HOME RULE CRISIS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15550, 6 March 1914, Page 7

HOME RULE CRISIS.

LORD DUNRAVEN'S LETTER.

GENERAL ELECTION USELESS

SOUTH AFRICAN LESSON. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received March 6, 12.15 a.m.) London, March 5. In a letter to the press Lord Dunraven says a fair chance of a settlement of the Irish difficulty is obtainable only by referring Mr. Asquith's proposals to a conference on the lines suggested by Lord Loreburn. Coercion of Ulster was impossible, and exclusion unthinkable, while a general election is useless as a solution.

Lord Hugh Cecil (Unionist M.P. for Oxford University) declares that the difficulty in the way of a conference is insuperable. He draws ah analogy between General Botha's action in South Africa and the possible happenings in Ireland as creating two centres of sovereignty. Nobody can deny, he says, that the deportations were altogether indefensible. Nobody can be blind to the outrages and scandal of the infliction of perpetual exile by a retrospective enactment. True sovereignty lies with the South African Parliament and General Botha, not with the British Crown. I Such arc the consequences of Home I Rule.

The number of signatures to the Union Defence league's appeal against Home Rule is increasing daily.