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  NEW IRELAND PAMPHLETS. NUMBER THREE
  PRICE TWOPENCE


  THE ISSUE
  The Case for Sinn Fein


  BY LECTOR

  AS PASSED BY CENSOR.


  NEW IRELAND PUBLISHING COMPANY, Limited
  13 FLEET STREET, DUBLIN
  1918




THE ISSUE


=INDEPENDENCE.=

Does Ireland wish to be free? Do we alone among the ancient Nations of
Europe desire to remain slaves? That, and that alone, is the question
which every Irish elector has now to answer. Let us put everything else
out of our minds as irrelevant claptrap. Let nothing distract us from this
single issue of Liberty. We must turn a deaf ear to sentimental whining
about what this or that man did, his length of service, his "fighting on
the floor of the House," and so on. Whatever may have been done in the way
of small doles, petty grants, and big talk, the =fact= is that we are not
Free and the =issue= is, Do we want to be Free?

Why should we be afraid of Freedom? Would any sane adult voluntarily
prefer to be a slave, to be completely in the control and power of
another? Men do not willingly walk into jail; why, then, should a whole
people? The men who are =afraid= of national liberty are unworthy even of
personal liberty; they are the victims of that slave mentality which
English coercion and corruption have striven to create in Ireland. When
Mr. John Dillon, grown tremulous and garrulous and feeble, asked for a
national convention this autumn "to definitely forswear an Irish
Republic," he was asking Ireland to commit an act of national apostasy and
suicide. Would =you= definitely forswear your personal freedom? Will Mr.
John Dillon hand his cheque-book and property over to some stranger and
indenture himself as a serf or an idiot? When he does, but not till then,
we shall believe that the Irish Nation is capable of sentencing itself
cheerfully to penal servitude for all eternity.

It was not always thus. "I say deliberately," said Mr. John Dillon at
Moville in 1904, "that I should never have dedicated my life as I have
done to this great struggle, if I did not see at the end of it the
crowning and consummation of our work--A FREE AND INDEPENDENT IRELAND." It
is sad that, fourteen years later, when the end is in sight, Mr. Dillon
should be found a recreant and a traitor to his past creed. The
degeneration of such a man is a damning indictment of Westminsterism.

Parnell, too save for one short moment when he tried by compromise to fool
English Liberalism but was foiled, proclaimed his belief in Irish
Independence.

This is what Parnell said at Cincinatti on 23rd February, 1880:--

    "When we have undermined English misgovernment, we have paved the way
    for Ireland to take her place among the nations of the earth. And let
    us not forget that that is the ultimate goal at which all we Irishmen
    aim. None of us, whether we be in America or in Ireland, or wherever
    we may be, will be satisfied =until we have destroyed the last link
    which keeps Ireland bound to England=."

Were he alive to-day, when the last link is snapping, on what side would
Parnell be? Would he forswear an Irish Republic or would he proclaim once
more, as he said in Cork (21st Jan., 1885): "No man has a right to fix the
boundary of the march of a Nation. No man has a right to say: Thus far
shalt thou go and no farther. And we have never attempted to fix the _ne
plus ultra_ to the progress of Ireland's nationhood and we never shall."


=IRELAND AND SMALL NATIONS.=

At New York 31st August, 1904, John Redmond declared:--

    "If it were in my power to-morrow by any honourable means to
    absolutely emancipate Ireland, I would do it and feel it my duty to do
    it. (1904, not 1914!) I believe it would be just as possible for
    Ireland to have a prosperous and free separate existence as a nation
    as Holland, Belgium, or Switzerland, or other small nationalities. And
    if it were in the power of any man to bring that result about
    to-morrow by honourable and brave means, he would be indeed a coward
    and a traitor to the traditions of his race did he not do so."

If Holland and Poland and all the other little lands, why not Ireland? Put
that straight question to yourself and you must answer it as John Redmond
did in 1904. Are we alone among the nations created to be slaves and
helots? Are we so incompetent and incapable as not to be able to manage
our own country? Is a people of four millions to be in perpetual bondage
and tutelage to a solicitor and a soldier? Did God Almighty cast up this
island as a sandbank for Englishmen to walk on? Is it the sole mission of
Irish men and women to send beef and butter to John Bull?

Look at the other nations and ask yourself, Why not? Why is not Ireland
free? Are we too small in area? We are double Switzerland or Denmark,
nearly three times Holland or Belgium. Is our population too small--though
it was once double? We are as numerous as Serbia, our population is as
large as that of Switzerland and nearly double that of Denmark or Norway.
Does the difficulty lie in our poverty? Are we too poor to exist as a free
people? The revenue raised =per head= in Ireland is double that of any
other small nation, seven times that of Switzerland! The total revenue of
Ireland is ten times that of Switzerland, three times that of Norway, four
times that of Denmark, Serbia or Finland. Yet all these countries have
their own armies, consuls, etc.; they run themselves as free nations at
far below the cost of servile Ireland. Why? Because