From Our Own Correspondent. DUBLIN.
IRELAND WELCOMED A DISTINGUISHED VISITOR IN MR. JOSEPH P. KENNEDY, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO ENGLAND, WHO HAS JUST PAID A FLYING VISIT TO IRELAND, IN THE COURSE OF WHICH HE MADE A BRILLIANT SPEECH, THE TONE OF WHICH WAS AS MUCH WELCOMED IN ENGLAND AS IN IRELAND.
The National University conferred an honorary degree on this eminent scion of the race.
President Hyde received Mr. Kennedy, who also visited the Apostolic Nuncio. Later there was a banquet at the Castle, which was attended by Ministers and diplomatic representatives, includ ing Mgr. Robinson, U.F.M.
" If there are two countries in the world that bid fair to live on terms of close intimacy in the future," said Mr. de Valera, proposing Mr. Kennedy's health, " these two countries are ours and yours. We have common ideals, and we are proud to think that our people in your country have played a great part in moulding these ideals."
Replying to the toast, Mr. Kennedy said: " This town of Dublin, this land of Ireland, is sacred soil to me. From this land my ancestors came to the New World.
" There we received the liberty to earn our bread in the sweat of our brows, to worship God as we chose, to have no place denied to us that was rightly ours by virtue of industry, ability and character. But this did not dim the memory of Ireland. It did not take any part away from our spiritual devotion to the shamrock soil—a devotion which the people of my own country, and the people of the nation to which 1 am now accredited, respect as they do their own deepest allegiances.
" All Three Nations Desire Peace " " There is another sense of comity that fills me today, another sense of harmony which fuses all that I am and also all that I feel for this land, the mother of my race; for Great Britain, the area of my immediate activity, and for the United States, my native country of my first loyalty. This sense of comity flows from the fact that all three nations, which in this vital moment touch my being, stand out among the nations of the earth in their desire for peace, for individual liberty, for acceptance of the true humanist doctrine of live and let live.
" This being so, I come to Dublin in the happy consciousness that 1 can put wholly aside my brief diplomatic garment and say what is in my mind. I need not conceal my high admiration for Great Britain and its people, my sentimental attachment to this soil and to you. I need not seek recourse in polite or political phrases. 1 can say, and I do say, that nothing could be more in keeping with my nativity, my ancestry and my official position than to express the feelings of ancient homage and love in this presence.
"Perchance my thrill and emotion are the greater because this is the first visit 1 have paid to the land of my forefathers. I stand upon this Irish earth with even greater pride in the progress of the state of Ireland because of a choice recently made among you. Need 1 say that the choice to which I refer was that of Doctor Douglas Hyde to be President of the State, an act that is eloquent of that brotherhood and tolerance which remain the hope of mankind in an angry world.
Place in the Sun for All
" Between my country and Great Britain there have been two wars. Happily, there is never to be another.
" Between this land of my fathers and the British there have been many wars. Happily, there is never to be another,
" The broad Atlantic washes all our shores. To us it is Mare Nostrum, and, as I consider the policies of your great leader, Eamon de Valera, of the British Crown and Prime Minister, and of the eminent statesman, President Roosevelt, who is my chief, 1 see a joined determination that blood shall not flow in this ocean again, the blood of brothers; that there is sufficient place in the sun for all of us; and that God, Whom we all worship, is to us the same in spiritual concept.
" His spirit fills minster, church and cathedral, and to us all He is transeendant as the Prince of Peace. From many vain battlefields we have come to Him at last as children of His highest purpose. May He help us to achieve this purpose."