Itit. IRISH INFERNO. IT° ZEE EDrSOS OF 17XE " SPECRATOA."3
$m,—The Spectator is not given to plunging; but on the Irish question it seems, if I may say so, to show a disposition to
plunge. And, as the .Spectator represents all that is soundest in English journalism, aisle matter for regret. Any personal bias which I may have is in favour of the loyal minority. My sympathies, i.e., are with Ulster as distinct from Celtic Ireland;
-and -I am -sufficiently Victorian to regard Catholicism in general, and the Papacy :in .particular, as permanent dangers to civil and religious liberty. It is just because this is so that I find it impossible to accept either your defence of the cam- paign of retaliation in Ireland or your oriticism of the Church of Rome in connexion with the Sinn Eein crimes.
With regard to the funeral of the late Lard Mayor of Cork,
it was a grave scandal that the flag and uniform of the so- called "Irish Republic" should have been seen in a London church and in the streets of London. For this, however, neither the Church of Rome nor the Irish bishops are respon- sible; it is the English Catholic authorities and the Metro- politan police ;who are to he blamed. As to the Lord Mayor -himself, misguided and unsocial an his action was, it -does not follow that bemuse he belonged to what is known as the "Irish Republican Army," he can properly be said-to have been "a member of a murder association." To think in this way is to 'fall into the fallacy of the Church of Rome with regard to Masonry. A Freemason may, no -doubt, be also "a member of a murder association." But this must be proved, not assumed. And in the present case, can any one doubt that the Sinn Fein murders are the work of a secret moiety of the type of the Clan na Gael, -which the police have not yet succeeded in tracking down?
Casuistry has deservedly a bad name; but :rather as a temper than as &science. The Distinguo of the casuists, open as it is to abuse, is inseparable from any system of applied ethics. To speak of the action of ,a person who sacrifices his life in order, to assert a principle, however mistaken and mischievous a principle, as _suicide, is sorely a misnomer. Nor can it be seriously held that "Killing No ltfurder—Irish version—has become one -of 'the standard works of the Roman Church in Ireland." Let us take a Parallel nearer home.- The impression left on the casual reader of the current numbers of the Nation and the Spectator might well be that the former journal con- sidered the murder of an Irish policeman, the latter that of an Irish civilian, presumably (though by no means invariably) of Nationalist sympathies, as a very trivial affair. The im- pression would of course be in each case a mistaken one. But the fact is that both the Nation and the Spectator accentuate one set of facts and minimize, though they formally acknow- ledge, the other. The Irish bishops do -the same.
The present unhappy state of Ireland is not due to a double dose of original sin in the Irish. The more closely' the history of the last six years is examined, the more clearly the want of intelligence,tact,and candour (not to-use a stronger word)on the part of successive English administrations and administrators comae to light. Accuracy of statement is not an _Irish virtue. Is it, as things stand, an English one? "The -Government has learned a great deal during the war as to the permissibility of official denials." it would do well to unlearn the lemon. The secret of the unrest of our time, economic, social, and political, is the atmosphere of mutual -suspicion and distrust in which we are living. It is a poisonous atmosphere: ()Innis home mender has-impressed itself on our minds.
The question, Who began it? is one which-should not be put, and cannot be answered; things are what -they are. They cannot be allowed to drift; but while the situation would justify martial -law, or something very like it, the present system of indiscriminate reprisals sinks us daily deeper in the mire. During the Italian Bisorgintento assassination was, an happily, not unknown. But what would English statesmen of the type-of Palmerston or Russell have said had the Austrians made this an excuse for carrying fire and sword over a whole countryside, as their successors are doing in Ireland? I do not know whether the official denials, which are too half- hearted to be described as the homage paid by vice to virtue, extenuate or aggravate the situation. They are .presumably meant to save the Government's face. But they -offend the national conscience.
It is improbable that Rome will speak; "there is no vision.° But were it to do so, the pronouncement might not -be to our mind; the moralist must condemn wrong-doing "not at all, or
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