WILL ULSTER FIGHT?

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 303, 19 June 1912, Page 4

WILL ULSTER FIGHT?

With the progress of the Home Rule Bill through the conjmittee stage we are hearing less of the possibilities of civil war i* Ireland as a result of the probable passage of the measure. The subject will, however, undoubtedly be raised again when the debatable clauses are reached, and the many Unionist amendments in the directions of exempting certain provinces are discussed. In the meantime the reactionary revolutionists are a little less virulent in their comments, and probably a good deal of the expostulatory and defiant criticism is dlue more to the Irish temperament than to any honesty of conviction that the only alternative to a continuance of the Union is anarchy. Writing on this subject in the Westminster Gazette a correspondent savs:—"Those who talk most glibly about the determination of Belfast to resist Home Rule by force speak in the language of the Belfast of the past. Fot a great change has already come over the thriving city of northern Ireland. The town is realising itself as a place of importance and of dignity which can no longer afford to indulge in the pranks of hot-headed youth. Belfast, with its magnificent city hall, its streets of rich shops, and its notable public buildings, would be a city to sack, but the citizens themselves have the strongest objection to any public movement which endangers the property. 'A riot here means that our windows are broken and our shops are looted,' said a tradesman in one of the principal thoroughfares. There can be little surprise that the man who talks loudly about what will be done if a Home Rule Bill is passed goes home and, surveying his possession, prays that the older temper will not be again born in the people One cannot but think of the whole proceedings in connection with Mr. Churchill's visit to Belfast without feeling, that there is a dleepseated change in the chief city of Ulster. The religious feud is not so potent as it was, despite every effort to keep it alive. Belfast is "less turbulent and more responsible. It was not for nothing that the whole of the engineers of violence came from outside the city. Few people in Belfast have any fixed belief that the town would rise against Home Rule. Turbulence,' if it comes, will come from the more rural districts which have not had the educative influences at work in a great industrial area. There the old spirit of antagonism is still kept alive as a fiery flame, fan:ned! by the heated blasts-from Unionist leaders which can be studied in the long reports of their speeches in the Ulster papers. Belfast is too occupied with its own affairs, too confident of itself, to be readily stirred to any movement which would endanger its prosperity. The feuds which will arise in Belfast are far more likely to spring from conflicts between capital and labor than- from religious or political differences. Andl the Belfast citizen in his moments of quiet talk reveals himself as conscious of that 'truth."