“Ireland’s Case” (ca. 1920)

“Ireland’s Case: An American and International Problem” is a pamphlet written by Richard W. Wolfe (1866–1951), an Irish immigrant and prominent Chicago businessman and secretary of the Irish Freedom Fund, which published this piece sometime during the Anglo-Irish War.

The demand for liberty is not only a sentiment, it is something more—it springs from the desire to live, the instinct of self-preservation, the sense of self-respect. It is only those with the slave mind who do not crave liberty.

Racial Handicap

Twenty millions of American citizens of Irish blood demand liberty not only for the race in Ireland but liberty for themselves here in America. No degree of financial or business prosperity, or success in other ways, no degree of superiority of mind or character, can save a man or woman of the Irish race from the humiliations and insults which is the fate of the people in servitude.

Who has not felt the hot blood of resentment at the depraved spectacle of the “stage Irishman,” the slurs in the motion picture, the attacks in the newspapers, in books and magazines, and by lectures and public speakers. Some of these attacks are sly and subtle, some open and brutal.

British Propaganda

It is all due to British propaganda, for which England spends millions in America. The stage Irishman was manufactured in the English music hall, just as the very recent slander, that the Irish have been slackers in the war, has been manufactured in London for American consumption. It makes no difference with the British propagandist that Provost Marshall Crowder officially disclosed the fact that the percentage of Irish who waived exemption to fight for America is very much higher than that of English, Scotch, Welch, Belgian, Canadian, French or Italian.

Character Assassination

The British motive for the character assassination of the Irish in America is obvious. Britain wants to maintain her strangle-hold upon Ireland, and to do this Britain thinks it advisable to strangle the Irish race in America, as elsewhere around the world, in order to minimize their influence.

American ideals and Irish ideals are identical—liberty for others as well as liberty for ourselves. The English ideal means liberty for the Englishman, but not for his neighbor. No true American can be opposed to Irish liberty. Those who are against it would be against Washington were they living in his day.

The separation of Ireland from England would remove the motive for British opposition, the result of which is, that it takes ten, twenty or forty percent more brain and more energy for people of Irish blood to accomplish the same things than it requires from people of other races.

This separation would be a benefit to England, and the English people, as it would be a benefit to Ireland and the Irish race. It would remove friction among races that would otherwise be friendly. Besides, as the Irish race in America constitutes one-fifth of its population, it goes without saying, that injury to this portion of America’s population means injury to the entire nation. A portion of a community cannot suffer without corresponding loss to the entire community.

Political Discrimination

To illustrate the handicap of the Irish element in America permit me to draw attention to the present Democratic administration. There is not a man of the race in the President’s cabinet, although there are two men in it born under the British flag. This is so, notwithstanding the fact that it is said more than eighty per cent of the Irish vote go to the Democratic party, and that this vote is the backbone of the party in the North. In this regard, the present administration is no exception to former ones, and only illustrates the difficulties under which the face labors because of English hostility.

Foreign propaganda is Britain’s high art, as to “divide and conquer” is Britain’s pet policy. How well she has succeeded in America in this policy of divide and conquer, setting race against race, in hostile camps, is a tribute to her skill, as it is a cause for alarm to us who love the Republic.

Let it be always remembered that there is not now, and there never has been any quarrel between the people of Ireland and the people of England. The British soldiers in Ireland who are shooting down the Irish people are not doing so of their own will. They are sent to do this, just as the German soldiers were sent to shoot the people of Belgium, while there was no enmity between the simple Belgian peasants and the honest people of Germany.

God intended that men and races should be free, and whoever robs them of that right invokes for their own destruction the anger of God and man.

English People Just

The English people are justice loving and generous, and they are fighting against the autocracy of England just as the German people were struggling against the autocracy of Prussia. The brutal autocracies of Prussia, Austria and Russia have been swept away. The British Empire alone, with the Japanese Empire, stands as the only survival of medieval autocracy. Britain is ruled by a caste system, all the propaganda and camouflage about British democracy to the contrary, notwithstanding. Britain is ruled by a hereditary House of Lords, some 580 members, more than 500 of whom are English, and to which Bishops of the Church of England belong. The King is their head, not the representative of democracy. The law of primogeniture and entail still prevails in England. Twenty families in England own two-thirds of the land of England. Land in England is worth less now than it was a generation ago. There are fewer than 100,000 owners of land in England, while there are 8,000,000 of land owners in France. In the year 1907 there were less than 2,000,000 of people working on the lands of England, while in the same year there were 20,000,000 of people employed on the lands of Germany. Twenty-five percent of the people who died in England, before the war, were buried in paupers’ graves, while one-third of the people there were constantly up against the starvation line.

Caste System

Against this brutal caste system, and the deplorable conditions it has produced in England, the great masses of the English people are now, and have always been struggling. It is this blind, greedy, merciless, caste system which has its heel upon the neck of Ireland. While the results in England are bad, the results in Ireland are, of course, far worse. When the Englishman leaves his native country the doors of opportunity are open to him; when the Irishman leaves his native land, being of a subject race, the doors of opportunity are closed against him, largely. The Irish tone of voice is called a brogue, and is ridiculed; the Englishman’s voice is called an “accent” and is imitated. If England were put in Ireland’s place, and Ireland in England’s place, the terms “brogue” and “accent” would be transposed, and the Englishman would soon realize what servitude meant, as the Irishman would realize what liberty meant. Because of limited opportunities, and not because of inferior brain, the average man of fifty in Ireland knows less about business and the practical affairs of the world than a much younger man in other countries that are progressive and prosperous.

Population

The grievances of Ireland are not ancient, they are now present. In the year 1800 the population of Ireland was 6,000,000, while the population of England was 8,000,000. In the year 1847 the population of Ireland was 9,000,000. Now the population of Ireland is less than 4,500,000, while the population of England is 36,000,000. The decay of the population is an arrow sign of the decay of the country in other ways, industrially, socially, educationally. The population of Ireland, measured by that of other European countries, such as Belgium, should be 25,000,000 to 30,000,000. Belgium, with a population of 8,000,000, is only one third the size of Ireland and has less resources than Ireland.

Ireland has an area fifty per cent greater than the combined area of Belgium and Holland, and is larger than Denmark and Switzerland, and is larger than Denmark and Switzerland combined. Ireland’s current revenue is equal to the combined revenues of Denmark, Switzerland, Norway and Greece, and is only twenty-five per cent less than that of Spain. Ireland is reported to have the least crime of any European country, but her government is the most expensive. A British Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, a mere figurehead, gets an annual salary of $125,000, considerably larger than that of the President of the United States, whose salary is $75,000 per annum; other official salaries of British appointed officials are correspondingly high.

Commercial Advantage

When the commerce of the world turned from the East to the West, from the valley of the Ganges toward the valley of the Mississippi, Great Britain and Ireland, because of their geographical location, became, in the highway of commerce, what the busiest corner of the busy centre of city life is to the great city; what, for example, the corner of State and Madison streets is to Chicago.

It is to this natural advantage, and not to British arms, British diplomacy, nor British superiority in other ways, that England’s greatness is due. The British flag, British diplomacy and British arms have followed, and not preceded British business. There is plenty proof of British blundering in diplomacy and arms. But business never sleeps, it is ever alert, it is ever calculating, cold, brutal, bloody.

This British superiority is a myth. Could there be any proof of this more convincing than is supplied by the fact that England, with all her advantages, in a short generation was rapidly losing her trade, at home and abroad, to Germany, a country away from the sea, and with a soil worn out and poor and much of it utterly barren? No! England’s wealth is not produced by England’s brain and muscle; it is wrung from the sweat and toil of others.

English Exploitation

It is the tragedy not alone of a race or of nation, but the tragedy of all mankind that one burly, bully nation stands over the world to strike down any particular nation that rises by reason of hard work, industry, economy, patience and perseverance, thereby arousing the jealousy and inviting destruction by the powerful one. It is the super trust, the trust of all trusts, depriving the world of the blessings of the growth of mind, of discoveries and inventions, and the development of natural and human resources. England has excluded Ireland from the advantage of commercial location on the highway of the seas, and has monopolized the advantage all to herself. So that, were you to ship an automobile, a piano, a chair or table from America to Ireland the articles must first go to England, that the English merchant may get his profit. Ireland is the closest point to America, but merchant ships do not land at Irish ports, although Irish ports are unexcelled by any in the world. England is a great nation, not because of any inherent superiority of her people, but because of the advantages of commercial location.

Excess Taxation

Besides, England is imposing a tax upon Ireland of approximately $100,000,000 a year more than it takes to run the government of Ireland. And further, a British commission, appointed to investigate the subject, reported that England had taken from Ireland in excess taxation about $1,600,000,000. The business England did before the war with Ireland was second only to that with the United States. With the United States the business done annually by England in round figures, was $775,000,000; with Ireland, $675,000,000; with Germany, $600,000,000; with France, $300,000,000. So that with the profit from this business, together with the amount of excess taxation, it may be fairly estimated that England’s profit from an enslaved Ireland is $200,000,000 a year. Even so, it is the policy of blind greed for England to enslave Ireland, because a free Ireland, prosperous and fully populated, would be yet a more profitable customer and certainly a better friend for England.

Blockade

The blockade of Ireland’s ports and commerce by England has been more effective than was the blockade of Germany during the Great War by the Allies. To prove this statement you may turn to page 74 of “The Stateman’s Year Book,” a British publication, and there you will find that of the total annual export business of the United Kingdom, before the War, England, Scotland and Wales did 99.7 per cent, while Ireland did .3 per cent. Let your mind rest for a moment upon that statement that you may get part at least of the tragedy therein revealed,—Ireland’s part of the export business of the United Kingdom less than one-third of one per cent!

Do you find here the force of British propaganda about a prosperous Ireland?

Scotland

It is said Scotland is content—why not Ireland? This is thrown up for camouflage and propaganda. Those who say this know well the reasons. There have never been any hostile, alien settlements of Englishmen in Scotland, as there have been of Scotch and English in Ireland.

In Scotland the law is administered by Scotch men, the schools managed, the banks and railroads owned, the board of trade and stock exchanges controlled by Scotch. In Ireland, an alien and hostile minority administers alien law, owns the railroads and the banks, controls the school system, the boards of trade and the stock exchanges, holds itself aloof from the national life and maintains hostility to the aspirations of the great majority of the people. This minority proclaims itself the garrison in Ireland of the British ruling class. Suppose Germany or England conquered this country, and planted on the north-east corner of it a hostile settlement to govern, control and exploit the rest of us, how should we feel? We hear much of the hyphenated American, but the hyphenated American is devoted to America and the flag. The hyphenate in Ireland is different; he fights the interests of the country in which he lives.

This intolerant and intolerable minority has nothing in common with the numbers of others who came to Ireland at various times from Scotland and England, and who have become more Irish than the Irish themselves.

Religious Question

The religious issue in Ireland is a pretext of the British propagandist. Were there no other proof of this, it would be sufficient to know that for the past hundred years nearly all the leaders of national Ireland against British rule have been Protestants.

The fight against Ireland, in a word, comes from a combination of the caste system and the economic exploiters in England. This same infamous combination is threatening the very life of our Republic. To save our republican institutions, and to save the Irish race from threatened extinction, is a cause which appeals to all lovers of liberty, to all who believe in the principle of self-determination—the right of peoples to choose the form of government under which they live and for which we went to war and spent our blood and treasure. This appeal to the hearts of red blooded Americans, of whatever race, cannot be in vain.

We rejoice with the other races who have recently secured their liberty—the Poles, Jews, Bohemians and the others whose names are less familiar to us in America. We congratulate them that the securing of their liberty did not interfere with Britain’s plans, because if it did their aspiration for liberty would not now be realized.

Irish Republic

The people of Ireland, in a peaceful and orderly manner, have set up a republican form of government. This was done by means of the ballot under English law and the supervision of English officials. As we have given our sympathy and support to the other races to secure their liberty, we also give to the people of Ireland our sympathy and support to maintain their liberty. Surely, the claims upon us for support from other races in their struggle for liberty cannot be greater than the claims of the people of Ireland.

The slave minded everywhere are the despair of the men of spirit who try to break the chains that bind them. The victims of oppression are often the uncompromising supporters of the oppression from which they suffer. They are attracted to wealth and power as the moths are drawn to the flame that singes them. They may be found sitting on the bench of the court of law, or on the bench of the cobbler. The freedom spirit is not a thing of the mind; it is in the blood.

God intended that men and races should be free, and whoever robs them of that right invokes for their own destruction the anger of God and. man.

Cowards and slaves will falter, those whose blood is streaked with yellow will cringe as they have done in every age and every land, but the spirit of Irish liberty has come down through the centuries, unbroken, unterrified, and no power on earth can stop it until the Republican flag, serene and secure, floats under the soft blue sky of Ireland, over a people, proud, prosperous and happy, and then millions of men and women of Irish blood, the world over, joined by the lovers of liberty of all races, will send up to heaven from bursting hearts their ringing song of joy.

EMMETT’S EPITAPH WILL THEN BE WRITTEN.

Source: James E. Murray Papers, Mss 091, Series I, Box 299, Folder 5.

Top of the page: “Headquarters of the American Commission on Irish Independence and Friends of Irish Freedom, New York, c. 1920” (National Museum of Ireland)