The Irish standard., 1916-07-01
Good Accom- Iished By
the Recent Revolt Saws
Writer in Boston Pilot
From 1.-THE Pilot" Official Organ Of
Cardinal o'conneII, Archbishop
Of Boston.

gave up their lives in Dublin little
while ago have perhaps wrought bet.
ter than they knew for the land they
loved. There has come to our atten-
ton thoughtful and fair-minded pa.
per on this matter. 1t deals with the
topic from. new angle not the less
interesting that the writer has recent.
1y come to this country from Ireland
The Sim F'ein uprising was deplor.
able and to many it may seem in ex.
plicable and even insane. The public
talks of the concessions made to the
Irish people, the uprooting of the alb.
sentee landlord system, the dawn of
Home Rule. But when you sit down
and estimate seven hundred years of
consistent and concerted oppression,
the misery and murder that the people
cannot forget, the grudging aid doled
out by Parliament after the hardest
political fighting and finally that mir
age-like Home Rule Bill so often prom
Used and as often withheld, he begins
terness and longing for action on the
part of the Irish neople OF today. This
is the key to the entire problem. Irish
history since the capture of the land
by the British must be surveyed as
an organic whole. The uprooting of
whole counties to give place to aliens
in religion and race, the terrorism of
Stanford, the horrible cruelty of the
Penal Laws, the selling of Irish girls
In the New Orleans slave-markets,
their exploitation in the West Indias;
these rise up of themselves to make
the Irishman's heart to grow hot and
his arm to swell with a determination
to pay this debt of such long stand
ing.
1t must not be forgotten that the
Irish race is by nature and mental
ability such as to deem itself the equal
of any in the world. The sudden
growth of sympathy for "little nations"
caused them to say: as there in all
this no sympathy for us, the most
bitterly prosecuted little people in his
tory?"
AS If this were not enough, the
world saw the spectacle of Carsons
open treason, the breaking of nation
al oaths on the part of Roberts and
French, the cringing of England to an
insignificant minority of bigoted trail
tors, but no one sensed the damnable
wrong of all this like the Irish peo-
pie themselves. while the Orangeman
grinned. Can the sons of men who
fought at Bunker Hill, at Lexington;
through all the American Revolution
find it in their hearts to say that after
all these revolutionists, though fewer
and under a great handicap were any
less heroic than the men who gave
us a free land and liberty!
The Sim Feiners may have been
poor strategists; they may have been
lacking in discretion, but have there
not been hundreds of such instances
in our history with the names of the
men who fought lone fight with GER
tain death before them.
Surely these were blood-brothers
with the heroes of early American his
tory Now that some of the truth
has filtered out, the foolish and brutal
treatment Of Sketlington and others,
the murder of English officers by their
own men, no sane man can help believ-
ing that there was far more to this
revolt than the public knows. The
very panic-stricken eagerness of the
existing English Government to do
something real for Ireland's rights
shows how near the thrust of the Sim
Feiners was at Englands heart.
The whole world knows the Irish
man, the good points and his bad ones,
his reckless courage, his innate chv-
airy. A few did rise this time in revolu-
ton as many a time before, but what
race of men worthy the name of men,
would have stood what Ireland has
stood from her ancient and fiendish
>S's' hithouC SllSkt lOE
freedom even if death and defeat were
all but certain?
1t seems that but one man in high
station in Great Britain cried for more
and more blood and harsh treatment
and this was the Protestant arch
bishop OF Dublin. Let any Christian,
whether Catholic or non Catholic, con-
trast this evil utterance with the no
BILE sentiments of the Holy Father.
Could any man expect justice in
thousand years if lInglishmen in any
number agreed with the vile position
taken by this Protestant prelate who
in any other land would be imprisoned
or exported as an undesirable citi.
zen?
Words like the above and deeds such
as have been done these seven CEN
turtles by Great Britain against the
men and women of that little nation"
Ireland, explained without long argu-
ment the moral of the Dublin uprising.
eirreII Asks Parliament To Suspend
Section Of Penal Code Relating to
Franciscan Fathers.
f1Nrv 4.