olinging desperately to
beautiful dream out of which
I was about to pass into the
cold world of reality.
"Andrea," the voice called
again.

"You must go, little comrade," I said with a trembling voice. "Be brave for my sake."

I raised her to her feet and stood up beside her.

"You will be the queen of beauty in Erzerum. You will be happy. Time heals all wounds, little comrade."

My voice was choking and I was uttering foolish platitudes.

"You

think of me

sometimes?" she whispered.

will

"Always."

my lips.

I dared not look at her

again. I remember gazing down at the dim gravel floor of the arbour, listening to the sounds of her feet taking her away from me for ever...

How long I remained in the arbour sitting on the seat I cannot remember. All around me was the crying of the crickets. Then the sudden whistle of the departing train, a puffing, a clanking of metal on metal that gradually faded to nothingness. Once more only the orying of the

I felt a sudden swift kiss on crickets that closed in my

solitude.

AVE ATQUE VALE.

BY J. A. STRAHAN.

ists the
Joiners' Society. Some time
ago, as the world has been
very fully informed, the loyal
workers in the shipbuilding
yards and engineering shops
of Belfast, being exasperated
by the continuous murders of
loyalists in the South, and
especially of their fellow-
Ulsterman, Colonel Smyth,
whose brother, Major Smyth,
D.S.O., has since been assassin-
ated, resolved to work no longer
side by side with men who
sympathised with such crimes.
Accordingly they insisted that
every worker
should either
forswear sympathy with mur-
der and treason or leave the
yards and shops. About ten
per cent of the workers refused
to do this, and were expelled.
The expelled workmen com-
plained to the said Society
that they were being driven
from their work because, as
they gently expressed it, of
their political opinions. The
Society was shooked at this
enormity and determined to
put an end to it. It called on
the loyalist workers who were
members of the Society to
come out of the yards and
shops until the disloyal workers
were brought in again—in
other words, it ordered the
men who had expelled the
Sinn Feiners to strike as a
protest against their own act.
As a modicum of intelligence
might have taught it to antioi-
pate, the loyal workmen did
not come out of the works, but
very probably they will shortly
come out of the Society.

Carpenters' and perpetrated but for the fact
that the officials of the Society,
like true-born Englishmen,
would believe anything about
Ireland except the truth. If
they read the newspapers they
must have known that the ae-
tion against the Sinn Feiners
began in the works of Messrs
Harland & Wolff; and every
one knows that the head of
that great firm is Lord Pirrie,
and that his lordship is an
ardent Nationalist-the one
solitary Nationalist employer
of any importance in Ulster.
Nevertheless, when the Sinn
Feiners told them that the
employers were at the bottom
of the trouble, they believed,
and acting on the belief that
a lie was the truth, they made
themselves ridiculous.

No doubt such an imbecility as this could never have been

In this they were no worse than the bulk of English politicians and pressmen. Who does not remember, when the third-or was it the fourth?

Home Rule Bill was before Parliament, how the declaration of Ulstermen that they would fight rather than submit to a Dublin Parliament was received? Who does not remember the jokes about Ulsteria, and the signing of the Convention in blood, and the drilling with wooden rifles? The notion that the Ulster Soots would risk their little finger to resist being put under the rule of people whom they regarded as traitors, struck these jokers as no less absurd than that they should resent being deprived of their birthright as full citizens of the United Kingdom-as full citizens as the men of Middle

sex or Mid-Lothian,
the politicians and pressmen
laughed the Ulstermen drilled,
and before the Bill came up
for final reading the jokers
found themselves faced with
a disciplined army tens of
thousands strong with real
rifles-an army which did not
shoot solitary policemen and
soldiers from behind hedges,
but which was prepared to
meet in the field any other
army which attempted to
drive them under hated

yoke. Then when coercion of
Ulster had become impossible,
the jokers declared it to be
unthinkable. The National
ists had told them that the
Covenant was mere blaster;
and this being a lie, they
believed it and made them-
selves ridiculous.

While Ireland not merely English domination but everything which savoured of that detested rule; and that the only difference among them was whether they should attempt to attain the whole object at one blow by open rebellion, or whether they should take the safer if slower way of attaining it bit by bit through Parliamentary aetion-by what they called instalments of justice. When the Liberals came into office the bulk of the Irish Nationalists were in favour of proceeding by the slower and constitutional way: under Unionist rule the quicker or seditious road had become most disagreeable. But with the advent of the Liberals the trend among them was steadily to sedition. Before the worldwar broke out all the vital force behind the Nationalist party was for rebellion. After the world-war broke out the vital force became the only force behind the party. Every farm labourer and mill hand of the Catholic persuasionand it must never be forgotten that these and their parish priests and Catholic curates are and have for years been the diotators of Nationalist policy in Ireland-were repeating that foolish saying of O'Connell's, that England's difficulty was Ireland's opportunity. The only question among them was when should the armed rebellion take place? And this was the oooasion which the sagacious and far-sighted Sir Edward (now Viscount) Grey seized for declaring that in the whole dark

Conversely, when the Ulstermen declared that the one force behind the Nationalist movement was hatred of, and the one object of the Nationalist movement was separation from, England, this being the truth, they did not believe it. They relied on the protestations of the clever Nationalists in Parliament, who, no doubt, sometimes were voicing their own feelings and aims. But the Ulsterman paid no attention to these protestations. He relied on what he heard on the farms, about the factories, and in the public-houses. There, whatever there might be in Parliament, there was no pretence: the Nationalist workers talked plainly to the Unionist workers, and left them in no doubt that their one object was to drive out of

prospect then before England convinced that they are murthe only__ bright spot was dering policemen and soldiers, Ireland. When the Ulsterman and destroying property right read this amazing statement, and left, not to get the separahe marvelled whether after all tion they themselves declare government by traitors could they want, but in order that be much worse than govern- they may manage their local ment by fools. Before long, affairs with the same skill and while the Liberal papers and honesty as have rendered in England were still en- Dublin, Sligo, and half the thusiastically announcing the southern towns practically loyalty of the Irish National- bankrupt. Once more the Engists and the wickedness of the lishman will believe anything Ulstermen, rebellion broke out about Ireland except the in Dublin and the South; un- truth. armed policemen and soldiers were shot like dogs in the streets and country lanes, and a republic in alliance with Germany was proclaimed. And Englishmen, having refused to believe the Ulstermen's declaration because it was true, had once more made themselves ridiculons,

But after all, Ulstermen are friends of England and the Empire, and so it might be argued that-at any rate among the new Englishmen, who dislike England and detest the Empire-they are reasonably "suspect." It is only natural, therefore, that any statements they may make should be disbelieved. But now the Nationalists themselves have come forward to confirm those statements. Throwing over all professions of loyalty to the King and all talk of Home Rule, they announce that their one and only object is complete separation. For the first time they are telling the truth, and for the first time they are not believed; the Englishman, in spite of all they can say, is

The Ulstermen would not care much what the Englishman believed about the Celtic Irishman if he let them alone: that is all they want, to be left to enjoy the position to which they were born, full and free citizenship of the United Kingdom. But in spite of the Liberal leaders' declaration, that the coercion of Ulster to drive it out of the United Kingdom is unthinkable, they see that both leaders and followers are once more thinking about it. Their only difficulty is as to how that coercion can be brought about. In the present state of things, with the army and police in Ireland in a state of furious hostility against the Nationalists, it would be madness to ask them to shoot down their friends unless these would submit to their enemies. So they are compelled to seek other forces for coercion. And they are finding them—slander and abandonment.

Slander is the preliminary stage. For nearly three years now the life of a soldier and policeman in southern Ireland.