THE LONDON NATION ON THE IRISH SITUATION.

New Zealand Tablet, 15 July 1920, Page 30

THE LONDON NATION ON THE IRISH SITUATION.

The Nation in a recent issue, attacks Mr Lloyd George’s reply to the railwaymen of Ireland, and says: “We are moving towards a war not for order and security, and for the protection of a minority, but because the Prime Minister is prepared to sacrifice a million lives for the naked right to control another people. ' “Within 18 months of the armistice we have stepped into the shoes of the enemies whom our soldiers destroyed. We use their weapons, we talk their language, and are succeeding to their place in the esteem of the world by methods borrowed from them. “We have brought a people who had no thought of breaking with Britain five years ago into a demand for complete independence. Having driven them to this, we do not reason, but we threaten to use the full weight of our naval and military power. “If the Irish workmen refuse to help to send aeroplanes to bomb their friends, perhaps their wives and children, we reply that it would be easy to organise an .Irish famine. Mr Lloyd George admitted to another deputation that they were starving Russia, and Ireland is a good deal smaller and nearer. “We cannot believe,” the paper concludes, “that the British people are so wanting .in generosity and prudence to sanction this adventure.”