IRELAND AND THE WAR.
MR. WILLIAM O'BRIEN, who of late has shown a disposition to emerge from his self-imposed obscurity into the political arena, has come forward with a practical suggestion. Addressing a meeting of the United Irish League at Letterkenny on Sunday, he pointed out that Ireland was now garrisoned by a very small body of regular British troops, and would only require the arms and marksmanship of the Boers to turu the river Shannon into another Modder or:Tugela. Here, at least, we have advanced a step beyond those cheap resolutions of sympathy with the Republics which have been carried at so many Irish District and County Councils during the last few months. The choice of the Shannon, no doubt, was due to a desire to obliterate from that river the stigma of ridicule attached to it by Thackeray's famous ballad in '48, when "They beat the rattattoo, and the peelers came in view, and that ended the shalloo on Shannon shore." Nothing could have been more resolute than the tone of Mr. O'Brien's speech, as a logical sequel to which one might have expected the speedy enrolment of a corps of Shannon sharpshooters, or Mayo mounted "Wild Geese," with Mr. O'Brien as their commandant. But by one of those disastrous coincidences so familiar to the student of Nationalist polemics, while Mr. O'Brien at Letterkenny was advocating the adoption of forcible methods for the restraint of Imperialism, Mr. Blake, M.P., at Longford was vigorously de- nouncing the proposed Irish - American invasion of Canada. Indeed, he went so far as to say that if he thought these threats serious and capable of substantial execution, he would not have been there at all. "He would have borrowed a Mauser that day, learned the new rifle practice, and taken passage to help defend his wife and children and grandchildren from his brother Home- rulers." The question, in short, for Mr. Blake would not have been "Shall I slay my brother Boer ?" but "Shall I slay my brother Home-ruler ? " and he leaves us in no doubt whatever that he would have answered it cheerfully in the affirmative.
The cynical observer may remark, of course, that these two utterances are equally devoid of real significance, and do no more than neutralise each other. For ourselves, we should be very sorry to place the courageous declaration of the former Prime Minister of Ontario on the same level as the bellicose vapourings of the founder of New Tipperary. Both are eloquent Irishmen, but in the case of Mr. Blake to the gift of picturesque expression is added the experience of the responsible and successful administrator of a great province. It is this experience which enables him to estimate at its true worth this empty menace of an invasion of Canada, and to rate the frothy rhetoric of the New York tavern politicians on a par, let us say, with Mr. O'Brien's modest proposal for the build- ing of entrenchments along the Shannon. If any of our readers should be disposed to interpret the evidences of hostility displayed by Mr. O'Brien and other journalists as indicating the existence of a genuine and dangerous disaffection in Ireland at the present juncture, we believe them to be entirely mistaken. Still waters run deep. When people mean business—even when they are Irish- men—they may be trusted to keep their counsel and refrain from rhetoric. England's adversity is always Ireland's opportunity so far as the "Little Irelander " is concerned, and if it gives Mr. O'Brien any satisfaction to "let a screech out of himself," as his country uien say, it does us no harm, and enlivens, if it does not impress, the bulk of his compatriots. Mr. O'Brien, it should be added, is never convincing when he assumes the role of the physical-force man. His most energetic excursions into the domain of action, as opposed to that of rhetoric, tarnished, rather than enhanced, the lustre of his aureole. You cannot make a first-rate recruiting sergeant out of a political martyr who refuses to travel third class.
Is the war, then, popular in Ireland ? To answer that question affirmatively would be undoubtedly going too far, but a fiat denial would be equally wide of the mark. Mr. O'Brien's histrionics are discounted by all educated Nationalists ; even the masses regard him some- what in the light of a " play-actor," and applaud the artist without in the least heeding the politician. The attitude of the Irish irreconcilable was beautifully defined by Mr. Pat O'Brien, M.P., in a speech delivered at Balla, County Mayo, last Saturday, when he said : "We love the Boer, not for his personal merits, but because he is an enemy of our enemy ; but we love Ireland more." To the young men of Ireland who "contemplated going to the Transvaal at the bidding of England to help in this unjust war to kill a people rightly struggling to be free," Mr. Pat O'Brien had nothing very terrible to say. "He would only repeat what the old Cork woman had said to her son, 'Good-bye, and may the Lord have mercy on you ' " ; and the "immense gathering" which hung upon the speaker's words greeted this denunciation with the discriminating tribute of laughter. One thing is tolerably certain : abuse of the Irish soldiers at the front is not only distasteful to the mass of their com- patriots, but it will not be tolerated by them. The efforts which have been tentatively made in this direction by certain Irish journals have already been in great measure discontinued, and we find the Dublin Independent, the most robust of the Nationalist organs in the Irish capital, not only providing its readers with the latest telegrams from the seat of war, written by an English loyalist, but admitting in its editorial columns that Sir George White's defence of Ladysmith is unquestionably " fine " and "gallant," and confessing to something more than a sneaking admiration for Lord Roberts. There is, in short, very °little to choose between the tone of the leading Nationalist journals and that of the Socialist or extreme Radical prints in London. What the people really think is hard to state with certainty, but the igno- minious fiasco of the demonstrations in Dublin at the time of Mr. Chamberlain's visit cannot be said to indicate a widespread abhorrence of the war policy of the Government. Even the windows of the Celtic Literary Society were so unchivalrous as to refuse to open wide enough to allow the fair spokeswoman of the Transvaal Committee to address the populace. If the war is not popular in Ireland, the fighting undoubtedly is. A conclusive answer to the sneers directed against the "cheap loyalty of the landlord class" has been found in the formation of the Irish Hunt con- tingent for the Imperial Yeomanry. Mr. Winston Churchill's appeal to the foxhunters of the United Kingdom has nowhere met with a prompter response than in Ireland, and we have very little doubt that, if Volunteer corps existed in Ireland, the readiness of the rank-and-file to offer themselves for active service in South Africa would in no whit fall behind that shown on this side of St. George's Channel. Certainly we should be surprised to learn that the recruiting for the regular Army had fallen off in Ireland since the declaration of the war. So long as England refuses to give Paddy a legiti- mate excuse for fighting against her, he is very well con- tent to fight on her side, not merely for the fighting's sake, though that naturally attracts him, but because the bravest and most illustrious of his compatriots are to be found there. Lord Roberts and Sir George White may both be fairly claimed as Irishmen, the one by blood, the other by long residence and family association with Waterford, while every Munsterman will tell you that Lord Kitchener owes his success to his having once lived in the kingdom of Kerry. We have seen that the irreconcilable Nationalist does not profess to love the Boer "for his personal merits "—a greater contrast than that which exists in creed and temperament between the Irish and the Boers, could hardly be imagined —but because he has taken the field against the English. He is careful to add that he "loves Ireland more," and, spite of Plunket's famous impromptu, we believe that even the irreconcilable means "Irishmen" when he says "Ireland," and that the feelings aroused in him by the gallantry of the Inniskillings or the Dublins are by no means unalloyed with pride and satisfaction. As Mr. Godley said in our columns in his lines on the fight at Glencoe, "Soldiers are links to unite us for ever, Soldiers of Erin that died for the Queen,"—and we feel pretty sure that O'Connell, who at the height of his power did not hesitate to declare his passionate devotion to the person of the Sovereign, would have echoed the words. No; in spite of Messrs. William and Patrick O'Brien, we cannot bring ourselves to admit that national sentiment in Ireland. is solid for President Kruger. That sentiment, we are convinced, finds truer expression in the message of Lord Roberts to America, and in the gallantry of the Irish troops in the field. And if Ireland were ever threatened with invasion by any "enemy of the enemy," we cannot help thinking that even amongst Nationalist Members the example of Mr. Blake would be followed more freely than the advice of Mr. William O'Brien. Distance lends enchantment to the view, but even at a distance of six thousand miles the fiercest Nationalists find it impossible to profess dis- interested affection for the Boer.
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