In the Nome of Lords on Tuesday Lord Willoughby de
Broke drew a striking contrast between conditions in Great Britain and Ireland. In Ireland there had been a boom in horse-racing, and even "that good old Gaelic sport of cock-fighting" was being generally enjoyed. The Irish were in fact having junketings of every kind, and practically no article of food was rationed except sugar. Lord Crawford made some excuses about the expediency of not applying exactly the same regulations to Ireland as to England ; but Lord Crewe pointed out that the inequality was bound to be resented in England so long as the justification, if there were one, remained unexplained or seemed inadequate. Perhaps the truest word of all came from Lord Beresford, who remarked that the whole explanation was that the Government were in a fright of doing any- thing in Ireland. To us this fright is incomprehensible. The arrest of the rebel ringleaders was carried out with remarkable precision and success. For several days the chief exponents of Sinn Fein who remained were bewildered and incapable of leadership. Then was the time to follow up one stroke with another. If Conscription had been applied then, there might indeed have been some resist- ance, but It probably would have amounted to very little.
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