erned--or she may
make such a final compact with Ireland that she can afterwards maintain
before the whole world, without fear of contradiction, that Ireland is
freely one with England without the help of a single soldier.

It's really more important than winning the war, if Englishmen could
only realize it--for the psychology of Ireland is the psychology of
every one of the constituent nations of our common Empire; and the late
Mr. Stead used to say to me, "A blunder in Irish government is a blunder
in Imperial government"; but I never realized this so much as when I
learnt with what an intense interest the Indian students present in
Dublin had followed the whole case.

When the Irish leader, therefore, in the acuteness of the moment
expressed the hope that no party would be allowed to make capital out of
the event, he expressed a hope which was re-echoed in every Irish
breast; but it would have been far more effective if he had instead
expressed the hope that each party should bear its proper share in the
guilt of the catastrophe.

For the danger is the making of the Sinn Feiners into a national
scapegoat for the faults of all.

For in a sense all were responsible. True, neither Redmondites nor
Carsonites took any part in it--and it is very lucky they did not, for
it would have meant civil war and fearful bloodshed from one end of the
country to the other--but in neither case was it out of any love for
England, for both of them fully realized that they might have been in
the position of the Sinn Feiners themselves, and both were equally
determined to rid Ireland of English meddlers.

It might almost be called a "tragedy of errors," for there was nothing
but blundering all round. England should never have allowed Carson to
arm, nor should Redmond have followed suit if he wished to play the
constitutional game to the end; but once both had appealed to the
principle of physical force, neither had a right to censure the methods
of a third party which had arisen out of their own incapacity to keep
the country in hand.

England was in principle perfectly justified in employing force against
the whole three of them, and hastened to take full advantage of the
situation by handing the reins of government over to the military--but
that was the greatest blunder of the lot.

For there can be no doubt that to the rank and file of the Sinn Feiners,
as to the rank and file of the Orangemen, physical force was not an end
in