HOW WOULD AN IMPARTIAL ARBITRATOR ACT?
THE best way of arriving at a general outline of the form that Exclusion should take is to consider how the task of Exclusion would be performed if a man of clear and well-balanced mind, with no prejudices on either side, with no traditional leanings, and with no axe to grind could be summoned, say, from the United States or from one of our own Colonies and be empowered to draft an Amending Bill. Suppose, for example, that we could call back to life the spirit of Abraham Lincoln and ask him, with the Virginian precedent in his mind, to direct onr steps, what would he say and do ? Would not the first thought of an impartial arbitrator such as we have described be to put his principle of action into some such words as these ?— " I note that both sides are agreed in desiring to prevent civil war. I note also that, though neither side is enamoured of Exclusion for its own sake, both aides agree that only through Exclusion can civil war now be prevented—that is, only by making the Home Rule Bill operate in a part of Ireland and not in the whole. My problem, therefore, is to find out what is the area the exclusion of which would prevent the outbreak of civil war. It is clear that, in fair- ness to the Home Rulers, I must not put a square mile more into the excluded area than is necessary to accomplish my work, nor, in fairness to the Ulster Protestants, a square mile less. To do so must ruin my whole scheme. In a case of this kind neither side will be willing, as in a commercial bargain, to say that a square mile one way or the other does not matter. As Hamlet noted after his talk with the Norwegian captain, the Ulstermen will • go to their graves like beds' rather than yield an acre where a point of essential principle or of good faith is involved. In settling the question of area, then, I must always remember that the problem is not merely to find out in what political units of existing local administration, such as counties or Parliamentary divisions, or even baronies or parishes, there is a local majority for or against Exclusion, and mechanically to accept the verdict of those local administrative areas. To do that, if a small area were taken, would be to dot the excluded area with little unexcluded fragments. Again, if too big an area were taken, as, for example, the whole province, districts large enough and homogeneous enough to claim separate treat- ment might ho involved in an Exclusion which they disliked. For example, if the Parliamentary division were taken, four-fifths of the city of Belfast would be excluded and one-fifth would remain under the Dublin Parliament—an absolutely impossible situation, granted that my capital object is, as it must be, to avoid civil war.. That would be to invoke, not to prevent, the arbitrament of the rifle. For the same reason, I cannot take the county as the unit in which the will of the majority is to prevail, for if I do so I shall again find myself in as great a difficulty in the case of the nearly balanced counties. The odd man might, for example, throw Tyrone into the excluded area and Fermanagh out of that area, or vice versd. But such a result would again be to invoke an appeal to arms. Finally, if I take the Province as a whole, I am in danger of excluding somewhat too much, and of leaving in Ulster homogeneous Roman Catholic units such as the West and South of Donegal, the greater portion of Monaghan, and possibly the whole of Cavan—areas which will vehemently object to being excluded. It is clear, then, that in order to prevent civil war, or, shall I say ? to prevent any person from having a reasonable excuse for appealing to arms, I must delimit a new homogeneous Protestant anti-Home Rule unit, bigger than any county, but somewhat less than the Province, which shall not be honeycombed because I have given the right of saying whether they shall come in or go out to too small areas, and which shall not be forced to include important Home Rule areas because I have given the right of option to too large an area—i.e., to the Province as a whole. In fine, my excluded area must be drawn without any mechanical reference to existing divisions. I must travel over the map of Ulster with a free mind, and decide, on the best considerations of general equity at my command, that this or that piece of Ulster shall be or not be in the excluded area. In this way, and this way only.
can I get at the area the exclusion of which will prevent civil war."
We cannot set forth in detail the whole of the considera- tions which would sway our impartial arbitrator in his political map-making. We can, however, give in outline what we believe would be his final conclusion, and for con- venience we will place it in the oratio recta. "I have come to the conclusion that the whole of what are some- times called for convenience the six Plantation counties must, owing not merely to the proportion of Protestant inhabitants they contain, but also owing to their tradi- tional history and geographical position, be placed in the excluded area. In addition, a portion of the county of Donegal to the north and east must be included in the homogeneous Protestant Ulster, as must also a small portion of Monaghan. The six counties with these addi- tions will, in my opinion, constitute the area the exclusion of which should prevent civil war. To put it in another way, I exclude from the area of the homogeneous Protestant community which I wish to create in the North of Ireland the greater part of the counties of Donegal and Monaghan and the whole of the county of Cavan. To carry out the principle I have adopted, a Boundary Com- mission of impartial men should be appointed whose duty it would be to determine what amount of Donegal and Monaghan cannot be left out of the homogeneous com- munity I am creating without risking a resort to civil War."
- We are quite certain that if the aid of such an arbitrator as we have imagined could be invoked, and if his decision, as we believe it must be, were on the lines suggested, civil war would be avoided. No doubt there would be a great many heart-burnings in Ulster over the result, but in the end the essential equity of the arrangement would prevail. Again, there would be a good deal of outcry amongst the Roman Catholics and Home Rulers included in our New Ulster as to the unfairness of including baronies, or even counties, in. which there was a small, or even a comparatively large, local majority for Home Rule. A little reflection, however, will ehow that such outcries on either side are inevitable if you are to make so tremendous and so risky an ex- periment as interfering with the existing status quo. After all, the inclusion of these Home Rule areas in the New Ulster would not be more inequitable than the inclusion of the Protestant communities of the South and West in the area to be placed under the Dublin Parliament. It is no good to think you can pass a Bill like the Home Rule Bill without being unfair to a great many people. We are long past the possibility of justice to all, and must fall back upon the opportunist course of being thankful if we can escape civil war, however unjust we may be to particular districts or groups or individuals. We are out to prevent the rifles going off by themselves, not to secure the abstract rights of minorities, either in Ulster or in the South and West. Indeed, we may be said from the beginning to have started on the prin- ciple of violating the rights of minorities. All we can hope to do is not to violate them on so grand a scale or in places where they are so powerful that we shall be faced with an appeal to arms. Indeed, the Home Rule Bill plus the Amending Bill might almost be described as a Bill for injuring minorities wherever they are not sufficiently powerful to cause insurrection and civil strife. That is the point we have reached, and that also is the case for the maintenance of the Union and the status quo. Since, how- ever, the country has determined, or must be supposed to have determined, that it will alter the status quo and dissolve the Union, we have indicated the best that can be done. It is no good to pretend, as papers like the Westminster Gazette are always wanting us to pretend, that the Home Rule Bill is not calculated to oppress local minorities. It is calculated to do so, and, following its example, so must be the Amending Bill for the Exclusion of Protestant Ulster.
We have one more consideration to deal with, and our remarks must be in the nature of a prophecy. The Unionist majority in the House of Lords will now no doubt take charge of the Amending Bill. Presumably they willbegin by excluding the whole of Ulster, and will also make the consequential amendments strong and watertight, which cannot .be said of the iniserable makeshift arrangements now in the - Government Bill. The Bill will then go down to the Commons, and here, under pressure from the Irish, the Commons will restore the county option, though probably leaving out the time- limit, and send the Bill back to the Lords. The issue will then at last be narrowed down, as we have always fore- seen it would be, to the question of area. Under such pressure the Lords will, we hope, suggest the delimi- tation of the New Ulster on the lines which we have asserted would be adopted by an independent arbitrator.
Let them propose a New Ulster to consist of the six counties, plus a slice of Donegal and a slice of Monaghan to be delimited by an impartial Boundary Commission, not merely on the ground of the local majority, but on the ground of what will prevent civil war. It will then be for the Commons to choose whether they prefer civil war to displeasing Mr. Redmond and the Nationalists. No doubt they will be told that it is now not merely a question of displeasing Mr. Redmond, but of displeasing three hundred thousand National Volunteers, armed with the American rifles for which Mr.
Redmond has just been appealing. If they are wise they will disregard the National Volunteers, and remember that it takes more than gallant men—the National Volunteers are no doubt gallant enough—and rifles and revolvers to make an army. The thing to bear in mind in settling the question of the area to be excluded is that it must be an area which henceforth and for the purposes of the Union and the Con- stitution shall be treated as a single unit and not split up. The splitting-up or county-option plan may be a very good one for embarrassing your political opponents, or appearing to meet their demands while not meeting them, but it will not do the one thing which is now wanted; it will not prevent
civil war. On the other hand, if you Can choose the right
area, and then submit to it as a single unit the ques- tion of Inclusion or Exclusion, you can prevent civil war. Further, if in order to save their face the Govern- ment wish to put in something that looks like a time. limit, they can enact that a similar question to that originally put shall be put to the excluded area six years hence. That is a form of periodic Referendum which the Ulstermen need not be in the least afraid of facing. What they will not take, and what, indeed, they would be mad if they did not refuse, is automatic Inclusion after six years of Exclusion.
The prospect is, in any case, a dismal one. We must be content if we can just stave a civil war. But
even then the nation will still be in a condition of the gravest peril. In Ireland there will be two sets of armed men facing each other in a bitter and suspicious mood.
And whose fault is that? It is the fault of those who did not remember that there cannot be two armed forces in any community. The mark of sovereignty is the control and direction of armed men. When the 171stermen began to arm the Government should have said to themselves " This arming and organization of a military force cannot be allowed, or there will be two Sovereigns in Ireland. We have reached the point when we must either agree to the demands of the Ulstermen, and so give them no excuse for arming, or else we must invoke the whole power of the State to crush them and stop them arming. Otherwise we shall reach a situation when we must either give way to them because they are armed or else destroy them in arms. Armed men cannot be argued with. One must either kill them or yield to them." But the Government did not say this. They would not even go to the country on the Ulster question and ask for a mandate to coerce Ulster. They preferred to shut their eyes to what was going on and let things drift. They sowed the dragons' teeth of falsehood and prevarication—and lo! the crop of armed men that stands in the fields of the North awaiting the dreadful harvest of the sword.
But even that was not enough for Mr. Asquith's Administration. With a cynicism or a carelessness, or a mixture of both, worthy of some effete, frivolous, and decadent Machiavelli, they allowed a second armed force to grow up in Ireland, and one even more difficult to control or to argue with than the Ulstermen. Words fail us in denouncing the wickedness of such a policy. We will only ask our fellow-countrymen the question : "What is to be said of a Government which, in an island torn by the spirit of religious and political faction, allows hundreds of thousands of men to arm themselves on. different sides ? Was there ever such a Government out of Bedlam—or rather out of Broadmoor, for the policy is as criminal as it is crazy ?"
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