The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1916-12-16
Ladies Auxiliary and
A. 0. n. Will Install
Officers Jointly

Continued from page ~
Do they act now as American bankers
or English agents?
60 We cannot have our cake and
eat it. We cannot expend our income
in England's war against Germany
and use it to develop our own re-
sources. 1t is proposed to lend Eng
land the products of our fields and
shops to the value of one thousand
million dollars that she may blow a
people friendly to us into fragments
Ten million dollars has reclaimed a
couple of hundred thousand acres in
the West and made them serviceable
to man; four hundred million gave us
the Panama Canal. Think what a
thousand million would do, and
thousand million is but enc Install
ment of what Morgan demands for
England. Shall we give this thousand
million to ruin Germany, or shall we
use it to make life in America better
and happier?
a. 1t is practically certain that the
loans made to England will never be
repaid, not even though she were vic
torious in the war: Her expenditure
is so enormous, the destruction of her
resources so great, that at best she
will emerge from the war bled white.
Her taxation since the war has gone
up by leaps and bounds; it will go
higher after the war. Everything tax
able will be taxed. A high financial
authority, friendly to England, esti-
mates that her normal income tax
after the war will be so per cent, and
suggests that the bondholders will
own the country. On the other hand,
the feverish imitation prosperity of the
munition shops will have disappeared,
and the soldiers will have returned
from the front, with new ideas of their
own Importance, to find themselves
out of work. We must look forward,
therefore, to labor disturbances on
vast scale with a possible overture of
the government This is supposing
England to win. England, however, is
beaten and every day but makes
clearer her defeat. Therefore nothing
is more sure than that England will
repudiate every debt arising out of the
war, and start with clean slate. At
most, out of consideration for us, she
may turn over to us her worthless
claims against Mexico, hoping thus
to involve us in trouble.
| (5) A further reason for opposing
this loan, or rather gift, is that it is
intended to aid England to destroy
Germany. Now England ever was and
today is our enemy, while Germany
has at least never been unfriendly and
her people have on several occasions
given us their sympathy and their act
| i've help when we needed both. Eng
land tried to crush the colonies during
the Revolutionary War, set Tories and
Indians to massacre and scalp our de-
fenceless civil population. after the
war refused to abide by the treaty
and again involved us in trouble with
! the Indian tribes, then cnce more
treated us as a subject population un-
til we were forced into war, where
upon she abolished, as she las done in
this war, all international law, and
burned and ravished at her own sweet
will. Beaten, she but changed her
method of attack, and she intrigued
against us and annoyed us until she
brought on the Civil War, and found
the opportunity through her pirates,
disguised as Confederate cruisers, of
destroying our foreign commerce.
Once more disappointed in failing to
bring about the break of the republic,
she professed repentance and friend
ship only to carry on her nefarious,
work as before. In recent years we
have had a sample of her friendship
in her threats regarding the Panama
Canal. And today she plots to involve
us in war with Japan. hoping thus to
cripple two of her friends" at once.
Are we to injure ourselves that we
may help this old and unrelenting en-
envy to destroy nation with which
we are at peace?
Signed on behalf of the Massachu-
sets Council. Friends of Irish Free
dom, by it's executive committee.
DR.. JOHN F. KELLY,
Chairman, Pittsfield.