BAR TO U.S. FRIENDSHIP FOR BRITAIN

New Zealand Tablet, 8 April 1920, Page 23

BAR TO U.S. FRIENDSHIP FOR BRITAIN

THE IRISH ISSUE. : '■ 1/,- : "MOST SOLID PHALANX IN AMERICAN POLITICS."-

«t n n a " artl , cle entitled, "Is America Friendly?" AGO., writing in the Daily News, says the most'formidable obstacle to American friendship for England is the Irish question. Until that question is satisfactorily out ot the way there can be no secure friendship between the two countries. "The influence of the Irish upon American politics is much greater than their numbers would surest" (he continues) "Those numbers are great— less than a tenth of the population, probably much more—but they are the most solid phalanx in American life. They have the acutest political instinct of any section of the community, and in the party caucus, both municipal and national, they are generally masters. "Around them cohere all the anti-British influences, which are now reinforced by the great German population, which is not less considerable than that of the Irish. Facts Withheld From British. "It is deplorable that there should apparently be a conspiracy of silence to conceal from the country the magnitude of this menace to Anglo-American relations. It is the- great, glaring, ominous fact of American politics. It meets you everywhere. It shouts at you from the antiBritish Hearst press wherever you may be— New York in Boston, in Chicago, in St. Louis, in far-away San Francisco. xi "S Valera makes the progress of a popular hero through the country, and the British public's ears are stuffed with cotton wool to prevent the fact percolating to its mind. In Boston I saw a whole issue of the Hearst paper devoted to a malignant attack on this country and its misgovernment here, there, and everywhere; its designs on American credit, and so on. - ■ "The Mayor of New York is an Irishman, and the mayors of most of the other great cities are Irishmen'or the nominees of Irishmen. Judge Cohalan, of the Supreme Court of New York State, travels about delivering passionate diatribes against England, and half the Senate plays up to the same tune. . . "The suppressed nationalism of Ireland bursts out in blotches on the face of America, and America is angry with the blotches, and angrier still with the cause of the blotches."