The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1899-12-30
CELTs IN THE BRITISH ARMY.

IL WAS Tile lElSu iuu luC Liz lllitll-
ers in Wellington's armies who won
for him the glorics of his Indian and
Peninsular campaigns, says Count
William j. Onahan in the New World.
The British army never contained
fewer Irish and Highlanders than at
the present time, and in Englands
dire extremity they are unwilling to
accept the Saxon shilling to shed their
blood in the Anglo-Boer war; While
we hear of England and her remote
colonies mastering men for the Afri-
can campaign, we hear nothing about
the Irish and Scotch preparing for the
fray. Lord Roberts, in his interview
with an American correspondent, said
that the Irish now as ever are ready
to shed their blood for the queen. Of
course, he knows better. The Irish
and Highlanders in Cape Colony and
Natal have had all the fighting they
want Under inefficient officers they
led the van and suffered heavily, and
those who escaped Mauser bullets are
now imprisoned in the racing grounds
at Pretoria. The regiments bearing
Irish and Scotch names are composed
of mongrels and not Of Celts, and
hence they have not fought so gallant
ly rs at Waterloo, at Sebastopol and
ut Lucknow.
The Irish regiments doing England's
dirty work in South Africa are COM
posed of men inferior to those whom
Richard Labor Shiel eulogized so elo-
quently in the British parliament in
answer to the ungenerous taunts of
Lord Lyndhurst, who stigmatized
them as "aliens in religion, in Ian
guage and in blood" Rising in his
seat the rhetorical Irishman spoke as
follows:
"Aliens! Great God! Was Arthur,
Duke of wellington in the House of
Lords, and did he not stand up and
exclaim, Hold! have seen the aliens
do their duty? His mind is of cast
too martial to be easily moved, but
Notwithstanding his habitual inflexi-
bility, 1 cannot help thinking that
whom he heard his Roman Catholic
countrymen for we are his country
mem designated by phrase as offens-
i've as the abundant vocabulary of his
eloquent confederate could supply, l
cannot help thinking that he ought to
have recollected the many fields of
fight in which we have been contrib
utors to his renown.
"The battles, sieges, fortunes, that
he has passed ought to have come
back upon him. lie ought to have re-
mcmbered that, from the earliest
achievement in which he displayed
that military genius which has placed
him foremost in the annals of modern
warfare, down to that last and sur
passing combat which has made his
name mperishable-from Assaye to
Waterloo-the Irish soldiers, with
whom your armies are filled, were the
inseparable auXiliaries to the glory
with which his unparalleled successes
have been crowned.
"Whosc were the arms that drove
your bayoncts at Vimiera through the
phalanXcs that never rceled in the
shock of war before?
"What desperate valor climbed the
sleeps and filled the moats at Badajos!
All his victories should have rushed
and crowded back upon his memory
Vimiera, Badajos, Salamanca, Albu-
era, Toulouse, and last Of all, the
greatest-. Tell me, for you were
there, I appeal to the gallant soldier
before me (Sir Henry Hardinge), from
whose opinions differ, but who
bears, l know, a generous heart in IN
intrepid breast-tell me, for you must
needs remember-on that day when
the destinies of mankind were tremb
ling in the balance-while death fell
in showers-when the artillery of
France was leveled with a precision
of the most deadly science-when hel
legions, melted by the voice and in
spircd by the example of their mighty
leader. rushed again and again to tho
onsct-tcll me if for an instant, when
TO hesitate for an instant was to be
lost, tie aliens blanched? And when
ut length the moment for the last and
decisive movement had arrived. and
the valor which had so long been
wisely checked. was ut last let loose
when with words familiar, but immor
tai. the great captain commanded the
great assault-tell me. if Catholic Ire
land, with less heroic valor than tho
natives of your own glorious country
precipitated herself upon the foe?
."The blood of England, Scotland
and of Ireland flowed in the same
stream and drenched the same field
} When the chill morning dawned, theil
dead lay cold and stark together; ii
the same deep pit their bodies were
deposited; the green corn of spring is
now breaking from their commingleG
dust, the dew falls from heaven upor
their union in the grave"
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