The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, September 20, 1913. ULSTER AND HOME RULE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1148, 20 September 1913, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, September 20, 19 13. ULSTER AND HOME RULE.

Thk ordinary Liberal is (says the Spectator) suffering under a complete delusion about Ulster. If you tell him that he is burying his head in the sand and avoiding the sight of the dangers that surround him and his policy, he will only smjle at you and tell you that he is perfectly happy and that Ulster is not going to be the cause of the slightest embarrassment. He thinks that he will be able to receive the slashings of the Ulster sabre on a feather bed, and after the feather bed has been struck at long enough without result, the “chivalry” of Ulster will have to own itself beaten. It will be a case ot the Ulsterman killed with kindness. Those who think thus are living in a fool’s paradise. The loyalists of Ulster, high and low, are in earnest, and the loyalists ot Ulster are not fools. This means that they know that those who stand on the defensive are always beaten. They recognise quite clearly that if they want to win they must attack. In short, as soon as the Bill is passed into law, a force stronger than reason —the sense of selt-preservatioo—-will drive them to attack. The Southerners in the American Civil War fired on Fort Sumpter, not with any deep-laid Machiavelian design, but because the conditions obliged them .to have recourse to the defender’s best form of defence —assault. What is the moral for the Liberals who feel that they cannot give up Home Rule ? In the first place it is to exclude North-East Ulster altogether from the operation of the Home Rule Bill, and thus prevent civil war. Such exclusion will prevent any recourse to arms. If they cannot or will not do that, then the next best thing is for them to consent to a general election or, what course would be far fairer and better, a referendum, before the final passing of the Home Rule Bill under the Parliament Act. If that referendum or general election takes place, it will go either for Home Rule or against it. If it goes against it, there will be no more difficulty in Ulster. The Union will remain—the Government which divides Ireland least. If Home Rule is carried at the polls, as most Liberals tell us it would be, then, though the danger would not be over, the danger of insurrection in Ulster would be very greatly modified. It is true that the Ulster people in the abstract say they would not submit even to the openly-expressed will of the majority to force them under a Dublin Parliament. As a matter of fact, however, they would fee dominated by a great popular vote in favour of Home Rule. Such a popular endorsement of the Bill would prevent the English or Scottish Unionists from offering them any help. It would do more. It would actually cause Unionists to do all in their power to discourage .insurrection and resistance. Ulstermen, brave and reckless though they are, would feel the tremendous weight of a popular vote against them. Therefore any sincere Liberal who is bent upon forcing the Home Rule Bill upon Ulster is bound to use this most potent instrument befoie he uses the bayonet, the rifle and the machine gun. If the people of England and Scotland ate. not determined upon having Home Rule, it will never stand. If they are determined upon it, it is obviously to the interests of everyone that they should be allowed to make that determination clear at a general election, and by doing so to simplify the task of overcoming Protestant resistance in the north-east of Ireland. To coerce Ulster and then at a general election to find too late that the people of England and Scotland did not approve of a Home Rule Bill which iucltided Ulster--what a policy, what statesmanship, what a way for humanitarians to gamble with the lives of their fellow men !