to prevent Germany from showing Ireland this manifestation of favor.
Without any illusions, then, about Germany, but with a clear vision of the English Empire as the incubus on Ireland, Irish Nationalists decided from the start of the war that it was Ireland's interest and duty to remain neutral as far as possible. In these days of small nationalities Ireland's right to take an independent line on the war cannot be contested, at all events by those who are fighting "German militarism." Being held by force by the empire, and plentifully garrisoned both by troops and armed police,—the police have been refused permission to join the army, though many of them have volunteered, because the Government wants them to keep Ireland down,—it was not possible for Ireland to be neutral in the full sense. Irishmen who had joined the army in time of peace, through economic pressure for the most part, had to fulfil their duties as reservists; Ireland's heavy burden of the war taxation could not be evaded. But, as one of Ireland's best known literary men put it, Ireland preserved "a moral and intellectual neutrality"; and the individual sympathies of the people, while not "pro-German" in any positive sense, were and are, distinctly anti-English.
Mr. Bonar Law said that if Canada or Australia was disinclined to help the empire in this war, no English statesman would dream of compelling them to do so. But Ireland's notorious and marked disinclination to help was treated from the first as a crime, and the sternest measures of repression were employed against those who claimed Ireland's right, as a small nation, to settle the question for itself. Since the outbreak of the war, the regime in Ireland has been one of coercion tempered by dread of publicity. The English Government set two aims before itself: to suppress Irish discontent, and at the same time convince the world that no Irish discontent existed. These aims are not reconcilable, and the pursuit of both had led to an extraordinary series of inconsistent and muddle-headed actions. I cannot detail them all in this article.
The first attack was made on the independent press. The daily press was reduced to subserviency, negatively by fear of having its telegraphic supplies cut off, positively by huge sums paid for recruiting advertisements by the English war office. The various Nationalist weeklies had to be dealt with otherwise, as they could neither be bribed nor intimidated. The method adopted was to strike at the
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