THE GOVERNMENT AND IRELAND.
IF we may take the Prime Minister's speech in the House of Commons on Tuesday night at its full face value, es we are sure we may, there is to be en end of the ridiculous game in Ireland of pretending that things are not what they are. The decision to treat realities as such has not been taken a moment too soon. In our opinion, we had already conic extremely near to another disaster in Ireland through a repetition of the policy of " Birrellism." Last week we described that policy as one of believing that a tiger could be tamed by the Amiable process of calling it Poor pussy," of feeding it with cream, of pretending that its claws were only pads of velvet, and that its growls were only a new kind of purring. We have often had to deprecate the foolish argument that the refusal to believe in a policy of trying to placate people who, on their own admission, are implacable is the equivalent of blindness to the advantages of condi": i in as such. No one could believe in the merits of conciliation more firmly than we do ; but in the case of Ireland, concilia- tion in the only form in which it is there accepted has been tried, and ended in a bloody and ruinous failure. The only kind of conciliation acceptable to the Irish rebels it r. complete yielding on all points of government. If you make a law of the most simple and elementary kind for the maintenance of public order and for the protection of the lives and property of decent and law-abiding citizens, you must be prepared in Ireland—to abandon that law at a moment's notice in the name of conciliation. If you do not abandon it, you are it brutal and bloodthirsty tyrant ; you have provoked the highly reluctant wrath of a docile and friendly people.
As we all know, Mr. Birrell set himself scrupulously and to the last detail to act upon this Irish conception of conciliation. When the rebel volunteers spent their half-holidays in re- hearsing the capture of Government buildings in Dublin, the whole thing, as was required by Mr. Birrell's huge and, as it turned out, tragic assumption, was officially regarded as a delightful joke. How charming and innocent in their gambols are these amusing and unconventional Irish people ! No other people in the world could behave quite like them ! We must really learn to appreciate all their ways, for if we do not we shall surely be written down as men of that dull and insensible type who are not susceptible to the Celtic charm ! Well, the end of " Birrellism " was that there was a massacre in Dublin. The word must be used in justice. The rebels in the rising of Easter, 1916, did not declare war and give their enemies en opportunity to clear the non-combatants off the scene. They opened fire, and in cold blood took a great number of innocent lives. Because sons fifteen directors of this massacre were tried and executed, the rebel mind, with characteristic audacity, pretended that Ireland was being treated- to bloodthirsty suppression. Any one who impartially reads the facts ntust admit that the leaders of the rebellion were treated with both justice and mercy.
When we wrote last week we feared that the tragi-comedy of " Birrellism " was going to be played out again to another terrible culmination. There were many signs that this was so. The Defence of the Realm Act regulations in Ireland had been openly defied for months, and the Executive, except fitfully and in certain places, appeared to have made up its mind not to vindicate its position. A violent and seditious letter by the Roman Catholic Bishop of Killaloe was banned, but was nevertheless published by the Fteeman's Journal. ,The drilling of volunteers was forbidden, yet the rebel volun- teem drilled openly, wore their uniforms, and carried arms. It is said that a shipload of wounded soldiers who arrived in Ireland on the day of Ashes funeral were kept waiting many hours before being transferred to hospital, lest the sight of soldiers who had been wounded in the cause of Great Britain—incidentally the cause of civilization and demo- cracy—should provoke the parading volunteers to a state of regrettable resentment. We can only hope that none of the unhappy soldiers who suffered in this way, if the story be true, died--an unexpected sacrifice to the cause of No Provo- cation in Ireland. But, as we have said, we take the Prime Minister's words to mean that there is to be no continuance of " Birrellism " in Ireland. Every sensible person will read his words with profound relief, and the nation will expect him to secure that in practice they shall bear their full and unequivocal meaning. It is unnecessary to pay a great deal of attention to what Mr. Redmond said in the House of Commons on Tuesday about " provocation " by Dublin Castle. The truth is that Mr. Redmond finds himself in an exceedingly difficult position, and one which, although we think he has played a somewhat weak part during the war, commands a good deal of sympathy. His speech was sober and moderate on the whole, but it was only too evident that he was trimming his sails so as to use the passionate gales of Ireland to increase the speed (or perhaps we should rather say to check the backway) of his own political vessel. He, however, undoubtedly penetrated to the bare truth when he said that the present ferment in Ireland was the chief danger to the Convention. On these grounds we are heartily at one with him. If the Convention can perform a miracle and produce a settlement of the Irish question—we note that nearly everything said during the debate about the progress of the Convention was optimistic—no one will be more unfeignedly glad than we shall. But it cannot be too often repeated that to allow Ireland to collapse once more into a violent and sanguinary convulsion is the one way to defeat every single hope of the Convention. The very fact that Mr. Redmond was able to make a point of the capriciousness of administrative severity in Ireland proves that the last thing which Dublin Castle has had in its mind was provocation. When people behave stringently in one district and with absurd indifference or laxity in another, it means that they are so much afraid of their own policy that they hesitate to. put it into effect. They are not out to conduct a campaign of provocation, but, on the contrary, are shrinking from any consistent firmness. If any one still doubts that there is, or was, the greatest possible danger in the conduct of the rebels led by Mr. De Valera, he need only reflect upon a simple state- ment made during the debate by Mr. Duke. Two hundred thousand young Irishmen were being enrolled by the avowed enemies of Great Britain and the Allies. A new rebellion in Ireland was their avowed purpose. How, asked Mr. Duke, had the clemency of the Government in releasing Sinn Fein prisoners in England been requited ? When in prison at Lewes some of the leaders were all the time considering schemes for the reorganization of the rebellion. Immediately they were released they set to work again. When the Govern- ment in Ireland made one of the " silly arrests " which had been complained of, evidence was captured of a whole scheme of armed operations. This document described the reorganiza- tion of the Irish volunteers to enable them to complete " by force of arms the work begun in Easter week, 1916." Then followed words which we will give textually : " The executive will not issue an order to take the field until they consider that the force is in a position to wage war on the enemy with reasonable hopes of success. At the right moment the word will go forth to strike. Then let it be done relentlessly."
It may be said that Mr. De Valera's troops are only a stage army, and that, as no one can buy a rifle in Ireland without a licence, and as the most circumstantial rumour has not spoken of more than about nine thousand rifles being at the disposal of the Irish Volunteers, Mr. De Valens 's military movement is nothing but a harmless piece of make- believe. It might be added that the new rebels, being pre- sumably without artillery, could no more hope to succeed than the Dublin revolt, also for lack of artillery, had any real hope of an ultimate success. But these objections do not meet the point. Mr. Lloyd George spoke definitely of the arrangements known to have been made by Germany for a second landing in Ireland, and Mr. Duke no less explicitly said that the helping hand which was to bring more arms to the rebels was that of Germany. Last week we pointed out that Mr. De Valera's military manoeuvres had an extra- ordinary aspect of reality because his men were in occupation of both sides of the Shannon, and that this fine navigable river runs right into the heart of rebel Ireland. What we hinted at then we can now discuss more openly on the authority of the words used by the Prime Minister and Mr. Duke. If there were another rising in Ireland, the rebels would, of course, hope for the co-operation of the Germans coming in from the sea. Artillery very likely could not be brought, except possibly a certain number of field guns, but rifles and ammunition could be brought in large enough quantities by submarine. This would be easy enough if the rebels held the Shannon. Now suppose that just at a moment when some particularly hard blow was being struck by Sir Douglas Haig on the Western Front, when every trained man was required to bend his will and his efforts to what perhaps might be the decisive action of the war—suppose that then the Irish rebels, with the help of Germany, were able to create a considerable distraction in Ireland. It might
not amount to what, on strictly military grounds, we should call a formidable rebellion. It might, nevertheless, require a couple of extra divisions to be drafted into Ireland to save innocent people from another massacre and to keep order in the predominantly rebel counties. Such a distraction, even if it lasted only a few weeks, might just prevent what ought to have been a crowning mercy upon the Western Front from achieving its purpose.
From the military point of view we do not put the matter on higher grounds than that, but they are quite high enough. That is why we have read with such intense satis- faction and relief Mr. Lloyd George's words, which have oome not a moment too soon. " Deliberate attempts are being made in Ireland to organize hundreds of thousands of young men preparatory to a rebellion... Mr. De Valera's speeches are a cold-blooded incitement to rebellion, and must not be allowed to be repeated."
Previous page
