ARE WE SINN FEINERS?

New Zealand Tablet, 8 April 1920, Page 17

ARE WE SINN FEINERS?

What is the doctrine of Sinn Fein? As we understand it, it is something like this (says a contemporary); An enemy possesses our shores, compelling our acceptance of his forms of government, even to the sending of our chosen representatives to his Parliament, where they;;4become corrupted and where the separate identity and ; thought of Ireland is lost. It is therefore our first duty to cure this ill by refusing- to accept the enemy’s forms of government. Instead of turning our thoughts outward to the ends of the earth (be it Westminster or be it Washington), we must turn our thoughts in upon ourselves. We must assume ourselves to be that which we desire to be; and by concentrated thought upon our-selves—-not in any spirit of selfishness, but in an exercise of spiritual discipline—we will make ourselves strong and self-reliant. Even though an enemy possess our shores, it will be for us, as though that enemy ngi more possessed our shores, for he will no longer possess our thoughts. Our thoughts will be for our own things. Patiently and surely we will build up a State claiming the utmost of our allegiance. Having cleansed our minds of the stranger's alien forms of eminent, we will devise those forms of government best adapted to our own need, best answering our own sense of virtue, best continuing the tradition of the old polity our forefathers built in a free Ireland. > The activities of that State will also be undertaken by us. Hitherto we have demeaned ourselves by running to this one and to that soliciting aid. We will demean ourselves no more. Having built a State worthy to claim the allegiance of just and true men—devised not in slavish imitation of other States, but thought out anew in all its parts and in the consonance of those parts— will be our pride and our determined resolve to 'put it into motion J’he enemy in our territory may seek to hinder, and may in fact throw many of our plans into disarray, but we will continue though he f were to cast us down a thousand times. He has destroyed, for his own selfish purposes, our industries. By the operation of our State we will build them again. He has ostracised us from the use of the V great natural resources of our country. We will open up those resources and render their wealth and their service for the whole people of Ireland. He has mined our trade indifferently with all the nations of the earth. We will open that trade, expertly and with careful thought to find the wisest, healthiest, and most natural exchange of commodities. He has burned and locked up our literature We will explore it. He has sought to kill our national speech. We will revive it. He has sought to withhold us 'from all culture save his own. We will create a true ami beautiful culture, not by grafting our wit and grace on to his briar-tree, but by clearing the obstructions from our natural roots. And these and other things like unto these will we do, firm in the faith that our salvation lies not in the ends of the earth hut in our own right hand, in our own wise brain, and our own clean intention and honest procedure. It will require infinite self-sacrifice; it will demand a heroism beside which the heroism of the Bed Branch will seem a little thing; but, God helping us, we can do

no other. . Such,, a course is honorably required of us; and we will pursue it lie the i: end. f That, as we. conceive it, is Sinn Fein. No nobler doctrine was ever placed before a nation. It is. weighty, with responsibility, for it tolls us, not merely that thus and thus can freedom be won, but also that we will not be worthy of freedom till we win in such a fashion. It asks us to realise, as the constant habit of our daily life, the highest conception of citizenship. And instead of being preoccupied With the presence of the invader, it asks us to concentrate ' upon our own national duties and responsibilities. . • .if: ? ' ■ iffy Moreover, it put this ideal before us, not as a party creed, nor as a social evasion, but as a national duty. a r from excluding Labor, it is a doctrine not possible of fulfilment without Labor. And it cancels political differences before a great national fealty. Yet let us deal honestly with ourselves and ask ourselves how far we have fulfilled our own doctrine. What actual part of that doctrine have we as a nation put into actual practice? This is not a question of what Hail Eireann has done, will do, or may enact. Nor is it a question of how much money wo may subscribe to the •Republican Loan. There is money in the country—that is to say, there is stock in the country and there is paper in the country, and men judging themselves ordinarily shrewd are proudly changing substantial Irish stock into insubstantial English paper, and much of this money will find its way into the Republican loan, where it will usefully stiffen the sinews of national enterprise. Yet it may he that many men will take up such stock, and think that thereby they have completed their duty, when in fact only the least part of their duty has been accomplished. Political work is over; yet political meetings are still being demanded. A cynical Englishman said the other day: “Your barrels will save us.” “Well, there’s not much porter drunk to-day,” he was told. “Oh, I don’t mean what’s in them, but what’s said from the top of them,” he said. Political meetings; the running of action into talk. This was what he had in mind. He would not have been so complacent if ho know that every Sinn r ein Curaann throughout the country was drawing up schedules of English goods sold in the shops of town and village with a view to cutting off that trade altogether wherever possible. He would not have spoken so complacently if lie knew that a committee of experts (not political persons, but experts) was analysing those schedules with a view to financing and organising Irish enterprises co-operatively to supply those needs: and that another committee of experts was analysing the lists with a view to opening up trade with America, France, and Germany for such of those articles as we were not qualified to make, or could not at ones undertake. He would not have been so complacent if lie • knew that such activity was an activity born of the workers of Ireland; that every Cumann was a Cumann of workers, co-operative workers, with a property and pride in their work, and compiling their schedules exactly and accurately for themselves in their own undertakings, as men exactly and accurately draw up a list of their investments. Ito would not have been so complacent if Hail] Eireann’ provided an Historical Quarterly Ttcrinc, a magazine that built up an independent art thinking (without which no

nation, lives before its .;fellows as a" nation), and a Science and, Industrial Journal, that were earnestly studied through all the Cumanh of Ireland. '•'■.,"*;,'.';',';'.'',;"' '/''-y" ~ He would not have been so complacent if .hi'" had known that we were not'., political persons, but Sinn Feiners., , .. .-,'".''.. r V' ''''' -''" '/:' ; ;...;' ",\\ ; .,. National Assemblies but beat the air without disciplined peoples to control and complete therifj and when we; examine the splendid doctrine we will do - well to examine ourselves to see how many of us truly are worthy of its title. It is time that, we do so, for our salvation will not come from the ends of the earth, but will be wrought by us here at home in Ireland. •