Mr. Redmond closed his oration with a refreshing return to
the old assertion that but for the brutal interference of the soldiery and police Ireland would rise like one man, and talked of Ireland's four and _a half millions and what they would do if they could only get...tlr.,..guns. But Mr. Redmond forgets that if his Hillside men got the guns, so would the loyalists of Ulster. It wOuld be a case not of four and a half million unanimous men, but of, say, three millions of the Southern Irish against one and a half millions of Protestants and loyalists of Ulster. In that case we should unhesitatingly back the 1J1stermen, even if they had no help from Scotland and England. But they would have help. In truth, Mr. Redmond's calm ignoring of the Ulster loyalists and the loyalists generally, and of the fact that they would be quite as willing to fight—if they could get arms—against Nationalism as the rest of the Irish would be to fight for it, is a capital example of the way in which he and his friends habitually beg the Irish question. You would never dream, from reading a speech by Redmond, that such a place as Belfast existed. Fortunately, however, it does.exist—and long may it flourish—for even his glittering verbiage cannot alter physical facts.
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