SINN FEIN ACTIVITY.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 14439, 27 October 1917, Page 6

SINN FEIN ACTIVITY.

DUBLIN, September 28. The Sinn Fein party m Ireland is extending its activities and is forming local clubs everywhere throughout the country. It still remains!, however, rather a pervading sentiment than a definite organisation. It is impossible to gay which particular individuals are the authorised exponents oi its purposes, and there is a good deal of divergence both of tone and substance between the various pronouncements smade from its platforms. Some speakers continue to preach revolution by armed forces, while others appear to aim at a programme much hearer the limits of practical! politics. ' ■ ■ ' . ' ■ ■ "' • ■

The Associated Press correspondent has talked with somie who are very influential m the movement, to whom, a free Ireland^under the crown is quite a welcome idea, provided it does not! mean subjection to the British Cabinet. This is not so very far from , the ' Horn c Rule that Canada enjoys. The great talk of the support given at the electiqhs to Sinn Fein candidates comes rather; from men dissatisfied with the conduct of current politics and the necessary restrictions of the war than from thope who adhere either m principle or: praW ticeto methods of Violence. ; ■'■■'■

There is a continuously hopeful feeling that the, Irish convention may turn out a good workable scheme of self-goverri-menti and the conviction is growing that if it does so Sinn Fein will be left without followers.

Meanwhile the military authorities are treating the situation on the assumption that the extremists mean what they say. They are, m fact, calling tlie bluff; So long as there is the threat of another rebellion, they 'take the threat seriously, and seem determined to make very clear, the hopelessness of repeating the wild* experiences of Easter week, 1916. V