OUR ROMAN LETTER

New Zealand Tablet, 22 January 1920, Page 18

OUR ROMAN LETTER

_ o •■;,■■, (By "Scottus.")

MONSIGNOR O'RIORDAN. (Concluded from last week.) Though Italy's participation in the struggle made matters appear more difficult for Mgr. O'Riordan and his College, especially for the first couple of months, the civil authorities seemed to grasp the situation and certainly showed an amount of consideration that could not have been expected towards people who had taken no pains to manifest sympathy with the Allies, however keenly they might be interested in the cause for which the Allies said they were fighting. But it should bo remarked that while Mgr. O'Riordan had his own views as to the merits of the case, he repudiated the idea of being pro-German and objected to being called so. As nearly as possible his attitude may be summed up in words which he often repeated to me: "Two big bullies are up against each other hope each will get a good cooling and be taught a lesson." He did not wish to see Germany victorious; neither did he like to think of England coming forth from the arena with fresh laurels and added glory. But as he was certainly not pro-English, and as no Englishman could see the possibility of a half-way house between this and rank pro-Germanism, he was usually classed amongst those having tendencies or sympathies in the latter direction. I often mentioned this aspect of the case to him, and jokingly remarked to him that he might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb: "I can't help that," was his usual reply; "if people will not use their reason the loss is their own." On the whole, however, the first year and a-half of the war glided by without much incident as far as he was concerned, and there was little apparent likelihood of his being drawn into the vortex when the Easter sun of 1916 rose brightly over the hill-tops of Ireland and ushered in another dav .with another day's work to do. Into the anxieties occasioned by that memorable event there is no need to enter further than to observe that no Irish newspapers were allowed to reach us for several weeks, so that we had to depend for information on what was wired out here by the London press agencies. Fortunately, as it happened under the circumstances, we had not been accustomed to expect a whole lot of truth from these; and therefore, though they had much to tell of the thoroughness with which the Sinn Fein venture had been suppressed, we were slow to accept all. we read and were inclined to hope that when the actual facts reached us the reality would be found to have been less ugly. Such hopes were doomed to disappointment in a way that readers can easily -imagine: and almost at once the whole series of events in Ireland led to a situation here which had to be faced sooner or later. First of all there were a number of Irishmen in this city who thought they were doing a service to God, a supposition some of them entertain to the present day, by making it appear that the Sinn Feiners and their sympathisers were a pack of corner boys and rowdies with little respect for God or country; and secondly their views were carefully taken up and added to and ventilated by English people in high position and of considerable influence who did" not hesitate to proclaim the urgent need of ecclesiastical intervention for tho purpose of curbing li»»i unheard-of audacity of any churchman who si 101 l venture to say a good word for the culprits. The outspoken language of tho Bishop of Limerick naturally singled him out for special attention. Rightly or wrongly Mgr. O'Riordan had long felt that Dr. O'Dwyer's reputation had suffered unfairly in Rome owing to the attitude he had taken up a generation ago in reference to the public policy of the day. With this in mind he had been accustomed for some years to have the Bishop's Lenten Pastorals and the like turned into Italian and published in Rome; and now that the Bishop;, had by his outspoken stand drawn down on his devoted head the ire of those who once used to clap him on the back for what they believed to be his adhesion to English 'rule in Ireland, but who now went about proclaiming that they would see he was removed from his diocese or made to eat his words, Mgr. O'Riordan made up his mind that something had to be done to clear the air and cope with the situation that had arisen and might easily lead to grave consequences if allowed to pass unnoticed. Naturally no defence of the Bishop's attitude could be of much value without an intelligible exposition of the causes that" led up to it and the events that attended it; and as I was at the time a fairly diligent student of the London Times and other English newspapers for the truth that was in themand for other things as . well,he desired

me to mark and preserve everything, that could throw light on the subject, while he tried as best he could to procure such information as the censor allowed to come from Ireland. He was actively engaged in putting this material together when I happened to fall seriously .ill, and for a couple of months neither wars nor the rumors thereof troubled me except in dreams. When I had struggled slowly back to life and consciousness he showed me the result of his labors in a pamphlet of 43 pages beautifully printed and turned out, entitled The Recent Insurrection in Ireland: An Exposition of Its Causes and Consequences Drawn From Official Sources and From English Newspapers. It was not published, nor was it exposed for sale. It was simply- handed or posted as a private memorandum to those likely to be interested in the question or influenced by the crisis, or who might be called upon in their official capacity to examine the situation with which it dealt. Hie pamphlet, which from the color of the cover and general get up soon came to be called ''The Red Book," attracted much attention, diplomatic and otherwise, and led to not a little gnashing of teeth. Complaints poured in on all sides and from all sides, and the step was bluntly characterised as a blow aimed at the Allied cause. A writer who has since been using the columns of the Morn- - ing Post for attacks on Mgr. O'Riordan and his College vehemently objected to the pamphlet as '"political" on the ground that the expression "scrap of paper" was used in reference to certain broken pledges made to Ireland, forgetting I'm' the moment that the same expression had been England's trump card in working up a case against Germany -but as usual, any word in favor of Ireland was mere "polities," even though the same word used % for purposes of English propaganda was "patriotism." Another eminent Englishman bitterly lamented that the pamphlet offended against all laws both civil and ecclesiastical, basing his statement on the fact that being printed as a private memorandum it bore neither imprimatur nor printer's name. The manager of the Rome branch of a well-known Belgian publishing house who doubtless would consider it, the height of patriotism for Irish priests to purchase the liturgical productions of that house, freely entertained his clients with denunciations of tho "Red Book," which he characterised as a traitorous act against the writer's fatherland! Threats too were freely indulged', and for a time it was gleefully told round Roman teatables that Mgr. O'Riordan and those associated with him' were to be banished from tho sacred soil of Rome. Apparently the intervention of the Italian civil or military authorities was invoked, and the police made some efforts to trace the printer; hut they did not seem to have their heart in the task, and took no further action beyond that of closing the post to the pamphlet. About the time these enquiries were being made he drew up a short note, a copy of which is in my possession, indicating the scope and sources of the "Red Rook," as follows: "T.h is a document for private distribution. _ There is nothing in if which lias not been already published in England, either in official documents or in the newspapers; "It is composed of (1) a literal translation of part of Mr. Birrell's evidence given before the Royal Commission of Enquiry into the causes of the insurrection in Ireland; "(2) Then a literal translation of the correspondence between the Bishop of Limerick and Sir John Maxwell; "(3) Then a literal translation of several passages from official reports, from newspapers (in almost every case English newspapers), from speeches by Air. Asquith and letters from a few military officers; "(•!) Tho remarks of English newspapers on the compact; suggested by Mr. Lloyd George, proposed by Mr. Asquith, '"accepted by the Irish Party, and then broken by Mi'. Asquith." Some time in 'the same year he drew up and printed for private use a statement of the facts regarding the question of the chaplains in the British Army. The step wTis rendered necessary by an effort that was being made with some success both at home and in Rome to show that if there was a shortage of chaplains the fault lay with the Irish clergy, who, it was alleged, and urged, had failed to do their duty in the matter. Various hints and a knowledge of the actual facts led Mgr. O'Riordan to conclude that the effort amounted to an attempt to distract attention from those really responsible by drawing a red herring across the trail. As a sample of the methods resorted to it will be enough to mention that one of the statements of a semi-official nature .brought to light was to the effect that the Maynooth Mission to China was simply a dodge to enable Irish priests to avoid conscription! It was my intention to' devote part of this sketch to some account of his literary labors and kindred activities in Rome; but I find the pages already written have outgrown the usual limits, and I cannot expect the reader to bear with me if I continue just now. Accordingly I must postpone this subject for consideration at a subsequent

date. For the present I must content myself with referring to. a certain issue connected with his public activities which of ten occupied our attention, and with regard to which he was very outspoken: * : , •=; People sometimes wrote to him in recent times questioning the worldly wisdom of these and similar activities: f Cui bono? What good does it do?" they urged. "You are only putting yourself to trouble, probably without •corresponding results; and in any event, why not accept accomplished facts and recognise that England is powerful enough to impress, on those whom she wishes to impress, her own view of herself and of all the world beside. Besides you are possibly doing harm to your College by running the risk of isolating it and estranging the sympathies of those who may be useful in one way or another." On these' and similar exhortations and representations his remarks were usually to the following effect: "It is curious that these and similar observations invariably come from two classes of persons—those who place the Empire over all and those who would be the loudest in complaining if any step were taken by the Holy See as a result of what they, would call insufficient or one-sided information. Of the former I have nothing to say. If they consider the Empire entitled to supreme consideration, that is their own affair —and they are entitled to their opinion; but so am Ito mine. As for the latter, all I have to say is that to me it would be criminal for one in my position to stand idly by and impassively allow the enemy to build up impressions or convictions that might easily lead to regrettable consequences. Irishmen sometimes complain that this has happened —they ought not to forget that what has happened once is possible again. From a -religious standpoint I can imagine no greater misfortune than the possibility of Ireland being estranged from Rome, and I should freely spend all my energies to obviate any such possibility. On the other hand we have not had so many national glories to boast of for nearly twico a thousand years that we can afford to despise or resign the one real glory wo have achieved, that won in the allied camps of religion and learning, which made our name in bygone days, and which we have been renewing throughout the past century. To keep this before the world, and especially the world of Borne, is to me a work of national importance in the highest sense of the term; and I should he inclined to suspect the sincerity of those who would counsel me to lie idle or would consider it an unpatriotic work or a work of no importance to prevent tho laurels that are ours being filched from our brows to deck those of the alien and persecutor. As for what our good friends have to say of alleged isolation, it does not move me at all. They say this either because they do not know what they are talking about, or because their political proclivities would lead them to imagine it is true. Did they live in Rome they would know the facts; and the facts come to this, that there is no college that stands higher than this in the esteem of those whose esteem is worth having; and it enjoys that esteem, not because it has been passive or craven, but because it stood up against odds and helped to make the Irish name something of consequence in the centre of Christendom."