Der Deutsche correspondent. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1841-1918, 1916-09-27

not grasp Like the emasculated
Britons who begged their Roman
tyrants not TO set them free it can
no longer conceive Ireland as any
thing but cripple or a begger --
dependent of some strong Power.
II England doesn't tyrannize over
Ireland then Germany will, there
fore, we must help the English ty-
rant, is its base and banal argument.
That ireland, if sne had the strength
to strike, should strike for herself
that Ireland, if she had not the
strength to strike Tor herself, should
have the wisdom and self-respect not
to strike for her old enemy the
slave mind cannot conceive. Like
the old men who had lain in the
dungeon Of an English King until he
mad forgotten the light of Heaven, it
starts back in terror when its prison
is broken down and the common light
of day streams in.
The slave mind is everywhere in
Ireland On our platforms, in our
platforms, in our press, often in our
pulpits. 1t is a tacit denial that the
Irish are the peers of other white
men-a tacid admission that Eng
land is right in her treatment of us
We Irish nave exactly the same title
as the French, the English, or the
Germans, to govern our own country
and shape our own policy. When
we look on the world from a lower
standpoint we are slave minded. 1t
was Grattan, the greatest of our
constitutional leaders, who declared
that il the interests of the Empire
clashed with the liberties of Ire
land, then he, and every Irishman,
would cry: Live Ireland, perish the
Empire" 1t was O'Connell, his sue
cessor, who gave us the watchword:
ireland for the Irish OF the world
in blaze" Today the world is in
blaze and our slave mind is fixed
where it ever is-over the sea in
stead OF at home. The supposed
wrongs of Belgium move it to
Wandering, the real wrongs of Ire
land 1t shrinks from contemplating,
for indeed 1t is some kind Of treason
to British law to suggest Ireland has
any wrongs at all. Our slave minded
are not crying Live Ireland!" or
ireland for the Irish!' - they are
whimpering about the Empire" and
the fine free institutions of that En-
pire, which has made Ireland what it
is noday-half poorhouse and half
cattle-ranch. What, though all Eu-
rope, all Asia, all America, all Afri-
ca, rang with the clang Of arms and
drank In blood, should Ireland dream
Of, think Of, work for? Her own
freedom, her own restoration to the
sovereign nationhood the arms of
the Volunteers won for her in 1882,
and the treachery of envious Eng
land struck down when Ireland laid
down her arms. Since that time
Englands most effective garrison in
Ireland has not been her soldiery.
1t has been mainly the writer's of our
press and the orators of our plat
forms, whose prudence is cowardice,
whose statesmanship is evasion,
compromise and surrender, and who.
slaves themselves to the menace of
English authority or the induce
ments OF English wealth, have bred
and fostered in this country that
mental and moral obliquity, that
slave mind, which has today unfor-
tunately Irishmen dying on foreign
battlefields to uphold the power of
their country's tyrants and which has
other Irishmen ignorantly prating of
Germany as a despotism while the
dried blood of the unarmed men,
women, and children, shot down in
the streets of Dublin by England's
soldiers, is still darlSly visible on the
door posts of Bachelors Walk.