IRISH NEWS

New Zealand Tablet, 28 March 1918, Page 34

IRISH NEWS

CATTLE-DRIVING IN IRELAND. \[ » A correspondent writes:"Your warning in the Tablet as to the cables (purporting to deal with Irish affairs) published in the New Zealand papers is quite opportune. The news items are obviously as bogus as the place-names mentioned in them. Castle Fergus, so far as I know, and I know Irish geography pretty well, is non-existent. Kilfeyra was obviously taken out of a penny novelette. The Publicity Department in England is evidently trying to get up an anti-Irish feeling in Allied and neutral countries. The cables are part of the game, just like Rolleston's pamphlet and Hay's brochure. I imagine the failure of the Convention is expected, and all these things are part of a publicity ' offensive' to show how unreasonable and how lawless the Irish people are. "It is for this reason doubtless that the practice of 'cattle-driving,' which some of your contemporaries confound with ' cattle-lifting,' figures in the cable news. Let me point out what ' -cattle-driving ' really is. It is a kind of pressure brought to bear on cattle speculators who rent large tracts of land on the eleven months' system from landlords to the detriment of the congested districts where land is wanted to convert existing uneconomic holdings into economic ones. The practice is to take the cattle off the ranches of the cattle speculators and drive them to the owner's doors as a gentle reminder that the land is wanted by the people. No violence is used to either cattle or owners. The people only want back the lands taken from them within comparatively recent times as a result of the land-jobbing in the Encumbered Estates Court. Cattle-driving has been in existence for over a decade, and I do not remember that the Sinn Fein Party ever expressed any formal approval of it, though it is now employed to discredit it. Mr. John Dillon M.P., used to be the patron saint of cattle-driving, and Mr. Ginnell was one of its chief practical advocates when first started by the Irish Party. "Speaking of the Encumbered Estates Court, it may be well to point out that its operations were responsible for much of the present congestion. The Irish famine (1846-8) left the Irish landlords of the poorer class in a very poverty-stricken condition, and in the latter year (1848) Lord John Russell brought in and passed an Act for the sale of deeply mortgaged estates. Samuel Rawson Gardiner, the well-known historian, describes this act as a 'curse.' The new landlords were for the most part land-jobbers, who were determined to extract the last penny in rent. They evicted wholesale, and consolidated farms into sheep walks and cattle ranches. Some of the evicted emigrated to America, carrying with them the well-known love of England they and their children still cherish. Others remained in the locality of their old homes, as laborers, or at best, cottier farmers, and tlieir children's children are there still. These can point out in many cases the ruined gables of their fathers' homes rising amidst the sheep pastures. They constitute the bulk of the cattle-drivers. The cottier farmers want their old homesteads rebuilt, and it is hard to blame them for this." A NEW NATION: MR. GEORGE RUSSELL'S LETTER. In the course of his recent published letter on the subject, Mr. Russell says: We are slowly realising the vigor of the modern Irish character just becoming self-conscious of itself. I had met many men who were in the enterprise of Easter Week and listened to their speech, and they had to prove their spirit to myself and others by more than words. I listened with that half-cynical feeling which is customary with us when men advocate a cause with which we are temperamentally sympathetic, but about whose realisation we are hopeless. I could not gauge the strength of the new spirit, for words do not convey the quality of power ill men ; and even when the reverberations from Easter Week were echoing everywhere

in Ireland for a" time, I, and many others, thought "and felt about those j who .died as some pagan concourse in ancient Italy might have felt looking down upon an arena, seeing below a foam of glorious faces turned to them, the noble, undismayed, inflexible faces of martyrs, and, without understanding, have realised that this spirit was stronger than death. I believe that capacity for sacrifice, tl|at devotion to ideals, exists equally among the opponents of these men. It would have been proved in Ireland, in Ulster, if the need had arisen. It has been proved on many a battlefield of Europe. Whatever views we may hold about the relative value of national or Imperial ideals, we may recognise that there is moral equality where the sacrifice is equal. No one has more to give than life, and, when that is given, neither Nationalist nor Imperialist in Ireland can claim moral superiority for the dead champions of their causes'. And here I come to the purpose of my letter, which is to deprecate the scornful repudiation by Irishmen of other Irishmen which is 60 common at present, and which helps to perpetuate our feuds. We are all one people. We are closer to each other in character than we are to any other race. The necessary preliminary to political adjustment is moral adjustment, forgiveness, and mutual understanding. I have been in council with others of my countrymen for several months, and I noticed what an obstacle it was to agreement how few, how very few, there were who had been on terms of friendly intimacy with men of all parties. There was hardly one who could have given an impartial account of the ideals and principles of his opponents. Our political differences have brought about social isolations, and there can be no understanding where there is no eagerness to meet those who differ from us, and hear the best they have to say for themselves. This letter is an appeal to Irishmen to seek out and understand their political opponents. If they come to know each other, they will come to trust each other, and will realise their kinship, and will set their faces to the future together, to build up a civilisation which will justify their nationality. I myself am Anglo-Irish, with the blood of both races in me, and when the rising of Easter Week took place all that was Irish in me was profoundly stirred, and out of that mood I wrote commemorating the dead. And then later there arose in memory the faces of others I knew who loved their country, but had died in other battles. They fought in those because they believed they would serve Ireland, and I felt these were no less my people. I could hold them also in my heart and pay tribute to them. Because it was possible for mo to do so, I think it is possible for others ; and in the hope that the deeds of all may "in the future be a matter of pride to the new nations I append here these verses I have written : TO THE MEMORY OF SOME I KNEW WHO ARE DEAD AND WHO LOVED IRELAND. Their dream had left me numb and cold, But yet my spirit rose in pride, Refashioning in burnished gold The images of those who died. Or were shut in the penal cell. Here's to you, Pearce, your dream, not mine, But yet the thought for this you fell Has turned life's waters into wine. Yo-u who have died, on Eastern hills Or fields of France as undismayed, Who lit with interlinked, wills The long heroic barricade. You, too, in all the dreams you. had, Thought of some thing for Ireland done, Was it not so? Oh, shining lad, What lured you, Alan Anderson? I listened to high talk with you, ■ Thomas McDonagh, and it seemed The words were idle, bjit they grew To nobleness by death redeemed.

Life cannot utter words more great Than life may meet by sacrifice, v- : - •'•■'■ ' "■'■ '"■"■; High words were equalled by high fate, You paid the price. You paid the price. You who have fought on filds afar, That other Ireland did- you wrong Who said you shadowed Ireland's star, Nor gave you laurel wreath nor song. You, proved by death as true as they, t In mightier conflicts -played your part, • Equal your sacrifice may weigh, Dear Kettle, of the generous heart. The hope lives on age after age, Earth with its beauty might be won For labor as a heritage, For this has Ireland lost a son. This hope unto a flame to fan Men have put life by with a smile, Here's to you, Connolly, my man, Who cast the last torch on the pile. You, too, had Ireland in your care, Who watched o'er pits of blood and mire, From iron roots leap up in air Wild forests magical, of fire; Yet while the Nuts of Death were shed Your memory would ever stray To your own isle. Oh, gallant dead — This wreath, Will Redmond, on your clay. Here's to you men I never met . Yet hope to meet behind the veil, Thronged on some starry parapet, That looks down upon Innisfail. And see the confluence of dreams That clashed together in our night, One river, born from many streams, Roll in one blaze of blinding light. —"Ji"