The manner in which the British Government dealt with the Sinn Fein situation when it did become a menace showed lack of imagination and lack of information. Two errors in policy were made, and in the second case the error was persisted in. Irishmen of all shades of political opinion have informed me that the irresolute conduct of the Cabinet over the Irish conscription issue during the European war was directly responsible for subsequent happenings. The young men of Ireland had become impregnated with the bellicose spirit which was abroad in the rest of Europe, and that spirit must finally find a way out through some channel or other. A firm conscription policy would have caused it to flow outwards to the discomfiture of the Empire’s enemies; the irresolution of the Government caused it to flow inwards. The British Cabinet was harassed at the time, and did not dare to put the issue to the test. The youth of Ireland took the Government change of mind as a sign of weakness, all the world knows with what results. Irishmen of all political opinions have assured me conscription could have been carried out. The second case has been happening before my own eyes during the last eighteen months, and has been evidence of the lack of imagination and the little knowledge of the Irish temperament in Government circles. There were two alternatives for dealing with the Republican movement. One was to strike it a hammer blow while it was in its infancy, using all the impedimenta of war if necessary, aiming at speed in all things. The other alternative was to be generous and give a satisfactory measure of Home Rule.[1] The course the Government did adopt was doomed to failure. The Irish are a sensitive people and a spirited people. Public opinion in Ireland was dead against the Easter week rising of 1916, the British soldiers were cheered when they arrived; but four or five years of repression, of Irishmen hunted by Englishmen, of mistaken arrests, of wrong houses raided, of troops tramping Irish streets, of police and more police, brought about the alteration in feeling. From my personal observation I am under the impression that the British Government was continually being misinformed on the progress made against the Republicans, and while, like a cancer, Sinn Fein was sending out new shoots about the country, the British Cabinet was officially told the movement was collapsing. Thus the matter was spun out, and first in tens, then in hundreds, finally in thousands, Loyalists went over to the other camp. I saw it for myself. It was obvious to anybody with eyes.