Judge — April 2, 1921 — page 14: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

f Perrtros Maxwett, Fd Jases S. Mercarer, ributing Editor j. A. Watprox, Associate Editor HICH is worse, to go ahead too slowly or too fast? If it is possible that we perfect Americans have cither fault, it is perhaps the latter. Al though we are a big country, our means of com- munication are speedy; most of us read the newspapers, at least the headlines or the sporting or fashion pages and we are therefore educated, after a fashion. In spite of our bigness what was yesterday's thought in Boston may become today’s action in San Francisco; the crazy notion in Nebraska this week may next month be a national issue in Washington; a little while ago we were wet, or at least damp, and now we are absolutely dry. This American speediness has its advantages, particularly when it takes the form of laudable enterprise. Its drawbacks are scen when a few of our fellow-citizens are able to utilize it to rush us headlong into action, which we regret with equal speed and for which we have to pay the bills later. For an example, we have to go no farther back than Mr. Bryan's fantastic experiments in finance, and other more recent in stances will occur to any one who stops to think. In the imme- diate future we are likely to have other examples in the crim- lity of tobacco-smoking and in the enjoyment of a uniformly ir gloomy Sunday RELAND, on the other hand seems to be suffering trom too much slowness. Those who sing ‘Here’s a Health to King William and to Hell with the Pope” are still fighting with those who sing “ Here’s a Health to the Pope and to Hell with King William,” although that Pope and that King have both been dead for a century or more. Ireland is a small country and in it news should travel fast, but information does not seem to have reached all parts that today’s fighting is not over grievances of today, but over old hatreds which should have burned out years ago. There are high points of education in Ircland, but there are also areas of dense ignorance. Error flourishes in ignorance and it supplies many and easy tools to crafty leaders secking more their own purposes than the good of Ireland. The getting of American money seems not the least important of those pur- poses. And they thrive in keeping Ireland slow to learn the truth that confronts her. It is neither flippant, unfriendly nor unsympathetic to say that Ireland is slow in this understanding. It profits her not at all and will not profit her future that she puts herself in the position where her men are imprisoned or killed and her women and children made to suffer. She would get as far and save infinite wretchedness and misery by the equally heroic but less spectacular policy of non-resistance. Of course with Irish nature what it is, such a suggestion is absurd, but it is none the less wise. HE truth is that England does not dare let Ireland become an independent republic. In permitting it she would lay herself open to destruction by foreign enemies. To prevent it she will expend her last shilling of treasure and her last drop of fighting blood. Has Ireland the resources, even with all the money that misguided Irishmen in America can send across, to accomplish anything of value to Ireland against such odds? gland professes her willingness to accord to Ireland the a and her same measure of self-government enjoyed by Can other major colonies, and under which they have grown and become prosperous. There seems to be no reason to doubt the sincerity of that profession, for it would be a small price for England to pay to be rid of the vexation caused by her stupidity in managing the internal affairs of the always unhappy island where the slowness of Ireland is fatal to her own best interests. She is divided against herself by those old hatreds. She won't advance out of them and beyond them She keeps them alive by song and story. She harks back to the past when she should be thinking of making a better present and future. Her young men are writing poems and plays about tradition and oppression, about past tragedies and. gh instead of inspiring hope and ambition and enterprise for a new Ireland. If the Ulstermen and South Irishmen devoted half the time to loving all Ireland that they do to hating England and one another, there would be no Irish question. And there would be no agitators to make a living by keeping the hatreds. alive. And there would be no pilgrimages of Irish patriots to America to gather funds for that purpose I F our American speediness had been replaced by the slow- ness of Ireland we might now be devoting our energies to old feuds instead of to modern enterprises. We had a couple of scraps with Ireland's dearest foe which we might still be singing about if we hadn't learned some new tunes. We also had a North and South bitterness with worse fighting than Ireland has known in all her centuries. Less than half a century served to wipe out hatreds which Irishmen would parently have kept alive and handed down from father ¢0 son and daughter as their dearest possessions. ‘This is not to be wondered at when these were the only possessians the Irish could hand down, but today Ireland is reported to be as prosperous materially as her agitators will permit her to be, and there are ample opportunities in Erin to accumulate more valuable properties than bad feelings. comicbooks.com