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are ready to kill right and left to secure it. There are a populace in the North who are resolved not to have separation, and are ready to die to prevent it. This seems a situation which does not lend itself to easy solution. Not so, thinks the Labour Party, a deputation of which went over to the distressful country lately to find a remedy for all her woes and this remedy, which the statesmen of Great Britain have been vainly seeking for seven hundred years, it discovered in seven days and yet Mr Winston Churchill says the Labour Party is not fit to govern! The remedy was simplicity itself, in fact as simple as the deputation: it was just to disarm the police and withdraw the soldiers and let the people settle their troubles themselves. Before this remedy was well announced the leading men of both the Loyalists and Nationalists were denouncing the English Government for not providing sufficient forces to prevent their followers killing one another!

It is always an honest and usually a wise policy for a nation to stand by its friends. In the case of Ireland it seems also to be England's only possible policy. All sane Englishmen see that separation is impossible: geography, which no policy can alter, prevents it. The Irishmen opposed to separation are the Protestant populace of the North, who are the only friends in Ireland of England and the Empire. If there be any wisdom, not to mention honesty, still left in English

counsels, England will stand by them.

Those Englishmen who wish to salve their consciences for not standing by them always insist that the so-called loyalty of Ulstermen is conditional loyalty-that is, loyalty on their own terms. That may be so. There are few things, if any, absolute in this world, not even, as we have been discovering lately, those very real things, time and space. It would be strange then if the Ulstermen's loyalty were absolute; but, so far as my experience has gone, the only condition they attach to it is that if they are loyal to Englishmen, Englishmen must be loyal to them. It does not seem on the face of it an altogether unreasonable condition, and certainly it is one the breach of which will be bitterly resented: there is no resentment so passionate as that of a betrayed friend. And it so happens that once upon a time the Ulsterman thought he had been betrayed by England. That was in the middle of the eighteenth century, when he was being evicted from the farms which his fathers had won from the wilderness, and was being persecuted for belonging to that religion which his fathers had died to protect. The effect of that betrayal on his loyalty was afterwards shown in the Irish Rebellion and the American Revolution. In the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the Ulstermen for the first time joined the Southerners in a furious insurrection against England. It will be England's fault if it is not the last time.

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Just after the Ulster Volunteers had accomplished their purpose, and Mr Asquith had declared, what he might with advantage have announced sooner, that the coercion of Ulster by force was unthinkable a good many people about him had been thinking of it once and talking of it too -the great war broke out, and the Volunteers joined up and formed the famous Ulster Division. Many of them never came back, many came back orippled for life, and many came back to find that in their absence their jobs had been taken by Sinn Feiners. The last was a grievance dwelt on bitterly by the shipbuilders who ejected the Sinn Feiners from the shipyards. They had ceased to be the thoroughly organised and disciplined body they were in 1914. If they had been what they then were, there would have been no riots either at Derry or at Belfast.

Some fair-minded persons, while admitting the service the organisers of the Ulster Volunteers rendered in this way, may still think that they rendered a greater disservice by their arming the people to resist the law by force. It was this, they argue, which led the Nationalists also to organise and arm their volunteers, which W88 the cause of the subsequent rebellion and the present state of war in the South and West of Ireland. Such a view indioates either ignorance or disregard of Irish history. Every Nationalist movement for centuries past has followed the

same lines: it begins as a moderate claim led by moderate men, and it ends in a demand for independence led by armed extremists. Such was the first volunteer movement. At first its claim was for freedom of legislation and trade, and its leaders were Grattan and Charlemont; in the end its claim was independence secured by rebellion, and its leaders were Lord Edward Fitzgerald and Theobald Wolfe Tone. O'Connell's constitu-. tional claim for Repeal of the Union in the same way changed into the Young Ireland movement and another rising. The Pope's Brass Band, with its leaders on the Treasury Bench, developed in time into the Fenian conspiracy with its leaders in Richmond Prison. Mr Parnell kept the physical force party under control longer than any other leader. That was due partly to his marvellous strength of character, and partly to his constantly assuring the party that he did not, whatever he said in Parliament, mean that Home Rule was to be the boundaries of the nation's progress. When he went, it was only a matter of time and opportunity when the physical force party would tire of the talkers and resort to action. The time, to sensible observers, was pretty near before the war broke out; the outbreak of the war supplied the opportunity.

This, then, is the state of affairs in Ireland as they stand revealed by the Ulster riots. There are a populace in the South and West who are resolved to have separation, and

are ready to kill right and left to secure it. There are a populace in the North who are resolved not to have separation, and are ready to die to prevent it. This seems a situation which does not lend itself to easy solution. Not so, thinks the Labour Party, a deputation of which went over to the distressful country lately to find a remedy for all her woes and this remedy, which the statesmen of Great Britain have been vainly seeking for seven hundred years, it discovered in seven days and yet Mr Winston Churchill says the Labour Party is not fit to govern! The remedy was simplicity itself, in fact as simple as the deputation: it was just to disarm the police and withdraw the soldiers and let the people settle their troubles themselves. Before this remedy was well announced the leading men of both the Loyalists and Nationalists were denouncing the English Government for not providing sufficient forces to prevent their followers killing one another!

It is always an honest and usually a wise policy for a nation to stand by its friends. In the case of Ireland it seems also to be England's only possible policy. All sane Englishmen see that separation is impossible: geography, which no policy can alter, prevents it. The Irishmen opposed to separation are the Protestant populace of the North, who are the only friends in Ireland of England and the Empire. If there be any wisdom, not to mention honesty, still left in English

counsels, England will stand by them.

Those Englishmen who wish to salve their consciences for not standing by them always insist that the so-called loyalty of Ulstermen is conditional loyalty—that is, loyalty on their own terms. That may be so. There are few things, if any, absolute in this world, not even, as we have been discovering lately, those very real things, time and space. It would be strange then if the Ulstermen's loyalty were absolute; but, so far as my experience has gone, the only condition they attach to it is that if they are loyal to Englishmen, Englishmen must be loyal to them. It does not seem on the face of it an altogether unreasonable condition, and certainly it is one the breach of which will be bitterly resented: there is no resentment so passionate as that of a betrayed friend. And it so happens that once upon a time the Ulsterman thought he had been betrayed by England. That was in the middle of the eighteenth century, when he was being evicted from the farms which his fathers had won from the wilderness, and was being persecuted for belonging to that religion which his fathers had died to protect. The effect of that betrayal on his loyalty was afterwards shown in the Irish Rebellion and the American Revolution. In the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the Ulstermen for the first time joined the Southerners in a furious insurrection against England. It will be England's fault if it is not the last time.

"AN EDICATED BLOKE."

BY A. J REYNOLDS,

As we moved into the lagoon, up some tributary of which we expected to find the headquarters of an almost lost exploring and prospecting party, a gust of wind-one of those sudden squalls that swoop down in October from the rocky peaks of the mountains in the Nigerian hinterland-sent the launch over until her gunwale lay flush with the water. I seized the railing of the bridge and watched the blurring of the mirror of water beneath us as the ripple of air passed across it, distorting my features as they lay on its hitherto placid surface. With the dulling of the water and blotting out of my own reflection, vanished the last reminder of the mood of kindness which the torpid air of Nigeria can sometimes be said to possess. The only suggestion left was menace.

Fierce little wavelets beat in impotent fury against the side of the launch, or curled under her forepart as she lifted her angry disdaining little head above them. The flying clouds stooped lower until they hid the head of the mount from our view, and sent the "boys" soudding below.

We proceeded down a monotonous oreek with our Nubia pilot shouting instructions to his crew through the gathering mist; one moment we seemed to be running into

nothing less than a wall of rock, and the next we would eddy into the centre of the stream.

Aroused from a spell of gloomy speculation by the temperature of the rain which beat down through the neckband of my shirt, I went below and put on a rainproof coat. The little vessel was pitching uneasily, but answering willingly to the helm in the hands of the pilot; as I opened the door a sudden pitoh pulled it out of my hands and sent it crashing back against my berth-rail, causing me to start as if shot.

In accepting leadership of the relief expedition, I had done violence to some misgivings as to my ability to accomplish the object of the expedition, and to take seniority over so many men who were old enough to be my father; the youngest among them could have given me fifteen years at least, but the duties of my party seemed light, and besides, as the foreman of the party said, I was "an edicated bloke."

The members of the main party described themselves as young and untrained. Seeing this, I daren't describe myself at all. The Agent General on the coast, in urging me to accept the leadership, had told me that my presence would exercise an influence

over them and stand as 8 don't take charge until we guarantee that all was above land." board at headquarters, as it was from there I came.

I had no good reason to believe that the party was in trouble. I knew little about its composition beyond what had been told me by the AgentGeneral before leaving Lagos, who had added, that possibly the leader was a man of theory rather than action, and might have chosen to confide the charge of one party to a man named Oxley who was, added the Agent, "greatly distinguished at college in athletio sports." Of course there was material for speculation in this official opinion, that a subordinate member of the party was considered as good a man at the practical side of things as his chief, and at first thoughts it suggested a possible division of interests and effort, but it did not necessarily indicate a hitch in the operations of the expedition.

A call from the pilot at the helm aroused me from my reverie, and some one touched me on the shoulder.

"This is where we land, sir; the captain advises lying to for the night."

In fact, we were now near the source of the river; it meandered on for another mile or two, but then suddenly dried up or was lost in the arid lands, and certainly the soundings had shown that there wasn't sufficient depth water to take our craft any farther with safety.

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The captain approached, and I suggested the firing of a gun. The captain gave the order, and as it exploded it produced an extraordinary effect among the hills, and then merged into a sound that spread far across the country, and seemed to an imaginative mind to be tumbling over itself in reverberating waves in its efforts to get away from its starting-point.

Our gruff old captain was gazing straight ahead, with his glasses to his eyes.

"See anything?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied, "seems to be something putting off in a canoe." I knew well how to look for it, and yet it was some moments before I could discern the black speck in the midst of the immense wilderness; it was set near the foot of a cliff which looked like the forefoot of an immense cloud-weighted hill which lay behind it; the great wastes of barren earth in which it stood enhanced its insignificance. I went forward to the forecastle deck where the members of the party were standing.

A few minutes passed, and the canoe turned out to be manned by a solitary native fisherman, who ran his canoe towards the bank upon observing us, and scrambling ashore, sank his canoe by the edge of the water, and retreated inland.

That night at "ohop" we were disturbed by a ory from the watch on deck of "Who's there?" followed by a reply which we couldn't distinguish.

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