ke Great
Britain that, through its county council system, people in districts
like Kent or Essex have been permitted control over education and the
purchase of land, and the distribution of it to small holders, how much
more passionately must this desire for self-control be felt in Ireland
where people have a different national character which has survived all
the educational experiments to change them into the likeness of their
neighbors. The battle which is going on in the world has been stated to
be a spiritual conflict between those who desire greater freedom for the
individual and think that the State exists to preserve that freedom,
and those who believe in the predominance of the state and the complete
subjection of the individual to it and the molding of the individual
mind in its image. This has been stated, and if the first view is a
declaration of ideals sincerely held by Great Britain it would mean the
granting to Ireland, a country which has expressed its wishes by vaster
majorities than were ever polled in any other country for political
changes, the satisfaction of its desires.

24. The acceptance of the proposals here made would mean sacrifices for
the two extremes in Ireland, and neither party has as yet made any real
sacrifice to meet the other, but each has gone on its own way. I urge
upon them that if the suggestions made here were accepted both would
obtain substantially what they desire, the Ulster Unionists that
safety for their interests and provision for Ireland's unity with the
commonwealth of dominions inside the empire; the Nationalists that
power they desire to create an Irish civilization by self-devised and
self-checked efforts. The brotherhood of domimons of which they would
form one would be inspired as much by the fresh life and wide democratic
outlook of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada, as by the
hoarier political wisdom of Great Britain; and military, naval, foreign
and colonial policy must in the future be devised by the representatives
of those dominions sitting in council together with the representatives
of Great Britain. Does not that indicate a different form of imperialism
from that they hold in no friendly memory? It would not be imperialism
in the ancient sense but a federal union of independent nations to
protect national liberties, which might draw into its union other
peoples hitherto unconnected with it, and so beget a league of nations
to make a common in