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Show IRISH SYMPATHY FOR BOERS NEVERTHELESS THEY TAKE UP ' ARMS AGAINST BURGHERS. It Is Painful and Humiliating to Note the Number of Irish Enlisting Enlist-ing In the Army of Her Enemy. In this crisis, when the hearts of all true Irishmen burn with sympathy and hope for the gallant Boers on the eve of their life and death struggle for independence, inde-pendence, it is a source of deep and bitter bit-ter humiliation to us to read in the papers pa-pers to which we eagerly turn for news cf the Transvaal that regiments with Irish names are going out to South Africa, Af-rica, not to be the armed and living- expression ex-pression of the will of the Irish nation, to tight on the side of right and justice, but to fight in opposition to the national nation-al will, as servants of our deadly enemy, ene-my, in one of the most unjust' and iniquitous in-iquitous wars that ever disgraced the world. It is such a humiliating- and painful subject that I have long hesitated before be-fore writing" on it but it is not by hiding hid-ing facts, however ugly, or by shutting pur eyes to them, that a remedy can ever be found. I know that this also is the opinion of the editor of the courageous courage-ous paper for which I am writintg, whose claim, to the gratitule of Nationalists Nation-alists is that it speaks openly and fearlessly fear-lessly on all Irish subjects, uninfluenced by the thought of what may please or displease timid adversaries- or supporters, support-ers, and guided only by the policy of freedom for Ireland. The Dublin and the Munster Fusiliers are not entirelv com nosed of Irishmen. They may have been once, they are not today; recruiting in Ireland I am glad to say and I have this from the lips of an English general is falling off very considerably: the so-called Irish, regiments regi-ments have to be made up by a large mixture of English Cockneys. England jealously conserves the Irish names of her regiments in order to s,h"bw the world that there are still -Irishmen so devoid of dignity that they will wear the uniform of their oppressors, and thus; destroy or weaken the sympathy and respect which Ireland possesses among foreign nations, and change that sympathy into a pitying contempt..' con-tempt..' But though the number of Irish recruits re-cruits for the English- army is diminishing, dimin-ishing, the sad fact still remains- that there are a large number of young Irishmen wearing the shameful uniform of servitude. Let us examine for a moment mo-ment the causes. The Irish are essentially a military race, debarred from a military career int their own land; they have furnished distinguished soldiers in most of the armies of Europe, and America owes, in a gTeat measure, her independence to the bravery of the Irishmen who fought for her. Each year I receive numerous letters from young Irishmen askinig me to obtain means for them to join the French army, but today in modern Europe foreigners are excluded exclud-ed from military service, and the Iri?h thus find themselves shut out from the profession which they love, and many young Irish boys thoughtlessly let themselves be tempted by the love or glamour, of a uniform to join the Eng. lisih army. Then, again, the economic conditions are so terrible in Ireland wilfully made terrible by the English system) of misgovernment that it is very hard for an Irish boy to gain his living in his own country, and some, to avoid starvation, accept the queen's shilling. I have seen this more than once during famine years in the west, though on the whole I have been greatly great-ly struck by the heroic endurance of our western peasan ts, who mostly prefer pre-fer starvation to the ehame of wearing England's colors. I am afraid drink I is responsible for the largest number of Irish recruits. Boys g'o off for an outing-, they get excited, they hardly know what they do. and when they come to themselves they find they are enlisted and many and many wonder however they came to make that fatal mistake. The recruiting sergeants are everywhere every-where in Ireland, on the watch to entrap en-trap our healthy peasant boys fcr the British armv. Ensland knows that sooner cr later she will Wave to fight a coalition of .Europe. Her able diplomatists diplo-matists and, above ail, her cunning allies, al-lies, who foment quarrels and internal strife among the different countries whom her policy of grab has exasperated, exasper-ated, may be Bible to stave off the day of reckoning for a time, but sooner or later it wKH come, and she knows that it is not with the punty, cl-teascd refuse of the slums of her great manufacturing-towns that ctie will be able to meet the armed naition3 of Europe. One significant sig-nificant fact I have just heard in several sev-eral tewns of the west is that recruiting recruit-ing sergeants are offering 5s. instead of Is. to induc3 hoys to enlist. In, the matter ctf en'.isit merit in the British army, a heavy and terrible responsibility re-sponsibility lies at the door cf the Irish I press I mean the so-called Nationalist press: for on 'the unionist papers, of course, I have no cc'mmemt to miake, they are in their role. Not only do we find no articles in- our newspapers warning tho people against eniisting. and pointing out to them the crime and shame it is for an Irishman, while his i country is suffering under foreign gov-i gov-i err.imerit, to wear the uniform of that government, but we read accounts of military pageants,- portraits of officers, and such like are given, until the newspaper-reading public, get so accustomed to look on theee English soldiers as familiar fa-miliar objects that, forgetting our history, his-tory, then begin to take an. interest and a pride in their exploits. It is this which renders the work of the recruiting recruit-ing agents possible in Ireland. I do not believe these Irish papers realize the terrible harm they are doing; they have no idea beyond that of the. immediate advantage of securing a certain circu-laiionr circu-laiionr among the hangers-on of the While the majority of Irishmen are om!it,Hn(r nndpr th shame of seeing regiments with Irish names, such as the Dublin and the Munster fusilleers, sent out to fight against the Boers, the time is opportune to call attention to this very serious subject, and point out clearly to the people that the Irishman who joins the English army or navy-must navy-must find himself sooner or later obliged to choose between this awful alternative either to face the danger of deserting before the enemy, which would be the right and noble thing for an Irishman to do (but how many, I wonder, would have the moral and physical courage fcr such an act), or else to commit the unforgivable crime of striking a blow against his motherland mother-land and again: freedom. Every enemy of England is, under existing cir cumstances, necessarily the friend or Ireland, and every blow struck for England, every shot fired in her service, ser-vice, is a blew struck against Ireland. It is a matter of such national importance im-portance to Ireland that I would like to see resolutions warning the people against enlisting passed at every meeting, meet-ing, both in Ireland. England or Scotland, Scot-land, where Irishmen come together for any purpose whatever. MAUD.GONNE. |