Why does England refuse freedom to Ireland? A host of evasive and contradictory answers
have been given to this question in the past. But the last two years have cleared the
ground of unreal controversies and fictitious issues. There survives but one answer to the
eternal question, and that answer is that it would be 'unsafe' for England to do otherwise.
All the recent utterances of responsible British statesmen, including the Prime Minister,
have narrowed the question to this single point.
'An independent Ireland on our flank,'
they have repeated again and again, 'would be a military and strategical danger to us'. In
the negotiations begun in July [1921], this again has been the one dominating issue. The
naval and military conditions imposed upon Ireland under the British proposals of July 20th
were justified by Mr Llyod George on the grounds that 'the geographical propinquity of
Ireland to the British isles is a fundamental fact.' (Letter of August 13th.) Ireland,
simply because she is near to England, is alleged to be a danger to England, and to guard
against this danger England claims for ever to rule Ireland, whatever the rights and wishes
of the Irish people.
That is the proposition: a brutally frank proposition, proclaimed without hypocrisy and
seemingly without a suspicion that it amounts to a denial of all international morality,
and violates the principle in the name of which Europe was drenched with blood for four
years. For if England can say this to Ireland, any state in the world can say it to any
adjoining state, and with greater force; for whereas Ireland is an island, most states are
actually contiguous to their neighbours. But whether the proposition be morally right or
wrong, is it true? Would an independent Ireland in fact be a danger to England? In the
first place let us have it clear that for England the question is not one simply of safety,
but of contrasting the relative safety of two opposite courses. Is she safer with an
Ireland under her military control, as at present, than one would be with an independent
Ireland?
A violently hostile Ireland is undoubtedly a danger to her, and, in the larger sense of
the word 'strategy' a strategical danger. It chains to the costly and odious task of
coercion a large army which might at any moment be needed for vital work elsewhere. It
requires a money outlay far exceeding any money profit derived from the possession of
Ireland. It involves England in a war of a kind which is damaging to her prestige and
admits of no finality because the objective is an unconquerable abstraction, the soul and
spirit of a people. Lastly it makes England bitter enemies among the Irish race throughout
the world, with results, especially in America, which are an embarrassment to her imperial
policies. These facts are unquestioned.
Those who say that Irish independence would be a danger to England are bound to prove that
the danger would be greater than it is now. Mr Llyod George, in a speech at Carnavon, on
October 9th of last year [1920], came near to a reasoned strategical argument than any
statesman in recent days, and the reasons he gave for the military subjection of Ireland
will serve as a basis of discussion. He made two points, not merely against an Irish
Republic but against 'Dominion Home Rule'. The first was that England would be forced to
have conscription because 'you could not have an army of 500,000 or 600,000 in Ireland and
only of about 100,000 men here.' The second point was that 'they (the Irish) need not build
a navy. You do not need to spend much on submarines. They are vicious little craft but
they are not expensive.'
Here are two assertions with which we can grapple. The danger to England is alleged to come
from an Irish army and Irish submarines. Mr Llyod George spoke as if Ireland, single handed,
could make these menaces effective, and the simpliest plan is to begin by following him in
this assumption because the underlying strategic principles will emerge most clearly... Let
us take the army first and, passing by the rhetorical use of some rather startling figures,
get to the point. The only rational meaning to be attached to Mr Llyod George's
proposition is that the Irish army would in some way threaten England. The same fear is
expressed in the second of the six conditions attached to the peace offer made to Ireland
by the British Government on July 10th, 1921.
Now let us suppose that little Ireland with her 4˝ millions of people and her revenue,
screwed to the highest point by exorbitant taxation, of 50 million, were really to form
the insane ambition of menacing with military force her mighty neighbour, Britain, with
42 millions of people, a revenue of 1,000 millions, and an army potentially 5 million
strong. How is the threat to be carried out? The small Irish army could certainly be used
up to the limit of its strength for defending Irish soil. But defence is not a menace. For
offence it must be transported overseas on ships which would have to be protected by a navy
capable of defeating the British navy and securing the permanent and undisputed command of
the sea; for it is an accepted axion of strategy that an over sea invasion is not possible
without the secure maintenance of sea-communications. Germany with the largest army in the
world and the second navy in the world was not able to land a man in England in the recent
war. England, thanks to her command of the sea, was able to land millions of troops
continuously upon the continent, place them upon the battle front and eventually throw them
into Germany.
Ireland then starting with a single naval ship to her credit, must in order to menace
England with her army, first become a naval power greater than England. Now it is certainly
not reasonable to refuse Ireland independence on the ground that this prodigious inversion
of relative positions might by a miracle come to pass in the future.
In this respect America will be but paying back the debt she owes to Ireland. In the days
of her struggle for independence, before she set up her republic, she was aided by Irish
citizens - many of whom gave their lives for her freedom. And in the Civil War thousands
of Irishmen died that your negroes might be free men. It is for their descendants, the
beneficiaries of those old wars of yours for freedom in '76 and 1861, now to pay back the
debt, and to help us set up an Irish republic, as independent of Great Britain as is your
own.
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