Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1918-03-06
REDMOND, IRISH
LEADER, IS DEAD
[oontinued from FIRST Page.1

relieved the patient, but heart fall
ure intervened Tuesday night.
The physicians attending Mr.. Red
mond issued the following announce
ment:
I'VE regret to announce that John
Redmond died at 7.45 this morning.
Owing to several serious attacks of
illness a severe operation was faced
with great courage. 1t had become
| imperatively necessary owing to an
Intestinal obstruction. This was re-
lieved by the operation and for some
days satisfactory progress was main
tanned. After a fairly comfortable
day Tuesday, heart failure superven-
ed during the night and after a few
hours, Mr.. Redmond passed peace
fully away"
Fought For Home Rule
For more than twenty-five years
John e. Redmond fought for Home
Rule in Ireland and for a majority
OF that time he was the recognized
| leader of Ireland's struggle for lib
erty." AS chairman of the Irish
Parliamentary party-the National
ists-he eXerted a powerful influence
in bringing about the creation of the
Irish convention organized in July,
1917, to devise a system of govern
ment for the island.
When David Lloyd George, the
British premier, in that year offered
| two methods of settling the vexed
Irish question, it was Redmond, who
as spokesman for the Nationalists,
rejected the proposition for a parti-
! ton of Ireland and instead, accepted
| Lloyd Georges alternative plan for
the convocation of the Irish conven-
ton in which Irishmen of nearly all
parties and creeds might meet in the
/ ,TF- -nsN n.
| and draft a constitution that would
afford justice to all.
, Redmond was one of the delegates
to the convention which sat at var
ious times at Dublin, Belfast and
Cork in 1917 and 1918.
In Commons Since 1881
Born in 1851, son of w. A. Red
mond, deceased, member of the
British Parliament from Wexford,
, almost continuously in the British
House of Commons since 1881. There
! his parliament fights for Home Rule
earned for him the sobriquet of the
stormy petrol of the House."
/ Educated in Clongowes Woods
College, Kildare, and Trinity College,
Dublin, Redmond was called to the
| bar the following year, but he never
practiced law. He devoted himself
almost wholly to his parliamentary
and political duties.
| Redmond's eloquence and his
grasp of parliamentary procedure
won his early recognition in Parlia-
ment and when in 1891 the Irish
| party was disrupted, consequent on
the Parnell scandals, he became the
accredited leader of the Parnellites,
| In 1900 he succeeded in bringing
about an amalgamation of the two
| leading Nationalist parties and made
| his position as Nationalist leader Sc
cure.
| WelI-known i'm u. S.
Redmond was well-known in the
United States, which he visited in
| 1908 and 1910, and Australia, where
| in 1888 he not only performed a
great service for his party in direct
| ing the collection of a fund of more
than $4,000, but found wife in the
! person of Johanna Dalton, New
South Wales 1eiress and beauty.
! The Irish leaders first visit to this
country proved a fiasco, but his sec
ond, made for the purpose ostensibly
of attending the convention of the
United States Irish League, at Buffa-
10, met with great success. Following
his attendance at the convention,
Redmond made a tour of all the
principal cities of the middle west
| and the Atlantic coast, delivering a
series of addresses on the Irish
question which were later held re-
sponsible for the British Cabinet
crisis of November, 1910.
| The speeches brought the Home
Rule question to a head. The British
government took serious hold of the
problem and a bill was evolved,
which on presentation and discus
sion in the House of Commons result
| ed in an impasse because of the
Ulster opposition. This was shortly
before the outbreak of the great
war.
Accused of Being Traitor
| With the entrance of England into
the war, Redmond Immediately de-
! fined his position as squarely with
the government in the earnest prose-
cution of the war. His support of the
government won the unstinted praise
of Cardinal Gibbons and the open
| and bitter condemnation of the Sim
Fein party, members of which at a
public meeting accused him of being
traitor to the Irish cause.
He maintained his loyal position
even during the exciting days of the
Sim fTein revolution, decrying the
rebellion, but attributing it to a Ger
man plotting in the United States.
When the rebellion had been put
down he used all the eloquence of
which he was capable in pleading for
leniency toward the great mass of
the rebels, and in urging a speedy
settlement of the differences that
had caused the revolt.
His eloquent address in the House
of Commons on October IS, 1916,
demanding immediate Home Rule
and the release of the Irish revolu-
ZIONIST called forth an answer from
Premier Lloyd George, in which the
premier Admitted that mistakes had
been made in handling the Irish sit
uation and urging all parties to unite
in bringing about solution.
John E. Redmond was a brother
of Major William II. K. Redmond,
who was killed while fighting under
the British flag in Franco in 1917.
Major Redmond was member of
Parliament for East Clare.