HOME RULE QUESTION.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 August 1916, Page 6

HOME RULE QUESTION.

To the Editor. Sir,—l beg to tlmnk Mr. W. A. Quin for his prompt answer to my question. I asked why ho saw "red" at the mention of the name of Ireland. His reply is: "Bound to no clime, and victor o'er the grave, as X claim to be, I am convinced that the national .spirit is inimical to religion." This is very dangerous preaching at the present time, when this nation and the Empire of which it is a part stand in such need of patriots. The Defence Department should sec- to it. But apart from this, I pity Mr. Quin from the depths of my heart, for 'he is that most unhappy of creatures—the man without a fatherland. He feds no responsive thrill when his heart-cords touch t'he fibres ot the soil out of which his flesh was formed; he has no impassioned hands to lift to her holy mountains, nor ear attuned to catch the spiritvoice that answers in their echoes. "For liini no minstrel-rapture.? swell; The wretch, concentred all in self, ' Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down To the vile dust, from whence he sprung, Unwept, imhonored and unsung." Xo wonder Mr. Quin felt called upon to rebuke the patriotic dean. Satan, 110 doubt, has rebuked him, too, as lie 'has rebuked many a patriot from the days of Job. For love of the land l that' bore us is incompatible with Satan's religion." 1 But not with the religion, of Christ, Who, as the dean reminded us last Sunday, wept a patriot's tears over His own beloved city and country. But as my pen is not forceful enough to rebuke a man who proudly and defiantly claims against the divine spirit of nationality, let me quote these beautiful words spoken by the dean at the mass meeting in the Winter Show buildings at the beginning of the war: '"lt ; s x pleasant and glorious thing to die for one's country,' 'wrote the great Roman poet two thousand years ago, and there is not one spot in ail this poor world so dull, so gross, so barbaric as not to resound with thrilling echoes of that immortal verse. The far-off regions of northern Russia are not bleak enough to make those echoes chill and cheerless, nor has beauty's fatal gift the .powei to make them pall upon the toilers in tha fair fields of gentle France. These echoes cast a halo more potent, because more holy, than that of high romance around the vine-clad hills, and feudal cistles, and lovely legends of the Rhine land, and they stir with more than the music of a mother's voice the heart of the magnificent Irish, whose priests have so often blessed the sword, and: whose sons have been so often proud to bear it. Those echoes have become the inspiration of the art and literature of all nations, they are the pulse of every patriot's heart, and the nostril-breath by which the hero lives. Harmonising with the music of war's bugle-call, their influence is like magic. Glider that influence I behold the timid becoming brave, the hard becoming sympathetic, the selfish becoming dangerous; I behold the weakest rushing with joy to defy danger and death to save their country's honor, and my whole being thrills with joy, for I now know that religion must live for eve*, and that love must live for ever, for religion, love and patriotism, gracious, heaven-born trinity, are sharers in one and the same immortality." After the egregious mess this gentleman has made of a simple English sentence, his new declaration that lie was expressing on another mattei what he believed to be the views of the highest Catholic authorities, is of 110 value. All your readers without exception will, of course, look upon the dean as a safer exponent of Catholic views than he. Since he is unable to give any safe information to youi readers, he should for his own advantage study matters calmly and deeply, and he will not again have to apologise for his coarseness. Let him, I say, study carefully, and he will find that the Catholic authorities, including the New Zealand Tablet, hold exactly the dean's opinion, an opinion he has often expressed in the words in which G. K. Chesterton refers to 1795: "A rebellion broke out in Ireland, and the Government that suppressed it was ten times more lawless than the rebellion." : Should he hesitate to accept this opinion let him read the damning evidence that is now being wrung from English officers before the Commission that is sitting in Dublin. Let hiin never take his eyes off that Commission while it sits. This will be a safer and wiser occupation than "belling the cat."—l am. etc., J-XO. ADAMS. Hawera, August 23. To the Editor. Sir,—Mr. Asquith and a Home Rule Cabinet were returned to power with possibly the largest majority any party has had in three generations. Ave the Homo Rule majority and the electors Anglophobes? The tortuous wisdom of Mr. W. A. Quin would make them so, but as that gentleman seems to have some knowledge of the Bible, he may for his profit look up the text which tells how the wisdom of the wise hath been confounded.—l am, etc., L. 0. HOOKER. Hawera, 'August 24. To the Editor. Sir, —Did I read P. J. Power's letter correctly when he stated that the Sinn Fein rebellion was suppressed and the damage to buildings in O'Connell street was the work of "British Huns"? What a slander on our British troops! P. J. 'Power knows perfectly well that all the rioting in Ireland was a pro-German outbreak, and any person who attempts to justify it is as had as they were. Mr. P. O'Dea's lament on behalf of 'Dean Power is puerile. lie glibly quotes a number of traitors, who met a just fate, as patriots, and quotes largely from the Commission's report. What about this, Mr. O'Dea: "Wherever the priests were disloyal, Sinn Feiners and traitors flourished, and wherever the priests were loyal there was "peace and tranquility"? This also from the Commission's report. A great writer said a few years ago: "The day Home Rule is assured for Ireland you will find the Church of Rome out against it." In conclusion, allow me to quote for the dean's special benefit what St. Paul said about certain Governors of the Church: "There were many insubordinate, silly talkers," especially of his class, "who ought to be bridiled. Such men overturn whole families and cause grave dissension among the people."—l am. etc., PATRIOT. Stratford, August 25.