Page:Roger Casement - The crime against Ireland and how the war may right it.djvu/65

Rh While he is, in his heart, perfectly aware of this, John Bull (for the reasons given by Richard Cox), is quite determined that nothing shall get him out of the house. "Separation is unthinkable"' say English Ministers. The task of Ireland is to-day what it always has been—to get the stranger out of the house. It is no shame to Ireland, or her sons, that up to this they have failed in each attempt. Those attempts are pillars of fire in her history, beacons of light in the desert of Sin, where the Irish Israel still wanders in search of the promised land. Few of the peoples of Europe who to-day make up the Concert of Powers have, unaided, expelled the invader who held them down, and none has been in the situation of Ireland.

As Mr. Gladstone wrote in 1890, "can anyone say we should have treated Ireland as we have done had she lain not between us and the ocean, but between us and Europe?"

In introducing the scheme of mild Home Rule termed the Councils Bill in 1907, Mr. Birrell prefaced it with the remark that "separation was unthinkable—save in the event of some world cataclysm." World cataclysms up to this have not reached Ireland—England intervened to well. She has maintained her hold by sea power. The lonely Andromeda saw afar off the rescuing Perseus, a nude figure on the coast of Spain or France, but long ere his flight reached her rock-bound feet she beheld him fall, bruised, mangled, and devoured by the watching sea monster.

Had Italy been placed as Ireland is, cut off from all external succor save across a sea held by a relentless jailer, would she have been to-day a free people, ally of Austria on terms of high equality?

The blood shed by the founders of modern Italy would all have been shed in vain—that blood that sanctified the