THE Irish Statesman has a goodly number of American readers, and it is safe to say that every one of them is deeply interested in the political settlement it advocates and in the current Irish thought and feeling it expresses. Unless we are completely misinformed they scan its pages with a yearning to hear some hopeful answer to the perennial question, 'How does she stand?' Not a few of them look to this new voice from Ireland for guidance in the most perplexing Irish situation in living memory. They know that this journal can claim the somewhat rare distinction of not being owned or controlled by any political organization, and of being absolutely impartial as between capital and labor in the social conflict now threatening the peace. of the world even more alarmingly than international antagonisms. Its columns are, therefore, a fitting channel through which to convey a message from Ireland to America, or less grandiloquently-from some Irishmen to some Americans.

In what I have now to say I shall assume a general agreement that Western civilization fundamentally depends upon a right mutual under

standing between the peoples of the United States and of the League of Nations, as we may now call it, under the British flag. 'To such an understanding.' writes Professor Turner in a book upon Ireland and America, remarkable for its sincerity, fullness, and impartiality, 'there has been in the past no greater obstacle than the Irish question. Forty years in close touch with American life have convinced me that this is a true judgment. Adding to my long American, my still longer Irish, experience, I give it as my considered opinion that at the present crisis America might do more to rid the world of the curse of Irish unrest than can England, or even Ireland herself. And I am not alone in this opinion.

The most emphatic British demand, led by the Times, for an Irish settlement is based upon Anglo-American arguments. The protagonists on both sides of the Irish political struggle have transferred their main operations to the United States. Nor were they wrong to do so; for the Irish question is a world question, not only because millions of those who have a deep personal interest in its settlement are scattered all over the world, but much

more because certain root principles involved are among those for which the late war was fought. In this agelong Irish controversy, as in that war, there is a Western Front upon which the main issue will be decided and that front is America. So, I propose to show the American people for it is they and not their President or government that can act in the matter that they have, while the very foundations. of World Peace are being weakened by this ancient wrong, an opportunity as great as their responsibility is grave.

Hitherto the American people have been indoctrinated with the opinions, hopes, aspirations, and passions of the party which has swept all before it in Nationalist Ireland. Now they are having presented to them for the first time in an organized campaign the opinions, hopes, aspirations, and passions of the opposite - the 'Ulster'— extreme. The writer from whom I have quoted above asserts that 'in America Irish matters are usually discussed by extremists,' that is, by people who refuse to hear the other side. But this is not the usual American way. I ask our American friends with full confidence not only to hear both sides, but, when they have heard them and realize what an impassable gulf divides them, to listen to those moderate folk who believe that they have found a bridge in Dominion selfgovernment.

Americans rightly wish the Irish people to have the government they want and the majority are asking for a republic. Yet Americans cannot support an Irish Republic without serious danger of civil war in Ireland. On the other hand if they argue, as does Professor Turner, that Ulster has the same right to separate herself from Ireland as Ireland has to break away from the United Kingdom and the British Empire, and cite as he does the

instance of West Virginia, then they run counter to the national sentiment of four fifths of the Irish at home and a much larger proportion of the Irish abroad.

The advocates of a Dominion settlement ignore none of these claims and counter-claims. Consisting mostly of business men who have taken no active part in politics, they are satisfied that a demand for the fullest measure of self-government, consistent with the military safety of the group of islands of which Ireland is a part, is now the one way of setting up a government in Ireland which will have any chance of attaining the consent of the governed. While refusing to break up the unity of their country, once that is assured, they are willing to concede, within the Dominion of Ireland, any provincial rights which may meet the needs and allay the fears of the mainly protestant population in the Northeast corner of the island.

We do not expect Americans to trouble themselves with the details of an Irish settlement. I have no more than indicated, in the broadest outline, what a body of Irish opinion which makes no extravagant claim of authority, but which Americans would certainly respect, believes to be the wisest procedure at the moment. We ask all lovers of Ireland to advise the Irish people to give it their thoughtful consideration at the present crisis in the affairs of their country. I know the chief difficulty in interesting Americans in the Dominion solution is that they have no experience of it. But they have only to look across their Northern border to see it conferring upon English-speaking people as full and as unrestricted democratic freedom as they possess themselves. And Canada is not without its Ulster

Readers of the Irish Statesman need not be told that the British Govern

ment in Ireland in its latest. and, I think it safe to say, its final, stage, is in itself a terrible evil fraught with the gravest consequences to the future of our country. You cannot make new crimes without making new criminals. You cannot discredit all the law that exists without weakening the sanction of the law to come. We are promised in a few days the announcement of a bill to provide self-government for Ireland. The Irish people have had no hand or part in framing the government they are to work. They have not the faintest notion what it is going to

The Irish Statesman, December 13. 1919

be. One minister in the secret has publicly disclosed that they will unanimously denounce it when its terms are known. We may, therefore, confidently assert that this is at best merely marking time, at worst a device of political opportunism in lieu of statesmanship.

I am convinced that the whole situation would be changed if the British people and the Irish people both knew that the American people would give their moral support to the reasonable compromise the Irish Dominion League advocates between sovereign independence and the legislative Union.

DURING the war neutrality was in bad repute, and it requires as much perseverance and self-restraint as scrupulous honesty in all dealings to wear down a bad reputation. In the press of the warring nations the Netherlansd have had their full share of suspicion and reproach, and though the war may be over some day, and settlement in all disputes be reached, the ill weeds of prejudice and bias grow rankly on a soil so tragically well prepared that it seems almost impossible to root out some of the fallacies created about the doings and dealings of Holland in the years of stress.

All through the war unthinking people ceaselessly reiterated: 'We fight and bleed, you neutrals reap the harvest.' And yet of all the neutral states of Western Europe the Netherlands have suffered most by the dis

location of their trade and industries, the mainstay of their national wealth. The transport trade, by which we partly live, entirely ceased; our factories closed down for want of raw materials and coal; our shipping dwindled to less than a tenth of its former dimensions; unemployment with its sequela of misery and hunger prevailed among the working classes; and an army on war footing guarded the frontiers and sapped the nation's wealth by an unproductive activity. Though the supreme sacrifice was not demanded, we were prepared to offer it and would have died fighting rather than live in shame. These are not idle words, for, whatever our reputation may be, we cannot be charged with cowardice or with compromising our honor.

No, we have not 'done well' by the

war, though fortunes changed hands, and the more adventurous or enterprising of our merchants reaped golden harvests, for which the populace have to pay. At present our population suffers from over-taxation and from high prices no less than others, and it is hardly necessary to quote statistical figures to reveal the fallacy of the contention that the Netherlands 'gained immense wealth' by a war which totally or partly ruined their neighbors. Still, figures and hard facts are illuminating, and it should be borne in mind that the total population of the Netherlands is less than that of London, and that the country is spread over an area equal to about half that of Ireland.

Taxation in Holland to-day has been raised to an amount about treble that of 1913, direct taxation is increased to 73.38 guilders per capita, which is 158 per cent more than that of 1913. Our National Debt was raised by a milliard and a half; but this, of course, does not include the losses incurred by industry, shipping, and trade, all of which are mainstays of the national wealth. I need only mention the amount paid out to the unemployed from August, 1914, to December 31, 1918, to convince the most incredulous reader of the seriousness of these losses. The state subsidy for food supply amounted to 335,000,000, state unemployment pay to 87,000,000, while in addition the National Relief Committee doled out just under 40,000,000 guilders to the suffering poor.

The cost of mobilization, to give another item of expenditure which arose out of the war, surpassed a milliard, and it may be mentioned that in view of eventualities our army has virtually been kept at war strength until this day. The sacrifice connected with the mobilization of the able

bodied part of the male population cannot be expressed in figures, and in this respect the Netherlands may be put almost on a par with the warring nations themselves.

A recent visit to Holland, extending over several weeks, convinced me had conviction been necessary- that the war has brought about a curious change of atmosphere in public places. A garish crowd has taken possession of the theatre boxes and the better restaurants. The nouveaux riches have successfully supplanted the cultured aristocracy of birth and mind; the professional classes have suffered as much from vexatious taxations and the high cost of living as the middle class and the poor. The necessities of life at the present day are still much dearer in Holland than in Britain, as I discovered to my cost. Barefaced profiteering, no less than the justifiable raising of prices caused by world scarcity, dearth of shipping, and increased cost of production - mainly due to the new eight-hour day and substantial raising of wages of the workers-place a heavy burden on the shoulders of the long-suffering middle class, whose lot is not an enviable one; and altogether the old conception of a land of milk and honey and general good living can be relegated to the dusty shelf of memories of a bygone age.

a mere

Economically, Holland has suffered loss in all directions, and the gold which flowed into our country in the first few years of the war trifle in comparison with the profits made by neutral states outside the - may have enriched the adventurous few. It has but slightly alleviated the financial burden which tends to crush that useful part of the population which has not unjustly been called the backbone of the state.

war zone

Politically, Holland's prestige as a

sovereign state has suffered also by the numerous and very serious difficulties she encountered during the past eventful four years. The sharpest legal minds of my country, the birthplace of international law, were ceaselessly whetted on the grindstone of international disputes and opportunistic claims of all contending parties. Only the strictest impartiality saved us from disaster, though not from abuse and vilification. Here our national characteristic phlegm and the firm assurance of the judgment of posterity saved us from hasty action. We know the time will come when not only the best minds of men, but also the unthinking throng, who sing their jingoistic leaders' chorus, will come to understand and appreciate the delicate position of my country, and will do justice to the skill with which our helmsmen piloted our ship of state through the raging storm, and to the courage of its crew, which rescued numberless lives from the surging waters of the war.

As to the question of the ex-Kaiser's extradition, I can only say that our notions of hospitality and chivalry are not different from those traditionally upheld by Great Britain, as reflected in Palmerston's historic words: "The laws of hospitality, the dictates of humanity, the general feelings of mankind, forbid such surrender; and any independent government, which of its own free will were to make such surrender, would be deservedly and universally stigmatized as degraded and dishonored.'

Our hospitality has been extended to other and less undesirable guests. King George paid a handsome tribute to our treatment of his maimed and broken subjects, rescued from the German camps. From other sides our help has been acknowledged, not the least by the Belgian refugees, who in their hundreds of thousands crossed

our southern frontier in the eventful days of Antwerp's fall. It is in no mean spirit of boastfulness, but with a set purpose, that I here mention the amount of expenditure incurred by the Dutch Government alone, in extending hospitality to destitute fugitives, namely, 35,000,000 guilders. How well I remember- for I happened to be in Roosendaal on the day when the long and sombre stream of refugees began to arrive-the heartfelt sympathy and friendly helpfulness with which the Dutch welcomed those poor souls.

How is it, then, that, at my recent visit to the Netherlands, that spirit of sympathy for the Belgian nation had almost entirely vanished and had given place to a feeling of deep resentment and distrust, not to give it a stronger name? No exception was taken to the guests of the past four years, their behavior has been no worse and no better than would have been expected of any other community ruthlessly torn from its surroundings. It is not because we kept and fed and clothed those thousands upon thousands of Belgian refugees, to the extent of adding one guest to every ten of our own population, that we ask for better treatment than has been meted out to us by the organized propaganda of the Belgian annexationists. We ask for fair treatment not only for our own sake, but also in the interest of the Belgians themselves and of their children's children. Nothing rankles so persistently in the mind as deliberate injustice; no knife cuts so deep in the flesh and leaves so hideous a

scar.

The lack of appreciation and good will shown to us by the Belgian Government in their hour of triumph, the immediate voicing of grievances not to us, but to the Allied Powers in Paris- the extravagant desires for