the end of the world we are, of course, in warm agreement.
But if Mr Smith has entered public affairs in pursuit
of static formulae for dynamic realities, if he wants
things fixed and frozen and final, he has come to
the wrong world to gratify such desires. And
even if he were to go to the next, he would have to
be very careful in choosing his destination, for all
the theologians tell us that, in Heaven, personalities
continue to grow and develop. In fact, if anybody
wants “finality,” I am afraid that we can
only recommend him to go to Hell. As for the
world, in which we live, it is a world of flux.
Physicists allow the earth a long road to travel before
it tumbles into dissolution, and seers and prophets
of various kinds foretell an equally long cycle of
development for human nature, as we now know it.
The fate of all our present political combinations
is doubtful, and no nation has received absolute guarantees
for its future. An All-Europe State with its
capital at London, a Federation of the World with its
capital at Dublin, a Chinese Empire with its capital
at Paris—these are all possibilities.
Australia may be annexed by Japan, Canada by the United
States, or vice versa; South Africa may spread northwards
until it absorbs the Continent, or shrink southwards
until it expires on the point of the Cape. The
Superman may, as I am informed, appear on the stage
of history at any moment, and make pie of everything.
And not one of these appalling possibilities disturbs
Mr Smith in the least. But he is going to vote
against justice for Ireland unless we can 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