CONSCRIPTION FOR IRELAND.
IS Mr. Lloyd George going to keep his pledge to the nation in regard to Conscription for Ireland ? Remember, it is a pledge, and not merely a declaration of policy. The ready assent of the middle-aged men of England and Scotland to the drafting of men up to fifty was obtained on the promise that Ireland was at last to be made to bear her proper share of the burden of war. Further, Mr. Lloyd George stands pledged not to delay Conscription in Ireland by linking it to any scheme of Constitutional reform. Nothing could have been clearer than the statement, made either by him or by Mr. Boner Law on his behalf, that the two measures were not dependent upon each other, and that Conscription would go forward as a necessary war measure quite apart from all other considerations. Therefore the Prime Minister cannot, without kiss of political honour, substitute Voluntaryism for Conscription, or keep Conscription back till a distracted Committee of the Cabinet has fashioned some form 'of disruptive Federalism. Two precious months have gone by ; no more time must be wasted.
The chief plea, one of cowardice and ignorance, for not applying Conscription to Ireland, is that the whole country will thereby be thrown into confusion ; that the Moderates will be driven into the arms of the Extremists ; and that open rebellion, or else passive resistance of the most virulent and dangerous kind, will be so organized as to make Compulsory Service a source of weakness rather than of strength, a diminution, not an augmentation, of Man-Power. We do not believe one word of it. We believe that if Conscrip- tion had been applied to Ireland when it was applied to England, as it could perfectly well have been, there would have been practically no trouble at all, especially if it had been accom- panied by the arrest of the Sinn Fein leaders—rebels en per- ' manence, and therefore always liable to internment. Even now, though the omens are not so favourable as they were at the beginning of April, a stern and steady application of the law would prevent any serious outbreak. This is no mere guess on our part. Our opinion is based upon solid ground.
Men who are told to obey in a manner which shows that those who give the order have not only the physical power but the will to enforce obedience, and that they know there- fore that they will obtain obedience, invariably give way.
Remember that what is making our politicians hesitate are the gloomy prognostications of so-called Irish Moderates ; of British Pacificists, Defeatists, and Pessimists ; of news- papers like the Daily News ; and of leaders of public opinion like Mr. Massingham. It was these very same people who told us that Conscription was absolutely impossible in England ; that we who advocated it did not understand the working classes ; that the moment we tried Conscription there would be a vast strike amongst the manufacturers of munitions ; that we should lose far more than we should gain • in a word, that the certain way of losing the war was to adopt the principle of Compulsion. Well, none of these terrible things happened. The working men showed, as we knew they would show, that the honour of the country was just as dear to them as to others, and was just as safe in their hands as in those of every other class in the country—and a great deal safer than in those of the rich Radicals who own the Daily News, or supply the funds which secure the reiteration of Mr. Massingham's weekly howls to the errant moon. At the moment our Bourbon Radicals, who learn nothing and remember nothing, are repeating the same tale with the same vituperative epithets. But though the circumstances are somewhat different, our Radicals will turn out to be equally wrong. Here again we have proof, and do not rely on mere assertion. When the Dominion of Canada, to its eternal credit, determined to apply Compulsion, our Radical Pacificists insisted that the notion of applying it to the Province of Quebec was pure Midsummer madness.
Quebec was another Ireland. The people of that Province had not their hearts in the war. The Roman Church, or at any rate Clericalism or Ultramontanism, was there, as elsewhere, always privately, and often openly, against the Entente and on the side of the Germans. Therefore it would be both cruel and inexpedient to force French Canada to fight. Unless the Dominion Government were prepared to are4st and imprison a dozen Bishops, hundreds of priests, and to risk bloodshed in the streets of Quebec and throughout the Province, Conscription could not be carried out. The Dominion Government, however, refused to be intimidated, and showed themselves ready to enforce the Draft, if necessary, with machine-guns and artillery. They obtained a quick victory, and now the very people who were supposed to be unconscriptablo are going not merely quietly but . enthusiastically, and like the brave men they are, to take up their duty to their country, to the Empire, and to the cause of Freedom and Civilization.
The same thing will happen if Conscription is applied with the same fearlessness in that other portion of the Empire in which Clericalism and Ultramontanism claim to direct the bodies as well as the souls of their adherents. Owing to the vacillation and delay of the Government, and to the advantage of two months' organization- which we have given to our enemies and to the friends of Germany .in Ireland, there may be, and probably will be, a little resistance and certain amount of bloodshed, but the South and West of Ireland—about the North-East of Ireland no human being has any anxiety—will follow Quebec and French Canada in yielding their due quota of brave soldiers. When we say this we are of course assuming that the Government will
not merely give the order with a voice and gesture that mean that they expect, and intend to exact, obedience, but that they will arm themselves with the necessary powers for putting down, not only the resistance of the individuals conscripted, but also the
incitements to resistance, and for presenting the persecution of the families of those who do not resist. It is easy enough to sketch the kind of measures that are necessary. The Tribunals, which must no doubt allow a good many exemptions in Ireland as here, must be military Tribunals, though Tribunals which will of course hear civilian evidence as to the injury that would be done to agriculture, trade, or commerce by taking particular individuals. Next, there must be no nonsense about trying persons guilty of resistance to Compulsion in civilian Courts or before intimidated or Sinn Fein juries. The law has already made every Irishman of military ago a soldier in the Reserve. If he commits the military offence of desertion or of disobedience to orders, he must be tried by Court-Martial. This does not of course mean that he will necessarily be treated with great harshness or shot at sight, but it does mean that he will be tried as all soldiers are tried for breaches of discipline. Now as to the equally important point of preventing incitements to resistance to the application of Compulsory Service. If proper regulations are framed uncle- the Defence of the Realm Act, there will be no great difficulty, and there need be no great harshness. By this we mean no sensational shootings, or imprisonments, or anything of the sort. Here Ireland's prosperity—a prosperity in which we have always heartily rejoiced and continue to rejoice—is the Empire s opportunity. Ireland is a country of small proprietors, both in land and in stocks and shares. There are very few people in Ireland who have not money or money's-worth at call. A Government who are resolved on breaking down resistance to their just decrees should not hesitate to fine heavily those who obstruct, or conspire to obstruct, whether they are Bishops or priests, monks or seminarists. Maynooth will not be conscripted, but it must not be a licensed asylum for anti-Conscriptionist plotters. The Roman Church as a whole may have to be taught that the great amount of property which her members have not only been allowed to accumulate, but have accumulated with the best of goodwill on the part of the British Government, is not to be used for the destruction of that Government. In the same way, the men who now possess the greater part of the soil in Ireland—i.e., the tenants under the various Purchase Acts— must be warned that if they resist a outrance confiscation of the property which they have acquired will take place. After all, there is inherent justice in this. The people of the United Kingdom as a whole have lent their credit, and in effect taxed themselves, in order that the Irish peasant should obtain the freehold of his land by means of annual instalments of less than the rent which he used to pay before he obtained that freehold. When the period during which the instalments are due has run out the Irish peasant will be an unencumbered landowner. If men by defiance . of the law become outlaws, they must be taught to take the consequences, in their purses as well as in their persons. John Bull is very kind-hearted and very stupid, but even he knows enough not to tolerate Rebellion with limited liability. Finally, in our opinion, those who resist Conscrip- tion, and have to be punished for such resistance, should be deprived of the suffrage. Those who will not accept the duties of citizenship must not expect to enjoy its privileges. We would apply the penalty of disfranchisement, for a term of years appropriate to the offence, in all cases of condemnation for aiding and abetting resistance to Conscription, and for conspiring to aid and abet. There is no need to go into further details. If once the Government make it clear that they mean business over Conscription ; that the law will be applied with the utmost sternness, though of course with the utmost justice • and that those who aid and abet resisters to the law, whether they are Cardinals, priests, or, again, whether they are the smaller fry of the Civil Service, Police, and Judiciary, will pay the penalty for their action, there will be little trouble. On the other hand, if the Govern- ment put forward some timid and half-hearted scheme for applying Compulsion which shows on the face of it that its authors do not believe in the possibility of applying it, and further, if they couple their scheme with some plan under which those who stand by the Government will in six months' time be thrown to the wolves under some system of Federal Home Rule, all prospect of a successful application of the Act must be abandoned. Tell the Police, tell the smaller Magis- trates, tell the Collectors of Taxes, tell the minor employees of Government, local and central, and the little men of the Civil Service generally, first that they have got to make themselves exceedingly unpopular by so working the law of the land that no one who aids and abets resistance to Conscription or incites to such resistance will escape the censure of the law, and then add that when they have accomplished this difficult, disagreeable, and even dangerous work they will immediately be put under the heel of those they have helped to discipline, and they will of course fail you, and the prophecies of the pessimists will come true and Conscription prove impossible. Tell them, however, that they have got to stand by you, and that no hedging will be allowed, but that you will stand by them, and victory is • not merely likely but certain.
Above all, there must be no petting of the Nationalists of the kind that formed the peroration of Mr. Lloyd George's Edinburgh speech. The Moderate Nationalist, if such a creature exists—personally we believe him to be a wholly extinct form of mammal—is never going to be coddled into a British patriot. Tell him that you feel sure that he will never really be so wicked as to bite and scratch or do anything hard or unkind because you know his noble nature, and you will exasperate him beyond words. Such praise will embarrass him with his friends, and will also show him that you are personally weak and destitute of self-confidence. Tell him, however, what you expect him to do, and mean to make him do, and he will in all probability do it.
Once more, we are absolutely confident that if Conscription be applied at once, and applied in the proper spirit and by the proper means, it will be successful. There will be no torrents of blood and no dragoonings, but merely a somewhat highly coloured repetition of what has happened in Quebec. In three months we shall be able to say that we are three hundred thousand brave soldiers to the good, and that Ireland is " as quiet as usual." That will be a success, but it will not be the whole success. By taking a complete generation of young Irishmen, giving them military training and discipline, and sending them out of the country for a good holiday, and so away from the narrowing influence to which they are now exposed, an improvement will be wrought in the Irish population which will have the very best consequences in the future.
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