The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1909-11-27

commerce, her art, her music, her cos
hers prayers. The center of European
knowledge and moral culture she peo-
pied the remotest hooks of the bar
barian world with her ideas and with
her ideals. In the minds Of all lovers
of scholarship and of sanctity she
stands as the symbol of all that was
brave and beautiful in medievalism
The neurological and archaeological
treasures of Ireland fill the seekers
after folk-lore to safety.
What is Ireland today? If her beau-
teous blue -blossomed flax fields arc
rotting for want of tending, whose is
the sin? If her mill wheels by the
foaming mountain torrents are dumb
in desuetude, whose is the blame? If
ruins, decayed estates, untitled fields,
deserted abbeys, empty manors and
uncared for nocks strike the tourist
with pity and dismay, at whose door
shall the crime be laid? The abom-
Unable misrule of Ireland by men alien
in birth and blood and language and
religion, by foreigners whose leisure
Is squandered in London, is the NOV
Ing theme OF Barry O'Brien and Allcs
stopford Screen. ~. q~S,s ,.,
We learn here in pages that TEEN
with truths hitherto unuttered, how
every scrap or shred OF Irish patriot-
ism has been diabolically crushed out
of young Irish hearts by the curse %
an alien education forced upon them
by the tyrannical opinions of hated
country.
Irish children have been systemat-
ically taught that Ireland has no his
tory, no poets, no statesmen. no tinan-
ciers, no distinction in commercial
life, no influence on the progress of
the world towards what?-moral and
mental and physical decadence?
If ireland has no written records
and dusty archives to chronicle her in
justices to other lands and to other
races, is it not rather her merit than
her discredit? If Irish history had
been written rather than spoken and
acted. would any Irishman have been
permitted to live who was responsible
for it's pages?
If England has fostered few great
poets, are they not needed to counter
balance the millions of stolid, stupid,
besotted illiterates who swarm in her
mills, mines and warehouses; and gaze
in hopeless, heartless idiocy from one
working day Of slavery to the next?
No English historian in boasting Of a
single Shakespeare or q married Shell
ley puts in this pitiful background of
fact in English life. The staring, ill
fed, ill-housed, ill-paid millions of
Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham
and Sheffield never figure on the pages
of the prejudiced upholders of English
literary superiority. If Ireland has no
statesmen, how many English names
of prominence shine in oratorical an
nails since Gladstone and DisraeH? OF
what avail to encourage Irish states
manship when it will never get a
chance or ghost of show at West
minister Palace? If the Irish are not
Hnanciers it is because they know
their Bible too we'll, and how hard it IL
to squeeze into heaven laden with
bags of gold. Ireland has never had &
monopoly of this worlds commerce. God
forbid that she ever will. Commerce.
| means the success of the few and til.
slavish subservience of the multitude g
The Irish never think in crowds. Ar
Irishman is an individualist by naturs,
particular wit, and an original hu-
morist. Out of such a race of units
do not look for organization and mil.
itary solidarity. Where every mar
wants to be an officer do not look fo
tractable soldiers Ireland never han
kered or hungcred after financial su
periority. 1t it comes to individus
1rishmen in spasmodic doses, they al
ways feel like perpetual apology t,
their less prospecting neighbors VIII
look for the daily disappearance Of tn
wealth as of something uncanny an
illegal.
.