Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXVIII, Issue 12, 22 March 1900, Page 1

Current Topics

AT HOME AND ABROAD.

A good many things come at last to those who know how to wait. Irish soldiers have been waiting for over a century for the repeal of 'a cruel law against the wearin' of the green ' in the British army. L.ast year this military regulation was in full operation, and an Irish soldier was placed under arrest and sent into durance vile for the crime of wearing a spray of the { chosen leaf of bard and chief in his cap on St. Patrick's Day, 1899. There is a world of national sentiment in the heart that beats beneath the scarlet tunic of the Irish Mr. Atkins — a sentiment which has stood British generals in good stead in serious crises on many a wellfought field. It is a point of honour with Patrick Atkins that his regiment or battalion should, if possible, outstrip the regiments of every other nationality in valour ; and this rivalry in bravery for the credit of the Old Land, coupled with their native love of ' a rale purty bit of a fight,' and their extraordinary gluttony for taking and giving punishment has led to their being so often sent as the ' forlorn hope ' into the deadly breach or to mad charges in the face of annihilation against superior forces of the enemy solidly entrenched upon the field of battle.' It was this sentiment which led an Irish officer to hold on successfully to Fort Charleston with a handful of men against overwhelming odds during all the long and deadly day of June 16, 1862, after he had received orders from a frightened superior officer to precipitately retreat and abandon the important position to the enemy. ' You, said he 'can retire if you please, and nobody will be any the wiser ; but if / left my post the whole world would know of it ; and sooner than do anything that would affect the honour and reputation of Irishmen, or of Ireland, I'd stay here till doomsday.' It was indeed a sore grievance with the Irish soldier in the service of Great Britain to be so long refused the small comfort of testifying by an external sign to his love of country on Ireland's annual day of days. But the grievance has at last been settled 'in the snapping of a gun,' and settled for ever — directly by a gracious act of Queen Victoria, indirectly by Patrick's magnificent gallantry at Dundee, Elandslaagte, Nicholson's Nek, Grobler's Kloof, Frere, Langerwacht Spruit, Pieter's Hill, and elsewere during the present campaign in South Africa. Not that the Fusiliers and the Rangers and the Lancers fought more gallantly there than at Assaye and Badajos and Waterloo and Tel-el-Kebir; but that armed struggles between nations of white men are nowadays fought out more in the public eye, thanks to the war correspondent, whose letters and cable messages are a sort of Prester John's mirror which enables the public to catch daily glimpses of what is taking place where • the front of battles lowers.' In October the War Office gave the Irish Fusiliers permission to wear a green plume, as a recognition of their conspicuous valour at Dundee. The bould sojer boy from Ireland may like a feather in his cap, but he will set vastly more store by the well-won privilege of wearing 'old Erin's native shamrock' in his cap on St. Patrick's Day.

Green is the national colour of Ireland and is officially recognised as such. It forms part of the colour-scheme in the ceiling of the House of Commons. The Earl of Enniskillen, Grand Master of the Irish Orange Society, admitted before the Belfast Royal Commission of 1857 that it was a national and not a party colour. A similar admission was made by W. Verner, another high official of the lodge, in a debate in the House of Commons on the proposed repeal of the Party Processions Act in 1870. When the soldiers of William of Orange were crossing the Boyne in 1690 they (according to Macaulay) wore green branches in their hats. And to this day the badge of the inmost circle of the Orange Society Tone of which we have in our possession) contains among its nine mystic layers of colour a circle of emerald green. Yet, somehow, the brethren, while loving to display their party colours, entertain

THB WEARIN' OP THE GREEN.

to this hour a rooted and unconquerable aversion to the wearing of the Irish national colour by any other persons. This antipathy arose among the yeomanry in Ulster in the dark and evil days of 1797- 1798. In the words of Dr. Drennan :— Alas I for poor Erin, that some are still seen Who would dye the grass red from their hatred to green. It rapidly extended to their confreres, the Ancient Britons, and to the Orange yeomanry of Leinster. It was then the custom of many women of every creed, class, and shade of politics, both m North and South, to wear, quite innocently, articles of attire containing some or other shade of thej forbidden hue. Referring to a period preceding the insurrection of 1708, Lecky tells us that every person who did so * was tolerably sure to be exposed to insults which planted far and wide, among a peasantry peculiarly susceptible on such matters, the seeds of deadly, enduring hatred.' From Lecky, Mitchel, and others we learn that, in the days of peace, those military ruffians cut oil with their sabres, or tore off with their hands, the petticoats, handkerchiefs, ribbons, and caps, even of women of ' enthusiastic loyalty ' if the offending garments or ornaments contained even 'a tinge of green.' In many instances the penalty was death. It was frequently much worse. And the national ballad rather understated than overstated the truth when it indicated that the soldiers then at free quarters amonij the people whiled away their leisure hours by

. . . Hanging men and women For the wearing of the green. The objection of Irish officialism to the green is yet far from dead. At the very time when the gallant Irish soldiers in South Africa were winning so dearly the right to wear their national colour in their caps, a body of 150 ' loyalist ' students from Trinity College, Dublin, we're attacking the Mansion House— the official residence of the Lord Mayor— and pulling down and tearing to pieces the green flag that floated over it ; and bodies of stalwart policemen all over the country were engaged in a similar occupation at the public buildings^, erected by the Irish taxpayers— in which the meetings of the County Councils were being held.

What an eloquent contrast is furnished by the democratic community in which we live! The Premier of New Zealand —a Lancashire man— sings • The Wearin' of the Green ' con amore, and proudly wears an emerald ribbon or a sprig of ' Erin's native shamrock,' or its colonial substitute, on each recurring St. Patrick's Day. In recognition of the valour of the Irish soldiers in South Africa, he requested all New Zealand to hold high holiday on last Saturday. (St. Patrick's Day has for years past been a bank holiday). The Mayor of Port of Chalmers invited his fellow-townsmen, by public advertisement, to wear the green on St. Patrick's Day. So did the Mayor of Dunedin. A great Irish flag floated proudly all day on the topmost flagstaff of the Dunedin City Hall. The whole city was en fete, and green and other flags were spreading their moving folds to the breeze in all directions. Smaller flags adorned the windows of shops and stores, and were proudly borne about the streets by children. A brisk trade was done in green flags, ribbons, emblems, oxalis and all sorts of trefoil, both in the shops and on the streets, and almost every person you met displayed the Irish national colour m some shape or other. Green leaves or flags also adorned the tramcars, cabs, 'busses, railway engines, etc., and even cart-horses were decked out in the favourite colour of the hour. The office of this paper was besieged, both by telephone and by callers, for information regarding the purchase of flags, the correct shape of Irish devices, proper spelling of Irish mottoes, and what not. Altogether the display of friendly feeling towards the Irish nation was of the most gratifying nature imaginable. A cordial acknowledgment of her Majesty's graceful dual recognition of Irish valour has been cabled to Windsor by the Irish residents of Dunedin and the surrounding districts. Very appropriately, it concluded with the hope that her approaching visit to Ireland 'may be productive of the happiest results.' It is a coincidence that the trefoil, which is the national emblem of Ireland, was the

emblem of Hope among the ancients ? Hope was sometimes, we are told, represented as a beautiful child, ' standing upon tip-toes, and a trefoil, or three-coloured grass, in her hand.' At any rate, we are landed at present in a period ot buoyant hope that English political parties may now at length break down the last barriers that have so long stood between the Irish people and the equal political rights which they demand, and must, evermore demand until they are finally md permanently conceded. Then, and not before, will the true union of hearts take place, which, under wiser ailminUtiatioiis, would long ago have bound Irish Celt to Briton and Scot like the 'triple leaves ' of 'old Erin's native shamrock ' to the one stem from which they spring.

' MY PAL FIRST.'

Colenso, recorded in the interesting letter published in The British Medical Journal, from Mr. Frederick Treves, Consulting Surgeon to the Forces. The wounded man, though fatally injured, and almost unable to speak from the dryness of his mouth, said to the orderly who was bringing him some water : " Take it to my pal first, he is worse hit than me." It was not so, for the writer finishes the story : " This generous lad died next morning, but his pal got through and is doing well." Sir Philip Sidney is immortalised by a similar act, but this poor private died " unhonoured and unsung," his supreme self-abnegation receiving its meed of praise only from the sympathetic surgeon who chanced to witness it, and who mentions it as an illustration of the unselfishness of which he saw many instances.'

The incident here commented on by our London contemporary recalls the story told by Mr. Maguire, M.P., of an Irish soldier who was lying badly wounded on the hard-fought field of Chattanooga during the American Civil war. Says Maguire : ' He was found by a chaplain attached to his corps in a helpless condition, leaning against a tree. The priest, seeing the case to be one of imminent danger, proposed to hear his confession, but was surprised to hear him say : "Father, I'll wait a little. There's a man over there worse wounded than lam; he is a Protestant, and he's calling for the priest — go to him first." The priest found the wounded Protestant, received him into the Church, and remained with him till he expired ; he then returned to hear the confession of the Irish Catholic, whose first words were : " Well, Father, didn't I tell you true? I knew the poor fellow wanted you more than I did." The priest and the penitent are still alive to tell the story.'

There was a time when the merest esquire might, by doughty feats of arms, win his

POOR TOMMY ATKINS.

spurs — to wit, a knighthood, a title, and, perhaps, broad acres as well. At Agincourt Henry V. knighted his standard-bearer, David Gamm, who after having kept the pennon waving bravely in the forefront of the fight, lay dying of wounds upon the field. We have changed all that pretty considerably. To Napoleon Buonaparte the soldier was 'only a machine to obey orders.' To Wellington, Thomas and Patrick Atkins were compact wisps of cannon-fodder. Their lives are to be gaily and lightheartedly flung away on occasion — just as the Prussian Guards were sacrificed at St. Privat. In one of the FrancoGerman battles Moltke ordered the cavalry to advance. They did, and were promptly converted into tangled piles of minced meat by the French mitrailleuses. Moltke, who witnessed the slaughter, coolly remarked : • I required an interval of 10 minutes. The advance gave it to me, and therefore the cavalry had to be sacrificed.'

Theoretically, any one of Napoleon's privates may have carried the marshal's baton in his knapsack. In the rarest cases he did so. A vastly greater number of them carried the iron spoon of the public institution. This has been even more particularly the case with England's nameless heroes. In 1897 a Balaclava veteran died in poverty in a public institution in Melbourne. Two other such deaths were recorded as having happened in 1898. The one was the case of an English veteran who had passed away in an English workhouse, where he had tasted meat only three times a week. The other death recorded was that of Peter McKay, a native of Belfast. According to the Belfast Weekly News of that date, he enlisted in a Highland regiment in 1854, took part in what Disraeli called ' the feat of chivalry ' at Balaclava, and did a brave man's part in the storming of the Alma. After campaigning for seventeen years in the Crimea and India, and winning five medals and six clasps, he returned to Belfast, worked as a day labourer, and at last, in his old days, gravitated to that place of torment of decent poverty, the union workhouse. There he died on September 8, 1898. The union gave him a parish coffin and rattled his bones over the stones to his last restingplace in a pauper's yrave. Here is the most recent instance in point, as recorded in the columns of a London paper : —

FAMINE IN INDIA.

once more — after a brief respite of less than four years— undergoing the agonies of famine. This time, however, the situation is far more appalling than it was in 1896-7. The Government of India officially states that the true famine area occupies 300,000 square miles of territory and that a population of no less than 40,000,000 is at the present moment struggling with the black despair of actual famine. Beyond the borders of this vast region an area of 145,000 square miles is, so to speak, covered by the penumbra of famine — a place of well-defined, though not acute, scarcity and distress. India, which adds so much of wealth to Great Britain, holds a melancholy record, even within living memory, for the vast scale and woful destructiveness of its famines. Mo figures have yet been published regarding the deaths from famine and famine-fever in 1^96-7. But an Indian Blue Book quoted by Mulhall in his latest Dictionary of Statistics states that the appalling number of 11,300,000 persons perished in the fearful famines that ravaged that most distressful country of the East in 1866-68-78. The deaths were distributed among the provinces as follows : Orissa, 1,300,000; Punjaub, 1,450,000; Madras, 4,085,000 ; Oude, etc., 4,486,000. Nothing approaching the stupendous scale of this destruction is recorded in history except the great Chinese famine of 1878, which is credited by Walford with the deaths of 9,500,000 subjects of the Tien-tse, or ' Son of Heaven.' The two other greatest famines of the century occurred in another neglected corner of the Empire — Green Eire of the Tears. In 1816-17 no fewer than 737,000 people had soul and body wrenched apart by the slow agonies of starvation. The historic famine of 1846-7 had as many as 1,009,000 victims. In the distressful years of 1879-80 there were 17,200 extra deaths in Ireland, apparently caused by destitution. In Ireland famines will disappear when the last traces of the present land-system have been swept off the face of Connaught and Munster. In India they will cease when a sum equal to a small fraction of the annual war expenditure of the Empire has been devoted to an extension of the system of irrigation which was inaugurated by the East India Company after the great famine that desolated the North-west provinces in 1837-8. The 'John Company' constructed the great Ganges irrigation canal, at a cost of £6,100,000. Its total length is 898^ miles; it is capable of irrigating 4,414,500 acres ; actually waters one-third of that area ; produces crops exceeding an annual value of £8,000,000 ; guarantees the j Hindoo his regular harvest ; and places him beyond the dread of death by starvation. The Nira Canal — first set on foot in X B64 — has rendered a similar service to the dwellers in the erstwhile parched plains between the Eastern and the Western Ghauts ; turned vast tracts of barren soil into smiling oases of cool green vegetation ; and annually spread its beneficent waters over 274,447 acres of cultivated land. The Periyar irrigation works not alone make two or more blades of grass grow where only one — or none — grew before ; but they light Madras — 350 miles away — with electricity, and supply farmer, artisan, and manufacturer along the way with electric energy at a trifling outlay. The Eastern and the Western Jumna canals, and those in the province of Agra, etc., irrigate over 2,000,000 acres of land. They have turned arid sands and heaths into rich soil, produced rank and luxuriant crops, and saved the people locally from the olden terrors of drought and the slow tortures of famine. Before the construction of those irrigation works no fewer than 238,000,000 of the population of India were subject to periodical famines. During the three years of drought in 1876-8 as many as 6,000,000 of the unfortunate people died of starvation. Apart from the plea of humanity, the construction of such works, even on the enormously costly scale of the Ganges irrigation canal, has proved a profitable* speculation, and has replaced recurrent famine and distress by assured plenty and contentment. The wide and ever wider extension of the system of irrigation is the remedy for the famines that so often visit the teeming millions of India.

' Mr. Kipling's Muse,' says the London Tablet, 'might find many subjects in the present war, but few more touching than the act of the dying soldier on the field of

An officer of blamelesa character, who has served with the Oordon Highlanders in the Crimea, in the Indian Mutiny, and on the North-we-<t Frontier of IndU, and has been specially mentioned in despatches for distinguished bravery in the field, is compelled at the age of sev nty-three to seek parish relief from the Lambeth Guardians. This officer appealed with his wife to the guardians at Lambeth, and the response 00 his appeal was an allowance — under the heading of out-relief — of five shillings a week. If a distinguished commissioned officer is driven in his old days to seek pariah relief, what must be the fate of the ordinary Atkinses, thousands of whom are now maimed aud crippled for life ?

When the drums are beating Thomas Atkins is a hero — huzza'd to the echo as the nation's saviour. In the piping times of peace there is little honour for the scarlet tunic. For Wellington's war-horse there was a mausoleum ; for Grant's a bronze statue. But lor the aged and useless veteran who has fought and bled there too often remains a pauper's funeral, and not even the poor vanity of posthumous renown.

The war in South Africa is so closely riveting the attention of English-speaking countries that their mental ears are almost closed to the wail of the starving millions in India that are

We have time and again referred to the

orangeism dignified tone and temper in which the ProAND the army, testant pulpit of Great Britain and the

colonies has referred to the war in South Africa. We know of but one solitary instance in which the struggle between Boer and Briton has been made the occasion of an unprovoked pulpit attack upon the Catholic Church whether in or out of the Empiie. A pretty town in South Canterbury was recently made the scene of this outrage on pood sense and decency just at the moment when Queen Victoria was making her graceful acknowledgment of the splendid valour ol her Irish soldiers, nine out of ten of whom are Catholics. The reason why of this disgraceful business will be sufficiently apparent when we explain that the clergyman who went into a state of acute hysteria in his references to Popery in the Empire, is chaplain of an Orange lodge. Butler's words in Hudibras may be aptly referred to such assailants of the Catholic Church who fling their handful of mud at her fair face and then, like this Canterbury cleric, boldly run away :—: —

But as those poltroons that fling dirt Do but defile, but cannot hurt ; So all the honour they have won, Or wo have lost, is much at one. The utterance and publication of the frothy nonsense of this unlearned cleric were, however, almost a felix culpa — a happy fault — in view of the clear exposition of the principles of Catholic loyalty which was made on the following Sunday from the local Catholic pulpit.

One of the drollest statements made by the clerical enthusiast was this : that the Inniskillings who fought so gallantly in South Africa are Orangemen ! This is, indeed, a story for the marines. The Inniskillings are recruited in the most Catholic portions of Ulster — some 10 to 15 per cent, of them are from outside Ulster — and the vast majority of them are Catholics. A slight knowledge, indeed, of military regulations and of the history of the Orange Society is sufficient to show that throughout the whole of the present century membership of an Orange lodge has been deemed, and is still deemed, inconsistent with the loyalty due by soldier of the regular army to his sovereign and his country. Musgrave, the Orange historian and apologist, frankly admitted in his Memoirs that the Orange Society ' should not be admitted into our regular army or militia . . . as it would be likely to create party zeal and discord.' On April 17, 1799, the Earl of Hardwicke issued a regimental order ' strictly forbidding ' membership of 'any such lodges or societies' to the troops under his command. General orders were issued in 1810 by Major-General Cockburne, who declared that membership of such associations was inconsistent with duty to king and country. On July i, 1822, and November 14, 1829, general orders were issued by the Commander of the Forces, and addressed to all general officers at Home and abroad, strictly forbidding the holding of Orange lodges in any regiment as ' fraught with injury to the discipline of the army '; ' that, on military grounds, the holding of Orange lodges in any regiment or corps is contrary to order and the rules of the service ; ' and that ' a disregard of this caution will subject offending parties to trial and punishment for disobedience to orders? Both of these instructions were embodied in the General Regulations and Orders of the army. They were confirmed and extended by the General Order of August 31, 1835, which remains in force to the present day.

The lodge, however, met the military regulations with calm defiance. When the infamous Cumberland Conspiracy was set on foot to prevent the accession of Queen Victoria and place the crown of England on the head of the old roue, the Duke of Cumberland — ' Imperial Grand Master 'of the Orange Society — the Grand Lodge set feverishly about the work of corrupting the fidelity of the army. In defiance of military regulations lodges were established in the army, commissioners were sent to win over the garrisons stationed in Scotland, Ireland, Canada, Malta, the lonian Islands, etc., and between 1829 and 1835 the loyalty and discipline of some fifty regiments was seriously tampered with. Independent of the army, the Duke of Cumberland had at that time under his complete control in Great Britain and Ireland over 300,000 Orangemen, all armed and sworn to assemble in any given place at his command 'at ten hours' notice.' When Mr. Hume and the Irish Members of Parliament exposed the plot to alter the succession to the throne, the country was thrown into a state of great alarm. O'Connell offered the stalwart arms of 100,000 Irish Catholics to defend the person and the rights of the young Princess Victoria. Two Parliamentary Committees were formed to inquire into the working of the Orange Society, and in their reports to the House of Commons we find the following : — When every endeavour on the part of Government to pat an end to Orange lodges in the army has been met by redoubled efforts on the part of the Orange institution, not oniy to uphold, but to increase them, evidently violating military law, and aggravating its violation by concealing from the officers of the different regi-

ments, and from the commander of the forces — from all, in fact, but Orangemen — the fixed determination of fostering their institution ; when soldiers are urged in official letters from the Deputy Grand Secretary of the society to hold meetings, notwithstanding the orders of the Commander-in-Chief to the contrary, but with instructions to act with caution and prudence, it is surely time for Government to take measures for the complete suppression of such institutions.

The result was that Parliament petitioned King William IV. to suppress Orange lodges in the army. On August 15, 1835, his Majesty made the following reply, which was entered in the Journals of the House of Commons :•—

I have received your dutiful address, submitting to me certain resolutions on the subject of Orange lodges in the army. My attention has been, and shall continue to be, directed to the practices contrary to the regulations, and injurious to the discipline of my troops. I owe it no less to the dignity of my Crown than to the safety of the country, and the welfare of my brave and loyal army, to discourage and prevent any attempts to introduce secret societies into the ranks ; and you may rely on my determination to adopt the most effectual means for that purpose.

The immediate result was the General Order of August 31, i 83"5, alluded to above. Early in the following year (1836) the Orange Society was suppressed as a disloyal and dangerous association. It was revived in Ireland in 1845. It can still create a great deal of local irritation. But the old days when it could menace an Empire are gone for ever.

• * • The biethren are past-masters in the art of slaving 1 Britain's enemies with their mouth. But in the day of the Empire's need they have been conspicuously lacking in personal devotion to the crown and constitution. The Irish Orange yeomanry had to be disbanded tor the persistent turbulence, mutiny, and disloyalty which made them the terror of peaceable citizens and the despair of the Irish Executive. In 1829, 1868-1869, and 1885 they threatened to raise 100,000 armed men to fight against the British Crown. During the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny, Irish Nationalist newspapers called on them to prove their loyalty in a practical way by sending out, not 100,000 men, but one regiment, one battalion, one company even, to fight the battles of their Queen. The challenge was of no avail, and, as usual, ' the hoight ot the fightin 1 ' was left to their Catholic fellow-country-men. History has curiously repeated itself in the present year of grace. Irish Catholics are once again bearing the brunt of the fighting in South Africa, while Irish Orangemen stay ingloriously at home and agitate for the re-enactment of the penal laws. Not so much as a corporal's secretary have they sent to the front. The utmost, that the taunts and gibes of the Irish Nationalist Press could rouse those lip-loyalists to was just this : that at Nevvry a certain number of them volunteered to don the Oueen's uniform provided that they received in advance an express guarantee that they should be enrolled for ' home service only, and not be sent to fight the Boers ! The gallant fellows' ' loyalty ' does not reach the sticking place. In the words of a Scottish paper, they find it less congenial to face the bullets of the Boers than to stay quietly at home and ' harry their Catholic neighbours in the North.'