Does anybody think that this attitude will be at all modified
by recent occurrences at Westminster? By no means. Lord Hugh Cecil, his
gibbering and gesticulating quite forgotten, will be assuring the House
next year that the Irish are so deficient in self-restraint as to be
unfit for Home Rule. Mr Smith will be deploring that intolerant temper
which always impels a Nationalist to shout down, and not to argue down
an opponent. Mr Walter Long will be vindicating the cause of law and
order in one sentence, and inciting "Ulster" to bloodshed in the next.
This is not hypocrisy, it is genius. It is also, by the way, the genesis
of the Irish Question. If anyone is disposed to underrate the mad
passions of which race hatred can slip the leash, let him recall the
crucial examples which we have had in our own time. We have in our own
time seen Great Britain inflamed by two frenzies--against France, and
against the Boer Republics. In the history of public opinion there are
no two chapters more discreditable. In the days of Fashoda the Frenchman
was a degenerate _tigre-singe,_ the sworn enemy of religion and soap.
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