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bare outline of the charges, and furthermore making the diabolical
suggestion that these charges should be made as black as possible
against the unfortunate prisoner. To its eternal shame, the Press,
the so-called Nationalist papers agreed to the request of the Under
Secretary.
General stood up in Court and uttered the deliberate lie that no at-
tempt was made to interfere with the liberty of the press. Fortu-
nately, a full note in shorthand of the whole proceedings was secretly
taken in Court and will appear at as early a date as possible in the
American press. I
14. In addition to bribery, suppression of the press, trials for trea-
son and court-martials and petty forms of tyranny are practised. A
policeman in Dublin was posting up a lurid recruiting poster depict-
ing a German soldier killing a woman, when a man whom he knew
personally as a friend met him and remarked that he disapproved of
such deceptive methods, more especially as England had treated Ire-
land worse than the Irish were told to-day that the Germans treated
Belgium. The conversation was a friendly one and there was no
question of interfering with recruiting. Nevertheless the man was
arrested and sentenced to two months imprisonment by a brutal
Dublin city magistrate, one of a number who had previously imposed
equally savage sentences on little barefooted boys for tearing down
recruiting placards. t
15. No petty form of tyranny has.been neglected, not even trade
boycotts. A contractor in Dublin employing a number of artisans
and laboring men took no part in the war, expressed no opinion but
refused to dismiss his men, many of them married, so that they
might be forced to join the army. An order went forth and he
was boycotted.
16. In County Carlow a middle-aged man, employed as a chauf-
four by a landlord who played a sinister part as an evictor in the
agrarian days, was told that his place was at the front and not
driving motor cars. He was dismissed, and being unable to obtain
employment, was forced to emigrate to America. Other men treated
similarly in the locality were not, unfortunately, able to imitate his
example, and had either to join thearmy or starve themselves and
their families. Methods of this kind are common all over the
country. Young men have been set drunk and then forcibly enlisted.
17. Furthermore, it is an undisputed fact that recruits from the
south and west of Ireland, ignorant and untrained as they are, have
been hastily sent to the firing line, while men of the Ulster Volun-
teer force, or in other words, the followers of Sir Edward Carson,
have been kept back.
18. Every lie that the most depraved mind could conceive is
being invented to entice the ignorant in the country districts in Ire-
land to join the English army. They have been told that if the
Germans come to Ireland they will kill the children, murder the men
and violate the women; that they will burn the churches, rob the
farms and starve the population. Every public building in the
country has been made hideous with recruiting placards, all of a
lurid type and some of a most humiliating kind.
When a hint of this reached the Court the Attorney--
4 . .'1'I:IE ii'A'i'H'h;itL'A"iVi)
19. A favorite taunt of the debased and drunken so-called
Nationalists who speak at the recruiting meetings in Ireland is to
say that the pro-Germans are silent and are unable to justify their
position. Never was a more unworthy taunt uttered. Press and
platform are alike closed to them, but this rigid suppression and
persecution has had precisely an opposite effect to that intended.
To-day more than ever in Ireland, amongst hundreds of thousands
of men, to be pro-German means to be pro-Irish, and despite the
slavish attitude of the so-called Nationalist press, the betrayal of
Ireland by its leaders and the relentless system of persecution
adopted by Dublin Castle, the eyes of millions of Irish people at
home are turned with hope and pride towards Germany.
20. Perhaps it was the too roseate picture drawn of England
going to war on behalf of small nationalities that first roused sus-
picion of England's motives in the minds of thousands of thinking
Irishmen at home. An Irishman likes frankness, and if England
had said to Ireland at the start of the war, “We are out to try and
smash Germany because she is a dangerous commercial rival of
England," the appeal might have met with some response, but the
picture of England going to war on behalf of small nationalities and
because Belgium's neutrality was violated caused a ripple of sardonic
laughter wherever thinking Irishmen meet in Ireland. England that
for seven hundred years has held the small nation of Ireland down;
England, the country that won India by crime, and holds Egypt by
force; England that holds Spanish territory at Gibraltar against the
will of the Spanish nation and that has violated the neutrality of
every country in Europe, big or little; England that destroyed two
tiny Boer States in South Africa a decade ago-the spectacle of this
country going to war on the pretence that she was safeguarding the
rights of small nationalities might have deceived other peoples but
it did not deceive the vast majority of the Irish in Ireland. ,
21. It is right that the Irish in America should know that the
Irish clergy have in this crisis acted with moderation. In view of
the unparalleled campaign of lying in the press and on the platform
many would have liked to have seen the clergy in the pulpits setting
the people right about the war, but their position has been a difficult
one and they have left the people to form their own conclusions.
What those conclusions are it is now possible after nearly nine
months of the war to summarize. -
22. Briefiy they are as follows: The vast majority of the Irish
P930916 3T6 HOW, as they ‘always have been, anxious to see Engli5h
‘"19 ’em0Ved bag and baggage out of Ireland. They would like to
See 3 great German victory over England, not because they have had
at all)’ “"19 3")’ Very close historical relations with Germany, but
because they believe that it would be to their interest by a victorious
Germany to have an absolute independent Ireland by the side of 8
b‘f3“‘n England. They also distrust England, and the Home Rule
B‘1.l' 91“ the amending bill to follow, arouses no enthusiasm. It is
a lie,-therefore, to say that Ireland is in this war with England. It
‘5 3 he t0 533' that Ireland is recruiting for England in this war.
Dublin, May 28, 1915. ’
ENGLAND OR GERMANY? MR. HARRIS
HE greatest critic of Shakespeare that has ever lived is fitted
to criticize the degenerate countrymen of the noblest of poets.
The cosmopolitan journalist and essayist is able to judge without
bias. The most brilliant talker of his time is the man of all men to
amuse us, and he does so in these very essays.
At first, I will admit, I was scandalized by his remarks on English
justice and English aristocracy; for I happen to be a member of
the class which he indicts. On reflection, I perceive his accuracy,
and my testimony has more value, for where he complains, I exult.
But the accident of my being a hammer does not blind me
to the feeling of the anvil. At the same time, I think that Mr.
Harris is quite wrong if he supposes that it is different in any other
country. He is on surer ground when he attacks the slipshod, hap-
hazard methods of the English, and contrasts them with the scien-
tific precision, the forethought (with the imagination implied in
that virtue), and the organized common sense of the Germans.
And in his exposure of the snobbery-jobbery of English govern-
ments his ruthlessness is hardly equal to the facts. The European
War will have been lost on the back stairs of Fleet Street.
Honest and capable men may yet emerge and save England; but
‘flat I>055ibilily lies on the other side of the bloodiest of revolu-
H0115. When dotards like Balfour, mediocrities like Bonar Law,
mountebanks like Carson, nonentities like Henderson (the king 108
9f the lab“? mm). are invited to strengthen a government, what
must be that government?
Kitchener is getting past his work--especially since that work has
been chjeny to ham“ ‘he intrigues of his own subordinates: French
ha? "0 Sfddlerly qualities but his bedside manner; Smith-Dorien
ihmcs lmghtest 0“ Pafade; the other generals should never have
“:9” dfalgged from their bath chairs. England is now experiencing
C “Sui of b35"1g Promotion on tactful adultery.
All this rottenness is exposed by Frank Harris in these brilliant
CS5:-“'5' Trmh “’l"'0Ut. in times like these, despite a bought PY955
and censored cables. Brains are not to be bounced, in the ‘W3
run. America is coming to her senses. This book will hasten the
pmce55' This 17001‘ may be Purchased through Tm-: FA'rm:RLAND
for One Dollar, postpaid,