"PATRICK FORD!"

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXIX, Issue 135, 31 July 1911, Page 6

"PATRICK FORD!"

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE CRY. r i’he erics of “Patrick Ford!” that were uttered hy Unionists during the disturbance in the House of Commons, refer to a man whose name has been very prominent in the Unionist Press during the last twelve months. Ford is the leaden, of one of the leaders, of the Irish party in America. He has for many years edited the “Irish World,” in New York, and has probably done more than any other Irishman in the States to maintain interest in the cause of Home Rule, and the flow of money into the treasury of the Irish Nationalist Party. When Mr Redmond visited America last year to gov more money for the cause, Ford announced at a meeting in New York that 10,000 dollars had been subscribed hy readers of Ids paper. Unionist journals drew attention to the fact that Ford had advocated the employment of dynamite and other methods of violence in dealing with England. It was declared that Mr Redmond was master of Air Asquith, and Ford was master of Air Redmond; therefore Ford was dictator in British politics. It was pointed out, for instance,- that in 1888 Ford wrote in the “Irish World” that “half a dozen dynamite shells would have more effect on the Castle and the police than all the costly demonstrations of ‘.resistance’ ” ; that in 1899 lie wrote, “If there is any dynamite or lyddite that will blow the British Empire up into the clouds or down into the bottomless pit, why, lot it he used, and forthwith. We believe in till that sort of thing”; and that as recently as 1907 lie approved of the use of dynamite, but said he was also in sympathy with the Irish Parliamentary Party, “so admirably led by Air John Redmond.” In September last, the Irish, Directory, with Air Redmond in the chair, expressed their “profound and grateful appreciation of the immense services rendered to the cause of Ireland by Patrick Ford.”