The following considerations must be a postscript to this description
of my visit. We are told that the Belfast men are to be upbraided for having formed the Volunteers and so set a bad example to their neighbours. But can anybody show a single case in which the Belfast Volunteers have murdered any man by day or night ? No Ulster man has used arms, except against our German enemies, or recently to assist the Forces of the Crown in maintaining order. But though Belfast has hitherto been patient almost beyond belief, the strain may become intolerable.
A fact amusing in itself, but none the less significant, shows how much the temper of Belfast is being tried. The legitimate rates are very high in Belfast as in the rest of the world, but in addition to that Belfast is paying very heavy compensation charges to persons injured in the rioting, which rioting, I may say in parenthesis, is believed in Northern Ireland to be deliberately fomented by the Sinn Feiners in order to put Ulster in the wrong and, if possible, to goad her into some violent act of reprisal that might be represented as a Protestant massacre. It must not be supposed that the people who get compensation for injury are all Protestants. Compensation is claimed and is given to both sides in cases of injury which can be shown to have been received in the course of public riot. It is alleged that a Sinn Fein bombing-instructor lately put in a claim for compensation owing to injuries caused, it is whispered, in the course of his professional duties ! Whether this is true or not I do not presume to say, but, at any rate, it is illustrative of the kind of thing that goes on.
And now I see that I have said nothing about the Northern Parliament, which neither Belfast nor the Six County Area desired for themselves, but which they took from the United Kingdom because they did not want to make it impossible for the Government at Westminster to carry out the policy of Home Rule which, rightly or wrongly, the Cabinet had decided to adopt. Northern Ireland said in effect : " If you are resolved upon applying the principle of self-determination, we shall not attempt to impose any veto upon the proposal provided you apply it fairly. Though we should rather remain in the Union, if you tell us it is our duty to be self-deter- mined we bow to your wish." In this spirit Belfast accepted the Home Rule Act which has now been applied to her. In this spirit it is being worked. I saw the Northern House of Commons in Session, and also the Northern Senate, and I can only say that more businesslike, more dignified, more responsible public bodies I have never seen. There was no nonsense and no play-acting about them, and I am glad to say there was the nucleus of a healthy opposition, and of an opposition at the very point where Parliament opposition should always be strong—that is, on the point of finance. A Parliament in the last resort is a taxing, spending, and waste-inhibiting body, and there- fore what it requires as an essential is the compensating balance of a Parliamentary opposition. Those who heard, as I did, Mr. Lynn and Mr. Coote at work will realize that they have got it in the Parliament of North Ireland. Again, those who heard Mr. Barbour's suave and masterly answers to their penetrating, and therefore necessarily disagreeable and disturbing, interrogations will understand that Sir James Craig's Government is already learning that Par- liamentary opposition is part of the machinery of democratic self-government, and that to be stretched upon the question rack is a duty which Ministers must welcome, not resent.
And so good fortune to Belfast and the North. They have saved themselves by their own exertions. They will save the rest of the Empire by their example. J. ST. LOE STRACHEY.
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