But if, for argument’s sake, a so-called settlement is arrived at, what becomes of De Valera’s Frankenstein monster?
Will it beat its automatics into reaping-hooks and convert its machine-guns into potato-sprayers? Possibly in the minds of English Radicals, but nowhere else.
And when the Welshman and the Mexican have fooled the English and the southern Irish with a formula, do they think that any formula ever phrased would fool Ulster?
On the day that an Irish Republic is set up (Dominion Home Rule is only another name for it), Sinn Fein, its _raison d’être_ accomplished, dies; but out of its corpse will arise two parties, or rather armies (for all men in Ireland are armed to-day except the Loyalists), one consisting of the farmer shopkeeper class, while the other will be the Citizen Army of the Bolshevist Labour Party.
The rank and file of the I.R.A. consists of farmers’ sons, young townsmen, shop assistants, and the like; they expect either a fat pension for life or twenty acres of land. Both have been freely promised to them, and both are equally impossible.
And these disgruntled gunmen, all armed, will take sides according to their sympathies, and before many months are past these forces will be at each other’s throats. And the national air of Ireland will be the “Red Flag.”
Like Kerensky in Russia, De Valera will disappear in the welter of revolution.
The R.I.C. will have vanished—they have already been told that when the “Cease fire” sounds, they will be given a month to clear out of Ireland, lock, stock, and barrel.
The surrender to Sinn Fein by the British Government is a good example of the evil which can be brought about by that modern plague, skilful and unscrupulous propaganda.
The sooner the good elements in England wake up and combine to insist that the necessary action is taken in Ireland to enforce law and order, the better it will be for both countries and the Empire.
The English people have been fooled by a press which carefully suppressed all news of the true state of affairs in Ireland, and then gave lying and distorted accounts.
It is futile to say that the remedy for false reports lies with the law. All honest men know that a clever lawyer in a court of law can make a half or three-quarter black lie appear a whole truth white as driven snow, as easily as a smart and up-to-date accountant can juggle with a balance-sheet to show + or - half a million as the necessity arises.