IRELAND AND THE WAR

New Zealand Tablet, 31 December 1914, Page 26

IRELAND AND THE WAR

.Almost the first thing I can remember was a strange procession of brakes, drags, and carts laden .with men, women, and children, winding under green arches and gay bunting through the streets of my native town. The procession was led by a venerable clergyman whose name was then a housenold word in Wexford, and for that matter in Leinster and Munster. These people were the tenants on an Irish landlord's estate. .They had been thrown out of their homes by bailiffs, assisted by the forces of the English Government.. And their destination was the workhouse. Yet the town was gay with decorations, and half a dozen bands marched in the long line, playing stirring national airs. A little later, I saw one, whom I came to know well in after years, carried into the home of my youth,, a perfect-wreck after six months spent in Wexford. Gaol because he aided his uncle and cousins in defending the sanctuary of their hearth against the minions, of a bad landlord.

Later still, I was present with thousands of Irishmen, in a quiet old churchyard, to see a marble cross: unveiled over the grave of one James Ryan whom Wexford Gaol had killed. Ryan got nirfe months for assisting in the defence of what came to be known all over Ireland as ‘Foley’s Fort.’ He got either four or six: months soon after for being a witness, and making derogatory remarks on the ineffectual labors of'the bailiffs: and the police, while twelve men held them at bay for a whole August day at ‘ Sowers’ Fort.’ It was war. These men who defended the ‘ Forts ’ I have named received the Sacraments from Canon Tom. Doyle and went into the houses prepared to die in their defence. And if nine of them actually did die there they died in consequence of the harsh treatment they received afterwards in their cells. Jim Ryan and John Mandeville are names that should never be forgotten by the farmers of Ireland. Lord Leitrim had been shot like a dog because of his awful oppression in the North others, though none other could rival him in cruelty and profligacy, had been shot in the South. The law would not intervene, save tp protect them, though juries at inquests had returned verdicts of murder against them when their victims died of starvation and exposure; and a maddened people cannot reason calmly on abstract moral principles such as the right or wrong of killing a tyrant by private authority when no other redress is left. The children of the men and women who suffered

so terribly then are the people of Ireland tp-day. The Irish in America to-day are the children, in great part, of those who were driven from Irish homes by cruel English laws, and who, if they brought away nothing else from the green shores of Ireland, brought with them the love of their dear land and the hatred of the country which stood for oppression.

Read any fair history of . Ireland. Do not go back to the broken treaty and the flight of ‘ the wild geese ’; forget all about the Cromwellian massacre around the cross in Wexford town, and all about the pitch-capping and half-hanging .and priest-hunting forget the plundered monasteries and the burning churches and the Union passed by bribery and conniption. Bear in mind only so much of Irish history as living people remember, the years of famine and pestilence during which starving men and women saw English soldiers guarding the corn that was carted away before their eyes* the years of unspeakable suffering and misery from the famine up to the eighties, the years of rack-rents and evictions and of the pitiful exodus of. the people; and then, even if you are not an Irishman, you will have come to some understanding of the rationale of the psychology of Irish minds at the present juncture. Better than anywhere else is it expressed! in the words of the 136th Psalm;

Upon the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept: when we remembered Sion: '

On the willows in the midst thereof we hung up our instruments. For there they that led us into captivity required of us songs. '

And they tjjat carried us away, said: Sing ye to us a hymn of the songs of Sion. How shall we sing the song of the Lord in a strange land \ " ..-...., If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten. - Let my tongue cleave, to my jaws if I do not remember thee: If I make not Jerusalem the beginning of my joy. Remember, O Lord, the children of Ldom, in the day of Jerusalem: Who say: Rase it, rase it, even to the 'foundation thereof. O daughter of Babylon, miserable: blessed shall he be who shall repay thee thy payment which thou hast paid us. Blessed he that shall take and dash thy little ones against the rock. Is it easy to forget the martyrdom of a country? And when we would forget is it easy to listen to the insane taunts of a Carson or a Richardson ? When England calls on Ireland to stand fast and true in the hour of the Empire's need they swear that they will never allow England to grant .Ireland her rights, the sacred rights of liberty and of nationhood for which she has so long bled. What has all their valor and all their daring availed the poor Gaels whose bones are whitening on every battlefield" from Waterloo to Spion Kop ? And what reality have Irishmen yet got that they should now die for the Empire? Is-Ireland yet a real, living, integral part of the Empire, or is she still,' and still to be, the same suffering, down-trodden Erin? This is just what many Irishmen want to be sure of at present. » And in the meantime the Irish regiments are, where they always have been in'war, in the thick of the fight. Ear, far more than England or Australia or New Zealand in proportion to her population has Ire'land sent to the front. Irish generals lead in the field ; Irish admirals command on the seas. And can anyone blame those who say, ' Let us at least keen our own volunteer army in our own land, and for our own land when the hour of need comes' ? Ireland, so often betrayed and befooled in the past, can hardly be blamed now if she hesitates.to throw down the cards which may at length win for her. So, when we read of the disputes at Home in the ranks of the volunteers, let us remember that there are two sides to the question ; that to judge which is right is yet premature and to be settled by the future which we can as yet read but ' as in a glass darkly.^ Rev. J. Kelly.