SELF DETERMINATION FOR IRELAND LEAGUE OF NEW ZEALAND

New Zealand Tablet, 21 July 1921, Page 17

SELF DETERMINATION FOR IRELAND LEAGUE OF NEW ZEALAND

PROVINCIAL CONFERENCE AT WELLINGTON.

The first Provincial Conference of the Self-Determina-tion for Ireland League, held this week, was most successful, and concluded with a mass meeting at the Town Hall (writes our Wellington correspondent, under date July 8).

“To secure organised support for the right of the people of Ireland to choose freely, without coercion or dictation from outside, their own form of government and their political relationship with other States and peoples” was, in text, the object for which a campaign was launched.

The mission of the League was explained in a leaflet placed in everyone’s hands on entering the hall.

“The League asks every citizen of New Zealand to live for the ideals for which we asked our boys to die in Europe. The League calls upon every lover of human liberty in this land, of every race, of every creed, and of all political parties, to enter its ranks and to work there for the relief of Ireland and the honor of New Zealand.”

PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS.

The chairman (Mr. P. J. O’Regan, president of the local council of the League), in opening the meeting, said the cause of Ireland was not without friends in the Dominion, despite misrepresentation. Despite all that was said about terror and murder in Ireland, Irishmen were still proud of their country. (Applause.) In no age was there a people so nearly unanimous in voicing their aspirations as in Ireland. Democracy cried out in favor of self-determination. There was no country so free from crime, and none cleaner in Europe. The responsibility for ■whatever crime was there rested not on the people of Ireland, but on the British Government, which made the chief promoter of violence a member -of the Cabinet and a judge. (Applause.) .It had been urged by the propagandists that the War was waged for self-determination. Now they were asking for a definition of it. Throughout history the Irish people had claimed and been recognised as a separate nation, fortified by God by imperishable leagues of sea. Ireland and England must always have things in common.

“We are not here to stir up strife, but to protest against the studied calumny of the press and the cable service. President de Valera—(loud applause)—was referred to as a surname, as if he were a criminal and leader of criminals. We have to come to New Zealand to learn that the cable service suppressed the news of responsible newspapers in England, but gave the views of the Belfast News Letter, in a statement that President de Valera’s hands were dripping with blood. (Applause.) We refuse to associate the people of England with the misdeeds of Mr. Lloyd George. His Government was elected on a false issue during the War, when the cause of Ireland was being neglected. Notwithstanding that, we are not without hope, for justice will prevail(applause) and the people of England will show that their principles of goodwill shall extend a helping hand to Ireland.” (Loud applause.)

THE RESOLUTION.

Mr. J. J. McGrath, in moving the resolution, said he appreciated the honor thus conferred on him. Ho stood before them as a son of Irish parents driven from the land of their birth by British tyranny. The executive of the League, which had drafted the resolution, was composed of every trade and profession, earnest men and women, lovers of fair play, with one ideal—to support the claim of Ireland and such nations to the right of their own government. (Applause.)

Mr. McGrath then moved the following resolution • First,—

That this meeting affirms its belief in the principle of national self-determination, as repeatedly expounded by the Allied nations during the late War; and we maintain that Ireland should furnish no exception to the application of that principle. Secondly,—

. That this meeting protests against the continued misrepresentation of the case of Ireland in this country by reason of the bias of the cable news and the unfair presentation and suppression of facts by the press; and, Thirdlly,— •. ’

That this meeting earnestly desires the utmost

goodwill between England and Ireland but is of opinion that reconciliation is not possible until the policy of official outrage shall have been- abandoned and the army of occupation withdrawn, and the people of Ireland allowed freely to determine their own

government.

The speaker appealed for-funds for the work of the League in New Zealand. Funds were needed for everything. The press of Wellington would not publish anything in regard to the cause of Ireland except on receipt of payment.

Air. William Luxford, president of the Wanganui branch of the League, seconded the resolution. He was reared (he said) as a Methodist, and was a native of Wellington. He had, as a child, looked to England as a country that would not allow its flag to fly over any country that did not have the same freedom as itself. He had not succeeded, in eighteen years’ study, in discovering the cause of persecution of Catholics. The Catholic Church stood for truth and justice, and the trouble in Ireland could not, therefore, be a religious one. (Applause.) Ireland was the only white country that did not have self-government. Catholic Ireland was fighting Catholic England for liberty long before there as a Protestant in the world. (Applause.)

“NOT AN IRISHMAN.”

Air. James McKenzie, a vice-president of the League, supported the resolution. He approached the question, he said from the point of view of a man who was not an Irishman. The present crisis was not Ireland’s tragedy, but England’s tragedy. The agitation of Parnell and Redmond had been pursued in a constitutional way. Redmond failed because he pinned his faith to the honesty of British statesmanship. Small, obscure nations had a greater measure of freedom than Ireland. He eulogised the sacrifice of Irishmen in the war, and condemned the British Government for shooting prisoners of war. The “Black-and-Tans” and auxiliaries were guilty of atrocities, and no news of them ever reached New Zealand. Every patriot was at one time a traitor and a rebel. George Washington was a traitor once, and now they are erecting a monument to him in London years too late. (Laughter.) The causes of the late war were militarism, Imperialism; a desire for commercial expansion and oil-fields, and the dislike of Royal personages for each other. America was building a navy equal to the biggest in the world, for no reason other than through disgust at England’s treatment of Ireland. (Applause.)

THE -IDEALS OF LIBERTY.

Very Rev. Dean Power (Hawera) said:

The Irish priest had never failed to foster patriotism and the ideals of liberty. For this he was made to suffer. Canon Magner was not the first priest to fall before the bullet of an English assassin, nor was Father Albert the first friar to be cast into an English dungeon, A prime reason for wishing to see his country free was that in the working out of her destiny she might show the English people what European civilisation meant. English civilisation was not European; Irish was the national life of Ireland, based on high ideals. While the rest of the world was engaged in the pursuit of loot, Ireland alone was fighting for liberty and spiritual things. The English Premier had said that Ireland was not a nation for she had lost her distinctive language, and a distinctive language was an essential of nationhood. The Briton who made that statement while he was shooting Irishmen foi* using the Irish language had lost all sense of decency. Mr. George should confine himself to the things on which he was an authority such as Marconi shares. He made himself a laughing stock when he discussed the essentials of nationhood. Every scholar knew that language was not essential, there were independent nations in the world, newly formed as well as old, that had not a peculiar language. England and America on the other hand had the same language, England and Japan had not, yet it was evident, as Premier Meighen could tell that England and Japan had more in common than England and America—at least they were both outside European civilisation. No serious man rejoiced An the tragedy that was mating the name of England stink in the nostrils of decent people;

no serious man rejoiced to learn from a most distinguished world scholar that in the matter of the persecution of small nations there was nothing to choose between the Briton and the Turk; and no Englishman could feel anything but shame to be told by Mr. Belloc that no nation in any time suffered such persecution as Ireland suffered at the hands of England. They had lived to see an evil thing upon the earth that while a propaganda of lying disgraceful to humanity was rampant in the cable columns of the daily press of the Dominion, truth could find a place in that press only at a price, and at a price that was prohibitive. Lying and infidelity to the plighted word were sure to wreck a nation, and those were the characteristic weapons of the enemies of Ireland that day. He concluded by exhorting the press at least to follow a nobler course.

PRESBYTERIAN HOME-RULER.

Mr, P. Fraser, ALP., the last speaker, said he did not associate himself with any religious strife, but with a party that had sought justice on all hands. He appealed against a suppression of the regard to the atrocities in Ireland. He, as a Presbyterian, was alawys a Home-Ruler. (Applause.) Irishmen were holding up to the promise given them during the war, that they would be granted self-determination. Until 1919, all the acts of aggression were done by Dublin Castle, and it was only when Irishmen lost their patience that the most active of them took severe measures. General Gough, who commanded the Fifth Army, said that Britain, by her treatment of Ireland, had descended to the level of the Turk and the Zulu. (Applause.) Lloyd George had not carried out the tasks he had been put into power to domake the Germans pay and hang the Kaiser. The crime and injustice done by the British Government had earned the condemnation of the working-class, and of every decent man, (Applause.)

The resolution was adopted with enthusiasm. Cheers were given for Ireland’s cause.

. Vocal items were rendered as follows:—Lyric Quartette, “Oft in the Stilly Night” and “Eileen Alannah:” St. Patrick’s College Choir, “Let Erin Remember” and “Ireland So Free.” Mr. W. McLachlan played national airs prior to the opening of the meeting.