The Washington times., 1922-02-19
de Valera Likely to Wreck
=. Irish Nation, Says Collins
Free State Is Too Small for
Political Rift, Leader De-
!; cIares in DepIoring the Men,
acing Tactics Of Former
!, Head of the Republican Gov
y eminent.

q stSod W biO NOPaohSod' WV
eminent.
Continued from First Page)
confiscated and given to aliens.
Our industries were to be effec-
lively destroyed. Everything that
tended to retain our Irish outlook
Everything that helped to keep
us as distinct people-everything
that tended to keep alive in us
memories Of our Gaelic civiliza-
ton. Irish nationality. freedom
and prosperity. were to be obliter-
ated.
Her method even then was to
divide in order to rule. setting
chief against chief, as later she
Set religion against religion.
This policy could not succeed
while we had land system
whereby mems rights in land
were secure and impregnable. By
means of the wholesale command
eering of land, the land was taken
from the people and the feudal
system, a tenure system admir-
ably suited for the purpose of en-
slavement, was imposed.
The free men of Ireland whose
rights had been rooted in the soil,
became tenants and serfs Of the
usurpers, and were completely at
the mercy of their new masters,
the landlords who gratefully join
ed with the enemy in the policy
or robbing and exploiting the
Irish people.
When England had succeeded
In uprooting the old Irish system
Of land tenure, under which every
one securely enjoyed land to cul-
tivate and common rights to graz
ing, she had taken the biggest
step in our subsection.
It was only in so far as II at
tempted to reverse that subjec-
ton that the land campaign Of the
Davitt period was justified. Some
historians yet take up this aspect
of the land struggle and discover
the national spirit seeking to
manifest itself in apparently
strange ways.
LANDLORDS ENEMY.
Were It not for this, the land
var would have been a sorbid
struggle. Were It not for this,
the killing of landlords would
have been murder. The people un.
doubtedly regarded it this way.
The landlords were the agents
who had taken away the liberties
of the common folk. and the COM
mon folk hit at the agent whom
they recognized as their immed-
late enemy. They took the first
thing first. They did the job
which was Immediately to their
hands.
In our generation we would no
longer shoot landlords, for land.
lords as they were then known
have mostly gone. In the same
way we hope that the next gen.
Grafton will have no necessity for
shooting an enemy. for the enemy
will have gone.
In furtherance of the same policy
the suppression Of our industries
was also necessary IL Britain's de-
sire was to be realized. 1t was
doubly necessary. Our manufac-
turers competed too successfully
with hers and It was to be our
privilege to exist, not as an indus
trial people, but for the purpose
of providing England with an
abundance Of food.
SLAVERY STILL EXISTS.
The destruction Of our demo-
cratic Gaelic social system, the
encouragement and prohibition of
all enterprise, leaving us only slave
life on the land, and the imposition
upon us of an alien language, alien
laws and alien ideas. made our
subJugation complete.
Our economic subsection was no
less necessary that we might learn
to forgs our former national and
economic freedom, and acquiesce
and grow passive in our servitude.
And we learned our lesson. We
forgot our language. We forgot
our own native Irish ways. We
forgot our Irish love and veneration
for things of the mind and charac-
ter. our pride in learning and in
the arts for which we had been ia
nous. We forgot our military skill
and athletic prowess, all of which
had been our glory from the days Of
Cormac, Macart and St. Patrick,
and before them.
We became degraded, feeble imi-
tators Of our tyrants. English
fashions and English materials,
tastes and customs were introduced
by the landlord class or were
adopted by them, and by a natural
process they came to be associated
in the minds of our people with
gentility.
The outward sign Of rise in the
social scale became the extent to
which we cast off everything which
distinguished us as Irish, and the
success with which we initiated the
enemy who despised us.
And slavery still exists. Today
in Ireland, although through i'm
proved economic conditions, which
have been worldwide and in which
it was impossible to altogether pre-
vent our sharing. helped by better
living on the land bought very
dearly by the purchase back again
Of the great part of our country
from those who never had any
right to it, we have been lifted out
Of the worst slough of restitution,
Although we have been turning