Irish News

New Zealand Tablet, 15 June 1916, Page 35

Irish News

GENERAL, Amongst the successes of the National University College, Dublin, for the annual medical examinations was Miss Eileen Bouchier Hayes, Rathkeale, who secured her degree of M.B. with honors. The talented young lady is a niece .of Dr. John Bouchier Hayes, J.P., Rathkeale. -At a recent meeting of the Athlone Burial Board permission was given to Captain Schofield, Adjutant, Athlone Royal Field Artillery Garrison, to have permanent memorial crosses erected in the cemetery over the graves of soldiers interred there since the war. The chairman said they had made an exception in this case, as the permission asked for was only given where the grave spaces had been purchased out. But these men noD? buried were gallant soldiers who succumbed to wounds received at the war while in hospital in Athlone, and it would be the wish of the townspeople that they should pay every honor they could to the memory of the brave. Mr. Jennings, the last interment, was a New Zealand officer, and it will be satisfaction to his friends to know he is in kindly Irish earth, for he was the son of an Irish exile. The Governor of New Zealand, the other day, sent a wreath to be placed on his grave.

RESPONSE OF FARMERS’ SONS. When Major Sir Francis Vane, Munster Fusiliers, attended the quarterly xneeting of the Ballymahoxx Rural Council, aixd urged the necessity for a further recruiting effort in the district. Mr. McGreevy said that one of their members, Mr. Ganahan, had sent five of his sons to the front—a man who could give each of them 100 acres apiece if he kept them at home. Still it was said the farmers were not doing their duty. He, himself, had his two sons out in the Irish Guards. There would be more Irishmen in the forces if recruiting were better managed. It was the duty of every Irishman to go himself where he could, or, if he could not be spared, he should send his son or some one belonging to him, or even his workman. When his sons left the little village of Abbeyshrule 75 other lads followed them. It was the same ixx the case of Mr. Ganahan’s boys.

ARMAGH CATHEDRAL. A very remarkable specimen of modern silversmith work has just been completed at the works of John Smyth and Sons, Wicklow street, Dublin, —noted for sustaining the olden reputation of Ireland for artwork in metals. It is a colossal lamp for suspending before the high altar of'the Armagh Cathedral.- ' It is a truly beautiful piece of work, majestic in appearance, and at once impresses the imagination of the spectator. Weighing over 1850 ounces of sterling hall-marked silver, covered all over with plates of fine gold, it measures 12 to 13 feet in height and over 3 feet in diameter. It took the continuous labor of ten men for eight to construct it, and it is probably the largest and most elaborate and the weightiest piece of silver-plate in the United Kingdom. This . old city (says the Irish Catholic) has every reason to be proud of the fact that the lamp is, in conception and execution, the work of Irish brains and Irish hands. A VICTIM OF THE REVOLT. The Rev. Father T. P. Davis, of Balaklava, S.A., contributes the following interesting account to the Southern Cross of the priest who was killed during the recent Sinn Fein, disturbance. I have thought all along, says Father Davis, that the priest referred to must be my old friend and college companion, the Rev. Father W. J. Doherty, D.D., of the Pro-Cathedral staff, Marlborough street, Dublin. Dr. Doherty was one of the best-known and most esteemed of the Dublin priests. A native of Dublin, he received his early

education from the Jesuit Fathers. Later he was a student at Clonliffe : College, eventually proceeding to the College of the Propaganda at Rome. There he was my classmate for four years, and we were ordained priests together on the same day—the Saturday after Pentecost, in 1895-—by the late Cardinal Par6cchi, then Vicar-General of his Holiness Pope Leo XIII. Among our companions of ordination were his Grace Archbishop Mundelein, of Chicago; and of Australian priests, the Rev. Father Hyland, of the parish of Rockdale, Sydney, who is also a native of Dublin. His Grace Archbishop Duhig, of Brisbane, who was possibly responsible for the paragraph in the Brisbane paper (though not ordained at the same time), was a student in Rome for part of the same period. THE IRISH BRIGADE. . The following letter from one of the commanding officers of the 16th (Irish) Division, sometimes referred to as ‘ The Irish Brigade,’ has been received by Mr, John Redmond, M.P.: — ‘Since I have been with the Brigade I have been very much struck by their unfailing cheerfulness, often under the most depressing circumstances, and the very marked determination , of every man to do his best. During the instructional period, when attached to other regiments for preliminary practice in the trenches, Sergeant J. Tierney, of the Leinster Regiment Lance-Corporal A. Donagh, and Private P. F. Duffy, of the Connaught Rangers, have gained the D.C.M., which, I think, is a record for any brigade that has been only under instruction out here; whilst Corporal Timoney, of the Munster Fusiliers, has been especially mentioned in Army Orders for an act of courage in picking up and throwing away a live Mills grenade which had fallen among some men under instruction. By this act he undoubtedly saved the lives of several men, and if it had happened in the field instead of at practice he would have been eligible for recommendation for a higher honor. ‘ With such men it is therefore safe to say that when the history of the war is written it will be found that the 16th (Irish) Division have worthily upheld the great traditions of- the Irish race.’ In a postscript the writer adds— ‘ Personally, I should like to add the great admiration we all feel for your brother and Captain Gwynn. Though unaccustomed to military life, they have cheerfully endured the hardships of *the men and devoted themselves to their comfort. On one occasion, when a trench had to be dug in front of the firing line, your brother insisted on going over the parapet and remaining with the men whilst they worked.’

PROPERTY-OWNERS’ RIGHTS, PAST AND PRESENT. We have evidently gone far beyond the theories held by landowners thirty or forty years ago when even the Pall Malt Gazette comments thus on the attitude adopted towards Lord Clanricarde: ‘lt will be a mystery to posterity how any civilised society could have so long tolerated an exponent of such unblushingly self-centred claims and allowed him to resist, almost single-handed, every programme, of settlement and conciliation. That a “lone miser,” tottering about the West-End of London, should have controlled large estates in a country which he never visited, without accepting any responsibility for his relations with their cultivators beyond the exaction of his legal dues, will seem' as gross an example of “barbarism” as the nakedness of economic conflict has ever produced.’ The moral is that Governments should examine grievances without prejudice and be bold enough to redress them when they are proved. It is for the sake of men, many of whom were scarcely less exacting or less harsh in their dealings with their tenants than Lord Clanricarde, that millions of the Irish peddle were driven forth from their own country, carrying with them a sense of oppression which still influences their views and the opinion of their families on public questions. The enemies made for this country by the conduct of Irish landlords almost defy counting.