The San Francisco call., 1898-06-05
IRELAND l ............NOURNS FOR GLADSTONE :.
 Praised as a Christian j.: and Statesman. f HOW THE TIDE WAS TURNED CLANCY TELLS OF EARLY TALK | AGAINST HIM. The Calls Special Correspondent
 Shows How Ireland, as a Ma
 tion, Heartily Sympathizes
 With America.
HOW THE TIDE WAS TURNED
CLANCY TELLS OF EARLY TALK AGAINST HIM.
BY J. J. CLANCY.

LONDON, May 21.-The death of Mir
 Gladstone is the great topic of the hour. . The. newspapers are full of it; so is . every place of public resort, and so, of course. especially are the Houses of
 Parliament. The fact that it had been . eNpected for weeks has not tended to : diminish the general interest and sym 'pathy. Every one seems to feel and to
 admit that in Mir. Gladstone there has passed away the greatest man of the British race whom this century has produced and one of the greatest men of that race of any time. He is now praised as pre-eminently a Christian statesman, a politician of lofty ideals, a man of principle, a patriot who has done unrivaled service to his country; r and in this eulogy those who were his political opponents join with his politi- cal followers. Yet it is only a few years since he was the constant butt of the hatred, the indignation, the denuncia- -tlon, and even the Scotfs and ridicule of fully half of the people of England. l myself have a keen remembrance of the :treatment he habitually received at the hands of the Tory party in the House of Commons during the home rule struggle. He often seemed to me to be :regarded by them as incapable of tell :' ing the truth. But the English do not,
 as rule, keep up political animosities
 when the cause of them has passed away, and when Mr. Gladstone retired
 from politics even the bitterest among
 his British opponents at once began to
 recognize his greatness and the luster
 which he shed on their common coun-
 fry.
 Yesterday, as my readers will long
 hV or
 up by both Houses of the British Par
 lament 10 eulOgies Of the deceased
 statesman. In the House of Lords the
 most notable incident of the sitting was
 the intervention of Lord Rosebery. He
 spoke 'aS the last successor in office
 of MT. Gladstone" and made by far
 the most impressive speech of any de-
 HVered. He had not spoken in the . House of Lords for a considerable time
 and there are certainly several circum-
 stances which made it natural for him to be on such an occasion among the
 panegyriSts. He was one of the most
 intimate of the personal friends of MT. Gladstone; in latter years he was his favortte Foreign Minister, and he was more than once clearly pointed to by
 his leader as his natural successor in
 the leadership of the Liberal party,
 though, curiously enough, it was an
 utterance of MT. Gladstone on the sub
 Ject of the Turkish atrocities in Ar
 menia which finally and directly led to
 his retirement from that post a couple
 of years ago. It was natural and most
 appropriate, therefore, that Lord Rose
 bery should speak on this occasion;
 nevertheless, some persons seem to see m the incident something beyond a
 mere desire on the part of the speaker to pay tribute to his deceased leader. and regard it as a political demonstra- ttOn and a bid for renewed leader I ln this view of it. but at the same time there can be no question that Lord R0sebery's s action and speech yesterday day are highly calculated to accelerate the movement, which, undoubtedly is 1 already on foot for bringing him back to the position in the Liberal party which he abandoned under the circum- ! stances to which l have alluded. In the House of Commons the absence | of the Parnellites during the delivery ot. the speeches on MT. Gladstone was, l oJ course, generally noted. It was deliberate and has been explained by MT. John Redmond himself, the leader l Of the party. to representative of the | press. Mir. Redmond and his colleagues | admit, like every one else the intel | lectual greatness of MT. Gladstone. his marvelous oratorical gifts, and the l magnitude of the services which he | Tendered to his own country But they know that there is another side to the 1 picture; that Mir. Gladstone's relations | with Ireland were not always fruitful i in blessings, and that it was he who | directly led to the crisis in the fortunes l or the Irish National party in Parlia- ment in 1890, from which results so | disastrous, from the Irish Nationalist l point of view, have since followed They | did not, however, wish on such an oc- | casion to mar the general harmony of | giving expression to those views in the | [. T sxl see that they could we'll remain silent l if statements were made in their pres ence, on those points. with which they could not agree; and therefore, they decided to be absent altogether. They i are, of course, blamed by their oppon- l ents in Ireland; but their course has | been approved, so far as 1 can see, by | at least their own supporters. and do | not find it condemned in England
 The death of Mir. Gladstone has tenn porarily displaced the war from its | position in the public mind; but there is one topic connected with it which | has continued to excite conSidera ble | attention in Ireland. Last week as | will be remembered MT. Chamber | lain, the Colonial Secretary, made a | rather sensational speech in which he | pictured war between England and one or more of the European powers as a | possibility of the near future, and not | indirectly pleaded for an alliance be- tween England and the United States. | There can be no question that, if such | an alliance could be struck up, every Englishman would rejoice, and so would those in Ireland who are English in sentiment. But the great majority of the Irish people would certainly view such .n alliance with no friend ly feelings, and largely because they believe that it would be, as far as America is concerned. a kind of Glaucus bargain. On this point Mir Michael Davitt, M. P, has written this week a letter to the mes here, in which he points out that America would abso- lutely have nothing to gain from such an alliance while England would have everything; and he insists that there are enough Irishmen and men of Irish birth in the United States to prevent such an alliance being formed. Another incident in this connection remains to be mentioned. Al present arrange