The Same Old Bogus “Oath”
NOW ATTRIBUTED TO SINN FEIN ORGANISATIONS
-----------------------------------------
(“Western People”, June 1921)
-----------------------------------------
The following has been sent to us by the
Publicity Department of Dail Eireann:
“The document
printed below, purporting to give the text of a “Sinn Fein Oath”, with
comments, is being widely circulated in the United States and elsewhere. It is
typical of teh disreputable propaganda employed against Ireland by British
agents in foreign countries.
The document
is a filthy and blasphemous libel upon the Sinn Fein organisation. The alleged
oath is a concocted forgery and teh statements which follow it are lies.
“Sinn Fein
imposes no oath of any kind upon its members. It is an absolutely non-sectarian
organisation, embracing men and women of all creeds, and requiring its members
simply to declare their belief in Irish independence and to pledge themselves
to work for that ideal. Two of its many Protestant members are Ministers of the
Republican Government.
MODERATOR’S
TESTIMONY
“The central
object of Sinn Fein, as of the United Irishmen in the past, is to obliterate
class and creed divisions and to weld together Irish citizens of every class
and creed in a movement for national freedom.
“The Irish
Republic has decreed and insists upon absolute tolerance for all religious
creeds. Fresh proof of its sincerity and success has just been supplied in the
published statement of the outgoing Moderator of the Irish Presbyterian Church
at the General Assembly on June 8th in Belfast, that in all his
goings, north and south, he had never been molested or threatened, that he had
not found one of his churches, even in the most isolated places, wantonly or
maliciously injured, and that wherever he had gone on in the south and west,
there was no trace of a religious war manifesting itself.
“TRACT AT NO.
10”
“ ‘I swear by
the Almighty God, by all in heaven, and upon earth, by the Holy and Blessed
Prayer Book of our church, by the Blessed Virgin Mary and Mother of God, by her
sorrowing and sufferings at the foot of the Cross, by her tears and wailings,
by St. Patrick, by the Blessed and Adorable Host, by the Blessed Rosary and
Holy Beads, by the Holy and Blessed Church in all ages, and by our Holy
National martyrs to fight until we die, wading in the fields of red gore of the
Saxon tyrants and murderers of the glorious cause of nationality, and if
spared, to fight until there is not a single vestige and a space for a footprint
left to tell that the holy soil of Ireland was trodden on by the Saxon tyrants
and the murderers, and, moreover, when the English Protestant robbers and
beasts in Ireland shall be driven into the sea, we shall embark for and take
England, root out every vestige of the accursed blood of the heretics, adulterers,
and murderers of Henry VIII, and possess ourselves of the treasures of the
beasts that have so long kept our beloved Isle of Saints, in chains and
bondage, and driven us from our genial shores to settle in foreign lands, and
shall wade in the blood of Orangemen and heretics who do not join us and become
one of ourselves. Scotland, too, having given her aid and succour to the beasts,
we shall leave in her red gore and shall not give up the conquest till we have
our Holy Father complete ruler of the British Isles as he was before the
Reformation.
“ ‘To all this, single and collectively, I swear to
fulfil as before mentioned with my eyes blinded, not knowing whom to me
administered this oath, so help me God.”
TWO DOLLARS PER
1,000
“ ‘The above is an exact copy of the Sinn Fein oath
taken from one of them during the riots in September, 1920, near Belfast, this
copy coming to America through an American citizen from Ulster, who has been
there since late Spring, 1920, with relatives, he having seen all the riots
about Belfast (notably the bloody 12th July).
“ ‘(This Roman Catholic Irish Oath had the stamp and
seal of the Irish Republic on it.).
‘These oaths
are furnished at 25 cents per 100, or 2 dollars per 1,000.’
(NOTE—Of
course the foregoing illiterate concoction is merely the oath attributed to
practically every big organisation, the object of which was freedom of
autonomy, for well over 100 years, modified in each case, mainly the name of
the particular organisation which it was desired to calumniate. In its day it
has been used throughout the world by the anti-Irish propagandists against the
A.O.H., the Land League, Fenians, United Irishmen, and many others).
END
No comments:
Post a Comment