The Irish standard., 1916-12-09

TACT IS SlSnlncanL OI Ouo OL IuOSe HELL
tai barriers which make it difficult for
English rulers and officials to adjust
their strict notions of the divinity of
law and order to what is to them the
odd idiosyncracies of the Irish tenn
permanent.
"In England the state has gradually
taken to itself sort Of sanctity in the
eyes of the majority. Loyalty is the
highest virtue, rebellion is the sin Of
witchcraft' (whatever that somewhat
anachronostic high sounding crime
may be-. Authority is enthroned in
the souls and minds of men. Indeed,
the divine pretensions Of the Roman
emperors could have brought them no
fairer harvest of submission.
"In Ireland the position is reversed.
The Republican proclamation points
out how six times in three hundred
years the Irish nation have asserted
their right to national freedom and
sovereignty in armed rebellions.' The
element of foreign ascendancy has
prevented the state from assuming a
semi-sacred character. Tradition has
grown up slowly from generation to
generation in the Irish mind, and the
idea of rebellion has gradually as
sumed the sanctity that among English
people is associated with the organ
lied authority of the state.
so that in Ireland the great rebels
are all national heroes and martyrs,
and their names are household words,
revered and honored, as in England
the names of kings and queens are re-
vered and honored-with this differ
ence, that in Ireland the halo Of the
tragedy is round the heads of all the
heroes and nobody speaks lightly of
those who have won great honor
through extremes of suffering and self
sacrifice.
Loyalty as conceived by masses Of
Irish people is not, as it is in England
Il faithful adherence to the successful
and governing classes but a passionate
cinging to an often lost cause, and to
the memory of dead and defeated
heroes"
The Proud Gesture Of the Gael.
In st. Enda's Magazine Pearse once
gave expression to this strange, trou-
bled patriotism so common in Ireland:
1t has been sung of the Gael that
his fighting is always merry and his
feasting is always sad.
Here at st. Enda's we have tried
to keep before us the image of Fionn
| ing, with that gesture of the head, that
gallant, smiling gesture which has
been an eternal gesture of Irish his
tory; it was most memorably made by
Emmett when he mounted the scaffold
in Thomas Street. smiling. he who had
left so much, and more recently by
those who died at Manchester.
When people say that Ireland will
be happy when her mills throb and
her harbors swarm with shipping, they
are talking as foolishly as il one were
to say OF u lost saint or Of an unhappy
lover, that man will be happy again
when he has comfortable income"
know that Ireland will not be hap
py again until she recollects that old.
proud gesture of hers, that laughing
gesture Of a young man that is going
into battle or climbing gibbet
understand one side. at all events, Of
the Sim Fein rising. The stories of
the irrepressible gayety that have fill
tered through from Dublin, the pleas
ant tea party in the midst of the ma
chine guns in Stephens Green, the
countess in male attire. smiling and
garrulous, discussing the situation
with her English prisoner, and order
ing the bill to be sent to the Irish Re-
public the man in the postotlice who
played The Wearing of the Green
and Who Fears to Speak of 49,? on
the bagpipes all through the terrific
bombardment that reduced O'Connell
| Street to a heap of smoking ruins
the man who put up a recruiting notice
| ton what had once been a wall at the
corner) bearing this inscriptions: Men
Of Ireland, join the British army and
save your towns and fields from the
fate of the towns and fields of Bel
gium,' and last. but not least. the sar-
donic Jacobin who cut out the heads
Of two high personages from the pic
ture in the College Of Surgeons and
wrote underneath in large letters. De-
leted by the Censor"
Not Afraid to Die.
"Pearse's gesture of a young man
mounting the scaffold seems to find
its echo in the story of the pretended
| execution of the girl scout Of Is whom
all the torture of that CHASTITY scene
could not move to betray her COM
rades.
You're a brave girl and you de.
serve the Victoria Cross said one Of
the soldiers at last. struck by the cour-
age with which such a child could un-
flinchingly face the prospect of imme.
date death.
"'YOu can kean vour Victoria Croes,