Washington (UP) –
President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Peter Fraser of New Zealand, who arrived in Washington today, will begin their war discussions at dinner tonight shortly after Fraser is received at the White House.
Fraser arrived at the national airport this morning and was received by Secretary of State Hull. Fraser will spend the night at the White House.
Seize vital suburbs of town, potential base to bomb Tokyo
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Many thought real thing was here as planes droned over darkened city
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The Pittsburgh Press (August 26, 1942)
By Ernie Pyle
BELFAST – The Anglo-Norman – or British – invasion of Ireland came in 1169 A.D. The Irish really asked for it.
One of their many native kings, finding himself being whipped, fled to England and begged the aid of King Henry II. A force of knights and archers was sent over. King Henry came himself in 1171, with around 10,000 troops.
The invasion was successful, but it didn’t subdue. King Henry left the next year. The minute he left the Irish revolted. And the followers Henry had left behind themselves turned to plundering.
King Henry probably could have conquered Ireland if he had stuck to the job longer, but he didn’t. It took 400 years to conquer Ireland.
Most of my slight knowledge of Irish history comes from a book by P. W. Joyce called “A Concise History of Ireland.” It is the most extensive tale of prolonged fighting I have ever read. From the time of Christ right up till now there has been fighting in Ireland.
Joyce details all the important fights from the beginning. Finally you become bored with the Irish slaughtering each other. Then, after the British invasion, the fighting continued, but the Irish were on both sides and you can’t tell half the time who was fighting whom.
Gradually, you are sickened by the awfulness of the excuseless fighting and killing; finally you begin to skip over whole battles they are so repetitious and, by now, seemingly unimportant.
If England had ever put a sufficiently strong force into Ireland, and had conducted a sincere government, I believe, the Irish people would have welcomed it, for they were poverty-ridden and ravaged by the continuous fighting among their own chiefs, and they wanted protection.
But England’s attitude for centuries was that the Irish were enemies, instead of subjects to be cared for. She forbade use of the Irish language, refused them the protection of England law, saddled them with oppressions, treated them as serfs, bled them, slaughtered them for rising up, and for centuries crucified the Catholics.
A point-by-point history of the 400 years following the invasion is actually uninteresting and largely confusing, so I’ll skip over it. It went through, time after time after time, this same cycle – rebellion by the Irish, defeat by the British, confiscation of lands, and planting them fir the benefit of British owners, either on hand or absentee in England.
For the first 400 years, England considered Ireland a colony, and the king of England held the title of Lord of Ireland. But King Henry VIII, in 1541, made himself king of Ireland, and thus Ireland became part of the United Kingdom.
Around 1560 the British began in earnest to force Ireland to become Protestant. She never succeeded, although there were times in the next 300 years when Irish Protestants were running Ireland and a Catholic was a broken, hunted man.
The British put it on so thick that even the Irish Protestants often sided with their fellow-Irishman who were Catholics. Protestantism was Ireland’s state religion from 1560 to 1869, although there was never a time when the majority of the people were Protestant.
I’ve been especially interested in one paragraph of this history of old Ireland. Remember, the year is about 1550. The author says:
“Ireland was then, as it has always been, the weak point of the empire in case of invasion from abroad… the best plan to provide against this danger would have been to govern the people so as to attach them to the empire and make them ready to ride in its defense.
“But the government took the other course; they governed the people by force and kept them down to prevent them giving aid to an invader… the consequence was that any invader, no matter from what quarter, would have been welcomed and aided.”
All this does not exactly apply today, but I think it interesting to find that Ireland was considered an invasion spot for England as far back as 400 years ago.
You’ll always hear the Irish berating Cromwell. Sometimes you’ll hear an Irishman speak of Cromwell almost as though he were still alive, and had been here only last week.
Actually, Cromwell did his dirty work in 1649, nearly 300 years ago. He was in Ireland only nine months, so you know he worked fast and ferociously to make his name the most hated one in Ireland over hundreds of years.
What Cromwell did was to come with plenty of troops and sweep down rebellion ahead of him. Many military leaders had done that before, but it was Cromwell’s butchery that won him his hated name. He operated much as the Japanese did at Nanking.
Both in Drohgeda and in Wexford, after taking the cities, he slaughtered everybody there, men, women and children. It was excuseless and barbaric.
Brooklyn Eagle (August 27, 1942)
Capital confident Navy is scoring a smashing victory
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Full-fledged members of party arrested in wide 5th column drive
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Dreadnought probably will see action in grand Allied offensive, says Knox aide
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Taft plans to link levy with Ruml idea for ‘pay-as-you-go’
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Buffalo, New York (UP) –
The wife of Herbert Karl Friedrich Bahr, former Buffalo resident who was convicted Monday of conspiracy to commit espionage, announced today that she intends to divorce him.
Declaring that she must have been hysterical when she said in Newark, New Jersey, during his trial that her love for him had returned. Mrs. Ruth Bahr said:
…as soon as I get the money, I’m going to get a divorce.
Destroyer also damaged in attack on foe landing at tip of New Guinea
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