During our Civil War, in 1862, a resolution of sympathy with the South was stifled in Parliament.
On June 6, 1919, our Senate passed, with one dissenting voice, the following, offered by Senator Walsh, democrat, of Massachusetts:
“Resolved, that the Senate of the United States express its sympathy with the aspirations of the Irish people for a government of its own choice.”
What England would not do for the South in 1862, we now do against England our ally, against Ulster, our friend in our Revolution, and in support of England’s enemies, Sinn Fein and Germany.
Ireland has less than 4,500,000 inhabitants; Ulster’s share is about one third, and its Protestants outnumber its Catholics by more than three fourths. Besides such reprisals as they saw wrought upon wounded soldiers, they know that the Green Irish who insist that Ulster belong to their Republic, do so because they plan to make prosperous and thrifty Ulster their milch cow.
Let every fair-minded American pause, then, before giving his sympathy to an independent Irish Republic on the principle of self-determination, or out of gratitude to the Green Irish. Let him remember that it was the Orange Irish who helped us in our Revolution, and that the Orange Irish do not want an independent Irish Republic. There will be none; our interference merely makes Germany happy and possibly prolongs the existing chaos; but there will be none. Before such loyal and thinking Catholics as the gentleman who said to me that word about “spoiling the ship for a ha’pennyworth of tar,” and before a firm and coherent policy on England’s part, Sinn Fein will fade like a poisonous mist.
Chapter XVII: Paint
Soldiers of ours—many soldiers, I am sorry to say—have come back from Coblenz and other places in the black spot, saying that they found the inhabitants of the black spot kind and agreeable. They give this reason for liking the Germans better than they do the English. They found the Germans agreeable, the English not agreeable. Well, this amounts to something as far as it goes: but how far does it go, and how much does it amount to? Have you ever seen an automobile painted up to look like new, and it broke down before it had run ten miles, and you found its insides were wrong? Would you buy an automobile on the strength of the paint? England often needs paint, but her insides are all right. If our soldiers look no deeper than the paint, if our voters look no further than the paint, if our democracy never looks at anything but the paint, God help our democracy! Of course the Germans were agreeable to our soldiers after the armistice!
Agreeable Germany!—who sank the Lusitania; who sank five thousand British merchant ships with the loss of fifteen thousand men, women, and children, all murdered at sea, without a chance for their lives; who fired on boat-loads of the shipwrecked, who stood on her submarine and laughed at the drowning passengers of the torpedoed Falaba.