IRISH DEVELOPMENTS.

Evening Star, Issue 18085, 28 September 1922, Page 4

IRISH DEVELOPMENTS.

It would bo . disappointing if tho Irish, with their bright individuality, did not bring some new methods into politics now that self-government has provided them with the opportunity. Tho Minister of Homo Affairs for tho Free State, Mr O’Higgins, who is guiding the Constitution Bill through Bail Eircann, has shown his superiority to dull convention by the manner in which ho is acquitting himself of tho task. The treaty with Great Britain, which tho Bill confirms, was undoubtedly signed, ho daid, under duress, in tho face of an alternative which meant war. A majority of tho Irish nation at any moment could without dishonor repudiate the treaty if they considered it wise and advisable, and were prepared to take the consequences. After all, it is a musty precedent which requires that the Minister who moves a Bill should display, and even feel, some sort of enthusiasm for it. Mr O’Higgins, making a new departure, seems to have dissembled his love for this measure most effectually, lids speech in support of it must bo almost unique in political annals, and it is a promising sign of tho good senso of the Dail that it should have supported the Constitution Bill by tho large majority that it did at its second reading, after the less than faint praise of this sponsor of it. The doctrine he laid down in respect of treaties is not one that could bo seriously commended. Half tbe compacts between-nations, as well as individuals, are made under duress of ono sort or another, and tho principle that allowed them to bo repudiated as soon as it was felt by ono party that conditions had altered for it would be a principle making for anarchy, and nothing else. Mr O’Higgins’s doctrine would leave Irish Republicans free, if they should surrender to-morrow on agreed-on terms, to break those conditions and again defy his Government immediately they might be set at liberty. It would make his parole of no binding force to tho soldier. Apart from those implications of his theory, the lukewarm regard for the treaty shown by this member of a Government pledged to support it would be highly encouraging to the Republican rebels if they were in a condition now to be much encouraged by anything. The letters of Mr De Valera, captured by the Government, make the final addition to much other evidence that they are in no such condition. Tho letters, we are told, show the “chaotic state of the Republican organisation.” Mr De Valera admits that he should have repudiated “General” Rory O’Connor. General O’Connor himself might have bd&n saved from his folly, and Ireland from much destruction and some bloodshed, if earlier incitements of the ex-President had been wanting. But on that point there is no absolute certainty. A brother of tho irresponsible general has recorded his opinion that the secret of his undoing was too much attendance at “movies” as a child. On.such things do tho fortunes of nations turn. It is at least evident that Republicanism is a failing cause in Ireland. The diminishing operations of the rebels, practically confined now to sallies from hill fastnesses and more or Jess isolated acts of destruction, after the first phase of more military pretensions in which they were merely driven from pillar to post, tell their own tale. The extremists have never had any popular sympathy. They have probably been very ill supplied, as compared with the national army, and they would be unlikely to get tho funds from America which were readily provided by societies in that country when the war was against Great Britain and not other Irishmen. ! It was a foredoomed cause for which they elected to fight, and it would bo strange if they were a happy family anions themselves. If tho system of Republicanism were more natural or more practicable than it is for Irishmen, sober study of tho conditions in half the republics of- tho world to-day would do little to commend it. China, rent by civil wars; Russia, oppressed and ruined; Germany, where State Ministers, in Bavaria, publicly proclaim their longing for a king, make a sad list of new republics.