THE IRISH PROBLEM.
WHO ought not to feel indignation and contempt for the attitude of a large section, or what at any rate appears to be a large section, of the British public in regard to the present state of Ireland ? They have pity and tolerance for the Lord Mayor of Cork because he so foolishly, nay so vainly, committed himself to ceremonial suicide. Surrounded and exploited by unpitying Roman prelates, designing politicians and hysterical Press-men, he was not able, though his sufferings were no doubt great, to resist the temptation of attempting to put the British people and their Government in the wrong. He was doing what plenty of Asiatics, and especially the Japanese, do when they desire to draw attention to what they consider some special piece of wrong-doing, to expiate some national disgrace, or to execute some act of private vengeance. But they, at any rate, perform their misdirected tragedies with a dignity and silence which we are old-fashioned enough to admire. They do not perform in a tempest of highfalutin' sentimentality. Though the public has unlimited pity for the Sinn Fehier who can doom himself to death in defiance of the Christian creed which he pro- fesses, it has little or none for the murdered soldier or policeman ; for the official or magistrate shot in the dis- charge of his duty. There is no pity for the wretched farmer or landowner who has been taken in his bed and shot because he has incurred the enmity of some self- appointed Sinn Fein official ; none for the Protestants and loyalists of Londonderry and Belfast who have seen civil war organized in their streets by cruel and ruthless conspire' tors. Having made the South and West of Ireland a hell upon earth, these men now wreak vengeance upon men of North-East Ulster—men whose only crime is their determination to maintain the cause of civil and religious liberty and to continue loyal to the Empire which they have done so much to found and to maintain. Owing to the gift of offensive and mendacious rhetoric, so often possessed by the Celt, and to the tongue-tied nature of the men of English or Scotch birth, people here have been persuaded to regard the Protestant inhabitants of Ulster as looking upon the street battles, such as have been proceeding during the past week, as something tolerable, if not indeed. delightful. It has been insinuated for the past twenty years that the men of Belfast positively love riots and the risks of sudden death, and find immense satisfaction in going into the streets and killing and maltreating their Roman Catholic neighbours. Nothing could possibly be further from the truth. The Ulster workers are as fond of a quiet life as their fellows in our English or Scotch cities. The Belfast man does not want to be shot down in the streets or to have his house burnt over his head any more than the ordinary inhabitant of London or Leeds. He is no coward, as he showed the world when the people of South and West Ireland were leaving it to the others to fight their battles at the front, but he certainly has no liking for outrage and oivil war. It is merely to create prejudice that the people of Southern Ireland have in- stilled into the minds of so many Englishmen the fantastic notion that the Ulster Protestant is a persecuting savage. The average Ulsterman in hard work, temperance, thrift, self-respect and general good citizenship need fear no comparison with the best men of the best urban populations in Great Britain.
But this lavishing of pity and sympathy on those who make cruelty and falsehood their instruments of rebellion, on the bitter and cynical enemies of England, and the withholding of it from men who have stood by us in the past—'i.e., from those who have nothing to do with treason and midnight murder, and whose only crime is their determination to remain our friends--by no means com pletes the tale of sentimental folly with which we are dealing.
We see experienced statesmen and powerful newspapers, by talking and by writing, suggesting that the British nation are hardening their hearts like Pharaoh and refusing to allow the poor enslaved people of Ireland to escape from their secular agony and " to live at last in peace and plenty, friends with all, and enemies to none, in a condition of ideal self-determination." That would be a pretty picture if it were true. No upbraiding would be needed of the British public for desiring that such an earthly paradise should be rushed into existence. But it is not true. The true facts of the situation are very different.
Without any fear of contradiction we make the following statements :— At any moment that part of Ireland in which the majority of people desire complete independence and a national existence of their own can have it for the asking, and practically upon any conditions they may choose. If they only want to have local self-determination, but to remain within the Enpire, they can claim the arrangements of the present Home Rule Bill—arrangements under which they will get the meet generous terms ever offered to an insurgent province. They will get not only the right to rule themselves but the right very largely to rule us, and in addition they will obtain in effect a subsidy from the long-suffering English and Scotch tax-payers of some seven or eight millions a year. If this is not enough, it is an open secret that if they ask for it., to the accompaniment not of midnight murder, but of a decent declaration that they cannot endure to be in the Empire at all, the South and West of Ireland may have Cuban terms. If they are not actually granted to begin with the name of a republic, they will soon be enabled to obtain the thing under a Celtic alias. The House of Commons would not bring on another Irish crisis to prevent an Irish Dominion calling itself a Common- wealth, or whatever is the Celtic pseudonym for a non- monarchical polity.
No doubt what we have called Cuban terms (or even the erection of the South and West of Ireland into new States of the Church in the charge of a Cardinal Legate appointed to play the part of monarch or Papal. Viceroy) could not be accompanied by a large annual subsidy. Even the worst Irish haters of England would hardly expect the English nation to become tributary to an Irish republic. A man may be generous to a partner who starts a branch business, but that generosity cannot be claimed by one who leaves the firm altogether with curses and threats of vengence. We may say, " Erring sister, go in peace," but unless one has got the paying of blackmail upon the brain, one does not say, " Go honoured but erring sister. We will give you a handsome annual tribute if you will deign to step out of the house without a fight." The desired terms, everyone knows, could be obtained to-morrow by Ireland minus that part of Ulster in which the Protestants and loyalists form such an overwhelming majority. They would no doubt be given even if the Irish came to us with their hands still dripping with blood. If the Irish washed their hands and took the trouble to keep them clean even for three months the terms would be bestowed with a blessing " and flowers," for John Bull is as generous as he is senti- mental. But it maybe asked by some bewildered in- habitant of the British Dominions, by some American, or even by some foreigner, " What then is all this trouble about ? Why is not the Irish problem settled hands down ? " The answer is an easy one. It is not settled because the leaders of the Irish insurrection, expert organizers of murder and tyranny, will not agree to any terms unless they are allowed to dominate the people of North-East Ulster. They say almost in so many words that what we offer will be of no value to them. It would be a mere mockery of their rights to exclude the right to do what they will with the people of North-East Ulster. Unless we give them what we have no moral power to give ; unless we violate the principle which was established, as we were told for all time at Versailles—the principle of self- determination—the Sinn Feiners will hold no dealings with us except those of insurrection, and insurrection not under the forms of war, but under the code of the assassin. Unless North-East Ulster is given over to them, they, like the unfortunate Mayor of Cork, will prefer to see the Irish people commit suicide and the whole island laid waste. They ask, indeed, for far more than the hunger. striker. " You must not only let us go, but you must let us take with us a victim whom we can oppress at our leisure," is their slogan. In the last resort, as we have always said in these columns, it is the attitude adopted towards Ulster which must' prevent all right-minded people from 'conceding 'the claims of the Sinn Feiners. Nothing could be more significant, nothing more sinister, than this resolve 'to deprive North- East Ulster of the right of self-determination. If the Sinn Feiners, able and quick-witted as they are, had no bad intentions with regard to North-East Ulster, they would say: " Let us leave North-East Ulster alone. We will have nothing to do with that anti-Irish community until they have lost the unpatriotic aspirations they now cherish. We want no traitors within our gates. We will leave them alone until they come to us on their beaded knees and own their fault, and ask to be admitted to the nation of Ireland. That theywill do so when they see the kind of Government which we shall establish in Ireland we have not the slightest doubt. But till they do this, as we are -assured they will, we are better without them!' This is the kind of thing that the people of South and West Ireland would say if -they meant well. That they do not even pretend to say it or think it is portentous. We do not wonder that it has struck, as we know it has, a chill into the hearts of those Protestants of North-East Ulster who would otherwise be Home Rulers. They feel it is a dread menace against which they must arm themselves before it-is too late.
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