El Arish

“ One has often wondered whether they existed except in our imaginations; but the Anzac likes to conduct war in his own way, and if somewhat casual about details, many a Turk will witness that he has a firm grasp on the essentials. We felt justified in relaxing somewhat our usual vigilance and spent a peaceful night. Long before dawn, however, the cavalry had moved off with uncanny speed and quietness, and surrounded el Arish before daylight, after a brilliant ride over unknown, unmapped, and very difficult country in the dark. ”

“ Within the next few days they attacked the Turks at Maghdaba and Rafa—each thirty miles from el Arish—inflicting heavy defeats and capturing many prisoners in each case. The story of all this has been well told by Mr. Massy in The Desert Campaigns. But the unhappy infantry had of necessity to be left out.
One great service the cavalry invasion did render us. The Australian light horseman has the bump of acquisitiveness even better developed than the Lowland infantryman, and having a horse on which he can hang his trophies he can give this penchant greater scope. ”

“ No, ladies and gentlemen, the lost Irish tribes of the South are not lost; they are not lost any more than the “wild geese” that flew across the Channel from Ireland were lost. They are not lost any more than the McMahons who went to France, or the O’Donnells who went to Spain, or the Simon Bolivars and the O’Higgins who went to South America, or the O’Farrells and the O’Briens who went to Cuba. For their Irish blood is of the strain that cannot be extinguished and it lives to-day, thank God, in the attributes and the habits and the customs and the traditions of the Southern people. ”

“ The period of independence found a small number of Irish residents in Buenos Ayres, mostly patrician families, such as Dillon, MacMurrough, Murphy, French, O'Gorman, Orr, Butler, O'Shee, who had been exiled or had fled from Ireland and obtained the king of Spain's permission to settle in Spanish America. The descendants of these families are now so intermarried in the country that they have mostly forgotten the language and traditions of their ancestors; but they occupy high positions in political, legal, and commercial circles. ”

“ Were Ireland free to-morrow, we would continue our lives as Americans. Our numbers and interests are so great and so deep here that, paraphrasing the words of your distinguished national leader, we can't spare a single Irish-American. But, nevertheless, we leave others to greet you as a cosmopolitan, as a poet, as a novelist, as a historian; and we speak the welcome of the heart, because we Irish-Americans are proud of you as an Irishman. We know how hard it is for one living under the British Crown to be at once an Irish patriot and a successful man of letters. ”

“ But that tales of one country, or one race, should have had a peculiar ability to diffuse themselves, wanting to all others, is a proposition that tries one's faith. Reverting again to the analogy already used, we know that there are animals common to India and Ireland whose original home was in neither country. There are men of the same Aryan descent by the Shannon and by the Indus whose ancestors had not their first common habitation by either river. And the folk-tales, so far as they are Aryan, did not originate south of the Himalayas, or west of the Irish Sea. But they cannot all be Aryan. ”

“ I, too, would like to see the Irish in possession of Ireland, but for other reasons. First and chiefly, because they are good patriots, and, though in a foreign land, even naturalized Americans, they do not forget their beloved country. Americans though they be in their new home, they yet remain Irish. They give their allegiance to America; but their hearts remain true to Ireland.
What a contrast to the Germans whom you find in the United States! These forget their mother-tongue, and their children do not speak it. They abuse their country. ”

“ It would not be difficult to give a reason why from a poor country like Ireland, with its two antagonistic races, there should have been such a noteworthy exodus to the new El Dorado. These Anglo-Irish, high-minded, courageous, well-educated, energetic, and born with the instincts of a governing race, were exactly the kind of men to take the chief part in the founding and ruling of new colonies, such as those which had been so magically called into existence, by the gold discoveries at the Antipodes. ”

“ He had accomplished the chief object of his visit, that of seeing for himself the great possibilities of a region toward which he hoped to divert the stream of Irish-American emigration. He saw how the energetic and honest men of his race, starting with no capital but their native "bone and sinew and brain," had prospered beyond their wildest dreams in the new, fair land, whose balmy climate resembled that of their birthplace. ”

“ Our greatest living philosopher tells us that Progress is not continuous, but rhythmic, like the waves of the sea, and that there is the ebb as well as the flow. And so, underlying this much-vexed "Irish Question," we should all train ourselves to recognise one of those strong, retrogressive forces that must either destroy the Empire, or be itself destroyed; and in this light I trust that this sketch of the "Irish in Australia" is not without political significance to the English and Scottish reader. ”

“ At what precise period what is known as the Scoto-Celtic branch of the great Aryan stock broke away from its parent tree, by what route its migrants travelled, in what degree of consanguinity it stood to the equally Celtic race or races of Britain, what sort of people inhabited Ireland previous to the first Aryan invasion--all this is in the last degree uncertain, though that it was inhabited by some race or races outside the limits of that greatest of human groups seems from ethnological evidence to be perfectly clear. ”

“ A man rising in the middle of the audience, exclaimed, with the accent of Ireland in his tones: "Imps of hell unchained, banqueting in selfish glee upon the heart's blood of the world." It came with the Irish ring in the words, rich and mellow, yet breathing fire and vengeance —vengeance for wrongs seared into the human heart suddenly and forcibly realized. ”

“ Instead of the son who would crown his gray hairs with honor, who would justify him, he was father to a common prize-fighter, a man who was not looked on with respect by any. The idol, perhaps, of the New York Irish, but of the ignorant Irish. True, he was a good boy; he didn't drink. But neither did his father except in reason. He was generous with his money, but, after all, what was money? Always smiling, always laughing. "Sonny" they called him and "Irish"; that was no way to attain dignity. Even the Italian coal-ice-and-wood man called him "Irish." ”

“ The Irish, being mostly Catholics, would not provoke religious hostility among the natives, and their sympathetic and gay temperament would commend them to the nation at large. There is land enough, and to spare, in this favored country for all Ireland, and here the sons of Irishmen would become men of property and influence. There are many Irish names in Mexican history as there are also in Chilian annals. ”

“ To those of my British readers who honestly desire to understand the Irish Question, I would say, let them eschew the sweeping generalisations by which Irish intelligence is commonly outraged. I may pass by the explanation which rests upon the cheap attribution of racial inferiority with the simple reply that our inferior race has much of the superior blood in its veins; yet the Irish problem is just as acute in districts where the English blood predominates as where the people are 'mere Irish.' If this view be disputed, the matter is not worth arguing about, because we cannot be born again. ”

“ It is because, long years ago, before even the Christ-child dwelt among men, Spaniards came to the west coast of Ireland and settled among the people there.
They gave their black hair and dark eyes to the people already in the country, most of [3] whom were fair in face, hair, and eyes. So it happens that sometimes they now have dark hair and blue eyes, and sometimes light hair and dark eyes.
"Norah! Norah, darlint! Come and feed the pigs," called her mother. "They are that hungry they would eat the thatch off the house if they could reach it." ”

“ It has often surprised me the number of Americans who are in New York, whose blood is Irish, and who would show themselves Irish in heart and soul and pocket, if enslaved Ireland was trying to do anything that would be worth assistance or sacrifice. ”

“ The whole theory of life was purely local. The bare right of existence extended only a few miles from your own door, to the men who bore the same name as yourself. Beyond that nothing was sacred; neither age nor sex, neither life nor goods, not even in later times the churches themselves. Like his cousin of the Scotch Highlands, the Irish tribesman's life was one perpetual carnival of fighting, burning, raiding, plundering, and he who plundered oftenest was the finest hero. ”

“ In every great colony it has been spoken from the dais of authority in the accents we love. Nay, more, I met officers in the service of France and Belgium, and some who had served in Austria, indistinguishable from Frenchmen and Germans in their ordinary conversation, who, when they strayed into English, became unmistakably Leinster-men or Munster-men, but none of these Irishmen show the least disposition to merge themselves in any other race. And the millions of our people in America, are they not more Irish than the Irish at home? ”

“ I must at the outset call the reader's special attention to an article entitled "An Australian Example," which appeared in the Contemporary Review of January 1888, from the pen of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, formerly a leader of the "Young Ireland" party, but more recently a politician, and now a pensioner, of the Colony of Victoria; and to a recently published book. The Irish in Australia, by Mr. J. F. Hogan, an Irish- Australian journalist.
I must confess that the effect of this strong dose of Celtic literature on the uninstructed British mind must be truly appalling. ”

“ But for your own gratification we place you on the line of nationality and race—a line that we ourselves are voluntarily obliterating and writing anew as Americans. We are done with Ireland, except in the love and hope we and our children have for her. ”

“ Here three young Irishmen, Charles Francis Meagher, John Boyle O’Reily and John Mitchell, known respectively, as the Irish Orater, Poet and Patriot, fired by love for Free Ireland and Home Rule, earned exile for themselves and left Ireland hurriedly. O’Reily settled in Boston and became a well-known poet and a champion of the North. Meagher settled in New York, and at the outbreak of the War organized the Irish Brigade, of which he was made Brigadier-General. ”

“ The conciliation of America will never be complete until we have achieved the conciliation of Ireland. It is evident, indeed, from many symptoms, that Irish-American hostility to England is declining, if not in rancour, at any rate in influence. Still, a popular New York paper, on St. Patrick's Day, thinks it worth while to propitiate "The Powerful Race of Ireland" by a leader under that heading, and to this effect:
"The Irish race is famous as producing the best fighters and poets among men, and the most beautiful and most virtuous of women. ”

“ Sir Henry Maine, too, has demonstrated that the native laws of Ireland are a mass of archaic Aryan customs. "He has shown that the old forms of Irish life, which he has reconstructed with marvelous skill, have a most striking and curious analogy to those of older races of Aryan descent, in various stages of growth and progress ”

“ The story of the Irish in America, of those millions of Americans who trace their ancestry back to the Emerald Isle, is typical of so many American immigrants, yet is also uniquely influenced by the rich culture of Ireland. Like so many of our forebears, they came to this land seeking a better future. In the process of becoming Americans, they changed themselves, changed America, and changed the world. ”

“ Three times, during the century, Spain was represented at London by men of Irish birth, or Irish origin. The British merchant who found Alexander O'Reilly Governor of Cadiz, or the diplomatist who met him as Spanish ambassador, at the Court of Louis XVI., could hardly look with uninstructed eyes, upon the lot of his humblest namesake in Cavan. This family, indeed, produced a succession of eminent men, both in Spain and Austria. ”

“ I have already adverted to the differences of race which exist in Ireland, more or less masked by the long predominance of the Aryan Gael. Such differences are not confined to Ireland. It is now admitted that the apparent predominance of the Aryan over most of Europe is, to a great extent, one of language merely. Furthermore, the elements which make up our population are found everywhere ”

“ Thured had better have married Bjorn after all!
I forgot to mention that when Gudlief landed on the strange coast, it seemed to him that the inhabitants spoke Irish. Now, there are many antiquaries inclined to believe in the former existence of an Irish colony to the southward of the Vinland of the Northmen. Scattered through the Sagas are several notices of a distant country in the West, which is called Ireland ed Mekla—Great Ireland, or the White Man's land. When Pizarro penetrated into the heart of Mexico, a tradition already existed of the previous arrival of white men from the East. ”