TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE IRISH CRISIS.
THERE can be little doubt that the three Cabinet Councils held this week were concerned with the Irish question and the possibility of avoiding civil war by the exclusion of that portion of Ulster in which the majority refuse to be placed under a Dublin Parliament and desire to remain under the Parliament at Westminster. As we write, no authentic information has been published as to the decision come to by the Government. Neverthe- less, we may feel tolerably certain as to one or two points. To begin with, it is clear that the Government have not adopted the position taken up by Mr. Redmond in his speech last Saturday, the position that Ireland is one and indivisible, and that he and his supporters will not allow one inch of the soil of Ulster to be excluded from the rule of a Dublin Parliament. If the Government had come to this decision, it is obvious that they would have announced it at once, and thus saved themselves from the difficulties that must come in battalions from first encouraging and then disappointing the large amount of moderate Liberal opinion which is anxious to avoid the coercion of Ulster by force of arms. But even if the fact that no such announce- ment has been made did not give an assurance that Mr. Redmond is not to be allowed to say that civil war is to take place, there is even better ground for such assurance in Mr. Winston Churchill's speech. It is incredible that a Cabinet Minister of Mr. Churchill's ability could have made his direct offer for the exclusion of North-East Ulster without knowing that he could carry the Cabinet with him. The fact that he spoke of no representatives of North-East Ulster being present in the Dublin Parliament makes it certain that he had absolute exclusion in his mind and not merely a scheme of so-called special safeguards. The only alternative is to assume that he was trying to force the bands of his col- leagues. That, however, would mean that he would have to resign if the proposals which he allowed the correspondent of the Daily Mall to say were the views not merely of himself, but of the Government, were rejected. But Mr. Churchill's speech and the deductions drawn from it have held the field too long without official contradiction to make the theory that he spoke without warrant tenable.
The next point to remember in attempting to realize the exact position is this. For good or ill the Government could not now withdraw the offer for the exclusion of North-East Ulster without the situation becoming very much worse than it was before that offer was made. The Government have always dreaded—they would have been utterly inhuman if they had not dreaded it—the outbreak of civil war in Ulster. However much convinced they may be as Home Rulers that Ulster will not be injured and that Ulster ought to fall into line with the rest of Ireland and so forth, the last thing they want to provoke is civil war. If for no other reason it would stamp their Irish policy as a failure. But if unhappily they cannot in the end avoid civil war, we may feel sure that they desire at any rate to limit it as much as possible and to give the least pos- sible excuse to the moderate section of Ulster Protestants for supporting it. Above all, they want to give no excuse to the Unionist Party here to encourage the men of the Covenant in resistance. But the excuse for civil war would clearly not be less, but very much greater, if the chance of avoiding it had been first dangled before the eyes of the people of Ulster and then withdrawn—with- drawn, too, because, as everyone would believe, the way of peace had been vetoed by Mr. Redmond and Mr. Devlin.
If war comes now, the moderate and hesitating section of the Ulster Protestants will say to the Cabinet, and say with justice: "You knew how to prevent civil war ; you pointed out how it might be prevented, and then you deliberately provoked it. On your own showing you have sinned against the light." The Unionist Party and moderate public opinion generally in England and Scotland will take a similar line as soon as the blood- shed begins. "You opened the door which would have prevented bloodshed and the appalling horrors which are now upon us, and then you shut it." The Government, we may be sure, are able to see this as well as we can. If they meant after all to choose the policy of "full steam ahead," they would never have been so crazy as to raise false hopes of avoiding civil war by first offering exclusion and then refusing it. They could not deliberately make the difficult path of coercing a hundred thousand drilled and armed men more difficult than it was originally. Unless they meant " exclusion " seriously, they could not have been so rash as to mention the word.
No one who takes the trouble to look at the whole situation coolly and justly will be able to accuse us of making mischief or of provocative action in stating these plain facts. Remember, our statement would be quite as embarrassing to the Unionist leaders if they (which, however, we feel sure is not the case) were trying to make party capital out of the situation, and were not bent on doing all they can to avoid the horrors of civil war. The fact that they did not at once reject the idea of exclusion, or at any rate of any exclusion but that of the whole province of Ulster, but allowed Mr. F. E. Smith to speak as he did of the exclusion of the homogeneous portion of -Ulster, places them in a position similar to that in which the Government have been placed by Mr. Churchill's speech. If after what has passed they were now to go back and to let themselves be con- trolled by their extremists and by the men who cry, "Not an inch of the province of Ulster must be left under a. Dublin Parliament," or were to reject the whole proposal as unworkable and to tell the Government they would take nothing but a general election, their moderate supporters and public opinion generally would, we are certain, visit upon them the consequences of rejecting the policy of exclusion without first having made an honest attempt to secure it. In truth, things have gone too far on both sides for the leaders, whether Liberal or Unionist, to allow the two groups of extremists, whose common formula is "not an inch,' to control the situation. The policy of exclusion. holds the field.
We are still among those who, in the abstract, and if we could have our own way, would very much prefer the Referendum or a general election to any other solution of the problem. We recognize, however, that we cannot have what we want, or, as we are fully prepared to say, what the Government ought to give in fairness and in obedience to the true democratic principle of trusting the people and of letting their will prevail. The Government have got the giant's power and are " basely " determined to "use it like a giant.' Therefore we are faced with the alternatives of exclusion or civil war. We choose exclusion even though it means the disaster of breaking down the Union in a portion of Ireland, and setting up a system of govern- ment and legislation which can only be disastrous to the area to which it is applied. Yet some of our correspondents write as if we were reconciled to the prospect of breaking up the Union ! They are entirely mistaken. All we affirm is that exclusion is better than civil war, and that we are prepared to accept the consequences of such affirmation. Others ask us how under exclusion we are to obtain pro- tection for the Protestant minority in the rest of Ireland. We fully admit the difficulty and the danger, but our answer is conclusive. Exclusion will do far more to protect that minority than will non-exclusion and con- sequent civil war. The moment civil strife begins in Ulster, as it will begin directly the Bill becomes law, the position of the scattered Protestants throughout the south and west of Ireland will be perilous in the extreme. Home Rule with exclusion may he dangerous ; without exclusion it is ruin. Does anyone suppose that the Ancient Order of Hibernians, when beaten in the north, as they will be, will fail to console themselves by reprisals in the south and west ? But against such reprisals the Central Government will be able to do nothing, for their energies will be absorbed in the work of forcing North-East Ulster under the Dublin Parliament. Practically the whole of the Constabulary would be shooting down Pro- testants in Ulster. People who think that exclusion means the desertion of the loyalists of the south have never thought the problem out, and do not realize what is the alternative to exclusion. If that exclusion, when offered by Liberals, were to be refused, the Bill would be certain to become law. Bat, as we have said above, the rejection of the offer of exclusion would very greatly influence public opinion here against the loyalists. " Un- fairly, no doubt, but nevertheless quite certainly, they would assert that the people of Ulster by so unreasonably rejecting exclusion had forfeited their sympathy. Here, then, is yet another ground why the rejection of the policy of exclusion has become almost as dangerous for the Unionists as for the Government.
Another Unionist complaint as to the attitude we have taken up is to be found in the allegation that exclusion is physically impossible and would make nonsense of the Bill. That it could. not make a Bill which is bad through- out into a good. Bill we admit. But it would certainly not make it any worse or any more unworkable than it is now. After all, what exclusion means is a difference of definition as regards the area to which the Bill is applicable. The drafting consequences of the proposed shrinkage of area, as Sir West Ridgeway quite truly points out in Thursday's Times, are not really of a very tremendous character. There are difficulties, no doubt, but they are in essence only the same difficulties that occur in the Bill as a whole. It is harder to draw a land frontier than a sea frontier, but that is all. As the customs duties were in any case to be collected by the Imperial Governments exclusion here is only a matter of account. The one point as regards finance where alteration would be practically, though not theoretically, necessary is in the clause giving the right to the Dublin Parliament to vary the customs duties. If this were done an internal customs line would have to be set up, and. that, we agree, would be impossible. The inclusion of a homogeneous Protestant Ulster in England. would again, as Sir West Ridgeway agrees, offer no administrative difficulties. But in any case we may venture to point out that the raising of these points is not for Unionists. If the Government do not urge that exclusion is impossible, as clearly they do not, or else Mr. Churchill would not have spoken, Unionists cannot bring up these difficulties to defeat the movement to prevent civil war. The detailed carrying out of the policy of exclusion must be left to the Government. We cannot give them an excuse for pro- voking civil war by trying to prove that they have no alternative. If a man levels a blunderbuss at the head. of a friend, and then begins to discuss whether he shall unload. it or discharge it, you do not tell him that it is impossible for him to refrain from his murderous design because if he points it in another direction and. then tries to unload. it, it will go off in his face. If he says he can unload it, he must be allowed to try the experiment.
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