IRISH ALLEGATIONS

Upwards of six thousand university students returning to Cambridge for the opening of another year were accorded a strange greeting Sunday night, when an Irish priest, fresh from confinement in an English jail, and speaking from a platform hallowed by the footsteps of James Otis and Samuel Adams, hurled anathemas upon all Harvard as "stinking rotten with British propaganda." If reliance may be placed upon the reports c. Three reputable morning papers, there is little in the way of vituperation approaching blasphemy, that this Australian visitor did not head upon such newspapers, schools, churches and citizens of the United States, as have refrained from supporting with money and influence the work of Sinn Fein adherents."

"Your ancestors fought the British tyrants of their day," the speaker is reported to have cried, "and the German assassins hired by a British King. They were the first Sinn Feiners; this hall is the hall of Sinn Fein; this country is the first Sinn Fein country, and the Stars and Stripes is the first Sinn Fein flag." Responding to this wanton perversion of historical fact a mob that packed Faneuil Hall to the doors alternately wept, cheered and pounded its approval.

It is hard to imagine arrogance and libellous presumption carried to greater limits on the public stage. The effrontery displayed in this instance surpasses even the procacity of Eamonn de Valera, who masquerading in the city of Boston two weeks ago, made bold to speak of "we here in America."

Boston politicians and Celtic mummers to the contrary, the time is not yet ripe when Americans who fail to sympathize with Irish rioting may be branded as traitors to their own nation. Sinn Fein is not synonymous with the principles of Jefferson and Washington, nor is it well that Americans should lay supine while foreign demagogues, abetted by their acclimated henchmen on these shores, revise our dictionaries and our history, and dictate our political policies.

As to the reckless charges that Harvard is bought with British gold, that all our social institutions are polluted with British Incre, the imputation is compellingly absurd. Even those who are incognizant of the liberty of expression with which the university community is blessed, will find it amusing to recall that a twelvemonth since Harvard was a "hotbed of radicals," in the pay of Bolshevist agents; while today they are hirelings of "Lloyd George and his Tories." Moreover, any cry that may be raised against the possible expenditure of English money for propaganda on this side of the Atlantic is put to ridicule by the plight in which the lobbyists for "Irish Freedom" found themselves when the recent closing of a Boston bank cost them the use of a large deposit.

There is no law which would impair the right of every citizen to a free opinion. And it is preposterous to deny the blundering stupidity with which England has treated the Irish question. The CRIMSON would be the last to hold a brief for the prolongation of the present unbearable situation. If Irish partizans, however, would receive in this country the protection of liberal laws, they must grant to the Loyal Coalitioner and the independent thinker the same freedom of expression for which they clamor. They must cease seeking to subvert the machinery of American government to the schemes of Irish separatism. They must abstain from the intimidation of voters and the baiting of public officers.