TOPICS OF THE DAY THE IRISH CRISIS. F IRMNESS, plainness of
speech, and sincerity of heart, joined to courage and high resolve, pitted against the arts of the ablest of politicians, have once more had the victory that is due to them. Ulster stood up against the mixed threats and cajoleries of those who wished her to yield where it impossible for her to yield, and she has won. We have much to say on the main issue, which is now, " How can we find a road out of the miserable, nay, shameful morass into which the nation has been led ? " but before we do so we had better clear up a certain mis- understanding as to the position of the Spectator. A few of our readers seem to imagine that our support of Ulster was wrong and unpatriotic, if well meant as they admit it to have been, because in their view we have been inciting Ulster to show pride, harshness, self-righteousness, and, indeed, all the unchristian virtues rather than the spirit of self-sacrifice. That is an entire mistake. We have never said a word to incite Ulster to stand out, for the very good reason that we want the Irish imbroglio settled at almost any cost except that of honour and good faith. Even though, thanks to the Government, a settlement involved the complete destruction of the Union we should submit. We were willing, that is, that Ulster should have a free choice. If her leaders could have found it compatible with their duty to those they lead to agree to a compromise based, not on the existence of the two Irelands, but on a hopeful hypothesis that the two Irelands had ceased to exist and that a real unity had grown up, or, at any rate, was growing up, it would have been, not a source of annoy- ance to us, but an immense relief. That we took the strong line which we did take and do take against the action and policy of the Prime Minister and of the Government was due to the fact that they did not give the Ulstermen a true choice. Rather they made an attempt as cruel as it was clumsy to coerce Ulster into doing something which she did not want to do, and which her leaders knew was impossible as a sure foundation of peace for Ulster, for Ireland as a whole, for the United Kingdom, and for the British Empire. If the Unionist Press, or rather we should say the Coalition Press—for the newspapers of which we speak have no right to claim the name of Unionist—had argued the matter sincerely and in a friendly spirit towards the Ulstermen, and had asked them whether they could not see their way to agreeing to a compromise founded upon a non-partition policy, but safeguarded by strong guarantees, we should have made no objection to such an appeal. On the contrary, we should have examined the plan on its merits and, if it had been in the least possible, would have done all we could to advise North-East Ulster to give her earnest consideration. But what did we see ? We saw, in the first place, the Government pledged to the hilt to allow Ulster to have the fullest self-determination possible. Up till a fortnight ago they apparently regarded that pledge not in any sense as a penal bond or as one secured by something like force majeure, and therefore a contract to which, in fact, the pound of flesh argument could have been honourably applied. Rather it was regarded as a bond given on its merits, i.e., given for the most valuable consideration known to the law, the natural love and affection felt by Englishmen and Scotsmen for Ulster and inspired by her loyalty and patriotism. When the rest of Ireland had either sulked in sullen enmity or actually plunged the assassin's knife into the body of the State, Ulster had stood as firm as Slieve-Donard.
And then something happened--something strange, sinister, and secret. Suddenly a change came over the attitude of the Coalition. Though the change was hinted rather than defined, one was irresistibly reminded of the dramatic scene at the Palace of Surajah Dowlah in which Clive suddenly turned upon the blackmailer with the words : " The time has come to undeceive Omichund. Omichund, the red treaty is a cheat and you are to hive nothing." let Clive, far from owing a debt of gratitude, had plenty of excuse because. he had been wickedly blackmailed. Clive's way, however, is not, of course, the way in which the modern politician acts. Instead, we had a speech from the Prime Minister like that which Tacitus describes as the first speech of Tiberius after he became Emperor. The speech, he says, was full of dark sayings and " eguivogues," and the senators dreaded nothing so much as to understand it. Certainly the plain Unionist M.P., as the Liverpool Conference showed, was determined not to understand.
In spite, however, of Unionist dislike the Gramophone Press began, both in the dailies and the weeklies, a campaign of moral coercion against Ulster. She was not merely told that she would be acting a disloyal or a selfish part if she insisted on partition, but dark hints were made to her as to the vengeance which might fall on her if she demanded her pound of flesh and the result were the spilling of even one drop of blood. Worst of all, she was actually told in some quarters that if she insisted upon having her rights—. the rights which had been solemnly assured to her only a year ago—there were ways in which the pledges upon which she rested her case could be perfectly well got rid of. If the present Coalition Government resigned and another Government came in that Government would not be pledged, even though that Government consisted of the men who had given or endorsed the pledges. Those, how- ever, who did not dare to go quite so far as that at any rate suggested that, if a dissolution took place, in which the issue was " Shall Ulster be allowed to wreck the peace of the Empire ? " she would be defeated and much worse things would happen to her than if she yielded now. It is against this infamous campaign for coercing Ulster that we have protested, and against which we shall continue to protest in the strongest language at our command.
To the supporters of Sinn Fein, direct and indirect, we have no more to say than to the newly-made defamers and coercers of Ulster. To those Unionists who honestly believe that it is their duty to try to persuade Ulster that the Sinn Feiners under a Dominion Govern- ment would become the most sincere and affectionate of partners we have no desire to use the language of denuncia- tion, but only of reason and common sense. Once more, though we will be no parties to any attempt to coerce Ulster, either morally or physically, we will never refuse a patient hearing to the peacemakers, however pessimistic we may be personally in regard to their efforts. No one who honestly advocates the .spreading of peace and good will shall ever be denied a hearing by us or be refused his meed of sympathy. If anyone thinks he can persuade Ulster into the belief that she will be perfectly safe in the hands of Mr. De Valera and Mr. Michael Collins and their col- leagues, by all means let him try. What we shall do is to stand by Ulster till the last moment if the cruel, the infamous, the mendacious attempt is made to treat her as though she were some kind of blackmailer, with whom it would be perfectly fair and just for the most honourable of men, pleading duress, to break their contracts.
To return to the essential point, how are we going to get out of the dangerous situation in which the Coalition Government have landed us by treating the Sinn Feiners as though they were like the lady in Pope's Epistle ?- " A very devil in the carnal part,
But still a sad, good Christian at heart."
We believe that things have now come to such a pass in Southern Ireland that the policy of maintaining the law of the land and the dictates of ordinary morality—" Thou shalt not kill ; thou shalt not steal ; thou shalt not bear false witness "—have become impossible. We could, no doubt, reconquer the South of Ireland, but, as things now are, we could not maintain that reconquest without a sacrifice greater than that which we ought to ask of the people of England and Scotland. That being so, we must return to what we have said so often during the past nine or ten months in these columns. That policy is, briefly, the expelling of Southern Ireland absolutely from the British Empire. We would take away from the inhabitants of the South of Ireland all their privileges as British citizens and leave them to manage their own affairs in their own way, subject only to certain provisos. These provisos would guarantee (1) The safety and welfare of Great Britain and of the Empire ; (2) the safety and wet' fare of Northern Ireland—the State created under the Act of Parliament, 1921 ; (3) the safety of, and full com- pensation to, all loyal persons In the South of Ireland —that is, all persons who elect to maintain their status as citizens of the United Kingdom and who should express their desire to leave Southern Ireland. The cost of " evacuat- ing " and compensating the loyal Protestant people of the South and of taking precautions against hostile acts on the part of the Southern Irish against the North or against our coasts would, of course, be borne by the Southern Irish.
This, it may be said parenthetically, need not, nay, should not, be accomplished by any attempt to make an agreement with the government set up in the South. It must be done by our own act and volition. We should calculate the amount required to be paid by the South in compensation for the evacuation and for the injuries done to the Loyalists during the past five years—that is, since the establishment of the Sinn Fein regime ; and if the interest on this sum were not paid, we should recuperate ourselves by a Customs Duty levied upon all goods from the South of Ireland entering our ports. Finally, we should of course retain the sovereign rights of Great Britain over the territorial waters of Ireland. When we first put forth this view in these columns we feared that most of our readers would think it not only wild and impracticable, but highly objectionable per se. All the same, we felt almost certain that it was the crude and unhappy solution which we should be driven by the force of circumstances to adopt.
We held, in fine, that the time must come when a course so disagreeable and so bad in itself would become the least bitter and the least injurious of the alternatives still left open to us by the hopelessly inefficient policy of the Government.
It is interesting to note how widely this plan, for which, needless to say, we claim no patent rights—it was, no doubt, simultaneously in the minds of many people—has been spreading of late. It is, indeed, very difficult just now to discuss the Irish question in a mixed company without somebody putting forward the expulsion plan as the only way out compatible with the safety and welfare of the Empire and with the allaying of the deep sense of indignation felt by the British people not only in regard to the Sinn Feiners, but in regard to the manner in which the Government have acted.
The policy of expulsion is also constantly croppina° up in the Press. Take, for example, last Sunday. The Sunday Pictorial contained an article in which the scheme which we have just set forth in skeleton was treated at great length by Lord Rothermere—the brother of Lord Northcliffe—the founder of the Sunday Pictorial and the proprietor of many newspapers with large circulations. Lord Rothermere, indeed, goes a good deal farther in his proposals than we have gone or desire to go. In his article—" How to Deal with Sinn Fein—A Plan to Prevent the Desertion of Ulster and to Avoid Civil War "—he proposes, not as we do, merely to enforce heavy duties against the Southern Irish should they refuse to pay what was in justice due from them, but at the very beginning and without fresh provocation to adopt a policy of commercial non-intercourse. Here are his words : " All exports from Sinn Fein Ireland should be prohibited." The only exception he would make would be in favour of beer and stout and other liquors which bring large revenue to Great Britain in the shape of Excise 1 That, we venture to say, is an error in politics, though we admit it is a very natural error. What we want is to make the money which we should have to expend in giving compensation to the Loyalists of the South, when we were expelling the twenty-six counties from the Empire, chargeable on those twenty-six independent and expelled counties. If the interest on this sum and on certain other money were regularly paid, well and good. If not, all Southern Irish produce should be put under the twenty or thirty per cent. duty which would be required to pay the interest on the hundred millions, or whatever the sum required for compensation. No doubt individuals and companies engaged in making beer or stout who wished to remain citizens of, or corn- Panics within, the United Kingdom would have their just claim for compensation ; but, of course, the receiving of such payment would be subject to their removal from the Sinn 2ein Republic either into North-East Ulster or some other place owning allegiance to the British Empire. That, however, is largely a matter of detail. The important thing is that Lord Rothermere realizes (1) that we cannot desert Ulster ; (2) that we have lost the opportunity for re-establishing le,w and order in the South by military action ; and (3) that the sooner we cut our loss in the South of Ireland the better. As to the probable results upon the South of Ireland of com- plete independence, we can only say that it is not our affair. The responsibility for isolation must rest on those who have demanded it in blood and fire. Once more we may adopt with alteration Lord Dalhousie's words : " The Sinn Feiners have asked for independence, and, by Heaven ! they shall have it."
But though we would carry this policy out sternly and consistently, we have no desire to be vindictive, even towards the murder gangs of Sinn Fein. Crimes are not inherited like lands, and we have no wish to punish the rising generation in the South of Ireland for the sins of their fathers. So long as justice is done to Ulster and to the Loyalists of the South we would give every chance to the expelled Republic to thrive and to repent. The best reparation that the Sinn Feiners could make to us and to the world, as also to themselves, would be to found and carry out a decent and reasonable system of government. Should they succeed, Englishmen should be the first to congratulate them on their success in discovering a right line in obliquity. If they failed, no man would be able to say that that failure was due to any vindictive, revengeful or Macchiavellian action on our part. If we give them that isolation of independence which they so strangely prefer to complete liberty within the Empire— that liberty which is good enough for States so virile in their youth and so august in the promise of their future as the four great Dominions—we should give it, not with a curse or with prophecies, but with an honest and sincere assurance of good faith. So long as their liberty does not conflict with the rights of Northern Ireland, and makes good that debt of compensation due to the Loyalists who dared not live among them in view of the history of the past six years, we shall watch their develop- ment not with angry eyes, or even with sombre acquiescence, but with the sincere hope that they will make the model State which they tell us they can make. It is not the genius of the British people to treasure the remembrance of wrongs inflicted upon them, however undeserved. We have something better to do with our thoughts and lives than to cherish the memory of ill deeds.
As a postscript we should like to express our sympathy with the good sense and courage with which Lord Rothermere ends his article. Here arc his actual words :- "Some timorous people are afraid that if we adopt measures against Sinn Fein we may have outrages, burnings, and murders committed by Sinn Fein emissaries in Great Britain. No fire-and-murder gang on earth could strike terror into the British people. Our laws provide for the punishment of assassins. If necessary, political incendiarism will have to be made a capital offence. I urge that if this scheme is adopted we shall avoid the enormous expense of a will-o'-the- wisp campaign against Sinn Fein guerrillas in Ireland. We shall prove to foreign countries that we seek to avoid bloodshed. We shall be taking steps which will not leave embittered memories of military reprisals. The scheme, if rightly applied, will even enable the Government to effect a substantial reduction of expenditure. The time is not ripe for Irish unity. Witness the condition of Belfast to-day. Ireland can never be united by the coercion of Ulster. The British nation is only slowly learning the truth. It is only gradually discovering that a proposal has been quite seriously made to thrust the Ulster Loyalists under the control of rebels whose dominating political principle is hatred of the British flag. When the electors realize that the most solemn pledges to Ulster are endangered, and that the men who fought beside us in the War may be abandoned to the enemies of Britain, they will arise and declare that they will not tolerate so unparalleled a betrayal."
Previous page
