" SETTLED DESPAIR."
E have dealt in the preceding article with the condition of Ireland and what has come of the repeal of the Act of Union under Mr. Lloyd George's unhallowed Treaty of Civil War. Here we should like to quote testimony of a very valuable and important kind in regard to the immediate cause of Irish chaos, supplied by Mr. Stephen Gwynn. He, it may be remembered, was for several years an Irish Nationalist Member of Parliament. Since the War, he has contributed a series of letters on Ireland, week by week, to the Observer. Mr. Gwynn is, of course, not only no supporter of the Union, but a bitter enemy, and also has shown on several occasions a deeply rooted sense of hostility, amounting, indeed, to hatred of this country. Though he belongs to a Protestant family and spent many years in England, he has often written of British policy in Ireland in the spirit of John Mitchell. In these circumstances one would not have been surprised if he had used the plea " too late " to excuse the actions of his fellow-countrymen. We should have expected him, that is, to attribute the appalling conditions now prevailing in Ireland to the fact that we had made our concessions not at the proper time and not generously enough. Yet when we turn to Mr. Gwynn's extraordinarily interesting article in last Sunday's Observer we find that, with a sincerity which does him no small credit, he makes no attempt whatever to lay the blame on British shoulders. He deals with the facts as they are, deeply unpleasant as it must have been to him to do so. After describing the present condition of Ireland as one of " settled despair "- the words were those of a young Sinn Feiner—he adds that " it is our own fault, and we know it. Where there could be freedom, there is anarchy ; where there could be pros- perity, beyond most lands in Europe, there is distress and the threat of ruin." He goes on to declare that the Dail is a mob of wrangling talkers, and that the Republican Army is a mob fast drifting into banditti. Particularly menacing is his account of the Army. It is dominated, he declares, by a set of young men who want to be soldiers, but who do not care " a row of pins " in which camp they serve. " Neither headquarters "—i.e., Beggar's Bush or the Four Courts—he tells us, dares attempt to maintain military discipline by punishment. If they did so, the condemned soldier would simply desert to the other side. But that is not all.
" Security is gone ; persons even less authorized than Mr. O'Connor's levies commandeer on their own account. It is quite true that scattered Protestants suffer, and Ireland all over has been genuinely and deeply shocked by the appearance in Southern counties of a disease which they believed—justly, for long enough-4o be confined to the North. But it is by no moans Protestants only, nor Unionists only, nor Nationalists only. A couple of ladies, Catholics and Sinn Feiners, living in Dublin, gave shelter for weeks to one of the most fiercely-hunted members of the Republican Army in what one may call the Tudor period. They have property in the West, and, seeing trouble coming, sought to sell it. There was an organized plan to prevent buyers offering ; then came driving of their cattle, and finally seizure of the land. They appealed to the man whom they had protected to protect them, for he is now high in power. He could only answer that government had broken down. '
Mr. Gwynn goes on to paint his picture in detail and to show the complete dissolution of authority :- " A strong Government now, if the people are given leave to establish ono, will have to do many things that cannot be popular in order to enforce its authority. It will have to face hearing itself called the imitator of General Macready by people who do or justify acts far more arbitrary and unjust than General Macready ever sanctioned. But in Ireland you are a tyrant only if you have the law on your side."
As to the North, he very naturally, though, as we hold, incorrectly, makes out as bad a case as he can as regards reprisals in Belfast. Indeed, so heated does Mr. Gwynn become—he has not, we gather, been of late in Belfast, but only speaks from hearsay—that he is inclined to give ear to those who think that the Protestants mean to expel the Roman Catholic population from the city !
Here is Mr. Gwynn's account of the conclusions which he reached on the information given to him by his friend. Considering also the fever heat of feeling in Ireland 'it must be regarded as both sincere and statesmanlike :- "Further, he told me (giving details) that this process, with the internecine war which it breeds, was now spreading. from Belfast into country districts. All that was happening m the South of Ireland strengthened this vicious tendency, just as what was happening in Belfast made things worse and blacker in
the South. i There is no doubt that the attacked Catholics in Belfast are retaliating by methods of senseless brutality : bombs in tramcars, for instance. No doubt, either, that the means are supplied lirgely by extremists in the South. I do not see what end can bo set to this sordid tragedy. Even if peace be established now in the South, is that going to remit:incite Ulster ? I blame the Northern Government less than Dail Eireann ; they had in Ulster—from their own standpoint, which asserts the separate right of Ulster—a problem far more difficult than any which confronted the Dahl ; and it was embroiled, entangled, and filled with poisonous dangers by tho course taken in Dail Eireann."
We shall make no comment on this, except to note that Mr. Stephen Gwynn wrote before the extraordinary " National Coalition was patched up in Dublin, and also before the criminal raids into Down and Antrim, raids which ended in the destruction of Shanes Castle and the other country-houses, including, we deeply regret to say, the house of Mr. Ronald McNeill, the well-known English Member of Parliament, at Cushendall—a district which for natural beauty can vie with almost anything in the once United Kingdom.
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