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'Martial law and a strong hand to administer it," was the prompt reply.

"How long do you suppose it would take?" stammered his interlocutor, rather startled by the severity of the conclusion. "About haalf an hour!" drawled the Irishman in his convincing brogue, and walked away laughing.

These were also the views if differently expressed of the lodgekeeper in our old home. The mother of "six of the finest boys that ever stepped "-to use her own expression-whose good conduct as well as their inches had established them early in high places as stewards and butlers.

"And why wouldn't they be good?" she exclaimed on this occasion, in reply to our congratulations. Shure I bet them well

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-ye'd hear them bawlin' at the crass-roads beyant."

Her code was vigorous if simple, and amply justified by the results.

"The Irishman is the worst man in the world to run away from," wrote Lord Midleton during the recent Sinn Fein outbreak -the only utterance of common sense in the mass of verbiage called forth by the situation-nor was the reflection unkind.

The Irish want authority, though they will never submit to it -a paradox, yet an undeniable fact.

Let them once feel they cannot do what they like, and they will do what they must with a fine philosophy underlying a great deal of outward grumbling. They will always grumble; it is a national prerogative.

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Why would ye want to deprive us of our grievance, shure that is our joy in life?" is a native utterance in point, and its truth was forcibly recalled to me in a letter from Ireland received lately, in which the writer declared: "We don't want Home Rule now, we have waited too long."

This is not the received method of viewing latent good fortune -if, for instance, a long-expected legacy came suddenly to handbut it is the Irish method of disclaiming a boon whose results they secretly dread. The Irishman doesn't know what he wants and won't be happy till he gets it," is an epigram which applies admirably here, as well as the recent pronouncement of a leading journal which says: "To refuse an Irish demand is to incur the most terrifying invective to grant it is to discover that no one ever wanted such a thing. The Englishman is perpetually surprised at the result; the Irishman never." We are so delightfully inconsequent and should never be taken au pied

de la lettre.

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Wasn't it lovely for me to be brought up by the holy nuns?" said my maid one day in a kind of whine she affects when recalling some specially ecstatic period of her life; "but shure

they're divils to be undher!" she added in the same breath, her eyes shooting fire. To the Saxon this would sound like a revelation, but in reality it was a tribute, and should occasion allow she would infallibly send her children to the same convent to be dragooned by the successful process employed towards herself. Perhaps the politicians might take a hint from this characteristic anecdote.

Martin Ross, that clever writer whose books have brought her country before us with a clearness no other pen will ever rival, makes one of her delightful sallies in The Irish Cousin. "The Irishman has the greatest respect and admiration for the astuteness which is able to outwit him!" No truer word was ever written, and I may add that, like children, the Irish feel no gratitude-nothing but contempt for a policy of wobble!

I knew a charming man full of good intentions on the subject of education, but unable to let a punishment take effect. On one occasion his little daughter was condemned to bed for a flagrant transgression. Early in the evening, however, a footstep was heard outside the nursery door. The little culprit sat up promptly too well she knew the measure of the paternal weakness" The old fool, I knew he'd come!" she called out to the nurse in charge.

Had England a greater sense of humour she might succeed better with the Sister Isle, but she is at one and the same time so solemn and so foolish. What madness prompted Mr. Asquith to come over to add to Sir John Maxwell's difficulties in quieting the country already a sufficiently impossible task? It was indeed a case of: "The old fool, I knew he'd come.' Ireland's welfare went to the winds and over he trundled-the seas well swept for his advent-to pat the backs of the rebels whose councils had lured their ignorant fellows to ruin and often death.

"The gentlemen speak to us so beautiful ye'd do anything in the world they'd tell you," whispered a dying Sinn-Feiner, a lad of nineteen, to the nurse in his ward. And he was one of many victims.

I am glad to be able to report for the credit of the country that in none of Mr. Asquith's peregrinations north or south did the luckless gentleman receive a single cheer, but his visit was none the less fatal to the prospect of settlement-the whole colour of feeling changed as if by magic in twenty-four hours, and Sir John Maxwell's policy was doomed.

Since then the country has remained in a state of seething discontent, of which the outward ebullition is checked occasionally by a feeble but still existent bayonet. When some trifling accident occurs, like the murder of a policeman, there is a show of taking

up the offending demagogue, but as he is sure to be released on the following day, no importance is attached to the arrest.

For the wrongs of the law-abiding minority there is no redress whatever, so their number is dwindling in consequence day by day. To put the matter in a nutshell, there is no law in Ireland now but Sinn Fein law, and small blame can be attached to the people for clinging to a code which is at least coherent and knows how to enforce its decrees.

Witness the case of the woman whose three sons had been sworn in Sinn-Feiners without probably knowing the obligations involved. Scenting trouble in the air on that famous Easter Sunday, she ordered her gossoons to bed and locked the door early to prevent their eluding her; but she reckoned without her host. When it grew dark, her windows were broken by stones flung from a distance, after which her cottage was surrounded by armed men, who threatened the lives of her sons unless she released them at once to carry out their nefarious mission. This is a form of coercion well recognized in Ireland, and woe to the man who dared to report the outrage; his life would not be worth a minute's purchase.

When matters come to this pass one can but applaud the sagacity of the Irish Biddy who declared to the M.P. of her county from whose lips I heard the tale that, "Bedad, your honour, there's nothing for it but to send to hell for Oliver Cromwell."

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I have been much edified by the views expressed in the pages of a choice publication called the Catholic Bulletin-a Sinn Fein organ in great demand. Under the heading "Notes from Rome in the July number I have culled the following extract: "Now that the Russian Eagle has its eye on Skibbereen, it would be too much to expect that Lloyd George's Conference trick could escape the attention of a city of such cosmopolitan interests as Rome." Conference trick!" It does not sound hopeful for the prospects of Home Rule self-evolved, if it ever had any prospects at all. When ten men in Ireland have never been known to agree on any one subject, he would be sanguine indeed who would expect better results from a convention of a hundred. But as the alternative would appear to be a republic of Sinn-Feiners, it might be well to draw attention to one of the items in the programme sketched by that eloquent gentleman the Member for East Clare. In one of his electioneering speeches he suggests as an early measure to put the landlords with their backs to the wall and shoot them in German fashion.

Does he forget that in these days the landlord in Ireland is not only a man, which is immaterial, but what is more to the point, a farmer-and that the farmers will not be likely to surrender their lives or their purses without a struggle? Hence the for

tunate split in the Irish vote, and the possibility it gives, in these days of upheaval, of reversing the time-honoured adage, and make Ireland's difficulty

England's opportunity

Now comes the point of the parable with which I set forth. Is there no one to seize the arm of star-gazing England and show her the powers in her grasp?

Government at the eleventh hour to save Ireland from herself? No, from what is worse, from "ourselves alone."*

What form should Government take? Any form provided it is sustained.

If the loyal minority can rely on the unflinching support of the executive, its numbers will increase by leaps and bounds.

If Crime be known as Crime-Honesty as Honesty-Justice as Justice if, in fact, Law, martial or otherwise, be enforced throughout the land, then peace and prosperity will come to distracted Ireland, if not in "half an hour," perhaps in half a year.

* Sinn Fein motto.

G.

THE DANGER TO THE NAVY

THE Army issues daily bulletins; the Navy, although in proportion it is doing as much work as the Army, work upon which depends the very ability of the Army to begin, says nothing. It is very difficult to say anything concerning the war at sea which does not help the enemy, who is so densely ignorant of the real position that he thinks Germany commands the North Sea and the English Channel. Only losses at sea are published; gains are concealed; so that the Navy is in the unfortunate situation of being weekly exhibited to the British public on the negative side, to the exclusion of all else. And it works unseen. Yet it works to such purpose that if it stopped working for one week the war would be lost the next.

The Navy achieves its tremendous task in spite of the extraordinary modifications in the theory and practice of naval warfare imposed by modern inventions. Like the Army, it was compelled, in the very article of war, to meet wholly unforeseen developments. That which had been expected did not occur. The whole of the theories and assumptions set forth by the politicians during the years preceding the war were set at naught, while the warnings and anticipations of Admiral Lord Beresford were justified in every particular.

Instead of one great fleet composed entirely of Dreadnoughts meeting another great fleet also composed entirely of Dreadnoughts, sinking them all, and thenceforward triumphantly "commanding the sea," what has happened has been the segregation of Dreadnoughts and a war waged between light craft on the one side and submarines on the other-a war in which no final decision is in sight, and in which a decision is perhaps impossible to obtain.

Hence it is that the public, their attention fixed upon the campaign on the Western Front, have relegated the Navy to a shady place in the background of their consciousness. It is a pity, but it cannot be helped at present. Full justice will be done to the achievement of the Navy in the end. In the meantime it is at least certain the public does understand that the whole conduct of the war depends fundamentally upon the Royal

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