TOPICS OF THE DAY.
NORTH-EAST IRELAND.
OUR most hearty congratulations to the men and women of North-East Ireland. They have done exactly what we always knew they would do—that is, obeyed the motto : "Fear God and take your own part." They have kept faith. They have kept the peace. They have acted with reason and good sense. They have refused to be either cajoled or bullied out of their freeman's rights. Further, as we predicted they would, while refusing to allow the minority rule of disloyal Roman Catholics in a region in which there was a well-marked loyalist and Protestant majority, they have made no attempt, direct or indirect, open or secret, to veto self- determination in those parts of Ireland in which they and those who think with them are in a minority. While refusing to be domineered over, they made no claim to domineer. They strongly regretted the break-up of the legislative union and the partition of the United Kingdom. They were resolved, however, that, though in its ignorance and weakness the House of Commons decreed that there must be a partition of the United Kingdom, that partition should not stop just at the point liked by the Sinn Feiners—at the point where it would mean misery and oppression to the people of North-East Ulster--but should be applied, if it were applied at all, justly and reasonably. The principle of partition invoked by self-determination should be used as a corrective as well as an irritant. The Ulster Elections have been fought in exact obedience to these principles. Though the dis- loyal and non-Protestant minority—the minority which hates all friends of this country and loves all its enemies —were given, and rightly given, every possible chance to make their votes effective, only a little under one-fourth of the members of the new Parliament are opponents of the Union and of Great Britain and the Empire, and over three-fourths are adherents of the party which, under the fair, wise, and brilliant leadership of Sir Edward Carson and Sir James Craig, have done such splendid service for Ireland, Great Britain, and the Empire.
Unless the people of England and Scotland are either hopelessly blind, or allow their eyes to be bandaged by the malicious, treacherous, sophistical propagandists of Sinn Fein, they cannot but learn, by what has happened in North-East Ireland, some most important political lessons—learn something which will greatly help them to deal with the situation in the South and West of Ireland. The first of these lessons is that North-East Ulster is a homogeneous community in which the majority of the people are inspired not only by a genuine loyalty to the United Kingdom, but by an equally genuine determination to preserve the first essentials of social polity—the preservation of law and order. It was hinted by the representatives of the Radicals and Liberals in the Press that the Protestants of North-East Ulster were not really friendly to this country and cared nothing for the Empire. We should soon see them fighting amongst themselves. With a passion which would have been amusing if it was not so disgusting, these superior persons evidently clung to the hope that the Ulstermen were going to show us that they really detested us as much as the Shin Feiners did. In any case, there would be labour troubles which would show the true value of an Ulster alliance. We had only to wait and see, and the black North would be proved to be as chaotic and as unfriendly as the spiritual home of the new Liberals and Radicals, the Bolshevik, Ultramontane, homicidal community of the South. This legend of the essentially disloyal North, incredible as it may seem, was believed in by a great many men who ought to have known better. Now, to their surprise, they see the true Ulster. To use the words of Daniel Webster on Massachusetts, quoted with such effect the other day by the American Ambassador, we can say of North-East Ulster : "There she is ! Behold her and judge for yourselves." Of the new State created in North-East Ulster it is quite safe to predict that, though the majority will assert its right to rule as it is its duty to assert it, there will be no unfairness to the minority, no interference with the religious or civil liberty, and no attempt- to blackmail, to coerce, or to betray to its foreign enemies the people of this country. Above all, there will be no claim to call murder by grand names or to excuse it if it should appear to be politically convenient. An even more important lesson than that we have just described is concerned with the South rather than with the North of Ireland. If what has happened in North- East Ulster is properly studied and understood,, it will be seen to reveal the truth about Sinn Fein and the nature of that vast homicidal conspiracy in which it is engaged —a conspiracy which, owing to cowardice, our Govern- ment have allowed to grow to monstrous proportions. Now we can see clearly what the Slim Feiners are in insurrection over, and what are the reasons that have induced them to turn murder into a fine art.
Their guiding impulse has not been the desire for self- determination, not resistance to a foreign oppression, not even revenge for past injuries real or imagined. It is the evil and preposterous claim to dominate and oppress the loyal Protestants of the North ; or, to prevent any begging of the question, let us say those persons of different race, religion, and political instincts who happen to reside and form a majority in the North-East portion of Ireland. Unless Sinn Feiners are given the power to persecute Ulster, Home Rule is worthless. They will have their pound of flesh at all costs. For this there can be no substitute.
It is curious to see that that partition has come to be reckoned the unforgivable sin by the Shin Feiners. The worst thing a man can be called is a partitionist. Par- titionists are even more abominable than the Black-and- Tans. Those who have insisted that if self-determination is to be the dominant principle in Ireland it should be applied to the North as well as to the South and West are regarded with that special hate which always fastens upon those who have deprived the bandit of his prey. It sounds melodramatic to say so, and yet it is none the less true that the grant of the right to rule themselves and the fulfilment of their aspirations for liberty and nationality are mere insults to the Sinn Feiners if they are unaccompanied by the right to tyrannize over the Pro- testants of the North. That, in plain terme, is the meaning of the deadly hatred which now attaches to those who have insisted that, if self-determination is to be the rule, self-determination must apply to Protestant as well as to Roman Catholic Ireland. Was there ever such an impudent, such a malicious claim as this—that the Pro- testants have no right to self-determination, that liberty is a thing which does not agree with those who refuse to take either their politics or their religion from their parish priest l See what is involved in maintaining this amazing proposition! You have first to declare that the partition of the State—i.e., the United Kingdom—is not only right and desirable, but that any opposition to partition justifies murder, arson, treachery, perjury, the slaying of women as well as of men, and indeed every crime on the Statute Book. That is not a view which we take, but, at any rate, it is a possible and coherent view. But the moment the principle of partition is admitted in the case of the United Kingdom, its adherents whisk round and take up exactly the opposite position. Partition instead of being a virtue becomes the most abominable of crimes. Just as anything might be done to carry it, now anything may be done to resist it. The partitionist of.the United Kingdom is the noblest of mankind, the partitionist of Ireland the most abandoned. During the past fifteen years or so a great many Englishmen have apparently been unable to see and draw the consequences from the advocacy of this impudent and sanguinary paradox. They have been bemused by the simple expedient of assuming that the people of North-East Ulster do not really want partition, and that, even if they do, they are such a set of cruel, domineering, and implacable tyrants that they don't deserve it, and so forth and so on. This sort of argument has gone on till at last the poor and easily puzzled Saxon mind has become utterly confused about the rights of the situation. You hear men who ought to 'know better bleating about the Irish situation in a manner that can only be described as capable of producing physical nausea. Here is a specimen : "It seems strange, but all my Irish friends tell me that the people of the North really hate us much worse than the Sinn Feiners do. The Northerners are the real rebels and the real cause of all the disorders and cruelties, and also of all the terrible religious animosity in Ireland." "I can't quite remember the argument for the moment," goes on the puzzled English Radical, "but I know they assert that if we set up an independent Parliament in Dublin, and left it to deal with these tyrannical and persecuting Orangemen, they would very soon bring all Irishmen together and free the poor wage-slaves of Belfast from their oppressors, and so make Ireland united and fraternal in spirit, and, of course, also a co-equal ally of Great Britain. It is ll rather strange, but then Irishmen have such quick, eager minds, and, considering everything, it is surely worth while to try to get such splendid results. Besides, as the Irish always insist, Carson is the real rebel. He must have been. Three million people wouldn't hold it like a religion if he wasn't. Also, according to the best Irish information, if he had not sent hundreds of innocent Irish farmers to the gallows (I do not exactly know when or how this was done, but they can't be mistaken about a matter like that), things would have been very different in Ireland from what they are now. Besides, all true bred Irishmen like De Valera—it is a very curious name for a pure Celt, but then everything is curious in Ireland— say that the Ulster people will never be able to rule them- selves. So what is the good of partitioning the unfortunate island ? As an Irishman said to me in Cork when I went there to see the ruins : 'An Independent Ulster, is it ? What's the good of Home Rule to us if we've nothing to rule on ? ' " The Ulster elections have, we trust, put an end once and for all to this sort of talk. The people of the Six- County Area have shown us that they can rule themselves, and that they can be reasonable. They make no claim to veto self-determination in the South and West, provided that it is not vetoed in the Noith-East. They have shown also that they can preserve law and order, and can prevent the murder conspiracy from spreading to their own area, and can do it without being cruel or without invoking religious persecution. One would have naturally supposed that the cruelties practised upon the Protestants of the South and West by their Roman Catholic neighbours (almost all the victims of the Sinn Feiners have been Protestants) would have led to the wild justice, or rather injustice, of revenge in Protestant Ulster, and that we should have seen innocent Roman Catholics punished for deeds of ill which they had not committed. Nothing of the kind has taken place. In spite of temptation the Protestants and loyalists of Ulster have exhibited a won- derful political temperance. They have sternly prevented injustice being committed against their Roman Catholic neighbours. No doubt it will be said that there has been a good deal of rioting and bloodshed in Derry and in Belfast during the past year, and we shall be asked how we account for that. We can account for it quite easily. The rioting has practically in every case been due to provocative attacks on the part of Roman Catholic mobs. Roman Catholic conspirators have done their very best to provoke the Protestants of the North into violent and arbitrary acts which would give an excuse for saying that the Ulster Protestants were not fit for self-government. Happily, the Protestants under the wise leadership, first, of Sir Edward Carson, and now of Sir James Craig, remained per- fectly cool, and in spite of repeated attacks on the Pro- testants by Roman Catholic and Sinn Fein mobs, they have managed to keep the peace. Not only has there been nothing which even the most inflated rhetorician could call a massacre of true Irishmen, but Roman Catholic employees have in almost every case been retained in the offices and in the works within the Six-County Area. The Protestant employers, that is, have done their very best to prevent religious discrimination. They have yielded neither to prejudice nor to fear. They run the risk, and it is not a small one, of having Sinn Fein conspirators at their doors rather than listen to the promptings of panic.
One more lesson of the elections must be dwelt upon. Surely the English people will now see the folly and the danger of allowing, themselves to be made the dupes of Irish calumny. A great many of us have lived in a totally unreal world as regards Ireland, owing to our yielding to the insidious promptings of Irish Nationalists. They have been particularly skilful and particularly successful in the matter of personal abuse. Just as in the past the Irish destroyed the reputation of a great statesman and patriot, Lord Castlereagh, by constantly besmirching him with lies and invective, so an atmosphere of unfair prejudice has been deliberately created about Sir Edward Carson. We said something about Sir Edward Carson last week, but we want to say once again that he has proved himself not only a great Irishman but a great Imperial statesman also. The United Kingdom and the Empire owe him a deep debt of gratitude. His voice and his influence have always been on the right side, on the side of good government. He has never wanted revenge. He has always been willing to compromise. He has always been reasonable. He has always been truthful. He has never indulged in intrigue and cajolery, or played a deceitful game. Above all, he has never played for his own hand. If he had, he could have been Prime Minister at this moment. Yet a very large section of English Liberals still think that he is a cruel, bloodstained man, and somehow or other the protagonist of rebellion in Ireland What has happened in Ulster will, we trust, tend to enlighten them, and, what is more, make them realize this great lesson. The Sinn Feiners and the disloyal Irishmen of the South are the greatest experts in calumny and in the creation of a false atmosphere that the world has ever seen. The fact that a man is abused and traduced by Sinn Feiners is no sort of reason for imagining that he has evil in him. Rather it is a sound reason for suspecting him to be honest, true, and faithful to his word, and loyal to his trust.
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