All this is very illuminating, and at the same time distressing, to the stay-at-home Briton, who had always imagined that his domestic troubles were his own property, and were not causing concern to other people. But it is an undoubted fact, and cannot be too strongly impressed upon the English people, that the failure of Great Britain to settle the so-called Irish Question is a distinct bar to a complete entente cordiale with America, and, to a certain extent, with the British Dominions overseas. But before plunging more deeply into the matter, let us make one thing clear. It is not from want of effort or from lack of good will on the part of the English people that the Irish problem still remains unsolved. This is not, thank Heaven! a disquisition upon the pros and cons of the Home Rule Question. Home Rule is coming quite soon, anyway. But it is permissible to set down here, briefly, the reasons why the English people have so steadily declined to accede to Ireland's persistent demand for a separate Parliament for so many years. The first rock upon which both sides split is the difficulty of determining what, exactly, is meant by "Home Rule." When a responsible leader of the Irish Nationalist party states his case to an audience which is friendly without being bigoted--in Canada, say, or at a meeting of moderate English Liberals--he clothes his appeal in some such words as these: "All we ask is the right, as a little nation, to conduct our affairs in our own way, without interference from the officials of another and more powerful nation. Ireland free, and Ireland a nation, can then take her proper place as a loyal daughter of the Empire, side by side with Canada and Australia."