IRELAND AND ITS CRITICS

New Zealand Tablet, 21 July 1910, Page 1144

IRELAND AND ITS CRITICS

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, — the Nineteenth Century and After for May there appears an article entitled ' Our Masters,' by that well-known litterateur and Catholic writer, Mr. W. S. Lilly. The article is in the form of a review of A History of the Irish Parliamentary Party by Mr. Frank Hugh O'Donnell, erstwhile Irish patriot and member of the Irish National Party. In the book under review Mr. O'Donnell seems to have poured forth the vials of his wrath and sarcasm upon the Irish Parliamentary Party in general, and upon Mr. J. E. Redmond in particular. " Now, Mr. Lilly, like some other prominent English Catholics, is notoriously opposed to Home Rule, a,nd he takes advantage of the occasion of a review of the book under notice, to get into his article very many lengthy extracts vituperative of the Irish cause, for the edification of his readers who otherwise Mould probably not have troubled to acquire the book. No doubt every writer on public questions such as Home Rule is entitled to make use of any work which will prejudice the minds of his readers against the question, and the friends of the question cannot very well complain. The point, however, to which I desire to draw attention is this: that Mr. Lilly, seeing his position in the literary world, must surely have been well aware that the author whom he so conveniently uses to damage the present dominant position of Home Rule is also the author of Paraguay on Shannon (a fairly recent publication), which, if not actually scurrilous towards the Catholic Church in its general purpose, is certainly a most virulent and libellous attack upon the hierarchy, priests, and nuns of Ireland, and even on Propaganda itself (a ' camarilla of foreign clerics on tho Tiber,' as he gracefully states it); in fact, it is a work after the style of Michael J. McCarthy's lucubrations on the priests and people of Ireland. It shows how far political bias can carry even the best of men, when Mr. Lilly, a valiant champion of the Catholic Church in general, can for the occasion overlook Mr. O'Donnell's unreasonable bias and hatred of the Catholic religious of Ireland, in order to temporarily use him to attack Home Rule. Surely Mr. Lilly, as a Catholic of some eminence, and otherwise recognised as a critic of considerable fairness, ought to be fairminded enough to recognise that an author who, whilst professedly a Catholic, so vilifies bishops, priests, and nuns as Mr. O'Donnell in his Paraguay on Shannon has done, is not an author whom he ought publicly adopt, even though it be to assist in an attack on his bete noir, Home Rule. Irish Catholics will now be placed in a dilemma as to how they ought henceforth appreciate Mr. Lilly as a Catholic writer, historian, and essayist, and also as an advocate for the Catholic schools in England, seeing that he can stoop to make use of such a writer as Frank Hugh O'Donnell in order to aid him in an attack on Home Rule, and to blacken the reputation of the Irish Parliamentary Party who have been such good friends of the English Catholics in their efforts to sustain their separate schools. The opponents of Home Rule, it would seem, are almost panicstricken at the paramount position which it has suddenly assumed in British politics, and are in such despair that they will make use of any weapon for purposes of attack. Adversity we know makes us acquainted with strange bedfellows, and this perhaps accounts for Mr. Lilly having, as it were, to touch with the proverbial pair of tongs Mr. F. H. O'Donnell, a discredited Parliamentarian and vilifier of Irish priests and nuns (his co-religionists)' and in a measure also of his countrymen (the peasants he styles ' lazy lazzaroni—whom Anarchist agrarianism has filled with crude Socialism, and into whom the priest-managed school has ingrained the lesson of dirt, ignorance, and leave-it-alone '), as a belated means of arousing the people of Great Britain to withstand the onward march of Home Rule to victory. Does it not seem passing strange that there are occasionally to be found some gifted sons of Ireland who are so degenerate that they eventually become afflicted with a form of dementia which causes them to violently attack both their Church and country— heretofore apparently most dear to —Yours, etc., J. J. DEVINE. Wellington, July 16.