TOPICS OF THE DAY
THE TWO IRELANDS AND THEIR LESSON.
ON week, too late unfortunately for us to notice, there eireappeared one of the most important and significant State Papers that have ever appeared in connection with the Irish problem. Some two months ago the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr. Dillon, and his ad hoc co-workers, the leaders of Sinn Fein, the self-styled allies of Germany, drew up a communication to the President of the United States, setting forth the Irish case against Conscription and generally proclaiming the wrongs of Ireland and her right to self-determination. This Nationalist manifesto has been answered by a communication to the President from the other Irish. Lord Mayor, the Lord Mayor of Belfast, Sir Edward Carson, and the representatives of Commerce and Labour in North-East Ulster. This manifesto shows the case for Con- scription, and points out that if there is a population in the South and West of Ireland determined to ally itself with Germany, either directly or indirectly, passively or actively, a population willing to let the cause of justice, humanity and good faith be overwhelmed in a torrent of blood, lies and Machiavellism, there is a population in the North-East determined to stand by Britain and the Good. Cause and to fight it out to the last. If there had been no sound argument in the case set forth by Ulster, the mere existence of the protest would have been of great importance, for it shows America, and indeed the wide world, in the clearest and best possible way, the existence of the two Irelands, and so overthrows the monstrous fabric of falsehood and paradox reared by the Nationalists. America learns that if there is a Roman Catholic, anti-British, and largely pro-German organisation, headed by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, for defeating Conscription and breaking up the United Kingdom in one part of the Island, there is another Lord Mayor in the other part of the Island with an organisation as determined to keep the Irish ship on the true course and to bear company with the good ships of Britain and America.
But the manifesto of the people of North-East Ulster does a great deal more than merely reveal the existence of the two Irelands. Its compact and closely-reasoned paragraphs show how fair and reasonable is the attitude taken up by the Loyalists and how unjust, unreasonable, and domineering is that assumed by the Sinn Feiners and the Nationalists, and how utterly ridiculous it is to compare Ireland's position with that of the oppressed nationalities of Slavonia Austria, Prussian Poland, or of Alsace-Lorraine. After pointing out the exist- ence of the two Irelands, the authors of the manifesto declare that they will not discuss " the faults and follies of the past," though they note that in the Nationalist communication " there is no assertion with regard to past events that is not either a distortion or a misrepresentation of historical fact "- a judgment which will not be found too severe by anyone who takes the trouble to test the accuracy of the Dublin version of history. But though the men of the North properly refuse at such a moment to bandy history with the men of the South, they make one or two comments and corrections which specially concern America's interest in the Irish problem ;
" There ie, however, one matter to which reference must be made, in order to make clear the position of the Irish minority whom we represent. The Nationalist Party have based their claim to American sympathy on the historic appeal addressed to Irishmen by the British colonists who fought for independence in Amerioa a hundred and fifty years ago. By no Irishmen was that appeal received with a more lively sympathy than by the Pro- testants of Ulster, the ancestors of those for whom we speak to-day —a fact that was not surprising in view of the circumstance that more than one-sixth part of the entire Colonial population in America at the time of the Declaration of Independence consisted of emigrants from Ulster.
"The Ulstermenof to-day, forming as they do the chief industrial community in Ireland, are as devoted adherents of the cause of democratic freedom as were their forefathers in the eighteenth century. But the experience of a century of social and economic progress under the legislative Union with Great Britain has convinced them that under no other system of government could more complete liberty be enjoyed by the Irish people. This, however, is not the occasion for a reasoned defence of Unionist' policy. Our sole purpose in referring to the matter is to show, whatever be the manta of the dispute, that a very substantial volume of Irish opinion is warmly attached to the existing Constitution of the United Kingdom, and regards as wholly unwarranted the theory that our political status affords any sort of parallel to that of the ' small nations ' oppressed by alien rule, for whose emancipation the allied democracies are fighting in this War."
The manifesto goes on to show that instead of Ireland being politically or constitutionally neglected and oppressed, the value of a vote in Ireland is almost double that of a vote is England. Whereas there is only one Member for every 75,000 Englishmen, Ireland has a Member for every 45,000 of her population. Ireland sends, in fact, to Westminster, and so to govern Britain, thirty-nine more Members than she has any right to send on the only true and sound democratic system, that of equality of representation—a principle which is recognized as the ideal throughout the United States. In order to prove that the -British connection has not, as is often alleged, left Ireland a ruined, famine-stricken, and desolate island, the Ulster manifesto calls only one witness. But he is one whose testimony cannot be gainsaid by the Nationalists. This is what Mr. John Redmond. said of the present condition of Ireland on July hat, 1915 :-- " To-day the people, broadly speaking, own the soil. To- day the labourers live in decent habitations. To-day there is absolute freedom in local government and local taxation of the country. To-day we have the widest Parliamentary and Municipal franchise. The congested districts, the scene of some of the most awful horrors of the old famine days, have been transformed. The farms have been enlarged, decent dwellings have been pro- vided, and a new spirit of hope and independence is to-day among the people. In towns legislation has beeri passed facilitating the housing of the working classes—a piece of legislation far in advance of anything obtained for the town tenants of England. We have a system of old-age pensions in Ireland whereby every old man and woman over seventy is safe from the workhouse, and free to spend their last days in comparative comfort.' "Such are the conditions," write the Ulster Unionists, "which, in the eyes of Nationalist politicians, constitute a tyranny so intolerable as to justify Ireland in repudiating her fair share in the burden of War against the enemies of civilization."
And all these good conditions? we may add, were worked out in the Parliament at Westminster with the hearty goodwill of the British people and paid for almost entirely by the British taxpayer.
The manifesto next deals, and deals most effectively, with the Nationalist plea that Ireland must be granted self-deter- mination. In this passage is described what we may call the central fact of the most recent developments of the Irish question. The people of the Six-County area of North-East Ulster—the area in which the Protestants and Loyalists possess a local majority as proportionately large as that of the Roman Catholics, Nationalists, and Disruptionists of the whole of Ireland—have publicly and emphatically repudiated. any desire to deprive the rest of Ireland—the Twenty-six County area, of their right to demand local self-government within the Union. They do not, as the Westminster Gazette imagines, themselves adopt and support Home Rule for the rest of Ireland, but merely admit that they have no right to veto Home Rule for the Twenty-six Counties though they have a right to veto it for the Six Counties. In other words, the people of North-East Ulster believe as firmly as they have ever believed. that the legislative Union with Great Britain gives Ireland, her best chance for developing spiritually and materi- ally, and for securing good government. But provided that the Imperial connection is maintained they make no attempt to dictate to or interfere with the local majority in the South and West. Let those parts of Ireland which want Home Rule have it ; but let those parts which do not want it be without it. In strong contrast to this point of view is the attitude of the Nationalists. The Sinn Feiners and their feebler Nationalist allies not only demand absolute separation, but they demand it for the whole of Ireland. They will not for one moment listen to the principle just set forth. Their claim is for dominance, not for justice. What in the Southerner is but a rational word, that in the Ulsterman is flat mutiny. Here is the Ulster manifesto's very clear and unimpassioned statement of the facts :- " The appeal which the Nationalists make to the principle of ' self-determination ' strikes Ulster Protestants as singularly inappropriate. Mr. Dillon and his co-signatories have been careful not to inform your Excellency that it was their own opposition that prevented the question of Irish Government being settled in accordance with that principle in 1916. The British Government were prepared at that time to bring the Home Rule Act of 1914 into immediate operation, if the Nationalists had consented to exclude from its scope the distinctively Protestant population of the North, who desired to adhere to the Union. This compromise was rejected by the Nationalist leaders, whose policy was thus shown to be one of ' self-determination ' for themselves combined with coercive domination over us.
"It is because the British Government, while preparedto canoed* the principle of self-determination impartially to both divisions in Ireland, has declined to drive us forcibly into such subjection, that the Nationalist Party conceive themselves entitled to resist the law of conscription. And the method by which this resistance has been made effective is in our view, not less deplorable than thespirit that dictated it. The most active opponents of con- scription in Ireland aro men who have been twice detected during the -war in treasonable traffic with the enemy, and their most powerful support has been that of ecclesiastics who have not scrupled to
employ weapons of spiritual terrorism which have elsewhere in the civilized world fallen out of political use since the Middle Ages.'
From these considerations emerge the following crucial con- clusions. If. Roman Catholic Ireland would adopt the principle adopted by Protestant Ireland and allow the will of the local majority to prevail, those parts of Ireland which ask for Home Rule would have it at once. What has killed Home Rule is the refusal of the South and West to abandon their claim to dominance, and to live up to their principles—to be honest Home Rulers. There is the Irish question in a single sentence.
Nothing could be more poignant and conclusive than the way in which the authors of the manifesto end up their résumé of the claim of the Nationalists and their ecclesiastical leaders to resist Conscription. It is a passage which every American will understand. The people of the United States know well that a nation is no true nation but a mere concourse of warring political atoms unless the absolute determination of all Military and Naval questions and of equality of sacrifice in regard to peace and war is established for the inhabitants of every portion of the State :- " The claim of these men, in league with Germany on the one hand and with the forces of clericalism on the other, to resist a law passed by Parliament as necessary for national defence, is, more- over, inconsistent with' any political status short of independent sovereignty—a status which could only be attained by Ireland by an act of secession from the United Kingdom, such as the American Union averted only by resort to civil war. In every federal or other constitution embracing subordinate legislatures, the raising and control of military forces are matters reserved for the supreme legislative authority alone, and they are so reserved for the Imperial Parliament of the United Kingdom in the Home Rule Act of 1914, the withholding' of which during the War is complained of by the Nationalists who have addressed your Excellency. The contention of these gentlemen that until the internal Government of Ireland is reformed in the manner they desire, Ireland is justified in resisting the law of conscription, is one that finds support in no intelligible theory of political science.
"To us as Irishmen—convinced as we are of the righteousness of the cause for which we are fighting, and resolved that no sacrifice can be too great to make the world safe for democracy '—it is a matter of poignant regret that the conduct of the Nationalist leaders in refusing to lay aside matters of domestic dispute in order to put forth the whole strength of the country against Germany should have cast a stain on the good name of Ireland. We have done everything in our power to dissociate ourselves from their action, and we disclaim responsibility for it at the bar of posterity and history."
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