6 methods, and however barbarous their actions, there is no doubt that they were sincere in their desire to 'win Irish freedom,' as they were accustomed to say. Most of them were youths under twenty-five years of age, and many of them under twenty. They had never done any useful work; and for some years they had been accustomed to no rule except the rule of the revolver. Some of them had been hanged for assassination; their memory was venerated as if they had been martyrs in a holy cause. If Ireland were to accept the Treaty,' and to settle down as an orderly and peaceful state within the British Empire, their occupation would be gone, and their ideals-however fatuous and mistaken-would become incapable of realisation. Furthermore, they were encouraged to a policy of intransigeance by Mr de Valera and his supporters. Dail Eireann had, indeed, by a small majority, accepted the Treaty'; but many of them were not disposed to obey its dictates, if they seemed to conflict with Republican ideals. And so the 'army' was divided, in policy at least. The larger part was willing to follow the advice of Mr Griffith; but a substantial minority preferred to follow Mr de Valera. Thus the Government were not in a position, in every country district, to command the aid of their own armed forces; and they acquiesced in this absurd situation, lest by appealing to the 'loyal' troops to subdue the mutineers, they should set brother against brother and provoke bloodshed. Such, at least, was their excuse, and it may be added that it was not by any means certain that an order to the troops to suppress military indiscipline would have been obeyed. The members of the Irish Republican Army were agreed among themselves that they would not fight with each other, and it is likely that Mr Michael Collins, who had been so prominent in the guerilla warfare of 1920-21, sympathised with this attitude of his former companions. At any rate, wherever the fault and whatever the reason, the sanctions of law and the penalties of crime disappeared from a large part of Ireland during last winter. The mutinous soldiery, who were not in every case paid by the Government, seized public buildings which might serve as barracks, robbed banks in order to get money for their needs, looted shops to procure food, and did all this with complete impunity. The occupation of the Law Courts in Dublin by Mr Rory O'Connor and the lawless youths who form his 'army' has placed the greatest difficulties in the way of administering justice. The Courts were seized on April 14, and since that time the Judges have been obliged to transact business, as best they may, elsewhere. The theft of motor-cars has become so common, that many private owners have given up using them. The billeting of soldiers on private citizens, without any authority, in the name of the 'Irish Republic' has been a frequent cause of trouble in country places. And appeals to the Provisional Government to check such things have, in the large majority of cases, proved to be useless. Sympathy is expressed, and complicity with outrage is disclaimed; but protection has been too seldom offered. To check the scandalous excesses of the mutineers would demand the stern employment of superior force, and this the Provisional Government have been either unable or unwilling to command. Again, the absence of an organised police force and the consequent freedom from penalty in the case of crime have encouraged professional criminals of every type. It is very remarkable that burglary has not been even more common than it has become, for there is no one to arrest the burglar. Private spite has been satisfied under the cloak of political enthusiasm. Splendid mansions have been burnt and looted-sometimes by organised violence, sometimes in the interest of sordid thieves-but there is no redress. Loyal citizens have been hunted from their homes, under the pretext that they are in sympathy with the enemies of Ireland, but really because landless men desire to seize and to occupy land that is not their own. And a campaign for the nonpayment of rent has made rapid progress, so that at the time of writing large numbers of people and many institutions are deprived of all advantage from their estates. The Provisional Government avow themselves unable, for the time, to remedy this desperate situation. It may be so, but certainly such a plea of incapacity will not much longer be accepted as a legitimate excuse for the nonfulfilment of the primary duty of every Government, viz. the maintenance of law and order. There is another cause of disturbance-perhaps the most potent of all. Until July 1921, the common enemy of all the armed forces of the Irish Republic was Great Britain; but it seems now to be Ulster, which stands aloof from the rest of Ireland, and is endeavouring to build up a separate state in accordance with the powers guaranteed to her by the Act of 1920. This partition of Ireland is abhorrent to all national sentiment; but that is not the sole or the main reason for the bloodshed on the Ulster border. The reason for that is to be found in the passions excited by the dreadful spectacle which Belfast presents. It is, in simple truth, a 'City of Destruction,' and the murders which have defiled its streets for many weeks past are all the more terrible, because the evidence as to their cause and their perpetrators is so much confused by party prejudice that it is exceedingly difficult to ascertain the actual facts. The Orangeman's explanation of the troubles in Belfast is quite coherent. He alleges that during the war large numbers of Sinn Fein artisans came into the shipyards and factories, taking the places of Ulstermen who had enlisted for war service; that these men (who were mostly Roman Catholics from other parts of Ireland) were very aggressive and insolent in their demeanour, openly avowing their disloyalty and threatening peaceable citizens with firearms; that after the war was over and ex-soldiers came back to work they found the situation intolerable; that the Orange workmen declined to work side by side with rebels; that they insisted on Sinn Feiners disavowing republicanism if they were to earn wages in the great shipyards which had an imperial outlook; and that finally a large number of Sinn Feiners were dismissed from the yards, not because of their religion, but because their disloyalty was such that the Ulster artisans would not work or associate with them. The Orangeman alleges, further, that since July 1921, 'gunmen' have been sent into Belfast from the South of Ireland in order to provoke disturbance and make the task of the Northern Government impossible. It was they who murdered policemen and magistrates and (as lately as May 22) a member of Parliament in the streets of Belfast; and it is urged that the violent reprisals of which Orangemen have been guilty are not surprising, when the provocation which they received is considered. The story is differently told in the South. There, it is said, the beginning of the trouble was the expulsion in 1920 from the Belfast yards of 8000 Roman Catholic working men, by the bigotry of Orange fanatics whose religion is measured by their hatred of Papists. These people and their families have been obliged to fly from the North, and they are called in Dublin 'the Belfast refugees,' for whose support it is a sacred duty to provide. It was to give them shelter that the Masonic Hall and the Orange Hall and the Kildare Street Club and other public buildings in Dublin were seized. It is to avenge their hardships and sufferings on Ulstermen that the warfare on the Ulster border is being waged with such fury, and that the great factories in Belfast and great mansions in the counties of Antrim and Down are being burnt to the ground. And it is, avowedly, because of the persecution of Roman Catholics in Belfast that Protestant loyalists are being harried in many parts of Ireland outside Ulster, as the subjoined document will show. It is a copy of an original letter addressed to an Irish lady in a country district. DEAR MADAM, Brigade, Division, April 1922. I am authorised to take over your house and all property contained, your lands and all contained thereon, and you are hereby given notice to hand over to me within one hour from receipt of this notice above lands and property. The following are reasons for this action: 1. The campaign of murder in Belfast is financed by the British Government. 2. As a reprisal for the murder of innocent men, women, and children in Belfast. 3. You by supporting the Union between England and Ireland are in sympathy with the Belfast murders. 4. In order to support and maintain refugees from Belfast. Signed, At the foot of the letter is the receipt for the property, which was duly handed over, 'signed on behalf of the Competent Military Authority' of the Republican Army. Seizures of this kind have been made all over Ireland, and it is to be observed that it is the Belfast situation which is put forward as the pretext. It is obvious that neither the Orange account nor the Sinn Fein account of the Belfast murders can be accepted as an impartial statement. Both sides are, undoubtedly, to blame, and it is quite idle to ask which side began the fighting. The number of Roman Catholics who have been murdered in the Northern capital during May and June is in excess of the numbers of murdered Protestants; but the numbers are so large on both sides that blood-guiltiness rests on Sinn Feiner and Orangeman alike. It is natural to ask why the Northern Government, with a fully organised executive and with undivided counsels, have not brought the assassins on both sides to justice long since; and the question is not easy to answer. The probability is that Sir James Craig is as little able to control the extremists among his Orange followers as Mr Collins to control his mutineers. It is impossible to believe (and absurd to suggest, as the Republican journals do) that the Northern Government encourage violence among their followers, although they may be too lax or too lenient in their methods of preventing or punishing violence. In a statement published on June 24 Mr de Valera had the hardihood to say: 'I know that women have been outraged, men and women have been murdered, whole families have been wiped out, and I share the common belief that a cynical Imperialism has instigated these outrages and provided the means for carrying them through.' This is very wicked nonsense. In like manner, we find it hard to believe that Mr Collins is directly responsible for the outrages of Roman Catholic assassins and incendiaries in the North of Ireland, although we think he has been very ill-advised in refraining from public denunciation of these outrages. His attitude towards the armed forces on the Free State side of the Ulster border has been curiously inconsistent, as he at one moment disavows responsibility for their acts, and at another complains that the British Government have sent troops against them. But there can be no doubt that the |