The Nsw Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 1920. IMPERIAL CRIMES

New Zealand Tablet, 25 March 1920, Page 25

The Nsw Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 1920. IMPERIAL CRIMES

fMERICAN exchanges bring us news, withheld carefully by our own hireling press, of terrible and shameful atrocities, committed, by men wearing the British uniform, on defenceless people in Egypt." The details of the foul' crimes against women, of the brutal rapes and the cruel abuses, remind us forcibly of certain things we used to read not long ago of people then called Huns. From India comes a blood-curdling story of the wholesale massacre of Indians by British troops, firing by order of a general on men and women huddled together like cattle in a pound. We of Irish race shrug our shoulders and think -that it is all in keeping with the records of English rule in Ireland during long centuries. We have come to that pass now that- no brutality of English officials could surprise us, and' no story of atrocity. could be invented that we could not from memory cap with one more awful. 'And, now,

remember that the very men who stand for these deeds of violence and infamy are : the present associates of Mr. ; Lloyd George in .-the Government of England. Remember that they are the very people at whose behest the daily papers of New Zealand are calumniating and misrepresenting the ~ Irish people week by week and year by. year. Of them Erskine Childers has recently said: 'Official utterances , assume; with insufferable hypocrisy, that a congenitally depraved people is engaged r in a causeless campaign against a humane and impartial government." By the aid of their army of press-liars, in England and in all the colonies, they keep up even still that hypocritical attitude. General Dyer mows down defenceless people in hundreds; British savages rape women in Egypt; in Ireland there is" no law for a man who loves Ireland, and even child-, reft are kidnapped and hidden away, while policemen and soldiers who have murdered innocent people walk abroad like men whom the Empire desires to honor. Our press, our editors, support the men who are responsible for all this. Nay, every man who buys most of our dailies supports them to some extent and helps them in their nefarious campaign. Of them, again, Erskine Childers says: "There is no sign that the Government, realise the moral responsibility they are .incurring." The hireling pressmen who do the dirty work out here are just as unmoral and just as culpable in the sight of all men who have still, some regard for Christian principles. * The Amritsar massacre is one of the darkest stains on English fame. It is destined to go down to history with the records of the rule of Hastings in older days, or with the pitch-capping and half-hanging and priestroasting in Ireland in '9B. Yet, it was but an incident, compared with the long-drawn-out torture of Ireland, covering the bombing of homes containing women and children, the murder of Sheehy-Skeffing-ton, the manslaughter of Thomas Ashe, the arrests and transportations and brutalities that have marked the years of England's fight for the rights of small nations and for the end of despotism ! Look at Ireland, look at India, look at Egypt to-day, and then say with the Preacher of old: "I turned myself to other things, and I saw the oppressions that are done under the sun, and the tears of the innocent, and they had no comforter and they were not able to resist their violence, being destitute of help from any. And I praised the dead more than the living, and I judged him happier than them both that is not born yet, nor hath seen the evils that are done under the sun." Look, then, at these preachers of to-day who would cloak all such crimes against God and man, and would denounce as a traitor any man who would dare to ask how long such injustice and hypocrisy shall be tolerated. What of the Christian, gentlemen who would uphold the Government that is responsible for the dark deeds of Amritsar and Dublin, and who still prefer to stand with Dyer and Maxwell rather than with the oppressed and crushed and beaten people for whose rights we were told a short time ago the war was waged? Facts must be faced. Murder will out. The tricks of politicians, the tyranny of plutocrats, the connivance of a base press may for a time suppress the truth. But the whole world will ring with it one day. The true state of things in Ireland as well as in India is becoming known to mankind. And the verdict of one of the ablest of living Englishmen on it is that "the organiser of crime is the Government itself." The worst of it all is the fact that this is the sort of thing the world has to contemplate at the end of a war in which soldiers were invited to join for the cause of justice and humanity. * " •' ..Try to look at the facts apart altogether from political or national bias. Regard them from the standpoint of a Christian who believes that only by justice and charity and purity can the world be saved. And try to.judge in the calm light of those principles the

English Governmentthat is, ; Messrs, Lloyd George, Bonar ; Law, Arthur Balfour, t Walter Long, ' Winston Churchill, and the "moralist" Macpherson, who are, under God, responsible for such crimes to-day. Can any man attempt to justify them ? Can any man listen with patience when they clamor for the execution of ''war criminals" Can any man shut his eyes to the fact that they have left on the British Empire an ugly stain of blood that all the waters of all the oceans cannot cleanse now or ever? 'Once more, let us quote Mr Childers, who is here speaking of certain atrocities ot the English Government in Ireland: "We must take a wide view of history to find a parallel for this. Germany has nothing like it to her credit." ° Such words are sad reading for those who love the Empire. If they are not sad the case of those who read them unmoved is all the sadder.