Under the beading "Ulster and Diplomacy," Lord Cromer utters a
word of much-needed warning in Wednesday's Times. It is greatly to be hoped, he premises, that the Prime Minister's proposals, though obviously unacceptable to Unionists in their present form, may eventually lead to a settlement which, however defective, will at all events avert the calamity of civil war. But the main object of his letter is not to indicate how this end may be attained; it is to impress on responsible politicians on both sides the danger of overlooking the possible connexion between events on the Continent and the Ulster difficulty. Undue importance should not be attached to the war scare articles in the German Press, but it is none the less true that they "indicate a European atmosphere sufficiently electric to render it highly undesirable that anything should occur which, in case of need, would prevent our Government from speaking in the councils of Europe in the name of a united people." The warning is all the more weighty since Lord Cromer, apart from his wide and intimate knowledge of European diplomacy, has never been an alarmist The old maxim Divide et impera has an obvious modern corollary : Intestine dissensions provoke aggression.
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