TOPICS OF THE DAY.
EXCLUSION HOLDS THE FIELD.
EXCLUSION holds the field, and, unless all the omens prove false, will win. No doubt Mr. Asquith has not yet said that he means to adopt Exclusion, but anyone who will take the trouble to read his speech carefully, and to get ea rapport with the mind behind it, will, we venture to say, recognize what is the true situation, and what is bound to be the course of events unless some untoward incident intervenes. Let us give our reasons for believing this. Remember, in the first place, that Mr. Asquith has never said that he must exclude the Exclusion of Ulster from the possibilities of settlement. He has said almost everything else in depreciation of Exclusion, but never that. He has declared that the door appears to be banged and bolted, that it probably ought to be banged and bolted, that the Unionists have banged and bolted it, that the difficulties of not banging and bolting it are well-nigh insuperable, but ou no occasion has he said that he himself has bolted the door, and that it is therefore useless to talk about the proposal any more. On the contrary, by anyone who looks closely it will be seen that be has, in spite of all his rhetoric, been most careful to keep the way of retreat by Exclusion always open behind him, knowing, of course, like the political commander of genius that he is, that it is essential for him to have a line of retreat, and that, though he may not like it, Exclusion is likely to prove the only practicable line. Mr. Bona Law in his wholly admirable speech in the debate showed that he had arrived at exactly the same conclusion that we have. He pointed out that Mr. Asquith, by shutting all the other available doors, had made it necessary for himself to use the door of Exclusion.
But if that be so, it will be asked, why did not Mr. .Asquith say at once and say boldly that he means to solve the crisis by Exclusion ? There are many reasons. The first is temperamental. Nobody who has watched Mr. Asquith's career can have failed to see that though in private he may look ahead, and perhaps does look ahead, quite as much as or more than other statesmen, he will never speak ahead or in any way commit himself beyond the situation of the moment. He will never act before it is necessary to act. He just catches his train, but nothing will induce him to be ten minutes too early at the station. Even when, humanly speaking, there seems no possibility of making a different choice, he is true to the policy of "wait and see." He acts when he must, but not before. He is not compelled to give his decision as to Exclusion for another six weeks, and see may therefore he certain that he will not give it earlier. Another and very practical reason is that he has got to finish his finance before Easter. This is a piece of neces- sary work if the Ministry are to remain in office, as Mr. Asquith intends that they shall remain. If he were to announce his momentous decision before he had got his votes, it might have an effect upon his majority which would have disagreeable and embarrassing results. He means, therefore, to do nothing which may have a dis- integrating effect upon that majority till the financial work has been got through. Probably another reason is that be wants a plan which is unpopular with a considerable section of his party to have the crude edges taken off by the process of waiting, discussion, and uncertainty. Familiarity breeds contempt, but it also breeds a kind of weary tolerance. For example, if Mr. Asquith bad prematurely announced exactly what he meant to do in order to get rid of his suffrage difficulties, he would not have got rid of them in the successful way in which he did. Finally, he probably thinks that he is bound in honour to his Irish supporters to exhaust first every con- ceivable scheme for including Ulster compatible with his major premise that civil war must be avoided. Before, then, he announces a decision which is likely to cause so much heat amongst the Nationalists, it is possible we may witness some wonderful turns and dodges and offers of most ingenious schemes for satisfying Ulster opinion. When, however, it has been shown, as it certainly will, that the Ulster people will not accept any substitutes for the one thing which will end their armed resistance—will not be put off by the artful shopman who offers goods "equally as good as what you are asking for, Sir" (at heart, of course, Mr. Asquith knows they will not be put off with substitutes)—be will grant Exclusion. Ho will first show the Nationalists that he has done every- thing in his power for them, and then sadly call on them to yield to the inevitable.
The Nationalists, we shall be told, are clever enough to see this, and will tell him plainly that he must not and shall not exclude Ulster, and that anything is preferable to that. Very likely. Those who argue thus forget, however, that Mr. Asquith, though of course he would never put it so brutally, now has the Nationalists completely in his power. What gives him that power is the impossibility from hie and also their point of view of dissolving. Up till Monday they might have said to him : " We would rather take the risk even of a Dissolution than accept Exclusion."—A Dissolution before the Session had begun would not have thrown away all the work of the last two years.—Now they cannot say that, for a Dissolution would throw it away. The spring in the Parliament Act has been released and the Nationalists are caught. The opening of the Session has for Liberals and Nationalists closed the "appeal- to-the-people" door, and Las left, as we have said, only ono door open—assuming, of course, that civil war is left out of account as a way out. The Nationalists, then, will have to decide whether to accept Exclusion ox to drive Mr. Asquith to resignation or dissolution, which are practically the same things, as they both involve the ruin of Home Rule. It is, we admit, for them a cruel dilemma, but they cannot reasonably declare that they have been " jockeyed," or, at any rate, "jockeyed" by Mr. Asquith. They can only in fairness blame "the inevitable," or "the force of circumstances," or " fate," or whatever yon like to call it, but not the Prime Minister. It is not he who is responsible for Ulster's refusal to be included, or for the determination of all sides not to have civil war. Besides; even if they did not see this, but in their soreness declared that they had been " jockeyed," they would not make the situation better. Nicking it with an ugly name is no remedy. In the last resort, like many people before them, they will have to consider whether three- quarters of a loaf is or is not better than no bread. No doubt Mr. Devlin will not think it is, but it is possible that there may be some consolation to Mr. Redmond in the tragic disappointment to Mr. Devlin. • Remember that Mr. Devlin's special objections to Exclusion are personal. His great strength lies in the Roman Catholic minority in the North of Ireland. If Ulster is excluded, Mr. Devlin loses for Parliamentary purposes a great part of his strength. In a Parliament drawn only from the South and West he would shrink from the very big man he now is in the Nationalist Party to a much smaller, if not an insignificant, figure. The Exclusion of Ulster would, we will not say exclude Mr. Devlin, but would put him in a very different place from that which he now occupies. That naturally makes Mr. Devlin a passionate Anti-Exclusionist. But perhaps we do the Irish leaders wrong in thus considering them as rivals. In any case, they will have to bow, like other people, to the inevitable. They must make their choice and decide which is the lesser evil—Exclusion or no Home Rule. Unques- tionably the fact that from their point of view there can now be no Dissolution puts them in a very tight place.
Though ever since the introduction of the Home Rule Bill we have declared that if the Bill were persisted in it must come to Exclusion or civil war, and that, since civil war is an impossible alternative, Exclusion must win in the end, we have never varied from the position that Exclusion is not good but bad in itself ; that it is, in fact, quite properly described as a pis alder. But a pis alter may often be inevitable. Granted the premissee—there must not be civil war, there must be Home Rule—every road will be found to end in Exclusion. You cannot get away from it, do what you will. At every turn and twist of the maze you ultimately find Exclusion grinning at you at the end of the alley. A curious and very interesting proof of this is to be found in a brilliant little pamphlet, What Federalism is Not, just published by Mr. Frederick S. Oliver (John Murray, 6(1.). Mr. Oliver, as our readers know, is the ablest exponent of the Federal solu- tion. He believes not in Home Rule for Ireland as an opportunist policy, but in Federalism per as as proving a panacea for all the ills of the Constitution, great and
small. He desires Federalism not, like so many Liberal Federalists, as a crutch to help him out of his difficulties, but for itself, and on its abstract merits. That being the case, it is only natural that he should dislike Exclusion. In itself it can say nothing to him any more than it can to us.
Yet, curiously enough, after a hundred and more pages of admirable dialectic, the greater part of which tends to show the badness of Exclusion, he comes to exactly the same conclusion as our own—that at the moment Exclusion is inevitable. All his roads also in the end lead to Exclusion. It is true that the Exclusion of Ulster must from his point of view be only temporary, but with this proviso Exclusion becomes for him a necessary way of reaching his goal. The temporary Exclusion of Ulster is for him a kind of carrot by which the British donkey is to be induced to let himself be harnessed to the Federal coach. Until he can get his Federal system ready, " until the whole of the contemplated constitutional change is carried through, it is surely only just and reasonable that Ulster should be allowed to remain outside. if such is the wish of her people. In this form and to this extent the policy of Ulster exclusion is sound and practicable." To many ardent minds, he tells us, the delay would cause disappointment, but "if they will look the grim alter- native steadily in the face they will hardly hesitate to choose the lesser of the two evils." For ourselves, we can heartily join hands with Mr. Oliver in his practical object. We, like him, do not want Exclusion for itself, but in order to save us from worse things. This is, in truth, why Exclusion will win. Every day more and more people of various views and various temperaments are coming to see that in the present circumstances it alone will save the nation from disaster. We would, of course, far rather have the Union as it stands. Again, we would far rather have had a Referendum. But we are not going to cry for the moon. Mr. Asquith's stony silence on that point (i.e., the Referendum) is significant beyond words. When it was urged upon him that though from his point of view a General Election might be impossible, he could still cut the knot by referring the Bill to the people, he made it clear that the Liberals would endure any- thing rather than face the dread arbitrament of the people's will.
Once again, Exclusion holds the field and will win. In all the circumstances it is the plan which divides the nation least. It is the only expedient upon which all who want to avoid civil war—and every section of the nation wants that--can find agreement.
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