The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1897-03-06
secure a safe line Of battle across our
northern neighbor.

enemy, the hater and reviler of every
thing the American republic represents?
The lion cries truce because his teeth
are drawn and his claws are blunted.
The American senate has called a
halt, despite the c1amors OF bodies dis
tinguished principally for a contempt
bic disregard OF American. honor and
patriotic purpose. The very men who
| cried down Presidents Cleveland S stand
on the Venezuelan question, who scoffed
| at the Monroe doctrine, are all arrayed
| on the side OF Englani's treaty today,
! baying with all the vociferation Of yell
low dogs.
The commercial bodies who borrow
English money at per cent, to loan to
Americans at 10, the British parsons Of
Boston, Andrew Carnegie of rotten ar
NOR notoriety, Edward Atkinson who
regards everything but trade as vice and
looks upon patriotism as a species of
madness, college professors from whose
VEINS the red blood Of humanity was
pumped long ago and tepid water sup
! piled for >circulation,-tnese are the
! creatures who bark and bay the senate
to rush through the treaty with a coun-
try as devoid OF honor as she is COM
mon honesty. -
The princi pie of arbitration is sound;
but why does not England begin her
treaty making with the little fellows in
Central and South America before she
comes to us? ::
We sincerely trust that before the SEN
ate confirms the treaty or rejects 1t,
some member of that body will rise and
demand the withdrawal Of British fleets
from our waters and the .razing Of the
Notifications she has piled up all
around us. England has everything to
gain by the treaty; we lose nothing by
rejecting it,
Let her give some earnest Of her de-
sire for peace, good will and fair treat
ment by her acts. Let her cease the
plumber and harrassing Of our poor fish
ermen in her Canadian waters; let her
stop her police-made dynamite plots
against our citizens; let her do ordinary
justice to her neighbor. Ireland, mill
lions of whose natives watch her from
this republic with distrust and then we
can be ready to hold out our hand to
her.
Her hired shouters here in the press
ana ON the platform have given away
the scheme unwittingly. They have
asked for an alliance, offensive and de-
fensive, with England; they want Amer.
lea to fight her battles for her. AS the
class OF citizens who prate forever OF
"Anglo-Saxon" this and that could not
be induced to fight under such circuul-
stances, the supposition is that those
who have no use for England anyhow
can be induced by Greatly to dc her dirty
work They never made a. greater mis-
take: The American administration that
undertook to fight England's battle
wouldn't last Is minutes. England
must look elsewhere for allies to do her
fighting; her Hessians will never be re-
cruited in this soil.
The treaty as 1t now stands, the joint
work of Olney and Pauncefote, is
singular misture of hum bug and deceit,
which accords England everything she
needs and gives America nothing that
she wants. Certainly no American Of
Irish extraction desires to see the land
Of refuge for his race overreached by a
nation that has not single generous or
honorable action to look back on, and
whose treatment of ireland has at all
times been atrocious. We are human
and act according TO the light of our ex-
perience. We cannot deem wolf safe
to admit to sheepfold. A treaty coming
from England and supported by those
who are friends Of England and the de-
tractors Of America must have some
thing more tangible than platitude and
sentiment to commend 1t to American
acceptance. When England Is prepared
to give guarantees Of her sincerity,
when she shows the same eagerness to
arbitrate with the Transvaal Costa
Rica and Nicaragua that she does with
us, when her guns are removed from
Bermuda, Halifax and Vancouver, when
her political gadhies in Canada have
been relegated to innocuous quiescence
then we may be prepared to talk about
traaties and NOT till then But Amer
lean public men should he made to I'M
derstand plainly that no government in
this republic can with safety enter into
an alliance offensive and defensive with
the only nation that has ever at
tempted to wreck the land and against
the nations that aided us in our hours of
PERIL and they must be made to remem-
her that however loudly, stridently and
persistently money and English agen-
cies may talk, it is American manhood
that votes, that fights, that makes and
unmakes public men, that builds and
tears down administrative lions and govern
ments. It was the patriotic people who
fought and died to throw of the yoke of
England; 1t was the boards Of trade and
kindred bodies that hampered the gov
eminent of 1872; 1t was the indignant
people, and not the money lenders, who