Series 01 Part 02: Hughes family correspondence, 3 April 1917-22 September 1918 - Page 420
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[Page 420]
4.
lately, so things are better than they have been. Archbishop Kelly, after standing clear from the Sinn Feiners for a long time, seems to be wobbling their way lately, & he issued a pastoral letter the other day written in his usual turgid style, but which brought in Home Rule for Ireland, & State Aid to Catholic Education, as two things to be conceded before recruiting on a large scale could be hoped for. Why these things formed the matter of a pastoral letter to be read in the Churches on Sunday is one of the things that one is quite unable to fathom. The Herald attacked him fiercely in a leader, & opened its columns to various correspondents who attacked him also. Last Sunday he complained bitterly about the deliberate misrepresentation of the Press, but for the life of me I can't understand the old gentlemen. His earlier utterances during the war were sound enough, & in striking contrast to some of his colleagues. Now he seems to be wobbling over to their side. If he isn't, he has only to say so clearly, but that is a thing he can never do. Everything he writes has to be read several times before his meaning is clear. However I kept the fiery Judge Heydon off a fresh controversy, & the correspondence in the Herald seems to have died out. I told Heydon that we had surely made our position clear enough in the Mannix controversy, & that it would only be an anticlimax to go saying the same things over again. I think that unless forced to it, as we felt we were by Dr Mannix, very little good & perhaps some harm to the cause may be done by too much newspaper correspondence.