BRITISH IMPERIALISM AND POISON GAS.

New Zealand Tablet, 26 August 1920, Page 13

BRITISH IMPERIALISM AND POISON GAS.

A main feature of the anti-Irish war now being desperately waged in America' is the lavish -use of literary poison gas (writes Mr. P. G. Smith, in the July Catholic World). It is sent in nauseous waves all over the country, in a desperate alien attempt to asphyxiate and kill reason and common sense, honor, humanity, and fair play. (It travels in various forms books, pamphlets, magazines, newspapers, etc. —and it is paid for by money advanced by pro-British American financiers to a great but bankrupt power.) As a sample of the stuff that is now being diffused from the British trenches in America let us take a book purporting to be written on the Irish situation by “a Frenchman who for years had taken the Irish anti-British propaganda as genuine,” but who eventually saw a great light, and was converted from his utterly erroneous views by admiring observation of British virtues, and who "now feels himself able to pronounce the Irish question ‘ an international imposture.’ ” . The remnant, the only white nation now unfree, is menaced with extermination in response to its peremptory and uncompromising demand for freedom and independence. The alien circle of steel is strengthening and contracting. Erin’s very darkest day seems to be at hand. But she is no longer the sad and submissive Erin with the tear and the smile in her eyes. She is a very active, fearless, determined Erin bearing aloft the torch of liberty. Though the aeroplanes of the foreigners manoeuvre and the tread of their marching soldiers is heard so often in our streets,” says the vigorous young pi elate, Bishop O’Doherty of Clonfert, "the fight for freedom so well begun shall go on uninterrupted. Ireland is not to be governed by any alien power. We shall yet, with God’s help and grace, bring Democracy before the eyes of the world, when Ireland is free, as she shall be free, and one of God’s own nations.”