THE
EDITED BY EOIN MAC NEILL. Vol. 2. No. 19.
(New Series.)
SATURDAY, APRIL 17, 1915.
Price One Penny.
on Easter Sunday, let me be excused . The no resolutions, only the silent but effective Realm has to be Defended. But for the eloquence of serried ranks. If the treatyexpense involved, the muste.r and review of breakers have succeeded to some extent in their Readers will excuse me, I ·trust, if they find National Volunteers was a commendable under- line of compulsion, the Irish people have .met 111.y comments behind time now and then in taking. I expressed the hope beforehand that, them more than half way. The "March of the Silence indeed was most refor;ence to public events. · The Liberal Home once the review had been ordered, the National Nation " goes on. Rule Government compels me to get the " Irish. Volunteers would answer the call of their head- appropriate for men standing under Parn~ll's Volunteer" printed at a distance of over a quarters andi turn out in the fullest possible statue and its inscription of Parnell's memorc hundred miles from where I live. Having strength. I take the estimate of the "Daily able words. forced t'lie former printer, Mr. Mahon, to Independent " as a fair one, that about z 5, ooo * * * relinquish his contract, I am told that they . men answered the call. The best armed contingent came from have now, after several weeks, given him back Belfast. This also was proper.. Le~ me repeat * * * Some 5,000 or 6,ooo are said to have been that "the Ulster difficulty" di$appears as soon . his confiscated property. They will find some , ·difficulty in persua:ding ·even · th:e most war- armed with rifles. Only for the hostility of as all Ulstermen are placed on a footing of fevered brain that these brilliant operations the Liberal Home Rule Government and the equality. There is a difficulty in doing that, have the remotest connection with the Defence difficulty of educating the Irish Pa.rJiamentary owing to the reluctance of the Liberal Home Party, it would have been easy to muster ten Rule Government to " coerce" the other wing of the Realm. -lf times that num'ber of rifles . The Belfast con- of English Imperialism, their cousins and con* * They have another way of keeping me from tingent, to the estimated number of 750, federates. It would ·be "coercion" to allow being in too great a lwrry. The mails get carried rifles and bayonets. Severar smaller the threatened people in Ulster to defend their from Dublin to Belfast in three hours, but a contingents were armed with pikes. The pro- homes, their families, and: their ri ghts as Irishletter from Dublin to the printers of the lRrsH fessional military men are inclined to dis- men against the violence threatened and VoLUNTEER takes forty-eight hours to get :countenance the pike. Every Volunteer who financed from London Tory Clubs. When a through. This is unreasonable . I made a has not a rifle ought to have a pike, supple- Government wants to abandon its pledges more reasonal>le offer ~ublicly to Dublin Castle mented, if possible, by a good holster weapon. under threat of force, it is naturally not too - to let rhem read my proofs, which would anxious to see the threat of force neutralised. * * * allow the printing to be done without delay, Rifles, bayonets, and pikes are · " m_unitions * * * and enable Dublin Castle to hold up the issue of war." It will accordingly be understood Silent Sunday was followed by speechful if they liked. I admit that it can do Dublin henceforth that when Dublin Castle interferes Monday. Ireland is not lookipg to speeches Castle no harm to read carefully all I have to w.ith the ~ossession of "munitions of war" by ~resent crisis, but in for consolation in her :;ay, but they can read it better in print than Irishmen, it does so in order to enable the Monday's speeches, to judge from Press rein manuscript, and I offer this mild remons- treaty-breakers to "amend" Home Rule. ports, there was at least one reassuring feature . . trance to the Home Ruie Liberal Postmaster* * We seem to be .g radually rising to a sense of * General, whose co-operation with Dublin If a half-finished work could give any cause National duty, and it is becoming recognised Castle imposes a delay of two days on me. for pride and. satisfaction, the men who, in the that the old factious spirit of treating .the Irish* * face of every discouragement and hostility, saw men with whom \Ve differ as a worse · enemy * The same Home Rule Liberal P.M.G. will the need for the Irish Volunteers, seized the than the stranger can no 101:ger .be counted on perhaps be able to explain how it happened occasion and shaped the work, might well conas a winning element . . that a letter sent to me a few days ago by a gratulate themselves on the events of Easter parish priest in the County Derry, and! regis- Sunday. So complete a change has been * * I have seen much of the inner side of polititered by him, was opened in transit and again effected in Irish public affairs and in the public closed before it reached me. Of the · opening mind, that it is hard now to get back, even in cal diplomacy during the past eighteen months, and closing there is no question. It is officially imagination, to the year 1913, and to look for- but I confess that Mr. Redmond's repeated admitted on the envelope, which I have re· ward from that point ·a year ancll a half, to see appeals and offers to the War Office are a turned to the sender. Is this more of the the Irish Parliamentary Party, from Mr. John puzzle to me, and since he is alone in making Defence of the Realm ? Redmond, the Ehairman, to Mr. Richa~d them, I i11fe~ that others find them . equally Hazleton, the penman, associated with a dis- mysterious. What is the exact difference ·be-. * If I am a week late, theu, in my references play of rifles, baym1ets, and pikes, and with tween the military attitude in April,. .1915, 1:0 the review of National Volunteers in Dublin a military atray of 25,000 men-no speeches, towards Mr. Redmond's electoral mandate;
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