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THE
EDITED BY EOIN MAC Vol. 2.
I
Price· One
SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 1915.
No, 9. (New Se,ries.)
NOTES _
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say that Imperial interests are para.- that he has consistently worked with the mount. Ireland is not called upon to Irish Volunteers. His wife and children · justify her relations to the· British Em- are obnoxious because they are the w1£e pne. She has not forced herself ·on the and children of a man who has been Empire . The Empire is bound in every locally pro min en t in tlre Irish Volunteers. resf)ect ,to justify its relations to Ireland. ~ I tremble to think that in mentioning I£ Imperial policy does not benefit Ire- these matters I may be · unwittingly land, but continues to impoverish, wea.ken guilty of revealing a: military measure of and degrade us as in the past, then we the highest : importance without having shall know\ vhere we stand and what our received proper authori~a.ti~n.duty is . t (
There has been a recent minatory visit of th,e police to the printing o_ffice of this papei; a.nd similar visits to a number of newsagents in regard to the sale of the paper. _The police are, of course, acting under the orders of the· civil government. Can anything be more contemptible? Is this Mr. Birrell's reply to my charge that the Government, including Mr. Birrell, have been maintained in offi~e for years by ,the Irish electors on the faith of an ·understm1ding which has be.en publicly violated? Or is it his reply to my q11estion what profit or advantage can Ire,.,J€1-nd . possibly expect, under the , esta b- . lished system of Imperial exploitation, from the' enormous charges which a war expenditure for the protection of English trade interests will entail upon Ireland, and what set-o:ff can Ireland expect against the strangling of land purchase and town purchase, the · diminution of employment, the great increase of that grand Imperial burden, the Poor Rate, the withholding of improvement loans, the aggravation of poverty .in tovvn and country, the check on all industrfal e:ffort, the postponement of all deyelopmen't ? 1
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, Miss Brighid · Ni Fhogarta.igh, of I have alrea.dy said that when I want Castlebar, who has this week. joined the a model for sedition and threats of re- French Sisters of ·charity; has, as ner bellion, I know where to find it. I shall last act in secular life·, forwarded to me find it in the utterances and the actions the sum of £2 2s. 7-2-d. , the surplus of a of th.e Unionist Party 'and of certain fund for the purchase of arms fb1; the lights of the British army an d navy . It Iri~h Volunteers of Castlebar, and has is not at all, strange to me tha.t these ' i:equested ·me to make public the fact, so models of~ sedition· and revolt can behave that certain ''official 'Nationalists "'' ma.y with impunity, even to this hour and in not be in a position to ~uggest that the this Im_perial crisis, while the maj-esty lady had kept the money. I trust that of Empire· manifests itself to humble in a life devoted henceforth exclusively printers and news.agents . It seems a to the service of God she will earn a recowardly and contemptible line of policy, ward for the same simple fidelity that in but that is exactly what all previous ex- this world she has given to the service perience leads us to r expect from the of her country and nation. 'rhere are British Superstatesman. women and men in Ireland, not few but many, not too few but enough to save * * * the nation, who lp10w that their cause is , I£ such things were done by military right and just, and whom neither threats authQrity, they would be less remarkable, · nor penalties nor malignity, nor the for nobody expects wise or intelligent vacillations of wealth and place and action of military men when they get pow~r, nor the wanderings of oncetheir way in civil a:ffairs: What we have trusted guides from the. path, can conto note is that such are the methods of found or lead astray . Beannacht De leat, civil government, ·and of Home Rule - a dheirfiur, agus _. biodh cobhair do Liberal civil govern~ent in Ireland, the ghuidhe linn anois is go brath na breithe . . year after the Home Rule year.
I have not asked Mr. Birrell for a reply . In- my view, ,the only thing we need from ' 'British Ministers and British politicians is that they · shall cease to interfere with this ceuntry-the only serious evils from Vi'hich this country su:ffers ·are the results * * * of their interference, past, present, and It did not surprise- me to learn that threatened. As a nation, we are entitled to ask ourselves pu,b licly what a.d vantages Mr. Desmond FitzGerald, a gentleman - or disadvantag;es we are likely to have with influential Unionist connections , from any course of public policy, and to was required ·a few days ago to give up answer to ourselves publicly. It is to · hjs home in Kerry an d to betake himself my fellow-Irishmen I put these ques- with his wife and .children wherever he tions, and the·y will continue to be put could find a new home, provided that he whether Mr. Birrell sends the police to did not live too 'near any place of military importa.nce·. So far as I can ascer· interfere or does not. tain, Mr . FitzGerald's obnoxiousness, as *' * * in the case of other. persons similarly rt lS no answer to such questions 'to penalised, consists entiFely in the fact
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Navan is a decaying town in the heart of Royal Meath, in the most fertile valley in · Europe, . ~ valiey with so rich ~ soil that some of the big prairie men who inhabit it ·have been forced, in · order to justify the manner of their occupation, to take refuge in a complaint never before spoken of any soil on God's earth, never dreamt of amcing any people but a.people stifled in the embrace of empire. I myself have heard a denizen of the valley declare in all seriousness that the land is too r·ich for tillage!,