The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1919. THE IRISH QUESTION

New Zealand Tablet, 4 September 1919, Page 25

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1919. THE IRISH QUESTION

g£§f ♦ ~ lllllP EVEN HUNDRED years of tyranny, the vSgljk rise and fall of dynasties of English rulers having in common little beyond the policy «»jj2SJZ, of exterminating Irish Catholics, have left J&fctM&f the demand of the Irish people for freedom. jpi* and self-government unappeased and unabated. Organised rebellions, shameful pledge-breaking, fomented famines, diabolical penal laws, - and ruthless landlordism, backed by the might of Britain, have not broken the spirit nor tamed the courage of the Irish, who, after all the years of oppression by a foreign Government, are still determined to have their own land and their own laws. The Irish question is not a complex one. Press and politicians in vain endeavor to obfuscate it and to throw the blame for all the confusion on the Irish themselves. What Ireland wants and will have at the very least is the repeal of the Act of Union which British statesmen have themselves condemned as a cruel and black fraud. They want the foreigners to leave them alone, and, having failed to rule Ireland, to betake themselves bag and baggage to their own country.. They want an Irish Ireland for Irishmen; they want their own old Catholic nation which has been ground down and beaten for more years than Belgium could count weeks of agony under the Prussians. ■ -*~ ' What • exasperates one is to read the mealymouthed drivel ..that t we .find^n i our press r when patron-

ising; editors and other- equally silly quill-drivers :: attempt to tackle : the question with a pharasaical show of • sympathy for Ireland. -;_ These people tell their read - ers—if they have readers left after 'four years of heapedup proof of their incapacity to deal sanely and squarely with any issuethat Irishmen could , have self-govern-ment if they would only agree among themselves. Every schoolboy who has mastered the outlines of Irish history could tell that the one thing certain about Irishmen is that they do agree that they must determine their government for themselves, and that they want no outside interference from rulers who rule without a shadow of right and who. stand for all that is blackest in the way of Prussian might and force. Lloyd George pretended to attempt a settlement when he wished to lead America into the war. But not only did he refuse to allow Irishmen. to select their own delegates for the Convention, but he refused to guarantee to .put the findings of his own packed gathering into force •when it had arrived at a substantial agreement. The real test of Irish opinion was the elections, when the issue was fought out fairly on the lines of Irish Ireland. Sinn Fein Carried the country, and since then has gained new strength, so that any man who knows anything about Ireland to-day cannot deny that the one thing on which Irishmen agree is Sinn Fein. No country has unanimous agreement as to its government, and only fools and editors tied and bound to the chariot of the infamous Harmsworth could pretend—as our editors do—that because a few foreign bigots in one corner of Ireland are compelled by their Tory and Protestant overlords to oppose self-government, Mr. George is justified in holding up to Heaven hypocritical hands and wailing, "Those Irish will not agree." Once again let us repeat that Ulster is for Irish Ireland, and that Ulster is by no means the one little corner of Orangedom which demands and obtains the right to oppress the rest of Ireland. Moreover, the inhabitants of that particular corner are not Irishmen: they are planters put there by England in the past for the express purpose they still serve, a purpose in keeping with that of the dark days of Ninety-Eight when their sexual filth drove Wexford to rebellion ; and it were as logical to say that the Chinamen and Jews, in New Zealand must determine what sort the government must obtain in the Dominion as to pretend that the engineered opposition of the Orangemen and the placemen is an argument against the united desire of all the rest of Ireland for a government according to their wishes. Of the endless hypocrisy of the press and of the tiresome platitudes of the editors of our "Day Lies" we shall never be free; but in spite of all they do and say the whole world knows to-day that Ireland is in the same position as regards England as Belgium or Poland was to Prussia, and that England has belied her war aims and broken her pledges and still stands for Prussianism and injustice at. the end of the war which was alleged to be waged for the destruction of such evils. The American Envoys who have startled the world by the recital of the atrocities of Englishmen in Ireland have testified to the splendid and. determined unanimity of the Irish people, fair-minded Englishmen who haye gone there could not close their eyes to it, our own soldiers have gone to Ireland and come back Sinn Feiners—and some of them have done their bit for. Ireland while there by protecting the people against the brutal Tommies whom they handled in no gentle manner in Limerick and again in Dublin. No lies, no camouflage can obscure the fact that Ireland is Sinn Fein and that Sinn Fein no longer admits the right of the Government which de facto rules by force to legislate for Irishmen. To-day de Valera is recognised by America as by Ireland as the President of the Irish Republic which is oppressed by- MacPherson, Lloyd George, and the other miscreants who are responsible for the kidnapping, the murders, and the atrocities to which the Envoys have' borne witness. * ■' The Irish Bishops, who are T proverbially, slow, to move, have issued a joint protest against the tyranny of the English Government and rightly indicted it as

the cause"- of the present'-state" of Ireland. The 'lrish people are determined that there can be no longer" any question of good or bad government at the hands of England and that ; they will have nothing short of self-determination. De Valera is welcomed throughout the United States by Cardinals, Bishops, Senators," Congressmen, and people as the President,of the Republic upon which the Irish people have agreed with marvellous unanimity. Distinguished English statesmen of. the standing of Erskine Childers have urged England to recognise, in justice to her own honor as well as to Ireland, the government which he and all men who do not blind their eyes to the truth know the Irish people have determined shall be theirs. Press and politicians and pledge-breakers notwithstanding, Ireland's, day is coming as surely as England's credit is being destroyed by her perverse - stand for might against right and for injustice against freedom. The sovereign dwindles down in America until it is no longer worth more than seventeen shillings and while it dwindles the funds are rolling in for the Irish Republic, and the Orange, White, and Green of the new Ireland is raised in triumph in every State. For America the Republic is now an accomplished fact. The sooner England recognises it the better for herself. She has still a chance of securing a Republic within the Empire. A little more Prussianism and that chance will have gone.