Evening Post. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1921. MR. LLOYD GEORGE'S REPLY

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 62, 10 September 1921, Page 4

Evening Post. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 1921. MR. LLOYD GEORGE'S REPLY

Mr. Lloyd George has returned a soft answer to Mr. de Valera and a stern one to the Trade Union Congress, and in both cases he has done well. The message sent on behalf of the Congress by its Parliamentary Committee was inspired by a genuine spirit of goodwill, but that is about the best that can be said' for it. It embodied a number of humanitarian generalities but not a word of definite guidance, and the earnest desire for peace which it expressed, without any indication of conditions, was well calculated to convey the impression that in the opinion-of the Congress any peace would be better than none. The prbmotion.of peace (says the message) involves personal negotiations in a Conference in order that the British Government and the Irish leaders may escape a verbal controversy and arrive at a recognition of the realities of the problem. The termination of the, -negotiations would, according to you, mean the resumption of hostilities in an intensified form. We declare that-a new war would outrage the moral sense of ths whole world, and;would never receive the British people's sanction. That the Government should spare |no effort for the. attainment of an honourable peace would be a perfectly reasonable demand. But to say that it must call a Conference because a new war will never receive the British people's sanction | is,to imply that they would rather surrender to Sinn Fein, shatter their Empire, and imperil their own security than resist an*l outrageous demand. A nation which resisted similar appeals when Germany still appeared invincible is not,going to surrender to such craven logic now. v- Mr. Lloyd George puts "his finger on the weak spot in the message of the Trade Union Congress with his usual dexterity. Nobody, he declares, is more opposed than the i Government, to bloodshed in a fratricidal,war, but he claims "the authority of the greatest democratic statesman in history for i the belief that even bloodshed is better than disruption of the living political organism, whose strength and unity are essential to the freedom of the world." The reference to Abraham Lincoln applies with a special propriety to the present problem. The great pacifist and humanitarian waged the most terrible of civil wars not, as we are apt to believe, in order to free the slaves but in order to save the Union.' The statesman who declined to shatter the Union by recognising the right of the Southern States to self-determina-tion would assuredly not have counI selled the sacrificing of the British Empire to a phrase or a vision, or hesitated in the presence of the vague and irresponsible philanthropy of the' Trade Union Congress. "No!" he'd ha'thundered. "On your knees, ' An'own one flag, one road to glory! Soft-heartednecß in times like these I Shows sofness in the upper storey !" We do not know the exact passage, if any, which Mr. Lloyd George had in view in his reference to Lincoln. But the whole of Lincoln's presidency was a testimony to the belief which Mr. Lloyd I George attributes to him. And the iaunavt&l Buue.nd lujvugura! will \jSXXfi as. well a* .anything else to_

illustrate the inspired determination with which after some four years of war Lincoln still subordinated his hatred of bloodshed to his dread of disruption and still held the nation to itß duty. On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago (he said) all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. AH dreaded it—all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was be--ing delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide effects, by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And war came. . . . Fondly do we hope, and fervently' do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of bloqd drawn with the lash, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." It was in this spirit that Lincoln faced his great task, saw it through, and died almost in the hour of victory. It is interesting to recall now that, if at the outset or at any time during the four years Lincoln had yielded to the soft-hearted advocates of peace at any price, the loss, even from the humanitarian standpoint, would have been incalculable. Conceivably, though far from probably, the cause of humanity would not have suffered an irreparable loss in the mere partition of the United States, but what the perpetuation and entrenchment of slavery in a-Southern Federation founded on that issue would have meant to mankind is a matter which requires no argument. The analogy bet^en the attempted secession of . the slave-holding States and that of Sinn Fein Ireland is, of course, very far from perfect, and it was only to a single point that Mr. Lloyd George's reference applies. It is also obvious that the statesmanship of so great and many-sided a man as Lincoln. may illustrate many other aspects of the present struggle. Lincoln's quiet patience was at least as astonishing as his courage and his strength, and the very next sentence to that at which our quotation stops may yet be invoked by Mr. Lloyd George against the critics who, while approving his firm reply to the Trade Union Congress, will condemn his soft answer to Mr. de Valera as weak. " With malice towards none," said Lincoln, "with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in." Let us hope that British statesmen may bring a double portion of Lincoln's spirit to the settlement of their arduous task in Ireland.