Written at the end of each edition of The United Irishman.
ENLISTING IN THE ENGLISH ARMY IS TREASON TO IRELAND.
Go, to find ’mid crime and toil
The doom to which such guilt is hurried!
Go, to leave on Afric’s soil
Your bones unbleached, accursed, unburied!
Go, to crush the just and brave,
Whose wrongs with wrath the world are filling
Go, to slay each brother-slave,
Or spurn the blood-stained Saxon Shilling!
FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN—
The Irishmen in England’s Service who are sent to South Africa will have to fight against Irish Nationalists who have raised Ireland’s flag in the Transvaal, and have formed an Irish Brigade to fight for the Boers against the oppressor of Ireland.
Remember Ninety-eight!
Remember the Penal Laws!
Remember the Famine!
England’s Army is small. Englishmen are not good soldiers. England has to get others to do her fighting for her. In the past Irishmen have too often won battles for England, and saved her from defeat, and thus have riveted the chains upon their motherland! Let them do so no more.
Think of the ruined homes and of the Emigrant Ships. Within sixty years our population has been reduced by one-half as the direct result of English rule. The Boers are making a brave fight against this rule. Let no Irishman dare to raise a hand against them or for our enemy and their enemy—England!
In all our towns and villages we see the recruiting-sergeants trying to entrap thoughtless Irish boys into joining the British Army. The recruiting-sergeant is an enemy, and it is a disgrace to any decent Irishman to be seen in his company. But he should be watched and followed, and the boys whom he seeks to entrap should be warned and reasoned with.
In preventing recruiting for the English Army you are working for Ireland’s honour, and you are doing something to help the Boers in their Struggle for Liberty.
By order,
IRISH TRANSVAAL COMMITTEE.
Dublin, 12th October, 1899.