IRISH NEWS

New Zealand Tablet, 17 June 1920, Page 31

IRISH NEWS

GENERAL. England now openly claimed the right to form and mould the character of the Irish child, said Archdeacon Keown, P.P., V.G., at Carrickmacross. All her efforts to subdue the spirit of the people of Ireland having failed, she now undertakes the slower but to her mind the more efficacious means of capturing the children! 4 It was the duty of the Church to see that the education of her children was imparted strictly in accordance with sound Catholic principles. That their aim in the new Education Bill was to denationalize and rob of its Catholic character education in this country no one acquainted with English methods in Ireland for 700 years could reasonably doubt. Everything distinctly national and Catholic would be excluded from the curriculum of studies, children would be taught the glories of England, the expansion of the British Empire, whilst the history of thenown country would be rigorously excluded. The Irish language in a very short time would be excluded from the schools, and the sun of Ireland’s glory-—her faith and nationality —would soon set. St. Patrick, who has safeguarded faith and nationality for 1500 years, would not abandon them now, and to him they appealed in confidence. Sir Gordon Hewart, the Attorney-General for England, declared some time ago in Parliament that no such offence as contingent treason is known to the law. That was when Sir Edward Carson was accused of having used threats which were to bo carried out if certain events occurred. Apparently" there is one law for the Carsonites and another for the Sinn Feiners. Mr. R. C. Barton, M.P., has been tried by court-mar-tial in Dublin, and the public are informed that he was found guilty of having stated in a speech that reprisals would be taken on Lord French if a certain prisoner died in gaol or if his health were injured. For this alleged contingent threat he received the heavy sentence of three years’ penal servitude, the plea which saved Carson being evidently overlooked or set aside. Mr. Barton, whose sentence is considered by the majority of his countrymen as a brutally severe one, has been deported to serve it.

The Lord Mayor of Cork referred, at a meeting of Cork Harbor Board, to the appointment by Lord French of Sir John Harley Scott, as High Sheriff of the city. His Lorship said the Corporation had not nominated any person for the Shrievalty. Any person that accepted office now held it purely as an office under the military dictator of Ireland," Lord French, and would only sit as a representative of Lord French, and not as a representative of the people. He (the Lord Mayor) would object to receive the sheriff. The office of sheriff was purely a military one, and one that the people of Ireland repudiated.

“ARRANT HYPOCRISY:” MR JUSTICE COHALAN HITS OUT. •jj? ha l raCtenSmff . as “arrant hypocrisy and middle-class ■ English impertinence” the declarations of Sir Auckland C. Geddes, new British Ambassador, on his arrival in this country (says The News, New York, under date April -1), Supreme Court Justice Daniel C. Cohalan one of the leaders of the Irish in America, in a stated ment last night declared that Ireland and England are at war and that the United States will continue to be interested in the cause of Irish independence until navalism. 1 13 fr ° m the overwhelming peril of Justice Cohalan’s statement, in full, follows: His (Sir Auckland Geddes’s) statement is a tissue of arrant hypocrisy and English middle-class impertinence. Within three days after a coroner’s jury ni Cork as held the British Premier and the two chief Enghsh officers in Ireland guilty of assassinating he Mayor of Cork, Sir Auckland Geddes says there

is no quarrel between England and Ireland v in s this generation. -. v :/ . -y w.-.- “ The truth is the two countries are at war, and will continue until England withdraws her army of occupation and leaves the Irish to rule their own country in their own way. “In face of conditions in India and Egypt, he can only speak of these countries on the theory that he has come here, like the proverbial diplomat, to lie for his country. America is interested in Irish independence, ' and will continue until the end, so that there will be freedom of the seas and the end of all wars, which can only come when the world is free from the overmastering peril of navalism. “Sir Auckland is running true to form, and it might be well for him at least to set foot on our shores before he begins to lecture the people of America. “If he wants friendly relations between America and England let him advise the ruling class in England to take their armies out of Ireland, India, and kgypt and to bring about those reforms in England which are so badly needed by the great mass of the English people. Iho British Ambassador is evidently very new in the field of diplomacy. It might be well for him to recognise the fact that we Americans need neither advice nor assistance from him in running our country.”

ARE YOU EOR PRISON WHEN DORA DECIDES TO CALL UPON YOU? “After much fine-drawn argument, the Executive scored a famous victory in a case that is a good deal more simple than it might look at first sight” (says a Manchester (7 nan la nr editorial). “A British subject may still be imprisoned without trial, and for as long as the competent agents of his Government think tit. D.O.R.A. was born of the war, but it appears to have been the kind of struggle that the preacher had in mind when he observed that ‘there is no discharge in that war.’ However, juries and indictments are not universally obsolete. In order to remove yourself effectively from their operation, it is, as a matter oi fact, necessary that you should be an Irishman, or at least resident in Ireland. 5

"Once that preliminary has- been observed it is now decided on the highest authority, that the Crown is certainly at liberty to intern you" for as long as it likes and without any troublesome obligation to prefer a definite charge against you. In the instance with which recent arguments were concerned there appears to be good ground for believing that Mr. Patrick Foy, who has been in prison since the middle of January', has never had anything at all to do with the Sinn Fein movement. This, however, is rather an empty and academic consideration— a -case is not going to be tried, the question whether it exists at all is hardly worth bothering about. "And there is no doubt at. all that he is not going to be tried. Proclamations issued after the Dublin rising in 1916 relieved the Government from any such objectionable necessity, and the court agreed with the Attorney-General that there were 'ample grounds' for holding that the emergency that was then recognised had not yet ceased.' It gives the Dublin rising an interesting standing as the most protracted revolution that was ever promptly suppressed. As long as the alleged emergency is treated on the lines of that decision, we do not see why it should ever be removed lrom our politics."

('Concluded from page 13.) I Ch Th v " V • S ■which stand for “ Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour.” This famous symbol was known to Christians everywhere, and was in constant use. It meant to the early Christians all that the Cross means to-day ; the use of the Cross would betray them to the persecutors ; the fish symbol was free of danger and yet full of meaning. It was used in the form of ornaments worn round the neck, as adornment in paintings, on glass utensils, on sepulchral monuments. It is found mentioned in Patristic literature frequently. St. Paulinus calls the body of Christ in the Eucharist

pan-is vents et aquae vivae pixels" —' true bread and the fish of living water.' Tertullian wrote " Nos piscicuU secundum ichthuni nostrum Jesum Christum in aqua nascimur" —"we little fishes, after the model of our fish Jesus Christ}, are born in water."—Now in paintings like the one we refer to, and in other representations on the ■ graves of the Catacombs, we find the fish associated with bread. Sometimes the bread is in loaves in a basket, sometimes it, is in the form of round flat cakes, marked with niches so that they could easily be broken, and the symbol represents the permeation of the consecrated species by Jesus Christ Himself.

Another Catacombic picture cf the same kind is that known as "the breaking of bread, - ' discovered in 1896 in the Roman cemetery of St. Priscilla. The 'fresco goes back to the age of St. Justin, in the middle of the second century, according to the testimony of archaeological experts, and is certainly Eucharistic in its meaning. In the Catacombic 'Chapel of the Sacraments' at St. Callixtus we find paintings of a tripod symbolising an altar, upon which are laid a loaf and a fish. • A priest stands by with his hands extended over these elements, apparently in the very act of consecration, and near by stands a figure with hands extended in prayer, representing probably the Church adoring the Eucharist. But we cannot now go more fully into this vast subject. What we have said is perhaps enough to point to the great historical phenomenon of the complete agreement between the Catholic creed of to-day and that witnessed to by these early Eucharistic texts and symbols.