TOPICS OF THE DAY.
POLICY AND IMPOLICY IN IRELAND.
ADARK shadow was cast over the opening hours of Parliament by the condition of Ireland. By far the more important part of the debate of Tuesday dealt with the murder campaign in Ireland, and with the reprisals which that campaign has provoked. There is no doubt that in turning to this subject before all others the House of Commons correctly interpreted the feeling of the country. For months we have deplored the apathy about murder. It has seemed almost to be taken for granted that murder was part of the natural course among Southern Irishmen, and that an Irish murder might somehow be regarded as a less terrible thing than murder elsewhere. Yet murder wherever it occurs among men who arc said to be civilized is the most terrible of crimes because it is the chief crime against which no regular safeguard can be provided. Ciyilized society is bound to proceed on the assumption thht murder will not be committed ; and the only real protection is a strong state of public feeling about the particular horror of murder. Among the Southern Irish, unfortunately, this feeling does not exist. Lord Hugh Cecil was perfectly right when he said in his striking letter to the Times of Monday that the real cause of the murder campaign in Ireland was moral depravity. The Roman Catholic Irish are notable for some virtues which they possess in a higher degree than most other people—one of these is chastity—but in their view of murder they are far behind other European communities. It is a good sign that English opinion is much more awake now than it was a few months ago to the significance of what has been happening in Ireland. Yet satisfaction must be tempered by the thought that many of those English observers who are most concerned about the condition of Ireland seem just as much concerned to upset the balance of justice and to imply that murder is dreadful when committed. in response to murder— under the provocation of a great murder campaign—but not so very dreadful when it is committed unprovoked or provoked only by some alleged political grievance.
Still, we shall not complain overmuch that the study of murder and of every kind of violence in Ireland is approached too often from the wrong end. It is good that an increasing number of people are being brought to understand what is at stake in Ireland. We shall get the balance right in time, and real and deep anxiety on the part of the whole nation is an essential preliminary. Justice must not blindfold herself. We must leave nothing out of the reckoning. Let us say at once, then, that for our part we are as much moved as anybody could be by the constant reports of undisciplined reprisals in Ireland. We admit that, however great the provocation, murder is murder, and we would even say that in the long run the nation stands to lose more from wrongs committed by Forces of the Crown yet condoned by the Government than from murder committed by irredeem- able scoundrels as an act against the authority of the Crown. If a Government who wink at murder or any kind of violence or indiscipline being committed in their name do so through weakness or stupidity they would, of course, perish sooner or later, and would deserve to do so through their sheer inability to govern ; but if they allow such things to happen deliberately because they find it convenient they would deserve even more to perish because they would have sacrificed the great principle upon which government rests.
So far as Mr. Lloyd George's speech on Tuesday went it was good, but he did not go into the question of principle which is now causing so much searching of heart. The difficulty of obtaining satisfactory evidence in Ireland about anything is notoriously so great that we cannot feel sure, after all that has been said and written on the subject, that we have any certain foundation of facts when we talk about reprisals. Whatever the exact facts may be, it was the Sinn Fein assassins who began the terrible competition in killing. That must never be forgotten. It governs 311 other facts. But we want to deal to-day rather with the faults of the Government in their proper place and proportion. The original fault of the Government lay in allowing matters to pass out of their hands before the condition of Ireland was so bad as it is now. Everybody knows that there is a limit to human endurance. The Sinn Fein assassins forced the police and the soldiers beyond that limit, and retaliation—that is to say reprisals—were naturally to be expected. That was only human nature. But immediately that point was reached, the Government, even if they had not foreseen it as they ought to have done, should have made it perfectly plain that if there were to be reprisals they must be official, disciplined reprisals. The word " reprisal " means in essence only punishment in the form of exacting recompense, and punishment for crime is just what is required for Ireland. There is therefore nothing wrong in reprisals.
We should find it difficult indeed to condemn the Govern- ment for any kind of reprisals, however severe, provided that they made themselves responsible for it and were pre- pared to stand by it as a definite act of policy. What is intolerable, and what is bound to bring not only disgrace but grave demoralization into the conduct of affairs, is that the Government should allow reprisals to become a nondescript instrument wielded by any man who cares to pick it up and use it. The plea of convenience is no plea at all. Far too much is at stake. No Government worthy of the name have a right to make a harvest out of the advantages of an entirely irregular procedure and to deny all responsibility for the disadvantages. That was the kind of policy, or rather no policy, which was at the bottom of the undoing of a great country like Russia, where the agents of Government did pretty well what they pleased, and were promoted or disowned according as the results of their work affected the Government. In a democracy like ours only one body can wield the instrument of punish- ment, and that is the State itself. The functions of Government, of which punishment—reprisal—is one of the chief, must be very jealously guarded. They have to be guarded as much from the friends of the Government as from their enemies.
Such are the general principles upon which the Govern- ment must be judged when all the facts are before us, though here we must repeat that we are by no means satisfied that we have got the facts. Unfortunately, English people are continually being taken unawares by the extraordinary proficiency of the Southern Irish at creating A false atmosphere, an atmosphere of prejudice and untruth. These Southern Irish are past-masters of all propagandist arts. Past experience ought to have shown us how neces- sary it is to sift any statement made in Ireland before we believe it. For generations there has been an unceasing campaign of calumny 'against England. English visitors to Ireland, unless they are equipped with an exceptional store of cynicism or scepticism, fall a prey to the engaging wiles of the Irish time after time. To read some of the letters and reports in the Press from English visitors to Ireland one might think that the very mention of the nick- name " Black-and-Tan " was enough to make the English- man lose all sense of evidence. To Irish minds Sinn Fein murder is nothing, but a Black-and-Tan murder is something terrible and quite different ; and somehow the Southern Irish have the power of conveying this distinction to the minds of those in whom they pretend to confide. Un- doubtedly a deep impression has been made in England by statements published in the Press during the past fort- night about the extent of unofficial reprisals. First of all there was a statement by Judge Bodkin, an Irish County Court Judge, who stated at the Ennis Quarter Sessions that the total amount of the awards in his district in which it was proved that Government forces had committed criminal injuries was £187,000. He also said that in that one district in three months 139 reprisals had been carried out, and that in no case had a crime been proved against the victims of the reprisals. Unhappily, when we are faced by such statements as these, which are on their face deeply distressing, we cannot feel sure that we have been given Judge Bodkin's remarks in their proper context and perspective, or that if his remarks have been reported correctly he is a man who can be relied upon to speak free from all political animus. It must be remembered that in Ireland political animus is so much part of the air that people are influenced by it even when they suppose them- selves to be free from it. Then, in the Westminster Gazette we read an article by Lady Sykes, the widow of that brilliant Member of Parliament the late Sir Mark Sykes. Lady Sykes says that she hoped the stories about reprisals had been exaggerated, but that she had come back horrified at what she had seen. " If there arc any," she says, " who disbelieve the word of those Who have seen the terror under which the people are living, the destruction of property, the burnings, beatings, imprisonments, murders, and shootings committed by what are called the Forces of the Crown, let them go to Ireland and see for themselves." She said that she had interviewed the mother of two young men who were shot at sight. The young men, the mother said, had been taken out of the house and shot without trial. That is only one example of many similar ones which Lady Sykes relates. But here again, unfortunately, we cannot tell what kind of mental defence Lady Sykes may have put up against the determination on the part of the Irish to impress her. We need not be in the least doubt, of course, that she believes herself to be reporting the exact truth. Oh for the truth ! We cannot help blaming the Govern- ment for not telling us frankly all they know, however cloudy the evidence may be in many cases. They have nothing to lo3e by it. All that we want to be assured of is : (1) that the Government have made a note of all unofficial reprisals, and (2) that they are taking steps to prevent them occurring again.
What Mr. Lloyd George said in the debate about the disciplinary measures taken against the Black-and- Tans who were responsible for the burnings in Cork was encouraging so far as it went. It turns out, as we always thought it would, that those in this country who ridiculed the idea of soldiers inquiring into the alleged misdeeds of Forces of the Crown were quite wrong, and were doing their own cause an injury. Although what is called the Strickland Report has not been published, Mr. Lloyd George told the House enough to show that the commanding officers in Ireland feel that if they allow reprisals to be committed without authority discipline will utterly disappear, and all the Forces of the Crown will become a useless rabble. That is precisely what we should have expected General Strickland and his brother officers to feel. One company of Black-and-Tans has been entirely disbanded as a result of the inquiry. If that may be taken as an earnest of what the Government are doing in all directions, it is a good sign. We gather that the irregularities of the past have been among the police Auxiliaries much more than among the troops. We have tried to warn our readers against accept- ing reports without verification, but when all allowances have been made for the propagandist campaign which runs parallel with the campaign of assassination, we know, of course, that there have been serious unofficial reprisals properly so called. To allow these things to continue is to consent to lynch law and to sacrifice one of the first functions of the Government. Lynch law would be inexcusable even if it could be proved that in every case it made sure of the guilt of the victim ; but lynch law never can do that. As Lord Hugh Cecil says in his letter to the Times, to kill a murderer even illegally is murder and carries with it the awful load of guilt that belongs to that crime.
We sincerely trust that the appeal of Cardinal Bourne to the Irish murderers may have some effect. For nothing is more certain than that if assassination ceased reprisals of all sorts would also cease. How the Irish Roman Catholic clergy can remain so complacent we cannot conceive. As Lord Hugh Cecil says, if Modernism were as rampant as murder in Ireland they would instantly set to work to stamp it out. Then why not stamp out murder ? But for the moment we must accept the situation in Ireland as it is, and we will end with an appeal to the Prime Minister to remember that even while he is protecting the loyal and the innocent in Ireland—a work, m our opinion, which he is doing with courage, and in which he needs and shall have all our support—he will commit a fatal error if he thinks that the Government need not reserve to themselves their primary functions. These can never be safely or justly placed in the hands of anybody else.
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