The Irish Problem

Mr. Chairman,-If I should have entered the room with any doubt in my mind as to whether there were Irishmen here or not, it would have been set aside when I heard that cheer, because I think Irishmen can give such cheers as no other nationality anywhere can. (Applause) We, the delegates from Ulster, are delighted to be amongst you, business people who control the main lines of progress in this great Dominion of Canada. We are delighted to look into your faces and see and know that your hearts beat true to a United Empire for the generations that are to come. (Applause) We are with you, in this respect, heart and soul from the old province of Ulster. Your sons and our sons have fought together to make the world free, to slay the tyrannous monster which would have destroyed the peace and the prosperity of the world; your sons and our sons have laid down their lives in France and in Flanders for us, and we are going to maintain the place of this Empire for the children that are coming after us and to hold it unbroken for the generations that are yet unborn. (Applause)

We recognize what you, the people of Canada, have done, and in the old Ulster land we have always linked you with ourselves. We say, over in Ulster, that we have done through the Canadian people just as much as you have done through your people; for your people are our people, you are bone of our bone; our fathers went out from these Ulster shores and came into this land and felled the trees and cleared the land. My grand-uncles and uncles, some of them, gave their lives, dying on their way to reach the Ontario backwoods, and the descendants of these men, when the Empire called, when the old Mother called, the grand-children of these men who went out from old Ulster and Scotland and England, heard and responded to that call of the old Mother so nobly, so gloriously, as to open to the world one of the grandest pages of British History. The tyrant Kaiser's knees shook when he realized that Canada and Australia and all the children of the Empire were coming to aid the old Mother to see to it that the old Flag, which never dipped nor bowed to any Flag in the world, would still be the Flag. (Loud applause)

We gratefully recognize that Toronto sent something like 63,000 men to the colours. We could not better that over in Belfast, but without compulsion Belfast with 400,000 people sent 45,000 men. (Applause) Our men and women at home did not remain idle and create a rebellion. No, they went to work, realizing that, if Ulster did not produce linen for the aeroplanes all the Allies' talk would be of no use in the war. So our farmers went to work and sowed their land and produced the flax that could not be drawn from Belgium or Russia, which were both held by Germany, or by rebellion, and in the moment of exigency, the Ulster farmer sowed more of his land in flax, and his wife and children handled that crop in a wonderful way and produced the flax that went to the Allies. Ulster produced 95% of all the linen that was used for all the aeroplanes of the Allies, the United States included. (Loud applause) But I suppose you are not here to listen to an Ulster man trying to boast about his province, because we are not given to boasting; we are of the Ulster breed, or of the British breed, and do not like to talk very much. (Laughter.) Oh, I have not commenced to talk yet-I know you business men do not want to be kept here for the whole afternoon, so I want to get right into the question of Sinn Feiners.

When we come to talk of our Empire and of our troubles at all, we have to talk of another, of the only black spot in the records of our Empire's story. The sons of Mother Britain came from all the ends of the earth; the dependencies of Britain sent their boys-black, white and brown and all colours from all lands and from all dependencies. They came to rally around the old Mother and to save the peace of the world; and, though I do not want to boast of our part in the war, I say to all the world there is the record. Take Britain out of the struggle, take your Canadians and your Colonial troops and all the rest of them that make up the bed-rock of the British type-take them out of the struggle-the picture of the war would have a different record to-night. (Applause)

The reason we are here at all is to lay the lies that have been circulated in the United States about our old Mother Country. The Sinn Feiners tell them that Britain is a persecutor, that Britain is a burglar, that Britain is robbing and crushing Ireland, that Britain is outraging and crushing the peoples of Ireland. I believe there is no part of the world today that would believe such talk without argument unless, perhaps, Germany; for wherever the old Flag floats in British Dominions and dependencies, there is liberty,-liberty for all. The Sinn Fein party seems to have gone asleep at a point about a hundred years ago, and in some state of lethargy they have lived during the last hundred years. Now they have waked and find themselves in a new world and cannot realize it; and so they are ever in the United States telling of the condition of things that may have been a hundred years ago. That is as far from the truth today as the North Pole is from the South. Why, in Ireland there is no oppression.

I hope I am an Irishman; my fathers were persecuted in France because they could not get liberty to worship according to the dictates of their conscience, and, as Huguenots, they were driven out of France and came over into England and into Ireland, and we have been in Ireland about 250 or 300 years; surely it will be acknowledged by all people that w e are Irishmen in that country, and if we are not Irishmen, you are not.. Canadians. (Laughter) I say, as an Irishman, that for the last forty years the British Government have done everything they could to uplift the condition of the Irish people. Landlordism which was the cause of the trouble is gone, gone away, practically, out of my country. The tenants of the soil, be they Sinn Feiners or Unionists, be they Catholics or Protestants, can get the money from the British Government at three and a quarter percent interest to pay for their lands, principal and interest paid into a sinking fund of three and a quarter percent so that after seventy years their lands are as free from any liability as your prairies are when you buy them from the Canadian Government. The British Government have come into my country and, after helping the farmer, they have gone to the labourer and, through the district councils of the country, they have given money up to eighty per cent., something like seventy millions of dollars, to provide houses for the working classes of my country. All over the country, in every part of Ireland, there are these pretty cottages solidly built of stone and lime with slate roofs, built under Government inspection and in the most approved and sanitary condition, sitting on an acre of land in one contract and on a half-acre of land in another. Over eighty thousand of these cottages have been built with money subscribed by the British Government at three and a quarter percent interest, and after fifty years the principal and interest disappear and these houses become the property of the ratepayers and of every district in which they are, and the rents will be applied to the relief of the local rates. And what is the rent on these cottages and the acre of land-something like thirty cents to thirty-six cents per week! These cottages are today inhabited by Sinn Feiners, and it is the wonderful anomaly that the Sinn Feiner, denouncing everything British, takes all the British money he can lay his hands on. So they live in these cottages provided by the money taken direct from the British Treasury at this easy rate of interest, or of rent after paying for these cottages. Aye, it is wonderful. I have tried to compare these things with the American people, the great American people, (laughter) the American people who think in millions, who have . no patience with any less, and I have said to the American people, the great people of the United States, "Have you eighty thousand cottages provided by your Government for your working classes"? No; it remains for the terrible Saxon, the hated Saxon, the awful British Treasury which is robbing and destroying Ireland to give such a charter to the labourers of my country. Oh, if this is robbery, we want plenty of it in my land. (Applause)

The British Government have given us light railways; and when Mr. Balfour was chief secretary, he opened up the whole west of Ireland to the fishing industry in order to get the live produce of the sea. It was an unfortunate circumstance, but it was a fact, that the English and Scotch and Manx fishermen were coming over to the west of Ireland and taking the fish out of Irish waters; and the poor Irishmen from Donegal and Kerry, were dozing on the banks, smoking their pipes and looking at the other fellows taking away all their crop. These districts were the scene of horrid famines at various points in the history of Ireland. They are congested, povertystricken districts and Mr. Balfour realized this. There was no navigation of the sea, there were no harbours on which to land the fish, there were no fishing boats to use, there was no knowledge of the art. So Mr. Balfour obtained a grant of eight or nine millions direct from the British Government-a gift to Ireland, not paid by the Irish taxes directly, only its quota to the British Treasury-and with this money he had light railways built on the west coast and had harbours built and quays, along down the coast on which the produce of the sea might be landed. Then they had the light railways and the quays and no fishing boats; so a committee was formed, known as the Congested Board Committee, made up of a few men nominated by the British Government, experts, and by some Roman Catholic priests; the Lord Bishop of Rothesay is, I think, himself the Chairman of that Board. This Board went to work and had fishing boats built at a cost of £150 to £200. Now they have the boats on the coast, and the railways, and they have the men on the shore, but the poor fellows did not know how to manipulate the motor boats and use fishing nets. So they had to do in my country what I suppose you have had to do in your country, and what we all have had to do when we are in a tight corner-we sent for a Scotchman. (Great laughter) We could not even come on this delegation without having a Scotchman who thinks he is in charge of the lot of us, (laughter) but I assure you we would want ropes to tether him to keep him along with us, he goes at such a pace. This Committee took over some Scotchmen and Scotch yawls, and they rented boats, or sold each boat, to five Irishmen and took their promissory note for the cost of the boat payment to be made to the Congested Districts Board as soon as they got sufficient money out of the fishing. To the honour of these men along that coast they have paid every penny of what these boats cost (hear, hear) and they derived great benefit throughout that whole district. One Scotchman was put in the boat with five Irishmen. (Great laughter) I tell you if they had to put Sandy with twenty-five Irishmen he would get out all right. But he was put into these boats to teach the Irishmen how to fish in their own waters-that is a fact-and these same Irishmen were soon able to get rid of the Scotchmen and do the fishing themselves. The Committee also established curing stations and these are in existence yet along those coasts.

The Sinn Feiners do not tell about these things when they come over to the United States of America. They withhold the truth-that is the misfortune of it,-and they picture my country as a country of beggars-and we are not beggars; we want none of your dollars. If a section of my country wants your dollars, we do not; thank God, we can live without American or Canadian dollars. But these curing stations were created, and experts were placed there to teach .the Irish girls to cure and pack the fish, so that when an abnormal catch was taken from the sea and they had not markets to get rid of them for a fair price, they cured them and packed them and sent them into many markets of the world. These fish are collected in great harvests taken from the sea on that west coast; they are landed on the Irish coast by the Irish light railways and sent to the British, Scotch, and Welsh markets and sold there twenty-four hours after they are taken out of the waters on the west coast of Donegal.

This is what the British Government has done for the most distressed part of Ireland, for the part that needed help. today there is an annual grant of £280,000 given from the British Exchequer as a free gift to teach the people home industries, hosiery work, making homespun tweed, developing many industries that can be carried on in .the homes of the people. Throughout the war, when every industry was struck down, the only industries that were left open in the land at all were these in connection with Donegal. The Government sought to help these people and keep them quiet, keep them from crying, keep them from making trouble through the war; and within these districts I have known five or six boys in one house each to be earning by his own loom something like £8 to £10 per week, or £50 per week for that home. I can prove it to you for I supplied the yarns. There was a fight in all the district for yarns; they could not get enough yarns at the abnormal price they were getting for the tweed. So interested was the Government in it, that they sent down a special commissioner, and they took control of my mill and the mill of another in the County of Fermanagh and Lispilaw, and all our products were sent down to that country. The special commissioner had to deal it out in small quantities, so intense grew the press of the trade and so much did the boys carry back from Scotland and from England. When conscription was placed on England and Scotland, these boys went home and got at their looms and earned from £8 to £10 a week, and I know where they earned £50 a week and not a man went to the war. Your sons came over and defended the Empire, defended these fellows, these selfish fellows along that coast. Yours boys died for them and for the world, and our boys died; and the cruel thing is that men representing all these fellows are in the United States today trying to vilify my country and to vilify the grandest old Empire that ever God gave to the world. (Tremendous applause) No, there is no oppression in my country. If you want to find the 'secrets of oppression, you must go some where else; it doesn't come from the British Government, and we have proper representation in Ireland; we have as much liberty as you have. The only thing we have not got in Ireland is license to break each other's heads and get off scot free, but with that exception I say we have as much liberty as you have. (Great laughter)

Take, for instance, representation in the Imperial Parliament. The Irish people send 145 members to the Imperial Parliament; Scotland only sends about 72 or 75, although she has 300,000 of a population more than Ireland. We send one member for every 40,000 people in Ireland to the Imperial Parliament, while England, Scotland and Wales send only one for every 73,000; in other words, one Irishman is as good as two Scotchmen or two Englishmen in the British House of Commons, that is, if they like to go. (Laughter) Well, they have gone, up to the last election, but at the last election they developed a kind of bird in our country, that reminded me of what my mother used to say when she was talking about our hens; there were some of them very useful, and some were not, and she didn't like the red hen that was looked upon as a "non-sitter." (Great laughter) We have a great number of Irishmen who have taken the notion that they will be non-sitters in the British House of Commons. We hope the mania will continue for some time, because, if it does, we will get on with some business in the House of Commons and will not be talking shop all the time and will not have an obstructing machine at work all .the time, and we will be able to do some work for the people that we wish to get on with. But they have that representation in the Imperial House of Commons, and there is no excuse or reason to complain. It is all the other way about; and we have our County Councils and District Councils in Ireland-I hope you people of Canada don't forget that-and we strike our own local rates and collect them and administer them, and no power on earth can interfere with us. I happen to be a County Councillor for Tyrone for the last twenty years, and for twenty years and longer we have had control of our own local rates, and we are elected on the same suffrage as you are, on the manhood suffrage. Every boy of 21 years of age in Ireland has a vote, and every lady who is married and 30 years of age, the wife of a voter, has also got a vote so I think we are getting on. I don't think the people of any country can lay the charge on the British Government that the Irish people have not the same liberty as every free people ought to have-the right to have their local affairs administered by representatives elected by the people and for the people. This we have in Ireland for the last 20 or 23 years. (Applause)

But now let us pursue this hideous thing, Sinn Fein, a little further. If they had merely stayed at home and determined not to sit, nobody would complain; but at that crucial time in the war when Verdun was being attacked and it was feared that it would fall, when those gallant Frenchmen had driven back wave after wave of those great sections of the German force, and when all the strength of Germany was directed to that fortress, and when they played with it as the very mouth of hell for days and weeks, and the enemy got ready to make another onslaught where the British troops might not be in such numbers to block the way, and the resources and tenacity of France were tested to the last moment; in that moment when Germany, with her Bernstorff, was trying at Washington to arrange with Von Jagow in Germany through John Defoe in New York, they planned this rebellion. John Defoe sent a message to V on Jagow for the arms that were promised .to the south of Ireland and for the men that should be sent continually out of Sligo, as they were afraid that the leaders in Ireland would have to be arrested. Easter Saturday was the day when the fatal hour arrived to strike, and the Germans sent their shiploads to Ireland; but the old British Navy had their tip in time, and they arrested the arms and sent the ships to the bottom of .the sea, and the German submarine ran to Ireland with Sir Roger Casement, who was supposed to be the Ambassador at the Court of Berlin-we have a wonderful lot of ambassadors, but somehow they are living out of Ireland, a whole lot of them (laughter) and they are remaining away for Ireland's good, and I trust that what will happen to poor de Valera is what happened to some men like Casement. The moment he touches Irish soil he is dumb. But don't you Canadians think that we in Ireland are downhearted; not the least. (Hear, hear) Don't think that the British Government has the slightest intention of listening to the idiotic nonsense of those men. I tell you that, when the old lion shakes his tail some day, there will be a rare walloping of those Irishmen. (Applause)

The rebellion was called off in the South of Ireland, but those poor fellows-you know they are all masters, and there are no followers-called the Dublin Conference and decided that as things were ripe with them and, as they had their battalions and all the firearms ready, they would go on with the rebellion. So they started that rebellion on the fateful Easter Monday and shot down every man they met in Cork; they shot down the innocent policemen on their beat; they burned the most beautiful street in Dublin, and, when their own firemen went to put out the flames, those madmen actually shot down their own firemen. May I say, in passing, that Sackville Street, that beautiful street that was burned down, is not being built by Sinn Fein rebels now. This terrible British Government, this awful monster that is robbing Ireland, actually contributed, from the British Treasury, $12,000,000 to build up Sackville Street, and it is being built by British gold today. Read the record and study it, and I believe there is not a man in this room that will not admit that the most long-suffering Government on the face of God's earth is the British Government in their dealings with Ireland. They are so long-suffering that we are going to lose patience with them; we are going to accuse them of cowardice; the Irish people believe they are cowards; their very leniency is put down to cowardice. Remember, de Valera himself was one of the commanders who entered Boland Mill, where the present Lord Lieutenant says more Irish and British soldiers were shot down in cold blood than at any other point in that unfortunate city during that miserable week; and yet this man has the effrontery to come over to the United States as the so-called President of a Republic that never existed, and never will. (Hear, hear) Why, he masquerades as a sort of modern George Washington, saving America. I have told the Americans, and they have rung true and responded to the statement most heartily in our meetings, that instead of being George Washington he is the Benedict Arnold of the world. (Applause)

Now, even if all this story could be treated as ancient history, we would cry quits with the whole question. We people in the British Isles wish to mind our business and develop the resources of the Old Land, as you wish to develop the New; but we are not allowed to close that miserable page of Irish history. I am here to state all the truth and nothing but the truth. I want to tell you that you must not write down everybody, all the Roman Catholic people in Ireland, as leagued with Sinn Fein. (Hear, hear) The most respectable and thinking Roman Catholics look upon this as a hair-brained, mad affair that is going to end in disaster; and I tell you that John Redmond was a broken man from the time that rebellion started. Although I don't believe in his politics, I believe in Redmond's honesty. I want to bear witness that he got on the platform in Ireland and appealed to the Irishmen to come and rally around the British standards, and he allied himself with all the people of the great Dominions in every part of the world to preserve the liberties of the world; but, from the time he did it, he was a doomed man. The Sinn Fein got hold of the youth of Ireland, of the rank and file of the country, and preached the gospel of hatred to Britain, hatred to the Allies, opposition to the war, and the stay-at-home policy. What was more, they planned that rebellion, which they never believed would come off successfully-they and Germany. The object they had in view was that by that rebellion they might bring back, as they successfully did bring back, 50,000 British troops from the front in France, to be a garrison in Ireland, to put down anarchy and rebellion during war-time. That 50,000, troops had to be made up by your boys and by the Australians and by others of the colonies. They did this for Germany, and so far as this was concerned they succeeded.

John Redmond tried to do his part as far as he was able, and many Roman Catholics were with him; a third of the Roman Catholic people in my country do not believe in Sinn Fein; they have more sense than that. But you say, why don't they speak out? That is another matter. If you had a revolver to your head, you would not like to say much if the man at the other end of the revolver told you to keep a quiet mouth. What has been done to many Roman Catholics and Protestants in the suburbs of Dublin? Men with blackened faces come to your door and say, "You are one of them." Imagine here in your great city you go home to-night, and, while you are sitting around your own fireside with your wife and children, a man comes to the door, and the first thing you see when you open the door is a revolver placed at your chest. You see a man with a blackened face who says, "Hands up or I fire," and four or five men, without warning, come into your hall. You are standing there, a miserable creature in your own home, though every man's house should be his castle under the British flag. Those men go through your house and search every room from top to bottom. If there is a sick wife in that house, the fact that she is ill does not exempt that room from being searched. They have gone into the sickroom and lifted the sick woman off the bed and put her on the floor and searched in and about her bed for arms and then put her back on her bed, although the nurses pleaded with them not to disturb her privacy under those terrible conditions. But there is no kindness, there is no humanity, in those desperadoes; they are not men; they are not civilized; they are men that ought to be shot down at sight.

Take another instance of life in my country, and then don't wonder because some unfortunate Roman Catholics cannot speak out; for many of those fellows would be more severe on the Roman Catholics than the Protestants. No Protestant cares tuppence about them; we know our own minds, and know what we will do; let them invade Ulster and we will show them what we will do; we are ready for them. (Applause) I will give you two instances of what happened. On the first Sunday in September, sixteen English boys, young soldiers who were in training at Fermanagh, were marching to the Cathedral at half-past ten in the morning. By an army order they were asked to bring their rifles with them, for the protection of the rifles lest these might be stolen in the barracks by some traitor inside who could help the Sinn Feiners to get away with the rifles. So they brought the rifles slung over their shoulders, and they had no ammunition. Generally, when there is some disaster, it is because of some humbugging breach of administration: precautions are not taken in time; John Bull wriggles through, but he might do better if he took precautions. However, the order was given for those fellows to enter single file into the church, and just at that moment three automobiles came round the corner and stopped. Twelve or sixteen men jumped out of the automobiles rushed on the soldiers and fired revolvers on the men who could not see the automobiles. Six of them were shot down on the ground, one of them fatally. One wriggled to the door on a side street, and the good lady of the house closed the door in his face and would not allow the bleeding soldier to enter. Don't blame that woman; she might be visited in a night or two and shot through the window, done to death without notice, if she had harbored that British soldier. Such is the blackguard hate of those people. Then those fellows got in their automobiles, cleared away, and have not been found yet. Nor are any of those cowardly murderers that shoot men in the back found-such is the terrorism in that part of the country, such is the want of public opinion, the want of manhood, the want of men asserting themselves even at the cost of being shot. Until we get rid of this terrorism in the South and West of Ireland, we will have no progress; and no real rest, until men do their own thinking and speak out in the language that they believe is best suited to their needs.

Take another case in the County of Cork. On the same Sunday, two Roman Catholic policemen are attending their church, worshipping God with the other Roman Catholic people according to the dictates of their conscience. Their service is over, and they are going out of their church to their homes, going amongst the crowd. About ten yards from the church, two shots ring out and the two policemen fall prone on the road; and many of the people go by jeering on the men lying in the road. Only for the tender mercies of the priest coming out of the church, sending for an automobile and having those men driven away to a hospital, where one of them died, they might have lain there for a long time. What crime had those Roman Catholic policemen done on those people? Nearly all the Irish police are Roman Catholics, and they are trying to carry out the law in the most honourable way. They have a tremendous job to face, and to their honour, I want to bear witness to the sterling qualities of those men. They differ with me in religion, but I say their loyalty is unimpeached, and at the risk of their lives they have tried to maintain law. (Loud applause)

While I blame the young priests of Ireland for going on and fanning the flame of Sinn Fein, I must be honest with the whole situation. That is the misfortune of it. I say the soul of the whole movement is the Red Rag and Bolshevism-there is no difference between them--it is going to usurp all Government in my country. If you took away the British army tomorrow from among those fellows they would raise in insurrection one with the other.

I have tried to give you the situation. They want Ireland a nation; they want Ireland for themselves. Lloyd George is going to give them three provinces, to rule it possibly with the usual British freedom. Will they take it? No, the bishops have said there must be no partition. John Redmond, in 1916 at the settlement that Lloyd George was then about to accomplish, agreed and Sir Edward Carson agreed-both sides agreed-when Lloyd George was giving six counties to Ulster and giving the other all the rest of Ireland. We thought the Millenium had come. John Redmond came over to Belfast and agreed, and the Nationalists and their representatives agreed; but John Redmond was not back in London when the bishops met in their council and said that there must be no partition. John Redmond had to eat humble pie and abandon his position of conciliation and meeting the situation as it really presented itself in Ireland. I ask in all concern, do those people want peace in Ireland? There is one thing they never will get. We people in Ulster province are determined that under no circumstances will we submit to a Parliament in Dublin. (Loud applause)

I am here to say that Sinn Fein is out to destroy British authority in Ireland, and through Ireland the Government if they can. As Ireland is one of the pivotal points of the Empire, they are out to destroy the structure on which this great edifice of Empire is built. So I am glad to speak with you of this Empire Club, you business men, and I put it to you, when you look at the whole situation, are we wrong in Ulster? ("No") I am a man of business, and I put it to you in this way:-If you have a sleeping, quiet partner who leaves you to do almost as you please in business, and when you come to balance your accounts every year, if you find you are a little bit on the wrong side-and you know what a worry it is to find an overdraft at the bank and the balance on the wrong side-it is a grand thing to have a dear old gentleman with plenty of money to whom you can go and tell your troubles, and who will most benevolently give you a cheque to square the whole thing and ask no questions, I say, if I have that kind of a sleeping, quiet partner, I am not going to dissolve the partnership. (Loud applause)

Men of this great Club, of this great Empire City because you are more than a Canadian City, your influence thrills through the whole empire-I thank you from the bottom of my heart as one of the delegation, and in the name of the whole delegation, I thank you; and it delights my heart to know how thoroughly loyal you are to the Empire. We knew before we came amongst you what we might expect, and we have not been disappointed in our welcome; and I tell you, if the British Government ever falls, I believe you will take up the cudgels and hold the empire together. (Great cheering)

Mr. Chairman and Friends,--When Lord Charles Beresford spoke in a Unionist demonstration in Belfast about ten years ago he opened his address with one fine word that bound him at once to the people of Belfast, and I utter it to you; he began by calling those present "Fellow Loyalists." (Applause) Well, fellow Loyalists, as the humble Secretary of this deputation, as one who feels that it is a great honour to occupy that position in connection with it, it will be my duty and privilege to present a report when we go home; and the first paragraph in that report, as far as I am concerned, will read something after this fashion: "Our delegation has been so well received throughout North America that similar deputations must be sent out every year." (Hear, hear) And there is great need for such delegations, for the personal touch that only delegations of this kind can bring, and that will tend to bind together the great English-speaking peoples of the world-and remembering that I am speaking in Canada-I may add, delegations that will bind together the scattered portions of our great Empire. I have a quarrel with the man who asked, "What's in a name"? Because I have a name, and I thank the Chairman for his reference to it, a name that at once proclaims me a Methodist and .proclaims me an Irishman; (laughter) and if I may be permitted to make this personal reference, one can be a good Irishman and a good Britisher. (Applause) We vigorously and absolutely resist the imputation made by the Sinn Feiners, that to be Irish you have got to get out from under the British Flag. We believe that a man can be a good Canadian and a good Britisher. William Redmond, himself a Roman Catholic, himself differing from us of this delegation both in religion and politics, proved, when he fell in France wearing the British uniform, that a man can be true to Ireland and can be true to the great Empire and to the cause of liberty and humanity. (Loud applause)

Many present may not know that there are very tender ties binding our delegation to this mighty power, the British Empire. The senior member of this deputation-senior in point of years-lost his eldest son in the war. He was a brilliant barrister in the West of Canada. That brilliant man sleeps his last long sleep in a portion of France, of which it might be truly said after the words of Rupert Brooke. "That there's some corner of a foreign field that is forever Canada." (Applause) And let rue say that in our own City of Belfast, we had a Club for soldiers and sailors that was the finest club in the United Kingdom, and that thousands of Canadian men slept in that club, were fed in that club, and were welcomed and received there. (Applause) I remember once receiving, in the doorway of that club, an astonishing compliment from a mighty Canadian beside whom I was a mere pigmy. He had had a thirst, and he had quenched it in the club, and a friend of his was beseeching him to go to bed, and as he passed me in the doorway-I was in there giving a little service-he

seemed to think that some little token of friendship should pass between us. So he stretched forth a mighty hand in which my poor hand was almost buried, and giving my hand a squeeze that nearly broke the bones in it, he said: and surely it was a very appropriate greeting to a minister-he said "Hell-o, kid." (Great laughter)

It fell to my lot, during the week in Belfast, to undertake a Methodist Chaplain's duties in the barracks, and there is one man that stands out- before my mind with peculiar clearness at the present time as a man who made a deep impression upon other men there. He was a middle-aged Canadian, who, while spending a brief furlough in Belfast had fallen and broken his leg and was going to be put in our Belfast Military Hospital. The English, Scotch and Irish soldiers looked with pride upon that man who had tramped many miles to the railway from a lumber-camp, had been turned down,- but still persisted because he wanted to strike a blow for the Empire and for Canada. I tell you there was not one occupant or visitor in that ward but saw, in the heroic action of that middle-aged man, the spirit of Canada. (Applause) Gentlemen, it is well that you should know it. There is in the British Islands a very keen and deep-seated sense of what Canada did in the war. We are here, and we are glad to think that you appreciate the part that Ulster played; but whatever others may think as to the part they played in the war, or whether they won the war, let it be understood that, as long as the British nation exists, Vimy Ridge will have a place, a sacred place, in the memories and affections of the people of the British Isles, and they will never be slow in their sense of gratitude and indebtedness to the mighty colony that made the glorious stand at Vimy Ridge possible. (Applause)

I ventured to ask this question last night, and I repeat it:-Seeing what the record of Ulster was in the war, and what the record of the rest of Ireland was, is it fair that the only reward that Ulster is to receive for her heroic, unselfish devotion, is that this eternal menace of being subjected to a disloyal and proved German crew should continue to hang over its head' ("No" and applause) Our Chairman assures us that the British Government must never sacrifice Ulster in the so-called interests of the peace of Ireland, and we believe that our Canadian friends, who are entitled to speak in Irish affairs for their part of the British Empire, can do a lot to strengthen our cause for Ulster by making it clear, through their own proper representations to the Imperial Government, that they stand by Ulster to the end. (Loud applause)

Let me give to my fellow Loyalists present a little bit of information for propaganda purposes. You have heard it stated that that rebellion, of which two of us were witnesses, was carried out in close co-operation with Germany. In connection with that rebellion, a large quantity of British gold began to circulate in the South of Ireland; it bore the date 1870; it had not been released by the British Government, because you know they had called in all the gold throughout the country and had a note-issue instead. The British Government could not tell where that gold came from, but the date on the coins gave the show away. You will remember that in 1870 the Prussians beat France, and wrung out of her a big indemnity. France had not the money, and she borrowed it from England, and it was sent over in British sovereigns. These were passed on to Berlin and kept there for a convenient season. That convenient season came, and to the shame of all true Irishmen, Irish hands were stained with German gold to carry out that rebellion, to involve the retention of British troops in Ireland, and so to help Germany, as she thought, to win the war. It is well that you should know that; and if any should doubt the truth of that, let me say that in our meeting in Seattle, Washington, a young man waited at the close of the meeting and told us, "I saw the sovereigns personally in Germany during the war; I was a resident in Germany when the war broke out, and I have seen the tower in which that money was stored, and I was told by the guards the purpose for which the money was being saved." So the evidence is hardly disputable, when entirely unsolicited testimony has been given and placed in our hands.

If any should ask what is really so wrong with Ireland that the land teems with unrest and sedition, perhaps the answer is that three-fourths of Ireland is really suffering from ignorance. A Canadian Colonel walked into a meeting in Chicago at which some of us were talking, and when the minister finished speaking he said, "I want to add a word." We did not know whether he was going to criticize or contradict our words, but he said something like this:-"When I was in France I determined I would go over to Ireland and find out what all this Irish trouble was about." He then said that he had toured the South and West of Ireland for a fortnight, and wherever he went the people would look at his colored badges and say to him, "You are from Canada; what are you fighting for England for? Why can't you let England fight for herself ?" He would say to them, "This is not England's war, it is Canada's war; it is everybody's war; these Germans will not spare you any more than they will spare Canada if they win." The people did not know; I have lived among them, and I am bound to say that hundreds and thousands of them were lamentably, pitifully, ignorant of the real issues.

Now, if you want to discover the source of that ignorance that has prevented the bulk of my countrymen from knowing the real minds, their real foes that are leading them astray and carrying them away by a most pitiful and thin, agitation for an Irish Republic, let me tell you that our educational system in Ireland is entirely wrong. We have a system of clerically controlled education; and while I am not here to raise religious issues, let me tell you that, in that system of education. there is a propaganda of anti-British teaching in our elementary schools in Ireland that is practically responsible for all this ignorance and all this bitterness of feeling today. If you could read those school books, you would be staggered that the British Government allows such anti-British teaching to have a place in the school books of the country. For example, there is one school book which describes an ancestor of the English entering Ireland in the twelfth century, and speaking of the imaginary peace and prosperity that the country then had until the English came on. He says, "So it all flourished till the spoiler, Christless more than Huns or Jews, came, and now the wolf and Saxon shared the wreck between the two." And he goes on to say this, with fine sarcasm, of the growing lads that read this book, "But their King will be your Father, and will furnish you meat and garments, gyves and fetters from the dungeons of his misbegotten race." Would your Government at Ottawa permit itself to be spoken of as a misbegotten race, in any schoolbook of this country? Well, if you want to know the secret of Irish agitation and unrest, it is not that the country is suffering any real grievance, but that, under our system of clerical-controlled education in Ireland, the most insidious and baneful anti-British teaching has had a place in the school. When that kind of teaching is given in threefourths of the country do you wonder that the state of Ireland is what it is? As the Chairman has suggested, all that Ireland needs at the moment for her order and peace is that the British Government will fulfil the first function of government, and that is, to govern. (Applause)

When we were in other parts of North America a number of men in Toronto besought us to come, insisted that we should come, and we are very glad that they did insist, and that we are here. I thank you, Fellow Loyalists, for all you have done for us, for the welcome you have given us; and when we go back we will say, in that word that was the secret of Lord Strathcona's success, we will say to our friends in Ulster, "Craigillachie"-Hold on," for Canada and Toronto are behind you. (Loud applause)

My. Chairman and Fellow-Countrymen,-Wherever you come from, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, or are Canadian-born, I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the wonderful welcome which you have given to our delegation. We shall never forget it as long as life lasts.

This has been a most marvellously interesting tour, and it is wonderfully interesting to meet you. I said so yesterday, and I say it again, that to meet you is just like meeting ourselves; you are we, and we are you; whether you be the sons of Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, Welshmen, wherever you come from, you are Canada, and Canada-why, that is Britain. (Applause) We shall never forget you and the part you played, your own great heroic part; we shall never forget the tragedy and the glory of Canada's part. Your sons fought and suffered and died. Many lie in yonder graves; some of us have seen them: they dot yonder Western front; they are your memorials; you will keep them in most loving and reverential affection.

We can recall the sweep of your great movement over the tides. Your boys seemed to blow the earth-fog over the waves in their eagerness to cross and obey the call of the Old Mother who summoned her Children from afar. Your cities emptied themselves, and your wide spaces gave up their boys. It needs not that I should speak a word of Canada;- Canada's story is part of the great epoch of the war, her story is part of the annals of that great conflict that has changed the courses of the tides of civilization. You need not explain your part; it stands amidst the perpetual records in the greatness and the glory and the grandeur of it.

One day I was talking to a number of black boys, coloured gentlemen in France; they were gunners, and most excellent fighting men. I was-I don't know that you would call it preaching to them-but we were talking together, and in the midst of our talk I turned to one of the blackest of them-he was as black as my coat-and I said, "What is your name?" and like a shot, he replied, "Duncan McIntyre." (Great laughter) I said, "Oh, Caledonia, she has placed her marks upon all civilization; the ends of the earth come to her and claim her!" I said, "Duncan McIntyre, put it there, brother; blood is thicker than water." (Great laughter)

I am glad for the call of the blood. We have looked into your eyes, Gentlemen, as we have gone abroad over your great continent, and whether in Canada or the United States, and wherever we have seen you, east or west, north or south, do you know, we can see the very soul looking out of your eyes; and we carry sometimes in our faces, and we carry in our hearts, something of the vision of the mountain and the glen and the rushing torrent. You hear in our voices the accents of the home tongue that you have never forgotten even though your stay in Canada or in the United States has been long. And we look into your faces, you men of Canada, and read the great tale you have to tell, the tale of the journey over the deep, the tale of the vast endeavour that built these great cities. You have the tale of the pioneer in your eyes, the tale of the long trek, and the great adventure you Englishmen and Scotchmen and Welshmen and Irishmen. You and we represent Britannia Britannia marching out to the very ends of the earth encompassing the wide spaces, forging new shapes, moulding new civilizations; and so we belong to one another, and I would say, "Put it there." (Loud applause) It matters not where Britannia's sons wander; somehow the old home-call is there.

We carry a message. You will give to us new notes to that message, and I believe, after all, that which joins us is not policies and not politics, not schemes of gain. Brethren, I think we are joined by something more sacred than that. I remember hearing Robertson of the West telling a story when he came over to Britain. He said that, in his journeying over the wide spaces, it was his duty to gather the outpost families into fellowship farmers in Manitoba and Saskatchewan and Alberta. When word came that Robertson was to hold a meeting, somewhere from the lonely shacks, ten or twenty or perhaps fifty miles, they came and trekked along the trail. They gathered from the distances to meet Robertson, who would read in the little shack, perhaps this Psalm :-

I joyed when to the House of God,

Go up, they said to me;

Jerusalem, within thy gates

Our feet shall standing be.

Jerusalem as a city is

Compactly built together

And to that place the tribes go up,

The tribes of God go thither.

And Robertson said he would not be through the reading till, here and there and yonder, an old man or an old woman would break into tears and cry at the music of the psalm. They wept at the music of the sacred song. It brought up Jerusalem-Jerusalem of God, this building with foundations in Canada and in Britain, and wherever the wondrous Anglo-Saxon speech is spoken, or wherever the sons of earth cry out their wistful yearnings to Almighty God, that is Britannia.

And after all, that is what binds us. We leave you, and we pray and hope -I am sure it is true-somehow of seeing Him who is invisible. You break the Bread of Life with us. Brethren, we have eaten that bread and we have drunk that cup. It is a mystic cup, that unseen business amongst the nations of them whom Christ has bought. We shall continue to eat it, the bread, the fellowship, the comradeship and love. It is the cup of the nations, and we shall drink that mystic cup of fellowship, and by that sign, that wondrous sign, we are held together until He appears unto whom is the gathering of the nations. (Applause)

The President expressed the thanks of the Club to the several speakers.