The Catholic bulletin. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1911-1995, 1921-06-04

every year to be spent in England to
pay English workingmen while their
own are unemployed. No, the Ulster
problem is not really serious. If it
was the British Government would
have let Ulster counties vote accord
ing to their desires.
As to the Possibility of Settlement.
Is there any possibility of settle
ment? / think Ireland truly desires to
be at peace with it's neighbor and once
it achieved the freedom it desired, it
would forget the past. Great Britain
is the natural market for Irish pro-
ducts. All Irishmen recognize that.
Irishmen can get along quite well
with individual Englishmen, who are
good fellows as a rule. But England
as represented by it's government they
mistrust and will have nothing to do
with. l was going to say it was Prus-
sian in it's methods with Ireland, but
that would be unfair to the Prnssians,
for, so far as l know, in their treat
ment of Poles or Alsatians there was
nothing comparable in ferocity to the
present British oppression of Ireland.
Indeed, the Prussian oppression OF
Poles or Alsatians appears in COM
parison mere ordinary good-natured
government. What is to be the end of
the Anglo-Irish conflict? l do not
know. l am inclined to think that as
between Ireland and Great Britain
there never will be any settlement
The last is too greedy for Irish
money and trade to let them slip out
of it's control, and too terrified of a
powerful Irish Nation alongside it to
allow Ireland freedom to develop and
increase it's population to the ten or
twelve millions who might naturally
inhabit it. Ireland, as it's history
shows, will be content with nothing
less than complete freedom over it's
own affairs. Only some third factor
arising out of world circumstance can
make that freedom possible. 1t is not
that British statesmen could not in
the past have made Ireland friendly
and contented inside the Bc.tisa Com
monweath, but they would not When
they dealt with Ireland they could not
rise to the noble conception of their
empire as a commonwealth of free ma
tions developing freely endless varie-
ties of culture and civilization. They
allowed this in respect of Canada. Aus
tralia, New Zealand and South Africa,
countries they could not hope to hold
long by physical force in subsection
to Westminster politics. But, where
the race was alien as in Ireland,
held, and hence it lis that these three
countries are in a blaze against their
oppressors. do not think the demo
crazy of one country can rightly rule
the democracy of another county. An
autocrat conceiyably might rule. sub
ject nations with success because the
individual can be appealed to, moved
or educated. But who could attempt
the task of educating forty million
people about the needs OF another
race. 1t would be easier tc get the
mythical camel through the eye of a
needle than to get into the brain of
one of those forty millions the needs
of the four hundred millions in their
empire. The drop cannot contain the
ocean. No democracy American,
French, German or Italian could gov.
ern Ireland against it's will with more
success than the English. They would
all be forced to adopt the sane meth,
DDS if they insisted on their right as
overlords. l believe the British Gov
eminent is prepared to wreck every
city in Ireland rather than allow Ire.
land the freedom it desires. No other
nation is going to intervene.
Why the Phrase, "A Domestic Prob
lem" Was Invented.
A man will prevent a bully kicking
a child in the street, but all nations
are licensed by other nations to deal
with their subject nationalities as they
will. The phrase, "A domestic prob.
lem," was invented to express this
license, and is recognition of the
truth Neitzsche proclaimed when he
said, 1.-The state is the coolest of all
cold MONSTERS In ancient Greece a
slave who was ill-treated had the
right to be sold to another master
but the subject nation has no world
/ tribunal to appeal to, nothing but the
Master of Life, that indefnable some.
thing we surmise in the government
of the Cosmos. So here in Ireland
people endure grimly, without hope of
any other nations Intervention, wait
ing for world circumstance to enable
them to escape from their conquer.
ors, or for the mills of God to come at
last in their grinding to. the British
Empire as they came to the Roman
Empire, the Chaldean and other en-
pires whose sins and magnifcence
have sunk far behind time
Nations Denied Freedom Cannot Full
fill Their Destiny.
l am trying to interpret the mood
Of my countrymen rather than to ex
press my own feelings. For myself ]
do not care whether I am governed
from Moscow or Pekin if my country
men are happy. | am by profession
an artist and man of letters, and !
find the consultations of life in things
with which governments cannot in
terfere, in the light and beauty the
! Earth puts forth for her children The
words republic" or empire are
opaque words to me. I cannot see
through them to any beauty or majes.
fly to which they inevitably lead But