LAW AND ORDER IN IRELAND.

Shannon News, 2 October 1923, Page 4

LAW AND ORDER IN IRELAND.

One of the most active contributors to public discussion of Irish affairs is Mr Darrell Figgis, who was for seven years one of the leaders of Sinn Fein, was chairman of the convention that drafted the Free State constitution, and is now a prominent member of its legislature. He has lately contributed ta the “North American Review an article in which he makes a rapid survey of the causes of Irish unrest. In the course of it, he says: Law and order are the bequests of tradition, of experience remembered in the blood, of venerable practice and hiabit. In Ireland, however, experience, tradition, practice, and habit all run the other way. Law and order, instead of being a mystic good, have been a mysterious evil, against which children have been taught to rebel. In veneration of antiquity, and in hope of the future of their country. In other, countries an unarmed policeman has been clothed with so mysterious an authority that his very appearance brings a majesty and begets a fear that no soldier in full panoply of war can arouse. In Ireland a policeman has to be regarded as an enemy-soldier. He has been armed and equipped in this expecta-* tion'. No majesty about him. So far from being the will of the people incarnate, he has represented the thwarting of the people’s will; and even when he pursued acknowledged criminals, he was left to Ms pursuit alone, because of the memory that he would be as willing to pursue acknowledged patriots. These things cannot be forgotten in an hour or undone in a day. What other - nations have slowly built up cannot be wrought in Ireland in the twinkling of an eye. It can only be wrought by conscious teachings and conscious effort, under the most favourable conditions, which Ireland has been denied. Where other -peoples rely on the unconscious memory, Ireland must f°r many years rely on conscious effort and deliberate will. How the embarrassment of this lack of veneration for law and order is aggravated into a menace to the stability of the new Government is shown by Mr Figgis. When the armistice was called in the mid-summer of 1921, there were some thousands of young men, many of them little more than boys, in the country,, between the receptive ages of 17 and 22, who had never been employed, had never worked, were all armed. Not all of them had fought consistently in the late war. Indeed, the active “flying columns’’ had at no time embraced more than a few thousand, Buf they were all armed, and they were all idle, and they were all accustefiaed to scenes of fire, fury, and destruction. During the armistice many more o,f this idle youth (including thousands who had steered a careful course when danger was about) were enrolled and armed. These, in the nature of tMngs, included some of the worst,, and certainly the most restless, elements in the country; and added to the menace that already existed a peril of the gravest kind. All lay with their leaders. Had these leaders remained united, this trained and disciplined youth mght have been turned to enormous good, and the country have been saved from the peril created by the existence of such a force. If all their leaders had unitedly accepted the treaty brought back from London, the armed youth of the nation would have stood by that result; and constructive development of the country’s resources could have been begun without delay for the creation of industries and employment. But when the leaders broke asunder in bitter recrimination, the rank and file Blipped from the heights of idealism to which they so often have been lifted, and to which they could always again have been lifted, and fell into the depth of violence and desperate carelessness, and, ultimately, criminality, which had always been the fearful alternative awaiting them, A n d presently the country, t’Q which so great an opportunity of development had been offered, was full of desperate, ofttimes fearless men, who laid the country waste and in ruins, all in the name of high ideals, but the majority a prey to their worst, untutored instincts.