WIDER ISSUE THAN HOME RULE

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 72, 26 March 1914, Page 6

WIDER ISSUE THAN HOME RULE

From within the shadow of the Home Rule nightmare a new spectre has arisen in the shape of a political Army, the last card of Ulster and the "constitutional" Unionists. This apparition is interesting, not as pioving beyond question that the loyalty of the Army as a whole is affected, but as indicating the length to which the party of privilege is prepared to go. The hold which it has secured upon the aristocratic cavalry regiments, culminating in the Gough incident, can no longer be doubted, and if the evil continues unchecked, it may result in sowing the seeds of disobedience throughout • the whole organisation — which would be a national disaster. So far as is known from the cabled details at time of writing, the officer strikers have completely humbled the Liberal Government. Under a new private charter between the nominal commander and the parties who refuse to be commanded — a document signed, copied, and deposited — there has been introduced into the Army an era of optional obedience ; a compromise so pitiful that it has been followed by the resignation of the Secretary for -War, Colonel Seely, under whose control the "'strike negotiations" were conducted. Though the Prime Minister is inclined to stand by Colonel Seely, and to refuse to make him a scapegoat for the worst phase in the recent chapter of Liberal vacillation, the blow to the Asquith Government's prestige is very great, and how it will surmount its increasing difficulties and blunders and embarrassments is not at all clear. To that extent, the military card played by the Unionist gamblers has been notably successful. But its immediate effect is as nothing to the ultimate one. Thanks to Unionists' machinations, ttfe British Army stands to-day, before ihe whole nation, under the indictment of being a class organisation. Insofar as it has been proved to be such, it must be pruned and purged, and that very necessary work is brought into the forefrontf by the military coup. A flashlight was needed to photograph the state of the Army into the dull brain of the elector. Ulster and the Unionists have the flash, and, the elector deserves no sympathy if he does not find the remedy. "The action of the commanders in some of the crack cavalry regiments, officered by aristocrats, has now," writes Mr. John Redmond, "fully disclosed the plan of campaign." That plan, says the Nationalist Leader, was to seduce Army officers by society influences; and he adds that the issue raised is wider even than Home Rule. Widor, yes ; because the internal government of Ireland is not an Imperial issue, but the loyalty to duty of the British regular forces, who are liable to service in any part of the Empire, intimately affects every British Dominion. Mr. Hamar Greenwood, Liberal M.P., and a recent visitor to Australasia, has rightly emphasised the effect which the events of the last few days will have upon the public opinion of Greater Britain. Thousands of over seas Imperialists who are not keen for or against Home Rule will be dismayed by the revelation of a Tory Army. If society and political pressure — operating through that " sinister feminine influence" to which Mr. Hamar Greenwood recently referred— can divert British Army officers from their duty, before a blow has been struck in civil war, and simply on the presumption of something that might happen, a very evil principle is admitted, and one capable of indefinite extension, vitally involving all parts of the Empire. Speaking in the House of Commons, Mr. Ward, Labour M.P., rightly compares the Unionist Campaign in the Army with the Syndicalist printed appeals to soldiers not to shoot strikers. But the Syndicalistic method has one big merit over the other — it is not secretive and hypocritical. When did the cavalry officers find their consciences drive them from their duty at the thought of slaying conscientious industrialists ? The fact is that in recent years no party — not even the fanatical Suffragettes — has given a greater stimulus to law-breaking and class prejudice than have the "constitutionalists" of the "party of Union.'' Mr. Balfour was wise to quit their leadership. His successors have sown the heaviest crop of wild oats that their generation has seen.