Omaha daily bee., 1906-02-09


1 powerfui--a very powerful destroyer; but
\ II is useless for building up. Love. on the
] other hand. Is like faith, II can move noun.
| tans; and, faith. we have mountains "a
| Honors Good in English.
| l honor and respect everything that is
! good in the great English race. l Yield 10
! no man in my appreciation Of their per
| severance, their business faculties. their
practical qualities They have So,o dHissl
| ence scores Of great cities: factories where
the unceasing roar and hum of production
are never silent. Theirs arc the harbors
| thronged with their forests Of masts; theirs.
| pre-eminently. are the mart ana the count
| ing house and the mercantile navy OF the
world. Wealth. power and the teemtng
! fruits of industry are theirs; and those arc
| things that mankind, in every age and
| upon my word think very often wronglN-
conspired TO reverence and admire. Yes;
whilst England. can point to such advan-
! tages as those, she may laugh at those who
| would belittle her; and. in the history OF
| the world she has made her mark deeply.
! Her enemies may hate her-they do hate
her; but they cannot despise her.
And yet. and yet there exists there at her
| very doors an ancient nation whose malt
deserted streets resound ever less and less
to the roar of traffic, whose mills are silent,
whose factories are fallen, whose very fields
are studded only with ruined gabi les ,
| nation. morality Of life. purity of senti-
ment. unswerving devotion TO faith. and to
a
halo In the eyes OF Europe that Is ell its
own. II Is a halo, too. that Is unstained by
oppression of any man. untarnlshed py
avarice Of anything. and undimmed py
characteristics of Race.
We'll. the characteristics of this Irish race
of ours are lightness, brightness. wit. flu
ency and an artistic temperament. The
charac teristics of the Teutonic race are an
intense business faculty, perseverance and
steadiness in details; and In America you
have ELECTED a magnificent blend of both
qualities in that free and noble race whose
sons or whose adopted sons and daughters
see before me tonight. But mark this
neither race can. with any success whatso-
ever. cut itself adrift from its own past and
throw itself in imitation of the other into
habits of life and thought and manners
into which God never intended 1t to be
thrown. .
The causes of this CHASTITY failure may all
be summed up in one word: we have ceased
TO be Irish without becoming English. II
is to this cause that attribute more than
TO anything else our awful emigration and
inipoverishment Irishmen leave ireland
today because they have ceased to feel that
they have a country. They will not accept
England as their country. and yet in the
ireland that the Gaelic league found before
II there was nothing to suggest TO them
anything else than an imitation England,
and the public mind had become hOpeleSsly
confused and Irishmen had no standard to
live by and they emigrated In their thou
sands
Threatened with Extinction.
Well, / said at the outset that ! would
have failed in my mission tonight If i did
not convince YOU that Ireland was really
threatened with national extinction in the
most far-reaching and vital sense OF the
word; and ! think have shown you dnat t,l IL
blots, and now you will ask me what have
we done to fill them? l will tell YOU, A
than dozen schools; six years ago 1t was
taught In l05 schools; today II is taught,
more or less. in something over 5000 of the
5000 schools of Ireland. Between public
and parochial schools. between colleges and
converts, there cannot be less than 2oO,OO
people now studying to read and write the
language six years ago, in intermediate
education only 260 pupils passed in Irish;
last year over 1900.
Six years ago no stranger coming TO Ire
land would have seen anything to tell him
that he was not i'm a big. vulgarized Eng
lish county. Now, in many OF the large
towns and in Dublin, the capital, you see
the names of the streets put up and the
names of the roads and the names of the
towns printed in Irish capitals at the cor
ner Of the streets, and you know that YOU
are not in England. Six years ago scarcely
a paper printed a word of our language.
Now all the national daily papers and very
many of the weekly papers print columns
of 1t. Six years ago an Irish book was a
rarity that appeared only at intervals of
many months. Now not a week goes by
but a new book printed in Irish is issued
from the press. and the distribution of
books and pamphlets from our own office
alone, not to speak OF the booksellers, has
been something over 100000 for every year
of the last four.
Must Know the Language.
Six years ago If you spoke Irish as well
as owen Roe and wrote It as well as. Geof-
frey Heating 1t would not be worth a
traithnin to, you. Now you cannot obtain
a place under the Corporation of Dublin,
under the Corporation OF Limerick. under
the County Councils of Cork or Mayo, and
dozen other places, unless you know the
language of your country. Six years ago
" the products of Irish hands and Irish
brains were to find market they had to
come back with the hall mark OF London
or of Paris upon them. Today we are
rearing and raising race OF men whose
one object will be that the article that
they buy shall bear the hall mark OF
Made in Ireland" and the results have
been amazing.
We have enormously increased the output
OF our weaving mills. We have doubled
the output of our other factories. Other
Industries in Ireland have been helped
there is an exhibition of our local indus
tries.
we have two training schools. one in
Munster and one in Connacht, to teach the
people how to teach. We have a school of
higher Irish learning which Knno Meyer
and Prof Strachan, the greatest masters
of old Irish and of phonetics In the world,
are teaching and in which they are doing
what Trinity college. with all it's wealth.
refused to do-training up race or irish
foremost scholars OF the world. We have
a fine nlace of our own in Dublin. We
have only twenty paid officers. We have a
weekly paper and a monthly magazine
We have organizers who work night and
day Sunday and Monday at their hard
| task OF persuading the people to be Irish
again, and who work and sweat themselves
| to death at a miserable wage that here
YOU would not offer to fifth-rate stenog-
rapher. And they have a corps Of 300