King Country Chronicle Saturday, February 15, 1919 THE IRISH PROBLEM.

King Country Chronicle, Volume XII, Issue 1174, 15 February 1919, Page 4

King Country Chronicle Saturday, February 15, 1919 THE IRISH PROBLEM.

A Washington cablegram states that the Foreign Affairs Committee of the United States' House of Representatives has passed a resolution urging tho Poace Conference to favourably consider Ireland's claim to self-deter-mination. We do not think that that resolution will do raucb towards the elucidation of what is a complex problem. Britain was never more anxious than at present to settle once and for all the Irish question. She is prepared to go to almost any length short of complete severance in order to meet the wishes of the Irish people; but the Sinn Feiners demand absolute independence, and that, for very obvious reasons, cannot be granted, despite the wish of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the American House of Representatives. Had the Irish people risen to the occasion during the progress of the war, and proved by their actions their loyalty to the British Crown, there is no doubt that all creeds and classes would have been willing to concede the largest measure of Home Rule possible, accompanied by the good wishes and benediction of the whole of the Empire; but the traitorous doctrines of false prophets ensnared them from their allegiance, with the result that the friendly sentiment towards Ireland's ambitions in many quarters has disappeared, and the hoped-for goal is further removed than ever. The Irish problem is a domestic problem, and for obvious reasons Biitain cannot brook any interference as to her method of handling it, even from such an exalted body as the Foreign Affairs Committee of the American House of Representatives. Britain has a Monroe Doctrine as well as America, and it will be well for American politicians to recognise the fact. Ireland's foes are not the British people, but are contained in her own borders. Commenting on the problem a contemporary thus succinctly slates the case:—"The practical annihilation of the Irish Nationalist Party at the general election and the success achieved at the polls by the Sinn Feiners increase very sensibly the difficulties of a settlement of the question of the self-government of Ireland. They certainly postpone more or less indefinitely the adoption of any scheme of Home Rule. The British people as a whole are not prepared to commit the control of the affairs of Ireland, including Ulster, to a party of malcontents and disloyalists such as very largely compose the Sinn Fein element. Nor could they dare entrust the government of any part of Ireland—of Ireland exclusive of Ulster—to a party which is animated by the feelings that have been avowed by the spokesmen of the Sinn Feiners. The present system of government is unsatisfactory, but it is infinitely more satisfactory than any system would be under which the government of a large portion of Ireland would fall into the hands of persons of the stamp of Mr De Valera, the Countess Markiewicz, and others who have been busily engaged during the past few years in sowing the seeds of sedition and in inculcating in the minds of their followers the view that complete separation from Great Britain is the ideal at which Ireland should aim. The somewhat abject surrender to the Sinn Fein tyranny of nearly every constituency in Ireland which was previously faithful to the Nationalist cause represents in this sense a political tragedy. While Mr John Dillon, himself ousted from Parliament by the Sinn Feiners, has fatuously laid the collapse of the Nationalist Party at the door of the Imperial Government he has declared in portentous terms that the Government cannot kill Ireland. It i 3 from herself, in reality, that Ireland is in need of being preserved. Mr Dillon perceived this clearly enough about the time when the election campaign was being begun. He addressed a letter then to the Cork Nationalists in which he said that 'during the first year of war the Allied nations were warm friends of Ireland, but all this had been changed by Sinn Fein, and the Irish cause was now very far from being popular with the Allied nations.' This is a perfectly true statement. If Ireland had been as loyal to Great Britain and to the Allies in the war as, on the strength of Mr John Redmond's patriotic utterances, it was hoped she would be, the whole aspect of the domestic problem, presented by the political condition of that country, would be very different from what it is to-day. There would in those circumstances have, been very little, if any, opposition to the operation of the Home Rule Act. Ulster might have protested, but her protests would have lacked such validity an they possessed prior fo the war. As things have turned out, any proposal at the present time which hail for its object the forcible compulI sion of Ulster to submit to the rule of an Irish Parliament in Dublin would be highly condemned throughout the length and breadth of the Empire. It would be an outrage, upon justice to hand Ulster over to the tender mercies 'if the wolves of Sinn Fein. Even Mr I.lnyd George's proposal for such a modification of Home Rule as would exclude the six northern counties of Ulster from the operation of the scheme —a proposal which he still regards as furnishing the most practicable solution of the Irish problem—would, in the present temper of Ireland, be rejected I by the great mass of the British people

as unsafe and, therefore, as unacceptable. For the postponement of the introduction of any measure of Home Rule the Irish people have only themselves to blame. They have listened to the voices of false prophets and have allowed their imagination to be captivated by fantastic tales spun by designing adventurers. By their conduct they have antagonised those who would help them, if they could, to secure the enjoyment of the benefit of self-govern-ment. They can look for no support from Great Britain or from the British Empire for the insane idea of an independent Ireland, which should be the 'jumping-off place of the enemies of Great Britain in the future, or for a proposal to allow disloyal Sinn Fein Ireland to coerce Ulster." As we wrote above, the people of the British Empire were never more anxious than at present to find a satisfactory way out of the Irish difficulty. It is the disloyal attitude of a large section of the people themselves which is making a satisfactory settlement impossible.