A DUBLIN , PRIEST ON PEARSE: WHAT PADRAIC PEARSE DID FOR THE NATION.

New Zealand Tablet, 4 September 1919, Page 22

A DUBLIN , PRIEST ON PEARSE: WHAT PADRAIC PEARSE DID FOR THE NATION.

(■"■■■: "I wonder," Father --Augustine remarked to ah j American interviewer, "I - wonder do you in America realise what Padraic Pearse did for us ? I think of what : we owe him, of how much of the Ireland of today is his creation. But you could not really know unless you were living in the country. " In Pearse's boyhood we were a dying nation. Yes, those of you who were in Ireland 10 years ago know how low our spirit was. Our schools, with a few brilliant exceptions, were de-nationalised, indeed it was the low national tone of the first schools he went to that aroused him to devote himself to education in Ireland, to do something to save the souls of the young men and. women from the dry rot that was destroying them. We used to wear the symbols of our degradation without a murmur. He changed all that, with his pen, with his speeches, his work in the Gaelic League, and, above all, by the creation of St. Enda's School. He gave reality to the dreams of generations of Irish people. He left an inspired nation to the present leaders, worthy followers of the brave men of 1916. "Indeed," said Father Augustine, "we have now the ablest leaders a nation ever had, and the most re-. presentative—-represent;]tive of every class and kind in the community. Many of them (leaders) are trustees of St. Enda's School, a special committee of men and women connected with education, will arrange for the academic and scholastic side of the school life, while Mrs. Pearse with her devoted daughter will take the place she occupied in her sons' lifetime —mothering the boys and looking after their physical welfare. The trustees are amongst the most prominent of the Irish leaders to-day. Many of them are but lately out of prison, and they will devote to St. Enda's all the time they can spare from the affairs of the nation. They are Arthur Griffith, Professor Eoin Mac Neill, Laurence Ginnell, and other well-known and trusted men and women. Besides these there are many men, clergymen and laymen, whose names do not appear, but who are intensely interested in the welfare of the school. It is to you, however, and not to them. will belong the chief honor of saving St. Enda's School, and presenting it to the Irish nation as a memorial to Padraic and "Willie Pearse, and indeed to the other men of kindred ideals who fought and died that their native land might live.