But the difficulty is to get a single issue Laid
before the electorate. It can be done strictly only by means of the Referendum. But if a Referendum on the Home Rule Bill is said to be impossible, the responsibility which rests on Unionists to see that the election really turns on saving the Union and on no side issue becomes enormous. Unionist statesmen have never faced a heavier responsibility than this. Mr. Asquith may not be contemplating a very early dissolu- tion, but Unionists would be mad to ignore the possibilities of such a thing happening. It is obviously tempting for Liberals to go to the country while the Unionist Party is still apparently in a disunited condition. For Mr. Asquith, again, another general election is sooner or later almost the only satisfactory solution of the extremely disagreeable Ulster problem. The appeal of the Ulster Unionists to be left out of the Bill has been rejected. In other words Mr. Asquith accepts the task of repressing the promised resistance of Ulster. That is the present situation. It means that blood- shed is brought a stage nearer, and no Liberal Cabinet looks upon such a prospect except with alarmed apprehension. Whatever Mr. Bonar Law may say has, of course, as he carefully pointed out, no sort of binding force on Ulster. The Ulstermen will resist the authority of a Dublin Parliament whether the Unionist Party in the rest of the kingdom is able i,o help them or not.
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