THE IRISH QUESTION.

New Zealand Tablet, 9 August 1917, Page 37

THE IRISH QUESTION.

To the Editor. Sir, —Mr. C. H. O’Leary, in the Tablet of July 26, reiterates for the third or fourth time that with which students of Irish contemporary history are well acquainted. With much that he writes I concur, but he is too dogmatic. For instance, this is a specimen of it: -v “The facts I quote can’t be challenged.” Oh, yes they can. This sentence may be challenged: ‘‘For a whole ,fortnight almost he [Mr. Redmond] and his precious ‘ party ’ sat like dumb dogs while the brightest intellects in Ireland were being quenched in blood.” That statement is absolutely incorrect. When the news first leaked out that thirteen brave men had been summarily and ruthlessly executed Mr. John Dillon several times interviewed in Dublin and pleaded with highexecutioner Maxwell to spare the lives of the twenty men who had also been condemned to be shot. Maxwell wanted more blood and insultingly and defiantly refused Mr. Dillon’s humane request. The whole thing was like a bolt from the blue : it was no time for moralising or delaying. With indecent haste and brutal ferocity the mandates of the secret courts martial were carried out. Mr. Thos. Lundon, M.P. (at whom Ch. O’L. in this connection and with execrable taste sneers) was commissioned to proceed to London, and to lay before Mr. Redmond the awful plight of the twenty doomed men. Mr. Redmond, on learning the alarming situation in Dublin, at a late hour of the night visited the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, with the gratifying result that the latter at once stopped the executions, no more taking place. The Irish Times at this period cried out for a further extension of the “surgeon’s knife,” while the organ of Messrs. W. O’Brien, T. M. Healy, and L. Ginnel (who, Ch. O’L. tells us, “did their best”), Mr. W. M. Murphy’s J tide pendent , when clemency was asked for poor James Connolly, hoped that “no further leniency would be shown.” To Ch. O’L. the Irish Party is anathema ; his virulence to it exceeds that of the Carsons, Craigs, and Lonsdales. The party is not sacrosanct, but let it be fairly and honestly criticised. In the issue of the Tablet with which we are now dealing the editor in treating with the Irish Party wrote: “The Irish Party is no longer trusted ; Mr. Redmond may blame his foolish belief in the honor of English statesmen for that.” I commend this form of criticism to Ch. O’L. Mr. Redmond, unfortunately, committed the error of Grattan when the latter swallowed Lord Portland’s sophistries, which left from that day to this a bitter legacy to Ireland. Let us bend our energies and talents in fighting our numerous and bitter enemies. Differences we may have ; we are Irishmen enough to be generous and forbearing, and to always recollect—“On our side is virtue and Erin.”—l am, etc., M. J. Shear an. Auckland.