The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1916-05-20

trolled from sources outside Ireland.
Today is as yesterday and the day be-
fore-Parnell and Pigott; Gavan Duff
fy's group and their traducers; the
Sim Feins Of 1916; and!
l have had the pleasure of an ac-
quaintance with several Sim Feins,
and to one somewhat disillusioned
with the methods and achievements
of professional politicians on two
continents it was a mental tonic to
come on group of men as high-mind-
ed, single in aim, and absolutely un-
selfish as these young intellectuals of
Dublin and Belfast. From the north
and south and west they had come
to these centers seeking the meager
livelihood Ireland under present con.
ditions offers the majority of it's peo-
pie.
They were mostly under middle age,
spoke from two to four languages,
and were particularly we'll versed in
international history and politics and
economics. They were usually poor,
an inconvenient fact which they
strove to put behind them, for they
preferred garnet in Ireland to a villa
outside its shores.
They were of many callings-alert
business men, writer's, artists, profess
sional men. I expected to find them
dreamers. They amazed me by being
shrewd, hard headed men with only
the national feeling overdeveloped by
the friction of alien rule. The poet
touch came in-for this twentieth cen.
tury-in their tremendous concentra.
ton upon their country's rights rather
than upon personal incomes or COM
forts.
They did not, as their critics &C.
cused them, live in the memory of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
recalling penal laws, prosecutions, and
depopulation by sword and slave
trade. They were living intensely in
the present and future, with but occa-
sional references to parents or grand
parents evicted or dead in the famine.
But they often did talk of the result
of the heavy impost of taxes after the
Napoleonic wars and of the 100000
900 Of taxes-as acknowledged by the
royal commission of Investigation
raised in Ireland and spent outside of
it in the last hundred years. They
were bitter about that, as yet unre-
turned, and made short work of my
argument that the loan advance of
e Is 100000 to small farmers purchas.
Ing land was step of restitution.
Nothing but great, unmistakable
act of friendliness and justice, like q
complete measure of home rule put
into operation, would have made those
men believe in Englands friendliness
or the parliamentary party's effective,
ness; they were wearied of words.
But complete scheme of home rule
on the Canadian plan was the last
thing they were likely to get; and
they knew it.
Then came 1914, and their troubles
grew acute.
Redmond's acquiescence in the de.
ferring of the emasculated home rule
bill, which could only come into force
after the war and when Carson had
had another chance to hack it, was a
red rag to the temper of men never
fully credulous of the success Of his
efforts. This, they protested passion
ately, is the only result of the Asquith
governments promise to Redmond, as
Irish leader, that If he kept his party
whipped into line as Liberal support
ers, and by so doing maintained the
Liberals in power, enabling them to
pass necessary measures of reform
for the British democracy, then in
return Ireland would receive COM
plete measure Of home rule.
For fourteen years that promise
has been passed around Ireland" said
one bitterly to me. Men have lived
on the hope 1t held-and this is the
outcome!"
Then the parliamentary party
agreed to go recruiting, which the Slim
Feins said openly might be very good
for constituents in England or France
but was exceedingly bad and IMPROVE
dent for man depleted Ireland. They
said much stronger things as we'll.
Finally, when the alienation could
60 no farther. in the end of 1915 the
Sim Feins united with the anti.C
son volunteers and clamored for Eoin
MacNeil, the founder of the volun-
teers as leader Of the Irish nation, in
stead Of Redmond al leader of the
Irish parliamentary party. They want
ed him as q constitutional leader, for
MacNeil is no agitator. It was the
one compromise with England which
the Sim Fein party would make. Had