sion of Ireland to the new force that
held her down. With Great Britain cut off and the Irish Sea held by
German squadrons, no power from within could maintain any effective
resistance to a German occupation of Dublin and a military
administration of the island. To convert that into permanent
administration could not be opposed from within, and with Great
Britain down and severed from Ireland by a victorious German navy, it
is obvious that opposition to the permanent retention of Ireland by
the victor must come from without, and it is for this international
reason that I think a German annexation of any part of a defeated
United Kingdom need not be seriously considered. Such a complete
change in the geography of Europe as a German-owned Ireland could not
but provoke universal alarm and a widespread combination to forbid its
realization. The bogey that Ireland, if not John Bull's other island,
must necessarily be somebody else's other island will not really bear
inspection at close quarters.

Germany would have to attain her end, the permanent disabling of the
maritime supremacy of Great Britain, by another and less provocative
measure. It is here and in just these circumstances that the third
contingency, and one no Englishman I venture to think, has ever
dreamed of, would be born on the field of battle and baptized a
Germanic godchild with European diplomacy as sponsor. Germany, for
her own imperial ends and in pursuit of a great world policy, might
successfully accomplish what Louis XIV and Napoleon only contemplated.
An Ireland, already severed by a sea held by German warships, and
temporarily occupied by a German army, might well be permanently and
irrevocably severed from Great Britain, and with common assent erected
into a neutralized, independent European State under international
guarantees. An independent Ireland would, of itself, be no threat or
hurt to any European interest. On the contrary, to make of Ireland an
Atlantic Holland, a maritime Belgium, would be an act of restoration
to Europe of this the most naturally favoured of European islands that
a Peace Congress should, in the end, be glad to ratify at the instance
of a victorious Germany. That Germany should propose this form of
dissolution of the United Kingdom in any interests but her own, or
for the _beaux yeux_ of Ireland I do not for a moment assert. Her main
object would be the opening of the seas and their permanent freeing
from that overwhelmin