tates
was disintegration, one which must continually threaten all
nationalities compounded out of great massed populations. Lincoln
therefore made the main issue of the war the right of a single state or
a confederation of states to secede from the main tribe or union. The
Civil War determined the issue in favour of the North: the natural
process of tribal disruption was declared illegal. Lloyd George's task
was of a different nature. He touched and wakened Britain's sleeping
tribal instincts with the insight of genius. War gave him his
opportunity, but had he not known that tribal instincts lie deeply
buried in man's emotional nature and are intertwined with his most
primitive feeling he could not have known how to touch the ancient
strings. Intellectual appeals had failed to stir the primitive and basal
tribal impulses of the people.

THE PROBLEM OF IRELAND

There was one part of the country, however, where Lloyd George's appeal
did not succeed in evoking British patriotism; it left the greater part
of the people of Ireland not only apathetic but even more actively
hostile than before. Yet their country formed an intrinsic part of these
islands; their economic interests had much more to gain by the success
of Britain than of Germany. History throws light on only part of this
thorny problem; the real difficulty thus encountered dates back to
prehistoric days--to the origin of the inherent, inherited, and
deeply-rooted tribal instincts of the Irish people. The Irish spirit
leapt up, as it had often done before, into a naming tribal antagonism
directed against everything British. What then is a British statesman to
do? We too have our tribal instincts, and their first impulse on being
awakened is--as it was in ancient days--to meet force with force, even
to extermination. That is the ancient tribal practice; but in these
days we have entered another era in the world's history when intelligent
effort must master and direct our inherited instincts. Statesmen know
that forcible means, when applied to extinguish a national flame, only
serve to feed it. Statecraft has never discovered, and I think it never
will discover, a method of forcing or grafting a new national or tribal
spirit on an old people. We have seen that a nation can colonize only
when the force which drives its members to migrate arises spontaneously
within the communities; a colonization initiated and conducted by a
government always fails to hold. Nation