THE IRISH NATIONAL VOLUNTEERS.
ONE of the most amazing features of the present crisis is to be found in the attitude which the Liberals are taking up in regard to the enrolment of the Irish National Volunteers. To judge from Radical organs of public opinion, one would imagine that the formation of the Volunteers was a great coup for the Home Rule cause and a great set-back to Unionism. Earnest Radicals point out that the Unionists are going to be eaten with their own sauce, and ask whether they do not now realize how mad and wicked it was to encourage the formation of the Ulster Volunteers. "Armed rebellion, as you now see, is a game that two can play at!" and so forth and so on. As a matter of fact, no thoughtful Unionist will be in the least impressed by such arguments as these. No doubt Unionists must look with alarm and anxiety upon the growth of yet another anarchical element in Ireland, and must condemn the astonishing folly of those who have allowed two huge bodies of armed men to grow up in a country where, even with- out the stimulus of arms and organization, there is always the danger of physical conflict. But though they may, and ought to, denounce such a monstrous dere- liction of the duty of Government, Unionists recognize that, unless the nation is a great deal madder than we think it to be, the existence of the National Volunteers will soon make it realize the utter impossibility of solving the Irish question by the destruction of the Union. If Ireland were a homogeneous country like, say, Norway or Holland, local autonomy, whether desirable or not from the widest point of view, would at any rate be perfectly possible. What makes it impossible in Ireland, what makes the Union not only the best but the only rational solution of the problem, is the fact that Ireland is not homogeneous, but is sharply divided against herself. The growth first of the Ulster Volunteers, and now of the National Volunteers, is proof positive of the fact that the power of the United Kingdom as a whole is required to prevent the two Irelands from flying at each other's throats.
But the uprising of the National Volunteers proves more than that. It shows how utterly impossible is the task set the Dublin Parliament, should it ever come into existence. The National Volunteer movement having once begun will now continue, and is bound in the end to eclipse in influence the Dublin Parliament. Remember who the National Volunteers are. They belong to the most excitable, the least educated, and the least stable part of the population. We do not wish to be offensive, but undoubtedly they are the sansculottes of Ireland. If they do not know their power already, they will very soon know it. Can any sane man doubt, when a conflict of will comes, as assuredly it must come, between the Dublin Parliament and some three hundred thousand armed Volunteers, which will prevail? It is true that the National Volunteers are, and will continue to be, very badly drilled, very badly organized, and armed chiefly with revolvers, blunderbusses, and such miscellaneous weapons. They will, however, be quite strong enough to coerce a Parliament which has no military force at its command sufficient to put them down. " Ah," it will be said, " thitt does not matter. The Imperial Government will, if the National Volunteers give trouble, lend the Dublin Parliament British troops with which to coerce the insurgents." Those who take this view must be singularly lacking in imagination. Do they not realize that to ask for such help is a thing which no Dublin Parliament could possibly do ?
To call in the hated English soldiery would at once
destroy the whole moral force and prestige of the Dublin Parliament. Such action would shatter Home Rule to atoms, as the magic word shatters the palace in a fairy story. But even if this were not so, what is the use of giving Home Rule to Ireland if it is to lead at once to English coercion ? Unquestionably, as the Military Correspondent of the Times points out in a very instructive article in Thursday's paper, the real menace of the National Volunteers is not to Ulstermen or to the Union, but to the Dublin Parliament that is to be. The extremists of Ireland, who we were always told would be kept in such grand order by the Dublin Parliament, have found an instrument for expressing their will which will soon bring the bourgeois Nationalists of the Parliamentary Party to ruin and confusion. If the physical circum- stances of Ireland, as we believe, forbade Home Rule before the formation of the National Volunteers, they forbid it a thousand times more strongly after the raising of that force. Every National Volunteer that is enrolled—we are told that men are being enrolled at the rate of many hundreds a day, and that the force will very soon number over two hundred thousand—is a fresh nail in the coffin of Home Rule. Home Rule was before a mad experiment. It is now rapidly becoming nothing but the violent rush down the steep place which ended in the choking of the unclean spirits in the sea.
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