LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
[Letters of the length of one of our leading paragraphs are Often more read, and therefore more effective, than those which fuz treble the space.] _— TFIE "TIMES" AND IRELAND.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR.") !gm—Contra stultitiam frustra—against stupidity even the gods fight in vain. And the first thought of the Irish Loyalist on reading almost every other day a ponderous " leader " in the newspaper which he used to admire advocating concessions to disloyalty—nay, inculcating such concessions as a high Imperial duty—is that the world is indeed crumbling, and that there is something in the old gibe of the Nationalist politicians about the incurable stupidity of "the English." What, we ask ourselves, does the Times want? Why does it ite—of course, in its own inimitable grand manner—the Language of the Manchester Guardian and the Daily News? Why does it now accept all the shibboleths, such as Irish nationality, War Office malignity, military tyranny, reasonable Irish claims, new standards of political values, which it has exposed so trenchantly in the past? Why does it clamour for an immediate constructive policy, by which it means the handing over of loyalists in Ireland to the disloyal elements? 'Why does it appear to think that it would be better to impose it s own scheme, which has been damned by every party in Leland, than to carry on the old and tried policy which it Las supported for a century ? Have the circumstances changed ? Or is the Times-, in its furious campaign against the Prime Minister, simply goading him on to those Constitutional experiments with Ireland which have been the ruin of every Minister who has meddled with them, in the hope that Nr. Lloyd George may break himself on this rock, after avoiding, with such adroitness, so many others?
In the cloud of verbiage it is impossible to discover the reasons for the change of view. There .is the old gag that this is .a golden opportunity,-which must not be missed;-for settling the Irish -question. Readers of the Daily News know that this golden 'opportunity has arisen about every six months for the last thirty years; if nothing is done, it is safe to say that it will recur again every six months for the next generation.
The peculiar stupidity of the Times is shown by the moment it adopts to push as a golden opportunity what it calls reasonable Irish claims," and to annex the Daily News cliclu. For the time when seventy-three Irish Members put forward a claim to an Irish Republic as an irreducible minimum is hardly an opportunity not to be missed for giving them something which they do not want—and for threatening with bell, book, and candle the loyal Irish who see that even what the Times offers with such a grand gesture would be destruction to Imperial interests in Ireland, while it would be no manner of use in settling the Irish question.
It is true that the Irish Dominion League go about saying that the Sinn Feiners do not mean what they say, that they will take much less than a Republic; in other words, that the persons who would control. the future destinies of Ireland are deliberately forswearing themselves. and therefore that it is quite safe to hand over to them the fullest powers—surely the least complimentary attitude to the fathers of a new nation
which has ever been seriously put forward! • It is true that the Irish Statesman, the organ of the Dominion League (edited of course by an Englishman, as may be seen by the absence of split infinitives), explains that it is quite safe to hand over the control of tariffs and trade to the new nation, because it would never dream of a tariff against Great Britain—but that such control is necessary because it would conciliate "national" sentiment.
It is true that the young lions of the Daily News who write furious articles about the " brutal militarism " and the "Prussian jackboot " in Ireland do not really believe that the patient, friendly English or Scottish lads who stand with "fixed bayonets" (horrible thought) between howling mobs of Nationalists and Sinn Feiners, receiving the stones which these patriots mean for each other, are the least like the Prussians in Belgium; the Daily News man would probably be quite indignant with a French journalist who made the accusation.
But all these things, the Irish Dominion League, the Irish newspapers, the Radical journalists, are part of the great system of humbug which prevails in Ireland. There. is an expressive word in Irish, Rameis, which means nonsense— wordy nonsense—and every one in Ireland takes these campaigners at their proper value. Unfortunately the Times has taken it all seriously—really believes that -the Government of • Ireland is pure militarism, swallows all the stories of outrages by the military, and the parading of tanks and aeroplanes; in short is, as we say in Ireland, "very English" about it all.
. There is nothing new about the attitude, but the Times has hitherto been kept on intelligent lines as regards Ireland by being in touch with men that know the meaning of Itameis, and how to value Irish stories. Credulity is a pleasant virtue in the young, and even the great Canning at the age of twenty could write : "If the Government mean rather to resist than td concede anything [he is talking of Catholic Emancipation and writing in 1792], then indeed Ireland is lost to us; for a garrison Government, such as we have.there at present, cannot in these days subsist long."
If the Times, which is saying exactly the same thing in 1919, were twenty years old there would be some excuse for it. But it is old enough to know better, old enough to have read and absorbed the history of Ireland, to be able to profit by the lessens of that history, instead of deliberately disregarding them. It might learn many lessons from the above extract from Canning's letter. First, that it is a mistake to be frightened at names—we continued garrison Government after 1792 and we have not lost Ireland—as a writer in the Times pointed out, there is no better training ground in the United Kingdom, and our young troops must be trained somewhere. Second, that it is not necessary always to be " doing something" in Ireland. The young Canning thought that something must be done about Catholic Emancipation in 1792, and nothing was done till 1829—in which time the population of Ireland nearly doubled. Third, that when you " do do" something to conciliate your enemies in Ireland, you do not conciliate them. Catholic Emancipation was to bind England and Ireland in indissoluble bonds, so it was promised. As soon as it was given, a new grievance arose and the concession was forgotten. Fourth, that the theory of the Nationalist historians, that Ireland was "independent" under Grattan's Parliament, was not accepted in England at the time. Canning, at any rate, a rising young politician, held that Ireland belonged to England and was kept down by a garrison. Above all, let the Times seriously ask itself whether a "settlement" imposedby force against the wishes of all sections of opinion ' Li Ireland is, in the first place, in accord with those democratic ideas which it now has so much at heart; and whether such a solution differs in principle from that militarism which it objects to. The only difference its solution would make would be that the military oppression would be exercised in favour of the enemies of England in Ireland and against her friends.
On the whole, the conclusion is that the Times is merely using the Irish question as a stick to beat the Government. Otherwise, why advocate a " just, nay, generous," treatment of. Ireland, which would cost at least fifty millions, and rail furiously against the Government for its extravagance in proposing to raise the salaries of five Ministers from .22,000 to £5,000 per annum?—I am, Sir, &c., ham LOYALIST.
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