NEWS OF THE WEEK.
91HE train of the Irish negotiations has run off the line along which it had been moving for many weeks. At the moment people are hopeful or despairing according as they are optimistic or not optimistic about the possibility of putting the train on a safer set of rails. The mishap—which, of course, tine cannot pretend to regret, because if the train had gone on towards its particular destination there would have been later a terrible disaster—was brought about by Sir James Craig's very honest and perfectly plain statement to the Northern Irish Parliament on Tuesday. The effect of the statement was that the Government bad secured a provisional assent from Sinn Fein to a settlement on the basis of an All-Ireland Parliament, but that the Ulsterleaders refused to accept that proposal, considering that it would put the Six-County Area at the mercy of the rebels. It is surely obvious that it would do so.
