What About the League?

New Zealand Tablet, 20 October 1921, Page 15

What About the League?

The Government has decreed (says the New Witness ) that the League of Nations shall decide on the Polish claims; and the first and most obvious question to ask just now is why it should not pronounce on the Irish claims also. If the Prime Minister says that the League of Nations cannot pronounce upon England and Ireland, he is uttering a most crushing disparagement of the League of Nations at the very moment when he is invoking it to decide upon Poland and Prussia. The League of Nations can be of very little use in Europe if it cannot decide on any of those quarrels about small nationalities and oppressed peoples, that were the principal dangers to peace in Europe. If the League could never have studied any, subject nationalities, we may be perfectly certain that it could never have prevented any wars. If it could not hayo ventured to criticise Turkey in its treatment of Bulgaria, it certainly would not have prevented Russia from coming to the rescue of Bulgaria. If it had been unable to comment, on Austrian oppression in Italy, it certainly would not have prevented Franco from coming to the rescue of Italy. If it dared not whisper a Word to Prussia' about Alsace, it would certainly not have been able, by any whispering or shouting, to persuade the French to forego an ultimate revanche; which, by the way, does not. mean . revenge, but rather restitution. The League of Nations is supposed to adjudge The questions on which great nations quarrel; and on what question do they quarrel so

much as on the position of subject nations? According to this theory, Poland is now called upon to accept whatever she is given by the League of Nations. But she could not have been given anything when she. needed it most. When Poland was utterly prostrate before. Prussia, and the two other robbers who were the more reluctant accomplices of Prussia, then by this theory Poland was precisely and literally in the 'position of Ireland. The three sections of Poland were three provinces which were the lawful property of three empires, and could not therefore be considered by any foreign tribunal. Yet everybody in his five wits knows'that the nation, thus dismembered but alive, was a more dangerous element in the peace of Europe than if she had been independent and secure. It was when the cries of the tortured nationality rang across the continent, when her crucifixion was lifted before all men as an ensign of revolt, when the world was full of the smoke of her smouldering wrath, it was in that most perilous of all periods that, according to this argument, Poland did not even exist. Now this is the real fallacy that will ruin us; the fiction that nations do not exist when they do exist. The

fundamental folly of the modern English has been simply this: that they thought they could be patriots without being nationalists. If there be such a thing as a nation, England is a nation, and Ireland is a nation. Because England is a nation we are patriots; and because we are patriots we desire to see these two nations so connected that our own nation shall be protected from danger. But because Ireland is a nation, we must base all our argument upon the fact that she is a nation, and recognise that it is a mere matter of legal accident whether she happens to be a subject nation. If the League of Nations sets out to settle any quarrel between nations, this is an absolutely typical quarrel between nations. Indeed, it is one of the very few quarrels between nations in which the passion of patriotism, and no lower passion, is really the popular force on both sides. We can understand a man saying on behalf of either of the two patriotisms, that the League of Nations is too thin and theoretical a thing to be called in against anything so positive as patriotism. But in that case, why should it be. called in about something so positive as, Poland? We can understand anybody expressing a fear that the League mightbo merely the tool of f add ism or favoritism, or, worst of all, financial enterprise. But why should the poor Poles

be torn in pieces by faddists and financiers any more than anybody else? Poland is a nation, and its claims are those of a nation; but it was just as much of a nation when it was not called a republic. Whether or no Ireland becomes a republic like Poland, what we have to face first of all is that she has never ceased to be a nation like Poland. - We may offer her what we consider a reasonable compromise of self-government, just as Russia offered such a concession to Poland just before the war. We may hope the matter may be settled so, by a dominion democracy under. the British King, as Russians might reasonably hope the Polish problem could be settled by a separate kingdom under a Russian prince. Perhaps it might have been, settled so: perhaps it would have been as successfully settled so; perhaps Poland might have been fully a free nation under a foreign prince. But anyhow, we have already admitted that Poland must be a free nation by granting her a .free republic. Anything else must have been a matter of special arrangement: and anything else in Ireland must be a matter of special arrangement. That is the vital thing to seize: that if we really wish to carry through our compromise, the first thing to realise is that

it is a compromise. It is not an "extreme measure, of self-government." It is a moderate measure of nationality. If we can still imagine that Ireland regards herself as something like Rutland, we may call it an extreme and even extravagant vision for a Rutland County, Connoil. But if we are sufficiently wide awake, and in possession of our wits, to know that Ireland regards herself as a thing like Poland, then it is obvious that we are giving less and not more than was given to Poland, even by those who tried to deprive her of Dantzig, and are trying to deprive her of Silesia. In short, the moral of the whole matter is the moral of innumerable modern' controversies. It is that confusion is quite as much the enemy of compromise as it is the enemy of completion. \

If we are to make a compromise between two claims we must have those two claims stated clearly, and even stated strongly. We must understand our own first principles and the other party's first , principles; we must see where both start before we see where both can meet. A great deal of well-meaning rhetoric has been poured out recently

in praise of Abraham Lincoln; chiefly by people who seem to be quite incapable of the intellectual virtues that Lincoln really possessed. The real lesson of Lincoln is not the value of lecturing other people about righteousness, but the value of asking yourself, by the (painful effort of thought, what you really think right. Lincoln could compromise because he knew where lie differed fundament-ally from the other man, and where he did not. In a phrase which is drearily vulgarised and wildly misunderstood, he did in reality know his own mind. The phrase is now generally used about some stupid bully who prefers to do without a mind. When a man really knows his mind, and knows the other man's mind, they can begin to bargain. Now Ave do not see how Mr. de Valera could very well have opened the discussion otherwise than as he did. Seeing that he is not only the leader of a Republican Party, but actually the President of a Republic (in his own eyes at any rate), it is simply inconceivable that he could have made his first speech to the English people without even asking for a Republic. If he had suddenly forgotten the v very word separation, his followers would have been justified, not so much in shooting him as a traitor, as in locking him up as a lunatic. It is perfectly manifest that, on his own principles, he must regard Ireland as having a right to an independent republic, and that he must say so. But he also said something else, which is worthy of consideration. He said that what he had been expecting, and we may suspect what he is still hoping for, was a treaty between England and Ireland, apparently to cover the questions of common defence. Reading between the lines of a document that was constrained to be a sort of defiance, we can certainly infer from this that the Irish leader is not by any means blind to the real English difficulty, arising out of the real English danger. On the principle of knowing our own minds, we must repeat to ourselves that the real English stipulation is for the adequate defence of England. Whether that is achieved along with liberty for a republic, or loyalty to a monarchy, may be a matter of importance but it is certainly one of secondary importance. On one side at least it may be called a matter of words; at any rate their republic will be much more reJ publican than our monarchy is monarchical. For the rest, Empire may come before England for some cosmopolitan imperialists; but it comes a very long way after England for us. If we could absolutely ensure for ever the independence of England, we should not be worried by the independence of Ireland. But we do want to insure it, while the bargain is going and that is what the bargain is really about. We care very much less about whether the bargain is called a treaty than about what are the terms of the treaty, even if it is a treaty. That the Irish Republican leader should begin by calling it a treaty seems to us utterly natural and inevitable. What will be said next nobody knows; the essential for the moment both in Ireland and Poland is to keep the door open for reason; and the danger is that the door may be slammed, in the one case by Prussia and in the other by Prussianism.

THE ORANGEMEN'S IDEA OF SUPERIOR CIVILISATION The following news item was published in the New York World of Tuesday, from its Irish correspondent (says the Brooklyn Tablet for August 27): . * "Two men yesterday entered Tyrone Street, in Belfast, which is almost wholly inhabited by Catholics, and, having warned some Protestant residents to take their children indoors, flung a bomb at a group of children and young people, five of whom were seriously wounded, one young woman named Flanagan, it is feared, fatally. The bombers have not been caught. The object of this outrage is believed to be to provoke " reprisals from* the Catholics, who, being largely outnumbered and the Orangemen having their own special police fully armed to protect ihem, always come off worst in these . outbreaks. The bombing followed an open air Orange meeting signalised by violent denunciation of the peace /•proposals.'' '" '\' ' •_*-.*■ .j i