MR. T. P. O'CONNOR AND ULSTER UNIONISTS. [To THE EDITOR
OF THE " SPECTATOR."]
FIR;—There is ample evidence that the German Government had determined to bring about the European war in 1914 or 1915, when they had completed the augmentation and re-equipment of their army and collected the last instalment of the capital tax levied far the purpose of strengthening their army and navy, which they Lad persuaded their people was the only guarantee for peace and against attack by envious neighbours. Mr. O'Connor's contention, tlierefss;e, that the war was precipitated by something which happened in Ireland is without force. If, however, we admit, for the sake of argument, that trouble in Ireland had any effect in precipitating the war, the responsibility surely lies upon those a ho so nearly succeeded after thirty years of agitation in setting up a separate Parliament in this country, which, had it actually some into existence, would have placed great difficulties in the ray of the British Government in conducting the war, and placed the safety of the Realm in serious danger.
As I have already pointed out in the columns of the Spectator, Fir Edward Carson and the Ulster Unionists, so far from deserv- ing any blame in this matter, have earned the everlasting grati- tude of the whole Empire by preventing, by their determined attitude, the actual setting up of an Irish Parliament at the time when the war began. The purchase by Ulster Unionists of Ger- man rifles (for which they paid a high price) and their vehement protests against being placed under the government of a disloyal Parliament in Dublin—protests which, in some isolated instances, tcok the rhetorical form of a professed preference for• government by the Kaiser to government by an Irish rebel Parliament (as who should say when canvassed by a candidate, " I would sooner Tote for the devil than for you, sir ") were the natural and inevitable results of the pernicious advocacy of the disruption of the Legislative Union of Great Britain and Ireland by Mr. T. P. t,'Connor and his friends, and they must bear the whole weight of any responsibility which rests upon anybody connected with Ireland for the outbreak of the war.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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