THE MEANING OF FREEDOM

WHATEVER may be the issue of the struggle in which Ireland is engaged at present, and it can have but one ultimate issue, there is no doubt on one point. The Provincial Government has afforded and is affording to the world the latest and perhaps the most conspicuous illustration of the difference between subjection and freedom, the change that is effected in the mentality of a people towards political disorder when it ceases to be a people without any real or effective voice in its own government, and become the master of its destinies. It was only yesterday that there was no party in Ireland which was interested in the maintenance of order, with the exception of the British Government whose very position as an alien and, so far as the people of Ireland were concerned, irresponsible Government made it impossible for it to intervene without at every step making confusion worse confounded. The whole of Catholic Ireland, in spite of such domestic differences as might exist between one party and another, presented the spectacle of a united house whose one objective was the exclusion of British influence and authority. The British Government dwelt with emphasis on its intention of rallying the Moderates, but not only did it not succeed in rallying them, but the only effect of its policy was to drive the moderates in increasing numbers into the camp of the irreconcilables, until there was no one left in Ireland whom it could even hope to reconcile. It was at this stage that the true remedy suggested or rather commended itself to the British Premier. Ireland was, for the first time, offered real and substantial freedom, the bread of life for which she had been so passionately crying for decades, if not centuries and not the stone that had been offered to her as a substitute in one form or another.