ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS

New Zealand Tablet, 17 February 1921, Page 17

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS

Subscriber. —Definite news lias now arrived concerning President do "Valera. The Hon. H. Boland announced early in January that lie had sailed from the United States by the Presidential yacht and was conferring somewhere in Europe with the Sinn Fein chiefs. Did you see the amusing cable the Star had the other evening, telling us that de Valera was lacking in moral , courage? That was on a par with the hint 'of the forger, ‘‘Givis,” that he was not a scholar. Great papers those “day lies” of ours! Ea.mon.— Me have read the cutting yon sent us with interest. There is no doubt in the world that not only the Orangemen but the Freemasons and Jews are against Ireland. The (Jorriere (V Italia had recently a good article on the influence of the Masons in Engish politics, and pointed out that special clauses protecting them were framed in the Sham Home Buie Bills; and it is also true that the only secret society to which the British'police in Ircalnd may belong is the Mason Brotherhood. And is it not a pity to see how, even among us, ignorant, conceited Catholics are ready to stand side by side with the foes of Catholicism who are murdering the Irish people? Protestant. Neither Hibernians nor Knights of Columbus over took such an oath. The false allegation is characteristic of Orange bigots, for the bogus oath is a real Orange oath. Colonel William Verner deposed at the Parliamentary Commission on the Orange Society, in 1835, that Orangemen swore as follows; “I, A. 8., in the presence of Almighty God, and this my brother, do swear that I will suffer my right hand to be cut off from my body and laid at the gaol door of Armagh, before I will waylay or betray a brother; that I will persevere, and not spare from the cradle to the crutch or from the crutch to the cradle; that I will pity not the moans or groans of infancy or old age, hut that I will wade knee-deep in Papist blood and do as King William did.” Is not what the thugs of Mason Greenwood are doing now in keeping with that oath? “Women and children first,” of course! Remember Armagh, Balbriggan, Cork, and Templemore.