OCR Text |
Show IRELAND'S VICTORY. The day we celebrate suggests many happy ! thoughts. Around the green flag, which was a menace men-ace in its native soil, has grown up a sturdy race, whose ancestors' helped to lay deep and solid the foundation of ihe Great Republic of the Western Hemisphere. Between the old and the new Ireland arose a community of sentiment which unites both Ireland and the LTnited States by the golden chain of sympathy and gratitude in the battle for- liberty, equality and fraternity. In the old home America's glory holds foremost sway in the peasant's heart. He is always interested in her welfare, and has ever rejoiced in her triump-ant triump-ant battles for freedom, from the War of Independence Inde-pendence down to the present; from the days of Patrick Henry, Commodore Barry, to those of Phil Sheridan, President MeKinley and the brave and daring rough rider who now rules the nation. Here the weapons used by England to extend her empire have been used to retard her further progress and influence on land and sea. The English language is no longer confined to her subjects. Her merchants, missionaries, soldiers, sailors and colonists can no longer claim a monopoly of that language. To every port, which was almost exclusively hers for three hundred years, another fleet, other merchants, sail-ors sail-ors and soldiers enter under a different flag, and all speaking the same language. That language, too. once used as a powerful weapon to eradicate the old faith, is today its greatest armor of defense. The visionary dreams of four hundred years ago, that unity of language, wealth, power and commercial supremacy would make the new creed universal and supreme, died when the United States was born. The great Goliah was conquered by a little pebble in the sling of the nc:v born Republic. Like the children of Israel, the vanquished at home carried the torch of faith to the Xew World, to which they were destined des-tined by Providence not only for the uplifting of the new flag, but for planting the mustard seed of Christianity in the very language in which England hoped to pervert the world. France, Italy, Austria, could not attain any such victory in the Xew World. Irish missionaries, like the poor fishermen combatting combat-ting the Caesars, were called and trained for the work. They succeeded. f 1- . |