Every Trade Union has already
bridged the Boyne. Every strike has already torn the Orange Flag and the
Green Flag into two pieces, and stitched them together again after a new
and portentous pattern.
What does it all come to? Simply this, that Ireland under Home Rule will
be most painfully like every other modern country of western
civilisation. Some Unionists think that, if they could only get rid of
the Irish Party, all would be for the best in the best of all possible
worlds. Why then are they not Home Rulers? For Home Rule will most
assuredly get rid of the Irish Party. It will shatter the old political
combinations like a waggon-load of dynamite. New groups will crystallise
about new principles. The future in Ireland belongs to no old fidelity:
it may belong to any new courage.
Assuredly we must not seem to suggest that, in an autonomous Ireland,
public life will be all nougat, velvet, and soft music. There will be
conflicts, and vehement conflicts, for that is the way of the twentieth
century, and they will no doubt centre, for the most part, about
taxation and education.
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