A TRIBUTE TO IRISH SOLDIERS.

New Zealand Tablet, 30 January 1919, Page 23

A TRIBUTE TO IRISH SOLDIERS.

That the daughters of Erin are noted among women everywhere for their chastity is a commonplace of past and present history; that their fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons are also exceptionally clean in their language and lives is not perhaps so well known, or at least so often adverted to (says the Ave Maria). The author of a recent war book, however, pays tribute to the decency of the Irish soldiers in a regiment on duty in Macedonia. It is an English officer who bears this testimony: "These Irishmen find that they can get on quite well without bad language, and they do. They are, of course, practically all Catholics, and that accounts for it. It accounts, too, for the fact that one never hears an echo of that lewd, indecent talk which forms 75 per cent, of the conversations in some English settlements, nor any of the obscene songs with which English soldiers sometimes amuse themselves.” The Irish have their shortcomings, but their besetting sins are assuredly not profanity and obscenity.