THE IRISH CRISIS.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 13350, 7 April 1914, Page 3

THE IRISH CRISIS.

.MR FREDERIC HARRISON'S WARNING. LOND6N, February 26. Mr Frederic Harrison has addressed a letter to the Prime Minister on the Ulster crisis. It consists, in the first place, of a warning against the certainty of civil war, which has been foretold by soldiers, administrators, and former'Min-% isters of tho Crown. The Ulster Coven,ant cannot be reasoned with, and is as .stubborn to crush as any of the greatest forces of rebellion'in English history. To go "full steam ahead" is to go to destruction. "Armed and organised* defiance by Ulster to the Home Rule Bill forms an obstacle to regular Parliamentary action of a kind of which our country has no experience since the times of the Stuarts," says Mr Harrison; "and it would be criminal folly to expect that it can be overcome as were Repeal and Fenian insurrections, the Plan of Campaign, and Orange Riots. You are face to face with a struggle as bloody and as obstinate aB the Boer War —one in, which the chances of victory in the field are far from promising, whilst the widespread confusion and the abiding curse are certain to last for generations. "One hundred thousand trained men in arms, with the appliances of a modern army, are not a "mob*; anil it is playing with words to tell us how Governments have often put down Irish rebels and Orange 'riots.' This is war, on a scale both bloody and protractedcertain to leave behind it memories of racial and sectarian hatred. WheYi the Bastille was taken in a street fight Louis called it a 'riot.' Why was it so? Because the insurgents '-had behind them the forces of at least half the nation. "You surely must see that this Ulster Covenant is at heart a kind of religions fanaticism, as hopeless to reason with, as stubborn to crush as were the English Ironsides, or the Scotch Covenanters, or Ayrshire Camerqnians. .Vague appeals to 'conciliation,' those House of Commons debates on 'compromise,' the promises of 'safeguards,' are to them as idle as were the sermons of prelates to the .Hot-Gospellers in Scott's tales." Mr Harrison then proceeds to remind the Prime Minister of a scheme which he submitted to him privately in the autumn. The scheme contemplates the treatment of Ulster as a separate province, and the'establishment of a separate and independent committee, elected by the constituencies of United UI ster, with complete legislative, financial, and administrative powers, without ap

peal to or control by the Irish Parliament, and subject only to the King in Council and the Imperial .Legislature. This authority would continue only for a stated term until after a general election, when it could be reconsidered or referred by referendum to Ulster for decision as to its permanence. A general election, Mr Harrison contends, cannot solve the present impasse, and he therefore recommends, for the purposes of % definite decision, a referendum ad hoc to the entire constituencies of the Kingdom. A referendum, in Mr Harrison's opinion whatever its use in normal times, would certainly settle the suffrage question, and "I am sure it* would settle the Irish question." Mr Frederic Harrison was one) of the pioneers of Home Rule; but he feels the Ulster spirit "in his bones," and his grandfather, as he mentions in the Course of the letter, was an Ulster Orangeman who was out in 1798. He is a historian, a lawyer, and a philosopher who has watched and taken part in manynational and social developments since* the early fifties, when, as a Fellow of Wadham, the home of the Oxford Comtists,' he began to make his , mark , as a clear and courageous thinker. Mt garrison may have been in many minorities, but his wide reading ,of history and his long experience of contemporary politics add an undeniable force and interest to his intervention at the present juncture in -the interests -of peace in Ireland.