Religious issue...
1 IRELAND
Drawing by Nancy Smaltman
( Continued from Page 10)
they displaced from the
ownership of the land.
The result has been an in
tercommunity problem as in
tractable as that in Cyprus, in
South Africa, or indeed in parts of
the United States But in contrast
to the situation in other countries,
where different communities are
differentiated by language or skin
color, in Northern Ireland the only
feature differentiating the two
communities is religion.
It is this phenomenon, com
pounded by an anachronistic but
deep seated fear on the part of
many Northern Ireland
Protestants of what they see as
the authoritarian attitude of the
Roman Catholic Church, that
gives the misleading impression of
a religious conflict. In fact,
religious belief has little to do with
the problem, and the least fervent
adherents to either religion are
often the most violent and
aggressive in the intercommunity
conflict that has culminated in the
past five years of extreme
violence.
The decision to partition Ireland
in 1920 when it was still within the
United Kingdom, was, perhaps,
. intended by some of its British
authors at any rate to help relieve
the pressures created by this long
standing intercommunity tension.
In practice, it had precisely the
opposite effect.
The artificially created local
Protestant majority in the newly
created region of Northern Ireland
inevitably felt themselves
threatened by the much larger
independent Irish State in the rest
of the island — which as a result
of this division was almost 95 pier
cent Roman Catholic — and by
the large 35 per cent Roman
Catholic minority within their own
area. They responded to this
sense of threat by developing a
siege mentality, and by repressing
the Roman Catholic minority,
whose natural development was
frustrated by discriminatory
housing and employment policies,
and whose political influence in
areas where there is a local
Roman Catholic majority was
frequently negated by un
scrupulous Gerrymandering of
constituency boundaries.
The Catholic minority responded
to this by largely opting out of the
political and administrative
system, with the result that the
new political arrangements in
Northern Ireland never gained
consensus support from the
population as a whole. Govern
ment of the area for 50 years was
in the hands of a single party,
dominated by landed and
business interests which exploited
the sectarian fears of the workers
and small farmers in order to
retain their dominant position.
Greater agricultural output costly...
( Continued from Page9)
Congressional approval of Ford's proposal to end
restrictions on the growing of rice, peanuts ana
cotton could make a difference — but not enough to
produce a substantial decline in over all food prices.
Only about 28 million of the country's 2.2 billion
acres of territory are used to grow crops. But
economists say thst the investment required to
convert forests or barren or hilly pastureland to
farmland is enormous. New highways, reservoirs,
airports and cities also eat up about 1.2 million acres
a year.
According to Psarlberg, the most promising
irrigation projects to reclaim land are now com
pleted, and new ones will be costly. Many of the
schemes now under study, or already rejected as too
expensive, have a futuristic character. Among these
are plans for a canal from Canada along the Con
tinental Divide, and the abandoned idea of pumping
water from the Mississippi River to Western Texas.
According to Lester Brown, an economist with the
private Overseas Development Council, water is in
extemely short supply in many parts of the country.
In rich wheat regions such as Montana, farmers soon
may have to compete for water with potential new
producers of energy for the Project Independence
prgram, he contends.
Because of these limitations, officials are counting
mainly on increasing crop yields per acre to achieve
the expanded production that the President wants.
The House Agricultural Subcommittee report
released this week spoke of a "throttling down of
agricultural research on livestock, fruits, vegetables,
farm management, soil and land use. The report
noted that there has been an inability to achieve
technological breakthroughs recently in key areas.
Scientists still haven't been able to devise any
commercially feasible way of producing more than
one calf per cow a year.
Also, scientists have not been able to achieve any
dramatic rise in soybean yields, even though
soybeans contain more protein than any other plant
and are the country's leading farm export product.
Manpower shortaaes in the countryside and the
high prices of fertilizer also are problems which could
limit dramatic production increases in the future.
Erik Eckholm, also of the Overseas Development
Council, says that the fertilizer-glutted fields of the
Uaited States are likely to be far less responsive to
heavier doses than undernourished land in other
parts of the world.
“As yields increase, there is a diminishing return,"
he says. A ton of fertilizer applied to high yielding
crop land in the U.S. might produce an additional
five tons of grain, compared with 12 tons more in
India, he says. But tight supplies, which are not
expected to ease for several years, may limit how
much even the United States can apply to its land.
High prices of nitrogen and phosphate fertilizer
have been a major complaint of farmers this year.
According to Eckholm, an estimated three million
tons of nutrients a year go to industry, and to
maintain golf courses, cemeteries, gardens and
lawns.
There is no question of the United States running
out of food. Normally, the country exports a quarter
of its corn crop, two thirds of its wheat crop, close to
half its soybean crop and 60 per cent of its rice crop.
The question is how to satisfy U.S. consumers,
commercial customers abroad and poor countries in
need of cheap food to combat hunger — all in a
period when the weather and limits in technology
could both cause disappointments.
Faced with the bitter and bloody
consequences of this tangled
historical situation, the basic
policy of the Irish Government —
indeed, of all political parties in
the Irish Parliament — is to help
find that point of balance between
the different elements in the
*Northern Ireland community
which will provide stable, just and
efficient government there in spite
of pressure from extremist
groups, and which will contribute
to the restoration of peace.
The IRA and also, of course, the
Protestant Paramilitary
organizations — regard violence
as a valid instrument of policy.
The hollowness of the IRA claim
to be waging war on the British
Army is demonstrated by the fact
that all but about 200 of almost
1,100 people killed in the north
over the past five years have been
Irishmen or Irish women — a large
number by the IRA itself.
I know that most Irish
Americans abhor the IRA and the
tragedy it has brought to the
country of their origin which they
hold dear. I would appeal to that
minority of Irish-Americans, who
in the past have been misled by
the specious propaganda of the
IRA and by its false equating of its
atrocious campaign with the War
of Independence in Ireland of half
a century ago, to give neither
comfort nor support to the IRA
nor its front organizations who are
the enemies of the whole Irish
people.
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Leo ^ Mimi
Kottke Farina
in concert at Mac Arthur Court
Saturday, October 26th
9:00 p.m
Tickets Available At:
EMU Main Desk
The Sun Shop
Chrystalship
Students: $3.50
Non-Students: $4.50
At the door: $4.50
A DOUBLE TEE PRODUCTION
NO SMOKING, PLEASE