IRELAND’S PLACE AMONG THE NATIONS

New Zealand Tablet, 3 October 1918, Page 11

IRELAND’S PLACE AMONG THE NATIONS

Ireland stands now in a stronger position than at any time since the loss of her independence. Her cause and the cause of the world’s civilisation are now seen to be the same. The enemy of one is the enemy of both. The friend of one is the friend of both. The hypocrite towards one is the hypocrite also towards the other. Those who are capable of playing the game of' circumvention towards the one are sure to play the same game towards the other. Ireland’s demand is that her case shall be decided by the judgment of the civilised world: securus judical orbit; terra rum. This demand is now practically unanimous. All at least admit its force. At present, we are told, a number of American journalists, by special arrangement, are making a study of the Unionist position in Ulster. This is the international appeal in its crudest form, the admission that the question of Ireland is not any other country’s “domestic question.” Mr. Devlin and other prominent supporters of the Irish Parliamentary Party have enrolled themselves in an “Irish League of Nations Society.” This is still more definitely the international appeal and the repudiation of the “domestic question.” The Sinn Fein Party, representing the large majority of the Irish people, and, in this matter, representing also a more or less liquid section of Irish opinion that is not Sinn Fein by confession, have put the demand in the very concrete form of direct reference to the Peace Conference. So Ireland’s two minorities are at one with the majority on this point, that Ireland’s case cannot be, and ought not to be, excluded from the World’s Court. Those who imagine that they can settle the case out of court by the policy of circumvention, by a new phase of secret diplomacy, by any amount of dining, wining, and undermining, or by attempting to lay down the defendant’s claims or pleas as the law on any point of the case, will find that they are losing time. Ireland repudiates in advance any such bogus settlement. It is not in the power of any man or group of men to contract Ireland’s case out of the World’s Court. Into that court it will come, in spite of every contrivance to the contrary, in spite of any sort of champerty or maintenance, and the court will invalidate any pretended settlement made under duress. Already, before the machinery of international law has been set up, one great principle of international law has been established, the principle of self-determination. It is of the essence of international justice that the application of this principle shall be permanent and perpetual. Even a whole nation, acting for the time unanimously, cannot contract away its inherent rights—just as in a civilised community no man can sell himself into slavery, much less can any man sell away the natural rights of his children. Nor can any claim based on prescription avail against inherent right. The right of self-determination is indefeasible. The old legal maxim, nullum tempos occurrit rer/i, will hold good in the Law of Nations, with the interpretation that sovereign rights which have ever formerly existed in any nation cannot be extinguished while that nation lives. Ireland should not be content merely to look forward with expectation to the new international justice which is the only hope for the salvage and repair of our shipwrecked civilisation. Ireland should be foremost in working for the establishment of the new order. Next to Greece, Ireland is the oldest of European nations. Her cause, I repeat, is the cause of international civilisation, peace, justice, and liberty. It is pure. The Irish people have no designs against any other people, no intention of conquering, dominating, exploiting or conspiring against any other people, white, black, or yellow, no desire to share in conquest, domination, exploitation, or conspiracy. We do not even demand reparation of admitted wrongs. We seek only the cessation of the present wrong, which is also admitted. Ireland’s position, therefore, is not open to suspicion of any kind. Ireland, accordingly, has a peculiar right to “take her place among the nations

of the world/ ’ not waiting in expectancy, not depending on the lead of others, but coming to the front as the apostle and advocate of those 'reforms which alone can secure peace, justice, and liberty for all nations and redeem the working millions from the thraldom of oligarchies and from the intolerable mortgage that militarism lays upon their labor and on the labor of their children and their children’s children. The statecraft of the existing system now stands condemned. It sees the coming sentence and it is twisting and turning to escape—yes, to escape so that it may get back to its old game when it gets the chance.. That is the meaning of all its new vocabulary of virtuous professions. It must never get the chance. Not one of its professions must be listened to —except the genuine old ones that still find voice through habit in the middle of all the psalm-singing. Perhaps the disgrace that awaits them will be punishment enough for the chief personal agentsprovided they are not too persistentbut for the system there can be no mercy, it must die. Any sort of reprieve for it will be treason to civilisation. Delenda eat Carthago. What is the new order to be ? Those who have the unconscious feeling that they were born to be slaves, that they are cogs in the wheelwork of the devil’s machine, that the criminal domination of semi-secret oligarchies is a part of the national —these modern Manicheans refuse to bestir themselves, refuse to see that what men of bad will have set wrong it is the duty of men of good will to set right, and that is the first step is the earnest wish and will to have it done. These weary worms, when the better way is proposed, exonerate themselves with the helpless scorn of “idealism” and “Utopia.” The scoundrels say exactly the same thing. There is nothing particularly Utopian in a judge and jury. A policeman on his beat is not the expression of a poet’s dream. There is no mention of courts or police in the Sermon on the Mount, which must be the height of folly if these things are too foolish to be practicable. Ordinary work-a-day lovers of liberty, peace and justice have turned to a plain working solution of the world’s difficultya solution which falls far short of the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount, but provides at least a decent remedy for the state of things that the existing statecraft has brought about. This is the proposed solution : 1. An International Court to hear and decide all international disputes. 2. An International Police to enforce the decisions of the Court. The first Law of Nations, which this Court will have to administer, is already defined—it is the Law of Self-determination. The second Law, upon which also the peoples are agreed, is that war between nations or states is unlawful. From these two principles, the principles of liberty and peace, certain other regulations must follow, but I do not propose to go into details at present. I think that “League of Nations” is a misnomer for any effort to approach this solution. It suggests things that we really want to get rid of. But I wish to say nothing to discourage others from shaping their own opinion and public opinion on the subject. Once more, I urge my fellow-countrymen not to be content with an attitude of passive expectancy. It is their right, their duty, their privilege, and their country’s advantage that they should be active, be forward, be apostolic in this cause. Eoin Mac Neill in New Ireland.