New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1916-05-12
The Irish Folly.

nounced the just and permanent word.
But does even Shaw perceive yet how
stupid, how fatally stupid, this policy has
actually been? Do Englishmen yet I'M
derstand with what amazement and dis
appointment Americans, whose sympa-
thies from the outbreak of the war have
been pro-Ally, are looking upon the re-
vival in Dublin of the policy which when
it was practised in Italy in the middle OF
the nineteenth century, stirred the heart
of England, as it did the sympathy Of
the liberal fraction Of the world?
There is nothing to be said on the legal
side for the Irish rebels. But what more
could be said for those associates Of MAJ
zini. who dreamed Of free Italy, whose
lives were a voluntary and beautiful
sacrifce-happily not vain-for an ideal,
for the ideal Of a united and independent
Italy? The Sim Fein leaders were not
less dreamers, not less men Of vain illu-
sions. than those who persisted at Austrian
hands.
But the true folly of the British course
lies elsewhere. When this great war began
Mr. Asquith told the world that Britain
had drawn her sword on behalf Of the
little peoples, on behalf Of the Serbians, on
behalf of the Belgians. American support
for the Allied cause, American sympathy,
which was very real and very widespread,
was not predicated on affection for Great
Britain or ancient love for France; pri-
marily it rested on the belief that the cause
of these nations was just, was right.
Now. with all the differences that men
can point out, there is one point Of re
semblance between the case of the Irish
rebels and the Belgians, who have resist
ed and are resisting German tyranny
Both are loyal to an ideal of free coun-
try, 10 the ideal Of a people, Of a race
and for this ideal the Irish rebels, like
the Belgian soldiers, fought
You cannot liberate the Belgians with
one hand and, subjugate the Irish with the
other. You cannot enlist the sympathy
of liberty-loving mankind for the human
beings who are the victims of German
tyranny and German firing squads and
at the same moment send other men be-
fore your own firing squads because they
have dreamed and striyen for liberty.
The Germans maintain that they have
conquered Belgium. They point TO the
fact that they hold all but little frag-
ment. and they claim the incidental right
l. Of he ha N Z
who resist their authority. They have OK
crcised this alleged right brutaly; they
have shot their scores where the British
have executed their twos and threes. They
have added rapine and arson to eXccu-
tons which have legal form.
Yet for those who love liberty the funda-
mental fact in Belgium and in Ireland IS
the same. If the Irish rebels were minor
ity-and they were-then the right Of the
majority was unquestioncd right to
rule If the Irish rebels resisted it was in
cvitable that they should be killed as and
while they fought. But afterwards?
In our own country we fought long and
terrible civil war. Those who were the
rebels in our land carried destruction far
and wide and imperilled the whole exist
cnce Of the nation. But when they laid
down their arms there was an end to Kill
ing, and no man died because he had been
a rebel And this was in accordance not
with the American tradition alone, but
with the Anglo-Saxon tradition, which has
been the cornerstone of Anglo-Saxon
power in the world,
Why could not the British have per
ceived that what they had done in South
Africa a few months ago must be done
again in Ireland? Why could they not
perceive that the whole civilized world
would look upon the British treatment of
the Irish question as test of the sincerity
of the British declaration that Britain
was fighting Germany on behalf of the
little peoples, on behalf of liberty?
Instead we have these executions. They
arc legal. They have small resemblance in
detail to the German atrocity; they are
orderly, regular processes. But they do TO
death men who, whatever their mistakes,
their folly, their insanity, were moved by
the same impulse that has moved men in
every generation, which stirs the souls Of
all who love liberty the world over.
IL will be said that many Of these rebels
conspired with Germans to wreck their
own country. But what is mans own
country? They did not conspire to betray
il for gold, for rewards in power or profit
certainly some of them did not. They
did not sell out what they had acknowI-
edged as their own. They were not faith
less to an allegiance that was inescapable-
They had the same right TO rebel that
Britain recognized and gorified in the
Young Italy of two generations ago.
or all the mistakes that the BRUSH
La -.nLo Lhic Irlsh hnsincss has been