The age-herald., 1901-05-05
New 2eague AgayNst SNgAaNd
 World>Wide Irish Combination is Proposed
BY MICHAEL DAvITT.

Dublin May 4-The Emigration statis- tics for the year 1900 have brought us face to face again with the deadliest injury which English government inhicts upon Ireland. It's objective reality in all its de- structive effects upon the country is daily before both rulers and ruled, as the very life blood of the nation drains its cease less, wasting, deadly course week by week through our seaports. But these annual figures, in their terrible, if blood less, story tells us more foroibly than in any other way of the deliberate crime of nation killing which English statesmen are ruthlessly committing as the, to them one and only sure way of rldding England of the difficulty which an Irish aspiration for freedom creates at her door
 This remorseless purpose is in line with England's traditional ruling record. The stranging of freedom unless it be of her own giving for her own race to admins ter. is as much her vocation among civ ilized powers as it was the mission of Mohammed to give religion freely" to those lands in which Christianity should be first exterminated. Cromwell in his famous defense of his innocense of any
 
 "I am not against the Catholic religion, but the priest who performs the ceremony of the mass must not live in these coun- tries" This is the spirit in which Eng land proclaims her friendship for free dom. q am not againse independence, in Poland, Macedonia or in Afghanistan, but there shall be no national freedom in India, Ireland or South Africa as long as I am strong enough to prevent it." She failed in a similar resolve with the fath- CTS of the great Republic, but she is slow ly succeeding with the country from whence the War of Independence drew more than half of the men who waged and won it for the good of liberty and mankind.
 Last year 45.000 young men and women between the ages of fifteen and thirty five, left the Irish shores. Twenty thous- and of those were men in the very prime of life; more men, in fact, than the Transvaa1 put in the field eighteen months ago in the desperate resolve of the little Republic to save its life from the imperial assassin of small nations. This, however. fs tho annual, not the casual. loss to the country which has reared this industrial army of manhood and womanhood for the benefit of other lands. Over 700O0O of theAsame age have gone the same way during the past de- cade. leaving q corresponding debility in racial production behind. And, so the slow. but sure progress of Celtic depopu- lation goes on, remorselessly carrying out England's sleepless and malignant design to drive the race from Ireland. or to bend to the sway of her selfish and sordid rule.
 What are we doing to stem the tide of this movement of death to the Irish na- ton? What are we called upon to do in this great national task? These are ques- tions and considerations which are, I think. moulding thoughts and shaping actions among sincere men on both sides of the Atlantic, since this new century has seen the drawing together again of militant Irish forces for a common pa- triotic purpose. For this obvious truth is seizing hold of every earnest Irish mind namely, how little, and how crim- inally paltry, are all sectional differences and party issues among Nationalists in face of this gigantic and deadly danger to the Celtic Fatherland?
 Twenty-two or three years ago thought ful men of action in Ireland and in the United States devised plan and launch ed an issue in Irish public life which call ed into existence in a brief period the most powerful combination which our