THE KAISER (on reading the appalling tale of German losses): "What matter,
so we Hohenzollerns survive?"]
And what has England's answer been, apart from the stubborn and heroic
resistance of her men on the Western Front? The answer is to be found in
the immediate resolve to raise the age limit for service to 50, still more
in the glorious exploit of Zeebrugge and Ostend, in the incredible valour
of the men who volunteered for and carried through what is perhaps the most
astonishing and audacious enterprise in the annals of the Navy.
The pageantry of war has gone, but here at least is a magnificence of
achievement and self-sacrifice on the epic scale which beggars description
and transcends praise. The hornet's nest that has pestered us so long, if
not rooted out, has been badly damaged; our sailors, dead and living, have
once more proved themselves masters of the impossible.
At home Parliament, resuming business after the Easter recess, began by
giving a second Reading to a Drainage Bill, and ended its first sitting in
an Irish bog. Ireland throughout the month has dominated the proceedings,
aloof and irreconcilable, brooding over past wrongs, blind to the issues of
the War and turning her back on its realities. Mr. Lloyd George's plan of
making Home Rule contingent on compulsory service has been described by Mr.
O'Brien as a declaration of war on Ireland. Another Nationalist Member, who
at Question time urged on the War Office the necessity of according to its
Irish employees exactly the same privileges and pay as were given to their
British confrères, protested loudly a little later on against a Bill which
_inter alia_ extends to Irishmen the privilege of joining in the fight
for freedom. Mr. Asquith questioned the policy of embracing Ireland in the
Bill unless you could get general consent. Mr. Bonar Law bluntly replied
that if Ireland was not to be called upon to help in this time of stress
there would be an end of Home Rule, and that if the House would not
sanction Irish conscription it would have to get another Government. It
remained for Lord Dunraven, before the passing of the Bill in the House of
Lords, to produce as "a very ardent Home Ruler" the most ingenious excuse
for his countrymen's unwillingness to fight that has yet been heard.
Ireland, he tells us, has been contaminated by the British refugees who had
fled to that country to escape military service.
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