TOPICS OF THE DAY.
" THERE IS NO COMPULSION, ONLY YOU MUST."
TriE Coalition hounds are still in full cry after North- East Ulster. The word appears to have been passed round that the section of the Unionist Press which is immediately under the Prime Minister's influence must bring all the pressure it possibly can to bear upon the Northern leaders. They must be either coerced or cajoled into acquiescing in some scheme under which what is called the essential unity of Ireland " is to be preserved. That, in plain language, means doing something which they, the men of the North, regard with anxiety and alarm. They are willing, not only to acquiesce in, but to rejoice in, the essential unity of the British Isles and to regard the United Kingdom as an indivisible unit. But their whole political existence, their moral raison dltre, is a practical protest against the notion that Ireland is one and indivisible. Their case—a case which the Courts of Justice, of Reason, and even of Expediency must surely hold to be good,is that Ireland is not a political entity and never has been, that in truth there are two Irelands, each entirely different from the other in every particular—religious, moral, political, geographical and racial. One is Roman Catholic, one Protestant. One is a community in which the majority of the people show no Teutonic blood or racial character- istics. It exhibits a Celtic culture and religious type, and a desire to re-establish a Celtic language. In the other part of Ireland Teutonic blood predominates, and what is even snore important, Anglo-Saxon ideals—social, moral and political–are all pervasive. The North of Ireland does not want to claim, and never has claimed, any ascendancy over the South. If ascendancy of the kind meant was ever claimed it was by the landlords of the South, not by the industrials of the North. The Ulster working and com- mercial classes would not, and will not, go under Dublin ; but they did not, and do not, want Dublin to be under Belfast.
Their ideal was, and is, to get rid of the flaming bitternesses and rivalries of Ireland, religious and political, by merging them in the greater community of the United Kingdom. If that solution is denied them they claim that right of self-determination which is being claimed by the Southern Irish to break up the great and far-seeing compromises of the incorporating Union.
One would have thought that this would have been sure to appeal to most Englishmen as a very reasonable point of view. Apparently, however, the Premier's Press finds in it extraordinary marks of ignorance and arrogance. We are treated to hardly veiled denunciations of the selfishness of the newly created State of Northern Ireland, and Ulstermen are asked in no ambiguous language whether they really think it is right to be so selfish and so self- centred. Will not they have a little consideration for the British Empire ? Only a very small concession is needed. Surely they will not plunge Ireland into bloodshed and imperil the whole Empire on a punctilio." Next comes the suggestion that the British Parliament can give them all the protection that they desire, if only they will not insist on partition. All Ireland will be given what may be called the status of a Super-Dominion. Within that Super-Dominion there will be two autono- mous Parliaments, joined for certain purposes by a Joint Council, or more probably a joint two-chambered Government. Such protections and such precautions, and i in addition a share in the shower of gold under which it is hinted that Great Britain is going to retire from the Irish field, should surely interest them."
Let us pause for a moment to examine this attempt partly to browbeat and partly to cajole Ulster into doing something which is equivalent to giving up her whole plea for separate treatment. Even if she could be con- verted to this point and become, in theory at any rate, anti-partitionist, her leaders, we feel sure, could never agree to any proposal to make the new relation of Dominion to Mother-country a relation not between Northern Ireland and the justice-loving Parliament at Westminster, but between Northern Ireland and the Parliament at Dublin. If they judged merely on grounds of practical expediency, we could hardly be surprised at the people of Northern Ireland being unwilling to accept the Govern- ment's proposal. They realize that even if the Sine Fein Parliament at Dublin were not given by the Constitu- tion any powers over the North, and if the powers of the unifying body were so restricted as to give on paper, at any rate, a real security for the self-determination of the North, this "cold-blooded, reptile-hearted compromise" (as perhaps it would be called in the Celtic oratory of the South) would at 'once become a subject for destructive agitation. The Dublin Parliament would be perpetually interfering, by debates, if not by Acts, in the affairs of Ulster. The boycotting of Ulster goods, assisted in every way possible by the Southern Government, would soon pass from being what is now a commercial incon- venience, tempered in all sorts of ways by Hibernian cunning, and would become a much more formidable engine for injuring Ulster.
For example, suppose the Southern Parliament declared that in order to do what would be called " bringing Northern Ireland to its senses " it would prevent Northern goods being carried on the Southern railways or entering the Southern ports. That, no doubt, would be illegal under the Act now suggested, but such illegalities would not be likely to trouble Dublin. But there is no need to emphasize the hundred ways in which the South could and would worry the North unless the North were to be a real self-governing community with representatives in the British Parliament, and with nothing but contractual relations with Dublin and the Southern Government.
The well-meaning Liberals, Radicals and Labour men who believe in the innate virtues and reasonableness of Southern Ireland will, of course, throw up their hands in horror and indignation at such a statement as we have just made. They will ask whether we really mean to impute such cruel and cynical cowardice to Ulstermen. " Why should they doubt their generous and large-hearted, if impulsive, brothers of the South ? They ought, instead, to trust them fully. If they did so that trust would never prove to have been misplaced." We know well what the men of the North would reply to this trust argument. They would ask the English supporters of Sinn Fein to remember the Easter rebellion and the ruthless massacre of a year ago. That massacre was not done in the heat of blood, or by angry peasants inflamed by drink, or panic, or religious animosity, as were the massacres perpetrated by the Protestants in '98. It was a massacre deliberately planned and justified as an act of war, not merely by the cynical and ruthless philosophers of Sinn Fein, but by ecclesiastics of the Roman Church in Ireland. The clergy at Maynooth followed the massacre up by publishing in their official organ an apology for murder. Killing was no murder when the victim was a British soldier or policeman. Think next of the history of the past twelve months and of all the cruel and evil deeds done during that time in the name of and under the direction of the people who claim that the one thing essential to their policy is an undivided Ireland.
We will ask any impartial person whether we have spoken too strongly of these events. What right have we to gird at the Ulstermen if they refuse to be placed under the men who did these things ; or, if we take the most indulgent view possible, acquiesced in their committal and determined to profit by the massacre even if they did not order it I Well might the Ulstermen retort to the accusations we have sketched, " You tell us to run risks which you would never take yourselves, and when we protest and show our horror and indignation you turn upon us with the sneer What aileth thee ? ' " But though we will be no parties to putting the slightest pressure on Ulster, we will make no attempt to persuade her to stand out. If her leaders can see their way to a voluntary compromise, we shall say no word to dissuade her. All we ask is that the choice of the North shall be absolutely free and unrestrained.
Previous page
