the same time hope to attain the political unity* of Ireland embraced within a single political .system. The last slued of excuse which the Republicans had for pretending to think there was subjection, subordination or inferiority on the part of the! Free State to any other State or people had been removed by the renort of the Imperial Conference. i

Mr O’Higgins accuses the Republicans of dishonesty when they canted in one breath about a Republic and in the next about political’ unity, for they had in Northern Ireland close on a million people, who, to put it mildly*, were not Republican doctrinaires. They were stimulating a hate that was burning, misehevious and destructive to the people.

The fact of the matter is that a small body- of people, who have taken up an attitude of simple, blind and unreasoning hatred to the idea of there being any prevailing co-operation between the Free State and the people and the Government of Great Britain, are preventing the progress and prosperity of not only the Free State but of Ireland ns a whole. They are preventing a return of that complete confidence which is necessary for the development of business ; hut for theninsane hostility, taxes in the Free State could he reduced, work coui’d be found for the unemployed, ami Ireland would he more flourishing than she has ever been since Saint Patrick banished the snakes from tier shores.

The Republican attitude is all the more inexplicable because Mr de A’alera, a week before the Treaty was signed, dictated a formula on which he hoped to secure a settlement, by which he was prepared to “recognise his

Brittanie Majesty as head of the associated States.” I have talked to Irishmen from Australia, and 1 have talked to Irishmen in America, who were supporters of separate government for Ireland, and I have not met one who does not confess that the present status and position of the Free State is infinitely better than they over expected to obtain and they can hardly restrain their indignation at the wrecking tactics that arc still being pursued by the Republicans, who are more concerned with their own vanity than they are with the welfare of their fellow countrymen and women.