being. It will be remembered that the proposition to set up such a body was one of two alternatives placed before the Irish Members of Parliament, and was that chosen by Mr. Redmond. The Convention was not received with any extravagant expressions of gratitude by the people of Ireland, who were not slow to point out that it was in no true sense a representative body, responsible to the public, but rather the creation of an English Ministry. While this accusation was in part just, it ought not to pass without some comment. In the first place, unrepresentative as it was, it was yet far more representative of the country than the Irish Parliament which effected its own dissolution, or than any Irish Parliament that ever sat. It contained a majority of members belonging to the Catholic Church, whereas the older body was rigidly confined to Protestants, then and now a small minority in the country. It contained also Presbyterians and members of other bodies ineligible for election when Ireland had a Parliament of her own. True, the members of the Irish Convention were invited to sit by the British Government; but the majority had already been selected for public positions, whether in Parliament, in County or City Councils or elsewhere. They might reasonably be looked upon as at least as representative as a vast number of the members of the last Irish House, whose positions therein depended wholly either upon Government or upon the private proprietors of the various and numerous seats which, in Ireland, corresponded to the Old Sarums in England.

Anyone who is curious enough can ascertain from the report precisely what the views of all the members were; and this may be added, that while the Sinn Fein and All for Ireland organizations refused to send representatives

to the Convention, there were among its members some who were in complete touch with one or the other organization, their views being thus represented in the assembly. The final choice of our meeting place in that noble apartment, the Senate House in Trinity College, was, from the historic point of view, an admirable one. Situated over the main entrance to the college, its windows on one side looked over College Green to the former Houses of Parliament, now occupied by the Bank of Ireland, but soon, it is to be hoped, to revert to their original purpose. By the way, may I advert for a moment to the odd mistake made by one of our legislators, of stating that Irishmen look forward to the restoration of their former Parliament in Stephen's Green. As well might a writer, deploring a lost English Parliament, utter prayers for its resuscitation in West Kensington. The incident is not without value as illustrative of the knowledge possessed of our country by those who make its laws.

The windows on the other side of our meeting place looked into one of the quadrangles of the college known as Parliament Square, a title due to this portion of the buildings having been largely paid for by grants from the Irish Parliament at a time when, as Barrington points out in his Recollections, no useful project for the advancement of Ireland ever lacked money from public sources and when the grant was made without any undue calls upon the tax-payer. But with much to recommend it, our meeting place had one fatal defect. Acoustically it was as bad a room as man ever spoke in. Some of us, remembering it as the scene of debates in our undergraduate days, were well aware of this fact, but I do not think that any of us had quite realized how bad

it really was. At the beginning of our sittings it was almost impossible to hear anyone; and it looked as if the Convention would have to migrate. Then some genius connected with the Board of Works hung sheets of canvas in rows like the gills of a fish from the ceiling. The scenic effect was something between Petticoat Lane and a spring-cleaning. The acoustical properties were improved; but they remained very bad.

In these quarters the members endured the stress of fifty-one meetings, each lasting for the greater part of each day; and as the room was always either revoltingly stuffy or impossibly draughty, 'endure' seems to be the proper word to use. The attendance, as the report shows, was extraordinarily good, and it may be added was not that sort of attendance which consists in marking-in' and then adjourning to the smoking-room, for a smoking-room we were civilized enough to have. The overwhelming majority of the members sat out the debates from start to finish. Such endurance surely should have borne some fruit. I myself think that it did; and I venture to offer the following remarks in support of this view. It is an unpopular view, for it seems to be very commonly supposed that the Convention was a complete failure; an absolute waste of time; an intentional and foreseen waste of time some argue I am convinced quite incorrectly.

When it came together I doubt whether anyone but that high-priest of optimism, our chairman, ever expected a unanimous 'agreed' report. What most people looked forward to was a sheaf of reports representing the different and well-known shades of Irish opinion. What, perhaps, no one ever expected was the kind of sheaf of reports which actually did issue from the Convention. As Sir Horace Plunk

ett points out in his covering letter to the report, there is no such thing as a Majority Report, though there are several documents representing the views of minorities of one kind or another. The findings of the Convention as set forth in the account of its proceedings are the majority report. True, the majority was not always the same on each question raised. There was always one stable minority which voted against everything proposed with the exception of the Land Purchase, Imperial Contribution, and Town Housing resolutions; and that minority was the solid Ulster Phalanx. This continuous opposition led to curious inconsistencies, as they must appear to the ordinary observer. To take an early example, the first clause in the 'Conclusions,' after stating that there shall be an Irish Parliament, goes on to lay down that notwithstanding its establishment or anything laid down in the Act of 1914, the supreme power and authority of the Parliament of the United Kingdom shall remain unaffected and undiminished over all persons, matters, and things in Ireland and every part thereof.' Subjoined to this will be found the following statement: 'Section carried by 51 votes to 18' (Division List, No. 6).

Here I can well suppose that the unsuspicious reader of the report will have said to himself: 'Of course those eighteen voters were wild Fenians who refuse to permit England or the Empire to have any say in Irish Affairs.' If any such reader will take the trouble to refer to Division List, No. 6, and to ascertain from the official list what the politics of those voting were, he will discover with some astonishment that, without exception, the recalcitrant minority who would have none of the clause was derived from Ulster, and consisted of those who are loudest

in proclaiming themselves sons of the Empire. The majority of fifty-one, on the other hand, contained all the Nationalists present and voting. The explanation is, of course, quite simple. The policy of what calls itself Ulster, though it is really only a part of that Province, was to vote against everything proposed; and that policy was steadily and continuously pursued. With such a policy on the part of any section - a policy which included that of no concessions or compromise no hope of general agreement was possible. There was a proposition put forward by the Belfast party as their solution of the problem, no doubt; but it was put forward with the knowledge on their part no less than on that of all the other sections, that it had not the remotest chance of being accepted as anything approaching a solution either inside or outside the Convention. With such a state of affairs, complete success was impossible; but it may at least be recorded that, contrary to the expectations of many people, persons widely differing from one another in views did actually sit together and debate the national affairs for some eight months with perfect freedom of utterance, yet without the slightest breach of courtesy or even of friendship, as a paragraph in the Ulster Unionist Minority Report very fairly points out. As to those outside the Ulster ring it should really be called the Belfast ring there was a majority and a minority separated from one another by only one question, a question of great importance, no doubt, though less so, some may think, than would appear from the length of time which the Convention occupied in discussing it, and this was the question of Customs. On this matter there were three definite opinions. The Southern Unionists so-called, that is, those Un

ionists who did not belong to the Belfast area or organization, were prepared to give up all their former views and accept an Irish Parliament with wider powers than ever previously proposed, but with no control over Customs. It was an extraordinary and a most generous - advance on the part of men who, like Lord Midleton, and the Protestant Archbishop Bernard of Dublin, had been lifelong opponents of any form of Home Government, but who had come to see that changed conditions must sometimes compel changes of opinions. So generous was their concession, and so important did their support appear to a majority of the Nationalist and Labor representatives, that they were willing to postpone the settlement of the Customs question (as indeed were the Southern Unionists) to the period after the war. At the same time they made it abundantly plain that Ireland should ultimately have the full control of her Customs as well as of all other sources of taxation. This opinion they set down in one of the sectional reports. The minority of the Nationalist party, containing names of great importance, held that the immediate settlement of the question of Customs, and a definite legislative enactment that their control should pass to the Irish Government as soon as peace was made, was a matter of such outstanding importance that it was better to stand by their view even to the alienation of the Southern Unionists and practically the collapse of the Convention. I do not propose to argue, but merely to state, the position. The majority of the Convention was then composed of the first two of the sections already mentioned. Let us see how it was made up. We can do so best by studying the final and crucial Division List, No. 52. 'That the report as a whole be

adopted,' is the proposition carried by forty-four votes to twenty-nine.

That majority of forty-four contained all the so-called Southern Unionists; five out of the six Labor representatives; and a majority of the Nationalists, including all the Nationalist M.P.'s present and voting. The minority consisted of a large preponderance of Belfast representatives who refused to consent to any kind of Home Government worthy of the name, coupled with whom were a small band of Nationalists who could not see their way to any compromise on the question of Customs. In a word, it consisted of those who thought that the majority of the Convention was asking far too much, and of others who thought it was content with too little. This vote then brought into the same lobby, so to speak, two utterly irreconcilable bodies of opinion.

That the majority was a very remarkable combination of men will thus be conceded by anyone who studies the Division Lists. It contained the names of men who had The Dublin Review

for long years stood on different platforms denouncing one another's political opinions in every mood and tense, yet who were now prepared to come together and make a reasonable compromise. If ever that central, moderate party towards which, as towards some almost impossible city of dreams, the eyes of many have been directed, is ever to arise and become articulate (it is there though it is almost unrecognized), from some such combination as this must it spring. Some might be found to say that it has actually arisen. The writer of these comments does not pretend to be, nor desire to be, a politician. But as the report has received neither attention from Parliament nor explanation from that 'transient phantom' who has escaped amid unanimous congratulations from the troubles of the Chief Secretaryship to the quietude of the Judicial Bench, these few observations may serve to clear away misunderstandings as to a part of its procedure and certain not impossible good results.

AT a lecture on the people of Russia, delivered at one of the intellectual centres of Britain about the time the Bolsheviks came into power, the lecturer was met with the heartsearching question: 'Where exactly in Russia is situated the nation of the Bolsheviks?'

Now that everyone realizes, perhaps, alas! too well, the meaning of the term Bolshevik, another puzzling name is brought to this country by the whirlwind of the east — 'CzechoSlovaks' Who are they? Whence do they come? What do they stand for?

Czecho-Slovaks now in Eastern Europe are not one of the peoples of old Russia, though some few Czechs lived in Southern Russia previous to the war. The Czechs, to the numbers of some seven millions, live in Bohemia, Moravia, and parts of Silesia, while the Slovaks, to the number of three millions live in the land called Slovakia, or Northern Hungary, between the Danube and the Upper Theiss. Thus the Bohemians are technically Austrian subjects, and the Slovaks Hungarian, but the history, civilization, and language of the two peoples are so similar, and Austria-Hungary is so feared as a common enemy, that with the revival of Nationalism there came a strong tendency to amalgamate

into one nation the Czecho-Slovak nation.

The Hapsburg dynasty has ruled Bohemia since 1526, but it is only since the Thirty-Years' War and the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, that the Czecho-Austrian relations have become more bitter, and, with time, ever more and more hostile. There must have been something very wrong indeed in the Austrian régime, if in spite of these centuries of common rule and, to a great extent, a common Roman Catholic religion, as well as the existence of a large German element in the kingdom of Bohemia they now, more than ever, seek to separate themselves from Austria.

This dissatisfaction of the Czechs and Slovaks, who, together with the Poles, form the western branch of the Slavonic world, has a very practical significance for the cause of the Allies in the present war. The great majority of the people of Bohemia and more important still of the Bohemian soldiers, who ipso facto belong to the Austrian Army, were openly hostile to the Austrian Government. One regiment after another refused to fight the Russians or the Serbs. The eight regiments of the Czech Landwehr, the 11th Czech Regiment of Pisek, the 36th Regiment of Mlada