It will be observed that we are getting on. A nation so busy with realities will have no time to waste on civil war. _Inter leges arma silent_. But this is a mere outline sketch of the preliminary task of the initial sessions of an Irish Parliament. Problems with a far heavier fist will thunder at its doors, the problems of labour. The democratic group in Ireland, that group which everywhere holds the commission of the future, has long since declared that, to it, Home Rule would be a barren counter-sense unless it meant the redemption of the back streets. The Titanic conflict between what is called capital and what is called labour, shaking the pillars of our modern Society, has not passed Ireland by like the unregarded wind. We can no longer think of ourselves as insulated from the world, immune from strikes, Socialists, and Syndicalism. The problems of labour have got to be faced. But will they be solved by a grapple between the Orange Lodges and the Ancient Order of Hibernians? It is obvious that under their pressure the old order must change, yielding place to a new. Every Trade Union has already bridged the Boyne. Every strike has already torn the Orange Flag and the Green Flag into two pieces, and stitched them together again after a new and portentous pattern. What does it all come to? Simply this, that Ireland under Home Rule will be most painfully like every other modern country of western civilisation. Some Unionists think that, if they could only get rid of the Irish Party, all would be for the best in the best of all possible worlds. Why then are they not Home Rulers? For Home Rule will most assuredly get rid of the Irish Party. It will shatter the old political combinations like a waggon-load of dynamite. New groups will crystallise about new principles. The future in Ireland belongs to no old fidelity: it may belong to any new courage.