The sun., 1919-10-19

SIDES. lhe latest attempt at lar sla1e-
ment of the cast. is Ireland and England,
by Edward R. Turner, professor OF
European history in the University OF
Michigan. Sir Edward Carson would not
issue it as handbook of the Unionist
cause. Mr.. de Valera would throw it In
The fire, we fear, after coming to Page 40,
where the author, after stating the OBJ
vious truth that "Irishmen think it mis-
fortune that their country was con-
quered by England" adds that lit was
far greater misfortune that the conquest
once undertaken was not during such
long time made complete"
Mr.. Turner is looking at the matter
from kindly Michigan viewpoint. He
feels that ireland would have been better
off materially if England had made a
complete job of it; what he does not
realize is that conquering Ireland and
conquering the Irish are two different
jobs. Peace, such as the British arms
brought about In olden times In ireland,
was what Macaulay called ''the ghastly
tranquility of exhaustion"
Mr.. Turner does not spare England IN
his recital of the Irish grievances. He tells
US what Spenser saw when the peasants
"looked like anatomies Of DEATH and
"spake like ghosts crying out Of their
graves" That was after Elizabeth
had starved 10000 to death in Munster.
Such crimes as this, Gays the author,
'must always be remembered in connec-
ton with the later lawlessness of the
Irish and the bitterness of the land wars
which have sometimes disquieted the
island. Deeply rooted in the native mind
were the feeling that the rightful owners
had once been supplanted by alien
masters and the instinct, based upon old
tribal law, that an occupier ought not to
be evieted."
Of the religious persecution in ireland
in the eighteenth century Mr.. Turner,
after condemning those responsible for it,
remarks: @But actually the persecution
in Ireland was far less than that which
destroyed Professionalism in Bohemia and
Spain" True, perhaps, but the Irish
outrages occurred more than a century
after the Continental expressions, and a
century should have meant some progress
in civilization. Besides, so far as religious
persecution was concerned the Irish
Catholics could claim to be innocent
bystanders.
ireland in the eighteenth century"
says Mr.. Turner, "was administered by
England with much of the brutal and OBJ
stinate tyranny that our free peoples
feared from Prussia triumphant" 1t.
was Ire1and's particular misfortune, he
adds, that she was in such peculiar
position that unlike the mistreated colonies
of England and Spain In America, she
could not break away.
Mr.. Turner has word In defence Of
the Fenians of 1865. He sees in them
now, from a distance, something like
the career Of the abolitionists of Garrison
in America before the Civil War. :.
Their deeds were unlovely; those for
whom they were working must often have
despised them, but they did inspire fear,
they did make men think, they did get
attention which mlder methods and more
constitutional ways could not secure. :.
What the Fenians did we condemn in
itself, and it had to be sternly depressed
but it arose out of evil conditions, and
cornatbino Of that tbav did hrOupht those
conditions to an end" Lawlessness, cries
one reader; Martyrdom, signs another.
Coming down to the last decade Of
Irish history, Mr.. Turner quotes from the
memorable speech made by Mr.. Asquith
in the House in April, 1913, reviewing
the insistent demands of the Irish for
Home Rule since the people found
political voice:
"When Mr.. Gladstone spoke in 1893 he
had in support of the proposition that