TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE GRAND MISUNDERSTANDING.—I.
HOW is it that John Bull makes mistakes so many and so fatal in his attempts to solve the Irish problem ? That is a question which serious-minded people are asking themselves when they see such exhibitions of British-made political folly as are now going on in Ireland. They see the Old Birrellism, in spite of its bloodstained record, capped by the New Birrellism. They hear the Prime Minister telling them to attack and suppress Boloism wherever they find it, and yet forgetting entirely that by far the worst examples of Boloism yet recorded are at our very doors, and lying open to the public eye ! In Ireland we may see the whole machinery of Boloism laid bare. We find German money (not Irish- American money, though the conduit-pipe through which it flows is often Irish-American in name) going into the rebel pockets. What was Casement but a Bob in arms ? But since the suppression of the Rebellion and the execution of Casement it is an open secret that plenty of German subsidies for rebel and Sinn Fen projects have reached Ireland. That is perhaps why Mr. De Valera and his staff find it so easy to fly about the country in high-powered motor-cars, and, according to the Daily Mail correspondent, are willing to offer petrol for nothing in any quantities, even to friendly enemies. There is no want of cash in the Sinn Fein movement, but very little of it comes from Irish sources. It is Bolo-bred. Yet not only the Prime Minister, but apparently the greater number of Englishmen, seem to think that there is nothing strange or contradictory in elaborate efforts being made to hunt out the mote of Boloism on this side of St. George's Channel, while leaving the beam across the water without even a comment. Curiously enough, too, the newspapers which specially exhort us to search for Bolos and Boloism here, there, and everywhere in England never even suggest a Bob hunt in Ireland.
The explanation of this regime of paradox and topsy-turvy- dom is, we believe, to be found in the fact that, in spite of seven hundred years' acquaintance with Ireland and Irishmen, the average Englishman still acts on the supposition that the Irishman is at bottom such a man as himself, and shares his failings and his virtues. One of the chief reasons, perhaps the chief reason, why the Irishman, and especially the Irish extremist, is incomprehensible to the Englishman, is to be found in the Irishman's wholesale use of the lie as an instru- ment of war and politics. And here let us say that we are not going to make any self-righteous attempt to show that English people are more virtuous than Irishmen, or that it is the case of an absolutely honourable and trustworthy people opposed to a race of liars. There are, of course, plenty of liars in England, but they do not deliberately use the lie as a political instrument as do the Irish ; or if they do, they do not contrive to use it in such a way that it is believed in by their enemies. John Bull's political lies have never taken anybody in. Irish politics have been run for generations under this particular form of political camouflage. Let us take first an example from history. Castlereagh's countrymen hated him because he was the real author of the Union. But for his ete.adiness and high political capacity the Union would never have been carried, that Union which remains the greatest instrument for good ever achieved in Ireland. The making of the Union was never forgiven him in his lifetime, or even after his death. The result .has been that the quick-witted, satirical liars of Ireland have contrived to send their great countryman down to history as a black-hearted, tyrannical scoundrel, a sort of Hibernian Machiavelli, rejoicing in wicked- ness and oppression, and wickedness and oppression carried out by the vilest and most underhand of means; Yet when one can clear away the slime of lies which the Irish satirists first compounded for home use, and then employed to infect English historians, one finds that Castlereagh was in reality a man of strong Whig views, a man essentially a moderate, even a " trimmer," using the word in its proper sense of one who steadies the boat at the right moment. If one reads Castle- reagh's speeches and despatches in 1815, one realizes indeed that his true views were not unlike those of the mOderate Liberals of to-day. Though his personal sympathies were probably with the French Royalists, he was most careful to make it clear that the British Government would take no part in forcing upon the French people a Government which they did not desire. Curiously enough, he was far more moderate and democratic in this matter than was Grattan. Again, strangely enough, Castlereagh at' the Congress of
Vienna showed himself very strongly in favour of the present Radical panacea—i.e., a " League of Nations." If we re- member rightly, he actually used this form of words. So much for an historical example of the successful lie.
Modern lies have unfortunately done their work almost as well. Take the case of the resistance of North-East Ulster to Home Rule, or, rather, to the turning of the inhabi- tants of an area in which there is a majority of Unionists out of the Union and forcing them against their will under a Dublin Parliament. By a systeni of hard lying, a very large number of people in this country have been led to believe that the people of Ulster were in the past the cruel and ruthless oppressors of the South, that Ulster has been the pampered child of British ascendancy, and that in the last few years Ulster had shown an anti-English and rebel spirit because she feared being robbed of her right to oppress the South. Next, North-East Ulster and her people have been represented as black and brutal Protestants, whose whole desire is to persecute Roman Catholics, and treat the most sacred rites of that faith with hatred, ridicule, and contempt. Finally came the arch-lie that when Ulster prepared if necessary to resist the attempt to drive her out of the Union against her will and to force her under a Dublin Parliament, her leaders were guilty of intriguing with the Kaiser and accepting gold in sackfuls from the emissaries of Potsdam. It has even been alleged that Sir Edward Carson himself in the spring of 1914 was in communication with Potsdam, and was prepared to welcome a German invasion ! Of course them is not a shade of a shadow of truth in these statements. They are not even based upon some alleged carelessness in the way in which subscrip- tions to the Union funds were accepted, or upon reckless talk by any of the responsible Ulster leaders. It is possible that some obscure and excitable Orangeman may have said that he would rather live under the rule of the Kaiser than under the rule of a Dublin Parliament, but as far as we know there is no trustworthy evidence of any such talk; The lie was manufactured by the Irish Home Riders, because they thought it a good way to damage Ulster. Just as they concocted the Castlereagh lice in order to destroy the reputation of the Unionist statesman, so they deliberately invented the Carson-Kaiser legend for English Home Rule consumption. As soon as it became apparent that the refusal of the North could not be met successfully by honest means, and that Sir Edward Canon was going to be the organizer of victory, the attempt was made to destroy him by " a campaign lie" of the kind which the English people would find specially impressive. This particular lie happily proved too much. except for a few very ill-informed people. More dangerous because more vague were the generalized lies that the people of Ulster oppressed their Roman Catholic neighbours, and that it was difficult, nay, impossible, for a Roman Catholic to live and thrive in Belfast. In reality, and in view of the past history of Ireland and the amazing arrogance of the Roman Church in Ireland, what one is surprised at is the moderation and good sense of the Ulster Protestants, and the way in which during the last three years they have kept the peace in North-East Ulster and have refused to yield to all temptations to adopt a policy of reprisals. That was not an easy matter during the Rebellion. Think of the situation. The Protestants and Loyalists of Belfast were inflamed day by day and hour by hour by news as to what was going on in Dublin and in the South of Ireland generally—of wounded British soldiers massacred in the streets, of a revolt which was laying the moat prosperous' art of Dublin in ashes, of policemen stopped and murdered on lonely roads, and of Irish rebel forces only kept out of a town like Galway by the shells of a British gunboat. Considering the very large Roman Catholic population in Belfast, a population honeycombed with secret societies of the extremest sort, it would have been a matter of little wonder, though of deep regret, if the Loyalists of North-East Ulster had in a panic insisted that they must take precautions and drive out of their midst those who at any moment might become traitors in arms and rise for the destruction of Belfast and her indus- tries. Suppose that the original plan of an insurrection over the whole of Ireland, and not merely an insurrection in Dublin and certain isolated places, had come off, as it nearly did. In that case the position of Belfast with its mixed popula- tion would indeed have beeg critical. It was: enormously to the credit of the people of Belfast that they kept absolutely quiet, that there was no demand for physical precautions against the rebels which might easily have provedprovocative. and that, notwithstanding the horrors of the Dublin rising, no reprisals whatever took place upon Roman Catholics. There was, we believe, in spite of the political nasaioria aroused, no
instance of any insult or injury to Roman Catholic Churches, Monasteries, or Convents, or to Priests or Bishops. Absolute order was maintained throughout North-East Ulster by the men who, lying tongues have told us (lying tongues believed, alas ! by the bulk of British Radicals), are ruthless and brutal tyrants. The Radical Press always writes with the sub-suggestion that Belfast is peopled by a set of predatory and persecuting savages!
if Englishmen would only remember that there has been a colossal conspiracy of lying in regard to Ulster, they would think much more clearly on the whole Irish problem. Let them, for instance, examine the facts in an extreme case--the recent history of the Orange Lodges. Most Englishmen still believe that the Orangeman is a person who, if he were not controlled by the police, would go out and crack Roman Catholic skulls every day of his life. Yet in reality the modern Orange Lodge is a perfectly harmless institution. We venture to say that no example can to found within the memory of any one living of the Orange Organization planning or doing anything of the kind that is daily planned, and has been done within the last two years, by the extremists of the other side —i.e., by the Sinn Feiners, or by the secret societies such as the Irish Republican Brotherhood, or whatever be the latest alias of the implacable haters of this country.
No Englishman who really wants to understand the North-East Ulster facet of the Irish problem can do better than study daily the columns of the Northern Wing, the chief organ of Ulster's cause. If he is an English Radical, he will expect, after what he has heard from Irish Nationalists, to find a paper full of the spirit of arrogant oppression, of bitter Protestantism, and of hatred of the majority of Irishmen, and yet at the same time showing very little love or respect for England. As a matter of fact, he will find a most readable paper edited with very great ability and good sense, showing no doubt the determination of the people of the Six-County area not to be deprived of their right to remain in the United Kingdom, but exhibiting no signs whatever of a tyrannical or illiberal spirit in the way in which their cause is pleaded. But this is not all. Though the Northern Whig is in complete sympathy with the majority of its readers, it has made no claim whatever, as is often alleged, to veto Home Rule for that part of Ireland which demands it—Ireland minus the Six-County area. The attitude of the Ulstermen has been and is that the Union is the form of government best suited to Ireland, and that therefore they deplore any breaking up of the Union. If however the majority in the rest of Ireland insist upon separation, the people of North-East Ulster make no claim to veto their demand. All that they claim, and all they mean to fight for, is the right to remain a part of the United Kingdom, and so a part of the British Empire. That is the policy of the Northern Whig. Such is the organ of the people who, we are gravely told, are far worse rebels than the most extreme Sinn Feiners.
(To be continued.)
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