A Laffan’s telegram from Paris, dated January 3rd, 1902 says:— John MacBride, who has been fighting for the Boers, has written a letter of New Year greeting and advice to the John MacBride Club, of Dublin, in the course of which the following passages occur:—
There is only one thing can put a new soul in Erin, and that is the merry clash of steel kissing steel, or the swift, sharp ping of the bullet as it seeks a tyrant’s heart. Nothing else avails.
Our rights as a nation are ignored by the leaders of the United Irish League. They want to make a part greater than the whole by making the land question the national ideal. They denounce the English Government, not because it is foreign to us and therefore not suitable, but because it does not eject the landlords. It is ridiculous to imagine a country like England, which has fed on the blood of the Indians, the Soudanese, the Matabele, and the Irish, voluntarily parting with its prey.
Of what use are protests? One rifle is worth a hundred thousand protests. We have boasted loud and long of what we would do when England was in trouble. She is in a miserable plight to-day, and we do nothing. The honour and prestige of Ireland have suffered in the eyes of the world.
May 1902 see a happier, more prosperous, a more Irish Ireland, and the dismemberment of the Cain-marked British Empire.