But in the light of modern research and scholarly devotion to truth such old world falsehoods and misrepresentations are being doomed to the oblivion that awaits all such evil doing. The causes and ideals for which Irishmen have lived, fought, suffered and died, need no apologist or vindicator, ancient, mediæval or modern, since St. Patrick’s time, at least. These causes have been mainly God, country, truth and freedom. It was Ireland’s devotion to her ideals and her sacrificial tenacity to her causes which, of course, led to England’s merciless, wholesale confiscation of Irish lands and estates, when she had gained sufficient mastery there by her Norman intrigues. During the reign of James I., Irish commerce and about all Irish industries were destroyed in like manner. The Irish schools in which English princes and kings had received their first lessons in classical learning were leveled to the ground, and the schoolmasters forced to teach under hawthornes and hedges. But even this did not, as was intended by the destroyer, quite destroy the love of culture in the Irish heart. Nor did the English soldiers’ desecration of the sanctuaries and the banishment of the priests in the least hinder the continuance of God’s eternal truth. Men died manfully for it. But the truth lived on and became more true because of their martyrdom.
In every land to which these “wild geese” bore their messages of those eternal verities for which they were banished from their own country, their Irish ideals have, under a more human tolerance than that from which they flew, been steadily extending and exerting more beneficent influences over the lives of men and nations. This could not have been otherwise. Here, where they came more numerously for a century or more than was the emigration from nearly all the rest of Europe together, Irish ideals of the form of the modern elective system of government have been more dominantly interwoven into the web of our national life, more obvious still is the heritage of ancient Celtic culture to be seen in American art, literature and hospitality. Too faintly, perhaps, is it felt in poetry or heard in music, as if, as in Goldsmith’s time, “they wept their own decline.” Yet, as the old art spirit seems now to be steadily regaining its wonted power, it may shortly overcome the evil commercial craze which now infests the earth.
Oxford University, in which, as I have said before, the great Scotus Erigena first established the beginning of classical learning in England, is now having prepared for publication a volume of prose and verse to be printed in fac simile from old Celtic manuscripts, preserved in the great Bodleian library. This is being done under the direction of the great German scholar, Kunz Meyer. He is writing an introduction and notes to the work. No other man living, not even Dr. Douglas Hyde himself, is a more profound Gaelic scholar or a more ardent lover of that Gaelic culture which, as has been seen, did so much toward the enlightenment of the world, than he.
There are many other notable instances of the healthy and vigorous revival of the Gaelic culture spirit and language which space forbids being here added. The selfless interest and liberal aid taken in and extended to this movement by men of other races evinces the fact that it is more of a world-wide out-reaching for the lost inestimable treasures of what the movement means than any narrow exploitation of the achievements of a single race. If, by means of it we shall succeed in expurgating the histories of the civilized world of such pernicious falsehoods as that of Hume’s, we shall certainly have conferred a lasting benefit upon mankind.
THE LATE COL. JOHN F. FINERTY.
BY P. T. BARRY.
Col. John F. Finerty, who died in Chicago on June 10, 1908, was born in Ireland in 1846. In his youth he became connected with the Irish revolutionary movement and was forced to leave Ireland in consequence. He arrived in America in 1864 and immediately joined a New York volunteer regiment in which he served until its disbandment.
Mr. Finerty became connected with the Chicago daily press in 1866. In 1876 he was detailed by Editor Storey of The Times to accompany the column of General Crook against the hostile Sioux and Cheyenne Indian tribes. He was present at most of the Indian battles of that memorable year and was especially mentioned by General Crook in orders for good conduct in the field.
In 1877 he wrote up, among other things, the Rio Grande frontier trouble from both the Texan and Mexican sides of the river. In 1879 he made an almost complete tour of old Mexico, traveling on horseback or by buckboard from the capitol to El Paso del Norte. In July of that year he joined General Miles’ expedition against the Sioux in Montana, crossed the British line and visited the hostile village of Sitting Bull. In October he accompanied General Merritt’s column, operating against the Ute Indians, who had murdered Agent Meeker and killed Major Thornburgh in Colorado. In 1880 he made a complete tour of the southern states and later wrote up the country traversed by the Canadian and Northern Pacific Railroads, then in process of construction.
In 1882 Colonel Finerty severed his connection with the Chicago daily press and founded the Chicago Citizen, which he edited until his death. He was elected to congress in that year and distinguished himself in the House by effective speeches in advocacy of the new navy and coast fortifications bills. In 1884 he supported Mr. Blaine for the presidency. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Parnell in his struggle for Irish autonomy and was twice elected president of the United Irish League of the United States.