TOPICS OF THE DAY.
ULSTER AND THE LIBERALS' DELUSION. THE ordinary Liberal is suffering under a complete delusion about Ulster. If you tell him that he is burying his head in the sand and avoiding the sight of the dangers that surround him and his policy, he will only smile at you and tell you that he is perfectly happy and that Ulster is not going to be the cause of the slightest embarrassment. If you press him a little further he will expand his views somewhat on these lines : " We Liberals quite admit that the Ulster people are very truculent, very reckless, and not only ready but anxious to fight. We concede also that they are brave and in earnest. But it takes two to make a quarrel. They may be spoiling for a fight, but we are not going to fight them. They will find our imperturbable gentleness and good temper towards them the hardest nut they ever had to crack. They may trail their coats, but we shall never tread upon them or do anything to provoke a quarrel. You tell us that the instant the Home Rule Bill receives the King's assent and becomes law the Protestants of North-East Ulster will form a Provisional Government and refuse to recognize the Parliament and Executive established under the Home Rule Bill in matters of law or revenue or general administration. Well, let them form their Provisional Government. It will no doubt be a very picturesque piece of voluntary effort. We shall not interfere with it. We shall let it sit at Ulster Hall or wherever else it chooses, and appoint its Ministers and Committees. For the first six months after the passing of the Home Rule Bill, the Dublin Government and Parlia- ment will not have been formed, and so the administration will go on just as now. Therefore there will be nothing for the Ulster people to strike at. It is no part of their case to attack the Union Government, which will still hold the field. They cannot refuse to pay taxes to West- minster, for to those taxes they have no objection. But after six months of doing nothing the Provisional Government will become a weariness if not a laughing- stock, and the people of Ulster will gradually withdraw their support from the movement. They will find that nothing very terrible is happening under Home Rule, and things will gradually settle down with, at the worst, an occasional splutter. By taking no notice of any technical treason or riotous rhetoric, the central Government will avoid all cause of quarrel with Ulster and give her no excuse for rebelling."
The ordinary Liberal no doubt honestly believes that this is the way in which things will proceed in Ulster, and that this is how he will be able to get the better of Ulster's determination. He thinks that he will be able to receive the slashings of the Ulster sabre on a feather bed, and after the feather bed has been struck at long enough without result the "chivalry " of Ulster will have to own itself beaten. It will be a case of the Ulsterman killed with kindness. Those who think thus are living, as we have said again and again, in a fool's paradise. Things may look like that on paper. In reality they will turn out very differently. And the difference will probably surprise leading Unionists here and even in Ulster almost as much as it will surprise the ordinary Liberal—though very likely not Mr. Bissell or Mr. Winston Churchill, who, unless we are greatly mistaken, have a keener and more intimate appreciation of Ulster's temper. We are no prophets, and cannot of course foresee exactly what will occur, but we under- stand enough of the temperament of the fierce, obstinate Protestants of Belfast and of North-East Ulster to predict confidently that, whatever else happens, the Liberal dream of disarming the Ulstermen by meeting them with a feather bed will not come true. In the first place, the actual passage of the Home Rule Bill under the Parlia- ment Act will throw Ulster into a violent ferment, a ferment which all the efforts of Sir Edward Carson's Provisional Government will be powerless to control. This will not be due to any double dose of original sin or even of combativeness on the part of the Protestants of the North, but to the extraordinary conditions which prevail in North-East Ulster. In the four counties, and in portions of at least two other counties, you have conditions which exist in no other part of the United Kingdom — conditions which approximate to those in parts of South-Eastern Europe. You have two popula- tions divided absolutely by race and religion, yet living close together, and in Belfast interlaced almost street by street. If North-East Ulster contained a homogeneous population, the Loyalist plan, on the one hand, of passive resistance through a Provisional Government and the Liberal plan, on the other hand, of entirely ignoring this passive rebellion, might co-exist easily enough. But with two fierce and eager populations living side by side and in daily, hourly contact such a thing is not possible. All the efforts of the moderates of the Provisional Government and of the more long-headed Liberals will be of no avail.
No man can, of course, say precisely how the trouble will arise, but we expect it will be somewhat on the following lines. The fiercer Protestants in the working men's quarters of Belfast and in many of the country districts will feel very much as the Greeks in Salonica felt when the war began between Greece and Bulgaria. At that time there was a large body of Bulgarians actually in Salonica—a hostile garrison within the town. The Greeks determined that at all costs these men must be driven out or taken prisoners. Though the analogy is not exact, something of that kind is only too likely to happen. The Protestants in works and docks and shops and offices will declare that they are not going to have traitors and enemies among them, and that in self-defence they must drive them out. No doubt the moderates and the employers, who will be in control of the Provisional Government, will do all they can to prevent such an expulsion of Papists and traitors, as they will be called, but almost certainly they will fail in their efforts. Throughout Ulster there will be a movement which will seem to those respon- sible for it a mere act of self-preservation—the act of getting rid of a minority which will be hated and feared as the instruments of Roman Catholic and Nationalist coercion. Naturally the minority, which in some cases will be a very large minority, will resist, and this resis- tance will cause riots of a most dangerous sort. The only way to prevent or check such rioting will be to flood North-East Ulster with soldiers, whose efforts will be directed towards keeping the peace between the two hostile sections of the working population, both of which sections will be found to be possessed of firearms and ammunition. That is what has happened on a small scale in previous riotings. But in the previous cases the efforts of the employers, and indeed of the whole educated and richer class among the Protestants, have been in the direction of assisting the Government and stopping the rioting. After the Home Rule Bill has become law the con- ditions will be very different. Then, even though it should be the desire of the Ulster Provisional Government to stop rioting as bad policy, they will find it almost impossible to do so. Some incident is sure to arise in which their sympathies will be too strongly with the Protestants to allow them to support the soldiers and the police effectively. They will be carried away by their racial and religious feelings and by the fact that, even though the Protestants may have been the aggressors, violent and unjustifiable things will also have been done—for that is inevitable — by the Roman Catholic and Nationalist inhabitants. A little use of the imagination will show how such incidents might arise. On the fringe of North-East Ulster there are plenty of places where, though the Protestants are in con- siderable numbers, the Roman Catholic and Nationalist inhabitants are actually in a majority—where, in a word, physical force is on the Nationalist side. In such cases passionate appeals for help will come from the minorities and we are almost certain to see men marching from the Protestant centres to their relief. Reprisals will evoke further reprisals, until the whole country is on fire. We do not say that it will be impossible for the British Govern- ment to put down confusion and anarchy of this sort by the strong hand, but we are certain that if it is to be put down and a great deal of bloodshed and outrage prevented, it will be necessary to fill North-East Ulster with soldiers. To do the thing effectively at least 60,000 or 70,000 men will be required, for almost every village will want a detachment. And the soldiers will be wanted not for a day or two, but for months, for the moment they are withdrawn the rioting will break out afresh. Ulster, in truth, will have to be an armed camp. And during those months not only Ireland, but England and Scotland, will be kept in a perpetual ferment by tales of outrage such as always take place in civil war, even though it be civil war kept under by the iron hand. Such will be the conditions under which the inevitable general election will have to take place! Is that a prospect which pleases the normal Liberal ?
We shall be told, of course, that we are playing a very wicked part in writing like this, and that we are in effect encouraging rebellion and outrage of the worst sort. We are not afraid of such an indictment. Though we hold that an actual right of insurrection in arms belongs to Ulster, we should in no case have any sympathy with attempts by Protestants to drive the Roman Catholics from the workshops or from their homes. Such action would of course be evil. But it must be remembered that the fact of our thinking it wicked, or the fact of the ordinary Liberal thinking us wicked for even discussing such a thing, will not alter the circumstances. We are quite certain that we shall not approve of a great many things that will be done in Ulster in the course of the resistance to a Home Rule Bill which includes Ulster. We have never pretended that the people of Ulster are likely to behave like saints or philosophers, or even like men of moderation and humanity. The Ulster temper when it is roused is not a good temper, but an evil temper, and one likely to produce evil things. But that is no reason for pretending that North-East Ulster is a land of peace and quiet. We are stating the facts as they are, not as we want them to be or think they ought to be, and we are not going to be prevented from stating them by the foolish criticism that by doing so we become responsible for them and are by a Machiavellian trick encouragino. outrage. If the wild beast in the Ulsterman is roused he will act as a wild beast—as a wolf, and not as a lamb. Of that we may all be absolutely sure. And of this, too, we may be sure. When anything in the nature of civil war occurs, men will not be deterred from taking the side which on general grounds they think they ought to take by any wrongdoing in detail, however bad. As in all other civil wars, men will go by the great issues. Thousands of English Royalists abhorred many of the acts of Charles and Laud. Yet when the war came they joined with Charles and Laud. So, too, thousands of Parliamentarians disliked many of the things done by the Parliament and by the Puritans. Yet when the war came they found that in spite of those evil things they must side with the Parliament. And so here. Though the moderate people in Ulster—and there are plenty of moderate people—may be horrified by the first acts of the mob and of the hot-headed resisters, they will not find it possible merely for that reason to abandon their cause and their people. Rather they will feel that, right or wrong, they must stand by their own faith and their own flesh and blood lest even worse things happen. An American who remembered the outbreak of the civil war once said to the present writer, " Before the war began there were many of us in the North who hardly knew which side we were on. When the first shot had been fired, we knew in. an instant which was our cause. All hesitation was over, and we were all hard and fast Federals or Confederates." Civil strife makes clear-cut divisions.
The Loyalists of Ulster, high and low, are in earnest, and the Loyalists of Ulster are not fools. This means that they know that those who stand on the defensive are always beaten. They recognize quite clearly that if they want. to win they must attack. In short, as soon as the Bill is passed into law a force stronger than reason—the sense of self-preservation—will drive them to attack. The Southerners in the American Civil War fired on Fort Sumter, not with any deep-laid Machiavellian design, but because the conditions obliged them to have recourse to the defender's best form of defence—assault.
What is the moral of what we have written for the Liberals who feel that they cannot give up Home Rule ? In the first place, it is to exclude North-East Ulster altogether from the operation of the Home Rule Bill, and thus prevent civil war. Such exclusion will prevent any recourse to arms. If they cannot or will not do that, then the next best thing is for them to consent to a general election or, what of course would be far fairer and better, a Referendum, before the final passing of the Home Rule Bill under the Parliament Act. If that Referendum or general election takes place it will go either for Home Rule or against it. If it goes against it, there will be no more difficulty in Ulster. The Union will remain—the government which divides Ireland least. If Home Rule is carried at the polls, as most Liberals tell us it would be, then, though the danger would not be over, the danger of insurrection in Ulster would be very greatly modified. It is true that the Ulster people in the abstract say they would not submit even to the openly expressed will of the majority to force them under a Dublin Parliament. As a matter of fact, however, they would be dominated by a great popular vote in favour of Home Rule. Such a popular endorsement of the Bill would prevent the English or Scottish Unionists from offering them any help. It would do more. It would actually cause Unionists to do all in their power to dis- courage insurrection and resistance. Ulstermen, brave and reckless though they are, would feel the tremendous weight of a popular vote against them. Therefore any sincere Liberal who is bent upon forcing the Home Rule Bill upon Ulster is bound to use this most potent instrument before he uses the bayonet, the rifle, and the machine gun.
If the people of England and Scotland are not deter- mined upon having Home Rule it will never stand. If they are determined upon it, it is obviously to the interests of everyone that they should be allowed to make that determination clear at a general election, and by doing so to simplify the task of overcoming Pro- testant resistance in the North-East of Ireland. To coerce Ulster and then at a general election to find too late that the people of England and Scotland did not approve of a Home Rule Bill which included Ulster— what a policy, what statesmanship, what a way for humanitarians to gamble with the lives of their fellow men !
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