n promise him
that throughout all the aeons, as yet unvouchsafed, and to the last
syllable of recorded time, her political destiny is going to be in all
details regulated by the Home Rule Bill of 1912. This is not an
intelligent attitude.

Of course the real innuendo is that we in Ireland are burning to levy
war on Great Britain, and would welcome any foreign invasion to that
end. On these two points one is happy to be able to give assurances, or
rather to state intentions. As for foreign invasion, we have had quite
enough of it. It is easier to get invaders in than to get them out
again, and we have not spent seven hundred years in recovering Ireland
for ourselves in order to make a present of it to the Germans, or the
Russians, or the Man in the Moon, or any other foreign power whatever.
The present plan of governing Ireland in opposition to the will of her
people does indeed inevitably make that country the weak spot in the
defences of these islands, for such misgovernment produces discontent,
and discontent is the best ally of the invader. Alter that by Home Rule,
and your cause instantly becomes ours. Give the Irish nation an Irish
State to defend, and the task of an invader becomes very unenviable. As
for levying war on Great Britain, we have no inclination in that
direction. The best thought in Ireland has always preferred civilisation
to war, and we have no wealth to waste on expensive stupidities of any
kind. In addition we are handicapped on sea by the smallness of our
official navy which, so far as I can gather, consists of the
_Granuaile_, a pleasure-boat owned by the Congested Districts Board. In
land operations, we are still more seriously hampered by the
non-existence of our army. And although, in point of population, our
numerical inferiority is so trivial as one to ten, even this slight
disproportion may be regarded by an Irish Parliament as a fact not
unworthy of consideration.

But we must not suffer ourselves to be detained any longer among these
unrealities. A Home Rule government will be loyal to the interests of
its people, and actual circumstances demand, for the behoof of Great
Britain and Ireland alike, an era of peace with honour, and friendship
founded on justice. The magnitude of the commercial relations between
the two countries is inadequately appreciated. Not merely is Great
Britain our best customer, but we are her best customer. The trade of
Great Britain with Ireland is larger than h