IF REASON RULED.
WE proved so successful in our last week's diagnosis of the attitude of Sir James Craig and the people of North Ulster that we are encouraged to make an attempt in regard to Mr. De Valera and Mr. Lloyd George. Very likely we shall make a failure, but at any rate we may clear our own thoughts, and wo hope also those of our readers, if we put down what we hold each leader ought to say, and would say if reason ruled. Speaking dramatically and entirely from his own premises, Mr. De Valera should say to the people of Ireland in general, and to the people of Northern Ireland in particu- lar, something of this kind : " Sir James Craig and his colleagues have told us that they make no claim to veto the right of self-determination for all Ireland outside the Six County Area, the area which they represent. We tell them at once that neither do we make any claim to veto their right of self-determination. We would rather that the official and legal recognition of such a right had come from ourselves, and we feel confident that some day the people of Northern Ireland will bitterly regret that they took their right of self-determination from a British and not from an Irish Parliament. When they want to be admitted to our Parliament, as assuredly they will, they may find the terms far harder than they would have been if they had chosen the other path. The loss, however, is not ours but theirs. We shall make their action no obstacle to a settlement. For us, indeed, it is an opportunity for clearing the air and putting our exact position before the world. We hold that the action of the Northern Irish for the past hundred years and more has shown them not to be true Irishmen. As they stand at present they are aliens to our race, and to the culture and the faith of the Greater Ireland. To be frank, they are not true Irishmen, but imitation Englishmen and Scotsmen. Therefore we much prefer their absence to their presence in an -Irish Parliament. We have a nation to make, or rather to re-make, and for this noble and, as we believe, God-given purpose we realize the advantage, nay the necessity, fos acting through a homogeneous people. Such guests as these can be no partakers in our freedom's feast. Their action shows that they scorn what we esteem—man's happiest lot, his highest calling. They would devitalize us with their practicalness, their sneers at our idealism, their inability to look beyond a profit and a balance-sheet. Their blank indifference to our living idealism would bewilder us, would destroy us, would eliminate that sym- pathy which must exist among those who join in any work worthy of the highest human endeavour. They mistake the situation if they think we want them and their super. cilious help at the crisis of our faith. We do not. Some day, when they see what we have made of Ireland, and what they have made of Northern Ireland by their squalid industrialism, and when the Celtic and Catholic element in their midst have begun to leaven the mass of Saxon materialism, the people of the Six County Area will knock in contrition at the doors of the Dublin Parliament and humbly and in penitence ask for admittance. Till this day comes we are content, and more than content, to have nothing but formal and business relations with the Six County Area."
All that from our point of view is, of course, unsound and untrue. We must no more be held to approve its substance than the dramatist must be supposed to share the views of his characters. We are merely putting the Sinn Fein case as regards Ulster as we hold a wise leader would put it. If Mr. De Valera were to make a pronouncement on those lines, he would greatly enhance his reputation as a statesman. He would show the world that he fully realized that a predominant fact cannot be talked out of existence, or even imagined out of existence. But he would have done a great deal more than this. Such a speech as that which we have sketched would be the best posaible assurance that Northern Ireland could possibly obtain that no attempt would be made to coerce her, and that, therefore, she need not be disturbed about the future. She would feel she need not be anxious or suspicious, or entertain what we may term an intensive particularism. The reality and malignity of the menace felt by the Six County Area have always been Supported by the unpleasantly significant fact that nobody in the South has ever made such a speech as that we have put into the mouth of Mr. Dc Valera—a speech clearly to the interests of the Southern Irish if it could be made with sincerity. That it has as yet not been made is in Northern Ireland regarded as proof that the South means to try to force all Ulster under its domination. We have tried to state what Mr. De Valera would say if reason ruled his mind, or—as quite possibly it would be more fair to say—if reason ruled the minds of those whose views he must consider before he can consult his own wishes. Let us now try our hand at what should be said by Mr. Lloyd George. In our opinion, having been left absolutely untrammelled as regards Northern Ireland, Mr. Lloyd George should not attempt bargaining negotia- tions, but should at once, and of his own motion and not under any pressure or semi-coercion by the Sinn Feiners give them the very widest and most advanced terms that can possibly be given. In the matter of Southern Ireland, we ought not to wrangle over this or that form of Dominion status, but give at once the very maximum we can give, consistent with two things—the safety and security of these Islands and so of the British Empire, and the pro- tection and security of the loyalists and Protestants in the South. These must be protected not merely against being shot in the streets or having their houses burnt over their heads, but must be given a choice either of staying in South Ireland or of remaining full British subjects in Northern Ireland or in Scotland or England. If they elect for such a change of domicile, they must be accorded not a miserable dole like the Ameri- can United Empire Loyalists, but the fullest pecuniary compensation for their loss and disturbance. As our readers know, we have for many months past urged this policy- i.e., the maximum rather than the minimum solution— and have, subject to our two provisions, expressed our willingness that the South of Ireland should be left literally to its own devioes. Clearly Cuban terms of this kind would prevent the presence of Sinn Fein members at Westminster, but neither they nor we should object to that. Again, the effect of such Cuban terms makes it necessary to have a different set of fiscal arrangements for Southern Ireland which, in our opinion, had much better receive control of the customs. We are not frightened at the thought of these fiscal arrangements, which, of course, would include payments from Ireland in respect of the National Debt, Land Purchase, and the compensation due to the migrating loyalists and the superannuated judges, police and officials, landlords, business and professional men, whether Protestants or Roman Catholics. Such just payments would be made perfectly secure by the knowledge in Ireland that repudiation would mean a non- intercourse act. If we once get out of Ireland we shall never return—never attempt to use physical force. The use of a system of non-intercourse or heavy customs dues and embargoes would remain at our disposal. If Ireland would not meet her just engagements, we could meet them for her by special taxes on Irish produce earmarked for this purpose.
Needless to say, we ase not looking forward to anything which would be so injurious to Ireland and so regrettable and unpleasant to ourselves. Still, we may feel glad that the people of Ireland, demoralized as they have been by our policy of systematic surrender, can be made to realize that when they are independent we shall have, economically, the whip-hand. No doubt we shall make, as we always do, a bad financial bargain, but at any rate it is not likely to be so bad as that which exists at present, and we shall clearly be able to enforce its provisions. We are glad to see that in this matter we have the backing of the Duke of NorthUmberland, who, again, is supported by a leading article in the Morning Post of Tuesday. The Duke and the Morning Post do not; in the abstract, like the idea of independence in the South any more than we do. Nevertheless; -they have come to think, as we have felt, that the Government have contrived to let things get into such a desperate mess and have used so foolishly and so half-heartedly the powers which they originally possessed for putting down the Irish insurrection, that the best way out now is the scheme we have proposed. The guiding thought in this matter is that we should remember that, if we give to Ireland the power to enforce claims which she really has at heart, we had better satisfy these claims at once. We are certain to have to yield to them later. This was proved in the case of Grattan's Parliament, and must indeed always be the case. Take, for example, the name " Republic," which, after all, is only Latin for " Commonwealth." By giving to a hostile people a Parliament on Dominion lines, we are in fact giving them power to call themselves what they will. If an Irish Parliament took to calling itself something or other in Erse which meant " Republic," and were also to flourish the Latin translation of it in our faces, does anyone really suppose that we should go to war to prevent it ? We should not fight over a word. Therefore we may as well give the word up at once. We have written frankly—some people, we fear, will think cynically, but that is not in the least our intention. 'We believe most earnestly that there is still a real possi- bility of peace, if only we arc sincere and try to build on a foundation not of paradox but of honest reality. Northern Ireland has set us a good example both in sincerity and in good temper. If we follow her here, and if the Sinn Feiners will do the same, it should be impossible to prevent a settle- ment. Even the most anti-British of Ultramontanes could hardly prevent it, though we admit that •is still the essential danger point. The Pope's influence, which, though it is very small over the higher Irish ecclesi- astics, still counts to some extent among the Irish people, will, we may feel sure, be cast on the side of a peaceful settlement.
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