The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 1900. 'PRO-BOERS' AND 'TRAITORS.'

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVII, Issue 10, 8 March 1900, Page 17

The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. THURSDAY, MARCH 8, 1900. 'PRO-BOERS ' AND 'TRAITORS.'

LLE. d' Au3ialb once said of Madame de Maintenon, wife of Louis XIV. : ' I have seen her divert the king by a thousand in\ entious for four hours together, without

repetition, yawning, or slander.' No doubt it was a task — and she said it was — to amuse a man who was no longer amusable. For the King was old and crusty and a trifle sour, and the Madame was no longer young. Bufc to tickle the dulled fancy of senile royalty for hours at a stretch, and

to do so without a breath of slander — well, that was an uncommon feat even for the days of the Louis the Great. A task almost as ticklish falls to the lot of the editors of the daily Press who have to while away the leisure hours of the somewhat finicky and exacting Louis Quatorze of our day — King Demos. He finds repetition a weariness of spirit, dulness the capital crime ; but he winks benevolently at a seasonable bit of slander. In the circumstances it is no easy task for the editor — or his staff — to, day after day, avoid unwarranted reflections against somebody's fair fame, when, in the words of Lewis Carroll's Walrns, he has To talk of many things : Of shoes and Bhips and sealing-wax. Of cabbages and kings, And why the sea is boiling hot, And whether pigs have wings,

and the thousand and one other wise and foolish themes that go to make up the modern daily. Just now the fleeting fancy of our local King Public demands of fche editor an exuberant expression of loyalty — not of the quiet and steady kind that, like true bravery, prefers to speak by deeds ; but of the vociferous, evanescent, jingle-jangle order that had its origin during the Turco-Russian war amidst the garish surroundings of a music-hall stage in London.

It is no easy task to editorially tickle readers' fancy time after time with so paltry a presentation of so grand a theme — a presentation of it, too, that sternly demands the suppression of every unpleasant fact, tie publication of all sorts of noisy fiction, and the substitution of sounding nonsense for sober and dignified comment. In such circumstances there often lies a strong temptation to enhance one's own reputation for loyalty, and at the same time vary the monotony of eternally harping upon the same strident note, by casting unmerited aspersions upon the loyalty of others. British journalists are singularly free from such squalid folly. Adverse opinions as to the origin and conduct of the war find the freest and fullest expression in the editorial columns of British newspapers of repute — in fact, in the whole Liberal Press of Great Britain. And nobody is scandalised. British pulpits deplore the war ; Scottish Presbyterian clergy cry aloud for its discontinuance. And nobody is on fire. Such tolerance is, however, not to be found in the British colonies that lie south of the line. In New Zealand reputable journalists denounce the great and progressive Liberal .Party as pro-Boers. They attack, or permit attacks upon, our Agent-General for the crime of forwarding war news which was then and subsequently admitted to be correct. And in the epidemic of suspicion there have been some who ventured to impeach the loyalty of the Irish nation, and even to make sneaking insinuations against the fidelity of the Irish soldiers that are doing what has been termed ' the hoight of the fightin' ' in the present South African campaign. An editor does well to keep his feet warm. He does better still to keep his head cool. And an ice-bag would be a useful adjunct to several editorial sanctums in this Colony just now. For there probably lies at the bottom of all this fanaticism of suspicion somewhat of the political brain-fever which is frequently coincident with serious crises in a protracted war. The ' we-are-betrayed ' mania that followed Sedan, and the 'Prussian spy ' mania that marked the early days of the siege of Paris, were conspicuous instances in point. Both passed away. But before the ' spy ' epidemic was spent it had resulted in the violent death of a number of respectable Frenchmen and foreigners who had no more communication with the German enemy than they had with the builders of the Pyramids of Egypt. We are pleased to regard the Parisian population as fickle and too much tyrannised by feeling. But our own pet ' pro-Boer' and ' traitor' mania is in its way as unreasoning and intolerant, even in the day of rushing victory, as was the wild and agonising cry of ' treason ' that went up in the streets of Paris after the crowning disaster of Sedan.

The pagan priests of ancient Rome had, in their solemn functions, an attendant to remind them of their mortality. And in times of ferment such as the present our public, too, require certain things to be brought home to them, ' lest they forget, lest they forget.' One useful reminder at the E resent juncture is this : that the Irish fighting man has een all through the present century, and is still, a chief

mainstay of the Empire. And another is this : that he has been ever true to his salt. Irish brains have directed, and Irish muscle has aided, the best British military achievements of the past hundred years. The two great British Commanders-in-Chief of the nineteenth century were the Duke of Wellington and Lord Wolseley — both Irishmen. Mr. Stead says of Lord Wolseley that *he is Irish through and through.' 4He is,' adds Mr. Stead 'one of the long roll of distinguished Irishmen by whose aid we have builD up and defended our Empire.' Among the other notable empire-builders of Irish nationality were Lord Gough, Sir Charles James Napier, and Sir Eyre Coote. Most of the prominent military leaders of Great Britain at the present time owe their birth or parentage to ' the emerald gem of the western world.' Lord Wolseley has been already mentioned. Lord Roberts was born in Cawnpore of Irish parents. He glories in his Irish nationality, and has probably more of the pride of race than any officer in the British service. Lord Kitchener, Generals Sir William Butler and Sir Bindon Blood, and Generals White French, Clery, and KellyKenny are all Irishmen. So is Lord Beresford — ' Irish to the back-bone and spinal marrow,' as somebody has described him. According to a recent Blue Book, at the close of 1898, 165,038 non-commissioned officers and men in the British army were English, 28,358 Irish, and 17,285 Scottish. In his Dictionary of Statistics for 18tt9 Mulhall says : ' Compared with population, we find that England produces five soldiers per thousand inhabitants, Scotland four, and Ireland six.' In other words, in proportion to her population, Ireland furnishes the regular army — that is, the fighting line — with 20 per cent, more troops than England and 50 per cent, more than • Bonnie Scotland.' Other things being equal, we may legitimately conclude that the Green Isle suffers proportionately when the cannons roar and the rifle-fire crackles over the field of battle and the blood begins to flow.

But it would seem Lo bo the settled tradition of the British army, ever since the well-tried days of the Peninsula, that the brunt of the fighting shall fall to the Irish and the Scottish regiments in every place where 'England's farflung battle line ' is to be seen. Theirs is ever ' the gap of danger,' and, in the words of an American writer, 'they get more than the lion's share when the tail-twisting fairly begins. 1 The present war in Sout.h Afiica is no exception to what seems to be the well-established rule. Nobody needs to be told how the gallant Scottish troops suffered, through somebody's blundering, at the M odder. The first bayonet charge at the Boers, and the first hill-capture in the present campaign were the work of the Irish troops. The Dublin Fusiliers, the Scottish Borderers, and the Connaught Rangers were the first to gain a footing on the north bank of the Tugela, amidst a murderous concentrated fire from the Boer trenches. The actions at Dundee, Elandslaagte, Nicholson's Nek, Grobler's Kloof, Frere, Langverwacht Spruit, Pieter's Hill, and at various points along the line of the Tugela, will ever be associated with the gallant dash and fierce elan of the Irish troops. At what is called by some ' the battle of the Tugela ' the Irish troops constituted only 20 per cent, of the British forces engaged. They had 70 per cent, of the total number killed in the engagement. The Dublin Fusiliers showed their gallantry even on the verge of their great disaster of October 20. ' Let us make a name for ourselves,' was their cry. ' Fix bay'nets, boys, an' let us die like men ! ' The generals who conducted the relief of Kimberley were Lord Roberts, Lord Kitchener, and Generals Kelly-Kenny and French — Irishmen all. French it was who, just in the nick of time, completed the circle around Cronje after a rapid march from Kimberley. General White, who, in i the face of disease and hunger, held an unrelaxed grip upon beleaguered Ladysmith, is a County Antiim man. And, according to the cable messages, another Irishman, Lord Kitchener, bore the brunt of the heavy fighting which led to the relief of the pent-up and suffering garrison at a moment when it had only four days' provisions left. This gallantry and fidelity of the Irish officers and soldiers is no mere isolated instance. It is one of the most conspicuous ; and constant facts of British military history. * I never read an account of a British battle,' said Max O'Rell, ' without seeing mention made of the gallantry of the Irish

troops.' And in hotly defending his countrymen against such cowardly insinuations as have been referred to in the second paragraph of this article, Lord Roberts recently said that they ' have ever been among the first to lay down their lives, whether against the Boers or against any other nationality.'

We cannot find in the history of any nation or empire that ever existed an instance in which n conquered country rendered such conspicuous and faithful military service to its conqueror. And that service is steadily and loyally rendered despite the fact that, through all those years, the Irish people have been subjected to galling political disabilities which forbid any claim upon them for such sacrifice and fidelity by those who guide the destinies of the Empire. On the very day that the Connaught Rangers fought like furies under Buller at the Tugela River, ' 22 Connaught Catholics,' says a Scottish paper, ' were ordered by a Dublin Castle emissary to stand by, and forbidden to take any part in the trial of one of their co-religionists, whose fate was left to the consideration of 12 picked Protestants ' whose sympathies were notoriously anti-Catholic. To this hour jury-packing is the scandal of successive British administrations in Ireland. Judges are appointed solely with references to their political leanings. Despite emancipation, Catholic religious Orders are to this day in Ireland illegal associations. Till 1893, no Irish farmer could safely take an interest in land. Even in this year of grace evictions are carried out and property created by the tenant farmers is ruthlessly confiscated — a state of things which would create a revolution in New Zealand in 48 hours. A Royal Commission showed a few years ago that over £100,000 000 had been in 50 years extorted from that poverty-stricken country by her wealthy neighbour — or at the rate of about £2,750,000 annually beyond Ireland's fair contribution to the Imperial revenue. And the population of that unhappy Cinderella of the nations has melted away from some 9,000,000 in 1815 to 4,704,750 in 1891. And still the people continue to fly from a land that has been visited by the worst of all the varied curses of class legislation. And mark ye, good masters all : This unhappy course of legislation is driving the chief stream of emigration to other flags, and giving them the benefit of brawn and brain that, under happier circumstances, might have been retained for the defence of the British Empire. That blunder was committed twice before on a vast scale, and with calamitous results : (1) in the days that followed the fall of Limerick, when the flower of Ireland's chivalry took service on the Continent of Europe ; and (2) after the destruction of Irish industries in the supposed interests of British manufacturers, when great numbers of sturdy fanners and artisans were forced to seek a home beyond the Atlantic. In both instances, the Irish emigrants and their descendants were to the lands of their adoption as true as the needle to the pole. As a result of the first blunder, Irish troops, that, under a wise and enlightened policy, might have been used to safeguard British interests, were forced to take service under other flags. They were pitted against England at Foutenoy, Ramilies, Malplaquet, and on many another hard-fought field ; and the blunder of statesmen made an English king exclaim in the bitterness of his soul : ' Cursed be the laws that deprive me of such subjects ! ' It is the story of the übiquitous ' Kelly and Burke and Shea ' over again :—: —

And Shea, the scholar, with riding joy, Said 'We were nt Ramilies, We left our bones at Fontenoy And up in the Pyrenees, Before Dunkirk, on Landen's plain, Cremona, Lille, and Ghent,

We're all over Austria, France, and Spain, Wherever they pitched a tent. We've died for England from Waterloo To Egypt and Dargai : And etill there's enough for a corps or crew Of Kelly and Burke and Shea.' Wfll ' ' Here's to good, honest fijjhtin' blood,' Said Kelly and Burke and Shea. In the other case, a good half of Washington's army of independence was composed of Irishmen and the descendants of the Irishmen who had been compelled by tinkering politicians to cross the Atlantic to find a living: that had been refused them in the land of their birth. The same short-sighted poiicy is being followed to this hour. British Ministries — and especially those of the Tory Party — still

persist in keeping up a little Poland within a few hours' journey from the heart of the Empire. Their policy towards the Irish nation not only deprives the Britith Dominions of the services of splendid fighting material in the day of her need ; but it is sending it abroad in every ship to swell the military strength of nations with which England may at any time be engaged in a deadly straggle.