E THE STAMP OF THE IRISH RACE NGROSSED as they are by the terrible drama being enacted before their eyes, people on this side of the Atlantic pay little heed to the fact that the United States is celebrating during the present year the completion of the Panama Canal by holding at San Francisco a great International Exposition, planned and carried out with an elaborate magnificence in keeping with American largeness of idea in such matters. One of its features, the Arch of the West, called forth the following eloquent protest which we take from the editorial columns of the San Francisco Monitor, one of the foremost Catholic newspapers of America. The editor, Mr. Charles Phillips, is author of a volume of poetry, Back Home, in which he charmingly and very affectionately describes his own early days-life in an Irish Catholic family who were pioneer settlers of Wisconsin. It has gone through many editions. "From left to right the figures are, the French Trapper, the Alaskan, the Latin-American, the German, the Hopes of the Future (a white boy and a negro, riding on a wagon), Enterprise, the Mother of To-morrow, the Italian, the AngloAmerican, the Squaw, the American Indian. . . . The types of those colonizing nations that at one time or place or another have left their stamp on our country have been selected to form the composition." These words, taken from Prof. Eugen Neuhaus' book, "The Art of the Exposition," describe the sculpture surmounting the Arch of the West, at the Panama-Pacific Exposition. We look in vain in this splendid sculptured group for a figure representing one of the chief of "those colonizing nations that at one time or place or another have left their stamp on our country"; we look in vain in "The Nations of the West" for the symbol of the Celtic race. The German, the Italian, the Anglo-American, the Latin-American, is there; but there is no sign of the Celt, no sign of the Irish man. This is an unfortunate mistake, one that for thousands of people mars the beauty of the great arch and its magnificent statuary. And it is an inexcusable mistake. For artists of the standing of those chosen to design and execute this work to overlook such an important part of their composition is almost inexplicable. Yet there must be some reason for the omission of the Irish race from "The Nations of the West.” We are loath to believe that prejudice is the source of the error. Then ignorance must be. Yet it is difficult to think of such artists knowing nothing of the history of the Celt in America. From the earliest days of our country, Irish names have been written in our records: Irishmen helped to lay the foundations of Virginia. Cromwell's crushing of Ireland in 1651 drove Irishmen by the thousands to the free air of America. It was Irish settlers in New Hampshire who made "Stark's Rangers," the men who fought the British at Bennington, and prepared the way for the surrender of Burgoyne. Pennsylvania was full of Irish from the year 1701; and Virginia and the Carolinas continued from their opening to be thickly settled by them. In our fight for independence, they took part in every campaign from Lexington to Yorktown. Twenty-nine of the ninety patriots who succoured the American army in 1780, when it was starving to death, were Irishmen, thirteen of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Irish. And on sea as well as land, they gave their life-blood to the making of our nation. The Father of the American Navy was an Irishman, the illustrious John Barry. The first naval battle of the Revolution, fought off Machias, Maine, was won by Jeremiah O'Brien. And who were the heroes of the War of 1812 but Perry and Lawrence and McDonough? all three of them Irishmen ! Not only were the foundation stones of our nation laid by many an Irish hand and cemented with the blood of many an Irish heart, but, when the Union was threatened, it was the same Irish blood that sealed our innumerable victories, with VOL. XLIII.-No. 509. 54 Sherman and Shields and Meagher and their almost countless fellow Celts leading the armies of Lincoln on to triumph or fighting in the ranks by the hundreds and the thousands. So also in the Spanish War, and so through all our martial history, the bravery of the Irish Race gives lustre to our nation's story. It is so to-day as it has ever been, name upon name in the lists of our Army and Navy men, be they officers or soldiers or sailors, bespeaks the debt our country owes to the land of the Celt. Such is the story of the Irish in the making of our country on the Atlantic seaboard. And who, we might ask, led the vanguard across the continent, populating the vast prairies of the Middle West and finally penetrating to the Pacific Coast to open to the world the California we so proudly boast of to-day? It took the red blood of Irishmen-the Floods, the Sullivans, the Murphys, the Martins,-to endure the test of the Argonauts. Assuredly in California the Irish put their virile stamp upon the land! And what of the Irish Race in peace-in art, philanthropy, science and industry? Fulton, an Irishman, gave us the steamboat; Morse, an Irishman, gave us the telegraph. It was Patrick Jackson, an Irishman, whose inventive genius gave New England its cotton industry; it was McCormick, an Irishman, who made the whole world rich by his mowing machine. It was an Irish engineer, Jasper O'Farrell, who planned our own city of San Francisco. The White House at Washington was designed by an Irish architect, James Hoban. Horace Greeley, this country's most famous journalist, was Irish. So was Godkin of the New York Post, and Cassidy of the Albany Argus. One of the first newspapers in America was published by an IrishmanJohn Dunlap's "Pennsylvania Packet." In medicine-read the roster of the great Doctor's Convention just held in San Francisco! From the great Murphy of Chicago to the best physicians in our own State, the list is little else than a catalogue of Macs and O's! In statesmanship and government? Nearly half of all the Presidents of the United States have been of Irish blood. Grant and McKinley were Irish; so were Monroe, Jackson. Polk and Harrison. At no time since the establishment of our government has the Irish Race been without its representatives in Congress. The history of America's judges and jurists is bright with Celtic names. Music, literature, the arts? The list becomes unwieldly. Poets, novelists, dramatists--the first in the land have been of Irish blood. And the stage!—what a record is there, with its Lawrence Barrett, its Mary Anderson, its Dion Boucicault, W. J. Florence and John Brougham, its Margaret Anglin, its John Drew, and a score of others of the greatest of the great! In portrait painting, what nobler names than Copley and Ingham, both Irishmen? And since we are addressing the sculptors-why not speak of sculptors, too, and mention such a name as St. Gaudens, by many considered our greatest-and yet an Irishman! The very Statue of Liberty surmounting our National Capitol at Washington was done by an Irish sculptor, Thomas Crawford! And let those who are interested in Expositions remember that the first World's Fair held in America-the Philadelphia Centennial of 1876-was laid out by Irishmen, John Barry and William Doogue; and if Celtic blood be sought, there is John McLaren-born in Scotland-the justly famous landscape gardener who has made the PanamaPacific Exposition truly beautiful, and who is a worthy follower of Doogue, the Irishman who planned the Public Gardens of Boston. And why not, while we are at home, note down the names of other Irish artists of the PanamaPacific-John Flanagan, for instance, and D'Arcy Ryan, who made the Exposition's marvellous dreamlike electrical scheme a reality? So much for the story History presents to contradict the sculptors of "The Nations of the West." But above and beyond the bare facts and figures of history, there shines the unwritten record of the Irish spirit permeating our nation from coast to coast, a spiritual force, forever making for the ideal, forever striving toward purer and higher goals, forever cherishing the best in man, fostering religion, supporting education, encouraging philanthropy:-a spirit that cannot be altogether weighed or measured, but that expresses itself in the best thought and the best deeds of hundreds of thousands of the best people in America. And here, be it noted, we speak only of the Irish in the United States. Yet the same glorious record of their race is written indelibly in the history of the lands to the north and south of us, in Canada and in Latin America-lands that are participating in the most auspicious manner in the PanamaPacific Exposition. Canada's chronicle is the same as ours, with even more emphasis laid on the debt she owes to Ireland; and, if we look to the south of us,-the whole southern hemisphere is stamped with the mark of the Celt. The great Republic of Argentina alone need be cited; there the Irish have become leaders in every walk of life, as is shown in our article this week published in another column. "The Irish," says Douglas Campbell, "contributed elements to American thought and life without which the United States to-day would be impossible." The sculptors of the arch of "The Nations of the West" at the Panama-Pacific Exposition made a grave mistake when they left the Irish Race out of their design. UNHAPPY HAPPINESS (From the Latin of David Wedderburn.) Let him beware who finds all smooth in life, JOHN J. HAYDEN. |