ULSTER, THE’ WISCONSIN OF IRELAND

New Zealand Tablet, 29 May 1919, Page 9

ULSTER, THE’ WISCONSIN OF IRELAND

(By P. A. Force, in America.)

I owe Wisconsin an apology for my title. I use the name of that sane, progressive State merely "by way of illustration. Many people in Wisconsin and elsewhere think that La Follette has been called a proGerman just because he proposed the taxation of war profits ; he wanted to make the profiteers pay fgr the war. The ! profiteers hold strings which, being pulled, make the politicians and the journalists of this fair land dance appropriately. Some Wisconsin people think their State has got a bad name through^ the agency of business rivals in other States. On this-point there is a very interesting communication from a Wisconsin man to the December number of the Atlantic Monthly. At all events an idea has been widely spread through the nation that the Kaiser kept a strong German colony in Wisconsin. lie paid them well, it is said, gave them the full benefit of kultur, taught them to despise Uncle Sam and hamper- his war measures. If the facts were so, then no doubt the Kaiser ought to have protested against; the “coercion” ;of Wisconsin. His colony there was “loyal” to him and to* Jcultur, and it was and is outrageous to force its members into union with aliens, aliens in language, religion, and history, aliens in culture and hvltur. I am ready to believe that many editorial tears have been - shed in Germany over the hard f%te of Wisconsin. What Wisconsin is alleged to be, what political and commercial enemies want us to believe Wisconsin

to be, that Ulster is, an alien colony, artificially created and artificially conserved in the bosom of a nation in the interests of a foreign Power. Ulster is distinctly a “manufactured article,” an artificial product. The creators and preservers of Ulster are the Junkers of England, the men who destroyed the Boer Republic and who are now in power again with Lloyd George as a figurehead to fool the democracy of England and of the world. They have their reasons for holding Ireland, and they are exactly the reasons the Prussians had for holding Belgium, the reasons Captain Kidd had for holding every ship he captured..^But Ulster is their excuse. Ulster was conceived and begotten and nursed and coddled, as an excuse for* the English Junker grip on Ireland. Lloyd George' Asquith, Balfour, and all the other English politicians regularly and periodically remind Ulster of this, its reason for existing. Ulster is, moreover, a garrison, a foreign garrison, now armed partly with English and American armament, partly with weapons graciously supplied by Krupp and the Kaiser before the war, in exchange for hard cash paid by the lords and gentlemen of England. It is the business of this garrison to help hold Ireland for the “superior race,” for the authentic originals of Nietzsche’s supermen. A few of the names of the English patrons of this alien colony in the north-east corner of Ireland may be of interest. The late Duke of Norfolk, “leading Roman Catholic layman on this planet,” according to some of his English friends, was a very mighty potentate indeed in* the organisation that collected and disbursed funds to help Carson fight the Pope, lie contributed liberally to those funds. He stood beside Carson at Liverpool, at Birmingham, London, and all over England, while Carson told the English people of the enormity of the iniquity of putting the Protestants of Ulster under a Home Rule Government

that would represent a majority of Catholics. T* His Grace of Norfolk did not believe that Irishmen are unfit for self-government, nor did he think that ' their religion unfitted them for that task. He merely felt and acknowledged the foreboding that Home Rule for Ireland would be merely one step, but a tremendous step, in advance for real . democracy in the British Isles. Jle and his class, the hereditary legislators, the lords - and . gentlemen ~o England, have little use for real democracy anywhere. In addition' to this hatred of the democratic principle, opposition to Home

Rule was good political tactics on the part of the aristocratic party. In large sections of darkest England, the Protestant drum is , a fine vote-getter. In some corners 1 of England ( and Scotland, ’(in" 1 fact, it..... works almost as well as it does in Florida and Georgia. So (d Norfolk, the; ; Catholic, and Balfour, the Protestant, could- d count -' on coaxing away many sound Protestant English votes from the English. Democratic .party, by merely raising the cry that Home Rule is “Rome Rule.” . ! .‘ ’ | In the eighties of the last century almost all the leaders of the Irish people were ,in gaol at the behest of Mr. Gladstone, who gaoled Parnell on the ground that “the resources of civilisation against : its enemies are not ; exhausted.” Lord Salisbury and the 2 other . leaders of the Tory party then tried to “dish” Gladstone and the Liberals by making a deal with Parnell in gaol. The Tories were to grant Home Rule while the Irish .Party .was to vote with the Tories in ' the House of ‘Commons. If that deal had gone through, then-1 have no doubt the Liberals would have become the champions of Ulster, the creators and upholders of the Rome Rule bogey. i It is principally a matter of political tactics between the two English parties; the best men on each side, such as Morley for the Liberals and Wyndham for the Tories, have confessed that Ireland is little more than the shuttlecock of English party-politics. T

Other eminent Tories who patronise Ulster are, or were, Lord Charles Beresford, Sir John JeUicoe, the late Lord Roberts, the late Earl Kitchener, Lord French, General Gough, who let the Germans through at St. Quentin , in . March, . 1918, after receiving his promotion as a reward for his services to Carson. With them were associated- all the leading figures in London :“society.” Thus the English navy, the English army, and society were behind the Ulster sham. Society in London consists of two elements: first, the real blue blood that comes down from William the Conqueror; second, the rich brewers, bankers, and pork butchers who buy titles and peerages and pedigrees for good coin of the realm. This second element corresponds to our “big-money” element, just as the first element corresponds to our New England, and Virginia and New York aristocracy. When Lloyd George belonged to the Liberal or Democratic party and was fighting to free the Methodists and Baptists of his native Wales from the incubus of an established Episcopal Church, he gave to the nobility and gentry of England who supported and were supported by that incubus, the name of “the British Peerage,” because the humble pewter beer-tankard provided most

of the funds that paid for most of the titles and pedigrees of those exalted persons. That gentry has been the butt of-English satirists from Swift to Meredith. The superstitious awe with which so many Englishmen look up to them invited the caustic wit of Thackeray. These heterogeneous assemblages of privileged persons instinctively resent anything that helps the toiler or the poor ; they instinctively feel that to make the poor comfortable, to give them education, to gi\ 7 e them political rights, is to endanger the citadel of privilege. That is the secret of their hatred of Ireland. That is

the reason for the manufacture and ' the upkeep of Ulster. Ireland would quickly absorb and assimilate (the alien colony in the north-east corner of Ulster, if the powerful alien sustenance and stimulus were withdrawn. A London Tory paper on the Ulster question is about as reliable as a Wall Street organ on an American labor problem, or an American profiteering scandal. The British Peerage keeps old sores open in Ulster and opens new ones by a most powerful and ’{heavily financed propaganda. Right down to the middle of the war the English army and navy were ; the family property of the aristocracy. * And it was this control of the army and navy that terrified King George and Lloyd George and Asquith into annulling ((the British Constitution by killing a . Home Rule measure that had passed through ? all the constitutional 'stages several times. ... -Military rule in the strictest sense annulled and suspended the British

Constitution in the case of Home .Rule, merely because Home Rule threatened the interests and defied the Junker prejudices of the privileged class that owned the army and navy. ’ /.■•■■■ ■'.'V - I f£4‘. English 5 democrats are familiar with this glaring fact. 1 They all know that Tr and realises that Ulster* is a‘ mere pretence, an excuse manufactured: to throw a rag of democratic decency over the naked Junkerism of the English aristocracy. And those English democrats fear that Lloyd George will; prove to be too .weak a dilution of democracy in the new Junker Government. ; Hitherto the lords and gentlemen of England - of inherited- or purchased pedigrees have felt it safe to. perform the experiment of sabre-rattling govern-, ment in the Irish body politic. --They have not felt it quite safe to use army, navy, finance, and society against the vital interests of the English people,, at all events since the-Chartist movement of the thirties

of the last century. But now they have a big majority in the new English Parliament, mainly due to Lloyd George’s war record and his radical social programme. English Democrats fear that the lords and gentlemen with or without the co-operation of Lloyd George, will- try to revive their ancient privilege of ruling by sabre and bullet in England as well as in Ireland. The rule of the sabre and the bullet in England is the ultimate aim and the logical consequence ‘.the scheme of the schemers who manufactured and sustained and who work the Ulster sham and • bogey. * And this is the reason why the Chestertons, - the. Wellses, the Massinghams, the Morleys, the Burnses, and all the thinking Democrats of England hate the very name of Ulster. For Ulster 'suggests to them the horrors of privilege and caste from which England tried to free herself by revolution after revolutioil. , ’ -'T.i.O

Let nobody blame Ulster. Inanimate puppets are not responsible. Let the blame fall on the wily tricksters who manufactured the puppet and pull the strings, and they are the Junkers of England. Part of the Junker plan is to'direct attention to the antics of their Belfast puppet and then talk about 'lrish disunion. This patent fraud seems to deceive some well-meaning persons in America. “No-Popery,” yells the Belfast gramophone. “Irish dissension,” say the American dupes of the London operator of the gramophone. ..?