e set up it will be a new and vital complication of
the situation preceding a settlement which will embrace the whole of
Ireland.

So far as Ireland is concerned the public mind is occupied at the
moment of my writing with the question of "reprisals." Various efforts
have been made to bring about peace. They have failed because, in my
view, they have been reluctant to recognise and make allowance for
certain essential facts. The whole blame for the existing state of
civil war--for, repudiate it as the Government may, such it
undoubtedly is--is thrown on the shoulders of the Irish Republican
Army by those who take their ethical standard from Sir Hamar
Greenwood. It is forgotten that for two or three years before the
attacks on the Royal Irish Constabulary began there were no murders,
no assassinations and no civil war in Ireland. There was, however, a
campaign of gross provocation by Dublin Castle for two reasons: (1) by
way of vengeance for their defeat on the Conscription issue; (2) as a
retaliation on Sinn Fein, because it had succeeded in peacefully
supplanting English rule by a system of Volunteer Police, Sinn Fein
Courts, Sinn Fein Local Government, etc. The only pretext on which
this provocation was pursued was on account of a mythical "German
plot," which Lord Wimbourne never heard of, which Sir Bryan Mahon,
Commander-in-Chief, told Lord French he flatly disbelieved in, and
which, when, after more than two years, the documents are produced,
proves to be a stale rehash of negotiations before the Easter Week
Rising, with some sham "German Irish Society" in Berlin. On this
pretext the Sinn Fein leaders, Messrs de Valera and Griffith (whom
there is not a shadow of proof to connect with the German plot), were
arrested and deported, with many hundreds of the most responsible
leaders. Furthermore, an endless series of prosecutions were
instituted and savage sentences imposed for the most paltry
charges-such as drilling, wearing uniform, singing _The Soldiers'
Song_, having portraits of Rebel leaders, taking part in the
Arbitration Courts which had superseded the Petty Sessions Courts, and
such like. All this, with suppression of newspapers and of all public
meetings, went on for many months before Sinn Fein, deprived of its
leaders, was goaded at last into attacking the Royal Irish
Constabulary. Whatever the juridical status of the guerrilla warfare
thus entered upon (which it is not improbable England would have
appl