WHAT IS HAMAR GREENWOOD?

New Zealand Tablet, 17 March 1921, Page 32

WHAT IS HAMAR GREENWOOD?

"What is Sir Hamar Greenwood?"' asked Mr. Asquith the other day. A Bradford Liberal said, in reply, that Sir. Hamar Greenwood was a "coward." Perhaps; the matter is not important. We understand the gentleman was born in Canada; that his father was a native of Wales; that he came to England some years ago in search of a "job;" that he got some "jobs" as a Liberal politician; and we know he is now "Chief Secretary for Ireland" as an upholder of Coercion, "Reprisals" and Partition. Many quaint and curious specimens of British political humanity have been sent across the Narrow Sea as "Chief Secretaries." The names of many of them have faded from the public memory —who, except some crabbed student of dry-as-dust records, now recalls the fact that a Sir. A. Nepean filled the post — or a Mr. Horsman —or a Colonel John Wilson Patten ? But a few of the tribe secured species of "immortality" which no one envies. Lord Castlereagh, for example; and Sir Robert Peel: and Mr. W. E. Forster. Others incurred "unpopularity" in a minor degreean outstanding example of this species being Mr. Arthur Balfour. But, taking them all in all, the English politicians sent across as "Chief Secretaries for Ireland" have been poor types of the "Party hack." Those who did not rank low amongst the mediocrities of English public life won high places in the long list of Ireland's tyrannical rulers. Castlereagh, Peel, Lamb (afterwards Lord Melbourne), Stanley, Forster, Balfour, and Wyndham were fairly intellectual persons —as English politicians go; each was a Coercionist: and when poor Mr. Wyndham changed his views, as a result of his Irish experiences, and sought to promote "peace and goodwill" between two nations, he was hounded down and hunted out by the "Ulsterians," while the English Tory Party sympathised with the hunters, and" Wyndham's partners in the orientation of policy with which he was identified—the late King Edward VII. and Mr. Balfour—looked on and uttered not a word. The fate of Mr. Wyndham was one of the most disgraceful episodes connected with the sooty history of the office from which he was extruded.

A broad-minded Irish writer, now dead, says of the "Irish Chief Secretary:"

As a rule, he came amongst the people—a stranger and an enemy. He was ignorant of Irish history, Irish character, and Irish wants. . He was indifferent to Irish claims. He had not a thought in common with the. nation which he was sent to rule. In race, in religion, in interest, in point of view, political aims and national aspirations he was anti-Irish. Our contention is that if the "Irish Secretary" appointed by an English Ministry were as Irish in race and "character" as Hugh Roe O'Donnell, as well acquainted with Irish history as John O'Donovan or Eugene O'Curry, as Catholic in his religious feelings as the Pope, and as Nationalist in his "political aspirations" as Wolfe Tone, he would have no trace or title of moral right to assert his dominance over "the nation which he was sent to rule." He always came to Ireland, and remained, and acted as a "ruler" because "brute force" was behind him —a "brute force" none the less real because at intervals it was not necessary to make tfpen displays of its existence.

But the immediate "point" is that description of "Chief Secretaries" in general written by the late Mr. Barry O'Brien nine years ago "fits" Sir. Hamar Greenwood with so much exactness that the historian may almost be regarded as a prophet. "What is Sir. Hamar Greenwood?" The ex-Premier of England said he was "a man who had deserted the treat Gladstone traditions." There is no evidence that the Welsh-Canadian ever cherished "the great Gladstone traditions" —or any other "traditions" except those appertaining to self and pelf. A simple answer to the Asquithian query is that Sir 11. Greenwood is a "Chief Secretary for Ireland'—and, on the whole, the most consistent upholder since' Castlereagh committed suicide of the pernicious "traditions" which cling to that English

office as the germs of disease , hang over and around a lazaretto.—Exchange. :