The sun., 1919-08-24
CARSON BRINGS
IRISH PROBLEM
NEAR TO CRISIS
Threat to Call Out Ulster
Clans if Home Rule Is
Granted to Country.
INJURIES L. S. FRIENDSHIP
suggestion That Act Be Pro-
mulgated, but With North
Left Out of 1t.
ny SHAW DESMOND.

ireland the eternai'
That stormy petrol of politics, Sir
Edward Carson, with his uncanny ca
pacity for doing the wrong thing at
the right moment, has by the Belfast
threat to call out the clans IL Home
Rule comes, flung ireland once more
into violent eruption. For the raising
of the devil he has chosen the very
suitable day OF the Twelfth Of July.
Only this time he has raised more
than "the hated South"-he has raised
England.
Quixote Carson is a horrible example
Of misplaced conscientiouness. This
hard, lean knight of politics, who has
broken many a poisoned lance in the
lists of Westminster, is as full OF anti
auated shibboleths as follower OF
William the Conqueror transported to
the twentieth century. 1t is Mark
Twains Yankee at the Court of King
Arthur" over again, but reversed.
Only it is William OF Orange Sir Ed
ward follows, not the other William.
Like his type. he has learned nothing,
has forgotten nothing. The lessons OF
the great war have left him as I'M
moved as the first lightnings over the
planet doubtless left the antediluvlans.
He doesn't know he's standing at the
beginning of the twentieth century
he believes ne is standing In the mid
die OF the sixteenth.
There are sins of conscientiousness as
OF consciencelessness. Which only proves
there is a morality beyond morality.
Torquemada, the Carsonic antelope, was
conscientious, but
The Key to America.
Now II Carson had made his Belfast
speech in 1914 nobody would have cared
boot. But OF course he had to wait
until the Key to the British Empire
had come to be regarded as the Key to
America. There Is not a statesman in
England, except perhaps Sir Edward
himself. who. to put It in an Irish way,
is no statesman, who does not realize
the vital import of American friendship.
Nine statesmen out OF ten, whatever the
bench on which they sit, believe to-day
that the principal hindrance TO a close
Anglo American understanding is the
little island which has sent nearly four
millions of her children across the At
lantic as hostages to fortune.
That is the real basis OF the recent
startling series of Irish articles in the
Times. You Americans know the Times
Of yesterday; the old 'Thunderer,"
whose utterances were as those of the
gods OH Olympus. That Times. about
which O'Connell once said IF the
Times praised me should sit down and
examine my conscience" The Times
that, like Sir Edward Carson, learned
nothing and forgot nothing. But you
cannot say that of to-day's Times,
which. informed first by the American
spirit and later by the Northcliffian
newspaper genius laid down new mile
stone in British journalism.
And here is the Times giving Its pom
thcal blessing to a series of articles
which demonstrated that the spirit OF
the time is with Ireland's aspirati tons
and that the old. petrihed Mandarinity
has to be smashed; so admitting that
Ireland is, after all, right in her century
old claim to govern herself. 1t marks
an epoch in British politics as in Brit
ish thinking. 1t means the funeral of
the men who Used To Be. And now
comes Sir Edward, who. to give the
devil his due. is better Irishman than
lie knows. talking lightly OF calling
out the Ulster Volunteers" All this.
when Europe, after its four years blood
bath, is as likely as not to clap man
who talks of bayonets into a lunatic
asylum.
The truth is that for the FIRST time
the only thing that ever really mattered
in the Irish question" Is being recog-
nzed. That is, 1.-The psychological fac
tor" The economic" factor and the
religious" factor have had their turns,
hut the 'human''-never.
IT Is at last being recognized
that the Irishman (and 1 include the
fisherman. though sometimes he doesn't
- a, LII
different way of thinking from any other
European. The big things of Europe
are the no things for him. and the trifes
things for which to live and die. In the
dawning of that recognition on the part
OF the Engishman-with whom as a
human being he has never had any
qusrrel-lies the dawn OF hope, and for
the first time in seven centuries.
The Human Factor.
To me in my recent visit to the States
lie most significant thing about modern
America was the recognition, the deifi-
cation, II you will, OF 1.-THE human fac
tor That enormous stress on person.
atty, which the hypercivilized European
sometimes regards as childish, Is TO me
the beacon FIRE of the North American
continent. lighting it and the world to
further conquests over matter. America
recognises the human, not the me
chanical," factor as the handspring Of
life and OF progress. And she Is right.
She has recognized It In Ireland
II is emblematic of the time that the
extremist more and more comes to his
own-that is, what the world used TO
call extremist" England has always
admired the moderate. She has set a
premium upon men whose suences. even
when they were masks for ignorance, as
silences so often are. seemed to portend
responsibility. In literature she has al
ways had aversion TO the passionate or
the outspoken To-day she Is recognize.
Ing the extremist" in politics, perhaps
In art, as some day she will in com
merce. She is beginning to recognize
him in Ireland.
II was Lloyd George extremist. who
displaced Herbert Asquitlh, moderate, II
Is extremists in commerce like Sir Ar
thur eel-Maitland-who incidently
would sternly repudiste the description
whose resignation from the chieftain.
ship OF the Overseas Department Of
Trade because he was too extreme {"
who has the sympathy of the British
public, not the moderate who forced