IRELAND’S RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION

New Zealand Tablet, 1 April 1920, Page 19

IRELAND’S RIGHT TO SELF-DETERMINATION

Speaking at the St. Patrick’s Day celebration at Waikiwi, the Rev. Father Eccleton, S.M. ? in the course of his remarks, said the claim of Ireland for inclusion in the application of the principles of self-determination and - of government only - " with the consent of the ’governed, is '"‘-'addressed not to blind prejudice, not to ; insane passion, but to the court of cool, balanced reason. The aim of all exposition, as of all discussion, is to evolve not heat, but light. _ " i ‘ 7V ; The Irish people are a separate race. They are ! Celts, / one of the earliest peoples that swept across what is now Europe from the depths of the mysterious East. Their advent was much anterior to that of the Teutonic race. With the coming of the Teutons, they were pressed out on to the very edge of the then known world, and found their habitat in the islands of the west. In Ireland they remained, and remain but for later Danish and NormanFrench infusions in the eastern and southern seaboards, Celtic.

They were among the first of peoples to embrace modern civilisation. The earliest records speak of Ireland as the schoolmaster of the western world when the peoples around Ireland were sunk in barbarism. Their division into septs or clans was the weakness that worked for their undoing. Powerful enemies from without skilfully applied the ancient doctrine of divide ct impera — and rule. For 750 years the fight of the Irish people for the retention of their right to self-determination has gone on, and the conflict was never more determined than it is to-day. Every weapon has been used to crush the Irish race. Penal laws, in their savage ferocity the most terrible instrument ever created by the perverted ingenuity of man, famine artificially created, and ruthless extermination by the sword have all been employed. The Irish were denied education, and then jeered at as ignorant. They were robbed of their lands, and then had the bog-lands and bleak mountain-sides let to them by foreign land sharks. They were rack-rented. As they improved their poor holdings— were merely tenants at willtheir rents rose, and they were thrust back into dull and hopeless destitution. The ready gibe 'then came from the heartless creators of their condition that they were improvident and unclean. In millions they, ardent lovers of their country, were driven forth to find sanctuary on the continent of Europe, in the colonies, and in the great Republic of the West. Thousands of Irish boys and girls were shipped in Cromwell’s time as slaves to the West Indies. The whole reason of Ireland’s sufferings is economic. Her lands were depopulated to make room for cattle, her industries were, and are, crushed; her trade was, and is, deliberately strangled because the moneyed classesnot the mass of the English people across the Irish seawould, and will, brook no rivalry from the quick-witted and virile people across the water. The religious issue is a lying and contemptible subterfuge. The crux of the matter is to be found in economics.

It was stated by the Times, during the terrible famine of 70 years ago, with a whoop of devilish exultation, that the Irish were going with a vengeance. The word vengeance was unfortunate. That vengeance they have and hold light-hearted and readily forgiving as they are—because the same causes operate and the same weapons of oppression are in use. The world may see it to-day in the wrecking of the League of Nations by America. * An Irishman, it was also piously hoped by the same “Thunderer”—more correctly a “Squeaker”—would soon be as rare on the banks of the Shannon as a Red Indian on the shores of Manhattan. G. K. Chesterton, in scorn, asks the world if a Red Indian in New York has ever attained to eminence in government in the senates of the world, in the learned professions, in art, in science, as the hunted Irishmen from the banks of the Shannon. For the Times, and for the caste it represents, the only good Irishman ""as a dead or exiled Irishman, that the pride of grass might grow and the flocks might increase in a fertile desert labelled Ireland. The record of Ireland is an appalling story of blood and tears and unmerited suffering, a story that sickens decent men and that brings the blush of shame to the cheeks of honest Englishmen. Ireland seized her opportunity "during the Napoleonic wars. Under Grattan, she formed her volunteers. England s difficulty had become Ireland’s opportunity. In the face of armed men, the Tory rulers of England granted her her own parliament—an undemocratic parliament, but yet a government of Ireland by Irishmen. The country at once jumped into prosperity. Pitt and his advisers set to work to wreck the Parliament, and by the lavish distribution or wretched titles, of money and of place, they

brought about the suicide of this parliament and consum- ’ mated the - infamous Union that still endures. , The names of; Butt, O’Connell, Parnell,' and Redmond are outstanding names in the long fight for the : repeal ;of the Union. At times the -people, deliberately goaded into rebellion and maddened by incessant wrong, broke out into armed revolt. . Through the years the Irishman of to-day reads with swimming eyes the names of Emmet, Wolfe Tone, John Martin, John Mitchel, Smith-O’Brien, McCracken, the brothers Sheaves, Davitt, Allen, : Larkin, O’Brien, Harvey, Stephens, Pearse, Connolly, Plunkett, MacDonagh, de Valera. We are told that we live in the past and brood on the wrongs of the past. It is foreign to the Celtic temperament to brood and to nurse wrongs. Their nature is not the dour, - hard nature that does so. The wrongs of Ireland still endure, and are more intense to-day than they have been for long years. The wrongs of Ireland are not in the past only. They are very much in the living, palpitating present. W. E. Gladstone, a great and just Englishman, sponsored Ireland’s cause because her case is unanswerable. In the teeth of Tory opposition, bitter and unrelenting to this hour, he showed the English people just and generous people—the justice of the claims of the Irish people. He showed the people of England, as distinct from the -Tories who still hold the reins of government in England, that , their cause was Ireland’s cause, that Ireland’s cause is the cause of freedom, that Ireland must live if democracy is to endure on the earth. Each-time that he, given a mandate therefor by the people of the three Kingdoms, sent a Home Rule Bill through the Commons, he found in the gilded Chamber, the stronghold" of Toryism, the hereditary privilege, the House of Lords, ' an impassable barrier. In 1914 the Asquith Government took up the Gladstonian Liberal tradition and sent a Home Rule Bill through the Commons. It was a poor measure of Home Rule, with nothing in it of the broad freedom that Canada, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand possess under the flag of the Empire. Yet John Redmond, weary with the strife of years, with memories of centuries of titanic effort teeming in his brain, accepted it as at' least an instalment of justice. Once more the Lords refused Ireland her right conferred on her by the democracy of England. The Parliament Bill was introduced, for the first time in history clipping the wings of the Lords. Tr provided that the Lords might twice reject a Bill passed by the Commons, but that on its third passing through the Commons it would become law automatically. The Lords fought for their privilege, and so vociferous did they become that they earned for themselves the scalding scorn, uttered in immortal verse, of G. K. Chesterton. They were threatened with a creation of peers sufficient to ensure the passage of the “clipping” Bill. They were stricken with horror at the prospect of the invasion 'of plain Bill Smiths into the haunts of the Vere de Veres, and with sore hearts submitted to the demands of democracy. Chesterton had told them that they spoke too freely of the grace and scorn of rank. Ho challenged them to say whether there was one upstart from whose “filthy face” they would shrink. They were, he said, too, a mob of usurers, idlers, and cads. He further reminded them that if their rank did date from Norman times they should let their Norman fathers sleep.

“Let God’s good grass grow above them "Where their pointed pennons blew, They were thieves and thugs and smiters But they were better men than you.”

The Homo Rule Bill at last received the Royal assent. At once a sinister figure arose. Democracy had spoken and the voice of the people was to be countered. The agelong enemy of free peoples, militarism in its most horrible aspect, civil war. was invoked. From the throats of guns was to come the answer to the peoples of Great Britain and Ireland. Sir Edward Carson, a very able lawyer, became the marionette for the Tories. Mauser rifles were landed at Lome and other places. The Citizens’ Army and the Nationalist Volunteers moved also. At Lome there was connivance at the landing of arms. At Bachelor’s Walk in Dublin men, women, and children were shot down when Irish southern volunteers marched with unloaded rifles. The people ere food for cannon. The Tories were using their age-old argument (?). Then came the war. “Ireland,” said Sir Edward Grey, “was the one bright spot.” Redmond made his generous and dramatic offer in the Commons. Irish recruits flocked to the colors. At once the hidden hand made its presence felt. Irishmen were refused the right to join Irish regiments. Officers’ Training Corps in Ireland were frozen to death. They were thwarted and

, ,' • i:i * a \ ■ ■{'• "t ■ : tk , • 1? i- : A.** tv badgered at every turn. "The valor of Irish arms at Mons and at the Dardanelles .was met with studied official" silence. The vlrish; for the first - time standing side by side ! .with other free peoples, within ... the . Empire, were repelled, angered, and maddened. The Home Rule Actstill ;on the . Statute Bookwas suspended, and Carson was in the War Cabinet. The Irish were played with,- laughed at by their Tory enemies. , They are a fiery race, a fighting race, a proud and spirited people" Long l centuries > of oppression had left them not a cowed or crushed nation, but ?a , nation of buoyant spirit, a veritable ; marvel in history. . - - " ' ;. The-rebellion of 1916, born of, dull despair - and of maddening insult, broke out. The members of the Irish Provincial Government found death before firing squads and rest in quicklime in prison yards. The members of the rebellious Ulster Provisional Government found reward in high places. The Tories have place and pelf for its rebels,but the firing squad and the quicklime for men- who die for freedom. The lessons of the French Revolution and of the Russian Revolution will never bo learned by them—until it is too late. The Convention served its purpose by throwing dust in the eyes of America. , . .. Ihe aims of President Wilson found an echo in every Irish heart. The world was to be made safe for democracy, government was to be only with the consent of the governed, and all nations, great and small, were to have self-determination. These principles are the principles of Christian ethics first enunciated by Bellarmine and Suarez against Tudor tyrants and Stuart fools. In our day they were re-expressed by Benedict XV., adopted by the British Labor Party, and given once more to the world by Woodrow Wilson. When-Wilson spoke them he was listened to, because he was backed by the men and grins and ships of the American Republic. The principles of Wilson are applicable to Belgium, to Jugo-Slavia, to Bohemia, to Alsace-Lorraine, to Poland, but not to Irelandso Irishmen are told. They are to be serfs. Ireland expressed her acceptance of the Wilsonian formulae at the last election, when she returned practically all her members pledged to self-determination— Gaelic, “Sinn Fein.” The Tories would not permit her to live within the Empire, although again and again she has stated her desire to stand shoulder to shoulder with the free dominions beneath the Union Jack. Irishmen were forced into the position they are now in. The campaign—the ancient campaign of armed repression, of lying, of bogus German and other plots, is now in full blast. Ireland must be blackened in the eyes of the world and goaded into rebellion once more, that the tanks and troops and machine-guns and poison gas and bombs may give their traditional answers to democracy. The people of England are awake to the position. The . great Trades Unions of England, led by J. H. Thomas, M.P., and Robert Smillie; the Labor newspapers of England, led by the Herald; publicists like G. F. C. Masterman, Major Erskine Childers, M.P., and G. K. Chesterton, the United States Senate; the legislative assemblies of nearly every State in the American Union; the Manchester Guardian, the great English Liberal organ, the Australian Commonwealth Parliament, have all" espoused Ireland’s cause, have all implored the enemies of democracy to grant Ireland the right to determine her own destiny within the Empire if she may, without the Empire if she must. The dawn must surely break if freedom is to endure. When it does, we may exclaim with Swinburne Who is this that rises red with wounds so splendid, All her brow and breast made beautiful with scars; In her eyes a look as of long pain ended, And on her lips a song as of the morning stars.”