TOPICS OF THE DAY.
TOO LATE TO TURN.
Mr. Churchill's adroit, and dialectically impressive, speech in the House of Commons is, we fear, going to prove yet another example of firm talking as a substitute for firm dealing. The crisis, however, not created, but merely revealed by the assassination of Sir Henry Wilson, is far too serious to be dealt with by the castigation of the Government. It would be easy to say bitter things about the present Administration, and they would be justifiable, but they are the very last things we want to say. Our desire is to say something which may help the British people, and, indeed, help the Government so long as they are entrusted with the task of getting us out of the lamentable situation into which they have led us, possibly with the best of intentions, but certainly with the worst results.
We shall therefore write no more about the debate and its reiteration of threats and hopes, fears and fallacies ; but shall try to describe quite shortly and plainly the situation as we see it. We shall also state what seems to us to now be the only solution left us—a solution which in itself we greatly dislike, nay, dread, but which, since we believe it to be a less disastrous solution than any other, we are bound to urge on the attention of our countrymen. Consistent neglect of attempts to use preventive surgery may make amputation necessary—a resort to which would not have been required had proper remedies, instead of quack remedies, been applied in time. But when once amputation has become the lesser of the two evils, it is of little avail to curse the first 'set of medical advisers for their weakness or their folly, or to try to bring back the irrevocable yesterday. The only thing is to amputate lest gangrene destroy not only the limb, but the whole body.
Here are the immediate facts of the Irish Question. We have erected in the North of Ireland a system of Con- stitutional government which has the fullest confidence of an overwhelming majority of the population of the area in which it operates. That is, we have established true sell-determination in the Six-County Area, and the system is being as loyally worked as in any Dominion within the Empire. It is true that there has been anarchy in certain quarters of Belfast, and that in special cases cruel reprisals on the Roman Catholics have taken place. But these outrages, though deeply to be regretted, have been very much distorted. Many of them, though designed to look like Protestant crimes, have really been acts of vengeance on people who have been held, by the Sinn Fein Extremists, to have become traitors to their faith through accepting the Northern Constitution. Other outrages were deliberately intended to create a feeling of unrest and to give excuses for fresh attacks upon the Protestants.
The talk about Orange oppression end Orange bigotry has been largely factitious. If the Orangemen were the kind of people described in the Radical Press, what would have happened on the night after the murder of Sir Henry Wilson ? Yet there were no reprisals, no calls for vengeance. No one, so far as we can gather, lost his head even for five minutes in the face of that awful provocation. Again, the Orangemen have never attempted to do what Rory O'Connor has done in, the Four Courts, that is, try to erect an imperium in imperio, so as to force extreme action on their own friends.
Consider for a moment what the provocation has been in the North. Not only have there been the outrages in Belfast and the constant murder of policemen and civilians, but there have been ambushes and raids and burnings throughout the North, caused not by the indigenous population, but by regular forays by the Southern Irish. The area in which the British Government and the British Parliament have deliberately and by a solemn statute constituted a system of Dominion Home Rule, an area also which the Southern Provisional Government have under the Treaty unquestionably pledged themselves to respect, has again and again been invaded by hostile bands. Yet never have Sir James Craig and his Govern- ment taken any action in the Southern Area, though such action might have been pleaded as their only effectual form of defence. Further, no attempt has ever been made by Protestant extremists to organize in Dublin action such as the Republicans have organized in the North as well as throughout the South. Has anyone ever heard of Orangemen burning down the isolated houses of prominent Roman Catholics in country districts, or doing there foul and midnight murder ? The talk about " six of one and half a dozen of the other," and " one is as much to blame as the other," is grossly unfair I The Northern State has merely tried to maintain the right which all Englishmen have agreed to accord to it. Under great provocation the North has sedulously avoided the slightest interference with the affairs in the South. So correct, indeed, has been its attitude that the Ulster Government has been repeatedly accused of cynicism and indifference to the sufferings of the Protestants and Loyalists of the South. But there has been no reciprocity in this respect on the part of the Southern Government. They have done nothing to stop or even to condemn the attacks on the North. Instead, they have taken help and support from those who almost openly endorse such attacks.
But perhaps it will be said that a better time is coming. The Irish people have at the polls unmistakably endorsed the Treaty—that is, endorsed the principle that Ireland should remain within the Empire. And they have also endorsed the Settlement in the North—under which the Six-County Area is made master of its own fate—unless and until the South can win the North by good deeds to unite Ireland under a single Parliament within the Empire.
That" the elections are all to the good we agree ; but what hope have we that the Provisional Government will carry out the policy which, no doubt, it might like to carry out—the policy of restoring order, of working with the British Government and the Northern Government for the good of Ireland as a whole, and of keeping faith ? Though we say it with deep regret, we see very little possibility of any real change of heart or of head among the people of the South. Whether through fear of the extremists, or through dislike of England, we will not inquire, but they appear to have little wish to act in the way in which Mr. Churchill in effect told them that they must act. But what is to happen then ? What will happen if the Provisional Government proves weak and so unable to accept Mr. Churchill's ultimatum ? What is to happen if the provocation to anarchy in Belfast, the attacks on the Northern frontier, and the killing of Southern Loyalists, go on ? What, in fact, is to happen if the Treaty is only kept in words and not in deeds ?
Mr. Churchill talks vaguely if strongly about our powers of restoring order. Though we say so with shame, we do not believe that the Government have got the power to act, even if they have got the will—which we also doubt. Remember what the Churchill threat means. It means flooding the South of Ireland with troops and at the same time carrying on the very difficult business of preventing raids across the border of the Northern Area. It may mean a massacre of the Protestants and Loyalists of the South. Anyway, it means the mobilization of the whole British Army, and so the sterilizing of British arms and British influences in Europe. It means a vast expenditure of money. It means a paralysis of trade. But, though the British people are as patient as they are patriotic, and anxious above all things to do the right,_ how can this Government ask them to undertake a work so hopeless and so disagreeable, and probably in the end so useless ? The Government's policy of firmness stands self-con- demned. If they are now going to ask for the sacrifices we have named, why did they first throw away the whole of the plant of government ? Think of it ! If we have to coerce the South, we shall be fighting against men whom we have deliberately armed, to whom we have given motor- cars and lorries, to whom we have presented military and police barracks and strong places throughout the country. When our men are killed they will be killed by rifles, machine-guns, bombs and high explosives which we have either sold cheap or actually given away to the Nationalists, or else have weakly allowed to be stolen from us or to be smuggled into the country from abroad. To ask for such sacrifice, with no prospect of peace at the end, is, in our opinion, impossible, or, at any rate, quite impossible for this Government. Remember what it would all be for. If the circumstances we have envisaged should arise, what we should be doing would be asking the English people to force a population, whom they will by that time have come to hate and despise, into the heart of the British Empire—into a place where they are not wanted. The British people here and overseas do not want to be com- pulsory fellow-citizens with the Southern Irish. Again, the people of Great Britain have no desire to see repre- sentatives of the South of Ireland once more at West- minster, creating ill-will and anarchy in the very sanctuary of the Empire. To be plain, the ordinary man, now we have gone so fir, wants to get rid of Southern Ireland and not to reassume the burden.
If the Government wanted to change their policy they should have considered where they were going, and not have driven madly down a narrow lane too steep to make turning round possible. The analogy is exact. There are occasions in the moral sphere, as in the physical sphere, where you cannot turn back. You may realize as fully as possible that you have taken the wrong road ; but it is too late, and the least bad of the alternatives is the only one that you can adopt—that is, to push through or, to resume the metaphor which we used at the beginning of this article, to accept amputation.
Therefore, once more, and not because we like it, but because we hold it to have become a grim necessity, we believe that what the British people ought to do is to say to the South something of this kind : " Unless at the very first meeting of your new Parliament you show a complete change of policy and of attitude, we must insist that you leave the British Empire. We are not going to keep house any longer with men who differ from us so fundamentally on the first principles of civilization as you do. We are not, however, going to be revengeful, or to do anything unjust or unfair. You tell us you desire complete independence. We give it you in the fullest way, and for the whole of the area for which you can justly ask it. At the same time, considering all that has passed, we insist that you undertake to give to every man in the South who is now a British subject an option to remain a British citizen or to remain a South Irish citizen. If he chooses the retention of his British citizenship, then you must purchase such property as he has in Ireland on fair terms. At the same time, we will extend a similar option to any persons in the North of Ireland who wish to become Irish subjects and to cease to be British subjects." We do not for one moment say that this policy would be as good for Ireland or for the Empire as the maintenance of the Union, but, since the policy of the maintenance of the Union has been irrevocably discarded, we say without fear of contradiction that it is the best policy we can now get. The only objections that can be raised to it are :— (1) That there are naval and military dangers.
(2) That the Irish Government would never pay com- pensation to the Loyalists, even if they promised to do so.
We meet the first objection by saying that we run no greater military or naval risks by putting Southern Ireland outside the Empire than by having her nominally, but not really, within it. We would solve the compensation problem by pointing out that, if South Ireland were to break her financial faith, we can collect the money required to pay the interest on a compensation loan by taxes on Irish imports into this country. Questions as to what amount of the National Debt should be borne by Ireland and settlements of such problems as that of Irish railways and enterprises of that description must be left to the decision of judicial and commercial Commissions.
We are quite prepared to have our scheme described as impossible. All the same, we believe that it will be found to be by far the least dangerous of all the perilous solu- tions that are left us. Remember one thing about it. The coercion of a self-governing province within the Empire is practically impossible. The coercion of an independent Government is a much easier business. To put a concrete case. It would be much easier, as Mr. Boner Law evidently sees, to force a foreign Government to prevent its subjects from organizing outrages in the North of Ireland than it would be to mace a pseudo- Dominion Government.
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