iling this opportunity for
declaring his hatred, his undying hatred, of England. His father had
suffered frightfully in the great famine; every story he ever heard at
his mother's knee was a story of English tyranny, English brutality,
English rapacity; England, for him, stood at the rack centre, the
lustful and bestial slave driver, the cruel and merciless extortioner.

This man's good judgment, however, would not suffer him to approve of
German militarism, and as events moved forward he gave his support more
and more to the cause of the Allies.

"But I want you to know," he told me, striking the table with his hand
and watching me carefully, "that I was dead against John Redmond for
saying that Ireland must go to the aid of England. Ireland's call was to
go to the aid of civilization. If Germany had stood for civilization, I
should have been on Germany's side and dead against England.

"I tell you, at the beginning of this business I longed to see England
defeated, humiliated, broken to the dust. But civilization is of such
enormous consequence that I put my natural hatred of England on one
side. The violation of Belgium made me an anti-German. And with the vast
majority of Irishmen in America it was the same thing. The menace of
German militarism forced us into your camp.

"I am perfectly certain that but for the violation of Belgium there
would have been in this country among Irish-Americans an open movement
publicly proclaimed in favor of Germany. That is my fixed opinion. And I
happen to know what I am talking about."

No Hatred of England.

I gathered in the course of his conversation that Irish friendliness
toward England is a final manifestation of a change in the feeling of
all America toward England. It was not very long ago that President
Cleveland wanted war with England. Hatred of England was at one time as
fiercely handed down from generation to generation by Americans as by
Irish-Americans. We have to thank our English stars that America has
outgrown this historic hate and that Irish-Americans now show the new
and happier feeling of their compatriots.

I asked this Irishman, no one better able throughout America to express
a just opinion on the subject, what difference had been made in the
feeling toward England by the passing of the Home Rule bill.

"It was the passing of that bill," he replied, "which finished the work
begun by German militarism. Home rule has softened our feelings toward
En