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New Zealand Tablet, 29 July 1920, Page 26

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« Lloyd George on British Tyranny We invite our Orange and Council-of-Churches friends to meditate on the following words of the English Prime Minister, May 7, 1917 : “Centuries of brutal and often ruthless injustice, and what is more . . . centuries of insolence and insult, have driven hatred of British rule into the very marrow of the Irish race. The long records 'of oppression, proscription, and expatriation have proved v the greatest blot on British fame of, equity and eminence in the realm of government. There remains the invincible fact that to-day she (Ireland) is no more reconciled to British rule than she was in the days of Cromwell.” Isn’t it dreadful that a Welshman should be allowed to calumniate the Empire like this? Up and at him, ye P.P. Ass. warriors ! A Sentence Wanted An anti-Irish Irishman once pronounced the following sentence in Irish in order to show how unmusical the language is : ,D’ ith damh dubh uhh amh or neamh. The words are pronounced : Deeh dhov dhuv uv ov er nav, or in Ulster: Deeh dhou dhoo oo on er non. The sentence means, A black ox ate a raw egg in heaven. Now there was a retort in English, showing that even more horrible sentences can be found in the tongue of the foreigner. r We would be glad if some correspondent would send it on to us. Some Names The Irish for Hugh is Aodh. From it we get Mac Aodh (son of Hugh), in English Mackay, Mackey.

or - Magee ; and O Haodha . (grandson of Hugh), in English ,o’Hea, Hayes, Hughes. From the derivative Aodhagan (pronounced ae-a-gauu = little Hugh) we get Mac Aodhagain, whence Mac Egan, Egan, and Kehgan. Some common names are Mac Donnchadha, in English MacDonough; MacSuibhne, Mac-Sweeney ; O’Dalaigh, O’Daly; O’Ceallaigh, O’Kelly; O’Cobhthaigh, O’Coffey; O’Laoghaire, O’Leary; O’Murchadha, O’Murphy; O’Raghallaigh, O’Reilly. Aodh, Hugh; Brighid, Brigid; Conchubar, Connor; Domhnall, Daniel; Donchadh, Denis; Sean, John; Seumus, James; Eoghan, Owen; Eibhlin, Eileen; Maire, Mary; Nora, Norah, TJna, Winifred, are common Christian names. Hunger Striking Some time ago there was a learned discussion on the morality . of hunger strikes in some of the Irish periodicals. We saw theologians attacking and others defending the action of the prisoners, and most people who read the discussion remained where they were at the beginning of it. The Irish Jesuit, Father Gannon, recalls a historical incident which, as concrete cases do, throws more light on the problem than pages of abstract reasoning. Father Gannon quotes from Fleury a graphic account of the hunger-strike of St. Eusebius. It concludes in the following words; “As he would not receive any .(food) from them he remained six days without taking nourishment, and was about to die of weakness. At length on the sixth day, constrained by the protests of various people, they allowed one of his followers to come to his relief.’’ “On reading this,’’ says Father Gannon, “we rub our eyes and wonder are we really back in Syria sixteen centuries ago, or merely scanning the columns of the Irish press before its machinery was dismantled and its troublesome voice silenced. Only handcuffs and forcible feeding are wanted to complete the picture. The story, as Fleury tells it, will give us pause before pronouncing dogmatically on the ethics of this manner of protest. For if it did not and does not prevent Eusebius from taking his place among the canonised saints of the Church, it can hardly be identified with an attempt at suicide which is defined as directa mi ipsius orris'ut and never' permissible.” Incidentally, too, it seems that licentious living and total disregard for pledges and promises are not the only things that the Saxon pagans of to-day have in common' with the tyrants of old. Protestant Literature Cardinal Newman warned us long ago that the tone of the newspapers and the books that we read is in the main unhealthy for Catholics. Of course there are books and papers which frankly attack everything Catholic; books like those of the notorious impostor, McCabe, which are simply and plainly blasphemous, or those of Chiniquy or Robertson (the author of the ‘ classic” of which we heard so much lately), who for their own ends publish outrageous calumnies calculated to injure Catholics in the British Empire ; and of these perhaps it may be said that they are more unhealthy for Protestants than for Catholics. Catholics see through them and are nauseated by them, as indeed are decent and educated Protestants; but the bigots who are brought up on lies take every word written by such persons and recommended by preachers who have left the forge or the trolley for the pulpit as Gospel truth: nay, they take it for truth even when in direct contradiction to the Gospel which enjoins charity before all things. Of such we do not now speak —non ragioniamo di loro : they are beneath contempt, as are the persons who circulate them : they are sewage, and they are handled only by scavengers. Apart from that class there is the average novel or the average newspaper which, we take it, the Cardinal had in mind when he uttered the warning we have spoken of. Catholic _ truths are the most important hangs on earth. It is a thousand times more important for a man to know what the Church teaches than to know what Mr. Massey said about Ireland; it is a

vital matter to know what is wrong or right with regard to conduct, but it is entirely indifferent ' whether we know or know not what sort of hat the Baroness Hoggenheimer wore at the New Zealand Cup - meeting. The papers and the books ignore the real things and waste infinite time over the worthless. There is as- a rule nothing in them that would suggest to a reader that Christ came on earth for the ' redemption of sinners; there is much in them to persuade a fool that to make money and to be rich is the end of man., The Antidote The papers and the books are in a sense poison for mind and soul. We need an antidote to them. The antidote is found in Catholic papers and books. If a man cares to live a healthy life he will take his medicine when he wants it; if a man cares to live a healthy spiritual or intellectual life he must take the antidote against the current poison in which he moves and breathes. How much does the average Catholic spend on secular papers and novels? How much does he spend on Catholic papers and books? The answer each individual will give to that will be an indication'of the tone of his spiritual and intellectual life. It used to bn said that Catholics were not educated. ‘ The truth is that Catholics educated the world. A Protestant tradition of lies decried Catholic scholarship and persuaded unthinking people that Protestants had a monopoly of learning. So far is this from the truth that we venture to say that, all other things being equal, a book by a Catholic writer is a better book and a more learned book than one by a non-Catholic. Protestant history is biassed by a false tradition. Read, lor example, Mr. Chesterton’s History of B gland and see for yourself how many false notions were spread abroad in the interests of Protestantism. We have been told so often that some of us may have come to accept it as true that Catholicism meant the decay of culture and that true Progress goes hand in hand with Protestantism. The contrary is the truth. Learning and the Arts made little or no progress since the Reformation in Protestant countries. The dark middle ages of which so many utterly ridiculous; things are written by men who are ignorant of history and of the literature of the past had scholars and artists and thinkers that for all her boasting England: could not rival at any time. Catholics have in our own time begun to vindicate their rights. They have come into the open. The old policy of letting things go with them who make most noise is dead. We more than hold our own in every department of science and learning and literature. And one thing can be said confidently : a Catholic author is almost certain to write a clean book that anyone may read. That is more than can be said of non-Catholic writers. Also it may be said that in a Catholic paper you will find the truth : that can be said of few other papers to-day. The uroni/di, which may literally be translated as the "johnnies, will not support their own. But when were they ever worth anything to anybody? When were they ever anything but contemptible?