"IMMEDIATE WAR"

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 150, 22 December 1921, Page 7

"IMMEDIATE WAR"

LLOYD GEORGE'S OPTION

STATEMENT IN DAIL EIREANN

BEPUBLIO LOST TO SAVE THE PEOPLE. |

(UNITED PUKSS ASSOCIATION;—COPIJHOHT.)

(AUSTRALIAN ■ NEW ZBAI.AND CABLB ASSOCIATION.)

(Received December 22, 10 a.m.)

LONDON, 21si December.

Mr. Gavin Duffy said that Mr. Lloyd George, on sth. December, presented the following ultimatum: "There must be peace or war. My messenger goes to Belfast to-night. . I have here two answers—one for the Treaty, the other for rupture. If it is rupture, there will be immediate war. The only Vay to avert it is to bring me the signatures of all the plenipotentiaries by 10 o'clock, coupled with an undertaking to recommend the Treaty to the Dail Eireann."

Mr. Duffy described Mr. Lloyd George's action as a monstrous iniquity. Mr. Duffy said the Dail' Eireann would support the* Treaty. It gave power to the Irish to control their own Government and military, increased the people's power to a greater degree than ever before. 'They had power to relegate the King of England to the exterior darknoss. The delegates in London found when Mr. Lloyd George threatened mv mediate war if they failed to sign the Treaty and recommend it to the Dail Eireann that he was not play-acting. '.'lf they had not signed it, fresh hordes of savages would have been let loose in Ireland." They lost the Republic in order to save the peoplt of Ireland. Before they rejected the Treaty^the people of Ireland must have a national alternative. He saw no other alternative before them.