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Show j M Patriotic Priest to j i tbe Trisb. Brigade. We place before our readers this week a letter quite recently addressed by Father O'Haire, Missionary Apostolic, Apos-tolic, now in France, to Colonel Blake, of the Irish Brigade attached to the j Boer army. 2S Rue de Pare, Cognac, Charente, France. I Dear Colonel Blake: I shall be grateful grate-ful to hear from you when you have a spare moment, letting we know how the men of the Irish Brigade are and what is their number; if you can, add , the approximate number of the whole foreign legion and kindly state if the Irish Brigade fights under the flag of Erin, or if the men are included in the of French. Germans and all nationalities. nationali-ties. There are many Irishmen who wish that Fontenoy might repeat itself, and that as there Irish valor carried the palm of victory in favor of the French and to the dismay and chagrin and repulse of the English troops, so now, too, Ireland may lend a helping hand to the Boers, who are the unfortunate victims of the vanity and insatiable greed of England's statesmen and capitalists. cap-italists. Oh! that another "Peter the Hermit" might arise who could gather a great crusade to repel from Africa the modern Turks who, with effrontery, effront-ery, pretend themselves to be the heralds her-alds of light, while they rob and kill and stifle and smother the two honest Republics of South Africa. All the news we get from South Africa Af-rica is, as you know, through the English Eng-lish press, which monopolizes the cables, ca-bles, and this news is saturated with lies and highly spiced with vain records rec-ords of a never-ending English victorious victor-ious march. But the "casualties list," which cannot be refused or denied, and which is printed in small type in the London journals, is a sickening proof of the carnage and mortality for which Rhodes and Chamberlain and all those who abet this most unjust war of England Eng-land are responsible. Nearly the whole press of England is now dictated to and subsidized by the capitalist rowdies row-dies in whose interests this infamous war is waged, but we have proof enough that the words of President Kruger are being verified that if England should win "the price to be paid would stagger humanity." England Eng-land already staggers, and the whole world is appalled at the magnificent spectacle of bravery exhibited by the courage of the Boers. The first pleas for the war advanced by the wilv Chamberlain are now exploded soap bubbles. The bogus petition to Queen Victoria from the Uitlanders, asking to be relieved of the intolerable burdens bur-dens and injustices of Oie Boer government gov-ernment ,is now known 'to have been a cooked document. The signatures to it were a mere sham. The question of religious intolerance and educational disadvantages and cruelty to the natives na-tives have been publicly disproved and trenchently repudiated by truthful men, well posted in African affairs. The ugly truth has now oozed from the polluted mouths of the interested parties par-ties "We want territory. We want gold. We fight for prestige and supremacy su-premacy and for the property of others." oth-ers." This war of English brigandage adds yet another page to the history of England's Eng-land's scandals, chapter of her history for very much more than 100 years might be headed in big type: Pride, Lies, Corruption, Deceit, - Plunder Plun-der and Massacre! Let poor Ireland speak the bipod of whose sons has been spattered upon the walls of the countny. Let unfortunate unfor-tunate India speak whose famines and whose eore are awful testimonies to England's rapacity. Let South Africa itself speak, and reveal what England has done since 1806, when she set her cloven foot upon its soil. The records are written in blood the blood of the Hottentots, the blood of the Basutos, the blood of the Zulus, the blood of the Tembus, the blood of the Kriguas, the blood of the Matabele, the blood of the Pondos and the blood of the Boers flow in one long purple stream, marking the track of the destroying serpent. I pause with bated breath, and I hang my head in shame as I recollect that the persistent poverty of Ireland has driven into the English army many of her half idle, half starving men, during all tne meiancnoiy penoa, ana that thus Ireland has shall I say it? I say It in sorrow participated in England's crimes. Today in Ireland unarmed, with twenty-five thousand bayonets and as many pieces of artillery artil-lery as there are in South Africa pointing point-ing at us we have r.o power, not even over our own local affairs. We have no Home Rule. We have no university to enable Ireland's sons to run in the race and gain the prize. We are in truth a land of despoiled prisoners a splendid object lesson to the nations na-tions of the beneficence of English civilization. civ-ilization. We are kept in poverty in the interests of bloated England. Our manufactories are nearly all destroyed. Ireland is a big shop for the sale of English goods.. Our nation is a hunting hunt-ing ground, where the English recruiting recruit-ing sergeant prowls to induce young men to become "soldiers of the queen,"" and then they are sent to "pig stick" the Indians and the natives of Africa, and the Boers, so that the vultures of English cupidity may be gorged, and the queen then comes to Dublin to remind re-mind us of the part we have taken in this glorious slaughter. This adds to the more than awful tragedy; and so, in this cruel war, Ireland's sons have taken, a part against the honest Boers, and the poor Irish fellows have been put Into the front of the march to death, and they have in hundreds fallen into an inglorious grave, over which the spirit of Erin hangs her head in disgrace and scandal and shame, al- tnougn witn tearrui eyes sne says: "Requiescat in pace." It is not marvelous, therefore, that I, an Irishman, should congratulate you, dear Colonel Blake, and through you the Irishmen of the Transvaal Irish brigade, be they many or few, who are on the riarht side of the battlefield not standing under the Union Jack to aid England in her unjust war, but standing under the banner of Erin, on the side of the . defenseless honest Boers, who, in this war, are the representatives rep-resentatives of liberty and justice, and right. Tell your Irish companions that Irishmen of true spirit congratulate them and felicitate them. If they fall they will fall in ,a noble cause, and Ireland Ire-land will honor them just as all France today bows down In reverence before the splendid bravery of her glorious son, Villebois Mareuil. Yours. (Rev.) . JAMES O'HAIRE. |