DEATH OF JOHN REDMOND

Otago Witness, Issue 3339, 13 March 1918, Page 37

DEATH OF JOHN REDMOND

LONDON, March 6. Mr John Redmond, M.P., is dead, at the age of 66. Mr Redmond's health had been failing for some months. Death followed on a severe operation, whicn was rendered imperative owing to an inte6tinal obstruction. He made satisfactory progress for a few days, then heart failure supervened. in the House of Commons Mr Lloyd George said he would move the adjournment in connection with Mr Redmond's death, but there was urgent necessity to carry on the business. There was no difference of opinion regarding the ability, genius, eloquence, judgment, and dignity with which Mr Redmond advocated Irish policy. It was tragedy that h,e should be cut down before he achieved the great purpose of his life. He said: When I saw him last he was a broker} man; death was written on his face. His last words were a plea for concord between the two countries. Mr Asquith eaid Mr Redmond's death was an indescribable shock. Mr Redmond was a great parliamentarian, and .a true patriot. The House, Ireland, Great Britain, and the whole British Empire were impoverished by his loss. The, Press Bureau states that the Irish Convention passed a resolution expressing sorrow at Mr Redmond's death, and paid a tribute to • his invaluable services. The Convention has .adjourned until after the funeral. Mr- Redmond's death is generally deplored, particularly owing to the present critical situation of Irish affairs. Newspapers of all shades pay a tribute to his work and his sincerity, and sorrowfully comment on his departure on the eve of the accomplishment of his life's work. Mr John Edward Redmond was a son of W. A. Redmond, M.P. He was born at Waterford in 1851. He wa» educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and was called to the Bar at Gray's Inn in 1886, and subsequently to the Irish Bar, though he never practised. lie secured a position as clerk in the vote office of the House of Commons, his father at that time being a member for Ballytrent. He himsejf entered Parliament in 1881 as memiber for New Ross, being then 30 years of age. He has sat continuously in the House, but from 1885 to 1891 he represented New Wexford, and latterly Waterford. Throughout the S 6 years of membership he has been pro-" minently identified with the Irish party. As farty whip he rendered great service to the rish members, his thorough grasp of the procedure of the House being of good assistance to his party. At the time ofthe rupture of tno Irish party consequent on the Parnell scandals, Redmond- was the ■ m°st eloquent member of the minority who continued to recognise his leadership, and in 1891 he became the accredited leader of the Parnellites. In 1900 the two Nationalist parties were amalgamated under his leadership. In his earlier days in Parliament he was looked upon as one of the stormy petrels of the House, but as years wore on he was recognised as a statesman. The party of which he was leader held the balance of power, which enabled the Liberals to a large extent to retain office., after the elections of 1910. Though he declared that "Home Rule was the be-all and the end-all of the Irish policy and proframme," the Bill's passage through the louse of Commons found him showing a spirit of compromise and willingness to accept a modified form of Home Rule rather than risk loss of everything; and was rewarded bv the passage of the Bill in September, 1914. When war broke out he made an eloquent speech on the righteousness of the Allied cause, and promised Ireland's support and his party's observance of the political truce: but he declined a seat in the Coalition Cabinet in May, 1915. He was a prominent member of the Dublin Convention, now seeking to solve the Irish problem. On the platform he was an effective speaker, and in Ireland an orator. Mr Redmond's 'best service to his party was his Australasian undertaking: in 1883. as the result of which some £IO.OOO flowed into the party hat. It was during this tour that he married Johanna, daughter of Mr John Dalton, of New South Wales. He spoke in Dunedin in the old Queen's Theatre. Since then his son, William Archer Redmond, M.P. for East Tyronp. has visited Dunedin on similar errand, sneaking at the Garrison Hall. Maior William Redmond. M.P., brother of John Redmond, died of wounds in France in this war.

SKETCH BY MR A. G. GARDNER. The following sketch of the Irish Nationalist leader, whose death has been announced this week, extracted from " Pro-, phets, Priests, and Kings," by the editor of the Daily News, will be read with interest : When I first looked down upon the House of Commons there was one ligure that above all others touched the imagination. He sat. in the corner seat below the gangway, cold, isolated, silent, a man nursing his gloom wrath and his unconquerable hope. The sad eyes looked out with a sleepless passion from under the level and lowering brows. He affected you like the thunder-cloud. Presently, you felt, the forked lightning would leap out of the gloom and strike the offending earth. Ho held you by the fascination of the unknown. ' He was a dark secret —an idea incarnate. Near by him sat a young man of Napoleonic profile, the Roman nose boldly sculptured, the chin firm, rounded, protruding, the eye full and fearless. Today that young man, young no longer,, sits in the corner seat. The thundercloud has vanished. Instead there is something of the warmth and generosity of frank comradeship with the House. For Parnell was the symbol of Ireland's despair and Ireland's hate; Mr Redmond is the symbol of Ireland's hope and Ireland's expansiveness. He .is the leader in a happier day. The sky has cleared, and the end is in view. The old passions have passed away, and with the new and more humane and enlightened spirit has come the need of a new leadership. It required Parnell's fierce intensity to create the cause, and to carry it through the wilderness j it needs another strategy to enter the promised land. Parnell was the incomparable guerrilla chief, mysterious, secret, elusive, touching the imagination of- his fol-

lowers to a sort of frenzy of devotion; MiRedmond is the commander-in-chief of a regular army, pursuing his campaign in the open country according to the laws of Parliamentary strategy. He is not a dictator; he is the head of a staff. Mr Redmond could not wear the rebel robe, for his genius is Parliamentary and constitutional. He is, indeed, one of the ablest Parliamentarians in the House. He has the spirit of. Parliament in hie blood.. Four generations of his family have sat in the House, and he himself learned the rules as a clerk in the House, and later by breaking them hi those thrilling days when the duty of every Irish member was to smash the machine of government. When he rises in his spacious, authoritative way the House has that air of silence and respect which it only wears in the presence of a master. It is difficult to remember that this grave, senatorial figure, who comes into aotion with waving banners and measured pomp, learned the art of war in the fierce school of faction and rebellion. His baptism was in blood. It was in 1880 "that he made his first appearance in politics side by side with Parnell. He accompanied the chief on the platform at Enniscorthy, in his native Wexford, when Parnell was pelted with rotten eggs and brutally attacked. Parnell remained impassive through it all. '' When an egg striiok him on the head," said Mr Redmond in telling the story, " he pever even raised his hand, to brush it off, but calmly went on with his speech. Afterwards in the hotel he took his lunch as calmly while a tailor stitcheq his torn trousers." Later on that memorable day young Redmond was attacked by a mob in the streets, knocked down, and cut on the face. Parnell met him, and remarked, " Why, you are bleeding; what's the matter?" Being told, he said with his cold smile, " Well, you have shed your ■ blood for me at all events." Nor was his advent in the House less dramatic He hj.d intended to stand for the Wexford seat vacated by the death of his father, but Parnell selected Mr "Tim" Healy for the seat, and young Redmond loyally supported the chief's nominee. In the following February of 1881 he was returned for- Ross. "They were stirring times," he told me, " and I got a telegram from Parnell .to come at once. 1 crossed the Channel immediately, took my seat, and was suspended with all the rest of the party the same night for refusing to vote. But not before I had made my maiden speech. It was brief:, but conclusive. The Speaker called on me to withdraw, and I said, ' Mr Speaker, I decline to withdraw.' That was all; but I had broken the ice." He took his share in many such scenes. ." We were most of us high-spirited young fellows, fresh from the University, and enjoyed that rough campaigning." * To-day the House has no warmer admirer. " Putting aside its attitude to Ireland." he says, "it is the finest assembly in the world—so manly and generous. It has tenderness too. It is remorseless to .the bore, but the touch of sincere humanity goes to its heart. It came to love Biggar with his quaint figure and his interminable speeches. And you remember how, when Bradlaugh was dying, it passed a resolution cancelling the wrong it had done him. That was a fine and generous act." With all his apparent composure he has some awe of the House. "Familiarity does, not breed contempt," he said to me once. "I find it harder and not easier to address it than I used. I am discovering that I ' have nerves. . Whan I am going to make an important speech I am fidgety and unhappy." He is the Orator of the House—the last representative of. a tradition that has passed. Other men vise* to speak: he rises to deliver an oration. He advances, as it were, with his colours flying and his drums beating. It is no longer a- skirmish, but a general engagement. All his rhetorical legions are brought into action with pornp and ciroumstanc«. His commanding presence, his strong utterance, his unhurried manner give a certain dignity and authority to his lightest word. He could make the multiplication table sound as impressive as a funeral oration, and the alphabet would fall from his lips with the solemn cadence of Homeric verse. To hear him say "Mr Speaker, sir," is alone a liberal education in the art of saying nothing with immense seriousness. It is the oratory of the grand manner, like that of Mr Henry Chaphn; but there is "stuff" in his speech, while Mr Chaplin has only stuffing. With all his air of deliberation, he relies largely upon the moment. On one of the rare occasions when he wrote out his speech he " missed the points," picked up his notes, found them in a hopeless confusion, tried again and failed, had a further and unavailing search among his papers, now more hopelessly jumbled than over, put them away and sailed off before the wind of his portly eloquence. It was all done with perfect gravity. He is a man who can even break down with dignity ~~and repose. In many respects he is the last representative of Irishmen. He has none of the gay, irresponsible wit of his brother " Willie," the idol of the House, who has a tongue as swift as a Dublin jarvey's, and whose interjections explode like joyous crackers on the floor of the Chamber. Mr "Willie" refuses to be solemn. It is enough for him to be merry and mischievous. He holds that his brother has dignity enough for both. In the hot days after the " split," when he replied with, his delightful impulsiveness to some exasperating attacks by Mr- " Tim" Healy, his brother remonstrated with him on the ground that his words* were not " gentlemanly." One gentleman in the family is enough. John," he said with his delightful gaiety, and no doubt went off twirling" his shillelagh. Nor has he apv of that Celtic mystery and passion which give the philippics of Mr " Tim" Healy their touch of magic. Still less has he his spirit of impish mischief. Again, he has not the detachment of John Dillon, a patriot of the Brutus strain, simple, chivalrous, self*forgetful, a man who lives for a cause with a certain stainless purity that ennobles the House and enricnes our publio life. Mr Dillon is the poetry of patriotism; Mr Redmond is its politics. He is the plain, competent business man who has succeeded to th<? command of the concern and does his work with thoroughness and dispatch, but without naasinnate intensity or that tvrannic impulse that possessed Parnell. When Parnell was dethroned ho di<rl. If Mr Redmond was dethroned you feel that he would simply have more leisure for sport. No one has , ever doubted _ his patriotism; but he has nono of the bitterness of fanaticism. Ho is above all a man of the

world and of affairs. Tho air of the country blows about him, and he lovea the wholesome entertainment of life. You are not surprised to learn that he was a good cricketer and that he still follows the game with interest, that ho is happiest tramping the mountains with a dog and a gun, that ho can manoeuvre a salmon as skilfully as a Parliamentary motion, and sit a horse as firmly as ho sits in the saddle of the chief. He is alone a sufficient answer to the foolish view that the Irish have not the gift of self-government. He is one of the ablest generals in the House. He has brought his frail barque through the wildest rapids that any statesman ever navigated.. Through all the bitter war that followed the fall of Parnell he remained loyal to his old chief—loyal in the face of English morality and Irish clericalism. He marched out of the battle with his little band of nine, and wandered with them through the wilderness for nearly ten years. At lost he brought all the scattered flock together, and today even Tiger Tim consents to bear his mild yoke—at least for a time. He has the great virtue of never making enemies, for there is no poison in his shafts. He has about him a spacious and sunlit atmosphere in which the rank growth of personal bitterness cannot live. He can be generous even to .his political foes. ". I like Balfour," ho will tell you. "He bear* no malioe. When the round is over he i shakes hands. After I oamo out of prison in 1888 he met me in the lobby, ' I'm glad to see you back,' he said. 'I hope you are no worse for it.' And he saia it in a way that made you feel he meant It. Now that is not the way with ——." He will not even admit that Mr Balfour was wholly bad at Chief Secretary. "The worst Chief Secretary by far was ," and he mentions a name that fills one with a mild surprise. "No man of sensitive feeling," he says, "can fill that office long. . Birrell was too finely strung for it. It needs a man like Walter Long. ' I hunt three days a week and draw a fat cheque at the end of it,' he told an audienoo' in Dubjjin. He is 'one of the good type of r old Tories. You know he is half" an Irishman, and hunts in my country." He has, you see, a good word for everyone. If the old ferocities of the Irish issue have vanished from the House, it is largely due to him as well as to the softening | influence of time. He has no anti-British sentiment and will never talk of "cutting the painter." " Our stake in the Empire is too large for us to be detached,from' it," he said to me. "We Irish have peopled the waste places of Greater Britain. Our roots are Imperial as well as national." He rejoices in the new spirit that has come over Ireland. The old religious strife i» dying. "When I first went to Belfast, - I went' carrying my life in my hand. In those days you dared not be seen in the streets and had nowhere to speak save a remote schoolroom, and even theife you I were not safe. The last time I went toBelfast I spoke in the Ulster Hall, the largest building in the place, and a third | of the audience were Protestants. At the . close one after another of them came up and shook hands and spoke cordially about my speech. The world is growing better j and saner." Unlike Parnell, he is a Catholic, ■ but in his urbane way he has fought an herois ' fight with clericalism. When the Parnell".! split came he elected to stand by his political chief and to defy the lightnings of j the Church. , It needed courage. He has ' sat in his pew and heard himself de- S nounced by name from -the altar as .the anti-Christ." He has seen the congregation rise in a body /and walk out in revolt against the priest. His ultimate triumph was won without sacrifice, and it involved, the end of the political domination of the priesthood. The secular power of the priest '-.. was split on the rock of Parnellism. There have been moments of weakness. He made, a mistake in tactics when he responded to Cardinal Logue's appeal and brought his party over to support the Education Bill in the autumn session of 1902. And his action in moving the rejecton of the Irish Councils Bill at the Convention did not square with his reception of the Bill in the House. His judg r ment is sometimes overruled by exipedi- . ency. He is not the autocrat of his party, - as Parnell was; he rules by consent. _ When Home Rule comes, it is to be hoped that it will find him still in the saddle. It will be well for Ire- . land and well for England ' that his | suave spirit should give the note to the j new relationship of the two countries. For the fundamental fact about Mr Redmond is that he stands for peace and goodwill. He is by nature the least combative of men. i He has been fighting all his days, but he has always fought as though he loved his . foes, and when he passes from St. Stephen's at Westminster to St. Stephen's Green in Dublin, he will not leave a single bitter memory behind him. -