The New Zealand THURSDAY, JUNE 7, 1917. LORD NORTHCLIFFE ON IRELAND

New Zealand Tablet, 7 June 1917, Page 29

The New Zealand THURSDAY, JUNE 7, 1917. LORD NORTHCLIFFE ON IRELAND

- man in Enland doubts nowadays the 6 IllsK } immense power for good or ill possessed by JH§JK the Northcliffe press; and one has but to recall the names of the Times and the Daily ifojs=|M Mail to realise how vigorously in the past that power was turned against the Nationalist interests of Ireland. Consequently .: we may take as a sure indication of the mind of an united Britain the fact that Lord Northcliffe made a Home Rule speech at the banquet of the Irish Club on St. Patrick's Day, and that this utterance was followed by strong pleading in the Times and the Daily Mail for a definite settlement of the Irish problem. In our next issue we will publish the text of his lordship's'speech, and we need hardly remind any of our readers to take into account that it is a Home Rule speech delivered by a Unionist who has been driven by the logic of facts to

the conclusion that the interests of the Empire demand with special urgency that the long-standing wrongs of Ireland be forthwith redressed. To three points emphasised by the speaker we invite the attention of our readers: first, the splendid natural resources of Ireland ; secondly, the injustice of not allowing Irish workers to share in the benefits accruing to their fellows in England from the extraordinary demand for war material and 'munitions; thirdly, the need of good government to remedy the crying scandal of the present situation.

Ireland’s natural resources, the fertility of her soil, the immeasurable power of her great rivers, and the physical superiority of her people have long been the theme of English writers who have travelled in Ireland. John Bright, speaking in Dublin in 1866, after pointing out* the prevalent misery and poverty, said: “With your soil, your climate, your active and spirited race, I know not what you ought not to do.” Arthur Young, Wakefield, McCulloch, McCombie, McLagan, are but a few of the English and Scottish writers who were impressed by the natural fertility and luxuriance of the Irish soil. According to Sir Robert Kane, Ireland is capable of supporting in comfort 20,000,000 souls; M. de Beaumont says 25,000,000; and Arthur Young, in his Tour in Ireland, 24,000.000. In a letter to the Times, in 1867, Lord Dufferin said that human agency alone was responsible for “the perennial desolation of a lovely, fertile island, watered by the fairest streams, caressed by a clement atmosphere, held in the embrace of a sea whose affluence fills the richest harbors of the world, and inhabited by a race, valiant, tender, generous, gifted beyond measure with the power of physical endurance, and graced with the liveliest intelligence.” Lord Robert Cecil concluded, as all the world concludes now, that the perverse human agency in question is the Government of England. The writers we have referred to dwell on the fertility of the soil and the untold resources of the seas. Lord Northcliffekeen business man that he islays special stress on the mighty, unharnessed rivers daily expending power enough to drive every engine in Great Britain and so long neglected owing to the blindness or prejudice of capitalists. We know that some years ago he made a special study of the resources of the rivers and streams of the South of Ireland, and when he speaks of what could be done to enrich the country by utilising their “ white coal ” his words are worthy of respect.

He points out that in these days when high prices and crushing taxation make harder than ever the lot of the laborer, little or none of the millions handled by the workers of England are spent in Ireland. Irish politicians have repeatedly called the attention of the Government to this injustice, and with no good results; for the cruel wrong has gone on, and Irish taxes have grown more impossible while nothing has been done to help the poor to meet them. Lord Northcliffe spoke of the satisfaction with which he learned that Mr. Ford had determined to open in Cork a large motor factory, which would offer to hundreds of people constant employment and good wages; but he did not, as he might have done, comment on the efforts made by greedy English merchants to prevent even this crumb of comfort from reaching the Irish poor. In a letter to the Times Messrs. Donovan, Hazeltoxx,' and Keating have protested against the trade rivalry and jealousy which moved British manufacturers to petition the Government to withhold the facilities they had promised to Mr. Ford. Such a spirit is in keeping with the restrictions placed on Irish trade in the past when the glass industry, the trade in silk, hops, beer, malt, cattle, linen, and wool was ruined for the interests of English merchants. Side by side with the iniquitous cod© of the penal laws were the enactments which killed every attempt at commercial and industrial enterprise, with, a thoroughness and dishonesty which made Edmund Burke ask: “Is Ireland united to the Crown of . Great Britain for no other purpose than that we should'counteract the bounty of Providence in her favor.

and in proportion as that bounty has been liberal that we are to regard it as an evil which is to be met with every sort of corrective?” The same policy inspired Swift’s caustic pen when he wrote, “ I confess that from a boy I always pitied poor Arachne, and could never love the Goddess on account of so cruel and unjust a sentence which is fully executed upon us by England, with further additions of rigor and severity, for the greater part of our bowels and vitals is extracted without allowing us the liberty of spinning and weaving them.” Is it any wonder that Lord Northcliffe has at length arrived at the 'conclusion that a good government is needed in Ireland ?

Verily a good government is the panacea for Ireland’s wrongs; for it has been demonstrated to all humanity that a bad government is at the root of all her misfortunes. And, as that sterling friend of Ireland, Campbell-Bannerman, said, a good government means a self-government. It is as plain as anything can be that no foreign government in Ireland can be a good, or even an indifferent one. Seven centuries of bitter experience have shown the incapacity of the statesmen of England to do justice to the people of Ireland. English statesmen have confessed that the history of their efforts to rule, or to subjugate, Ireland is a long, dreary record of appalling failures. And now, when she has blazoned to the entire world that her policy is one of liberty and justice, can England any longer persist in her oppression of Ireland ? England hails the revolution of Russia as a triumph of democracy ; England assures humanity that she is fighting for the freedom of Poland, of Belgium, of Servia. We ask: What of Ireland? Lord Northcliffe, and he speaks for the people of England and of the Empire, answers that Ireland too must at length have her birthright of freedom. In the face of common sense, of honesty, of the ridicule of universal opinion will Lloyd George once more advance his hypocritical plea that for the sake of a minority in Ulster the oppression of the Irish people must continue ?