The Irish standard., 1912-06-15
Has Been Worked So Skillfully as to
be Considered an Argument
Against Home Rule.
People Who Disregard it are Those
Who are Most Familiar With
the Facts.
Other Similar Threats Made by
Ulster That Have Vanished
Into Thin Air.

Mr.. 4. p. OConnor. M. p, has
little faith in the sincerity of the Ul-
stcr leaders who are threatening civil
war should the Home Rule bill be
adopted. In a London cable to the
Chicago Tribune of June S, Mr.. Ohcon-
nor says:
The best organized, the most opu.
lently financed bluff of the most ad.
mirably stage managed and modern
times is the Ulster threat of civil war.
II has been done so well that 1t has
taken in people of England to de-
gree that must have delighted it's or
Eanlzcrs. Indeed, it has done SO we'll
that even liberal statesmen. full of
kccnest sympathy for Ireland, and
with no love of the sixteenth century
hiEotry of the Ulster Orangemen,
have treated 1t with solemnity and
have even seemed to think that it
was 4 difficulty in the way of Home
Rule 1t is time that the threat
stood to be the unreal thing it is
The people who believe in it least
are those who would be the first to
suffer from 1t. To Orange Ulster and
It's threats Of civil war the national.
lists on the north Of Ireland occupy
the same position as the natives o!
AIsace and Lorraine to Il new war be.
tween Germany and France. That is
to say. the nationnlists of Ulster would
be first victims OF the Ulster civil
war. Yet have never yet met a
single nationalist or liberal from VI.
ster who does not laugh at the whole
thing. 4. w. Russell knows Ulster as
we'll as any man. He laughed the
whole business to scorn. and, indeed,
tore 1t to tattcrs in the very able and
temperate speech he made on the sec
ond reading of the Home Rule bill,
Mr.. Dcvlln is n Belfast man. not only
by birth. but to his fingertips, and he
has never had Il moments concern
about 1t, and yet If the bluff had any
foundation, he, the bcst-known man
in Belfast, would be one Of its first
targets.
When | was in Dublin the other day
ut the convention, l met a large num-
bcr of Ulster nationalists. When I
spoke Of the coming civil war with an
appearance of seriousness, they look
cd at me in surprise as If were try
ing to have a joke at their expense.
The whole thing was so ludicrous
that it came as an astounding dis
covery to them that anybody in Eng
land or ireland was so foolish as to
be taken in. In short, whenever the
Ulster buster produces either terror
or belief, it is not in Ulster itself.
Similar Threats in Past.
do not bring forward in proof Of
the soundncss of this attitude the fact
that similar threats have been uttered
so often before, and that the threats
have ended in thin air do not
point to the number Of men like the
late Sir Richard Talkiner. who vowed
to die as martyr when the Irish
church was about to be disestablished
and lived for close upon forty years
afterwards a well-paid and highly re-
spectacle judge. Nor do 1 pause to
point to the depths of insane appre-
hension which the disestablishment
created in even serious minds and
representative men as indicated in the
passage quoted in the debate on
Welsh disestablishment by Mr.. AS
quith, the passage in which the arch
bishop Of Armagh, whom I remember
very we'll "a handsome and stately
nlen.oer of the great Beresford fam
Vy-said:
IF you overthrow the Irish estab-
l. shed church, you will put to the
I.ish Protestants the choice between
an-ostasy and expatriation, and every
maa among them with money or po-
siticn, when he sees his church go.
will leave the country. If you do
that, you will find Ireland so difficult
to manage that you will have to de-
pend on the gibbet and the sword
/ do not dwell on these threats and
apprehensions of the past as my main