Irish News Letter

Americans Now in Ireland
MAYBE THEY WILL PROVE THE GO-BETWEENS OF ANGLO-IRISH GOODWILL—WHO KNOWS?
From Our Own Correspondent DUBLIN.
Apart from other considerations, Mr. de Valera's statement on the landing of American Forces in Northern Ireland was necessary, as an answer to certain rumours which have been circulated by hostile parties within Ireland. Enemies of the Irish Government, seeking to add to its difficulties, have spread stories of secret bargains, by which it is alleged that the claim to the national territory has been sold or surrendered.
ft is for this reason, more than for any other, that the Taoiseach evidently felt obliged to issue his declaration that what has been done in the North has been done without consultation with his Government. Had he left any doubt on this point, his Government would have been subject to many suspicions, calculated to damage Its position. Only by renewing the national claim could the principle on which the Government stands be made clear to. all.
As to the implications of the landing— once the Irish position is clarified—there is not much that can be said helpfully. The failure to clear up Partition before the war made complications inevitable, and the importent thing is to strive, by tact and prudence, to turn every new situation to good, instead of to had, use.
Viewing the presence of Americans in the partitioned area with detachment and a hopeful eye. it is possible to see the
potentially good indirect results. The regime of bigotry surely must be modified
,,, when forces of a nation devoted to freedom are present—forces of which the personnel is probably ans.-third Catholic. One hopes that these American sojourners among us may prove the moral intervention long needed to bring about conditions of religious freedom. America may prove the go-between of Anglo-Irish goodw111,—who can tell?
Numbers of the American troops will be treading ancestral soil; for Ulster sent hun
dreds of thousands of migrants to America In the 18th century. The very Presbyterians who defended Derry in the famous siege afterwards migrated to America in disgust at their treatment, and their grandsons fought in thee American Wax of Independence.
TREASON TRIALS?
The Dail, summoned by special requisition, has debated the Emergency Provisions Order, by which Common Law and Statute Low are tiet aside in the trying of certain cases. The Labour leader, Mr. Norton, led in condemning this drone measure. Mr. Costelloe, former Attorney-General in Mr. Cosgrave's idgime, said that call his life's experience in law was denied by this suspension of accumulated law. The Minister for Justice, Mr. Gerald Boland, granted that the course taken by the Government was extreme, but it was necessitated, he said, by extremg circumstances, There were organisations That sought to bring about foreign intervention. lie could not give the evidence for this, but was wen satisfied that it was so. The Government could not have its hands tied in dealing with such a dangerous conspiracy by the refusal of Witnesses to appear, or to give the evidence, when murder was done. Mr. de Valera said the measures taken were required in order to put down " organised murder." There were organisations which sought to involve Ireland, by dealing with certain outsiders— Challenged by Deputy Dillon to say what outsiders were meant, the Taoiseach said that a certain organisation had presumed to declare war in Ireland's name on one of the belligerents. The corollary was obvious. He stated that the heads of the conspiracy would be tried for treason, if sufficient evidence to lay before a court were obtainable. The Government was certain that it had the men, and that they had done what was alleged against them, but the AttorneyGeneral was not satisfied that evidence sufficient for a court could he brought.
This statement by the Ttioiseach is the first hint of a treason trial under Irish law. It suggests that certain interned men would be tried for treason if the Government could secure witnesses Who would stand to their evidence.
NEW ORDER Whether they wished for it or not; whether they could keep out of the war or got dragged into it, whether Germany or Britain won the war, Ireland stood on the eve of a new Order. So said the Rev. Dr. Lucey, of Maynooth, in the opening address in Catholic Social Week at Dublin Mansion House, The Irish people, he said, should, therefore, prepare now, or th.! forces of world revolution which the disbanding of the world's armies would let loose would engulf them and forge for them a new order that would be neither Irish nor Catholic, and would certainly be no better, and probably rather much worse, than what they were living under to-day,
The Catholic Church made no " cure-all " claims for any system she proposed, Dr.
Lucey said, but insiated that reform of social institutions without reform of men's minds and hearts was work in vain, and that there never could be question of an earthly paradise, human nature being what it was. Above all, they must learn to cherish a little more the virtues of justice and charity.
SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION
The trade unions' and ettiPleteers' associations' part in Catholic social reconstruction was discussed by the Rev. E. J. Coyne, S.J., tit the second session of the Social week.
Father Coyne said that the grand strategy of the Popes for the social problem required the co-operation of three different elements— the Church, the State, and those actually concerned immediately in the problem—the workers and the employers. He welcomed positively and constructively the rise of organisations among workers and employers, and thought he was right in saying that the Popes were the tirst statesmen to give such an affirmative and positive greeting to the rise of the trade unions in the second half of the last century.
IF ONLY IT COULD . . .
If Germany could be persuaded to become an equal partner in a Christian European Federation animated by a common European consciousness of its historical and moral unity, peace in Europe would be assured for all time: and with the co-operation of the peace-loving American nations, we should be well on the way to a world-international order.
So said Dr. D. J. Cannon, Kildare, in an address to the Catholic Association for International Relations, in Dublin.
IRISH PRIESTS IN NEW GUINEA The Japanese invasion of New Guinea has a particular interest for Cork, says the Irish Press, as several Cork priests, members of the Irish Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, are working there. No news has been received from these outposts of the Order since hostilities began. At Rabaul are located the headquarters of the New Guinea Mission, with Rev. Father W. Barrow, M.S.C.—a native of Glantore, Mallow, Co. Cork—in charge.
Prescription for Peace
Mgr. McNicholas, Archbishop of Cincinratti, said in a sermon on the war recently: " No magic touch will give us an ordered world. No political, nor even an armed, world organisation of peoples and nations can insure a lasting peace. "A basic condition for such a peace is that the teeming masses of all countries, many hundred millions of people of all nations, must be -given an opportunity to develop in heart and soul; they must not he forced to continue a life and death-struggle in the economic order for a mere existence. They must have time for the higher things of the soul if they are to attain the supreme purpose of their existence."