OFFICERS WHO RESIGNED.

Auckland Star, Volume XLV, Issue 70, 23 March 1914, Page 5

OFFICERS WHO RESIGNED.

1 AGREE TO GO TO ULSTER. BUT NOT TO FIGHT. HUMOURS OF JUXY ELECTION. '(Received 1.55 pan.) LONDON, March 22. Lieutenant-Colonel Gough and seventy officers resigned. Sir A. H. Paget, after communicating with Whitehall, informed them that the War Office had accepted Lieutenant-Colonel Gcmgh and Major Kearsley's resignations, but the others were liable for the consequences of refusing to obey orders. Both replied that they would stand by their brother officers. On the assurance that the movement of troops was merely designed for the protection of Government property, and assisting the maintenance of order, the officers who resigned agreed to go to Ulster, but declared that they would not participate in hostilities. Lieutenant-Colonel Gongh and Colonels I McKewan and Parker, in response to a summons, visited the War Office. Many provisional resignations in the Infantry and Artillery departments have been put in. They are intended to be effective in the event of liostilities. Mr. Bonar Law raises a debate on the situation to-morrow. Exciting episodes arp expected. The Kin;; ii.is cancelled his visit to the Earl and Countess of Derby, in order to remain in clone communication with his Ministers. The "Chronicle" says that Mr. Asquith will at an early moment announce in the House of Commons his willingness to grant a general election in July, provided the Opposition co-operate in passing into law this session the Plural Voting, Home Rule, and Welsh Disestablishment Bills. A CONFLICT NZAHEE. (Times and Sydney Sun Services.) LONDON, llarch 21. "The Times," in a leader headed '■'Gambling in Human Lives,"' states that the debate on Uteter brought an armed conflict a few steps nearer. Mt. Asquith's re-ply was inadequate to the point of childishnees. The editor of the London. "Daily Xewe," Mr. A. G. (iareriner, a militant Home Rule Liberal, writes interestingly of Sir Edward Car&on:— "Whether Sir Edward Carson is a good or a bad hero I leave for the moment. But that there is the quality of heroism about him is . undeniable. Without him the cause of Ulster would be contemptiMe ; witih him it ifi almost formidable. Hie figure emerges from the .battle with a certain sinister distinction and loneliness. He is fighting for a bad" cause that is in full flight, but he is fighting as men light who count nothing of the cost. The dawn is up ia Ireland, but he -will not yield to it- He -prefers to go down with the darkness. . . . "But his passion is not the paeeion of patriotism, for he has no country. He hae only a caste. He does not fight for Ireland; he does not even fight for Ulster; he fights for a Manchu dynasty. But to doubt his ea-rnostness id to make, a fundamental mteealculation. It ie true .thai hie record led even Mr. J. M. Robertson to doubt whether Unionism was not adopted by him as a policy of expedienc}'. "The charge emerged out of the famous 'turncoat' incident. 'There ie nothing,' said Sir Edward -with Wβ customary coaieeness, apropos of Mr. Churchill's visit to Belfast, 'that the men of the Xorth of Ireland hate more than a turncoat, whoever it be, T. W. Ruseell or Winston Chnrchill.' 'What about Sir Edward Carson himself?' aeked Mr. 'Hamer Greenwood, in 'The Times' next day. "He wae once a Liberal, and a. member of the Xational Liberal dub.' It was a palpable hit, bu± when Sir Edward retorted, 'On the day that the fvrat Home Rule Bill was introduced I telegraphed to the National Liberal Qu-b to take my name off the roil of members,' it seemed that th-e victory was b-is. Mr. Greenwood, however, had the curiosity to go to the recorde of the Xation-a'l Liberal Club, with disastrous reeulte for Sir Edward. foT the records showed that he was elected a member two months after the Home Rule Bill was introduced, and that he did not resign untrl fifteen months later, on October 21. 1887." f.Wifn Arthur Balfour wae put in charge of mutinous Ireland Carson was hie Crown Prosecutor.) * "But though illr. Ca-rson profited, like many a hungry lawyer, by his loyalty to "-the Castle,' though he swept through the country ac the Crown Prosecutor, and imprisoned a score or more of Irish members for daring to address their constituents, though he wae promptly rewarded for Wβ services by Heinjr appointed SoFteitor-General of Ireland—in i~pite of all this, it is not, I think, true that he adopted , the cause of Ulster as a matter of expediency. It is t>he .breath of his nostrils, the fire in hie blood. It mak«s hhn shed teare —real tears—on the platform. It makes him talk treason, set up a provincial government to de:fy the Crown, and ntter wild threats about marching from Belfast to C<rr]<. It makes him put htmecrf delibera-t-ely out of the running for the office in the State to which he rrrigCii have asnlrrd. "There is something in **> c mere •presCTice o«f the man that is shattering and masterful. The retreating foTehead. with the black wHI-oiled hair brushed close to the crown, the lonjr hatchet the hravv-IJdd-pd fwe, at once dreamy and merrilp**. the dToop of the mouth, the dial!en-ginsr thruet of .the underiip. the heavy jaw—all procHim the man 'p9.Ti3.blp de tont et pire.' He misrht pa?R for a Sioux chief, vhn bad left his Foal p>? at home, or for an actor who the held. baxJ Baron, or for a member of another and still more strenuous profesion. *