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Show WAS LIP10N SLANDERED? Many of our Catholic exchanges, especially such as reflect the Celtic mind in the editorial page, have attacked Sir Thomas Lipton for an alleged insult, to the Irish nation offered at a recent banquet. ban-quet. According to a story in the New York Journal, a paper generally regarded as sensational and unreliable, Sir Thomas observed the Irish harp among the decorations of the banquet table. He ordered it removed and a Union Jack placed in j its stead. If the story were true, and the fact established, it could have no other effect than to turn Celtic sympathy for Sir Thomas into hearty contempt for Ihe person who displayed such pro-British spleen. If any man could be aroused to anger over such an incident, it would be John F. Finerty, chief of the Irish National League in this country, and editor of the Chicago Citizen. Before jumping at conclusions, con-clusions, like most, of his editorial brethren of the same race, Mr. Finerty decided to investigate. As a result he states in last week's Citizen, on good authority, that Sir Thomas Lipton, in a published interview, has absolutely denied the, charge 'made against him. "We have not seen the interview ourselves," our-selves," he said, ''but our friend Mr. P. J. Reynolds of this city, as good an Irishman as lives, saw it and read it through. Mr. Reynolds says that Sir Thomas expressed himself as being indignant over the faleshood, and pointed to the fact that he himself him-self has displayed an Irish ''harp without the crown" on his vessels and elsewhere. We are surprised sur-prised that his interview has not been more extensively ex-tensively published, but we think it only just to Sir Thomas to give Mr. Reynolds' statement, in which " we have firm faith." : So much for that story. Now for something more matter-of-fact, although it discounts our boast over "a Yankee boat and a Yankee crew." In one of his interviews, Sir Thomas Lipton made the remark: "The smartest sailors I ever saw in my life are sailing the Reliance." Sir Thomas was correct, as the result proved. His remark has been accepted as a compliment to American seamanship, seaman-ship, f ' How many of the Reliance crew were Yankees to justify the boast, "how we apples do swim?" The Chicago Tribune answers by saying, in the first place, that Reliance is a Yankee boat. It was built at Bristol by Ilerreshoff, who is, in spite of his name, a Yankee, born in Bristol. But. alas, Reliance Re-liance did not have a Yankee crew. There was not an American on board of it nor a person born in America. Its captain is a Scotchman, who has taken out his first papers. The first, second and third mates are Norwegians. Of its crew of forty-two forty-two men, thirty-seven are unnaturalized and two . naturalized Norwegians, two unnaturalized Swedes and one an unnaturalized Dane. Reliance, therefore, there-fore, was a Yankee boat manned by a Scotch-American Scotch-American captain and a Scandinavian crew, and the result must be set down as a Norwegian triumph. |