advocacy of Sinn Fein or Republican politics. In July Sinn Fein, the Gaelic League, Cumann na mBan and the Irish Volunteers were declared to be "dangerous associations" to which Irish men and women would in future belong at their own risk. Concerts, hurling matches, literary competitions, were prohibited all over Ireland by military force when they were held under the auspices of persons politically obnoxious to the Government. Government became a matter of having enough troops in the country to ensure that the Executive was able to do precisely what it pleased. Ireland was treated frankly as hostile and occupied territory, and the last pretence of constitutional government was finally abandoned. The reply of Sinn Fein to the arrest of Mr. Griffith for complicity in the "German Plot" had been his triumphant election for East Cavan. This was almost the last seat which the once powerful Parliamentary Party ventured to contest. Its co-operation with Sinn Fein in the question of Conscription had been, not an alliance but an operation conducted in common, and on other points each was at perfect liberty to pursue its own path. But the junction of forces had only succeeded in bringing into clear relief the essential incompatibility of the Sinn Fein and the Parliamentary policies, and it became evident that the Irish public would have to choose definitely which it should finally adopt. Sinn Fein, which refused to compromise on the essential principle of Ireland's distinct and independent nationhood, could argue with considerable force that on this assumption alone could Ireland object to Conscription with confidence and moral justification--that if Ireland were not a nation, but a province or a dependency, then the resistance to Conscription was legally and morally without a sound basis. It was extremely difficult for the Parliamentary Party to counter this argument: and in point of fact some of them did not try to counter it but frankly dissociated themselves from the Anti-Conscription policy. It was perfectly clear that the Home Rule Act reserved such powers to Parliament as to make the conscription of Ireland, as part of a general measure of Conscription for the United Kingdom, a step which Parliament would legally be entitled to take and which, once the Home Rule Act was accepted by Ireland as satisfactory (and the Parliamentary Party had declared that it was) Ireland would have no moral right to resist. The Party began to shift its ground: it could no longer, in view of Irish feeling, remain advocates of a settlement which made Conscription possible: it would not go the whole way with Sinn Fein and declare that no settlement would be satisfactory which did not acknowledge the right of Ireland to independent nationhood, to self-determination and the right to choose its own form of government. The Party settled down unofficially to the advocacy of a form of Home Rule which should ensure to