The Most Irish of Living Irishmen.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIV, Issue 22, 1 June 1910, Page 2

The Most Irish of Living Irishmen.

Mr. John Redmond (Leader of the Irish Nationalist party in the House of Commons) visited Cork on May 2(2, on the occasion of a large gathering of his followers. At the same time many O’Brienites were visiting Cork in the interests of the "All for Ireland" I,eague, and special police precautions were taken to prevent disturbances. In spite of this a tierce fight between the two factions occurred at Mr. Redmond's meeting. Mr. .Daniel Sheehan, M.l‘. for Mid-Cork, being badly assaulted. During the fight clubs, stones and bottles were freely used, a hundred injured people being treated in the infirmaries. An additional cable on May 27th states that further rioting took place between the two factions, the excitement having spread to Newmarket, a county town witli a population of 1000. The police were powerless to stop them fighting and a number of bouses were wrecked. Finally the police fired on the rioters, shooting one man dead.

(j ! r FRESH phase in the fierce duel / I between John Redmond and J William O'Brien for supremacy in the ranks of the Home Rulers threatens to send the man from Cork to America. Mr. O’Brien’s only object in visiting the United States, avers “The Freeman’s Journal,” “is to dry up the financial springs which water the oasis of Home Rule,” an allegation which the gentleman concerned concedes to be well founded. William O’Brien’s rebellion against John Redmond is acknowledged in Irish papers faitliful to the challenged chieftain to be the most successful as it has proved to be the most! brilliant campaign witnessed within the ranks of the Home Rulers since Parnell unhorsed his own predecessor. A dozen

Home Rulers have been chosen to the new Parliament in flat defiance of Redmond and in open support of O'Brien's rebellion. Should another general election occur this year, Mr. O'Brien, predicts “The Cork Accent,” will have no difficulty in doubling the number. Had the revolt from Redmond been precipitated a little earlier, adds this daily, a much larger number of seats in the south and west of Ireland must have been wrested from Redmond’s control. Had the latter fulfilled his promise to Asquith to support the Budget, William O’Brien, sworn foe of that famous measure of taxation, would to-day, admits the London

“Times,” be filling Parnell’s old place as uncrowned King of Ireland. Yet the general public has still to realise that there is a feud between Redmond and O’Brien and that O’Brien is the real master of the political situation in London. Of that feud, the London “Standard” affirms that it is a war of temperaments as much as of policies. It translates into practical politics the terms of the contrasts between these men. John Redmond is taciturn, square of jaw and chin, hawk-like in glance. William O’Brien is an animated vocabulary, with the .brow of a bard and the eye of an inspired dreamer. John Redmond is stern of aspect and intensely .erious in phraseology. William O’Brien is mellifluous, eager in. salutation, at times merry, al-

ways approachable. John Redmond dresses like a London financier and looks prosperous, to say nothing of his tendency to express in his face that silent sense of the value of his own time which forbids trilling. William O’Brien lounges about in soft hats and short eoats, a volume of some Italian poet in his hand, a quotation from Shakespeare on his lips, and a ready laugh that invites and encourages conversation. John Redmond has few gestures and William O’Brien can never convey an idea without a wave of one of his long arms. William O’Brien's grand resource is speech. The inveterate refuge of Join*

Redmond Is silence. William O’Brien fa perpetually revealing the working of his restless and dart'ing intellect. John Redmond shrinks from the slightest manifestation of an intention until the hour has! come for action. William O’Brien despises the art of the parliamentary tactician. John Redmond believes in organising, directing and controlling the Homa Rule party in a compact regiment of voters for use in crucial divisions. William O’Brien loathes bargains with the English politicians and is fighting for tW cause of his country- without regard f® the oppressor. John Redmond dearly, loves to traffic in the spoils of legislation with the Ministry of the day. William O’Brien is a man of letters with the outlook upon life of the poet. He has written novels, collected pictures in Italy and read the classics in the original. John Redmond can be picturesque neither in speech nor action. His voice is clear and forceful. He chooses his words deliberately. He is sane. William O'Brien cheers his auditors with the slogan of freedom, overwhelms them with the music of his accents, puts his gesticulating arms and his heaving breast into his discourse until a whole audience, catching the fever of his fury, springs from chairs to tables and rends the sky with its universal roar of “Ireland forever!” Sarcastic students of the feud between' O'Brien and Redmond are delighted with:' the last-named gentleman's despair ati these displays of Celtic frenzy. Applause is to O’Brien the proof of the' vitality of the great cause, whereas to Redmond it is sound and fury, signifying nothing. William O’Brien, again, is Cork incarnate. John Redmond represents the spirit of Dublin. Cork his beloved native Cork, is set high upon the altar of. William O'Brien’s patriotism, for that city is the centre of all his aspirations. His very organ is styled “The Cork Accent.” It is complained of Willianj O’Brien in “The Freeman’s Journal”— John Redmond's “organ—that he sees only Cork, hears but Cork. He reverts to Cork unceasingly, for it is the ancient capital of Ireland’s kings, the home and the cradle of Ireland's genius, the theme of his majestic, periods, the constituency he represents.' John Redmond reflects the commercialism of common sense Dublin, while never forgetting that he is by.birth an. Irish gentleman. But he ia Dublin; stately, like Dublin, and destitute, like Dublin, of the picturesqiieiiess of Irish lakes and Irish fields. O’Brien, in the language of his personal organ, belongs to that Ireland which smiling lakes beautify, while Redmond stands for an Ireland grdvn commercial through industrial enterprise and solidly solvent finance. O'Brien, re-' torts “The Freeman’s Journal,” weeps foi’ Ireland and Redmond works for her. William O'Brien, in the opinion of the more disinterested English spectators of his latest political adventures, speaks home to the heart of Ireland more tellingly than his rival Redmond. “O’Brieili has the tremendous advantage of looking Irish,” to quote the London "Post,” “and Redmond seems excessively English.” The contrast was telling when the new members of the House of Commons were sworn in. Redmond was dressed in a suit of tho latest city cut. O’Brien appeared in light grey, as if he were still 'beneath the. skies of that Italian landscape lie so reluctantly quitted to> plunge afresh into the turmoils of the Home Rule agitation. Redmond sat by, himself, pondering, abstracted. O’Brien was surrounded by eager supporters, pledging fidelity. O’Brien’s genius originally asserted itself in the hatching of conspiracies. Perhaps the most famous of all his ideasf in this line was the plot he conceived for utilising the strike of the Dublin police in an attempt to seize Dublin Castle and carry off the Viceroy of Ireland. Unfortunately, as William O’Brien viewed the matter, the “Irish Republican Brotherhood” refused to join in the conspiracy and the project collapsed. Parnell, then at the apex of his renown, seems to have fallen in with the scheme, but when it lost its aspect of tragedy, and became pure comedy, Parnell assured! O’Brien that “Ireland must be freed prosaically, practically, not emotionally and dramatically.” It is the one truth, opines the London “Post,” which! the temperament of William O’Brien forbids him to learn. He is essentially poetic from impulse and ineradicably romantic because of the cast of his mind. The Home Rule agitation is an epic tg him. He creates in hia countrymen thai

illusion that O’Connell has come back to them. “He should 'be seen mustering his indignation when he recounts the long history of his country’s misfortunes, her oppressions, her woes —when he wakes from the tomb these generous heroes, those unswerving citizens who have ensanguined with their blood the scaffolds of Ireland, her plains and lakes —when he is exhibiting to his brave adherents the lamentable spectacle of her liberty wounded by the sword of England” He is never so truly himself as when pouring the oil of his eloquence upon the flames of Irish patriotism. His voice descends to the lowest of whispers without the loss of a word in any ear. He points a finger at some imaginary or apostrophised tytant. The execration is hissed with the sibilant effectiveness of the finest tragedian on the French stage. He passes into a trance before tens of thousands of people who seem obedient to every impulse emanating from his brain. Never does the element of anticlimax operate to dispel the intensity of the moment. He has visions upon the platform and discourses ip a trance, says one London daily, puzzled to account for that ascendancy over the minds of Irishmen which enables William (d’Brien to plunge his country into uproar, to defy Redmond and to revolutionise the whole plan of campaign upon which the Nationalist organisation has been built up. The great' enemy of Ireland is Redmond. That is the gospel according to O’Brien, and the history of Home Rule for the next few years, says the London “Telegraph,” will have to be studied through the maze of the emotions of William O’Brien, his poetie license, his Celtic eloquence, his prejudices, and the spell of his personality. To London observers, the days of John Redmond’s supremacy are no more. The power has passed t'o O’Brien. Years have passed since first William O’Brien implored the Corkonians to march, claymore in hand, to the encounter against English despotism. Time has made him not less bold but more adroit. He preaches to-day not' tlie triumph of Irish force but the triumph of Irish ideas, “the only triumph which sheds no blood, the only one which rests upon opinion and justice.” On the platform William O’Brien has been described as less an orator than a spectacle. His best effects are attained in the open air. He treads slowly into view, the grey head bent upon the ground. The wild applause seems to make no impression upon him. Then he lifts his great eyes to the audience and slowly extends a pair of arms to enjoin silence. There ensues a solemn hush terminated in the wildest outbursts of laughter as the orator begins his speech with a cruel sarcasm at the expense of John Redmond.

That measure of veneration inspired in the average Irishman's heart for the personality of William O’Brien owes less, however, to the picturesqueness of the man—great as it is—than to the connection of his career with the heroic Eige of the Home Rule agitation. He saw something of the Fenian rising in 1867. as the London “Post” observes. At first in Cork, afterward on “The Freeman’s Journal” and later still as editor of “United Ireland,” he was a vigorous assailant of landlordism and of Saxon domination. For many a weary year he was the trusted lieutenant of Charles Stewart Parnell, to the blank amazement of all who understood both. Parnell was splendidly poised and cool. O’Brien was then what he is now, prone to verbose indiscretion, eager to take iip a challenge, irreconcilable. “Each Was indispensable to the other,” as .the London daily says, “because each was the antithesis of the other.” O’Brien shared Parnell's imprisonment in KilXnainham Gaol, when Forster was Gladstone’s chief secretary for Ireliind, Q’Brien spending his time chiefly in the Composition of infuriated letters, which Parnell with difficulty persuaded O’Brien to destroy. No political asset could be more substantial than that Cork accent which is

the boast, of William O’Brien and the despair of his great rival. Never has the richness of spoken English delighted the fastidious ear with so rolling a volume as political oratory attains in Cork, n city which, as the late Lord Randolph Churchill onee declared, had made his native language “tit for Heaven.’-