will continue to prosper if the land purchase system
is carried out to the end in a liberal spirit. The worst danger comes
from the check given to the process by the present Ministry. But the
national feelings of Ireland must not be ignored. Her far-back history,
bad in itself, but represented worse by unscrupulous writers, makes it
necessary to maintain an impartial power above the warring elements. In
a pastoral country people have much time on their hands, and are apt to
spend it in brooding over bygone wrongs. But over the past not Jove
himself hath power, and it is for the future that we are responsible.
From Wellington onwards Ireland has given many great soldiers to the
British Army, and it is the classes from which they spring that it is
now proposed to abandon. Under Home Rule the flag would be a foreign
emblem, useless to protect the weak in Ireland, and perhaps available to
oppress them. England would have cast off her friends and gained none in
exchange. Nothing will conciliate the revolutionary faction in Ireland,
and there is every reason to think that it would become the strongest.
Modern Ireland is the creation of English policy, and many wrong things
were formerly done, but for a long time amends have been making. If
England, from weariness or for the sake of Party advantage, abandons her
supporters, they will have no successors. Ireland will be more
troublesome than ever, and the crime will receive its fitting
punishment.

X

HOME RULE AND NAVAL DEFENCE

BY ADMIRAL LORD CHARLES BERESFORD, M.P.

Ireland under Home Rule must, in the event of war, be regarded as a
potentially hostile country.

In this statement resides the dominant factor of the situation viewed
from the naval and military point of view. It is not asserted that the
government of Ireland would be disloyal; but it is asserted that the
authorities charged with the defence of his Majesty's dominions cannot
afford to take risks when the safety of the country is at stake. That
such risks must exist under the circumstances indicated, is obvious to
all those who have studied the speeches of the leaders of the Irish
Nationalist party, in which they have unequivocally declared their
intention to rid Ireland of English rule, and in which they extol as
heroes such men as Theobald Wolfe Tone, who intrigued with France
against England in order to achieve Irish independence, and who took his
own life rather than receive the just reward of