Bisbee daily review., 1918-05-22
The Irish Question

 IS so many sided, so sharp at the edges, so bitter, so vital, so far reaching. Ireland s woes and glory have for centuries been the worlds saddest, sweetest song. Our senti- ment our love, our admiration, our com passion have all been with the Irish for more than a century, England's treatment of Ireland up to within the last thirty or forty years was most unjust and cruel. Our sympathy has always gone out three fold to the under dog. But our practical common sense and our possession of the facts tell us that this hard policy has been changed. That for the last ten years especially, the Irish man has had practically all the rig ghts, priv ileges and blessings of citizenship that an Englishman enjoys, or Scotchman, or Canadian or an Australian.
 And yet with Britain at war for her na- tional life, Scotland, Canada and Australia are bending every energy in most loyal, eager fashion to save her, and at the same time themselves, from German domina- ton, while Ireland seethes with revolt, feud and rebellion Some of her leaders have plotted treason and consorted with German agents, and still do plot and con sort with these enemies of that human free dom that Ireland has sought and suffered for so long. The world would be quick to condemn and stern to punish such grave deflection from the cause of liberty against oppression were 1t not for the thought of the thousands upon thousands of gallant lrishmen who have fought for four terrible years over all the immortal battlefields of France
 However, the record of the Irish at Givenchy makes all the more reprehensible and dastardly the record of the Irish Sein Primers in Dublin and elsewhere. For these plotters and agitators not only stab Eng land from behind but their own people who have died for a great cause.
 No Irishman that ever stood knee deep in bog or waved a club in Dublin riot will doubt or deny the friendship, love and good will of America generally towards him and his grand little isle When he came here by the thousand seeking sur cease from sorrow we called him to the police force and the mayors chair of our cities, and to our congress and our places of power, and to places of power and profit in our industries We gave him of the best of everything and he has more than repaid us in the building of our republic In fact, in public sentiment generally, we have even made his quarrel with England our quarrel, and no Fenian plot in the past fifty years in this country but that had plenty of American packers and sympathizers. We, too, had fought England for our free dom, and we felt as deeply as though in a blood bond the wrongs and sorrows of Ire land.
 But now England and America and France are bound together by the strongest ot mortal ties in a war against a powerful and ruthless enemy of all freedom, in a war to the death. We are fighting now for the freedom, not only of Ireland, but the freedom of all English speaking and Latin peoples. Revolt, rebellion or dissention in Ireland at this time is not only treason to England but to Ireland as well, and to America, who has always been the loving and loyal friend of Ireland and all the Irish
 The lrishman of the past generation who took in with his mothers milk hatred of England and her oppression of his land and people, has become so prejudioed and em- bittered and poisoned against all things English that he cannot now see or recog- nize Englands present fair and just treat ment of his native land The bad black past rises before him and blots out all the good of the present. And he stands in his own light, which is bad, and in the light of his country, which Is worse, and waves the bloody rag of fifty years ago instead of