MR. LLOYD GEORGE AND CONSCRIPTION FOR IRELAND.
WE have described the chief features of Mr. Lloyd George's speech elsewhere. Here we will deal with certain special aspects of Mr. Lloyd George's proposals. In the first place, we must confess to very grave suspicion in respect of Mr. Lloyd George's proposals, not merely to mix up the questions of Home Rule and Irish Conscription, but to postpone the application of Conscription to Ireland on the plea that there is no National Register in Ireland, and that there- fore there must be a delay of " some weeks " in carrying into practice the principle of equality of treatment for Ireland. We may be too critical, but in our opinion there is to be found in these words a most dangerous opportunity for allowing Mr. Lloyd. George's promise to be kept to the ear but broken in the performance. We presume that what he intends is the pre- paration of an Irish Register. A Register created as was the Register in Great Britain proved a comparatively easy matter, for it had the goodwill of the general population, the co-operation of Members of Parliament, and the active help of the Party agents and organizations on both sides. In Ireland the Register will have to be compiled, not only subject to the opposition of the Nationalist Members of Parliament, of the Sinn Feiners, and of the Roman Catholic hierarchy and clergy, but also, except of course in North-East Ulster, in the teeth of the whole population. Given the ingenuity of Irish- men in general, the weakness of the Irish Executive, the actual disloyalty of a large number of the minor Irish .officials, and the belief which now exists in the minds of practically the whole Irish Civil Service that they are soon to change masters, and that they will henceforth have an Irish Parliament and an Irish Executive—and most probably a Sinn Fein Parliament and a Sinn Fein Executive—over them, it is easy to see that the work of making a National Register might be prolonged not for " some weeks " but for many months.
If Mr. Lloyd George meant business over Conscription in Ireland, what he should have done was to apply not the English system but the American system, with one or two alterations. The Irish clauses of the Bill should lay down that on " the appointed day " every man between the ages of eighteen and fifty resident in Ireland should be deemed to be an attested man in the Army Reserve, and should be required within seven days to present himself at the recruiting office nearest to his place of residence, and supply information as to the date of his birth, the nature of his avoca- tions in civil life, and his present place of residence. That duty fulfilled, he would await like every Army Reservist the call to the Colours. Any man failing to do this would of course be regarded, as and treated as a deserter, except that he would net be liable to the death-penalty. Needless to say, there would be exemptions on the same grounds as in England and Scotland for men doing work of national importance. The only difference would be that the Tribunals would not be formed in the localities but would be Military Tribunals— bodies far more likely in Ireland to act without fear or favour than those .of local extraction.
It may be alleged that in these circumstances a very large number of persons would refuse to report themselves at the appointed time and place, and that the difficulties which we have noted in regard to the Register would apply to the Draft. Our answer is that all would depend on the way in which the subject was approached. If the people of Ireland were made to see that the Government were absolutely determined to apply Conscription justly but sternly, and that they would stand no nonsense and no evasions,: we believe that a very large majority of the men who are now shouting against Conscription, and are offering to die in the first ditch in. Ireland rather than in the last in France or Flanders, would come quietly, and indeed willingly, enough. Irishmen are as a rule constitutionally indisposed to yield to wheedling or supplica- tion, but they almost invariably obey a steady, firm word of command, given hi a way which obviously expects and requires obedience. Certainly that was America's experience. As soon as the rifles of the two Pennsylvanian regiments brought back from Gettysburg had spoken plain truths in the streets of New York, Irish resistance to the Draft was at an end. Irish- men are brave in battle, but when they know that a Govern- ment mean business they do not care to fight the State. What makes this specially actual in the case of the agricultural population is the fact that, thanks to our excellent land policy in Ireland, the great majority of the peasants have now a distinct stake in the country, which they do not want to lose, but which of course they would lose if they attempted to defy the will of the Parliament of the United. Kingdom to the uttermost. Rebellion in arms must at the least involve outlawry and forfeiture of land and goods. The crux of applying Conscription to Ireland. rests with the instruments to be used, and above all with the instruments at the top. If Mr. Lloyd George is in deadly earnest, and clearly nothing else will serve in such a crisis, what he should do, instead of talking about " some weeks' " postponement, would be to announce that Lord Wimborne and Mr. Duke would be recalled from Ireland, and that for the time being a soldier, not a civilian, would fill the Viceregal chair. Since his differences of opinion with the Premier in regard to strategic considerations do not allow his great military talents and experience to be used on the Western Front, we would. suggest that the soldier should be Sir William Robertson. With Sir William Robertson as Viceroy, and a Parliamentary soldier like Brigadier-General Page Croft as Irish Secretary, we venture to say that the Irish population would soon be placed on a war footing. A paragraph or two added to the Defence of the Realm Act would fill any gaps in the executive powers of the Viceroy. The Cabinet very rapidly extended these Regulations when they were annoyed, or professed to be annoyed, at Cabinet secrets being divulged in the Press. It does not therefore seem unreasonable at such a crisis as the present to ask for some small extensions of authority for the Irish Viceroy while engaged in applying Conscription to Ireland.
A proposal of the kind we have sketched, if made by the Prime Minister in Parliament, would have shown at once to all the world that he was, to return to our American precedent, hi as grim earnest as was Mr. Lincoln when he reiterated his simple order, " Apply the Draft." Proposals not only to apply Conscription in principle, but to create at once the machinery suitable to an area in revolt, would have had an instant effect in Ireland. Mr. Lloyd George's vague and sketchy, and therefore half-hearted, proposals have had exactly the opposite effect. The Irishman is always quick to see whether his opponents, in those combats which his soul loves, are really out to win. The slightest sign of doubt, hesitation, and anxiety is seized upon in an instant, and makes him determine that there is no need for yielding. If we are not very much mistaken, what the balancing Irishman at the present moment is saying is : " We needn't be afraid. There is no fight to a finish here, but only a Registration campaign." Mr. Lloyd George's talk about a little delay in the case of Ireland, of Orders in Council, and so forth, would have been enough in itself to inspire this feeling. But when he added to it the declaration that the Government would instantly introduce a Home Rule Bill, it must, have been plain to the meanest capacity that, in the words of the hero in Mr. Kipling's tale, " there's a 'ole in these rules." Mr. Devlin is perfectly right when he says that if there is to be Home Rule in Ireland, with an Irish Parliament and an Irish Executive, it will be quite impossible to apply Conscription. like Mr. Lloyd George, we have not yet read the Report of the Irish Convention, but we are not in the least surprised to hear that it stated this very obvious truth. No matter what the theoretical powers of the Imperial Parliament and Government, a Home Rule Government, which in practice would new mean a Parliament with a Sinn Fein majority, would not only have the power but would take great pleasure in so obstructing the application of Conscription that it could not be applied without first repealing the Home Rule Act and altering the whole scheme of govern- ment in Ireland. In other words the Police, who apparently are to be put under the Dublin Parliament, and all other officials, from the village postman to the Exciseman and the Customs House officer, would have orders to do their best to impede and render impossible the work of the recruiting authorities. In a word, Mr. Lloyd George's plan has a most suspicious resemblance to that adopted by that prudent but exceedingly fusee lady, Penelope, the wife of Ulysses. It may be remembered that she accepted the offer of the Suitors in principle, but said that a little delay would be necessary while she got together her trousseau. Accordingly she set up an admirable new loom (or Register) and began to work upon it in the daytime, but every night she unpicked her work, with the result that though the demand of the Suitors was, as we have said, accepted in principle, the delay in practice was quite sufficient to last till the beneficent Sea-God threw Ulysses upon the shore of Ithaca and into the bosom of his family. (Mr. De Valera, if he adopted our parallel, would no doubt substitute the Kaiser in a submarine for Ulysses, and the mouth of the Shannon for sea-girt Ithaca.) To our crude, cruel, and non-Celtic mind this enatting of Conscription, plus creating the machinery for making Conscription impos- sible, has a very strange look.
The text of the Bill has been published. As it is a mere skeleton, which the Government may clothe with flesh by Orders in Council, it does not call for detailed criticism. But, even if it seems somewhat ungracious, we cannot join in the heroics of those who congratulate Mr. Lloyd George upon the splendid spirit in which he has met the great crisis. We do not see how he could possibly have done anything else than he has done. We should, we confess, have felt more sympathy with him if he had had the courage and the sincerity to point out frankly in the House of Commons that what he is doing now as regards Ireland, and also as regards England, Scotland, and Wales, ought to have been done a year and three months ago, and that, instead of hasing to prepare new machinery and a new system almost literally under the fire of our enemies, his first duty when he came to supreme power was, we do not say to have taken men prema- turely from civil work, but to have established a working scheme for the arraying of the whole nation, and to have had that scheme steadily at work, producing at once a small flow of new recruits, but ready at a single turn of the tap to provide a full supply. To thank Mr. Lloyd George with bated breath for having discovered during the last three weeks that there is a great need for fresh troops on the Western Front, and for having had the courage to come down to the House and ask for them, seems to us a little like praising a bight watchman for ringing the fire alarm when he sees the flames bursting through the warehouse floors.
As a postscript to what we have said, we must express our regret that the Volunteers have been forgotten in the Man- Power Bill, and our hope that their place in the scheme of National Defence will not be overlooked. If Military Service is drastically applied to all men between forty-three and fifty, the first effect will naturally and inevitably be the destruction of the Volunteers, or, rather, to leave them with boys of sixteen and seventeen at one end and old gentlemen between fifty and sixty at the other. The War Office mani- pulation of the Force has already reduced it by a very large percentage. This would be the coup de grace. Now we venture to say that the proper plan for the conservation of military energy will be to make it obligatory for every man, whether exempted or not, who is between the ages of forty-three and fifty-five—or we should even prefer to say sixty—and is not taken for immediate regular service, to enrol himself as a Volunteer. But it is obvious that a great many men are so fully occupied with their present work that if temporarily exempted from regular service they could not keep up the , amount of drills required for an A " man. We would therefore allow the Military Authorities, acting through the commanding officers of Volunteer units, to exempt a man from further training if he had qualified in musketry and elementary drill. We mean by this that after he had learnt how to fire and manage a rifle and how to form fours, the partially exempted man should not be required to perform any further military duty—unless of course there was invasion or an imminent danger of invasion, and embodiment had taken place. The advantage of the plan we propose is that we should thus have practically the whole remaining male population organized and in units and ready to be called out in case of invasion. Their military quality might not be high, but at any rate they would be at hand, in a definite organization and subject to orders. In such an emergency as we are thinking of it would not only be easy to find work for them, but they would, owing to their skeleton organ- ization, be ten times as valuable as requisitioned civilians. Before the Bill leaves the Committee, this serious omission should be rectified.
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