THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, MAY 21, 1918. AN IRISH CONSPIRACY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 17320, 21 May 1918, Page 4

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES TUESDAY, MAY 21, 1918. AN IRISH CONSPIRACY.

report that a vast insurrectionary conspiracy has been brought to light in Ireland will excite feelings of grave regret and concern throughout the Empire. Further information respecting the exact extent and depth of the conspiracy will he awaited with a great deal of interest. From the particulars which have so far been supplied and from the number of arrests which have been made it seems clear that the authorities have reason to believe that a widespread organisation is responsible for the allegedly treasonable movement and that they took action just in time to prevent a disconcerting rising. That the Sein Finn party is implicated need cause no surprise. Its disloyalty has become a matter of history. Its policy has, from considerations of expediency, been represented latterly by some of its supporters as a policy directed to securing for Ireland a form of government on the constitutional model that obtains in the British dominions. That is, however, a flagrant and deliberate misrepresentation. The Sinn Fein aim is purely separatist. It was publicly declared as such at the time of the Dublin rebellion in 1916. The leaders of that crazy rising, it will be remembered, issued a proclamation in which, with remarkable effrontery, they styled themselves " the provisional Government" of the Irish republic, a sovereign independent State. Whatever the extent to which it may have considered discreet to water down the statement of their aims for consumption by credulous people, the separatist character of the movement initiated and organised by them was unmistakable. Nor has there been any ground for the assumption that their plans underwent any change after their treasonable attempt to act upon the "living principle," which has been enunciated with approval by one of our weekly contemporaries, that "England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity," met with the ignominious failure it deserved. The leaders of that movement, who have been eulogised in New Zealand as " heroes "—those who paid the penalty of their crime being described as "martyrs"—remain traitors in heart, and tne latest developments suggest that they are ready for the performance of any act of treachery. The proclamation which has been issued from Dublin Castle relative to the alleged conspiracy states, it will be observed, as a 'fact that those who are concerned in the movement " have entered into treasonable communication with the Germans " and have been associated with an attempt on the part of Germany " to defame Irishmen's honour for German ends." There would be no such explicit declaration of German complicity if the authorities had not the most ample evidence to support it. Germany would assuredly use whatever dupes she could find in Ireland, or in s any other part of the British Empire, to make trouble and create strife such as might bo calculated to embarrass Great Britain; and it is not difficult to conclude that in misguided "heroes" of the type who declared, on the occasion of the rising in 1916, that they were "supported by gallant allies in Europe," she had willing tools ready to her hand. On the assumption that the existence of conspiracy has been fully established, the authorities in Ireland, who have, it seems, been twitted by the Sinn Fein'ers with being too timid to interfere with their disloyal proceedings, have performed a great public service by the skilful and expeditious manner in which they have struck at tie heads of the diabolical movement. The names of the more prominent among those who have been arrested suggest that it was an act of mistaken clemency on the part of the Imperial Government : to release last year all tho " heroes " of the Dublin rising who had been sentenced merely to terms of imprisonment, i

These included two men, at least, who were originally sentenced to death, and who have now been re-arrested. If they are as guilty now as they wore then, it would b© an act of grave weakness to deal again so tenderly with them. It is a melancholy reflection that those fanatical persons who poso as tho saviours of Ireland should prove to be the worst enemies of that country. It is impossible to resist the conviction that the occurrence of this conspiracy at this time and tho revelation of the influence which has been exerted in Ireland by ill-balanced and traitorous individuals must have the effect of postponing the date when that country will enter into the enjoyment of a largo measure of self-government.