"But if the militant labour leaders of Ireland have not apostatized, the same cannot be said of the working class as a whole.... "Perhaps some day the same evil passions the enemy has stirred up in so many of our Irish people will play havoc with his own hopes, and make more bitter and deadly the cup of his degradation and defeat. "But deep in the heart of Ireland has sunk the sense of the degradation wrought upon its people--our lost brothers and sisters--so deep and humiliating that no agency less potent than the red tide of war on Irish soil will ever be able to enable the Irish race to recover its self-respect, or establish its national dignity in the face of a world horrified and scandalized by what must seem to them our national apostasy." Now the strange thing about Ireland is her definition of "loyalty." It is not with her a species of sentimental altruism but a plain, business-like, common-sense view of her own interests, and nothing can make her change that view, for she has through centuries of disillusionment become chronically suspicious. "I dare say I don't take the same view as you would were you in my place," wrote Mr. Birrell to the Prime Minister on January 25th. "Loyalty in Ireland is of slow growth, and the soil is uncongenial. The plant grows slowly. Landlords, grand juries, loyalist magistrates, have all gone; yet the plant grows, though slowly." Her patriotism, on the other hand, is almost necessarily a matter of internal administration; and for this she fights with all the spirit that animated her in the past against Dane and Saxon. Hence it is quite easy for an economic grievance at once to assume the proportions of a national movement, and once it becomes resisted as such, the spirit of nationality becomes rekindled again, and it was this latter that prompted the final efforts in the evolution of the Republic. America and Germany both contributed to intensify the spirit of nationality and gave material assistance that made the attempt at "Separatism" a practicable ideal, but it was only made possible because of the internal troubles in Ireland herself. So long as a constitutional outlet is not afforded for such grievances, so long must unconstitutional means be appealed to; but the question which the breakdown of the old regime suggests seriously to all thinkers is whether there are not ample means within the Constitution, and I think it is the universal opinion of the more moderate that there is; and it is just these moderates whose views will be the more welcome because of the failure not merely of the Sinn Feiners to establish a Republic, but of Sir Edward Carson and John Redmond to come to an understanding that would have placed them in a position to have controlled it in time, and, which is more important still, to be able to deal with any repetition of a similar character in the future.