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13. If it is believed that this scheme, or any diminutive of it, will settle the Anglo-Irish problem, British statesmen and people who trust them are only preparing for themselves bitter disappointment. I believe that nothing less than complete self-government has ever been the object of Irish Nationalism. However ready certain sections have been to accept installments, no Irish political leader had authority to pledge his countrymen to ever accept a half measure as a final settlement of the Irish claim. The Home Rule Act, if put into operation tomorrow, even if Ulster were cajoled or coerced into accepting it, would not be regarded by Irish Nationalists as a final settlement, no matter what may be said at Westminster. Nowhere in Ireland has it been accepted as final. Received without enthusiasm at first, every year which has passed since the Bill was introduced has seen the system of self-government formulated there subjected to more acute and hostile criticism: and I believe it would be perfectly accurate to say that its passing tomorrow would only be the preliminary for another agitation, made fiercer by the unrest of the world, where revolutions and the upsetting of dynasties are in the air, and where the claims of nationalities no more ancient than the Irish, like the Poles, the Finns, and the Arabs, to political freedom are admitted by the spokesmen of the great powers, Great Britain included, or are already conceded. If any partition of Ireland is contemplated this will intensify the bitterness now existing. I believe it is to the interest of Great Britain to settle the Anglo-Irish dispute. It has been countered in many of its policies in America and the Colonies by the vengeful feelings of Irish exiles. There may yet come a time when the refusal of the Irish mouse to gnaw at a net spread about the lion may bring about the downfall of the Empire. It cannot be to the interest of Great Britain to have on its flank some millions of people who, whenever Great Britain is engaged in a war which threatens its existence, feel a thrill running through them, as prisoners do hearing the guns sounding closer of an army which comes, as they think, to liberate them. Nations denied essential freedom ever feel like that when the power which dominates them is itself in peril. Who can doubt but for the creation of Dominion Government in South Africa that the present war would have found the Boers thirsty for revenge, and the Home Government incapable of dealing with a distant people who taxed its resources but a few years previously. I have no doubt that if Ireland was granted the essential freedom and wholeness in its political life it desires, its mood also would be turned. I have no feelings of race hatred, no exultation in thought of the downfall of any race; but as a close observer of the mood of millions in Ireland, I feel certain that if their claim is not met they will brood and scheme and Wait to strike a blow, though the dream may be handed on from them to their children and their children’s children, yet they will hope, sometime, to give the last vengeful thrust of enmity at the stricken heart of the Empire.

14. Any measure which is not a settlement which leaves Ireland still actively discontented is a waste of effort, and the sooner English statesmen realize the futility of half measures the better. A man who claims a debt he believes is due to him, who is offered half of it in payment, is not going to be conciliated or to be one iota more friendly, if he knows that the other is able to pay the full amount and it could be yielded without detriment to the donor. Ireland will never be content with a system of self-government which lessens its representation in the Imperial Parliament, and still retains for that Parliament control over all-important matters like taxation and trade policy. Whoever controls these controls the character of an Irish civilization, and the demand of Ireland is not merely for administrative powers, but the power to fashion its own national policy, and to build up a civilization of its own with an economic character in keeping by self-devised and self-checked efforts. To misunderstand this is to suppose there is no such thing as national idealism, and that a people will accept substitutes for the principle of nationality, whereas the past history of the world and present circumstance in Europe are evidence that nothing is more unconquerable and immortal than national feeling, and that it emerges from centuries of alien government, and is ready at any time to flare out in insurrection. At no period in Irish history was that sentiment more self-conscious than it is today.