THE NEW SIGNIFICANCE GIVEN ST. PATRICK’S DAY.

New Zealand Tablet, 19 June 1919, Page 23

THE NEW SIGNIFICANCE GIVEN ST. PATRICK’S DAY.

-p. livSt. Louis, as throughout America, St. Patrick’s Day this year was marked by a celebration extraordiAnd wheu detailed reports are returned from other distant centres, no doubt we shall have an amplification of the statement (says Church Progress) ; M ' V* Everywhere - that Irishmen dwell— which 1 is everywhere that God, set land into the seas and where civilisation has ensued— cause of Ireland’s freedom has tanned Irish enthusiasm and unity of purpose into a conflagration The justice of that cause is flaming the convictions, of all men who love freedom. And this is the thing which made St. Patrick’s Day this year a celeb at ion extraordinary. J ■ , • Throughout ' the p land, .as the accounts are assembled . thousands of eloquent voices pleaded self-de-termination for Ireland, and millions of people applauded. And not all the voices, nor all the applauding people were of Irish birth or Irish ancestry. Both groups had their proportions of other races. But the common bond uniting them was the love of freedom—the conviction that it is the inherent right of all peoples to fashion their own form of government. 1 1 , have witnessed the silence of official America at the I eace. Conference on this great principle, insofar f it. applies to Ireland. They feel that peace, with Ireland an English vassal, is a falsification of American principle and American declaration. As the friends of freedom, therefore, they have joined with American Irishmen to secure freedom for Ireland. -■ i u The cause of Ireland never before in this country had such championship. And as the declaration of assistance found its most forceful expression on the teast day of Ireland patron saint, the civic observance oi that day was given a new significance. Will Mr. Wilson heed the new alignment? Will he measure the force that is behind it Will he explain to the Peace Conference what it means ? Will he bring home to the reconstructors of a new world that the principles he enumerated and which they accepted must not preclude Ireland alone? Will he tell England that the American people are overwhelmingly and intensely for Ireland’s nationhood, and that there can be and will be no compromising the matter? This is the new significance given to St. Patrick’s ay in America. How it is going to be transmitted in 1 ans remains to bo seen.