918,
to separate prisons in England,
without trial or accusation--communication
with whom has been cut off.}

APPENDIX B

UNIONIST LETTER TO PRESIDENT WILSON

CITY HALL, BELFAST,
_August 1st_, 1918.

To THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

SIR,

A manifesto signed by the leader of the Irish Nationalist Party and
certain other Irish gentlemen has been widely circulated in the United
Kingdom, in the form of a letter purporting to have been addressed to
your Excellency.[110]

Its purpose appears to be to offer an explanation of, and an excuse for,
the conduct of the Nationalist Party in obstructing the extension to
Ireland of compulsory military service, which the rest of the United
Kingdom has felt compelled to adopt as the necessary means of defeating
the German design to dominate the world. At a time when all the free
democracies of the world have, with whatever reluctance, accepted the
burden of conscription as the only alternative to the destruction of
free institutions and of international justice, it is easily
intelligible that those who maintain Ireland's right to solitary and
privileged exemption from the same obligation should betray their
consciousness that an apologia is required to enable them to escape
condemnation at the bar of civilised, and especially of American,
opinion. But, inasmuch as the document referred to would give to anyone
not intimately familiar with British domestic affairs the impression
that it represents the unanimous opinion of Irishmen, it is important
that your Excellency and the American people should be assured that this
is very far from being the case.

There is in Ireland a minority, whom we claim to represent, comprising
one-fourth to one-third of the total population of the island, located
mainly, but not exclusively, in the province of Ulster, who dissent
emphatically from the views of Mr. Dillon and his associates. This
minority, through their representatives in Parliament, have maintained
throughout the present war that the same obligations should in all
respects be borne by Ireland as by Great Britain, and it has caused them
as Irishmen a keen sense of shame that their country has not submitted
to this equality of sacrifice.

Your Excellency does not need to be informed that this question has
become entangled in the ancient controversy concerning the
constitutional status of Ireland in the United Kingdom. This is,
indeed, sufficiently clear