Well, nothing could sound more reasonable or unexceptionable than that. But two comments present themselves. In the first place, you will note that the orator says "We." "We" means the Nationalist Party, representing about seventy per cent.--possibly more--of the Irish nation, and ignores the existence of the minority--a minority which, before the War, had deliberately and openly declared its intention, and was fully prepared, to fight and die rather than be forced out of the Union. Such a determination was doubtless very indefensible, but there it stands. It is recorded here as one of the trifling factors which prevent the Irish Question from being settled out of hand by the mere wave of some amateur magician's wand. Secondly, it implies that Ireland is not free. Now here is a statement that can be refuted at once. Ireland is just as free as England and Scotland and Wales. In one respect her freedom is very much greater, for she is heavily over-represented in the House of Commons. An Irish member, returned by a remote Galway fishing village of fifteen hundred voters, can balance the vote, say, of an English member representing a great working-class constituency of forty or fifty thousand. If a redistribution of seats, on a basis of proportional representation, were to be ordered in the House of Commons to-day, Ireland would automatically lose about thirty seats. The Irish members, then, wield a power in the councils of the United Kingdom to-day quite out of proportion to the population of the country which they represent. In another respect Ireland enjoys a freedom not vouchsafed to the nations of the sister isle. In the dim and distant days before the War, Mr. Lloyd George was engaged in a campaign of what his friends called Social Reform, and his victims Rank Piracy. One of his most unpopular flights of legislation was the Land Valuation Act, and another was his National Insurance scheme. Neither of these acts has ever been visited upon Ireland, for the simple reason that the Irish people refused to entertain them at any price; so the oppressed English, as usual, gave way, and paid the piper alone. Again, last year, when the Military Service Act, imposing conscription upon every able-bodied man between nineteen and forty-one, became law, Ireland was once more exempted. To the black shame and grief of every true Irishman, Ireland to-day stands officially aloof and alone in the struggle for liberty and humanity. The thousands of her gallant sons who are fighting in the trenches alongside their English and Scottish and Ulster comrades find difficulty in filling up the gaps in their ranks, because certain of their brothers prefer to stay at home--to make political bargains, or to engage in the profitable task of supplying the demands of depleted Great Britain for ablebodied labour.