IN THE LORDS LORD MORLEY'S POSITION.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 78, 2 April 1914, Page 7

IN THE LORDS LORD MORLEY'S POSITION.

AN APPEAL FOR. A COMPROMISE. LONDON, Ist April. In the House of Lords, Lord Curzon said that Sir. Asquith's assumption of the War Minister's office was publicspirited, and he hoped the result would be the dissipation of tho mystery and intrigue which existed tnere, and that it would end the cowardly . campaign against the Army. Lord Morley said that as Colonel Seely's second resignation wa3 due to a desire that it should not appear that a, Minister of the Crown made a bargain with the Army, and as Colonel Seely 1 had absolved him from being a party to complying with Brigadier-General Gough'a request, he was not justified in resigning. Lord Loreburn appealed for a compromise. He said he did not believe in tiie existence either of a military plot or a Government plot to provoke Ulster. Both sides had reached the conclusion to leave the settlement to a, future Parliament as to whether Ulster should remain in or out of the Irish Parliament, but it would be quite impossible to letter any future Parliament with difficulties which threatened civil war arid the danger of a foreign war as well. Lord Lansdowne said it was not * the Unionists who had tampered with the Army, but the Government, who had approached the officers with hypothetical questions. Lord Crewe, Secretary fo» India, said that at a Cabinet meeting on 16th March, a proposal by the military authorities to reinforce the small garrison raised the question as to whether the movement might be regarded as proyocative. Military opinion thought that it might, but those responsible for the maintenance of 'order thought otherwise. The latter Were correct, because Ulster had not regarded it as piovocative. The Government, rightly or wrongly, had abstained from interference with the Ulster volunteer movement, believing that such interference. would destroy all hope of an agreement* but no Government could neglect to take precautions, or look tamely on when an unauthorised force might seize part of the Kingdom and create an administration of its own. Mr. Asquith had now summoned Sir Arthur Paget to London" to obtain a full account of what had occurred. Lord Crewe concluded by expressing a belief in the possibility of a permanent settlement of the Irish question without anything that could be called a surrender by the Government.