"A DANGEROUS COOK.”

Otago Witness, Issue 3348, 15 May 1918, Page 3

"A DANGEROUS COOK.”

TO THE EDITOR DAILY TIMES. Sir, —I think you could with adv.anta.fro to yourself and your readers change tho cook who serves up the “Irish Stow’’ in your paper every Saturday morning. Tho * stuff has become perfectly nauseous. She must have had an attack of “vertigoitis.” In no other way can we account for tho manner in which she mixes tho unsavoury ingredients. With her the last comes first and tho first. last; she mixes cause with effect and effect with cause with a beautiful disregard of truth and decency. Witness her attempt to explain tho recrudescence of that disease called bigotry, which at the present time outrivals influenza in the hold it has got on a certain class of neurotics in the country. According to your cook the ‘‘Tablet microbe” is the cause. What about Australia? What about England, where Cardinal Bourne, whom no one will accuse of being unpatriotic, had lately to warn the people against tho disease? What about America, where the disease is making itself felt at present? The “Tablet microbe” has not reached there, not at least in sufficient quantity to cause the disease. No man can with any respect for truth accuse the Tablet of being the_ causa of the bigotry in this country, for it was scandalously rampant before tho Tablet said one word about it. And now, because the Tablet has dared to expose the disease in all its nakedness, it is accused of being its cause. Such is how history is writ. Witness again your cook’s argument irt your issue of April 27. Because a Mr Brennan moved in tho Federal Parliament a motion to the effect “that conscription could not bo applied to Ireland any authority exterior to tho Irish this motion is held up to ridicule, and wo are told in effect that because Mr Brennan and Archbishop Manuix, born in Ireland, cart came out to these countries and enjoy the privileges of the country they have no right to object to England enforcing conscription on Ireland. Your cook could go homo from here to England and. if tho people thought her worthy, could enter Parliament there and enjoy tire privileges of the country. Would she therefore advocate that England could enforce conscription on New Zealand against the will of the people here ? And yet New Zealand has no pretence o£ being a nation “exterior to Britain.” Witness again the attempt to hash up tho old canard that Ireland is over-repre-sented in tho British Parliament. The truth is, as everybody knows, that Ireland is for all practical purposes disfranchised. I have never yet known of a Bill introduced into the British Parliament by tho majority of tho Irish members for the betterment of Ireland passing through the House. This is a well-known fact. Now an effort is being made to put tho blaxno for the rejection of Homo Rule on tho Irish people, or at least upon their representatives. They can have it if they will only agree. Is the slogan. It Is well known that the Government has told tho irreconcilable minority to hold out and they will not be forced to agree. Bet me ask what business oould be carried on in Parliament or out of it under such conditions? Should

we have a central Parliament in New Zealand to<->y, had the irrcconcilables been advised the Home Government to hold out? Should we haw a central Federal Government in Australia? Could any business governed by directors be carried on ii the minority had the right ■to hold_ out? In no business in the world, and in no Parliament, and in no country do the same conditions exist as exist in Ireland, where the minority are'allowed to act the dog-in-the-manger' policy backed up by all the power of England. If the Irish are not enlisting it is not that there, is something wrong With "Mick" and "Pat;" the reason will have to bo sought in another direction. "We had served up to us one morning an account -of what the Connaught Rangers did at Salamanca and other places. No doubt tho poor fellows often picked the "nuts out of the f.rc," but they got very little of the nuts to eat. Most of them who returned died in the workhouses, and were buried in a nameless pauper's grave. It often haopened that when they were picking the "nuts out of the fire" England's home army stood guard over tho " crowbar brigade" while they pulled down the cottage over the fathers and mothers of the Irish soldiers, and sent these fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, and sweethearts in the emigrant ships to serve under a foreign flag. No wonder they carried the sword of bitterness in their hearts 1 You would feel very hurt if your mother was abused and continually belied by those who are no better than she. You may be very charitably inclined; even so, you would not have .much sympathy for tho neighbour in his trouble if he belied, abused, and ridiculed your mother. You may, therefore, have a fellow feeling for the Irishman at homo or abroad when he hears his mother country belied, abused, and held up to ridiculo by" ono who has nothing to boast about except that he has tho bully on his side.

Personally, I believe that tho people in Ireland should have tho right to say •whether they will have conscription or not, as the people of this country should have the right to speak for themselves in such a, matter of life and death as this is. And because Germany has not given the right to the people that is no reason why other countries should not give it. Two wrongs do not maJco a right. I pray every day, and earnestly hope, that the Allies will win the war, and win it soon; and I say flolomnly that the people in Ireland and those abroad who own Ireland as their motherland are not in any ■enso; but they have their rights at homo »nd abroad, and until these rights are recognised by the stronger party they cannot in

reason be expected to bo enthusiastic in strengthening the stronger party, whose strength has been used in the past—and, indeed at present—to coerce the weaker party. Ireland on two occasions recently offered to forget the past and to throw all her strength in with tho Allies. In neither case was the offer accepted. On the contrary, a series of bungling and muddling was begun which has brought things to such a pass to-day that is a scandal to our civilisation. A healthy condition of things will not arise while we have to feed on stuff like the " Irish stew " your nook serves up to your readers on Saturday mornings. Better change the cook.— t am, etc., James Coffey. St. Joseph's Cathedral, May 11.