ANCIENT WOUNDS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 43, 20 February 1914, Page 7

ANCIENT WOUNDS

TORN OPEN MR. BALFOUR AND HOME RULE ULSTER PREPARED FOR SACRIFICE. (By Telegraph.— Press Association.— Copyright.) LONDON, 19th February. In his speech at the City Unionist meeting, Mr. Batfour said that the Bill, which professed to be a complete healing process for Ireland, had torn ancient wounds open, and Ireland was now in two opposite camps, divided by differences more irreconcilable than ever. The situation was a hopeless entanglement — an inextricable mess. The Government admitted that modification was necessary, but the modifications were unknown and possibly unknowable. He did not believe that the Government would willingly throw itself into armed collision with Ulster. He warned it while plans were still malleable not to commit the most fatal mistake of the half-measure of Home Rule within Home Rule. " There is," he said, " a fixed desire in Ulster not to paralyse the Parliament of Dublin, but to be in the British Parliament on equal terms with us. We are now in the rapids. Even to the dullest ear the nrutterings of the distant cataract are audible, and unless the Government make a clean cut they will find themselves in a remorseless current and the ship of State will be dashed to irremediable disaster." Sir Edward Carson said they were prepared to sacrifice everything rather than submit to hateful rule. "Nothing under heaven will divert us," he declared. "It is our fixed determination to remain with -you."