In the House of Commons on Tuesday Mr. Redmond moved
a Vote of Censure on the Government's Irish policy as not tending to create an atmosphere in which the Irish Convention could achieve any result. He criticized the Government for arresting seditious speakers and forbidding military exercises, thus strengthening the Sinn Fein movement. Mr. Duke, the Chief Secretary, showed riot Mr. Redmond had underrated the gravity of the situation, inesnmell as the Sinn Feiners were deliberately advocating an armed revolt in co-operation with Germany, and were training their deluded fol- lowers in the use of rifles and pikes. Ireland, he said, was enjoying unexampled prosperity, and her two hundred thousand young men, who if they were British would be fighting for the Empire, were being made the tools of the conspirators. The Sinn Feiners' avowed object was to make the Convention a failure, but the Government could not overlook any definitely criminal acts or speeches on their part. Mr. Asquith, while declining to see in the Shin Fein speeches much more than the "rhetorical and contingent belligerency" common in Ireland, pleaded for moderation while the fate of the Convention hung in the balance.
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