The Reader's Digest

very serious American question. Yet if any one had taken the trouble to ask Mr. Ford, he would have learned that the British Government, as represented by Lloyd George, was especially eager for Mr. Ford to establish a factory in Ireland, and that Lloyd George had urged him to establish it near Cork.

I will give one more illustration to show how the American people have been led to accept the mass of unrealities that constitute the Irish Question.

On Sunday, September 7, 1919, in Fermoy, while a party of 18 soldiers were about to enter the Methodist church, three motor cars of armed men drove up. The men alighted and surrounded the military. The corporal was shot dead just as he was entering the church, and the next two soldiers to step into the doorway were dangerously wounded. The military, taken completely by surprise, were overpowered and their rifles were taken from them. In accordance with the military regulations the soldiers carried their unloaded rifles with no ammunition. They were practically unarmed. The crime caused general horror, and the Most Rev. Dr. Brown, Roman Catholic Bishop of Cloyne, sent a letter condemning Sunday's outrage to the Rev. J. O'Donoghue, Adm., Fermoy. It contains the following:

I was horrified-and so, too, as you inform me, were the people of Fermoy -in reading the account of that awful tragedy. The little band of soldiers had given no cause for provocation. They were proceeding in an orderly manner to their religious service, when the desperadoes stepped from their cars and, as sworn at the inquest, with little, if any warning or parley, fired on the unoffending men, Doubtless the immediate purpose of the criminal raid was to possess themselves of the rifles carried by the soldiers, but there is little room to doubt that they came prepared to carry out their object even though it included the taking of innocent life. It was a fearful tragedy, a savage crime which cries for vengeance from God and ordered society.

At the public masses on Sunday next. speaking for the bishop, the clergy, and the people of Fermoy, you will strongly condemn the awful crime in the name of Christian morality and social order. I say deliberately that there is no bet

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ter-ordered town in the kingdom than Fermoy. For a hundred years it has been a large military station, throughout all that time amicable relations have existed between civilians and military, and nothing has happened recently to alter these kindly relations. The relations between the military and civilians have always beer very good.

As to the facts there was no difference of opinion. I was in Dublin when this outrage occurred and read many Irish newspapers, Unionist, Nationalist and Sinn Fein. Yet this is how the story was cabled to the New York "American," by Daniel O'Connell, Universal Staff Correspondent at Cork:

A sensational hold-up of a military force took place this morning at Fermoy, when Sinn Feiners attacked a party of British soldiers numbering 30, fully armed.

One soldier was killed and several wounded, three severely. The Sinn Feiners captured all the soldiers' arms. The soldiers had marched out of the barracks to "keep order" at the regular Sunday church parade. Suddenly, out of a side street, dashed three automobiles occupied by armed civilians, who ordered the soldiers to halt and deliver their arms.

Instead of obeying, the commander ordered his soldiers to fire. A battle followed. The parties were equal in strength, but the Sinn Feiners proved the better shots.

Take it by and large, this extraordinary collection of dies is representative of the greater part of the dispatches from Ireland. It would be unfair to the American newspapers to single them out as being the most gullible in dealing with news from Ireland. The leading papers of England and Australia are frequently misinformed.

Let us consider the views of leading Irishmen and the inevitable implications. On January 6, 1921, at a mass meeting in Madison Square Garden, Harry Boland, Secretary to Mr. de Valera, said:

If England does not stop its campaign of murder we will preach a race vendetta among the millions of Irish throughout the world and take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth and strike dowr everything British. If I had my way, I would tell the Irish in America to rise up and tear down everything British.

Speaking about a week later in Boston, Judge Cohalan, a justice of the Supreme Court of New York

State, said:

We must point out that, just as inevitable as was the conflict between Germany and Great Britain, so is a conflict inevitable between the United States and Great Britain unless England disarms her ravy and withdraws her troops from Ireland.

4. Mr. Hughes, Secretary of State, in June, 1922, said:

"It should be recognized that what is more necessary than formulas is a keener sense of responsibility in the discussion of international questions. The chief enemies of peace are those who constantly indulge in the abuse of foreign peoples and their Governments, who asperse their motives and visit them with ridicule and insult." Speaking later he said:

"In the field of international affairs recklessness of statement is especially injurious to the interests of the country. Some of our editors and public men write and speak as though what they said for foreign peoples and their governments could not be seen or heard beyond the three-mile limit. The first duty of a people that desires peace is to cultivate good will, and the only cure for intemperate statement is the resentment of an intelligent community.

"Let it be understood that those who indulge in diatribes against foreign peoples and their governments, who hold them up to ridicule, who impute to them base motives and asperse their honor, are enemies first of their own country and as such deserve universal censure."

I have demonstrated in my article on Ireland in the June "McClure's" that the Irish, like the Germans, have been the victims of an endless propaganda of hatred that has manufactured patent falsehoods as to the present. If memories as ancient as those which this propaganda has inspired in the Irish were everywhere cherished and inflamed they would cause the bloody anarchy of the Balkans at their worst through all civilization.

The destructive effect of obsessions arising from nourishing memories of ancient wrongs, makes difficult the writing of history for schools. Will it be possible to produce good

school histories that will not nourish hatred for Germany? In most of the Irish schools the text-books in history inculcate hatred and contempt for England and everything English. How shall school histories in the United States be prepared? How shall we deal with England, Germany, France, Japan, in our school histories?

Shall we write our text-books in such fashion that the cruelties and injustice suffered by the Americans at the hands of England will cause us to hate England, or shall the school histories ignore the wrongs that our forefathers suffered at the hands of England? Evidently it is wise neither to nourish ancient grudges nor to ignore the heroic struggles of the founders of the Republic.

At this moment, in Germany, the question of history text-books is a most serious one. The masses of the people want a republic-shall they ignore the really tremendous epic of the centuries behind the creation of the German Empire in 1871, or shall they glorify the Kings and Emperors, who were so largely instrumental in unifying the German people?

The question of the Memory of Ancient Wrongs is a very serious one for the United States, for within its borders are found almost every world hatred, the most serious being the Irish hatreds, and the next in importance the German hatreds. The doctrines of Communism and Socialism have caused deep hatreds.

The cruelties and injustices suffered by the negro have produced a tremendous volume of books and periodicals filled with hatred and contempt for the white man.

The Jewish question is developing hatreds in many directions.

Nothing could be more disastrous to our well-being as a people than the development of racial, national and religious hatreds and animosities.

err.

He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living; ye therefore do greatly -Mark, 12:27. But Jesus said unto him: Follow me and let the dead bury the dead. -Matthew, 8:22 McCl. M., O. '22.

The Spread of Intolerance

Condensed from Hearst's International

Senator William E. Borah

1. Intolerance is intellectual cowardice.

2. One of the curses of war. 3. "Nothing dies so hard and rallies so often-"

4. Europe awaits a Lincoln. 5. What shall become of our heritage of tolerance?

HE fundamental, underlying basis

Tof intolerance is intellectual cow

ardice. Unwilling to meet the antagonists in the open arena where truth and right contend with error and injustice for supremacy, intolerance would, through foul and brutal methods, destroy the antagonists before the arena is reached. If I deny my opponent the privilege of expressing his views or of advancing his arguments, it is because I have in fact no faith in my own contention or distrust the strength of my own arguments.

If I would close the press or the mails to other men's views or opinions or beliefs, it is because I fear they may win support and approval from others where my opinions or beliefs would fail. But if I am strong in my own faith, convinced of the justice of my position, I fear no man and rather covet the opportunity to meet in the open all who contend otherwise, never doubting that in the end my antagonist, though free to use all the powers of the intellect at his command, must fail.

2. It must be admitted, I presume, by all who have observed the trend of things in this country, that the spirit of intolerance is obtaining a

strong hold among our people. Doubtless much of this is due to the warfor war breeds intolerance as the stagnant waters of the swamps breed disease. But the great problem is: can we rid ourselves as a people of this demoralizing and destructive, this wicked and consuming curse now that the war is over? All other nations engaged in the Great War have outdistanced us in forgiving those who expressed their opinions and views in derogation of the war. Their political prisoners were released long ago. We still hold in prison those who are guilty of no crime save the expression of opinion, the criticism of government. This illustrates, not only our indifference to the great guarantees and privileges of the people under the Constitution, but it discloses a spirit of intolerance such as we have never before exhibited.

Frederick the Great once saw a crowd staring at something on the wall. He made inquiry and found it was a scurrilous placard against himself. He directed that the placard might be placed more conveniently that all might read.

women who accepted our institutions, contributed through brain and brawn to our great natural wealth and entered into and became a part of our national life. Here have gathered all races, all creeds, all religions, all customs, to be welded into something new, distinct and permanent. The Constitution recognizes neither creed

nor race.

There rests upon us the impressive duty to say who shall come to our shores. But the decree, having been made, the laws accepted, ever thereafter to permit race or religion to become a cause for inequality before the law, for persecution or injustice, is to commit the most cowardly and most self-destructive act of which the government could be guilty.

The great numbers of letters coming to one's desk in these days, laden with the most intolerant and vicious antagonism to certain races and creeds and insisting upon laws, denying to them the enjoyment of political honor, brings back the truth of the statement of the celebrated English divine, Sidney Smith: "Nothing dies so hard and rallies so often as intolerance."

The race issue has been raised in some of our universities. Are we blandly to practice discrimination on account of race, compromise with intolerance-in the seats of American learning? We ought to say, not only from our college rostrum, but from the pulpit-and most of all from our legislative halls-that we refuse to defer in any way to racial prejudices.

4. What is all this all-but-insuperable obstacle of Europe but a widespread, deep-seated and apparently unconquerable spirit of intolerance? Why cannot the people, after all these years of suffering, after looking throughout these harrowing months upon their children unfed and unclothed, be at peace? It is because of the vice of intolerance. It has apparently become ingrained in their very being, and thus suspicion, fear,

hate, vengeance, murder and assassination torment night and day the souls of men.

I believe Europe awaits a Lincoln whose healing and uplifting message of intolerance and mercy will banish hate and fear from the hearts of men. If one wishes to know how hungry the masses are for such a message, let him recall how they received the messages of Wilson and how their hopes were blighted when these messages met defeat in the vindictive provisions of the Versailles Treaty.

The

Since the World War the frightful dogma of force has seemingly secured an increased hold upon the minds of men. Through force all things are to be accomplished. healing influence of justice and the wisely directing power of enlightened public opinion are less and less relied upon in both national and international affairs.

5. If there is any one thing which history establishes beyond dispute, it is the utter futility of intolerance in the world of ideas, the utter fruitlessness of persecution on account of race or creed. The only way we can meet erroneous and unwise doctrines is in the open field of debate where truth at last prevails. No error, however deep-seated, can long withstand the pulverizing effect of the combined influence of untrammeled minds.

Whose temple of liberty and justice is this within which we as a people now dwell? Who reared it and who have maintained and defended it? Who wrote the Constitution and placed safely there the sublime guarantees of civil liberty, free speech, free press, and the right to worship God according to the dictates of one's own conscience? These things are the handiwork of all creeds and all faiths, all races and all classes. Under this creed we have prospered and strengthened with the years. "Sirs, ye are brethren: why do ye wrong one another?"

H. Int., D. '22.

Pork for Podunk

1. Constituents want

Condensed from The Freeman

a roomy place at public trough.

2. An imposing exhibit of pork. 3. The procession of patriotic (?) landowners.

4. Planning for the next raid. 5. Why shouldn't Podunk theirs?

get

T certain stated times the citizens of these United States march to the polls and cast their votes for a delegate to represent them in the House of Representatives at Washington. The act of voting for a particular delegate may be the result of any one of many emotions commonly mistaken for principles or faiths, but the men who seek the office and those who attain it are under no illusions whatever about what their fellowcitizens expect of them when once they get there. There are exceptions, but in general the voters expect something from their officeholders, and that something is a goodly share of the Government pork. Their representative is expected to see to it that they shall have a good, roomy place at the public trough. The history of our pension-system, for example, is one of vote-bartering too shameful for words, and there is a multitude of other examples which do not differ from this save in the size of the stakes at issue. There

are rivers-and-harbors bills, reclamation bills, public-buildings bills, and a host of petty schemes looking to the creation of land-increments through this or that governmental activity.

No public-buildings bill has been introduced in Congress since 1916. The pressure for such a bill at that

time was tremendous. The desire was to send back to their constituencies the largest possible number of Congressmen with the choicest exhibit of bacon that could be offered to sniffing nostrils. The Administration, however, believed that it could win without any such distribution of pork, and no doubt it was already reckoning on the probable vast expenditures of war. The President announced that he would veto such a bill if it were passed. But his announcement did not prevent the enactment of the bill by the House, not in the least.

2. For the first time there was presented a close-up of the public hog at the public trough when the "Journal of the American Institute of Architects" widely distributed a complete analysis of the public-buildings bill introduced into the sixty-fourth Congress. More than 700 items appeared in that enlightening list. the little matter of post-office buildings, for example, the "Journal" gave the populations of the towns concerned as shown in the last three censuses, the amount of yearly postal receipts, and the names of the congressmen who were thus discharging their function in representative government. Among all the fine examples offered in that list, none was more conspicuous than the building programme of Congressman Langley of Kentucky, which follows: