IRISH VIOLENCE.
IIIHERE is very little difference between the notorious Fenianism in Ireland of thirty or forty years ago and Sinn Fein of to-day. The names are similar in sound, and they stand for the same things. What we have to face in Ireland to-day, after all the anxious and perfectly sincere, if often futile, consideration of Irish claims, is the fact that the organization of violence which did Lord Frederick Cavendish and Mr. Burke to death in Phoenix
Park is again atwork. It is often said the rather chilly- blooded apologists of Sinn Fein in this country that the Sinn Fein leaders repudiate violence, and that it is not they who have organized the cowardly shooting of lonely constables and the outrageous victimization of peaceful and innocent people. But these apologists must be extraordinarily forgetful of their history. Many of the Fenian leaders practised a consummate art in accepting what they regarded as the benefits of violence, while in public speeches and Law Courts they were careful to hold language to which they could appeal on any awkward occasion as a moot of their innocence. The actual assassins were catspaws, very often without any appreciation of the wicked forces which had been put into play, and which gathered them up and swept them forward to their doom. Mr. Rudyard Kipling years ago expressed the whole ;truth of the matter when he condemned the bland and self- explanatory leaders of Fenianism in the scathing words:- " He Cod, the men who did the deed
Were braver men than they 1"
If only the Sinn Fein leaders could be true to their own principles, and produce some scheme, however subversive or dangerous in itself, which showed a scintilla of con- structive power, one might have some respect for them ; but their irrational decision to stay away from the House of Commons colours all their actions. If their executive power seems already to be passing into the hands of the Volunteers, and the Transport and General Workmen's Federation, which is once more coming to the front, they have only themselves to blame. If this exchange of parts became complete, however, there would still be no prospect of an abatement in the violence. The disloyalists, who are predominant in Ireland, by whatever name they may choose to call themselves, want an independent Republic. Nothing else will satisfy them. All discussions of the Irish problem which allow this central fact to slip into obscurity are futile. At the present moment there are seventy-three Sinn Fein Members of Parliament, all demanding an independent Republic. In these circum- stances it is obvious that if a Dublin Parliament were set up, it would be a Parliament disavowing allegiance to the King, working for separation from Great Britain in every sense and every form ; in fine, a body of men intent upon maintaining what would be in essence a foreign Power inspired by furious hatred at the doors of Great Britain. It was to prevent such an evil as this, though in a distinctly less compact and acute shape, that Lincoln went to war with the Southern States of the American Union. Yet we are told now—see Sir Horace Plunkett's letter in the Times of Tuesday—that one of the chief reasons why we must settle the Irish question at once is that American opinion demands it. We will say some- thing more about American opinion presently. First of all we want to demand that the British public should be told the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the real character of Sinn Fein.
The present political character of Sinn Fein is rooted in the relation with Germany. From that relation Sinn Fein drew its inspiration, its hope, and some of its material strength. Mr. Bonar Law has said that a Departmental Committee is the proper body to investigate this relation. Why then should not a Departmental inquiry be made Possibly it has already been made. If so, let us have the results. If the Government declare, however, that they are too busy to institute a Departmental inquiry, or even to draw up a Report from the proceedings of any Departmental inquiry already held, why should they not publish the shorthand notes of the evidence at the trial
after the fleeter Rebellion of 1916 ? Or the reports of the Royal Irish Constabulary on the working of the German Secret Service in Ireland ? Or the reports of our naval and military Intelligence Departments on the military manoeuvres of Sinn Pein in the Shannon Valley in 1917 / If the Government will not do any of these things, by what means, we ask, are the British public to judge of the real nature of Sinn Fein I Political talk goes on here day by day as though it were quite conceivable that some form of self-government should soon be given to Ireland, and indeed as though it were a positive obligation upon the Government to give it. Surely the basis of all fruitful discussion must be a knowledge of the facts, and hitherto the public have been kept in ignorance of those facts.
We print elsewhere a letter from Lord Hugh Ceeil which is an able philosophic disquisition on Irish aims. We are doubtful whether Lord Hugh Cecil's scheme of setting up four Provincial Councils in Ireland, charged with the task of conveying to the Government their ideas upon Irish sell-government, would help us any more than we were helped by the Convention instituted by Mr. Lloyd George. We are sure, however, that Lord Hugh Cecil penetrates to the exact truth—and this is a very important matter indeed—when he declares that, though disloyal Irishmen want complete independence, they would prefer the maintenance of the Union to any one of the. usually proposed forms of Home Rule. Above all, he puts his finger on the truth when he says that the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Ireland, while outwardly professing to ask for Home Rule, has over and over again tripped up Home Rule movements. when they looked dangerously like suc- ceeding. It was the. Roman Catholic prelateswho brought about a fiasco in the last stage of the Convention. They do not really want a rival power to their own in Ireland such as would be found in a Dublin Parliament.
In hisletter to the Times of Tuesday, strongly recommend- ing the granting of Dominion Home Rule to Ireland, Sir Horace Plunkett seems to have persuaded himself that the objections of Ulster Unionists and Protestants may be ignored. At least he represents their objections as being chiefly economic, and therefore such as could be overcome by the wit of man; though the intense dread inspired in North-East Ulster by the prospect of Home Rule is of course religious and social quite as much as economic. To ignore this fact is to misrepresent the whole case. For the rest, Sir Horace Plunkett insists upon the familiar argument that the establishment of Home Rule is exacted by American opinion. On what evidence he relies we do not know. In our experience American soldiers who came over here for the war and studied public affairs expressed such disillusionment and disgust at the refusal of Sinn Fein in the name of liberty to march against liberty- destroying Germany as was partly tragic and partly comic to witness. They felt that they had been sold, as indeed they had been. American correspondents have sent us large numbers of newspaper-cuttings expressing American astonishment and annoyance at the Irish attitude. "Men of Irish blood in America," says the Chicago Tribune, "have helped to keep the Irish cause alive, and they will not take it kindly that in the great struggle against German militarism Irishmen at home held back." The NellP York: Times, after describing. German atrocities, exclaims • " By what monstrous delusion possessed, plunged in what unhappy remoteness from the agony of Belgium and the- world, does the Irish Church tie herself at last to the Sinn Feiners, the open friends of the Kaiser " The New York Times then points out that Ireland has grown pro- sperous by British legislation, and during the war has been treated like a spoilt child. " She is now playing an in- glorious, a contemptible part, while the tragedy of the nations goes on. . . . If the Irishmen of Ireland expect any help,. any good offices from Americans, they must help America now." This is all very different from the old voice of America, and we might give an indefinite number of quotations to the same effect.
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