Irish News

New Zealand Tablet, 16 July 1914, Page 39

Irish News

GENERAL. Mr. Joseph Devlin, M.P., speaking at Stanley Hall, Kentish Town, on ‘ Twenty-five years of Irish progress,’ said the progress of Ireland during the last twenty-five years had been marvellous. In less than five years from now every acre of land in Ireland would be transferred from landlords to the tillers of the soil. The Lord Mayor of Dublin was to have convened a meeting in the Mansion House for June 26 to make arrangements for a fitting celebration of the 900th anniversary of the Battle of Clontarf, and invitations to send representatives were extended to all the local authorities in Ireland, to the Irish Universities and constituent colleges, the Christian Brothers, etc., and to some municipalities in England and Scotland having large Irish populations. The Irish members of Parliament were also invited. • Father Anthony (Brennan), of Tasson, one of the newly-elected Definitors-General of the Franciscan Capuchins, is a native of Tasson, County Monaghan, and during three terms filled the position of Provincial of the English Province of the Order. Since the elevation of Father Anselm Kenealy to the Archbishopric of Simla, Father Anthony has represented the Englishspeaking Provinces on the General Definitory, and his re-election to the responsible office and dignity will be received with interest and pleasure by his many friends in Iceland and England. At a meeting of the governing body of Galway University College, the Rev. J. Hynes, Dean of Residence, was appointed secretary. Father Hynes, who comes from the diocese of Elphin, has now been Dean of Residence in University College for some years, and has taken an active interest in the work of the college, having been the promoter of the scheme for County Council scholarships for Connaught. At the same meeting, on the motion of Dr. S. B. Macllenry, M.A., the following resolution was passed unanimously: ‘That steps be taken to urge on the Civil Service Commissioners the advisability of immediately including Irish as an optional subject for Civil Service examinations.’ A committee was appointed to press the matter forward to an issue. A FRIEND .OF IRELAND. Ireland has lost a tried and trusty friend in the Rev. Silvester Horne, M.P., who died of heart failure in Canada. He was one of the leading Nonconformist ministers in England, an eloquent speaker, a thorough democrat, and a most modest and lovable man. The Irish Party sent a message of condolence to his widow, recalling that Mr. Horne’s last speech in Parliament was an appeal for justice to Ireland. Whatever happens in the future, Ireland can never forget how men like Sir William Robertson Nicoll, of the British Weekly , and the great body of the Nonconformists of Great Britain have stood up to champion Home Rule and to defend the people of Ireland against the calumnies of their enemies. The friendship of such men is more than ample compensation for the opposition of Unionists of the stamp of the Duke of Norfolk, Dord Edmund Talbot, Major Archer Shee, and the English Catholic Tories who have allied themselves with the Orangemen to defeat Home Rule. THE UNIONISTS AND IRELAND. Now that the fight for Home Rule has ended, so far as the House of Commons is concerned (says the Liverpool Catholic Times), there are, we feel sure, many Unionists who look back with shame upon the attitude of their party towards the movement and towards the Irish people. Of the courses that lay ©pen to the leaders, they chose the very worst. There was a time when it was hoped that they would declare for the right of Irishmen to manage their own national

affairs. Conservatives then, proclaimed from public platforms that they were convinced Homo Rulers. Rater they introduced a change in the policy of Dublin Castle, wnich was interpreted in Ireland as a step in the direction of Home Rule, taken with the sympathy of the late King. The Orangemen became restive, and Mr. Balfour retreated, sacrificing Mr. George Wyndham. It was the beginning of a policy that has brought disaster to the Tory Party. Mr. Balfour .has been succeeded by a leader who has cast the old Conservative principles to tho wind and adopted instead the doctrines of anarchy. He has sown the wind and his party are reaping the whirlwind. They have given the Irish people cause for enduring enmity to them, and have been utterly foiled in their attempts to defeat Home Rule. By putting arms into the hands of Carson’s Volunteers, they have enabled the masses of the Nationalists to arm themselves, and in their maddest moments to-day the Unionist leaders are not quite so insane as to imagine that the Irish people can be got by intimidation to renounce their national claim. MR. J. T. DONOVAN CALLED TO THE BAR. Mr. J. T. Donovan, a prominent and popular Nationalist, well known in Australia and New Zealand, was called to the Bar in Dublin recently. Mr. Donovan, who is an intimate friend of Mr. Joseph Devlin, M.P., accompanied Mr. Devlin to Australia as one of Ireland’s envoys. He visited Australia and New Zealand a second time in company with Messrs. R. Hazleton, M.P., and W. A. Redmond, M.P. He was proposed for the Bar by the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and his certificate was signed by Mr. John Muldoon, M.P. Mr. Donovan’s many friends will learn with pleasure of the attainment of his professional ambition, and will join us in wishing him success in his career at the Irish Bar. A SANE SUGGESTION. Mr. Harold Begbie, the well-known journalist (who is a Protestant), writes in a recent letter to the Loudon Times : —May I suggest that, as the Irish question is obviously a religious question, the most hopeful way of approaching a solution is to ge# the two disputants in to a religious frame of mind ? I am convinced that Catholic Ireland has already made the first move in this matter. One finds that the chief shops in so Catholic a town as Cork are kept by Protestants; one finds in a Catholic centre like Waterford prosperous Quakers taking a leading part in social and civic activities; throughout the whole of Catholic Ireland, including the North-West fishing villages of Ulster, Protestants live in perfect amity with their Catholic neighbors, and Catholics all over the country express the most, earnest admiration for the good and valuable qualities; of the Protestant population. This is well known. There is no Protestant question in Catholic Ireland. People are neighborly and good humored. Is it not possible to persuade the Orangemen of Ulster that there are qualities in the Catholic which deserve admiration Take the Catholic Irishman's wit, his social pleasantness, his imaginative faculties, and the enormous importance he attaches to chastity; are not these things worthy of Protestant friendship? No man in his senses will say that Belfast is as beautiful as Cork, as intellectual as Dublin, as spiritual as Letterkenny or Skibbereen. Is it not manifest that Belfast would be a more beautiful, intellectual, and spiritual city if her leading citizens encouraged the too dour Orangeman not todwell upon theological differences with Rome, but toimitate the nobler of those good qualities in the Catholic Irishman which make the South of Ireland as charming and gracious a country as Italy or France 1 This would be a first step. I can think of no greater glory for the Church of England at this hour than to solve the Irish question in this holy way. The bugles have been blowing long enough. It is time for the Angelus to sound. * Kind words,’ says Faber, * are the music of tho world.’