PRESIDENT WILSON ON IRELAND.

New Zealand Tablet, 29 May 1919, Page 13

PRESIDENT WILSON ON IRELAND.

• ' In a*book written by President Wilson 30 years ago, when he was a^ young man '(says- the Catholic Press);- there ; are gsome very sapient sentences on the, relation of ; - minoritiesand of majorities to the law;} together with a very pointed reference to the misgoveminent of Ireland as an example of the truth of his sayings on this subject. In view of the President’s unique position as the personage capable of exercising in the Peace . Conference more potent influence than any other member of it upon questions involving the' fate of small;, nations, it is only right, in the highest interests of Ireland and of international justice, that his remarks upon the iniquity of the system under} which Ireland is denied freedom should be given the widest publicity. Mr. ... Wilson wrote r—“ The power... ofthe community’ must support law or the law must be without effect. The bayonets of a minority cannot long successfully seek out the persistent disobediences of the majority. The majority must acquiesce or the law must be null. “This principle is strikingly illustrated,’.’ continued the future President, “in the inefficiency of the English repressive laws in Ireland. The consent of the Irish community is not behind them, though the strength of England is, and they fail utterly, as all laws must which lack at least the passive acquiescence of those whom they concern.” These weighty words are reproduced from the President’s learned and cogently reasoned book, The State- Elements of Historical and Practical Politics, written in 1889, when he was Professor of Jurisprudence and Politics in Princeton University. Ireland will be intensely anxious to know whether President Wilson adheres to the principle enunciated in. his younger days when he .referred so scathingly to the scandal of Publish misrule ,of Ireland, and whether he will stand up for it at the Peace Conference. This principle in relation to Ireland applies with the same force as when laid down by the President three decades ago —indeed, with infinitely greater force now in view of the refinement of Prussianism marking the coercive activities of the military regime in that country. Lit era script a mancf. If Ireland should, fail to secure the right of self-determination by means of the Peace Conference, history will judge President Wilson’s record in connection with her fate by the standard of right which he proclaimed in the extracts taken from his book.