The Irish standard., 1914-06-27
IRISH DEFENSE De.
bATEO IN PARL|MENT
Tory Leaders Make Charges AGAINST
Formation Of Volunteers in
Ireland
Government Acquiesced in Allow.
ing Organization to Spread
Throughout Country
Meet Force with Force" has Affect
of Keeping Ulster Orangemen
Quiet

-~,
The nationalist volunteer move
ment is one of the most curious phe-
nomena of history. It can almost be
compared to one of those volcanic
outbreaks that suddenly transform a
whole landscape and produce chaos
in region that has known little for
years but blue sky, a sleeping and
breezeless atmosphere, and the still
ness of tropical zone.
Nobody in particular seems to have
started it; none of the Irish leaders
gave it the Impetus; even the news
papers did not take much notice of
it; but it swept like prairie fire
from one end of Ireland to the other.
It seemed to rush across the Irish
horizon like outbursts of passionate
emotion such as in former period
led to the crusades, and, in modern
times, captured the Bastile, and, in
a few hours, killed and buried old
France and caused the birth of the
new.
Probably the real genesis of the
movement was the Carson campaign.
That movement, so bigoted in its
origin and purpose, yet did make a
strong appeal to the imagination of
the southern and the Catholic Irish
man. There is always-at least to
foreigners ironical and
contradictory in every Irish move
ment and in almost every Irish emo
ton. 1t is scarcely credible and
yet it is true that there is
no personal bitterness in the rela-
tions of the orange and nationalist
representatives in the house of COM
mons.
They listen to each others violent
rhetoric quite unmoved and without
a particle of profound resentment,
and often they meet after a hot en-
counter over a friendly cup of tea in
the same room of the house of COM
mons. The orangeman loses his tenn
per when he hears an English liberal
advocating home rule; the Irish ma
tionalist does not begin to see red
until he hears his country and his
cause denounced by an English tory.
Thus it is, though scarcely cred
ible, yet true, that there has been a
sneaking admiration in many nation
alists' hearts for the orange volun-
teer movement. 1t was little Incl
dent, but it counted for something,
when, the other day, body of ma
tional volunteers met on the road a
body of orange volunteers and the
two forces stopped to give each other
a respectful salute.
When the orangemen accomplished
their gun-running expedition; when
they seemed for the time to overawe
the powerful government; when
they seemed able to dictate
their own terms-all this was in re-
ality only appearance, for reasons
can give-when the Irish nationalists
saw all this, it was natural that they
should begin to think it was time
for them also to have the powerful
argument of an army and the gun.
It took them some time to come to
this conclusion, for it remains the
fact that Ireland has accomplished
the most overwhelming and most
sweeping transformation of country
ever recorded in history in the trans
fer of 100000 farms from the hands
of the landlords to those of the ten
ants by constitutional agitation in
Ireland and parliamentary action in
the house of commons. Never was
there such an example in the history
of peaceful revolution carried
through by peaceful methods. But
still there remains the fact that the
orangemen had been able to produce
considerable political impression by
organizing an Army
A further element was added, OF
course. in the fact that the Catholic
minority in some parts of Ulster were
in real danger, remaining unarmed
and undrilled in the midst Of an
armed and drilled population, who,
though in ordinary times livable
with. have been subjected in the last
two years to exciting appeals to their
religious and racial passions.
The final impulse. I believe. waa
given by the incidents in the Curragh.
The officers who revolted there have
since been hailed as heroes by their