to buy from
us it shall increase our power of selling to them.
Such questions last forever.
On the other hand sometimes by sheer carelessness a question gets
settled and passes out of politics. This, so we are given to
understand, has happened to the Irish question. It is settled. A
group of Irish delegates and British ministers got together round a
table and settled it. The settlement has since been celebrated at a
demonstration of brotherhood by the Irish Americans of New York with
only six casualties. Henceforth the Irish question passes into
history. There may be some odd fighting along the Ulster border, or a
little civil war with perhaps a little revolution every now and then,
but as a question the thing is finished.
I must say that I for one am very sorry to think that the Irish
question is gone. We shall miss it greatly. Debating societies
which have flourished on it ever since 1886 will be wrecked for
want of it. Dinner parties will now lose half the sparkle of their
conversation. It will be no longer possible to make use of such
good old remarks as, "After all the Irish are a gifted people,"
or, "You must remember that fifty per cent of the great English
generals were Irish."
The settlement turned out to be a very simple affair. Ireland was
merely given dominion status. What that is, no one knows, but it
means that the Irish have now got it and that they sink from the
high place that they had in the white light of publicity to the
level of the Canadians or the New Zealanders.
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