TOPICS OF THE DAY. •
AMERICA AND THE SELF-DETERMINATION OF NORTH-EAST ULSTER. EVERY patriotic man must hope that the Conference arranged between the Prime Minister and leading representatives of the Irish Convention will be fruitful of good, and will lead to that just and reasonable settlement of the Irish Problem which we all so ardently desire. As presumably the regulations made under the Defence of the Realm Act preclude comment on the doings of the Conference, just as they do comment on the debates of the Convention, we shall not deal in detail with this new development. But though we have neither the right nor the wish to write about the Conference or the Convention, except, as we have just said, to express the hope that they will arrive at a just solu- tion, there is one aspect of the matter upon which it is not only allowable but most important to touch. An attempt has recently been made in a section of the English Press to put pressure upon the people of North-East Ulster to make them abandon the position which they have always held, under the threat that if they do not do so they will imperil the alliance with America. We can say without hesitation that in the first place this threat is false. Neither the American Government nor the American people have the slightest intention of deserting at the bidding of Irish-American politicians the great cause to which they are pledged. They did not take up Germany's challenge to Liberty and Civilization lightly, nor will they lightly abandon the conflict. The notion of President Wilson or Congress attempting to dictate the terms upon which we are to modify a British Act of Parliament—i.e., the Act of Union—is unthinkable. They would no more do that than we should attempt to force Congress to pass a new Constitutional amendment. But quite apart from the questions of international comity and of interference among the Allies in regard to their internal affairs, we may be perfectly certain that the American people would never on the merits attempt any such pressure upon Ulster as has been suggested. It happens that the American people are well acquainted, not only with the facts of the particular case, but with the tone and temper of Irish politics and Irish politicians. What is more, they happen to have had in their previous history experiences of a Constitutional situation exactly like that which exists in Ireland, and these experiences make them specially well qualified to judge rightly and justly the position of North-East Ulster.
No doubt the American people are at the present moment not troubling themselves much about Ireland either on the Unionist or the Home Rule side. They are engaged in the biggest and most difficult task ever voluntarily and delibe- rately undertaken by a nation, and nobly are they acquitting themselves in it. They have already got a million men under arms, and they are preparing to raise another million or two millions and to equip them. At the same time, they have got to build ships to convey the men overseas and to keep them there, and, what is more, to build ships to help to ward off famine from Europe. Again, they have to stint themselves in food and coal and other necessaries in order to help the Allies to beat the Germans. Last, but not least, they have to raise mones1 by the thousand million. Still, if the squabbling in Irelay.d, and especially the squabbling to avoid the burden of Conscription, a burden which America has shouldered without a murmur, and further the Nationalist desire to secure the ascendancy of the Roman Church in all Ireland, is forced upon their attention, they will, we believe, put to themselves and the world one or two plain questions, and will abide by the answers which common-sense and their own history must dictate.
The first qu,mtion they will ask is : " Why, in the name of all that is just, is the principle of self-determination, now of such universal adoption, to apply everywhere in the world except in North-East Ulster ?" Here indeed the answer will come to t hem in the words of one of the greatest statesmen of all time. Wh6n America had to consider the problem whether, if Virginia claimed the right to secede from the Union, West Virginia had not also a claim to secede from Virginia, Lincoln asked his fellow-countrymen the following questions :- " By the way, in what consists the special sacredness of a State ? . . . I speak of that assumed primary right of a State to rule all which is less than itself, and ruin all which is larger than itself. . . On what rightful principle may a State, being not more than one. fiftieth part of the nation in soil and population, break up the nation and . then coerce a proportionally larger subdivision of itself in the most arbitrary way ? What mysterious right to play tyrant is conferred on a district of country, with its people, by merely calling it a Stale ? " These words, so often quoted in the Spectator, fit the Irish Problem of to-day exactly, and no comment on them is necessary. But Lincoln . did not leave the matter here. He dealt with it practically ' as well as dialectically. When at the end of the Civil War the ratification of the action of the counties of Virginia constituting themselves a State of the Union was being discussed, and when many men's minds were frightened by the terrible word " partition;" Lincoln answered them like the wise and far-seeing man he was. He boldly told his countrymen certain home-truths. One of these was that men who have rebelled in arms against their country during a great and terrible crisis do not deserve as much consideration as those who have kept the peace, like the people of North-East Ulster, and stood by the nation as a whole :- " Can this Government stand, if it indulges Constitutional con- structions by which men in open rebellion against it are to be accounted, man for man, the equals of those who maintain their loyalty to it ? Are they to be accounted even better citizens, and more worthy of consideration; than those who merely neglect to vote ? If so, their treason against the Constitution enhances their Constitutional value ! . . . It is said, the devil takes care of his own. Much more should a good spirit—the Spirit of the Con- stitution and the Union—take care of his own. I think it cannot do less and live. . . . Doubtless those in remaining Virginia would return to the Union, so to speak, less reluctantly without the division of the old State than with it, but I think we could not save as much in this quarter by rejecting the new State, as we should lose by it in West Virginia. We can scarcely dispense with the aid of West Virginia in this struggle ; much less can we afford to have her against us, in Congress and in the field. Her brave and good men regard her admission into the Union as a matter of life and death. They have been true to the Union under very severe trials. We have so acted as to justify their hopes, and we cannot fully retain their confidence, and co-operation, if we seem to break faith with them. In fact, they could not do so much for us, if they would. . . . The division of a State is dreaded as a precedent. But a measure made expedient by a war is no pre- cedent for times of peace. It is said that the admission of West Virginia is secession, and tolerated only because it is our secession. Well, if we call it by that name, there is still difference enough between secession against the Constitution, and secession in favour of the Constitution."
The next question that Americans will ask is : " Is the group of counties which forms North-East Ulster, the area which claims its right not to be turned out of the Union with England and Scotland, seeking not only its own salvation, but seeking also to veto the right of self- determination in the rest of Ireland ? " This question has only to be put to receive the answer " No." Ulster makes no such claim. Though she has always expressed her hope that the Act of Union may be maintained unimpaired for all Ireland, she has in the clearest terms abandoned any claim to veto Home Rule for that part of Ireland which desires it.
Yet another point_ may be raised by America : " Let us consider what the British have offered to that part of Ireland which desires to break away from the United Kingdom and to have self-government in its complete form." The comment which the American people will make on this matter will very soon dispose of hesitation. When they look into the facts they will learn that no State in the Union enjoys terms so free or so generous- as those offered by us to that part of Ireland which desires Home Rule. All the States of the Union stand on an equality as regards federal and national burdens and federal and national rights. The twenty-six counties of Ireland outside North-East Ulster have been offered, not only complete self-government, but freedom from a great part of their share of national and Imperial burdens, and in addition a very heavy, if partly concealed, subsidy from the rest of the United Kingdom ! It is as if Mazzini and Garibaldi had demanded from Austria, not only the grant of freedom for Lombardy or Venetia, but several millions a year by way of tribute !
There are several other questions which America might ask, and to which she would obtain answers that would destroy the whole fabric of sophistical anti-English argument such as has been reared in Ireland. Take, for example, the question : " Has not Ireland been overtaxed by Britain in the past ? " The first fact that America would learn here would be that, though there are a considerable number of taxes which are paid by persons who live in England and Scotland which are not paid by persons who live in Ireland, there is no tax paid by persons who live in Ireland which is not paid up to the hilt by all persons who live in England and Scotland. But how can a State or a Province be overtaxed if the people who live in that State or Province are individually not overtaxed but actually undertaxed ? To put it in another way, how can the population of Ireland be unfairly treated if not a single individual can be found in that country who can say " I ani suffering in pocket because I am an Irishman, or resident in Ireland " ? Only a body of Irishmen would have had the effrontery to declare, in spite of this, that their country was cruelly wronged in the matter of taxation. Again, only a body of Irishmen would have had the cleverness to persuade a mixed Commission of Englishmen, Irishmen, and Scotsmen to find a grievance in the Irish fiscal system !
Finally, let us suppose that the American people were to ask : " Why has North-East Ulster grown rich and prosperous while the South has remained poor and unprosperous ? Is it because the British Government have favoured North-East Ulster ? " What answer would the facts give them here ? They would learn at once that the British Government have not only never favoured North-East Ulster and Belfast, but that the prosperity there, which is almost American in its manifestation, is due solely to the splendid energy and enter- prise of the inhabitants. They owe nothing whatever to State fostering. They have had no nursing of any kind. All the showers ef State money—and they have been very large in Ireland as a whole—have been received by the South. But we need not elaborate the question. No votary of the fashionable principle of self-determination can look honestly into the Irish Problem and not come to the conclusion that if self-determina- tion is to be adopted it must be applied to North-East Ulster.
To end as we began. The Americans know far too much about Ireland and the Irish for it to be possible for them to attempt to dictate the Irish policy of Britain. Like ourselves, they no doubt earnestly hope that a unanimous decision will be reached by the Convention, but they are not going to forget the case of West Virginia, nor, again, to forget that though Virginia at the moment talked and felt so bitterly about " the partition of her sacred soil," both Virginia and West Virginia are now perfectly content.
Again, they will not forget another very important fact in American history. The Irish are, we know, among the bravest people on the face of the earth, yet not only in the Northern but also in the Southern States they refused during the Civil War to bear the full burden of citizenship in their adopted countries. Conscription, both in the North and South_ had•to be forced upon them. And yet for both sides the Irishman when conscripted by force made a loyal soldier. American experiences would indeed seem to show that there is a kind of etiquette among Irishmen which insists that before they begin to fight in earnest they must be allowed a preliminary scrimmage with those under whose banner they are ultimately to be enlisted.
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