pline, despite ambushes, assassinations and outrages, often designed to provoke retaliation for the purposes of propaganda, are becoming increasingly infrequent. I venture to believe that when the history of the past nine months in Ireland comes to be written, and the authentic acts of misconduct can be disentangled from the vastly greater mass of reckless and lying accusations, the general record of patience and forbearance displayed by the sorely tried police, by the auxiliaries as well as by the ordinary Constabulary, will command not the condemnation but the admiration of posterity.
The deplorable condition of Ireland Mr. Lloyd George as- cribed mainly to the intransigeance of Sinn Fein:
I do not wish to minimize in the least Great Britain's share of responsibility for the present state of the Irish question. But at last all parties in Great Britain had united, in the general elec- tion of 1918, in asking and securing from the electorate a mandate to give to Ireland the Home Rule which had been pleaded for by Gladstone and asked for by all the leaders of Irish Nationalism since Isaac Butt, including Parnell, Dillon and Redmond. The only un- settled question was the treatment of Ulster, and as to that, both the Liberal party had recognized in 1914, and the Irish Nationalists in 1916, that if there was to be a peaceful settlement Ulster must have separate treatment.
Sinn Fein rejected Home Rule and demanded in its place an Irish Republic for the whole of Ireland. Sinn Fein went further. It deliberately set to work to destroy conciliation and constitutional methods, because it recognized that violence was the only method by which it could realize a Republic. The rebellion of 1916 was its first blow to conciliation and reason. Its refusal to take part in the Convention was the second. Its proclamation of a Republic by the Dail Eireann and abstention from Westminster was the third. Its inauguration of the policy of murder and assassination in order to defeat Home Rule, rather than to discuss the Home Rule bill in Parliament or enter upon direct conference outside, was the fourth.
I do not think that anybody can doubt that the principal reason why the war did not bring a peaceful settlement, and why Ireland is more deeply divided to-day than it has ever been, has been the determination of Sinn Fein to prevent such a settlement and to fight for a republic instead.
But there is another aspect of the question to which I must allude. Sinn Fein does not confine its activities to attacks on servants of the Crown. It has inaugurated a reign of terror in Ireland which is certainly equal to anything in Irish history. Its hold on the country is due partly, no doubt, to the fanatical enthusiasm it invokes, but partly it is due to terrorism of the most extreme kind. Its opponents in Ireland are murdered ruthlessly, usually without any form of trial, with no chance of pleading their case, simply because the Sinn Fein leaders think them better out of the way.
The case of Sir Arthur Vicars l has excited horror because it is the murder of a well-known man. But it is only typical of what is going on all over the country. I may mention two other instances.
In the first, William P. Kennedy, a Nationalist Irishman of the school of Dillon, refused to close his premises, at Borris, county Carlow, on the occasion of the death of Lord Mayor McSwiney of Cork. 2 He was boycotted, and thereupon took an action for damages against a number of his enemies, Michael O'Dempsey being his solicitor. A short while after, both Kennedy and O'Dempsey were shot from behind a wall in front of Kennedy's house.
In the second case William Good, an ex-captain in the army, who had resumed his studies at Trinity College, Dublin,, after being demobilized, returned home to attend the funeral of his father who had been murdered at his own door a few days before. He drove in I to Bandon on marketing business. On his return he was waylaid by armed and masked men, carried some way and done to death, the following notice being found: "Tried, convicted, and executed; spies and informers beware."
The last two cases seem even worse. The first was the atrocious case recorded in the newspapers of April 8, where an unarmed, defenceless, and war-crippled ex-soldier was murdered with revolting brutality in the presence of his mother and sister, who were spattered with his blood. The second is in the papers this morning, where a poor woman named Kitty Carroll, the sole support of her aged father and mother and invalid brother, was dragged from her house by a party of masked men, who murdered her and attached to her body this legend: " Spies and informers beware! Tried, convicted, and executed by I.R.A." 3
I cite these cases because I think it is essential that people should realize the character of the Sinn Fein policy, the principles upon which it acts, and the nature of its campaign. Sinn Fein has never issued any condemnation of murder. Assassination and outrage
1 Formerly Ulster King-at-Arms and head of the Irish Heralds College. He was dragged from his house by a roving band of armed men on the night of April 14 1921 and riddled with bullets, his house being burned.
2 He died as the result of a hunger strike of 63 days on Oct. 25 1920 in Brixton prison. This ended the policy of hunger strikes.
3 She had rashly given information, through post, to the police of the existence of a still for the illicit distribution of whisky. This came out after the date of the Prime Minister's letter.
are the weapons which it has deliberately chosen as the means by which it is to gain its ends. I should like to repeat that it was not until over 100 of their comrades had been cruelly assassinated that the police began to strike a blow in self-defence. . . . The present state of affairs is due to one cause, and one cause only that there is still an irreconcilable difference between the two sides. The one side or, rather, the group which controls it stands for an inde- pendent Irish Republic; the other stands for maintenance in funda- mentals of the Union, together with the completes! self-government for Ireland within the Empire which is compatible with conceding to Ulster the same right of self-determination within Ireland as Nationalist Ireland has claimed within the Union. . . _.
A truce in itself will not bridge the gulf, though it might be useful if there were any doubt on either side as to where the other stands, or a basis for discussion were in sight. What really matters, if we are to attain to peace, is that a basis for a permanent settlement should be reached.
I fully admit, and I have always admitted, that the declared policy of Sinn Fein and the policy of His Majesty's Government are irreconcilable. I believe that the policy of establishing an Irish Republic is impossible for two reasons; first, because it is incom- patible with the security of Great Britain and with the existence of the British commonwealth ; and second, because if it were conceded it would mean civil war in Ireland for Ulster would certainly resist incorporation in an Irish Republic by force and in this war hun- dreds of thousands of people, not only from Great Britain but from all over the world, would hasten to take part.
On the other hand, I believe that the policy of the Government the maintenance in fundamentals of the unity of the kingdom, coupled with the immediate establishment of two parliaments in Ireland with full powers to unite on any terms upon which they can agree upon themselves is not only the sole practical solution, but one which is both just and wise in itself.
But the present struggle is not about the Home Rule Act at all. Fundamentally the issue is the same as that in the War of North and South in the United States between secession and union.
At the outbreak of the great American struggle nearly everybody in these islands sympathized with the South and was against the North. Even Gladstone took this view. Only John Bright never wavered in his adherence to Lincoln's cause. That war lasted four years. It cost a million lives and much devastation and ruin. There was more destruction of property in a single Confederate county than in all the so-called " reprisals " throughout the whole of Ireland.
Lincoln always rejected alike truce and compromise. As he often said, he was fighting for the Union and meant to save it even if he could only do so at the price of retaining slavery in the South. . . .
Is not our policy exactly the same? It is by reason of the con- tiguity of the two islands and their strategic and economic inter- dependence that it is necessary to fight secession and to maintain the fundamental unity of our ancient kingdom of many nations from Flamborough Head to Cape Clear, and from Cape Wrath to Land's End. I believe that our ideal of combining unity with Home Rule is a finer and a nobler ideal than that excessive nationalism which will take nothing less than isolation, which is Sinn Fein's creed to- day, and which if it had full play would Balkanize the world. . . .
I do not see, therefore, how we can pursue a different line of policy. It has never been our policy to refuse compromise about anything but the Union itself and the non-coercion of Ulster. Throughout the whole of last year when the Home Rule bill was before Parliament, I invited negotiations with the elected representa- tives of Ireland, stating that the only points I could not discuss were the secession of Ireland and the forcing of Ulster into an Irish Parliament against its will. . . .
To these overtures there was never a reply. And there has never been a reply, for the good reason that the real Sinn Fein organization is not yet ready to abandon its ideal of an independent Irish Re- public, including Ulster. That there are many Sinn Feiners who recognize the folly and impossibilism of this attitude is certain. But I regret that no less certainly up to the present the directing minds of the Sinn Fein movement, who control the Irish Republican army the real obstacle to peace believe that they can ultimately win a republic by continuing to fight, as they fight to-day, and are resolutely opposed to compromise. . . .
So long as the leaders of Sinn Fein stand in this position, and receive the support of their countrymen, settlement, is in my judg- ment, impossible. The Government of which I am the head will never give way upon the fundamental question of secession. Nor do I believe that any alternative Government could do so either.
Such was the situation when, on May 2 1921, the new Lord Lieutenant took the oath of office, with all the old world cere- monial, in Dublin Castle. The realities of the situa- tion were more clearly suggested three days later. On May 5 Sir James Craig, the Ulster leader, ac- viceroy. cepted an invitation to a conference with the Sinn Fein " President," Mr. De Valera. Rumour was rife as to the significance of this meeting. Sinn Fein had declared " war "
