April 21st. After mass at Castletown, Bear Haven, Father Brennan ordered his flock to resist conscription, take the sacrament, and to be ready to resist to the death; such death insuring the full benediction of God and his Church. If the police resort to force, let the people kill the police as they would kill any one who threatened their lives. If soldiers came in support of the draft, let them be treated like the police. Policemen and soldiers dying in their attempt to carry out the draft law, would die the enemies of God, while the people who resisted them would die in peace with God and under the benediction of his Church.
Father Lynch said in church at Ryehill: “Resist the draft by every means in your power. Any minion of the English Government who fires upon you, above all if he is a Catholic, commits a mortal sin and God will punish him.”
In the chapel at Kilgarvan Father Murphy said: “Every Irishman who helps to apply the draft in Ireland is not only a traitor to his country, but commits a mortal sin against God’s law.”
At mass in Scariff the Rev. James MacInerney said: “No Irish Catholic, whatever his station be, can help the draft in this country without denying his faith.”
April 28th. After having given the communion to three hundred men in the church at Eyries, County Cork, Father Gerald Dennehy said: “Any Catholic who either as policeman or as agent of the government shall assist in applying the draft, shall be excommunicated and cursed by the Roman Catholic Church. The curse of God will follow him in every land. You can kill him at sight, God will bless you and it will be the most acceptable sacrifice that you can offer.”
Referring to any policeman who should attempt to enforce the draft, Father Murphy said at mass in Killenna, “Any policeman who is killed in such attempt will be damned in hell, even if he was in a state of grace that very morning.”
Ninety-five percent of those Irish policemen were Catholics and had to respect the commands of those priests.
Ireland is England’s business, not ours. But the word “self-determination” appears to hypnotize some Americans. We must not be hypnotized by this word. It is upon the “principle” expressed in this word that our sympathies with the Irish Republic are asked. The six northeastern counties of Ulster, on the “principle” of self-determination, should be separated from the Irish Republic. But the Green Irish will not listen to that. Protestants in Ulster had to listen in their own chief city to Sinn Fein rejoicings over German victories. The rebellion of 1916, when Sinn Fein opened the back door that England’s enemies might enter and destroy her—this dastardly treason was made bloody by cowardly violence. The unarmed and the unsuspecting were shot down and stabbed in cold blood. Later, soldiers who came home from the front, wounded soldiers too, were persecuted and assaulted. The men of Ulster don’t wish to fall under the power of the Green Irish.
“We do not know whether the British statesmen are right in asserting a connection between Irish revolutionary feeling and German propaganda. But in such a connection we should see no sign of a bad German policy.” Thus wrote a Prussian deputy in Das Grossere Deutschland. That was over there. This was over here:—
“The fraternal understanding which unites the Ancient Order of Hibernians and the German-American Alliance receives our unqualified endorsement. This unity of effort in all matters of a public nature intended to circumvent the efforts of England to secure an Anglo-American alliance have been productive of very successful results. The congratulations of those of us who live under the flag of the United States are extended to our German-American fellow citizens upon the conquests won by the fatherland, and we assure them of our unshaken confidence that the German Empire will crush England and aid in the liberation of Ireland, and be a real defender of small nations.” See the Boston Herald of July 22, 1916.