The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1918-07-06

streaming of the Irish people over the
oceans to America, Australia, Africa
and New Zealand They were car
ried in British ships, impelled tc
abandon their homeland by British
misgovernment, and flee to lands
where they found established a civ
ilization of greater freedom, and
which gave scope for their strength
of body and vitality of brain. In
these lands they have prospered. They
have won the esteem of their fellow
citizens. They have accepted much
that they found existing, and intro
duced much that has been welcomed
and engrafted upon the free institu
lions of democracy.
But are they, then, to forget their
origin? Are they bound, by any law
of human nature, to throw away the
book which holds the record of the
blood which warns their hearts and
which flows in the soft cheeks of their
children? Other races, and other ma.
lions, in the communities in which
they dwell, have opened, and keep
open, the books upon which are printed
the annals of other times. Is the
Irish child to stay Irish in sentiment,
or is he to read in these other books,
like the children in the Irish National
Schools once read, that "he Is a
happy English child?"
No political loyalty is weakened by
cherishing sentiment of reverence
for the history of our ancestors, wher-
ever their bones may moulder into
dust. Is not an American of Irish
origin more intelligent citizen and
a more loyal American when he knows
that a ship from Ireland brought sue.
cor to the ADMINISTRATION settlers of
New England in the seventeenth cen
tury, that many of the leaders of the
early settlers in America were Irish.
men, that they filled the armies of
Washington, and that the Irish voices
Of Grattan, Flood, Burke and Sheri.
dan were raised on behalf of America
in hostile parliament?
Is not an Irish artist empowered in
his capacity when he feels that his
race, too, has given generously to fine
arts? Should he not know that Ire.
land was once the exemplar of the
world in sculpture and establishment?
Should he not know that facts upon
which this tribute of Ruskin was
based: "In the eighth century Ire.
land possessed school of art in her
manuscripts and sculpture which, in
many of it's qualities-apparently in
all essential qualities of decorative in,
vention-was quite without rival
seeming as if it might have advanced
to the highest triumphs in architecture
and in painting
Would not business man of the
Irish race, now habituated to accept
ing all knowledge from other sources
be stirred upon rejecting that the
Irish, too, were once foremost in bust
ness, that they made the most perfect
dyes that their woolens were es
teemed highly throughout Europe, that
Irish oak was used in the building
of ships on the Seine and the Thames
that Irish hides were shipped to all
the countries on the easter Mediter
ranean, that there were machines fol
making concrete in the mountains OF
Connaught, that along the Shannon
were companies engaged in drying and
exporting fish, that in the valley OF
Liffey were braizers and founders
whose metal work was sold in dis
tant lands, that the builders erected
massive structures which yet stand
the fury of the wind, that the linen in
dustry of the world has gone to Ire
land for instruction. that in the most
ancient records there are systems Of
weights and measures, and that medi
ums of exchange were based upor
coins much earlier in Ireland than IL
any country of Western Europe?
i The teacher who knows the influence
of Irish letters upon civilization viii
do better work when familiar with
Irish achievements, and will recog
nize that the judgment of John Nor
ley was just when he wrote that "the
story of our literature begins will
the Gael" that Anglo-Saxon and Teu
tonic poetry terminated from Irisf
seeds, that even before Christianity
the Druids of continental Europe were
sent to Ireland for training, that the
old chronicles state that Fenius FARSI
brought the alphabet from Phenicia tt
Ireland, and the schools of Christian
Ireland executed the innate menta
capacity of the race with such fidelit!
that when pagans crushed the civiliz
alton of the Roman Empire it wal
Irish scholars and Irish ideals which