executive-controlled famines have given cheap labour to England and
have built up her great industries, manned her shipping, dug her
mines, and built her ports and railways while Irish harbours silted up
and Irish factories closed down. While England grew fat on the crops
and beef of Ireland, Ireland starved in her own green fields and
Irishmen grew lean in the strife of Europe.

While a million Irishmen died of hunger on the most fertile plains
of Europe, English Imperialism drew over one thousand million pounds
sterling for investment in a world policy from an island that was
represented to that world as too poor to even bury its dead. The
profit to England from Irish peonage cannot be assessed in terms of
trade, or finance, or taxation. It far transcends Lord MacDonnell's
recent estimate at Belfast of L320,000,000--"an Empire's ransom," as
he bluntly put it.

Not an Empire's ransom but the sum of an Empire's achievement, the
cost of an Empire's founding, and to-day the chief bond of an Empire's
existence. Detach Ireland from the map of the British Empire and
restore it to the map of Europe and that day England resumes her
native proportions and Europe assumes its rightful stature in the
empire of the world. Ireland can only be restored to the current of
European life, from which she has so long been purposely withheld by
the act of Europe. What Napoleon perceived too late may yet be the
purpose and achievement of a congress of nations. Ireland, I submit,
is necessary to Europe, is essential to Europe, to-day she is retained
against Europe, by a combination of elements hostile to Europe and
opposed to European influence in the world. Her strategic importance
is a factor of supreme weight to Europe and is to-day used in the
scales against Europe. Ireland is appropriated and used, not to the
service of European interests but to the extension of anti-European
interests. The _arbitium mundi_ claimed and most certainly exercised
by England is maintained by the British fleet, and until that power
is effectively challenged and held in check it is idle to talk of
European influence outside of certain narrow continental limits.

The power of the British fleet can never be permanently restrained
until Ireland is restored to Europe. Germany has of necessity become
the champion of European interests as opposed to the world domination
of England and English-speaking elements. She is to-day a dam, a great
reservoir rapidly fill