Irish News

New Zealand Tablet, 22 July 1915, Page 39

Irish News

§•;•'.; GENERAL. Captain Edwin Henry Murphy, Leinster Regiment, killed on May 7, was the only son of Mr. Jerome Murphy, Cork. Lieutenant G. F. Gough, Royal Irish Fusiliers, reported as wounded, was educated at the Oratory and Sandhurst, whence he passed last July into the Irish Fusiliers. Lieutenant Timothy Sullivan, Royal Munster Fusiliers, reported killed in action in the Dardanelles, was the fifth son of the late Michael Sullivan, Ban try, County Cork. Lieutenant Wm. Heff email, Gloucestershire Regiment, reported killed, was a son of Dr. Heffernan, Killenaule, Thurles, County Tipperary. He was only twenty-two years of age. Captain the Hon. W. A. Nugent, 15th Hussars, reported wounded, is brother and heir-presumptive of the 11th Earl of West-meat h. He- was educated at the Oratory, entered the Army in 1896, was promoted captain in 1900. Subject to legacies to members of his family and .friends, the bulk of the estate of Sir Hugh Lane, who went down with the Lusitania, mainly consisting of pictures of considerable value, is bequeathed to public galleries in Dublin and London. News has been received that Quartermaster Sergeant Patrick Harte, Newcastle West, has been killed in action. When his brother Jphn heard of his death, though he has a wife and a young family, he joined the colors. He was accorded a public send-off. At a recent meeting of the Navan Guardians, Mr. O'Rourke presented an application for admission for John Mitchell, an army pensioner, aged-107. He said that Mitchell, who came from Dunshaughlin, was a very interesting old man. He served in the Crimean War. One of the guardians suggested that the Government ought to do something in a case like that. In fact they ought to give him illoo a year as long as he lived. On May 21, at the Church of SS. Peter and Paul, Ballymacward, County Galway, there was Office for the Dead, with Solemn Requiem Mass, for the late Second Lieutenant Roderick de Stacpoole, Royal Field Artillery. The deceased, who was only nineteen, was the youngest of the four sons at the front of the Duke and Duchesse de Stacpoole, Mount Hazel, Ballymacward, and was the second of them to lose his life there. The death has occurred at the Bon Secours Convent, Falls road, Belfast, of Mother Mary O'Keeffe. She was in Paris in the stirring days of 1870. She left Paris that year for the foundation of another house of the community in London, and here she spent nine strenuous years. After that she superintended the foundation in Tralee, yet another branch of the Order, where she worked for three years. Thence she went to Belfast, where for nearly forty years she devoted herself almost entirely to the care of the poor. She was seventy-eight years of age. SERGEANT O'LEARY, V.C. Like Mark Twain's, the account of the death of Sergeant Mike O'Leary, V.C, ' has been grossly exaggerated.' All doubt as to the fate of the Cork hero has been laid by the following letter which his parents at Macroom received from him on May 31:—'I have seen by to-day's papers that I have been killed in action. No :I am still in the firing line doing my bit for my King and country. I trust God is not going to call on me too soon until I have done a bit more. I came 'out. of the last battle with only a few scratches, thank God.' A sum of £3OO had been collected as a national tribute to Sergeant O'Leary, V.C, by a local committee, and it was hoped he would soon be given an oportunity of visiting his parents, and receiving at the

same time his military decorations and the congratulations of his fellow-countrymen. - _ / ■ ~— —■— a — : —' - k-''%M A HEROIC CHAPLAIN. ; -':■... - \ | [f . Enthusiastic reference is made in a letter signed by five Limerick men of the Royal Munster Fusiliers to the heroism displayed by Father Gleeson, the gallant Tipperary chaplain, during a terrible bombardment by the Germans on Sunday, May 9. l The writer is Private Danaher, and the other signatories are Privates Squires Bowman, Lynch, and Whelan.. ' It was terrible,' says the writer, ' houses, chapels, trees, and bodies flying in the air." . . . Still Father Gleeson stuck to his P ost attending to the wounded and the dying Munsters, and shells dropping all around him. Indeed, if anyone has earned the V.C, Father Gleeson has. He is a credit to the country he hails from, and has brought luck to the Munsters since he joined them.' CATHOLICS AND THE FIGHTING AT THE ■ DARDANELLES. From the letters of soldiers who have been wounded it appears that in the engagement during which Father Finn, military chaplain, lost his life, Irish Catholic regiments suffered very heavily. Writing to his wife, Sergeant J. Colgan, of the Dublin Fusiliers, who is now in the Royal Naval Hospital at Malta, says: * I received three wounds, but two of them are only scratches. I am lucky to have got away alive, as nearly everyone you knew has been killed, both sergeants and privates. All the heads were killed, including Father Finn. On the Sunday night there were only one hundred and fifteen to answer their names. Whether there are any left now I don't know, but it was awful. There were thirty-two in my boat and only six escaped alive.' The Munster Fusiliers had a similar experience. ' We landed on the 25th April at the Dardanelles, strongly held by Turks and Germans,' writes Private O'Shaughnessy, of the Ist Munsters, from the Military Hospital, Malta. ' We had to walk up to our neck in water, and those who were hit in the water were drowned.' 'Most of our officers and about seven hundred or eight hundred men,'says Private W. Moriarty, another of the Munster Fusiliers, ' were either killed, wounded, or drowned.' Needless to say (remarks the Catholic Times) there was no flinching. The Catholic regiments bore themselves with their customary courage and intrepidity, to which is due not a little of the decided progress that has been made. When the power of the Turk and the German is at an end in Constantinople, the heroic part which Catholics have played and are playing in suppressing it cannot be forgotten. IRISHMEN IN THE ARMY. At a recruiting meeting in Delgany, one of the speakers was The O'Mahony, D.L., who said that when the war commenced he was in the East of Europe and that was the first meeting in Ireland he had the privilege of speaking at since. He had been connected with the Nationalist Party for considerably more than 30 years. He was present at the Convention in Dublin after the introduction of the Home Rule Bill, which was now an Act. They heard the delegates from all parts of Nationalist Ireland declared their acceptance of the Bill as a final settlement of the old dispute between England and Ireland. He was directed by the Parliamentary Party to speak on English and Scotch platforms, and at over one hundred meetings he pledged himself that the Irish people would accept Home Rule as a permanent settlement, and if ever the Empire was attacked Ireland would be ready to do her utmost to defend her. For the honor of Ireland, he appealed to them to redeem the pledge which their representative had given at the great Convention in Dublin. Since the war began the number who had joined from Ireland was 63,425, these were the official figures up to the 15th May, and therefore he had a right to say that Ireland had responded to the call of duty. Amongst the Irish-" men in the Army at the present moment there were

116,671, which did not include the Irishmen in the .forces t in .the colonies, or from England and i Scotland;! This war was sogreat and the interests so vital that if they were to ] win and win'; they:'must, it was necessary that everyone capable of serving at the front ought to go and go because it was his duty, v — ~.\ m : A BRAVE IRISH FUSILIER. ; In the list of recipients of the Victoria Cross for gallantry in the field, published on May 24, the following appeared: —' Private Robert Morrow, Ist Battalion (Princess Victoria's) Royal Irish Fusiliers most conspicuous bravery near Messines on 12th April, 1915, when rescued and carried successively to places of comparative safety several men who had been buried in the debris of trenches wrecked by shell fire. Private Morrow carried out this gallant work on his own initiative, and under very heavy fire from the enemy.' By a sad coincidence there appeared in the official casualty list printed on the same date the death from wounds of the bravo private. The widowed mother of Private Robert Morrow lives at Sessia, close to the little Tyrone village of Newmills, near Dungannon. Unfortunately he did not live to receive the coveted distinction. He was born in Sessia 22 years ago, his father being Mr. Hugh Morrow, a respectable farmer. The father died shortly after Private Morrow's birth, leaving a widow and a numerous family of young children in rather .struggling circumstances. He enlisted in the Royal Irish Fusiliers five years ago, and on the outbreak of war was despatched to France with the first Expeditionary Force. • THE DECREASE IN PIG-BREEDING. The Departmental Committee appointed by the Irish Board of Agriculture in October last to inquire into the state of the pig-breeding industry in Ireland, with special reference to the recent decrease in the number of pigs in Ireland, has now issued an interesting report, and gives a number of practical recommendations. Going as far back as 1851, the committee find that the average number of pigs in Ireland yearly has been about 1,250,000, and the figures have been fairly constant. But in 1911 the numbers rose to 1,415,119, and in 1912 it dropped to 1,323,957, and in 1913 to 1,060,360. The total value of the pig industry in Ireland was estimated to be £6,887,000 in 1905, and £8,146,000 in 1914. The average for the past'five years has been over £8,000,000, Bacon curing is carried on by at least fifty different firms, employing approximately 3000 hands, and the bacon and hams annually exported from Ireland amount approximately to one-fifth of the total weight imported to the markets of Great Britain. The number of live pigs shipped annually from Irish ports in normal seasons exceeds 300,000, but since the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in 1912, the export of live pigs has considerably fallen off. The committee strongly advise the regular breeding and feeding of a certain number of pigs as likely to yield the best results, and they recommend farmers to devote as much land as possible to home-grown crops which will render them independent of imported food supplies. They suggest that barley especially might be more widely grown, and that in many districts the area of potatoes and oats grown for feeding pigs might be increased with advantage. Rural District Councils are recommended to provide a suitable pigsty in connection with each cottage erected by them, and the committee consider that the Department would be justified in asking the Congested Districts Board to give special consideration to applications for grants to improve existing pig houses or to erect new buildings.