The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1919-04-24

NfAAAAA'NCA 0N'NA4 the King:
 To the Kings Most Excellent Majesty.
 From Certain Irishmen Recently
 Serving in His Majesty's Forces
 Against the Central Empires:
 May it please Your Majesty-We, the undersigned, being Irishmen who have served in. Your Majestys forces against the Central Empires, desire to emphasize the record of the Irish peo- pie in the great war, and to solicit | most respectfully Your Majesty's as sistanCe in preferring Irelands claim that, in virtue of her efforts and sac riffces in the battlefield, as well as the intrinsic merits of her cause, she is entitled to benefit from the victor | ious assertion of those great princt- l pies which she has given of her life 1 blood to maintain.
 | We claim to represent a very large majority of the fighters of Irish birth 1 and Irish blood in the Allied forces. | There are circumstances which pre- 1 clude the possibility of organizing i an articuIate expression of our com rades' aspirations upon a. numerically l representative basis, but there can be no challenge to the assurance, which ! we tender to you, that our voices are l typically representative of the multi 1 tude flor whom, in their enforced si- | Ience, we feel ourselves bound in | honor to speak.
 Among Your Majesty's forces dur ing the war there have served ap- ! proximately 100000 men of Irish birth and blood, raised in Ireland by purely voluntary enlistment. At least an equal number of Irish birth or blood was furnished in England, Scot rn7nU1inatRlV voluntary enlistment. In Australia ! and South Africa by purely voluntary 1 enlistment, and in Canada and New i Zealand predominately by voluntary 1 enlistment very large numbers of men of Irish birth or blood were rais- ed. Among the forces of the United 1 States of America, associated with the Allies in the war, there were also very large numbers of men of Irish
 birth or blood. The rolls of the dead and wounded are the best testimony
 of the numbers of all of these and of their f-devotion to the Allied cause. Now, as always, Ireland takes her ! stand upon the rights of her nation
 hood. In former times the separate | nationhood of Ireland, distinct from Great Britain, was recognized, in
 form and in fact, by the official desig- 
 der the Crown of Your Majesty's pre- ] decessors. In 17S2 the Irish Parlia- 1 ment declared it's legislative inde- pendence of the British parliament. and the British parliament expressed it's formal and official acquiescence. l In the year 1900, however, by the en- actment of the Act of Union the Irish | parliament was abolished, and the I Kingdom of Ireland itself incorpor-
 ated with the Kingdom of Great Brit
 ain under the new title of the United
 Kingdom of Great Britain and Ire
 land.
 The circumstances under which the Act of Union was enacted were such
 that Ireland has always challenged it
 as being devoid both of moral and | legal sanction. The experience of | 11S years shows 1t to have perpetual
 ed in Ireland a condition of political
 insurgency; and an examination of
 the concrete results establishes the
 fact that Ireland, as compared with
 the other constituent units of the
 United Kingdom, then for the first
 time formed, has fallen far behind
 in population, wealth, and national
 power. The vital forces of the Irish
 nation have been spent in efforts at
 f-expresston and self-realization,
 and its material interests have been
 sometimes ignored, and sometimes
 overborne amid the rivalries of Brit
 ish party politics.
 The resultant protest of Ireland has
 assumed from time to time the vary
 ing forms of organized political agi-
 tation. armed rebellion, agrarian re-
 volt, and some slight manifestations
 of revolutionary terrorism.
 Tn the later Tr{c
 statesmanship, under the tuteIage of
 Parnell, gravitated toward constitu-
 tional action, and, in view of the democratic evolution of British tn-
 stitutiOns and in reliance upon the
 pledges of Liberal statesmanship, in 3 spired and expressed by Gladstone, 3 committed Ireland definitely to the l acceptance of a settlement of her claim which should insure to her full scope for national growth and self expression among the society of the
 free peoples within the. British Em- e pire.
 On the eve of the outbreak of the 0 war, after repeated considerations of [ the whole question, after the fashion 0 ing of innumerable' guaranties for the . protection of the dissentient minority = in Ireland, after the moderation of e Irish statesmanship had assented to t the pairing down of the legisla gre = recognition of Irish nationality tc n minimal proportions, and after the l. entertainment of the will of the nla- S jority of the voters of the United a Kingdom of Great Britain and Ire n land, the Imperial Parliament finally
 sanctioned Home Rule for Ireland a Immediately after the outbreak o,
 the war, the Home Rule Bill, by vir- e tue of the Royal Assent, became thu y formal sovereign legislative Act O y the Three Estates of the Realm. Thu e was a great pact of international ap l. basement ratified. Thereupon, anC d as the first fruits of her new right Le and obligations, Ireland rallied 10 tn ,e cause of the British Empire of whicI 1t she had become at least an enfran s. chised and self-respecting nationa
 unit. By a free gift of a free people
 as the Prime Minister of EngIant
 then described it, she sent an abund
 ance of her sons, for whom we speak
 to bear arms against the common foe le Ireland, and we, her freely offere
 sons, were fired by a two-fold enthu
 siasu-the ardor of a patriotisr