Art. 10.-IRELAND.

THE problem of Ireland is still unsolved; it may even be said that it presents greater difficulties than at any previous moment since the Union. It is not our intention now to explore the history of Ireland, to recall ancient Irish grievances, or British mistakes, in the hope that a precise understanding of the past may provide material for a constructive policy for the future. History has its uses, without doubt, for the politician, and he is not wise if he neglect its warnings or its lessons. But the present is never exactly like the past. Tempora mutantur; and the conditions of Irish life, social, religious, economic, are so dissimilar to those of the 18th or 19th century that a study of history is not by itself a sufficient equipment for the difficult task of promoting peace and order in that sadly distracted country. What is needed by the reformer is knowledge of the facts, of the present aspirations, fears, sympathies, of the Irish people, and of the several sections into which they are divided.

The first fact to be faced is the hostility to British rule which prevails over the larger part of Ireland. It is not generally understood in Britain how widespread this is, and how fierce are the passions which it evokes. To inquire into the causes of this, or to find reasons for its aggravation during the last twenty years, during which so many British statesmen have endeavoured to appease it by measures of social reform and British taxpayers have contributed so generously to the economic needs of Ireland, were a useless task. The plain fact is that, although Irishmen do not, as a rule, hate Englishmen or Scotsmen, they do hate British rule and desire for the future to manage their own affairs. This hatred of Britain we believe to be quite unreasonable; but it is a fact. It has been promoted by many generations of political agitators, and of recent years it has been fostered and encouraged by the Roman Catholic Church. There is nothing surprising in this. The priests of that Church are drawn, for the most part, from the ranks of the farmers and small shopkeepers, and they are inspired by the same political and racial prejudices as the people to whom they minister. In the 18th century, the Irish priest, in many cases, received part of his education on

the Continent; and the larger outlook on the world which he thus acquired was a check upon provincialism and parochialism in politics. But the establishment of Maynooth (which received a large State grant) put an end to this. For a century aspirants to the priesthood have been educated together at Maynooth, and they go forth to their work knowing nothing of any larger life, with all the political sentiments which they acquired at home intensified. It could not be otherwise. And, thus, it comes to pass that the spiritual guides of the majority of the Irish people are, for the most part, even more hostile to Britain than the least educated of their flock.

It has often been said, indeed, that the Roman Catholic clergy, or at any rate, the bishops, are really not unfavourable to the British connexion, and that, while they have acquiesced in the politics of their people, they have never been Home Rulers at heart. Such a view is unjust to them. Men in a position of responsibility must be taken to mean what they say; and the members of the Irish hierarchy have, repeatedly, in public and in private, collectively and individually, expressed their sympathy with 'national' aspirations. It is not reasonable to suppose that they consistently exert their great influence in a direction which they disapprove; as it is, indeed, psychologically incredible that they should have been able to emancipate themselves from all the traditions of their childhood and their education. We shall return later to a consideration of their political action; but at this point it is necessary to lay emphasis on the fact that the Irish priests have done more than any other class in the community to inspire the people with a distrust of British policy and, of late, to promote antagonism to British rule. Whether this attitude be wise or unwise is beside the point. Clergy and people are united in hostility to Great Britain; this is the first fact that must be borne in mind.

Why has this hostility been so grievously intensified of late? There are several reasons, but one of the most significant must next be mentioned. When the Great War broke out, it became of the first importance to secure the services of Irish soldiers, and at the same time to quash the sedition which was brewing in Ulster. Ulstermen were very ready to enlist in the Armies of the

King, provided that they were given safeguards to protect them against subjection to an Irish Parliament while their soldiers were serving in France. Mr Redmond, as spokesman of the Irish Nationalist Party, was equally anxious to secure the fighting strength of Irish recruits for the Empire; but he could not have hoped for any success in this honourable endeavour, unless those, whose champion he was, were promised the Home Rule for which they had been striving so long. The British Government had little time to spare for Irish matters in those tremendous days, but they did their best. They passed a measure of Home Rule for all Ireland on Sept. 8, 1914, thus delighting the Nationalist party; while at the same time assurances were given to Ulster that Ulstermen would not be coerced to submit to a form of Government distasteful to them. Here were two inconsistent policies, and it only needed a short time for the exposure of the inconsistency. The pledge to Ulster was kept in the sense that Ulster understood it, namely, that she was not to be subjected to the provisions of the Government of Ireland Act (1914); while the pledge to Mr Redmond, in the sense that his followers understood it, namely, that the Act should apply to all Ireland and be put into operation after the war, was broken. Mr Redmond's people understood that the exclusion of Ulster was only a temporary provision; the Ulstermen had always determined that it should be permanent, and-as it turned out-their view prevailed. It is true that the Act of 1914 pleased nobody, and that no one wished for it in the form in which it had been passed by Parliament; but it is equally true that it purported to be an Act of Home Rule for All Ireland, and that it was on the ground of this apparent recognition of Irish Nationality,' that Nationalists like Mr Redmond and Mr Devlin did their utmost to obtain recruits for the Army.

It is not surprising that Irish Nationalists should have been embittered, when they learnt that the only kind of Home Rule which Britain was prepared to offer them after the war was conditioned by the partition of Ireland. And to this day the great bulk of Irish Nationalists believe that Mr Redmond was tricked and their cause betrayed by the British Government which Vol. 236.-No. 468.

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refused to give what, apparently, it had promised. There are few in the south and west of Ireland-such is the lamentable fact-who will now trust the word of a British statesman.

And, again. The Irish Nationalist cannot forget that the policy of resistance to the armed forces of the Crown, for which he is very properly-punished when he is caught, was begun by Ulster. If the gun-running at Larne in April 1914 was not worthy of punishment, why should the gun-running at Howth in July of the same year have been hindered by soldiers and police? This was before the Great War broke upon the world, and before Ulstermen had shown that they were ready to range themselves on the side of the Allies (provided always that they were to be secured against government from Dublin). At this stage, there was no question of the services of Ulster to the Crown; she had shown herself a disloyal province, prepared to fight against Britain, if unwelcome decisions of the British Parliament were forced upon her. And yet the British Government neither arrested her leaders nor disbanded her volunteers. To be fair to the Irish Sinn Feiner (a hard thing for any loyalist), it is necessary to remember that he is, from one point of view, only resorting to the same policy of force and violence which Ulster adopted in her own interests (or her supposed interests) in 1914. He regards the British Government as a partisan government which does not measure out justice equally to Orangeman and Sinn Feiner, but which reserves its rewards for the former and its jails for the latter. This is not the whole of the case, by any means, nor do we agree with the Sinn Feiner's conclusion; but it is well to try to understand his psychology.

Such hatreds, such want of confidence in British justice, were the main cause of the lamentable and treacherous rebellion of 1916. The Irish Volunteers had repudiated Mr Redmond, and the hotheads among them decided to throw in their lot with Germany, not because they loved Germany, but because they hated Britain. Unpractical enthusiasts who desired to see Ireland once more an Irish-speaking country, bold anarchists who desired the overthrow of the existing social order, foolish boys who were discontented

because they had nothing useful to do and were secretly ashamed because they were not fighting in the Great Crusade, all conspired to set up an 'Irish Republic.' Many of these young men would, in the natural course of things, have emigrated to America or Australia to seek their fortunes; and the stoppage of emigration at the beginning of the war was the beginning of their discontent. Some one has compared the condition of Ireland in 1918 to the condition of a school in which for four years the Sixth Form has been prevented from leaving, and has remained, insubordinate and unhappy. There is a good deal of truth in that comparison; but it does not provide a complete picture of the situation, inasmuch as the most dangerous party in Ireland in 1916 (and the same is true of 1921) was the party of anarchist ideals, which aimed at the destruction, not of the British Empire only, but of all 'bourgeois' government.

British politicians have been slow to recognise that the struggle between Irish parties during the past ten years has been gradually changing its form. It is not now, mainly or primarily, a struggle between Roman Catholic and Protestant. Nor is it any longer a struggle between Home Ruler and Unionist, for the legislative Union of Pitt, which gave its name to the Unionist Party, is dead; it passed away, so soon as the Irish Act of 1914 was placed on the Statute Book, although pathetic and futile attempts have been made by the 'Diehards' of the Irish Unionist party to keep up the pretence of a Unionist policy. The struggle in Ireland now is between those who demand complete independence for that island, and those who hold that, whatever powers of local self-government may be entrusted to an Irish parliament or Irish parliaments, Ireland must remain an integral part of the British Empire. And the advocates of an Irish Republic, in the means that they have adopted to carry out their purposes, have become responsible for a policy that is, at root, anarchic, and have associated themselves with revolutionaries in more than one quarter.

For instance, Mr de Valera and his friends tried to enter into correspondence with the Russian Soviet Government in June 1920, and pledged themselves to