" ONCE BIT, TWICE SHY." A RE there any Unionists left
in the House of Commons, any men who believe that it is essential to the welfare of the Empire to keep the central State of our great free com- munity of nations safe, united, and secure ? Are there any who have escaped the blindness to facts cast upon them by the great Spellbinder, any who realize that during the course of the war we have already been egregiously fooled twice by the Irish Nationalists and by those who tell us that it is good policy to conciliate them, and that we aro now asking to be fooled for the third time ? We were in effect told by the first Coalition Ministry that we must continue to play the game of Birrellism, the game of pretending that rebel Volunteers were no more harmful than loyal Volunteers, and that it was per- fectly safe to allow men who openly professed hatred of this country to possess arms, to drill and organise themselves, and even to practise in open day the capture of the centres of administration in the Irish capital. Mr. Redmond assured us that there would be a dreadful rising if we did anything to interfere with the Sinn Fein Volunteers. If, however, we let them blow off steam and engage in a little play-acting, all would be well. Why turn their local and temporary military camouflage into a reality ? We took this March-Hare advice, and instead of avoiding rebellion, we of course induced it. Birrellism ended, not in avoiding bloodshed, but in producing it. The Nationalist and Sinn Fein Volunteers rose in armed rebellion, in a way that showed quite plainly their malignity, disloyalty, and treachery, and showed also that our leniency had done nothing whatever to conciliate them. The Dublin Rebellion was co-ordinated with a German raid on the coast, planned by a debauched and self-seeking degenerate who had sold himself to men who were the enemies of the country of his birth—the country which he had voluntarily served, and whose pay, pension, and title he had taken. It was only by a happy chance that the perjured traitor Casement was caught, and caught at exactly the right moment, and therefore the Irish Rebellion proved a misfire, except in Dublin. Thanks to Casement's arrest, instead of the disloyal elements rising simultaneously throughout Ireland, the stab in the back was only delivered at the centre.
One would have thought that after so plain a lesson as we had received in the spring of 1916 there was no possibility of our making a second blunder of a similar kind. Apparently, however, " Once bit, twice shy," is a proverb of which our present Prime Minister has not heard. No sooner was the great Spellbinder well in power than he induced those Unionist colleagues who formed the majority of his Cabinet to assent to another attempt at what is whimsically called con- ciliating Ireland, a plan of action which means opening your month and shutting your eyes and seeing what your enemies will send you. They appointed a Convention. A body of Irish- men really representative of the Unionists of the North-East of Ireland, representatives of that small and dwindling section of Southern Irishmen whom we call Nationalists, and also representatives of the Roman Hierarchy were to get together and try to weave a web of words which would convert Irish treason into Imperial loyalty. One would have thought that the British Government would have abandoned the whole crazy scheme when they found that the Sinn Feiners would have nothing to do with their proposal. The Sinn Feiners regard the people of Great Britain as their deadliest enemies. But the Germans are also the deadly enemies of Great Britain. Therefore, argue the Sinn Feiners, Sinn Fein must he in alliance with Germany—an alliance based also on the amazing ground, tests the chief Sinn Feiner, Mr. De Valera, that a German victory would mean the restoration of the temporal power of the Vatican. Accordingly they treated the Convention, and the soothing-syrup of glorified local self-government in lieu of an independent republic hostile to Great Britain, with contempt. Surely the facts should have shown the Government that the Convention could have no results ! Not a bit of it. So convinced was the Prime Minister that if you only call " Pretty Pussy " long enough and loud enough to a tiger, the tiger will turn into a purring cat, that he not only persisted in the Convention policy, but added to his vocal blandishments a dish of cream. He let out of prison unconditionally a number of persons who had been condemned to life-long sentences, not merely for rebellion, but for the much more heinous crime of murder. This policy of conciliating the Sinn Feiners by re- storing to them Casement's female counterpart, the Countess Markiewicz, and other leaders of sedition, ended, as any person who had ever read a Sinn Fein speech or studied a Sinn Fein manifesto should have known, in anything but conciliation. The tiger would not emit even one solitary purr. Indeed, the moment the prisoners were out, his roar was more menacing than ever. He realized that his enemies were afraid of him. The Government had not even adoptedthe precaution of making the men whose gaol-doors they opened promise not to take part in seditious agitation. The result was that the rebel leaders had not been free a week before they were actively engaged in their old plan of campaign. However, that did not in the least disturb the Prime Minister's equanimity. It was clear that the Irish could not really be so naughty as to play Tiger on the Spring, when he wanted them to play Puss in the Corner. Accordingly the Convention, under the protection of the Censor, vigilant in England but blandly lenient in Ireland, pursued the noiseless tenor of its way. Meanwhile the Sinn Feiners, with a shrewd eye for strategy, based, we make no doubt, on direct orders from the German General Staff, prac- tised the holding of the estuary of the Shannon, that magnifi- cent waterway which leads right into the very heart of Ireland, and which, if held by even a small force assisted by 1.1'-boats, could cut Ireland in two. And now the Convention has, in the words of Sir Thomas Browne, " concluded in a moist relent- ment," and, as far as unanimity is concerned, has reached no conclusion whatever. We beg pardon. There were two cases of real unanimity, both involving grants from the Exchequer of Great Britain, proposals accepted without even a wink by those who demand complete fiscal autonomy for Ireland !
On the top of the absolute proof afforded by the Convention that there are two Irelands, the Ireland of the Twenty-six- County Area and the Ireland of the Six-County Area, and that no agreement between them in regard to political ideals is possible, has come the crucial demand that Ireland should do her share in crushing Prussian militarism and freeing the world. Instantly the majority in the Twenty-six-County Area—i.e., the Nationalists and the Sinn Feiners—have joined hands to avert this fate, worse to them than death, worse even than the Union. Need we say that the majority in the other Ireland, the Ireland of the Six-County Area, are as fiercely anxious to do their duty and to strike their blow for the good cause as the rest of Ireland is anxious to avoid it ? It is in circumstances such as these, and when, as by a flash of lightning, we have seen who are our friends in Ireland and who are our enemies, that the Government have had the hardihood to promise a Bill for giving Home Rule to Ireland- s Home Rule scheme which in the first place, and in spite of a phantom series of so-called safeguards, will place loyal North-East Ulster under the heel of the Sinn Feiners of the South and West. (We speak of the Sinn Feiners, because the Nationalists have really ceased to exist, except as hewers of wood and drawers of water for the Extremists.) Here, then, we see writ large the lesson which the Government have learnt from allowing men to prepare for rebellion, from letting rebels out of prison although they would not promise to play even very mildly at the game of conciliation, from opening a Convention which, for every man with eyes to see, could only prove the incompatibility of temper between the two Irelands. If ever politicians asked for trouble, the present Government are asking for it now, and will assuredly get it. The Government tried a hair of the dog that bit them in 1916, and finding it a failure, they have gone on to swallow the whole dog.
The policy of the Government would have been mad enough and bad enough to excuse protest and censure on our part, however strong ; but what are we to say when, in addition to this crazy scheme of persisting in offering the rejected cream-bowl to the tiger, comes the amazing fact that the new Home Rule Bill is admitted to be a kind of half-hearted disreputable bribe to the Irish to do their duty ! Mr. Duke let the secret out when he, in effect, told us that, though the two Bills are not to depend upon each other, it was hoped that the tiger would not have to be handled before the new cream-bowl was ready to be offered to the, dear, misunderstOod, noble creature. What makes this policy of using Home Rule as the jam for the powder of Conscription the more astounding is the fact that in the Convention, which is admitted to provide the basis of the Government's new Irish Constitutional policy, the one thing accepted by all, besides the agreement to get any subsidies that could be wheedled out of the Imperial Exchequer, was the statement that, assuming an Irish Parliament were called into existence, Conscription could not possibly be applied except by that Parliament. Surely it was not necessary to have a Convention to persuade the plain man of the very obvious fact that if an Irish Parliament were called into existence it could and would undo all that had been done, or was intended to be done, by a Compulsory Service Act.
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