The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 1921. THE IRISH SITUATION

New Zealand Tablet, 25 August 1921, Page 25

The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, AUGUST 25, 1921. THE IRISH SITUATION

E want to warn all our readers against a mj!/f lie read assiduously by the daily m/r 2U papers. Ihey are with one voice trying ®vT to make people believe that de Valera refused to accept Dominion Home Rule. Now it ought not he necessary to rejT«) mind intelligent people that' whereas onr papers have a reliable record for falsehood, de Valera’s consistency and truthfulness have been splendid : the fact that empress says he refused Dominion Home Rule is enough to make us suspect that it is a lie; the fact that he says Ireland was never offered it is proof positive, even if we had not the use of our own eyesight to enable us to discover for ourselves that what Lloyd George offered was: an Ireland divided by an arbitrary line drawn by himself; an Ireland in which thousands of Catholics were to be at the mercy of Orangemen whose record for murder during the past year is beyond anything known of the Turks in Armenia; an Ireland for which the tariffs should be fixed by England’s permission and an Ireland that was to be the cockpit for England’s battles and the manoeuvring ground for British armies. That is not Dominion Home Rule : whoso says it is is a fool or a liar. But that is what Lloyd George offers: what de Valera refused : what our editors, true to their record, try to persuade fools is Dominion Home Rule.

Remember that the Archbishop of Canterbury recently went almost as far as to call Lloyd George a liar. Remember that a writer in the Contemporary Review said during the war that no foreign statesman could with safety to himself or his country trust the word of a British Minister. Remember how Lloyd George betrayed John Redmond, how lie betrayed Horace Plunkett, how he, Judas that he is, betrayed his own master, Asquith.' Remember also that he approved and condoned and thereby became morally responsible for the atrocities of the Black-and-Tans: so that it is quite true to say that he is guilty of the murder of Canon Magner, of Thomas McCurtain, of Kevin. Barry, of Mrs. Quinn; for before God their blood is on- his soul. If you bear well in mind what the man's character is you will understand why the

Irish people viewed from the first his "peace move" with suspicion. Old Ireland speaks openly of "Lloyd George's Peace Trap." It points out how at the very time when the Government was assuring the world that it was going to put more men and more guns into Ireland, a speech prepared, as has since been admitted, by the same Government, was put into the King's mouth in the shape of a plea for peace. The King's peace-speech was prepared by the men who at the same time were talking of exterminating the Irish That is a hard, stubborn fact. No wonder Old Ireland says : "We think that this is not a genuine offer, and is not seriously meant. Its basis to begin with is fraudulent, because the ' King's appeal ' on which it is based is not the King's, but Mr. Lloyd George's, and it comes immediately following a British Governmental declaration of war to the end on Ireland It is perfectly clear that Mr. Lloyd George hopes that this invitation will not be accepted. . . He counts upon it (a) to consolidate against Ireland the whole of English opinion, and possibly to give him a chance of going to the country .and getting a new lease of power en the question of a military conquest here, and (b) to induce the rest of the world to wash its hands of the blood of this country." Now that is the opinion of a genuine Sinn Fein source. Here is the vew of one (rt the few honest English papers, The New Witness: The men whom we permit to rule us are Quite capable of offering the Irish leader what they know he mil not accept in order to pretend afterwards that the fanatic will not accept anything." Another honest British opinion is that expressed in The Nation and Athenaeum- "He (de Valera) must take account of the mood of Ireland as well as of her grave political "n" -n ■' i' of course > sc ents a triple manoeuvre of the Prime Minister to fix 'partition on her; put her wrong nnth the Dominions and America if she declines a conference: and give himself a case for an intensive insli war , That is how honest and truthful English papers regarded the proposal when it was first made When details reached us what did we find? We found (1) that Lloyd George announced that he was giving Dominion Home Rule, (2) that he gave nothing of the kind (3) that what he gave was" an Ireland arbitrarily divided by Englishmen, (4) and instead of Irish control of Irish affairs, he made Ireland subservient to selfish English interests in the ways we have already detailed. We found one thing more: that the entire hired press did what he wanted it to do and what the Irish and the honest English papers foresaw they repeated the lie—the downright lie—that de Valera had refused Dominion Home Rule and they did their best to put Ireland wrong with the Dominions and with America. Let us note here that the few American papers quoted by our day-lies as expressing almost unanimous American opinion" do nothing of the kind: they express .British Governmental opinion according to standing, orders just as our own pitiful press does. r

Finally, was it for such a mess of potage as Lloyd George offered (in the hope that it would be refused) that Terence Mac Sweeney died? Was it for this that Pearse and Connolly lighted the torch of freedom in Easter Week? Was it for this that the brave men, the brave women, and even the brave children of Ireland endured at the hands of Lloyd George for the past three years atrocities and outrages that make the horror of the rule of Abdul the Damned seem insignificant? Was it that Ireland might be exploited in the selfish interests of Orangemen and of English capitalists that the war for the right of small nations to determine without outside interference their own form of government was fought? Was it for this the New Zealand,, the Canadian, the Irish boys we're killed on Galhpoli and on the plains of Flanders? There is no need to answer that it was not. No! a thousand times no! De Valera did the only thing that honor suggested. If we have any spark of honor in us we must realise that. We must be with him still: every man and woman worth having will be with him, and the rest, the worthless rest, we dismiss as Dante tells us

Virgil dismissed those who were too worthless for either hell or heaven :

Non ragioniamo di low. (Let us not talk of them.) r The present campaign of press-lies will separate the chaff from the wheat. The rest of us will go on until ■ Ireland secures what England pledged to her when Lloyd George (in a recruiting mood) said, "Why did God make small nations if He did not intend them to be free?" After seven hundred years Ireland is not going to yield now to a little Welsh upstart who has ruined England and will go down to history as a liar and an unprincipled adventurer. Let those among uswho are foolish enough to be gulled by the day-lies recall that proverb quoted by de Valera: "Shame on you if you deceive me once; shame on me. if you deceive me a second time." Recall that and remember England's record.