SPEECH BY MR CHURCHILL.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLVI, Issue XLVI, 16 March 1914, Page 5

SPEECH BY MR CHURCHILL.

ULSTER AND PARTY CALCULA-

TIONS

BY CABLE—PRESS ASSOCIATION—<3OPTRIGHI,

LONDON, March 15. Mr Winston Churchill, speaking at Bradford, said that an agreement alone would make it worth while to re-cast the Home Rule Bill. The Unionists' duty was clear. If they disliked the Act they must agitate for. a majority. If they won they could amend or repeal the law.

The Liberals, he said, sought to allay the old hatreds in Ireland, not to create new ones. He wanted to give them what they wished, not to force upon them what they disliked. Mr Asquith's offer, on principle, was the last the Government could or ought to make. If the Tories rejected this, it would only be because they preferred shooting to voting. He was certain that the first British soldier or bluejacket killed by the Orangemen would raise such an explosion as the Tories little appreciated, and which would shake the foundations of society. Sir Edward Carson was ' wrong on the merits of the question, and history would prove him so.

Sir Edward Carson talked of the Ulster convention which was to gr?,cfously consider the matter, while the Imperial Parliament stood on tip-toe outside awaiting the verdict. When he (Mr Churchill! looked at the situation as now unfolded, he felt they had had about enough of this sort of thing. Mr Churchill, concluding his speech, said:

"The Government will not allow themselves to be bullied. Doubtless bloodshed is lamentable, but the cowardly abdication of the executive's responsibility would be worse. Law and order must prevail. If Ulster .seeks peace, she knows where to find it. But if every .concession is spurned, if Ulster becomes the tool of party calculations, if civil and Parliamentary systems are brought to the crude challenge of force, if reckless character ends of forre, if reckless chatter ends tion. then let us go forward and rmt; these grave matters to the proof."