The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1901-08-10
"C0ME ON IN, JOHN ~
Anglo-Irish Dccadents.

The Irish, small as their population
is, knock the English all to pieces
whenever Representatives of the two
races meet in athletic contests writes
William O'Brien in the Dublin Irish
People. Even the English games are
(unhappily) practiced by the students at
Irish Catholic colleges, those who fol-
low them are to their Saxon rivals what
the wretched Fusiliers from Dublin
and Kildare and Rangers from Galway
and Mayo were at Colenso to the
craven-hearted English towards who
skulked at safe distance from the
banks of the Tugela, and then turned
their guns against the Irish who had
been driven back by the overwhelm-
ing fire of the Boer freemen.
Ryans from Rockwell and Magees
from some other place have been show
ing Englishmen FOR years how to play
an English-school game. The Saxons
don't hurl. If we could put seventeen
Of their best, with camans in their
hands, against seventeen boys from
any Irish parish in which branch Of
the G. A. A. lives, the spectacle would
be one to remember for a lifetime. Our
Kiely, and Flanagan, and Horgan,
and O'Connor are all humble Irish
boys-as Irish as their names. Yet
the world never saw their eQuals-nOt
alone England.
All this is only Introductory to q
remark about the extraordinary COL
lapse Of the decadents who rule Ire
land. Trinity College is a closed
borough to the Irish Catholic or Ma
tionalist student-except, indeed, he is
prepared to curse the Pope, to cheer
the Yeoman, to throw stones at q
peaceable possession Of Nationalists,
and to play the blackguard in the
streets whenever he has enough money
to purchase the preliminary stimu-
lants. The other day a parcel Of Penn
sylvania students crossed the Atlantic
and met number Of English COL
legians in rowing match. The visit
ors were beaten. Then they came to
Ireland and rowed against the chosen
representatives of Trinity College
muscle at Killarney. The result was
most ludicrous. All the boatmen in
Killarney were incapacitated, for
laughter, that evening. Such a miser-
able exhibition as that given by Trinity
was never heard or dreamt of. It was
not a race-it was like contest be-
tween Gulliver and Brobdignagian.
The men who were beaten by English
collegians in England were half a mile
ahead Of Irish collegians in a three
mile race.
There are no brains in modern
Trinity. There is no muscle there
either-except for an occasional bout
Of clod-throwing from behind the po.
lice-protected railings. The denizens
ape the English. England is decaying.
The upper classes' in Ireland have
decayed. Look at their representatives
in parliament! Look at their sons at
Trinity College, parcel of gawky
weddings with hereditary feebleness
and mental decadence stamped on their
features, and with nothing English
about them but their accent-and even
that fs vile. The Cromwellians are
''played out" In Irish life they are like
the race of miserable weaklings whom
an English writer named Mr.. Wells
pictured as the Inhabitants of this
planet some twenty thousand years
hence. They have all the ferocity and
much of the cunning Of the brutes who
were their forbears. But as MEN
f.