A PLEA FOR IRELAND’S FREEDOM

New Zealand Tablet, 28 April 1921, Page 13

A PLEA FOR IRELAND’S FREEDOM

[Address of Rev. James G. Mythen, of Christ Epis- ■ copal Church, Norfolk, Va., at Liberty Hut, 'Washington, D. 0., January 7, 1921.] Dr. Mythen said in part: In America the campaign against “the freedom of Ireland has become lately one of religious calumniation, our opponents having %o logical arguments to advance; they can’t come to America and say “Ireland, Egypt, and India ought not to be free,” because they .know we wouldn’t be- * lieve that, so they tell ns bthet things, and one of the things they tell us about, .Ireland is this: That the question of Ireland is not the question of a race older than any other white race in Europe, a race which civilised Britons when Britons were painted savages roaming through the forests, a race that sent sages and priests and prophets to them and gave them the culture they have so misused. They will not let the Americans believe that this race has never died, that through every century the men of the Gaelic blood have fought for liberty, so they tell us it is a question of religion. They desecrate even the mind of God, and I challenge them to-night with a high crime, a crime against the decalogue, — they have taken the name of God in vain ! They tell Americans, or try to tell them, that it is to protect the Protestant religion in Ireland that they remain there. It has been followers of the Protestant religion in Ireland who have answered this lie, because they have stood up in the face of all that England offered them and spurned her and fought her. The roster of Irish Protestant liberators should silence this • slander. Wolfe Tone, whose tricolor flag, orange, green, and white, you see here; Lord Edw ard I itzgerald, the Emmets, John Mitchel, Francis McKinley (uncle of the late President), and Parnell—those fought, and some died, for-Ireland. In fact all the bloody insurrections against England in Ireland, until the last one of Easter Week, were led by Protestants. There is no question of religion in Ireland to-night. The day has dawned when now we stand side by side as we did in the past, Catholic and Protestant, willing and ready to give our lives arfd all that we have — for what? For our blood — our blood that is older than Christianity, yes, and our nation, which is older than the Protestant religion. We were fighting for Irish independence before Martin Luther was born, and we will go on fighting for it until we win it or until our race perishes from the face of the earth./ As a Protestant and a Protestant of Irish blood, I want to say this for my religion; I honor it, I love' it. It has never been on the ..side of-the oppressor, though oppressors have used it. England is the deadliest enemy that the 1 rotestant Church has to-day. She has used us; she has abused ns; she has mutilated us; she has made us „ stand out before her guns.— We have carried the. banner of the Cross to China,* India, and Africa,‘and wherever our missionaries have gone, they have gone out nobly and gladly to preach .the .Gospel of the Cross-oE Christ ; (but when- they were established, suddenly they were'swept aside’/ and there they saw the deadly guns and the British dominion began. But I say this: If it were true to-night that Protestantism in Ireland is against Irish independence, if i Protestantism in ‘ Ireland ’ depends' upon; poison gas upon airplanes that drop death, if Protestantism ‘in Ireland depends upon machine-guns', then -Wee# V Protestantism dead and should be buried in -the- same tomb as the religion of .Moloch.‘.,{6fit..;icdeny it. I will take my stand with the men of, my Church, who in the Jasf century -Epscopahans) and} E^sbyterians-fayq‘.died in-Ireland fighting forlreland’s independence:’ ’ I willstand with them. • Nes, and ! wantto stand with the- greatestEpisccipalian that our Church tu the- last 150

i Washington', but who stands with him, co-partner .in glory ; I , will stand in the shadow'; of ‘ the glory of Robert Emmet as I did in San Francisco when Eamon de Valera, President of the Irish Republic, Ain veiled a beautiful statue to that Protestant Saint ,of Catholic Ireland. ‘ ’ ’ ■; " - ' 1 : ■ i' There is something I want you' men and women of Irish blood to pray over, no matter how your altars are 1 dedicated. Your prayers will roach the same God in the end. I want you to pray the groat prayer of action I God is a workaday God. To labor is to pray. Let your prayers be prayers of labor, prayers of action, direct action that this may come about, that it may be our. beautiful; our wonderful destiny that in our day, in our generation, we may answer the challenge ol Robert Emmet when he stood on the dock facing the hangman’s noose and said: * “When Ireland takes* her place among the nations of the earth, then, and not till then, let my epitaph be written.” If you but will to do it, if you stand united, you Americans who fought for democracy, you men of blood that sings in .your veins, you women who have power and might, —if you will it we shall write upon the blank space left below his statue that epitaph that Robert Emmet wants to have written. I want America to write it. 1 want Americans to write it in letters of gold, but if we do not, if we miss this supreme time in the history of the Gaelic race, God help us and God defend us. God send us penitent to our • death, because we shall have been the first of the Gaelic race in 700 years that failed in the hour of crisis. We can write it if we will, but if wo do not, never again call ourselves Irish ; give up your Ancient Order of Hibernians, give up your Friends of Irish Freedom, give up your Sons of St. Patrick, your Protestant Friends of Ireland, and cniigingly call ourselves what we will, but let ns not dare call ourselves Americans, because we will not be worthy of that name any more than we will be worthy of the blood that is in us. There is 'an alternative. If we do not write this epitaph there is in America to-night a man who is listening, who is waiting and hoping that wo will, and his heart is hea\ and his mind is staggering with the responsibility that wo are going to place upon him, because if we in America do not do it, he will he compelled to go back to our motherland, our fatherland, and say to the men, young and old, to the women and children of Ireland, “Go you up and write the epitaph of Robert Emmet and write it in your blond.” (Applause.)