A SPECTATOR' S NOTEBOOK
YOU might say of Lord Craigavon and Ulster l'etat c'est moi, in the sense not that the late Prime Minister was a dicta- tor, but that no more typically characteristic representative of Ulster Protestantism and Ulster Conservatism existed. He was, of course, the Captain Craig of the almost forgotten gun- running days, the Ulster-will-fight-and-Ulster-will-be-right-days, the Ulster Covenant days, the Carson and Galloper Smith days, of the eve of the last War. His general outlook, as Ulstermen insist with pride, never changed. He would fight to the death for partition and oppose inflexibly any plan for a united or federated Ireland. In maintaining that attitude at a time when Irish unity in the face of the Nazi danger might seem as imperative in the interests of Ireland herself as of the Commonwealth he escaped the criticism that would otherwise have been inevitable, because Mr. de Valera was more un- yielding and uncompromising still. Whatever Lord Craigavon had offered, Eire would not have abandoned neutrality, and for an Ireland united and neutral not even the critics of Lord Craigavon's inveterate " partitionism " in the past could say a word. That being so, the death of Ulster's first Prime Minister is not likely to change immediately either the political situation in Ulster or relations between Ulster and Eire.
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