TOPICS OF THE DAY.
MR. CHURCHILL'S SPEECH.
" When we were drifting into a quarrel with the Boers, Liberal minds sought to understand their point of view, and many—I daresay there are some in this hall to-night—faced great unpopu- larity in trying to do justice to it. But the Boers were a much smaller community than the Protestants of North-East Ulster, and they lived much further away from home. If we were being drawn into a quarrel with the Germans, Liberals would endeavour to
allay between two peoples by dwelling on all the interests the two great peoples had in common, by refraining from all provocative and bellicose modes of speech and action, and by pruning from our own policy everything which was not absolutely essential or scrupulously fair. And the Protestants of North-East Ulster are not foreigners like those good Germans. They are our flesh and blood ; indeed they are very nearly allies in many important aspects of political opinion—on land, on temperance, and on education —to English and Scottish Radicalism. We understand that they are full of apprehension ; we understand that they do not know how to make their anxieties appreciated by the great public over hero ; we do not like their methods ; we are not afraid of their action; but we don't judge them hardly as they judge us. I deprecate altogether the working up of fierce and hard feelings by these people, although, as you know, I have no special cause to admire them or their manners. A year ago, speaking here on this platform, I asked a question which I and other members of the Government have on various occasions and in various forms repeated across the floor of the House of Commons —Do they claim for themselves the right to remain for a time as they are under the British Parliament, or to have some other special arrangement made to meet their needs and wants, or are they claiming that these few counties shall have the right to bar the way for all time to all the rest of Ireland? I have lately seen a disposition on the part of the Ulster leaders to answer this question, and to answer it in the narrower sense. I read a good many sentences of Sir Edward Carson's recent speeches and of those of others who have been recently associated with him in Ireland, which seem to be designed to restrict and therefore to consolidate and strengthen the position of those for whom they spoke. It is obvious that the claim of North-East Ulster for special consideration for itself is a very different claim from the claim to bar and defeat Home Rule and to block the path of the whole of the test of Ireland, and it is a claim which, if put forward with sincerity, not as a mere wrecking manauvre, cannot be ignored or pushed aside without full consideration by any Government dependent on the present House of Commons ; and I say to Ulstermen, if my voice will reach so far, there will be no advance which they can make which will not be met and matched, and more than matched, by their Irish fellow-countrymen and by the Liberal Party in Great Britain."— MR. CHURCHILL at Dundee.
THE prospect of avoiding civil war through the exclu- sion of Ulster—the only way left us of avoiding such war if the Liberals will have neither the Referendum nor a general election—has improved greatly during the week, and as we write the omens are distinctly favourable. The most favourable sign of all is, of course, Mr. Winston Churchill's speech at Dundee—the essential portion of which we have placed at the head of this article— which neutralizes, and far more than neutralizes, the aggressive and combative speeches made earlier by Mr. Devlin and Mr. McKenna. There is, of course, a great deal in Mr. Churchill's speech from which we not only wholly dissent, but which in ordinary times would provoke from us strong criticism and protest. We do not, however, mean to dwell upon any of these points or to argue with him and his party upon matters of detail. Such argument just now would not only be dangerous but would iu the strictest sense be irrelevant. We must keep our eyes fixed steadily upon the object. We must never forget that what we are doing now is not looking for an ideal settlement of the Irish question, but for something much narrower, much more immediate, and so for the moment much more vital—the problem of how to avoid civil war. It is to that point that the Irish question is now narrowed down. Every Unionist, every supporter of social order, every patriot, every good citizen, whatever be his particular politics or particular views, must, if his pretensions to good citizenship are not a name, concentrate all his energies upon that essential con- sideration.
Instead of thinking of party advantages and of " dishing " his opponents, he must think only of how to extricate the Government and the country from the appalling dangers of that civil strife which it is absolutely certain will be awakened in North-East Ulster if nothing is done except to issue the order : "Full steam ahead with the Home Rule steam roller. Don't bother about those who will be run over." If the Unionists were to think less of the country than of their party, then no doubt the clever, the paying thing for them, would be to refrain altogether from helping the Government out of their mess and to encourage them to ruin themselves by provoking a civil war in North-East Ulster. We are certain that when once the shooting had begun in Ulster, and the country realized the real nature of the task they had undertaken in putting down by force of arms the men of the New Covenant, they would shrink back in horror from such a task, and would visit their displeasure upon the statesmen and the party who had led them to shed the blood of the Protestant majority in the north, and to shed it in the name of self-government and under the pretext that the will of the local majority must prevail ! Happily, however, there is every sign that the Unionist leaders and the Unionist Party as a whole realize that matters are far too serious to allow them to take a party advantage of this kind. They are called upon to do a thing which is most difficult for party men to do and most repugnant to their instincts, that is, for patriotic reasons to help their opponents out of a difficulty and to save them from political suicide—to let them escape from the tragic impasse in which they find them- selves. They must do this, however, and they are, we are sure, willing to do it, and even incidentally to help on a bad solution of the Irish question, rather than bring upon us the infinitely greater evil of civil war—the supreme evil which can never be redressed or repealed.
If the decision is reached that it has now become a patriotic duty for Unionists to help the Government out of their tight place, and to save them from invoicing civil war by the mad policy of " Full steam ahead," both sides must co-operate loyally, and neither side must take advantage of the situation even in the slightest degree for party purposes. There must be no pedantic quarrelling over details, no attempt to humiliate the other side by taunts or sarcasms, no efforts to make capital out of those sacrifices of what both sides have hitherto asserted to be matters of principle, and do still sincerely deem matters of principle, while admitting that they must be put aside for the common object of avoiding civil war. If this is not the spirit in which the policy of a Conference, or a settlement, or whatever we may call the common action, is entered upon, it is certain to prove a failure. We can best enforce what we mean by a specific example. The Govern- ment in making the offer for the exclusion of North-East Ulster, which was in effect made by Mr. Churchill at Dundee, will no doubt be tempted to say that if they snake this great concession the Unionists must agree to a settle- ment by consent as regards the application of the Home Rule Bill to the rest of Ireland. No doubt, in a certain sense the Unionists will have so to agree, but it would ruin the prospects of a settlement if the Liberals were to insist that the Unionists must also pretend that they now approve such a policy for the rest of Ireland, and consider it a good thing per se. That, of course, they cannot do, and ought not to be asked to do. All they can do is to say that if the rights of the local majority in the homogeneous part of North-East Ulster are respected and the inhabitants of that area are allowed to remain under the Parliament at Westminster, and are not forced under a Parliament in Dublin, Unionists will not merely withdraw all active opposition to whatever system of autonomy for the South and West of Ireland the Liberal majority insist on passing, but will acquiesce therein loyally though regretfully. Liberals cannot fairly ask for more than such passive consent. But, in truth, that is all that they require. To ask for more would be pride, not policy. In a word, the temptation to make the Unionists kiss the rod, or rather four-fifths of it, as well as yield to it, must be sternly suppressed by the Liberal leaders. On the other hand, the Unionists must quite as sternly resist the temptation, though we admit it will be a very difficult one to resist, to extort from the Liberals more changes in the Home Rule Bill and more derogations from the principle of the establishment of a Parliament and Executive in Ireland than are consistent with the strict exclusion of North-East Ulster—that is, with the avoidance of civil war, the supreme object now before us. Unionists must not attempt to effect what they would consider to be improvements in the Bill in other respects, or try to make a bad measure into a good one or a less bad one. Just as the Liberals must not try to pretend that we are willingly consenting to a break-up of the Union in four-fifths of Ireland, so we must not attempt to make the Liberals appear to be abandoning the principle of the Dublin Parliament and Executive. We must be content that the area over which that Dublin Parliament is to rule shall be an area which will not cause the outbreak of civil war. More we cannot ask for in order to avoid civil war. Less we could not take without abandoning our guiding principle of avoiding fratricidal strife. Neither side must attempt to require the other side to deny its faith, but each must practise a " sombre acquiescence" in a certain sacrifice of principle in order to avoid the dreadful arbitrament of the sword—that arbitrament which, in the case of a foreign foe, a man may face, in Wordsworth's phrase, " happy as a lover," but which, in the case of his fellow citizens, he can only face with horror and despair. To revert to the homely metaphor which we have used so often in the controversy in regard to Ulster, we Unionists must be content for the moment that the Government has agreed to fit to the badly constructed, dangerous, and useless engine which they are putting upon the roads a safety valve which will at any rate prevent an explosion ruinous to all concerned—ruinous not only to the men who stand by, but to the constructors of the engine. To have asked for that safety-valve to be fitted, and to have gained our point, does not, however, commit us to any approval of the principles on which the engine is constructed, but the fact that it has been granted does commit us to agreeing not to attempt any longer to block the path of the mad experiment. Our attitude must be, " Now we know that the worst cannot happen, we must, since you have the power, stand by and see what you can do with your engine."
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