blurred to distinguish the close presence of political phenomena which demand attention. In consequence, Ireland’s movement of self-assertion did not receive the good press which the occasion might normally have warranted. America, though neutral at the time, denounced the “disloyalty” of Sinn Féin in the best Colonial style, leaving to the American-Irish the hyphenated distinction, shared with their American-German fellow-citizens, of displaying a very natural sympathy with their kin in “the old country.” The racial ties of these two sections of Americans were, until intervention replaced benevolent neutrality, the only evidence of resistance to that anglicization of Allied opinion which has already been noted. Once, however, Dr. Wilson had declared his intention of making the world safe for democracy, repressive measures soon eliminated those manifestations of opinion. They had been denounced, but tolerated, only so long as it was legally impossible to suppress freedom of speech without injuring the interests of the highly articulate Allies and their friends.

The unsophisticated Irishman in the United States had to reconcile himself to the paradox of the American denunciation of the Easter Week Rising, as if the analogous revolt of the founders of that great plutocratic Republic had not differed only in so far as it was successful. The American separatists were alike untroubled by the representations of the unionistic minority, and the preoccupation of England with the war against her commercial rival of the period. But the Irish separatists made not even a romantic appeal to a people whose appetite for uplifting sentiment may be gauged by their profound conviction that the “moral leadership of the world” had been thrust upon them, after the outbreak of war, by an appreciative Destiny. It is true that, during the two years when this particular megalomania possessed the soul of America, her energies were exclusively concentrated upon the supply of munitions of war, with occasional humanitarian homilies, addressed to the Hun, and emphatic protests against the Allied blockade, which was denounced as illegal and unjust, but has become much more stringent under Wilsonian auspices. It is hard to decide which of these two not wholly unrelated phenomena is the greater tribute to the triumph of Anglo-Saxon culture; America’s condemnation of the Irish Republicans as “traitors,” or her reinforcement, when a belligerent, of blockade measures previously described as indefensible.

II

REALISM IN IRISH POLITICS

In this most intellectually belligerent of neutral countries the political mind has become realistic and critical, just when the combatant nations have taken refuge in an uncritical and remote idealism from the sordid and dreadful realities of war. Amongst the belligerents, it is true, there is talk of imposing ideals which, if ill-defined, have nevertheless called forth generous sacrifices from the inarticulate, plain people, who accept the formulæ officially or officiously provided for their guidance. But the mere fact of mobilization tends to emphasize the abstract quality of the formulæ in which the combatants have summed up, in almost identical words, their allegedly conflicting purposes. The individual is obscured by the anonymity of the device emblazoned upon the banner under which he is engaged. The mind is mobilized no less than the body, so that it is difficult to discern the personal emotion which must lie behind the self-immolation of so much bravery. Indeed, when collectively expressed in official utterances, the motives seem so abstract that President Wilson once confessed his inability to distinguish between them. It was not until he ceased to be a spectator of the conflict that he himself coined a phrase almost cynical in its bland inhumanity, coming from a country where the rudiments of real democracy are scarcely perceptible.

In so far, however, as it is possible to read any intelligible meaning into the word “democracy,” as currently employed, it must be prefixed by “political.” The world must be made safe for the political democracies, that is to say, those countries which have provided themselves with the “democratic institution” of parliamentary government. A couple of centuries ago the blessings of political freedom preoccupied the minds of those countries which have ever since accepted the attainment of that end as a substitute for the liberty of which it seemed the simulacrum. Those were the happy days when the discovery had not yet been made that political power is determined and conditioned by economic power, the former being useless without the latter. The gradual realization of this has been accompanied by a widespread disillusionment with party politics, popularly summed up by Mr. Belloc in his book, The Party System, which put before the general reader criticisms heretofore confined to Socialist literature. The domination of politics by capitalism became an accepted truism, and it was no longer possible for intelligent men to consider their “representative assemblies” with that seriousness so necessary to the dignity and comfort of the political mountebanks. In short, without prejudice to the theoretical virtues of parliamentary government, the conviction was established that, under the régime of profiteering industrialism, political democracy is an impolite fiction, and that the politics of capitalism must be party politics, with all its inherent corruption and dishonesty.

This process of disillusionment was not without its counterpart in Ireland, since Irish politicians were part of precisely that political machinery whose workings were being exposed in England. Moreover, within the past quarter of a century Irishmen had begun to perceive that, by relying upon themselves rather than upon their representatives at Westminster, they could get things done instead of being talked about. They also observed that the most flourishing industrial and intellectual movement in the country advanced amidst the indifference, when so fortunate as not to arouse the active hostility, of the politicians. It required very little, then, to arouse the suspicion that nothing more could be obtained for Ireland by political action in England, and the ignominious fate of the Home Rule Bill came as the final confirmation of a slowly accumulated scepticism. There was, of course, much of the inevitable ingratitude of the mob in this revulsion of feeling against a system which had been accepted by the Irish people, and had, within its limits, procured them undeniable advantages. Ireland, being eighteenth century in its retarded political mentality, believed, and still believes, in the marvels of political liberty, so that the Parliamentary Party was naturally outraged by the ficklessness of the anti-parliamentarian campaign. Electors and elected equally believed in party politics, and the Irish Party could show, with reasonable pride, a record of definite parliamentary achievement, unequalled by any other minority party in the British House of Commons.

The truth is, the Nationalist Party was accused of the vices inseparable from the parliamentary system by those who very humanly imagined that such vices were not inherent in the system itself, but were peculiar to British parliamentarianism. In all criticism there was lacking any suggestion of the possibility of similar defects in a purely Irish parliament. That is natural for two reasons. First, because the political development of Ireland makes it as premature for her to doubt the wisdom of