21 OCTOBER 1916, Page 3

In the crisis of the Civil War in America Lincoln

was suddenly confronted with almost exactly the same problem as our Govern- ment have now to face. Should the Draft, which he had found to be essen

tial, and had carried out in- the rest of the Northern States, be applied to the city of New York ? That sovereign self-governing State through its popularly elected Governor declared that the Draft could not and should not be enforced in New York. And here, curiously enough, it was an Irish population and an Irish mob which forbade the people of New York State being compelled to take their full share in the war.