Page:The Irish Cause and "The Irish Convention".djvu/14

 rebellion, whether in Belfast or in Dublin, and if the Prime Minister's first proposal could pass you would be simply extending the area of the next insurrection to Derry and Tyrone and Enniskillen.

I don't deny—Mark Tapley himself could scarcely deny—that at this time of day you may fail to produce any general Irish agreement even through such a Conference as we propose. You have let one golden opportunity after another slip through your fingers. It is tragic to think that if the Government had only made their alternative proposal six or seven years ago, and if the Irish bishops, Catholic and Protestant, had only then issued their recent manifesto, all these troubles might have been long ago blessedly composed, and the whole course of the war might have been very considerably altered. It may quite possibly be now too late. But the point is, you have never yet tried it. That is the astounding fact, but fact it is. The Prime Minister's own letter confesses it, and fail how you might, you could never at the worst reach a more humiliating position than you occupy to-day before the nations of the world, confessing that you have incurred obligations to Ireland which you are in honour bound to discharge and that you cannot do it.

I am still not altogether without hope that a Government which had the grit to tackle all the might of Germany unflinchingly may no longer stand shivering before two opposite sets of extremists in the Irish seas. Unfortunately the Prime Minister's speech which, I am afraid, lacked a good deal of his usual magnetic attraction, did not afford very much evidence of the fearlessness and high purpose which alone can pluck a successful Irish settlement out of the dangers in which the miserable bungling of the politicians has entangled us. If you break 14