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Show TRIBUTE TO IRISHMEN. - New York Times Pays a Splendid Testimonial to the Many Excellent Excel-lent Quolities of the Sons of Erin. I Why is it in these- , modern times, I when we all profess to abhor war, that if by chance a statesman, poet, scholar, preached or teacher-gets on his fe-t to extol the' virtues of arace, he straightway straight-way begins to call 't he roll of those members of it who-have- distinguished themselves' in war?;; v No doubt President Roosevelt pleased his St. Patrick's Day dinner audience when he told thsmi how Barry had helped to buitd up .our Infant navy, how Montgomery fell so ' gloriouslv at Quebec, how Sullivan- conquered " the. Iroquois, how mad "Anthony . Wayne fought like a tiger, against .the British, and how -Andrew Jackson 'of the old Irish stock became ."the victor of New Orleans." The ; tributes , he paid to those brave men, were deserved, but where one American of the Irish strain has won distinction upon th? field of battle ten thousand Irishmen "guiltless "guilt-less of their country's blood" or of any other blood, have given their unsparing unspar-ing toil to develop the resources of the united States of America. We should cut a pretty poor figure if the fighting J of our Irish generals had not been sup-j sup-j plemented by the labor of Irishmen mwho have built our railroads, cleared our forests, worked our mines, and manned our shops and factories. That has bee,n the great work of the sturdy Irlshirace in this country; the .presi- ' dent made a mere;reference to Jt when he spoke of the Irish virtue of "working "work-ing hard in time of. peace," adding, of course, "and fighting hard in time of war." It would have been temperamentally, tempera-mentally, impossible for Mr. Roosevelt to leave that out. The president may know, but he would not disclose that knowledge, that the Irish are first-rate farmers among the very best that ever put a plow into American soil. Many an indomitable toiler of that race has taken a farm which successive New England Yankees Yan-kees had failed to get a living on, and by downright hard work wjth head and hands has made it support a good-sized good-sized family and build up for him a small portune, as fortunes go in th? farmer's calling. The Irish are great managers of man elsewhere than on battlefields. Great numbers of the most successful contractors in the country are of Irisb blood. Subtract what these generals on peaceful fields have done with their men and their material from the um total of our achievements, and we should be a good deal less advanced than this year of grace finds us. New York would have no subway, for instance. The president presi-dent alluded in a perfunctory sort of way io wnat men of the Irish race have done for the artistic and literary development of the country, and mentioned men-tioned in passing their standing at the bench and at the bar, in business and statesmanship. But' of all the races out of which this great American blend has been made the Irish are pre-eminent in politics. The' president knows that, certainly. His own skill in that art tends powerfully to confirm the tradition that there is an Irish admixture admix-ture in the hot Batavian ichor that tumultously tu-multously courses through his veins. Athough the aptitude of the Irish for politics is proverbial, probably the president felt that he might be consid ered rather delicate ground, and, being be-ing much more regardful of the sentiments sen-timents of his hosts than our present ambassador at the court ' of -St.. James showed himself to be upon a similar occasion, he kept within the safe line of complimentary platitudes, chiefly about the Irish warriors. For our part, it seems not at all right that the Irish arms that have tugged and the Irish backs that have ached In making this country what It is, should be deprived of their due recognition and meed of praise. The Irish qualities that the president chiefly lauded, the qualities that make the Irish hard fighters in war, are common to all the great races of the earth. The qualities that make them indomitably in toil, that make them so successful in innumerable arts of peace, are not bo universally diffused dif-fused among the branches of our human hu-man stock that they may be lightly pass-.d over by eulogists of the race. |
