From Nationality, January 22, 1916.
The pro-English Press of this country has suppressed all report of Dr. Vaughan Cornish’s lecture at the British Royal Colonial Institute on ‘The Strategic Geography of the War in relation to the British Empire.’ The business of that Press is to supplement the explicit and implicit teaching in the ‘National’ School, the College, and the University—all English government-controlled, directly or indirectly—that Ireland is a poor country with no serious commercial and industrial resources, with no position, and dependent upon the benevolence of the British Empire for keeping its head above water. By constant iteration this has imposed upon a flabby minority of what for present convenience may be termed Nationalist Ireland and a majority of Unionist Ireland. But a greater achievement than this is to the credit of England! As she recently imposed for a period on some neutral countries her German-Atrocity invention, so she imposed for a century on Europe her picture of Ireland—the Key of the Western World—as a small island of no consequence, chiefly inhabited by murderous and unclean savages.
To-day the legend is at an end. Embattled Europe realises the strategic importance of Ireland, and the Englishman no longer pretends in that case. Dr. Cornish in his lecture at the British Royal Colonial Institute admitted that while England lay across the way of Germany on the seas, holding by her position the keys of the ocean against that power, yet that in turn England was subject to Ireland, for ‘Ireland stands to Great Britain as Great Britain does to Germany, viz.—across the line of sea-routes to all the oceans.’
Nature put the keys of the commerce of Europe and America into Ireland’s hands, and English policy, aiming at the commercial subjugation and exploitation of the world, first aimed at the subjugation of Ireland. Ireland’s position, the fact that she commands the ocean routes, that her bays and harbours are the finest in Europe, and that she possesses within herself the resources of a great maritime nation—is the explanation of her continued suppression and oppression.
‘The strategic importance of Ireland,’ said Dr. Cornish in his lecture at the British Royal Colonial Institute, ‘is not realised by the average citizen.’ Why? ‘Because,’ admits the doctor,
‘its foreign relations have long been merged in those of the neighbouring island. There are many other positions in the world besides Ireland which, if ever the British Navy were defeated, would suddenly be seen to possess a strategic importance which the course of historical events has concealed from the casual observer.’
Rising in the Atlantic Ocean, commanding the trade routes between the two great continents, possessed of a noble and fruitful soil and natural resources greater than many of the strong states of the world, the people of this island, reduced by one-half in seventy years, dwindle away day by day while the flag of England floats above them and the English tax-gather lords it in the land.
Many learned men in England’s Parliament and England’s Press discuss from time to time what it is the Irish want. They want their country to make it what Nature intended it to be—an independent Nation maintaining for the commerce of the world the Freedom of the Seas.