IRISH NEWS

New Zealand Tablet, 5 December 1918, Page 39

IRISH NEWS

GENERAL. Mrs. Mary Phair, Kilskeery, Co. Meath, has just died. She was over 100 years of age. A further suspension of the Government of Ireland Act, 1914 (the Home Rule Act), is announced in the London Gazette. Mr. E. De Valera, M.P., Professor Mac Neill, and Mrs. T. Clarke were voted the freedom of the city of Limerick by the unanimous voice of the city council. The Most Rev. Dr. Gilmartin, Archbishop of Tuam, has written a letter warning young Irish girls of the dangers of accepting employment in large English cities in present conditions. In the Crown prosecutions for the use of motor cars to attend the Croagh Patrick pilgrimage, the Roscommon magistrates granted “dismisses” on the ground that Mass celebrated on the Reek was a “business.” All sections of the Irish press welcome the announcement of the Government’s intention to grant improved pay to the R.I.C. and D.M.P., and the hope is generally expressed that the terms will be satisfactory. Rev. P. J. Rcidy, P.P., Balia, has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Anaiqnarians. lie ascertained the tomb of the Burkes, Earls of Mayo, where Tiboid na Luing (Theobald of the ships), son of Grace O’Malley, is buried. Jo Grace O'Malley (Grainnc Ni Mhaile) Ireland is indebted for one of its poetical names, “Granwhailc.” Judge Craig, addressing jurors in the Belfast Recorder’s Court, said that it ought to be possible to bring back the miners from the Front now that there were 1,500,000 Americans doing their share on the battlefield. The Dublin veiling Telegraph says:—“lt is stated that police have been stationed outside the buildings in Ulster where it is known the rilles of the Ulster Volunteers are stored, and this step is naturally regarded as a preliminary to the seizure of the 50,000 “stand of arms which are held by the Unionist revolutionary forces.” When a Road Board for the United Kingdom was established Mr. Lloyd George promised that the funds would be allocated to each country according to its needs, the poorest faring best. This promise was kept in the usual manner. For instance, for road widenings and the improvements of curves and gradings, England got .£276,087 and Ireland got £3706. T The Lord Mayor of Dublin presented Coxswain Michael Dalton, Pigeon House Fort, with the Royal Humane Society’s Certificate for having rescued from drowning Miss Bridget Phelan when bathing. His lordship mentioned that Dalton, who was 70 years, swam some 500 yards and rescued the girl. SEDITION THAT PAYS. ‘What I propose to do is, in the futuremay God grant it may be the near futurewhen the Avar is over I propose to summon the Provisional Government together. And I propose, if necessary, so far as Ulster is concerned, that their first act shall be to repeal the Home Rule Bill as regards Ulster. And I propose in the same act to enact that it is the duty of the Volunteers to see that no act, or no attempt at an act, under that Bill should ever have effect in Ulster. . . IVe have 'plenty of guns, and we are going to keep them. We are afraid of nothing —Sir E. Carson (subsequently in the War Cabinet, etc., etc.) at Belfast, September 28, 1914. „ (See The Complete. Grammar of 'Anarchy.) CENSORSHIP CONDEMNED. The Belfast Telegraph, in a leading article on Irish censorship, while condemning Nationalist policy all round, says: “There can be little doubt that the Duke policy of ‘hush/ as applied to Sinn Fein, if not in-

spired by the official Nationalist Party, at any rate evoked no protest from them. It, certainly was in. their interests that Sinn Fein should not get a hearing through the pFess. It. is no less certain that the Nationalist Party was desirous that the British public should be kept in the dark as to the way Sinn Fein had swept the country and served notice to quit upon the body of Nationalist members.” Again, this Unionist organ asks; “Who is to know in Ireland, in the welter of a general election, what meetings are not authorised or what speeches may or may not be permissible in the view of the censor ? More and more the censorship, under direction, has been steadily drifting towards a political rather than a war supervision, though it was expressly declared that the censorship should not at any time assume political or semi-political functions. It is time to have united attention trained on the subject in order that the functions of the censor should be clearly defined and certain limits assigned to it.” ANTI-IRISH PROPAGAN DA. A glance at the American papers (says the Irish Independent) reveals the sinister operations of the propaganda department against Ireland and the presentation of her case to the Americans. Our searches have failed to find in the purely American papers anything more than a belated, bald reference to the message sent by the Mansion House Conference to President Wilson. Full publicity is, on the other hand, given to Sir Edward Carson’s counter-message. It av 1 be remembered that last week a Dublin Unionist journal hinted as much. In two New York papers of August 12 the greater part of the Orange manifesto is published, it having been cabled from London on the previous day. he Americans, therefore, were presented with this document 11 days before it was issued for publication in this country and Great Britain. It is a glaring public scandal if the Government is aiding this antiIrish propaganda by facilitating the publication of Sir Edward Carson’s manifesto and preventing by means of the censorship and other methods the publication of the important document which emanated from the Mansion House Conference. IRISH AFFAIRS: AN ENGLISH VIEW. It is reported that when Mr. Dillon accepted the Irish Party leadership (says the New Statesman) he said privately that the position was one to which nobody but a lunatic would aspire. But although Ireland is not yet a battlefield or “another western front,” nothing worse from the purely Party standpoint could well he imagined than the present state of affairs. If the aim of the Government is to destroy finally a movement already suffering for certain faults of its own —- faults inherent in age—then its Irish policy in the last few months is of an astonishing ingenuity. The Party supported the Convention, regarding it as a genuine offer of self-determination; but the sittings of that body had no sooner ended than the Government entered upon a course of action every step in which favored an ascendancy of the Party’s enemies, whether from Sinn Fein or from “Ulster.” At the Convention a majority of the Party delegates had, at the urgent instance of Mr. Lloyd George himself, compromised with the Moderate, or “Southern,” Unionists; the unity thus achieved proved of no avail- —the Premier first omitted to read a report based on his own suggestions, and then by threatening to conscribe Irishmen, made the hardly attained relationship with moderate Unionism no longer possible. . . . When the Government weakened in regard to conscription the Irish people inevitably credited Mr. De Valera and Mr. Griffith, not Mr. Dillon and Mr. Devlin, with the victory. Possibly Mr. Shortt thought to do the Parliamentarians a good turn by the allegation of a S.F. German plot, and believed that many Irishmen, undecided between the claims of the rival National groups, would now forswear S.F.; if so, he blundered grossly. The necessary sequels of the “Plot” were, on the one hand, the reestablishment of ascendancy and the military regime, and, on the other, a S.F. domination. in Irish politics.