Current Topics

New Zealand Tablet, 8 September 1921, Page 14

Current Topics

Secret Societies The young King of Italy took, soon after his accession to the throne, a bold step when he purged the Italian army of Freemasons. Secret societies killed his father, and he knew that they were undermining his army. Therefore, taking his courage in his hands, he faced the unholy combinations and backed by decent public opinion swept them out. It is too much to expect that the British Empire will ever rise to such a height of decency as Italy then did. Army, navy, police, legislature are rotten with Masonry among us. When justice miscarries people shake their heads and murmur about the Masonic “pull.” When a criminal gets off and is allowed to remain a danger to the community, one at once thinks of the Masonic influence. The British Government, in one of its fool-Home Rule Bills, had the audacity to make an exception whereby while other secret societies were to be dealt with on lines of justice, Masons were to be protected by the Government. Masonry played an ignoble part in the war in France it has eaten into this Dominion like a canker; together with the infamous Orange Society once rightly condemned by the Government of other and saner days it has undermined the foundations of the Empire and left it a tottering, ruined thing only kept together by lies and trickery at present. Even America is cursed with it. In Harding’s Cabinet the Masons claim: (1) the Attorney-General, Harry Daugherty: (2) Henry Wallace, Secretary of Agriculture : (3) Edward Denby, Secretary of the Navy: (4) James Davis, Secretary of Labor; (5) William H. Hayes, Postmaster-General. When the international secret societies control affairs one can understand why wars are kept on and men slaughtered as long as certain people are making money by them.

The Belfast Relief Fund Our press will not publish the truth about the Orange pogrom which has massacred the Catholics of Carsonia, ' We, however, know the truth from the Catholic Bishop of Belfast and we have had now the merit and the pleasure of helping to alleviate the misery of the starving Catholic people driven from their blazing homes by the savages of whose conduct our day-lie men tacitly approve. We now close the Fund, as far as the Tablet is concerned, and any moneys collected henceforward, must not be sent to us. For nearly six months we have kept the columns of the Tablet open for donations, and if during the first four or five the response was disheartening, it is consoling to know that at last the charitable Catholics, aroused to a sense of their duty, made the Fund a success. Not in very many cases were parish collections taken up, but as a rule even where they were neglected individuals subscribed generously. In some districts little or nothing was done; others did magnificently, as they always do. On the. whole, it was the people who helped the SelfDetermination Fund who now came forward again to relieve the persecuted Catholics who are suffering because they loved Ireland. We take it that the Funds have been a real test whereby the sincere friends of Ireland were discovered ; for among human tests there is not one so reliable as the cash test. Talk is cheap, but when a man puts his hand in his pocket and backs his talk with a cheque one knows that his heart goes with his words. We have had a fair number ready to do this, and that they did it for Ireland, and for the martyred people of Carsonia is a thought that will repay them better than any words of thanks we could utter now. Next week we hope to be able to announce the total amount sent from New Zealand, and it will make the coming Christmas happier in many a "family that now knows want and cold for the love of Erin. Let. us emphasise the fact that as far as we are concerned THE FUND IS NOW CLOSED.

The “ Otago Daily Times ” The following extract is from Saturday’s issue of the Otago Daily Times , edited by Mr. James Hutchison, with Sir George Fenwick managing director : “At a meeting of Dail Eireann Mr. de Valera was re-elected President of the Irish Republic. “Mr. de Valera, in thanking members, said he felt like a boy amongst boys.” So far, this is perhaps the most sincere utterance attributed to Senor de Valera. He feels “like a boy amongst boys.” Along with the other boys he is playing a game. They have an imaginary Irish Republic headed by a half-breed President (our local Sinn Feiners, who deny and affirm at will, have not found the courage to deny that de Valera’s father was a Spaniard) ; —they have a mock Parliament called by a name unintelligible to people of later date than Brian Boru; they assign the “portfolio of Labor to Countess Markievicz,” a name and title that even Brian Boru would have stumbled at; and they authorise Mr. Michael Collins to raise in America— securities intangible, invisible, undiscoverable, and unimaginablea loan of twenty millions sterling. It is all child’s-play, and Senor de Valera gracefully acknowledges the fact. When these things are being done he “feels like a boy amongst boys.” Naturally the proceedings thus reported would take a festive ending, in the Irish way — something between a wake and a wedding.

Och, shillaloo! a-hee, a-hoo! Up rebels ! —ls it pale we are ? Divil a bit! Up Dail Eireann ! At laste 'tis out of jail we are!

Boys, kape the door ! —he's tuk the flure The Prisident, wi' jumps and kicks! An' see him —bold Day Valayry, Wi' Countess Markyvicks!

Troth, 'tis a sight for mim'ry bright Whin next we be meanderin' To Downiir Street to fule Lloyd George In bluffin' an' blandandherin'.

Whoop ! hillaloo ! avick, avoo ! Mother of Moses ! shtamp ! —hurroo ! Up Sinn Fein bhoys! Up Brian Born! Faix an’ be jabers ! Hullabaloo ! Left jigging.

The Catholic or Irishman who is ready to support a paper that publishes disgraceful attacks in the foregoing strain deserves what he gets. In a paragraph preceding this vile extract there is a scurrilous attack on the Catholic clergy.

The Gerrymandering Here is what an English paper, the New Statesman, has to say concerning the gerrymandering of “Ulster” which our day-lie men concealed: “Ulstermen and their friends did not hesitate to create large constituencies when' this improved the chances of Unionist candidates. The City of Derry had a Nationalist majority and, therefore, ceased to exist as a unit and was merged into the county of Derry, so that Sinn Fein might have less excuse to regard it as a piece of Hibernia Irredenta. Queen’s University, Belfast, a stronghold of Unionism, with 2500 voters was allowed to elect four members. Derry City, with 17,385 ’ voters, was not allowed to elect directly even one. The result of this skilful gerrymandering is that 341,239 Unionists have elected 40 members, while 164,278 Nationalist votes have elected only 12.”

That is a sample of the sinoerity and honesty of Lloyd George. That one detail reveals abundantly the character of the man whom our New Zealand day-lie men fall down and adore. The editors who suppress all efforts to bring the facts concerning Ulster before the public, while they publish the anonymous attacks

of writers, one of whom is an exposed forger, and others, for all we know, of the stamp of the Timaru murderers. On the whole it is creditable to us that we have neither the sympathy nor the support of the men who told the lies about corpse-factories and mutilated children, just as they did their ignoble bit years ago when the Boers were fighting for their country in that shameful war in which England (with the support of the day-lie men) struck her foul blow at the womb of a nation. They are with the murderers of Canon Magner and Mrs. Quinn now as they were with the men who shut the Boer women up to die in the infernal concentration

camps.

England and America i

The editor of the Dublin Leader says that a wellinformed visitor from England assured him that two years more of Lloyd George government would see England in ruins. The one country that could save England is Ireland. For England's real enemy in the economic world is America, and as long as Ireland is oppressed there can be no friendship between the "United States and the falling Empire. Current Opinion (August, 1921) tells us how the Irish cause in America foils England's envoys at every step. It says: "If the Sinn Feiners here and in Ireland could have read or heard a few of the verbal or written reports of Sir Auckland Geddes, they might have been agreeably surprised, we read, by his tributes to the brilliance of some of their American activities. Wherever the British Ambassador turned in America, as the Tory London Post admits, he was crossed and baffled by American reactions to the Irish crisis. He could do nothing of importance at the Department of State. He found the President ' correct' in the diplomatic sense, eager for Anglo-American harmony all over the world yet keenly alive to the influence Sinn Fein can bring to bear. . . As for the Senate it is so Irish that Sir Auckland Geddes is reported to have been amazed that even Henry Cabot Lodge will grow indignant over the wrongs of Erin. '. . American statesmen, driven into a corner, will say that they must reckon with the Irish vote."

And well they may ! The Irish broke Wilson and made Harding, and Harding knows that if he prove false he too will be scrapped by the same influence. That is precisely what hurts in England to-day. And it will hurt more, As long as the oppression of the one white nation ground down now by despotism continues so long will Ireland's influence work for the ruin of her tyrant. Everybody knows that now except our- New Zealand day-lie men and their anonymous forgers. England's army of unemployed is growing fast, but it is not growing more loyal. England has now been beaten in production not only by America but even by Germany. England is saddled with a debt to America, the interest of which she finds it hard to pay. England has to find millions to pay the "Black - and-Tans" who murder Irish women and children. She has fallen in a short time to the standing of a thirdrate Power, and she will fall lower yet. America alone can save her from ruin, and America will only hasten that ruin as long as England stands where she used to tell us Germany stood—as the embodiment of militarism and selfish despotism. Yes, that is where the shoe pinches. And we are very much mistaken if that fact had not much to do with Lloyd George's recognition of the Irish patriots whom he used to call a "murder gang." England would dearly love to have her statements that America lost sympathy with de Valera verified. Probably Lloyd George counted on it. But he was mistaken. De Valera came out of the negotiations as he entered them, an honorable, consistent man, true to his trust and worthy of his people. And instead of losing sympathy here or in America, he has won even greater admiration than before. Indeed, we venture to say that America will be more determined than ever "in future unless Ireland's rights are acknowledged. America knows Lloyd George of old, and another sample of his double-dealing can but serve to forward the cause of Ireland. "As an indication of

how low England has sunk in the opinion of the world take the following words of Sir Philip Gibbs, in the Review of Reviews, for July-August: "It [the English policy in Ireland] represents the bankruptcy of statesmanship and an apparent collapse of moral values on which we used to take our stand. Only in the history of Czarist Russia is there any parallel to the Lloyd George-Hamar Greenwood regime in Ireland. . . . The letter to de Valera and Sir James Craig is the most abject admission of disastrous failure made by a Government."

America and Ireland On© wonders that our daily editors do not grow weary of telling lies about Ireland sometime. The habit has become so confirmed now that we may confidently assume that the contrary of what they tell us is the truth. Recently they informed us that the supporters of Ireland in the United States, and also in the Dominions, were displeased because de Valera did not accept Lloyd George’s terms. We know from what our local branches of the Self-Determination League have done that New Zealand is firm behind the Irish President, and our Australian exchanges assure us that Ireland has gained rather than lost sympathy in the Commonwealth through de Valera’s bold and consistent stand for right against might. Once more what the day-lie men give us as truth proves a lie; but after seven years servitude to their capitalist bosses it would be too much to expect anything but subservience from them now, and their readers would get a shock if it happened even by chance that they told the real facts concerning Ireland. As for America, exchanges to hand inform us that so far from being disappointed the millions of Ireland’s friends there are more proud than ever of Sinn Fein. They have sent cables assuring de Valera, as we did, that they will back him to the end and that they recognise no right by which England’s selfish interests should be the dominant factor in Irish affairs. When Mary MacSweenev said the other day that it was not for a shadow of freedom that her brother died in an English goal she was cheered to the echo. And if our day-lie men really have the least desire to know the truth they will find America’s view expressed in the following editorial of the chief organ of the Irish race in that country. Of Lloyd George’s proposals the Irish World says: “They are far from complying with the demands of the Irish Nation— demands for the securing of which the flower of Irish manhood laid down their lives. Accepting them would mean placing a mutilated Ireland under the English flag : it would mean hauling down the flag of the Republic and running up in its place the Union Jack; it would mean the blasting of the high hopes animating our Irish brothers during the last two years in their armed resistance to English tyranny; it would mean a surrender big with ignominious consequences to Mother Ireland : ft would mean the continuous paralysis of Irish trade inevitably associated with the domination of a nation of shopkeepers. ... We cannot bring ourselves to believe that Bail Eireann will set its stamp of approval on the proposal to haul down the flag of the Republic in the hour of victory. Rather do we hope that the official representatives of the Irish people will be imbued with the sentiment to which de Valera gave expression when, in addressing a gathering of his countrymen assembled to greet him in Dublin after his return from London, he declared : If the Irish yeoyle act in the future as they have acted durinr/ the last two years they 'would not need to tall: of freedom. They would, have it. The Irish people, as well as the Irish rare, look to Dail Eireann to veto any settlement which has not in it the elements of permanency. The one offered bv Lloyd George and his Tory Cabinet is not such a settlement.” '

That expresses the views of the friends of Ireland, all over the world. And, as usual, it is exactlv contrary to what the day-lies told us was the feeling - of the friends of Ireland. Nor does that expression stand alone. It is backed by many resolutions passed in

America to go on supplying the. sinews of war to Sinn Fein until the fight is ended and until Ireland secures from England precisely what Lloyd George's Government pledged her during the war—the freedom vi a small nation oppressed by a strong ' power and exploited for selfish interests.