He then warned me that this great change might suffer a dangerous reaction if England allows the religious bigotry of Ulster to split Ireland into two camps.  To the Irish-American Ireland is a country, a home, and a shrine, one and indivisible.

“Such a surrender,” said my friend, “would not only be fatal to Ireland but fatal to something even greater than Ireland, and that is the cause of religion in an age of increasing paganism.  For the world can only be saved from the ruin of paganism, as we are beginning to see very clearly in America, by a union of religious forces.

“I am a Catholic, but I say that any man who says ’Only through my door can you enter into heaven’ is a bad Christian.  There are many doors into heaven.  What we have all got to do, Catholics and non-Catholics, is to insist together that there is a heaven, that there is a life after death, that there is a God.  The more doors the better.  No one has a monopoly of heaven.

“And to Ireland is offered the opportunity, greater than politicians appear to perceive, of presenting to the world an example of tolerance and compromise in the supreme interests of religion which may have incalculable results for the whole world.  But what will happen if England bows before the worst and the stupidest bigotry the modern world can show?  Not only will you strike a blow at Ireland and a blow at Irish-American sympathy, but a blow at the vitals of religion.

“For it is only by sinking religious differences and making a common advance against this universal paganism that religion can save the soul of civilization.  If you do not see the truth of that fact in England I think you must be blind.  The fullness of civilization hangs upon religious union; religious dissension is the enemy.”

Change in Ulster.

Another Irish-American who was present on this occasion, an accomplished man of letters and a traveler, asked me what England felt about Ulster’s share in the responsibility for the present war.

“I myself have seen two letters from Ulster,” he said, “in which the phrase occurs, ‘Rather the Kaiser than the Pope.’  These letters were written before the war.  Ulster, no doubt, has now changed her tune.  But it was that spirit, surely, and the reports sent to Berlin by German officers who visited Ulster and inquired into the military character of Carsonism which persuaded Germany that England would not fight.”

Irish-Americans are persuaded that Sir Edward Carson is in very great measure responsible for all the ruin and death and bitter suffering of the enormous catastrophe.  He boasted that he would make civil war, and such were his preparations that in any other country in the world civil war would have been inevitable.

Germany counted on that civil war.  The British Army was said to be completely under the influence of Carsonism.  The real catastrophe for the diplomacy of Berlin was not India’s loyalty and the vigorous uprising of the young dominions, but the dying down of Ulster mutiny.