Calling All Patriots
Editor Daily News,
Dear Sir - Henceforth, July 22nd, 1948, shall stand out as the most ignominious day in the annals of our country's long history. Small wonder that the very heavens deluged this fair land of ours with copious tears, that the sun refused to penetrate the gloom that enveloped us on that fateful day, when the soul of Newfoundland was rent in twain, and seventy-one thousand of her loyal patriots bit the dust, this time at the hands of their fellow countrymen.
Was it not sufficient when Britain humiliated us before the world by breaking her pledge to restore to us our God-given right? For four centuries in war, adversity, privation and struggle our people have lived in peaceful harmony. Today we are as divided as Jew and Arab, and discord and strife stalk this once peaceful land.
Less than one short month ago we stood at the shrine of our National War Memorial to pay silent and floral tribute to our honoured dead, who sleep not in this our native soil to which our ardent Confederate veteran Sullivan was spared to return. As we remember them with pride and sorrow, as well as the bleeding hearts and desolate homes of our honoured dead so too shall we recall with contempt and disdain our veteran Confederate, our one-time "Barrelman," Smallwood, who made Newfoundland better known to Newfoundlanders and the rank and file of the advocates of Confederation as they took their stand.
We have pertaken [sic] deeply of the cup of humiliation, but we refuse to drink its bitter dregs by bowing to Ottawa.
We are patriots, symbolic of our fighting Newfoundlander and as such we will stand until we return to the dust of this our beloved land from whence we sprung.
Yours truly,
J. M. CONNORS
St. John's.
Reproduced by permission of The Toronto-Dominion Bank. From J.M. Connnors, "Calling All Patriots," The Daily News, 2 August 1948, p. 4.
