The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1918-06-22
IRELAND
Will She "Shoot Niagara?"
 (By Dr. Arthur Lynch, M. P.)

Ine pSychOlOgy or people has al- ways seemed to me a foolish phrase" said friend of mine recently, but looking at Ireland, I am beginning to see new lights The speaker, who for years has been a sincere Home Ruler, had refused to believe that a crowd or a nation could reason in it's corporate capacity, therefore he had doubted that ideas could sweep over a people like an epidemic. The flaw in this argument is to suppose that people are convinced by reason. A few determined men may on a foun- dation of reason set a movement go- ing; there comes a time when the movement drives the drivers. So it is in Ireland today. To prevent a bath of blood in that beautiful but dis tressed country may still be possible that is my one hope in writing but it will require rare mixture of tact, judgment, f1rmness, and no small good fortune.
 The great governing features of the entire situation are, let us say, the necessity of stemming back the German rush on the western front, the desirability of securing Irish CO., operation, the advantage of satisfying not only Irish but American pubic opinion-but stop! Here have been laying the foundation of little req soning, and both sides in Ireland seem to have thrown reasoning to the winds.
 "Up De Valera"
 Take this young country boy from any part of Ireland; he is some 20 years of age, tall and strong, innocent as child in many things, including even statesmanship, but tenacious in argument as a member of Cogars' hall. In normal times he would have hied already to America, where most of his brothers are. America, he says, is the next arisph to his own, and England seems immeasurably further away to him than the Republic of the West. Lately he has been help ing on the farm. Now he cannot do that Conscription has risen like a spectre before his eyes. He is haunt ed by conscription. He dreams of rifles and blunderbuses, and desper ate encounters lon the hillside; he talks somewhat erratically of trench WdEldI0s dIo Ou6 SuSpOCl5 IlID1 Ol knowing where bikes are made. How will you argue with this young man | Appeal to his good nature, which is | abundant, and you will find him as ''biddable" and likeab1e a boy as one | could desire to meet; get away from | politics and bikes if possible, and you will find unsu uspected wells of the shrewdest comon sense. Do not | however, presume on that to talk reason, especially if he finds himself surrounded by a hundred like him. self. If you had the logic of Euclid the wisdom of Solon, and the elo- quence of Demonthenes, one of these country boys has only to shout 'UI De Valera" and you are left waste stranded, and barren.
 Meanwhile the father of the young man, a. hard-headed farmer, is col lecting all the silver he can in the fa1lacious belief that the war may be l over ''in a week or SOL and that notes will be mere scraps of paper; and "intellectuals'' in Dublin, capa, ble~of giving you a luminous disser- tation on the latest Abbey Theatre play, will meet at street corners, anC with visionary eyes gazing into flu turity will talk incredible sillines! about the "Blak Pug seen in Ulster the sign of terrible events about lC happen. Then go they home to pre- pare bandages in feverish haste, an; whip up the imagination each of thu other like people in a haschish dream
 Multiply all this by hundreds an i thousands, make it boil and seethe give a terrible reality to the meanin of resistance, and you may have som vague idea how conscription is stir ring the people. They say: Bette die than be conscripted." Die, cer tainly, let us say if you desire it; bu don't first stupify yourselves with tn drugs of illusion-with talk of 10 f
 bikes or the little dog that only chil
 dren under their teens can see.
 "Shoot Them Down.
 Turn to another group, not less de fternined, not less impervSous to per suasion-that of the case-hardene
 Unionists. They, too, talk politics ir 1 termingled with remarks on huntin