it as an American citizen and as an American question, [applause]; and I might say, further, because it will probably lead to an understanding of the spirit in which I speak, and perhaps throw some light upon the facts that I am about to give, because that is my peculiar function here, that it is not a question here with me to-day, as an American citizen, as to whether we would go to war with England to give Ireland independence or not. When that question comes up I will act as my father acted, and as my mother's and father's kindred acted in the dark days of the early sixties, when they went with the cause they believed to be just, on both sides, as they were able to do so; and my position will be where my position was prior to the entry of our country into the war.

I abhor war. I am against all the processes of war; I am against every reason that we can possibly have for going into war; but if the necessity arises, I recognize the fact that our forefathers, through blood and suffering, a century and a half ago entered into a compact agreeing that we would act together, that we as American citizens would make up our minds when there was a cause for war; that we would do it as Democrats; that we would do it as individuals; that we would do it as component parts, if you will, of a representative government; that we would have a spokesman in the White House whose duty it was to state the conditions of the country to the Congress of the United States. And it is for that body to speak for me, a private citizen as I am today, and with the exception of a few minor appointments by my Government have always been a private citizen, and always expect to be, and that I will stand behind the representatives whom I help to elect from my State under that plan adopted a century and a half ago; and if they declare that a state of war exists I will offer my children, as I did in this war, and I will stand behind my Government as it voices the will of the people through its representatives in Congress.

It was with a peculiar sense of support and a peculiar sense of sympathy that I heard the distinguished gentleman, Congressman Flood, the chairman of this committee when I had the honor of speaking before it, cite the causes of the nationalities that waived all claims of foreign allegiance in order to participate in this war under our Government. I say I am peculiarly glad, because it follows out the best traditions of the American people. I was born and raised in a border State, where passions ran high, and where there was a warfare existing, such as exists in Ireland today, for many months prior to the actual major hostilities of the Civil War and pratically all through it.

I came not from the dark and bloody ground of Kentucky, but from that border line where Jenson wrestled with Quantrell, and little bands of farmers organized to repel what they thought was an assault upon their constitutional rights as citizens of the State of Missouri; and as I walked through that grave yard at Belleau Wood, Mr. Congressmen, and read those names, I want to say that it carried out the thought that was given here; it was almost impossible-and I make no invidious distinction because we were all one in those great days-it was almost impossible to find any but German or Irish names among those 2,000 graves as we walked through there; but as I say, we were all one, and when that fight came to determine whether our Constitution was strong enough and elastic enough to make this Union an indissoluble union of States,

when that contest came and the call to arms came, those of Irish blood of the North who believed it was to be a fight for the perpetuation of the Union joined with the forces of the Union, as did my family and every other family of Irish descent out in that country, and those in the South who believed that it was one of the immutable principles on which our Government was founded that a State had the right to secede, went with their kinsmen and neighbors, of

course.

So we have those two great outstanding figures, Phil Sheridan, and Pat Cleburne of Arkansas, which represent that thought; and the only men of Irish blood living down there, from my earliest childhood, who have the disrespect of all the Irish people in that country, are the miserable few who claimed British protection in order not to participate in that war upon one side or the other.

So that I think we can approach this proposition as Americans, and I think we need not be challanged in our Americanism, and I hope I will not be called upon to say under what particular circumstances I would bear arms or under what particular circumstances I would be again proud to see my children in the uniform of the Army of the United States at a time of hostility.

We are not dealing with ancient rights; we are not dealing with ageold wrongs; we are dealing with present-day conditions. I know that I am talking to men who are abler constitutional and international lawyers than myself, and 1 know that my opinion will perhaps not have very much weight here, but nevertheless I would like to give it.

I would like to declare that the Government which you are called upon in this resolution to recognize, and in behalf of which you are asked to do all that the popular House of the Congress of the United States can do at this juncture, is the de facto government of Ireland. I want to put that plain and I want to put it straight; and 1 know, as I say, that there are gentlemen who have looked this up, who have preconceived notions to the contrary; but, if I may be allowed to do it, with our American background, with a slight reference to the traditional policy of this country with respect to republics and with respect to monarchies, and with respect to autocracies, I propose, if I may do it in the time, to give you the facts upon which I base this. The CHAIRMAN. Upon which you base a statement?

Mr. WALSH. Upon which I base the fact that this is a de facto government in Ireland, which you are called upon to recognize. The CHAIRMAN. I will appreciate very mucn hearing you on that subject.

Mr. WALSH. If God gives me the strength, Mr. Chairman, I am here to give it to you.

Mr. KENNEDY. You do not hola, then, that a de jure government is necessary to justify recognition?

Mr. WALSH. No. Of course it is international law, first, if we went into the final reasons. I deny that there is any such thing as international law.

The CHAIRMAN. But it is your contention that the Irish government is a de facto government?

Mr. WALSH. Yes. I was explaining that, as I say, I do not seek to impose my own opinion, because it is not as good as that of many of my hearers; but I am going to state the facts.

Mr. MOORES. We are willing to concede everything that you say about yourself, if you will tell us about Ireland.

Mr. WALSH. Is that a suggestion that perhaps

Mr. MOORES. That you get down to the issue.

Mr. WALSH. Is that a suggestion that i have talked a little too much about myself? A question was asked, and I thought that it was due to myself and the representation that I have here that I should answer the question asked by the Congressman; and I believe that he stated our position very clearly. [Applause.] And I was interrupted at this point, and I desired to get my statement clear, and I shall endeavor to do so.

Mr. MOORES. We want to get down to the issue. It is Ireland we are considering, so go on and talk about it.

Mr. WALSH. With all due respect, I think I am talking about it, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Proceed, Mr. Walsh.

Mr. WALSH. And if not, my time will expire in forty minutes, and I hope the committee will bear with me.

The CHAIRMAN. The gentleman had no intention of offending you. Mr. WALSH. I was saying, when the question was asked by the Chairman, that if possible I would give the facts to the committee so that the individual members of the committee could pass upon the question whether these people had a de facto government or not. What is government? What is the purpose of government? The purpose of government, as I understand it, is to protect the useful citizens of a community, the producers and those of good intentions who have produced and who seek to lead their lives upon the reasonable return that they have made from their own efforts or the efforts of their ancestors. It is to protect life in the realm; it is to protect property; it is to elect men to public office, men who are statesmen, who can look forward, judging by the past, having concern for the exigency of the hour, but looking forward to justice and the future of their country as representatives, and with a view to seeing that those who are placed in office are able to properly carry on that government.

And on the question as to the position of our country, I might say that until we established this government, if the governments of the world had been portrayed upon canvass, the ideals and conceptions, that is, if not the practice, it would have been a picture of great bodies of armed men marching and countermarching across the face of the earth, ready to tear each other limb from limb, under the guise often of carrying out the commands of an omnipotent God as voiced by some ruling family, but usually that they might take advantage of a weaker people for economic purposes for their own enrichment and for their own power. When our own government was constituted it was declared and it came from that great argument that was raging in Europe at the time over the rights of man-it was declared not only by the old colonists but by all those who came to their support, and all who came wholeheartedly to be Americans, from Ireland, from France, from Germany, from England, largely, that this was one country that was to be based absolutely upon the rights of the individual man.

And so, when I come before this body, I come before a body representing a country that traditionally has been in favor, in essence, of what we are pleading with this body to do to-day, so far as they can do it.

Before our country went into the war there was in Ireland an army-a regular constituted army-numbering something over 80,000 men of military age. They were the Irish volunteers. They were representing the nation of Ireland. Ireland is not asking this recognition as a new nation. Ireland claims that it never surrendered its sovereignty in the whole 750 years, voluntarily. Ireland claims that in every generation of her men-and these volunteers were voicing that idea by their action-that they shed their best blood to repel the invader from their shores. So that if that day came, as it has come before in this country and as it has come in other nations, when men were trying to assert the rights of Ireland, it could never be said that any statute of limitations had run against Ireland's rights, that there was no right of prescription there, because in every generation-and the very names of men sitting upon this committee arouse thoughts of those insurrections-in men like the volunteers of 1916 went out and shed their blood to repel the invader from her shores, so that men like us who come here today, so that men who are lawyers, might insist that it was a sovereign nation in spirit and never surrendered its rights.

Those men in 1916 published their declaration of independence. It is, in essence, much the same as the Declaration of Independence of the United States. It made them as spiritually free as the declaration of 1776 made us; and I hope and believe that, with less suffering than our forefathers had, it is going to make them actually free.

But something intervened. The World War intervened, and this country, our country, America, was called upon to go into that war, and it went into that war under an express pledge made by you gentlemen as representing us-under the express pledge of the American Government that they were not seeking to add territory to that already acquired by the Allies, but that they were going in for a great principle to be applied to the whole world; and I might say at this point that the Irish people-and I say it from first-hand knowledge-are the most conservative and law-abiding people in the world today. Great jails built to hold a thousand people, on that Island today contain perhaps seven or eight little miserable misdemeanants. One great jail I saw with one man charged with a common law felony, but with 500 of them charged with making the same declaration that Thomas Jefferson made, that Washington fought for, and that Abraham Lincoln made immortal. [Applause.]

This orderly people, then, taking us at our word, paying us the beautiful compliment that must be paid America as a country that never imposed its will upon another nation, a country that never ravished another people of their rights, a country that never extended a hand of sympathy to an autocracy, from the very first day of their birth, taking us at our word, and when an election was called in England, under the forms of English law, it was not a mere matter of campaign argument, but this government, which I am attempting to represent before this honorable body today, published a proclamation declaring that under the principles laid down by our country they proposed to determine the form of government under which they should live, and that that form of a government should be modeled after the Government of the United States of America; and they declared by written proclamation throughout Ireland that if their candidates were elected, they should be elected to a free parliament to sit in Dublin, and that

no man who should be elected should ever raise his hand to declare allegiance to any foreign king, English, German, or French. [Applause.] Upon that fair issue being made they overwhelmingly carried that country. They did it under coercion such as probably has not been paralleled in any country which had any sort of government boasting that they cherished the principles of free governments. Their leaders, splendid men, were transported to England and locked in jail. Bombing planes went there and flew over the peaceful villages and the countryside, dropping literature that in itself was a threat against the lives of the people. But they rose up at the ballot box, at our suggestion and on our plan, and by this overwhelming vote they declared their own government.

Now, let us see whether it is a government or not. Unless we stretch the point of international law to the extent of saying that a de facto government is a government which alone by force of arms, if they impose that force, are able to take the government away from the people, then this is a de facto government for these facts.

This assembly was elected as the national representative assembly of Ireland. I am making no distinctions now between the north and the south of Ireland. It is the national assembly elected by a homogeneous people. There is no question of the boundaries of this island; it is bounded by the ocean, and everybody knows it. There is not any question of separate culture of these people, or of their adherence. All of them have the same basic religion and the same ideas of family life; no question of it at all.

Now, they elected a national assembly. That a mere faction of them, much less in proportion than the Tories of this country in the days of our Revolutionary fathers, choose to go to a foreign country and sit in their assembly while the great majority stay at home and sit in their own assembly, I say, takes nothing whatever from the force of the position that this is a national assembly, if we judge it along the well-known lines of a national form of government, a republican form of government by representative democracy.

What is that government doing? It has its own army, the volunteer army of Ireland, and there is no disguising it, and no desire to disguise it. It numbers over 100,000 men. They have fought no major battle since they declared their form of government, and as I understand it do not intend to do so unless the unspeakable thing occur, that America and these other nations that went into this war for the self-determination of peoples, abandon those principles and leave them to their fate, in which event they declare I know nothing but their own declaration-that they will rise, poorly armed as they may be, and fight for their independence, and die for it if necessary. [Applause.] That is the situation so far as the army in Ireland is concerned.

The army of the invader in Ireland is attempting to govern Ireland, but is not governing Ireland.

We might say, as to the place of meeting now, the ancient parliament that was brought to the Irish people by the threat of what followed our own battle for independence, sat in the Irish parliament building. That has been taken by the English Government in the years past and turned into a banking institution. Very appropriately, from the standpoint of conception, it has become the temple of the money changer instead of the temple of the liberties of the people of Ireland.