THE IRISH.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVII, Issue 17651, 11 December 1920, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE IRISH.

NOT QUITE GROWN UP. BX FRANK MORTON. I love the Irish. I do not condemn a nation because a partisan mob is plaving hfvoo with it.' I don't condemn the Russians (whom, with good cause, I lov 6 too) because pi the Bolshevik excesses. I would as soon think of denying or disparaging the beauty of a woman because she had a whitlow or a dislocated hip. These "iings are curable. 1 always feel that my Irish friends have never quite grown up, and I love children. At their worst, the true Irish seem to me to bo shockingly naughty rather than desperately wicked. When I speak of the Irish I mean the Irish. I do not take in agitators accidentally in Ireland. Pearse was an Englishman, Griffith is a Welshman, De Valera is a North. American Spaniard. These men have no place in my reckoning when I talk about my love of the Irish. They and their like show as so many blowflies in a fair house. Nobody knows the Irish better than Mr. Herbert Moore pirn does, and he is a good Irishman himself. He was a leader of Sinn Fein till his conscience and his stomach revolted, a leader of the old type who would not palter with outrage and murder as means, who would not pretend that elaborated lies were the quintessence of God's truth. Hear him.

The fact is that all the wailing which arises from Ireland is the wailing of .so many spoiled and naughty children, whose proper Place is an international nursery. And if these adult children had the power they would reduce Ireland to the condition to which Russia, has been reduced by the- people who did the wailing in Russia before the Tsar fell. He points out that Irish extremists love revolution and conspiracy for their own sakes, and love all this hateful disaster tremendously for the game and the notoriety of it. He shows how Ireland is a jolly good country to live in. He makes the point that if British farmers lived up dor the Irish Land Laws they would think the Millennium had come. It is all quite true. Amid this pother we are apt t-j forget that the treatment of Ireland by the. British Government for thirty years and more has been wonderfully liberal. There is no doubt whatever about that l'acts and figures talk. Ulster and England. Incidentally, Mr. Pim removes other misconceptions. He tells how there has always been strife between' Ulster and the South, how Ulster has always stood fiercely against any idea of a United Ireland, how the proudest and most ancient Irish stock is in Ulster. When all the kings of Ireland ceded their rights to Henry 11. the King of Ulster stood out and -ceded nothing. No question of Catholic or Protestant then. No question of Presbyterian Scottish elements in the North. An extraordinary proportion of the notable men of Ireland, the leaders and the rulers, down all the centuries of history, have been of Ulster stock. These things are worth remembering. More, he shows how in all their personal relations the English have been humane and kind to the Irish in our time. When he himself was arrested and put ™ an -, :E^gU«^a^ jS ,it i; !K.aA4a&t.-After--.tha Rebellion of I&L6. But— In all i**? experiences, and in my contact . with the authorities. a can remehibr no instance in /which. I was treated with anything but kindness, politeness, and consideration; But I Jaws noticed that the atti- *?&* of Nationalists towards policemen and others hag been what one might . call instinctively, provocative. In the world of doss wo see this instinctively provocative attitude assumed by one dog. with the. mult that the other dog prepares for trouble.-

The British authority in Ireland has been consistently patient and forbearing in the teeth of all provocation. During the Great War, even in the months immediately following the Dublin Rebellion, the censorship in Ireland was the most liberal in the Empire, Irish .newspapers, even the papers of Sinn Fein, suffering virtually, none of the indignities 'that Australian and New Zealand newspapers suffered continuously. What is to be Dons about Ireland? But the children still wailed and r.-.i*. behaved. They behaved very badly all through the South— - South whose contribution to Irish science and industry • and art was negligible by comparison with the contribution of Ulster. Mr. Pim .is in no way inimical to the South.- He sacrificed much to become a leader of Sinn Fein while he still believed in the Nationalist cause. His friends were in the South. He only left the cause and hie friends when he had to leave or accept things hatefully repugnant to his mind and conscience. Here is no case of a biassed Englishman or a > bitter Unionist giving tainted evidence against the Irish. Mr. Pim has no colour of sectarianism. He longs passionately to see* these problems solved. He 'is disgusted by Sinn Fein, but not embittered. He.loves his fellow, Irish, but he has been compelled by their own misbehaviour to open. his eyes to their faults and weaknesses. And, knowing the Irish, he knows that refown and settlement cannot come in a day, that escape and peace can only be won by prayer and fasting. He does not despair. What is to he done about Ireland? Well, as MacNeill says, the Irish people, though steeped in vulgarity. have an instinctive vulgarity, and if we are to educate them, it would be well to present British ideas in a refined form, not as they are given by such exponents of culture as Horatio Bottomley The power which refined the Roman Empire which; produced the Renaissance, which made a polite people of the Franks and Goths, which lived through the Dark Ages, and gave texture and beauty to the Middle. Age the power which redeemed the English people tiom the bondage of puritanical ugliness may yet .redeem Ireland from its crimes and stupid conceit. I preach an ancient gospel the eospel according to Plato and Aeschylus' Sophocles. . Euripides. Virgil. Horace, and Ovid, it is" the old gospel of beauty and politeness: and if the education of the Irish Ivationalist he based upon the culture of trreece, he will be dazzled by a new and un-dreamed-of splendour of thought and form.

We don't care how, the better times come, so that they do come. We are ready to forget the agonies and the exasperations, if only after a while we may sit down in peace together and get on with the empire's work. Meantime, when the Bishop of Cork preaches that " the Irish Nation is the moral leader of the world," we can but smile a little sadly. These wailing children have such exorbitant vanity and such queer ideas. And I love the Irish, as I said at the beginning. I agree that if we could cut. them off and leave them free to work out their own salvation, it would be a good thing. But we cannot do that, because the security of the empire and the peace of the 'world are still things to be considered. The Irish are a fine and faulty people. They are fine friends, 'to long as you let them have a good deal of their own way. They are fine citizens, so long as you expect no common sense from them in the arena of. their prejudices. And they are as fine companions as any. If they would only stop *,his insensate clatter and this dreadfully bad behaviour, we should love them for that alone.