The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1916. THE CHRISTCHURCH PRESS AGAIN

New Zealand Tablet, 2 November 1916, Page 33

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1916. THE CHRISTCHURCH PRESS AGAIN

ST is, as we have before had occasion to F is, as we have before had occasion to remark, one of the inevitable accompani- <? ments of a resort to arms in the settlement of national disputes that the innocent suffer with the guilty, and that those who had no share or responsibility in bringing about the trouble by a cruel fate become its hapless and helpless victims. The sanguinary insurrection of Easter week —when the streets of Dublin ran red with blood —was no exception to the rule ; and in view of the fact, Irishmen, both at Home and abroad, with the warm-hearted sympathy which is characteristic of the race, have taken steps to remedy the aftermath of distress which has followed in the wake of the slaughter, deportations,, and imprisonments which marked the trail of the illstarred rising. Even warm-hearted Irishmen do not part with their money without having a reason, and they had ample warrant that the case in question was one of urgent and immediate need. They had before them the fact that no less than four funds— Prince of Wales’ Fund, the Dublin Lord Mayor’s Fund, the Irish. Tizzies Unemployment Fund, and the Irish National Aid Association’s Fund —had been opened in the capital to ameliorate the conditions there existing. That alone was unanswerable evidence as to the fact that acute and widespread distress prevailed. The Lord Mayor and the Irish. Times Funds were devoted exclusively to the distress caused by fires, while the Prince of Wales’ Fund provided only for dependents of soldiers. But these, as the Very Rev. Father Bowden, Administrator of the Dublin Pro-Cathedral, pointed out, only touched the fringe of the trouble, which was gravest amongst wives, mothers, and children deprived of their breadwinners. Overseas Irishmen had before them, further, the fact that an appeal had been issued by the Irish National Aid Association , giving definite paiticulars of the nature and extent of the distress which was waiting to be dealt with. We quote a portion of the appeal : 1 Other associations have charge

of the question of general distress, and met its special and urgent claims. Our association appeals for immediate and national aid on behalf of another class, not included herethe destitute families of some three hundred men slain during the insurrection, of fifteen executed by Courts-martial, of one hundred and thirtyfour condemned to penal servitude, of two thousand six hundred and fifty* deported without trial, and of about four hundred awaiting sentence by Courtsmartial. In all, there have been to this date three thousand two hundred ■ cases of released captives adjudged innocent, but not compensated for their imprisonment. It adds to the urgency of the appeal that many of these have been deprived of their employment, and that some of the female relatives of accused men have, though entirely distinct and without reproach, been heartlessly dismissed from their occupation, and despoiled of their livelihood.’ The appeal added that ‘ subscriptions are urgently needed.’ Later, a further appeal was made by the association, giving additional particulars of the necessities of the situation. We quote a portion : ‘ The Provisional Executive states that while the amount received shows a very generous response to the appeal, it is not more than is urgently needed. On the week ending June 24, grants of over £7OO were made,, but the large number of country cases, which have up to this been met by temporary local assistance, are gradually coming on the list of weekly grants by- the National" Aid Association, and in many of the city cases the grants have not been hitherto up to the amount which the Executive feels should be made. To cover all cases in the matter that the Irish people evidently desire would involve an enormous expenditure, and even to meet them to the point of genuine necessity must require the issue by the association of weekly grants to a total of not less than £IOOO a week.’ Finally, New Zealand Irishmen had before them the earnest appeal issued by the Very Rev. Father Bowden, Administrator of the Pro-Cathedral, Dublin, and treasurer of the fund ; ‘ We make appeal to all human hearts, whose noble compassion can reach over every obstacle to redress wrongs and alleviate suffering, that they may co-operate in this merciful and righteous work. For the sake of our country we make it, of our Nation’s honor, and of our own, so that its high repute for justice shall be transmitted by our generation unsullied to future and happier times.’ * With such facts and appeals before them, overseas Irishmen could not but recognise that there was a clamant call for help and succor. The effort to provide relief was in itself so essentially humane and charitable a movement that even papers that were not specially friendly to Ireland might fairly have been expected to allow it to pass without comment —and that has, in point of fact, been the. attitude of the vast majority of New Zealand newspapers. There has been in the newspaper offices of the Dominion a sufficient sense of the fitness of things to recognise that the affair was, after all, a matter that mainly concerned Irishmen, and that if they chose to send money to assist their own kith and kin in the hour of need that was purely their own concern. Almost the only paper from which churlish and officious interference has been experienced is the Christchurch Press , which seems constitutionally unable to repress its anti-Irish animus, even at a time when Irishmen—from New Zealand as well as from Ireland—are nobly giving their lives for the Empire, Tne Press offers opposition to the relief movement in a manner that is at once impertinent and insulting. The Press is pleased to disapprove of this work of charity and humanity because, it alleges, there is ‘ no actual evidence of distress justifying the appeal.’ The facts which we have set forth above, from representative clergy and others on the spot, are a sufficient refutation of that contention. Only the most hopeless prejudice, or an even more hopeless ignorance of the subject, could explain o the publication of such an utterly unwarranted statement. The paper does, indeed, attempt to quote authoritiesof a kind. One is the

London Spectator which, the Press admits is ‘s strongly anti-Nationalist paper,' whose ‘ possible extravagance of language must be allowed for; and the other is an anonymous ‘ Ulsterwoman,’ who writes to this ‘ strongly anti-Nationalist paper.' Has the intelligence department of the Press office really sunk so low that it is ready to accept any old wife’s story as sufficient ground on which to base condemnation, not onlj of the Bishop of Christchurch, but of the whole Catholic hierarchy of 'Australasia ? If so, criticism is disarmed, and the case is one that calls for pity and commiseration. The Press further objects to relief being sent from Christchurch on the ground that the authorities were not named to whom the money was to be made payable, and that there was a danger, and even a likelihood, that the fund would be used ‘ for the furtherance of political agitation.’ As our readers have long ago been informed, the authority to whom all the money collected in Australasia is being sent is his Grace the Archbishop of Dublin—an ecclesiastic who has a standing second to none in the whole realm of the Catholic world. As before, the authority quoted fox proof of this alleged danger is the anonymous old lady, ‘ Ulsterwoman,’ who shows her knowledge of the subject by not being even able to give the name of the Irish National Aid Association correctly. Against hex maundering and anonymous statements in regard tc the money going to ‘ Sinn Feiners in prison ’ we may set the official declaration of the association, issued and signed by the Executive Committee and published in the Irish papers of June 6 : ‘As our appeal, published in your paper, has shown, we are dealing only with the cases of relatives of those who lost their life or liberty as the result of the insurrection. No grant is paid until the case has been investigated by members of a large committee of ladies which is working in co-opera-tion with us, and which has now all the machinery necessary to enable a fair and proper distribution tc be made.’ As we have already stated, the treasurer oi the association is the Very Rev. Administrator of the Pro-Cathedral, Dublin, whose name ought to stand at •least as high as that of any anonymous ‘ Ulsterwoman.’ The Press professes to be impelled to its ill-natured and small-minded attitude by a sense of ‘ paramount duty to the Empire.’ These relief collections have been made through all Australia and nearly the whole of New Zealand, and nothing dreadful has happened. Christchurch is almost the last to take up the movement, and then—the Press comes bravely forward to save the Empire ! Really, the Christchurch paper takes itself too seriously. We have all laughed at the Skihhereen Pa;/le, which kept a watchful eye on the Czar of Russia ; but we have just as entertaining journalistic jokes nearer home. * As we have said, the Press’s manner of fault-find-ing was at once impertinent and insulting, suggesting as it did that the Bishops and Archbishops of Australasia were so devoid of ordinary intelligence as to send large sums of money away without really knowing to whom they were sending it, and implying that they needed to be guided in the way they should go from an office in Cathedral square. So far as the Christchurch collection is concerned, the only effect of the paper’s interference will be to give the movement a notable fillipfor Irishmen, of all people, will be the last to accept dictation from such a source. But the paper itself remains to be dealt with; and before these lines appear, the meeting of protest called for Tuesday night will have had something to say on the matter. We hope the discussi<^ will not end in the mere passing of resolutions. Tli’efe is only one vulnerable spot in money-making concerns such as our daily newspapers now are. The sense of ‘paramount duty to the Empire’—which- furnishes such a convenient pretext for the Christchurch daily-in a two-penny half-penny ‘ crisis ’ such as the sending of a few hundred pounds to relieve Irish distress, will undergo considerable modification if the paper experiences a substantial drop in its circulation.