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Vol. VII. No. 30. [New Series (a).]
SATURDAY, AUGUST 19th, 1922.
PRICE TWOPENCE.
éire Ós
YOUNG IRELAND
GRIFFITH
MEMORIAL
NUMBER
GOLDEN MOMENTS WITH ARTHUR GRIFFITH
No law, and no series of laws, can make a Nation out of a people which distrusts itself.
It is the duty of a free citizen to live so that his country may be the better of his existence.
No man can offer Ireland a speedy and comfortable road to freedom, and before the goal is attained many may have fallen and all will have suffered.
The strongest allies of England in Ireland are political ignorance, and provincialists masquerading as patriots.
The Nation was invisible and inaudible to the world so long as Ireland merged itself in the Parliament of Great Britain.
Loyalty is a noble word. Mask it and it becomes more dangerous than the prowling wolf.
Patriotism and Liberty are noble words, but masked they have wrought have in civilisation.
To-day we have men in Ireland—born in the country, citizens of the country—who use the word Loyalty to cover disloyalty, and who, mained in their own minds, lead a section of Irishmen to similar confusion.
The revival of the old national aspiration for Irish freedom seems startling and bewildering to many minds in Ireland, just as God's daylight is dazzling and blinding to a man confined in a dark cellar for years.
Let us be men again, and agree to Defend our country for ourselves. Let us be slaves, and offer to defend it for foreigners, and he will mock God who hereafter prays to Him to save Ireland.
The war's thunder awoke subconscious reversions into clear impressions. Its blazing fire and fury lit up the world and revealed many things that England had decreed should remain hidden. It revealed Ireland to Europe in its true perspective, and it revealed Ireland to the Irish nation in a way somewhat out of accord with the theories of Imperialism and Provincialism.
If we place our duty to our country before our personal interests and live, not each for himself, but each for all, the might of England cannot prevent our ultimate victory.
Our misfortunes are manifold, but we are still men and women of a common family, and we are not nation and apology for living in accordance with the laws of our being. It is not British misgovernment, but British government, good or bad, we stand opposed to, and in all hope opposition we seek to band all our fellow-countrymen.
His (Dr. O'Dwyer) was the voice which halted and disrayed the march of armed Tyranny when it deemed that it was consummating the Last Conquest of Ireland—his was the voice which spoke for the dead and the voice living—his was the voice that pierced through the prior walls and sent the prior men to their knees in thankfulness to God—his was the voice that lifted up the heart of the people and gave them courage to face undaunted the menace of usurped power. In his voice the secorn and defiance of an outraged nation range out, and before it armed arrogance quailed, failtered and finally retreated. His was the voice that rallied a distracted and leaderless Irish Nation, and gave it cohesion and inspiration.
A mere agricultural state is infinitely less powerful than the agricultural manufacturing state. The former is a producer of common and national grounds, and is a producer of the foreign politically desired economically and politically desired from its agriculture in exchange for unfactured goods.
Turn and gaze upon the sad Irish mother bidding good-bye for ever to the children she has born in agony, and bred in sovereity, as they go to perpetual exile. For many days she will stare the setting sun, and the years will bring a blessed number in her heart, and her faith will comfort her with the thought that the little children who prayed at her knee—for they will be little children—but on this earth she knows they will meet no more.
Like the emasculated Britons who begged their Roman tyrants not to set them free, the slave-mind can no longer conceive Ireland as anything but a
name, a province of England or the United States. The Ireland to be sought for, was an Ireland linked by language and tradition to the Ireland of Brian and Columbie, and linked politically and economically to no other country—an absolutely independent and Irish Ireland.
Plain truths are too much for the slave mind. It blinks and shrinks from them. In a word, it fears to have a country in an hour like this—fears to look the Truth in the face, and dodges itself into a kind of comfort and holy philanthropic security by setting up informational arguments, or what it would fain us think arguments.
people to Reliance in themselves, and to establish in Ireland's capital a National Legislature endowed with the moral authority of the Irish Nation.
There is no country naturally richer or more capable of successful development in practically every brand of industry than Ireland.
No doubt this world will always contain a large proportion of fools, but in a wisely governed land even the fool is protected from his folly.
Take away a man's self-respect and you believe his life. Take away a nation's self-respect and you paralyse its development.
President Griffith's Last Message to the Irish People.
This last message which we print in facsimile elsewhere, was written by Mr. Griffith on the occasion of his visit to Sligo last April. As the Irish people will recollect some person meeting Pilkington had "Proclaimed" the named and had announced his intention of preventing it being held at any cost.
President Griffith replied to that insolent challenge to him, as head of the Irish Nation, by going to Sligo to assert the right of liberty of speech. Before doing so, and anticipating the possibility of serious consequences arising out of the actions of those who had strized the town of Sligo, he wrote and entrusted to a friend a brief statement, the first part of which was confirmed with the disposal of his private affairs in the event of anything happening to him. The second part of the statement was a message to the Irish Nation. That part we reproduce: "Let the people stand firm for the Free State. It is their national need and economic salvation. Love to the Irish people, to my colleagues and friends."
That visit of President Griffith to Sligo was remarkable for two things. First, it was a striking example of the personal courage of the man, and secondly, because of the fact that it was one of those gifts was one of those which made such Irish people realist that he, as head of the Nation, would not brook any attempt to destroy the rights and liberties of the people.
Fortunately he returned safely from Sligo and was spared to the Nation for a few months longer. His statement remained unopened until a couple of days after his death.
Griffith: the Constructive Statesman
Ireland to-day mourns a statesman whose aim was to raise his country high amongst the other nations of the world. His mind was fertile and versatile to such a degree that time alone will reveal the magnitude of his work. He sleeps too near us to see him in all his moods. The personal note of sorrow is too deep amongst his associates to permit them to measure precisely the nature and extent of his life. But it can be said that he had deep the practical foundation of that Gaelic State of which he dreamed, and which he went far to resurrect and disentomb from out the ages. Amongst the statesmen of his country he stands out in one respect clearly above