TOPICS OF THE DAY.
ANARCHY IN IRELAND.
THINGS in Ireland continue to drift from bad to worse. Every day the Government governs less, and the Sinn Feiners increase their brutality and insolence. While the British Government is made to look ridiculous and contemptible by the open assumption of sovereignty by the Sinn Feiners, the fact that it is a tragedy, not a wild farce, that we are witnessing is brought home by the daily murder, or rather murders, for the record of slaughtered soldiers, policemen, and civilians is now often above one a day. One of the most horrible, we cannot say least justifiable, for none of them has the slightest justification even from the Sinn Fein point of view, took place in Cork last Saturday, when Colonel Smyth, who lost his arm in the war and who held a police appointment in Ireland, was shot down as no one in this country would shoot a dog. Colonel Smyth's only offence was that he was a police officer, and that it was alleged, without any truth, that when he addressed the policemen under his orders he incited them to reprisals on the Sinn Feiners of what the Sinn Feiners regard as a lawless kind. There is little doubt that the misrepresentation of what Colonel Smyth said was deliberate. Those at the head of the murder conspiracy marked him out for death, ordered his removal ; and apparently they thought it necessary in his case to get up a little steam before the deed was committed. Therefore, as in the French Revolu- tion, a few provocative sentences were put into his mouth. Foulion never said or suggested that the people should eat hay, yet he died because these words were cleverly fastened upon him. So with Colonel Smyth. His death warrant was written in a false report. But even if all this were not so and Colonel Smyth had in effect urged his men not to be scrupulous about the law but to defend themselves by striking hard against the Sinn Feiners, it certainly does not lie with the Sinn Feiners to express horror and reprobation at his inhumanity. The Sinn Feiners almost in so many words claim to hold and maintain a monopoly of the right to kill on political grounds, and to resent any resistance to their decrees, and indeed any form of self-defence, as an unforgivable crime which is to be denounced by all friends of the great cause of Irish anarchy.
How long are the British people going to allow the horrors of the Sinn Fein conspiracy to go on without any serious attempt to protect their own friends, to punish those who are guilty of murder, and to maintain the ordinary standard of civilization in the South of Ireland ? But we are not putting the matter quite fairly to the British people. What we ought to say is, how long are they going to tolerate a Government which is either unwilling or unable to carry out the elementary work of governing in Ireland. At present it is only men who are malefactors or enemies of the State who can go about their business in freedom and security. Let us remind the British people, perplexed and distracted as they are, that there is not the slightest reason why the condition of Ireland should be what it is. Though the task has been made incomparably more difficult than it would have been if the Government had acted honestly and strongly and promptly, there is nothing actually hope- less in the state of Ireland—nothing which makes it, as the thick and thin supporters of the Coalition are apt to pretend, a situation hitherto unheard of in human history and therefore one practically beyond solution.
The first thing to do is to recognize that, as the Sinn Feiners have told us, and as they themselves have recognized very greatly to their advantage, a state of war exists in Ireland, and that the Sinn Feiners are exercising belligerent rights against the British. This enables the Sinn Feiners to kill at sight, while we, who pretend that peace exists in Ireland, give to the militant Sinn Feiners all the advantages which are given, and rightly given, in time of peace to civilians even when they are caught red-handed in crime. But what is the result of this ? The middle people, always the bulk of every population, who are neither very strong Sinn Feiners nor very strong Unionists and only want to live quietly and make a little money, have all con e to see that it pays very much better to be on the side of the Sinn Feiners, or, at any rate, to do nothing which can be represented as in the least hostile to them. If you offend the Sinn Feiners you, and often the members of your family, may pay the death penalty within a very few days. On the other hand, if you offend the Government it will do nothing to injure you or even to make your life unpleasant. By calling yourself a rebel you entitle yourself to be let alone by the Sinn Feiners. You have made yourself nasty to the hated tyrant and so have proved your Irish " Civism." As the mass of mankind always follows the line of least resistance, can we wonder that, in the words of the old gibe, the law of the land is moonshine and the law of Sinn Fein a reality—backed up by moonlight murders! Thus you have Government officials, the Government police, the soldiers, and the officers of the law living in Ireland in the midst of a population which is either actively hostile or blackmailed into hostility, or at the best indifferent. At the same time, there is a large and very reckless and determined section of the hostile population which openly proclaims itself at war and takes all the advantages and privileges of war. Nowadays everyone talks so glibly about looking facts in the face that we are almost afraid of using the phrase. Clearly, however, we should accept the fact that we are at war. Now, the first thing in a war is to distinguish between your enemies and your friends. Everyone in the disturbed districts of Ireland should be made to declare himself as on the Sinn Fein side or on the side of the existing Govern- ment, though this will not be necessary, remember, in the Six County area where those cruel, heartless, and sinister tyrants, the Protestant Unionists, insist on living in a quiet, orderly, and non-murderous manner. By this we do not mean that people are to be put to the question, but that everyone must be given a chance of declaring and proving his loyalty. If he does not take that oppor- tunity of showing himself for the Government and against the rebels, then he must be assumed to be at war with the Government. A difficulty, of course, arises here—namely, that a great many people who are at heart on the side of the Government and would like to declare themselves will say, "But what protection can you give us ? " We adm.it the difficulty. Here is our proposal for meeting it. The Government must be prepared to say that if people come out on their side they will be amply protected and amply provided for in every possible way and that, so far as is humanly possible, they shall not lose materially by their loyalty. On the other hand, persons who choose to be at war with the British Government and the British people must be made to realize that they will be treated as enemies. Instead of spending large sums of money in subsidizing the organs of Irish Local Government, which often spend that money in antagonism to the British Parliament and its rule, we would use these sums in giving security and compensation to those who side with us. We would fine, and continue to fine, districts in which murders are committed and other acts of disloyalty take place, but we would not levy those fines upon any persons who declare themselves loyalists and gave guarantees of their loyalty. The inno- cent should not suffer with the guilty. Again, if the disloyal people in a district refused to pay the fines for malignancy which were levied upon them, their lands and property should be sequestered. This will be regarded as a cruel proposal, but, at any rate, it is not so cruel as the anarchy which now exists. As a matter of fact, the moment it was seen that the Government meant business with a policy of forfeitures for disloyalty or failure to show loyalty, we should all be surprised at the number of genuine supporters of the British Government who would appear in Ireland. The ordinary Irish farmer wants to trade and deal and not to be shot, and if he could only feel sure that the British Government would stand by him he would soon show us what he thought of Sinn Fein.
So much for the separation of the loyal from the disloyal part of Ireland and for making it clear who is on our side and who against us in the disturbed districts. The next thing is to consider how we can get rid of the awful immunity for crime which now exists in Ireland. It is practically quite safe to kill a policeman or a soldier or any enemy of Sinn Fein. As we see in the case of Colonel Smyth and in many other cases, you can enter a club, a private house, or a tram-car and shoot a Man with impunity. You can shoot him as he sits at his desk or stands at his door, or again you -can shoot him from behind a hedge as he drives in a motor-car or rides on a bicycle, nearly always without fear of arrest or reprisal. The reason is that you cannot get juries to convict or even to attend. If this could be got over you would not, under existing conditions, be much better off because you cannot get witnesses to come forward. And who can wonder at this ? Trial by jury has become an absurdity. Therefore trial by jury ought to be suspended in Ireland. It has absolutely broken down, and something must be put in its place. That something should, in our opinion, be a commission of three lawyers who should be given all the powers of the judges of assize, and who should try without juries, and if necessary should be able to hear witnesses in camera or have their depositions taken in such a way as to secure secrecy. Wherever possible two of these special commissioners should be Englishmen or Scotsmen and only one an Irishman.
No doubt the special commissioners would need to be most carefully guarded, but such guarding could, we think, be successfully managed if the military and the police were given a free hand. If the Government, however, will not do this, or something like this, and the perplexed British people do not see their way to force the Government to do so by the threat of turning them out, what then ? In other words, if the ten Liberal Members of the Coalition, headed by the Prime Minister, insist on the policy of conciliating crime rather than of punishing it, and if they are backed up in this Home Rule policy by Unionist votes, what is going to be the end of it all ?
We are not going to prophesy evil, nor again would we put any limits to the folly of a British Government when dealing with Ireland, but the one thing which we know will not happen is this. The British Government might in a moment of folly consent to a sort of Republic, like the Republic of Cuba, being established in the South and West of Ireland—a Republic completely independent at home but under contract, as is Cuba, to place all foreign affairs in the supr,-me hands. Now, if it ever comes to anything of that kind, we are certain that there will be enough sense left here absolutely to refuse to endow that Southern Irish Republic with a huge annual tribute from England which is in effect the proposal of the Home Rule Bill. The British tax-payer is not going to subsidize triumphant treason whatever else he does. If the Irish worry our foolish and soft-hearted people into any concession of this kind, the Republic will have to be really " on its own," financially as well as politically. After paying its share of its indebtedness to England, it must live upon its own resources and not expect one penny from us. Again, it must forgo all fiscal consideration in the matter of customs and trade privileges greater than those possessed by foreign States. If the Southern Irish, holding a pistol at our heads, or rather, at the heads of our unfortu- nate friends in the South of Ireland, demand freedom, they shall be made to realize that independence does not mean 'Do what you will, and kick me as much as you like, and whatever happens you shall always have a handsome sum paid quarterly." Complete freedom must mean complete freedom from British subsidies.
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