men in Ulster and our countrymen in the rest of Ireland, who
have denounced each other so vehemently, should at last appear to
have exchanged characteristics: why in the North, having passionately
protested against physical force movements, no-rent manifestos, and
contempt for Imperial Parliament, they should have come themselves at
last to organize a physical force movement, should threaten to pay no
taxes, and should refuse obedience to an Act of Parliament. We will
understand also why it was their opponents came themselves to address to
Ulster all the arguments and denunciations Ulster had addressed to them.
I do not point this out with intent to annoy, but to illustrate by late
history a law in national as well as human psychology. If this unpopular
psychology I have explained was adopted everywhere as true, we would
never hear expressions of hate. People would realize they were first
revealing and then stabbing their own characters before the world.

Nations act towards other nations as their own citizens act towards each
other. When slavery existed in a State, if that nation attacked
another it was with intent to enslave. Where there is a fierce economic
competition between citizen and citizen then in war with another nation,
the object of the war is to destroy the trade of the enemy. If the
citizens in any country could develop harmonious life among themselves
they would manifest the friendliest feelings towards the people of other
countries. We find that it is just among groups of people who aim
at harmonious life, co-operators and socialists, that the strongest
national impulses to international brotherhood arise; and wars of
domination are brought about by the will of those who within a State are
dominant over the fortunes of the rest. Ireland, a small country,
can only maintain its national identity by moral and economic forces.
Physically it must be overmastered by most other European nations. Moral
forces are really more powerful than physical forces. One Christ changed
the spiritual life of Europe; one Buddha affected more myriads in Asia.

The co-operative ideal of brotherhood in industry has helped to make
stronger the ideal of the brotherhood of humanity, and no body of men in
any of the countries in the great War of our time regarded it with more
genuine sorrow than those who were already beginning to promote schemes
for international co-operation. It must be mainly in movements inspired
with the ideal