Ireland’s strategical situation bears no analogy to that of Australia and Canada, which, for geographical reasons, are compelled, as South Africa will be compelled, to make a certain amount of independent provision, not only for military, but for naval defence, and would be wanting in patriotic feeling if they did otherwise.  New Zealand, on the other hand, is too small to be capable of creating a Navy, and rightly contributes to ours.  We have arrived at an interesting psychological point when Australia and Canada both seem to be inclined to reserve, in theory, a right to abstain from engaging their Navies in a war undertaken by Great Britain, but nobody will be alarmed by this theoretical reservation.  It is an insignificant matter beside the Naval Agreement reached at the last Conference (1911)—­an agreement worth more than volumes of unwritten statutes—­to the effect that the personnel of the colonial fleets is to be interchangeable with that of the Imperial fleet and that in a joint war colonial ships are to form an integral part of the British fleet under the control of the Admiralty.  With such an agreement in existence, it becomes superfluous to lay stress upon the fact that without formal and complete separation from the Mother Country in time of peace, the neutrality of a Colony would not be recognized by a belligerent enemy of Great Britain in time of war.  In any case these developments have no concern for Ireland, which does not want, and need not be given, power to raise a local Navy.  Nor, with regard to the regular land forces, will anything be changed.  Troops quartered in Ireland will be, as before, and as in the Colonies now, under complete Imperial control.  So will Imperial camps, magazines, arsenals, dock-yards.  On the other hand, arrangements should certainly be made to permit the raising of Volunteer forces in Ireland.  There are large numbers of Irishmen in the British Territorial Army, and Ireland sent five companies to the South African War.  Though the poverty of the country will for a long time check the growth of Volunteer forces, it is the Union which presents the only serious obstacle to their establishment.  No surer proof of the need for Home Rule could be adduced than the fact that it was held to be impossible to extend the Territorial system to Ireland.  One of the objects of Home Rule is to remove this suspicious atmosphere.  Whether local power to organize and arm Volunteers in Ireland should be given to the Irish authority, or, as in the Home Rule Bills of 1886 and 1893, reserved to the Imperial Government, is, if we trust Ireland, as we must, a secondary and not a vital matter, which would not affect the question of representation at Westminster.[83] Probably it would be most convenient to leave the matters in the hands of the Irish Legislature.  In any case, the Command-in-Chief of all forces in Ireland, regular or volunteer, would, as in the Colonies,[84] be vested in the King.

The control of the Royal Irish Constabulary and Dublin Metropolitan Police does not affect the question of representation at Westminster.  With or without representation, Ireland should be given the control of all her own police forces from the first, without the restrictions imposed by the Bills of 1886 and 1893 with regard to Imperial control of the existing forces.[85]