g control Great Britain has exercised since
the destruction of the French navy, largely based, as all naval
strategists must perceive on the unchallenged possession of Ireland.

That Ireland is primarily a European island inhabited by a European
people who are not English, and who have for centuries appealed
to Europe and the world to aid them in ceasing to be politically
controlled by England, is historic fact. And since the translation of
this historic fact into practice European politics would undoubtedly
effect the main object of the victorious power, it is evident that,
Great Britain once defeated, Germany would carry the Irish question to
a European solution in harmony with her maritime interests, and could
count on the support of the great bulk of European opinion to support
the settlement those interests imposed. And if politically and
commercially an independent and neutral Irish State commended itself
to Europe, on moral and intellectual grounds the claim could be put
still higher. Nothing advanced on behalf of England could meet the
case for a free Ireland as stated by Germany. Germany would attain her
ends as the champion of national liberty and could destroy England's
naval supremacy for all time by an act of irreproachable morality.
The United States, however distasteful from one point of view the
defeat of England might be, could do nothing to oppose a European
decision that could dearly win an instant support from influential
circles--Irish and German--within her own borders.

In any case the Monroe Doctrine cuts both ways, and unless at the
outset the United States could be drawn into an Anglo-Teutonic
conflict, it is clear that the decision of a European Congress to
create a new European State out of a very old European people could
not furnish ground for American interference.

I need not further labour the question. If Englishmen will but awaken
from the dream that Ireland "belongs" to them and not to the Irish
people, and that that great and fertile island, inhabited by a brave,
a chivalrous and an intellectual race (qualities they have alas! done
their utmost to expel from the island) is a piece of real estate they
own and can dispose of as they will, they cannot fail to perceive that
the Irish question cannot much longer be mishandled with impunity,
and that far from being, as they now think it, merely a party
question--and not even a "domestic question" or one the colonies have
a voice in--it