TOPICS OF THE DAY.
tHE IRISH IMBROGLIO. THOUGH the text of the Government's offer to Sinn Fein, the Sinn Fein answer, Mr. Lloyd George's comments on the Sinn Fein reply, and the statement of Sir James Craig as to the position of the Northern Par- liament and Government have been published during the week, the situation remains doubtful. The Government's gamble, for such it is, upon there being a moderate party behind the Sinn Feiners to whom they can appeal, and who in the end will control the situation, is undecided as we write, and probably will be still undecided when these pages reach our readers' hands. Once more, then, it behoves us to say nothing which will spoil the Govern- ment game. Even though we regard their hand as being very badly played, it is our duty, in the situation in which the country finds itself, to strengthen and support those who legally, if not actually, represent the nation.
Before, however, we make suggestions which if accepted would, we believe, help the Government, we must say something in criticism of the terms offered by them. Our criticism is that they fall between two stools. They either go too far or else not far enough. If there is anything that is certain, it is that when you are dealing with persons who hate you, or (since we will not beg the question even in the slightest degree) who think they hate you and say they hate you, or at any rate believe that they have suffered great wrong at your hands and are justified in treating you as their enemies, it is useless, while refusing certain demands, to grant others which involve the power to extort further concessions. It is useless to say that you will place a rifle and a packet of gunpowder and all the plant for making cartridges in a man's hands, and then to rely upon an understanding that he will never manufacture cartridges, when he only pressed for the rifle and powder and other material in order to be able to use his rifle. The attempt to do and not do at the same time failed hopelessly in the case of Grattan's Parliament. We granted a free Parliament to Ireland under certain restrictions, but we soon found that they were restrictions which we could not enforce in view of the powers we had surrendered. The result was that the restrictions were soon thrown overboard.
Granted the Government's decision to abandon the Union and to give self-determination to the hostile population of Southern Ireland, it is useless to insist on restrictions such as those which appear in the terms. They are restrictions which are not maintainable under a system of parliamentary self-government. To take another example, there were certain restrictions placed in the Acts giving self-govern- ment to the Dominions, but we all know that these restrictions would be untenable should the Dominions resent them. They are only maintained because they are quite as much approved by the majority of the people in the Dominions as they are by the majority of the people in the United Kingdom. If they once became the objects of detestation to a majority in the Dominions, they would snap like pack-thread. Therefore, once more, it is of no use to deny things to Ireland with one breath and with the next breath to give her the power to extort those things as soon as ever her Parliament is set up. For example, the limitation placed on the Irish Territorial Army is one which could never be enforced. If not directly, then indirectly and through a system of volunteering and Voluntary Reserves and so forth, the whole Irish popula- tion could be given a military training in opposition to Condition 2.
Take, again, the condition that no protective duties shall be placed by the Irish Government on trade and commerce between any parts of the British Isles. There will be plenty of nimble-witted people in the Southern Irish Parliament, if it is ever established, who will be able to drive a coach-and-six through such restriction'. Again, speaking generally, what is the use of set#4ng up a written constitution of the kind which will be created if " six conditions are declared to be vital," unless we set up at the same time something in the nature of a Supreme Court—a body which can decide whether the vital conditions have or have not been violated Further. this Supreme Court must have an armed force which it can call upon to carry out its decisions. Remember that every political instrument or constitution is capable of more than one and often of more than a dozen inter- pretations. Therefore such instruments are useless unless there is some power capable of deciding in detail which interpretation is the correct one. We suppose that the answer of the Government to this objection would be : " The supreme authority of which you speak will be, as in the case of the Dominions, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council." But if that is so, it is certainly advisable that this point should be made quite clear to the Irish people before we proceed to legislation. We must be certain that they accept this Tribunal as the Arbitrator in all constitutional disputes. In view of the destructive nature of our criticism, we shall no doubt be asked what we propose to do. Do we really propose to accept the old skin game of murder and reprisals once more ? Do we not think that that is worse than any conceivable plan that can be proposed ? Those are the considerations with which we shall be asked to deal.
The best way to answer these questions is to state specifically what we hold had best be done in the deplorable circumstances which must not be said to have arisen in Ireland, but which have been produced by the feeble, futile, and fantastic action of the Unionist Government ever since the end of the war—or perhaps we ought to say ever since the fatal mistake of not applying con- scription to Ireland in the year 1918. The first thin& we should do would be to say to the Sinn Feiners : " We•are not going to make anything in the nature of a treaty with you because we do not want to have a perpetual source of trouble and worry, assertions that we are not acting fairly towards you, and attempts to appeal to foreign Powers as interpreters of our treaty. Therefore what we propose to do is to lay down certain terms. If you accept them, you will find things made more easy for you. If you do not accept them, they will, nevertheless, be made to prevail in Southern Ireland under conditions which will be, as you will find, not merely unfavourable but probably disagreeable. We propose after a certain date to withdraw from the area of the Twenty-Six Counties, hereinafter to be called by us Southern Ireland, all the troops and all the police at present in our employment, and all our judges and magistrates, civil servants and other officials, except such officials and members of the police force as desire to remain in Southern Ireland, or else are considered by their superior officers to have forfeited their right of option by their behaviour during recent years. We will protect our true friends, but not our secret foes. Further, we will give a right of option to any landlord, householder, or man of business who bona fide desires to leave Southern Ireland, and who has reason to suppose that he will not receive fair treatment on the withdrawal of the forces of the United Kingdom. Persons who exercise their option of withdrawal will be paid by the Southern Irish Government full compensation for the loss and cost of such withdrawal. They shall be paid in bonds issued by the Irish Government at 7 per cent. interest, and shall have the guarantee of the British Government in case of failure by the Irish Government to pay the interest due on the said bonds. These bonds should not be permanent, but terminable annuities, and should run for sixty-five years. Southern Ireland, after its evacuation by the British troops and the withdrawal of the loyal officials and of persons exercising the option, shall be free to establish any form of government it likes. It would, of course, be free also to levy any taxation it liked.
The Six County Area, possibly with some adjustments of boundaries, would remain part of the United Kingdom as under the present Act. Certain strategic points along the coast of Ireland, wherever possible islands or peninsulas which could be easily fortified and protected from attacks by land, should be occupied by the British Admiralty. The territorial waters of Ireland should not be evacuated, but should be retained by the Imperial Government as part of their domain. Free access would, of course, be given to the commercial vessels of the Southern Irish Commonwealth, Republic, or whatever name should be adopted, and to the ships of other nations through the waters aforesaid. The Southern Irish Government would not be allowed to raise any naval force, and the policing of the waters surrounding her coasts would be in the hands of the British Government. That Government would undertake to prevent any foreign aggression by way of the sea upon the Southern community of Ireland. The question of the political relations, if any, between the Government of Southern Ireland and the British Govern- ment should be arranged after the evacuation had taken place, as also should the political relations, if any, between Northern and Southern Ireland.
It will be said that our proposal is open to exactly the criticisms which we made at the beginning of this article, and that the Southern Irish Commonwealth, Republic, or whatever the name may be, would very soon refuse to observe the terms agreed upon, or rather forced upon her by us. We should, it would be alleged, have no means of obliging her to respect the new arrangements. Those who argue thus have forgotten one thing—the fact that Ireland's sole market is in England. We should have complete power to enforce our terms and to make Ireland pay the interest of the bonds given to the evacuated persons, who, by the way, in order to prove their bona fides, should not be allowed to reside in Southern Ireland. If the Southern Irish were in default in the interest on the bonds, we should not, of course, attempt to enter Southern Ireland and enforce our claim. What we should do would be to put on all goods coming into England from Ireland a duty sufficient to raise enough money to pay the interest on the bonds. If that did not prove enough in practice, we might levy, in addition, an export duty upon the manufactured and other articles, such as coal, going from England and Scotland into Ireland. If that did not suffice, and Ireland still continued recalcitrant, we should have to pass a non-intercourse Act as punishment due to the wilfully insolvent, and cut our loss. But we venture to say that we should have no need to have recourse to such drastic measures. Southern Ireland could not, as she knows very well, live without us, though we could live very well indeed without her. If the Southern Irish reflect a little, they will remember that Denmark and France and Spain and the United States are none of them likely to lift their tariffs in order to let in Irish cheese, bacon, horses, and other products.
Suppose it is said that the Southern Irish, knowing this, but still being determined to be as recalcitrant as possible, would refuse any arrangement whatever. In that case, what we could not manage to do co-operatively we should do on our own initiative. We should evacuate Southern Ireland, ourselves issuing bonds to the persons entitled to compensation as above. We should pay the interest on the said evacuation bonds, to judges, officials, landowners, and, in fact, the whole Protestant community of the South, by levying on Irish products entering our ports a duty sufficient to raise the sum required. We should probably hold more vulnerable points on the shore under a scheme without arrangement, but that would be all. It would probably also for a time be necessary to have a line of military posts along the Six County frontier. We should then see what Ireland would make of the complete self-govern- ment and independence which would be given to her. As long as she committed no outrage, we should do nothing to injure her whatever. We should merely do what America does, and, indeed, what many of our own Colonies do to us—that is, collect a duty on her produce of, say, 30 per cent. ad valorem. Our consumers would no doubt suffer a little at first, but we could get all that we now get from Southern Ireland from Canada, America, Denmark, Norway and Sweden, Belgium, Holland, and France, and, of course, from Northern Ireland. Brittany butter is, after all, some of the best in the world, and the best Danish is as good as the best Irish bacon. If the Southern Irish did well in spite of their recalcitrance, there would be nobody who would be more pleased than we should be. Whenever the Southern Irish paid the Evacuation Bonds themselves, the Customs duties might be lifted. We have only one more point to note _in the Sinn Fein terms. All the talk about non-partition and the accom- panying profession of a desire to deal amicably with the North is moonshine. It simply amounts to this. The North of Ireland, or Six County Area, is to be an area in which the right of self-determination may be denied by the Ship Feiners, while Southern Ireland is to be s.. an area in which it must be granted by the people of the United Kingdom. Was there ever a proposition so preposterously impertinent ? The Southern Irish are apparently willing to break off negotiations and go back to a policy of unrestricted murder rather than admit that the majority in the Six County Area is to have a right to decide its own fate. Remember, it is not a question of whether the Southern Irish would treat the Northern Irish charmingly as they say, or badly as the people of the North say, but of abstract right. The South claims the right to demand self-determination for itself and to deny it to the North ! That has always been the Spectator s analysis of the situation, but we hardly expected to see it put out so glaringly before the whole world as it has been in the Sinn Fein negotiations with Mr. Lloyd George.
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