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fellows do?" Let Mr Clarke future than it has ever been in of Holycross, and Mr Coady and the shopkeepers of Thurles answer. But let "these fellows" look to it; they are storing up a dangerous heritage. The more successful their tactics now, the more certain their future discomfiture. If Mr Clarke had yielded the matter would not have ended there. "They had," said the Solicitor-General, "a body of men dictating to Mr Clarke. Tolerate such things, and there would in the future be a body, still more numerous, dictating in turn to the men who were responsible for the present disorder."

The Holycross case, no matter how we view it, gives cause for serious reflection. Translated into plain language, it means plunder, spoliation, Socialism of the crudest kind. These conspirators belong to the new race of peasant proprietors who, it was anticipated, having purchased their holdings, would settle down into quiet orderly conservative citizens, rooted to the land they loved so well. It will indeed be strange if land purchase, which was to bring such beneficial results in its train, has the effect of driving out of the country, against their will, former landlords of the Clarke type. It will be strange if it has the effect of introducing a new Socialism of the crudest type into one of the most conservative countries in Europe. Assuredly, if Holycross methods spread throughout the country, absenteeism will be more conspicuous in the

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"The worst absenteeism from which Ireland suffers," said Mr Froude, "is the absenteeism of her men of genius." There is a worse absenteeism at the present day the want of a proper public spirit, which would make such cases as the Holycross conspiracy impossible. Outside those immediately concerned, there were not a dozen people who approved of it, who had anything but condemnation for the conspirators. How was it that they were allowed to work their will and carry matters to such & pitch? Newman speaks somewhere of a certain "boyishness of intellect, in which the mind has "no discriminating convictions and no grasp of consequences." "Boyishness," not of intellect alone, but of the whole character, has been very much in evidence in Ireland during the last few years, in cattle-driving, boycotting conspiracies, Newmarket riots, and so on. These little incidents are too much regarded as mere diversion on the part of a naturally lively and "boyish people. In Ireland every second man you meet is a "boy," and wants to remain a boy all his life with all the irrepressibility and irresponsibility of a boy. He is pretending. He likes to play at living and not take life too seriously. He is not troubled with too much continuity of thought or purpose, and is capable of taking one side on a question today and taking the other side

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equally strenuously to - morrow. He is very susceptible to chance influences and chance impulses, and, above all, to the "Thyestean banquet of claptrap" "which is dished up for him from day to day from press and platform, and from which he cannot free himself. This "Thyestean banquet of claptrap" prevents him from seeing things as they really are. If he were permitted, if he permitted himself, to see things as they really are, we should hear less of Holycross conspiracies and boycotts.

The Land for the People! Yes, they have got it. Are they seriously alive to the responsibilities of the change? That is the important question

for them and for the country. Will they realise, now that they have become owners, that property has its duties as well as its rights, and that the right to trample on and plunder others is not a right which wise men will ask or concede? If they are wise for themselves and for the generations to come, they will rid themselves of men of the type of the Holycross conspirators. Let them beware lest, by fostering and encouraging such men and their methods, they may be setting up a new tyranny, compared with which any tyranny of former days was "as moonlight unto sunlight, and as water unto wine."

MUSINGS

ARISTIDES THE JUST

WITHOUT METHOD.

SIR EDWARD GREY'S PEDANTIC APOLOGY -A BRITISH AGENT WITHOUT INITIATIVE MR ROOSEVELT'S INDISCRETION-A CONSPIRACY OF ADULATION-THE UNIVERSAL CURIOSITY THE INFLUENCE OF THE CROWDE. B. IWANMÜLLER-A TYPICAL OXFORD MAN A TORY JOURNALIST GENIUS FOR FRIENDSHIP.

Sir

It is easy to understand the fervour wherewith the Athenians ostracised Aristides. There are few things so tiresome as the incurably, obstinately "just" man. His timid inhumanity stands confessed. He may be a safe pilot, if the sea is calm and no wind blows. In storm and stress he is fated to drive the ship of State upon the rocks. And we can the more ardently sympathise with the Athenians, because at the present moment we suffer from an Aristides of our own. Edward Grey possesses all the qualities of the "just" man. When he took office, we were bidden to be of good heart. Here, we were told, is our best hope of security. The sound sense and moderation of Sir Edward were everywhere extolled. We were promised that, at home and abroad, he would be a check upon rash enterprise and Radical sentimentality. His friends declared, with assured confidence, that he was a true Imperialist, a determined foe of revolution, an upholder of British prestige and the British Constitution. Nor has it been easy to shake the public faith. At every moment of crisis we have been asked to put our trust in Sir Edward

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HIS

Grey, though his habit of surrender should by this time be familiar to all men. When the most reckless Government of modern times seemed intent upon destroying the Constitution, it was stoutly said by his friends that in the last resort Sir Edward Grey would intervene. He did not intervene. Protesting with more than his usual fervour that he favoured a Second Chamber, he gave a loyal support to the Cabinet which was pledged to destroy the House of Lords.

He has accepted as his own the domain of foreign policy, for what reason, and after what training, we do not know. His conduct of a delicate office has not justified his temerity. Twice only has his talent been put to the test, and on each occasion he has proved a lack of tact and foresight. When Austria announced the formal annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which she had administered with understanding and success ever since the Conference of Berlin, Sir Edward Grey instantly showed velvet hand in the iron glove. He made a vast parade of strength to cover his inevitable weakness. He proclaimed in the face of all Europe that

the

England would be satisfied set about the building of Dread

with nothing less than a Conference, and then submitted, with what grace he might, to the very reasonable demands of Austria. That Austria's de mands were reasonable England should have been the first to acknowledge. We have never held it a crime to accept the responsibility of empire, and Austria had every right not to put off, at the bidding of others, the duty which Europe had laid upon her thirty years before. And the fact that Austria had accepted such a burden as we have never refused, was not her only title to our support. Austria and Britain were, so to say, hereditary friends. They have been bound together by the sympathy of taste and temperament. The Austrians are sportsmen, in the same

sense

that we like to think Britons are sportsmen, and a lack of understanding had never before been a stumbling-block in our paths. To-day the misunderstanding is complete and dangerous. Sir Edward Grey did not achieve his purpose. No Conference was held. The relationship which had existed since 1878 between Austria and the two provinces was not disturbed. What was disturbed was Great Britain's ancient friendship with Austria,-disturbed without benefit and in mere wantonness of spirit. Austria was thrown into the arms of Germany, which did not let slip an excellent opportunity, and still worse Austria, conscious of England's unfriendliness, was constrained to

noughts, which in the case of war will easily embarrass us in the Mediterranean, and will hold fast a portion of the British fleet free in other circumstances to fight its country's battles elsewhere. In brief, Sir Edward Grey was guilty of the worst sins whereof a Foreign Minister can capable: his strong words were followed by inaction, and he alienated a friend for no better reason than to make a show of sentimentality.

But it is for what he has done or failed to do in Egypt that Sir Edward Grey deserves the severest condemnation. And at last there is no doubt concerning his responsibility. He has avowed in the House of Commons that the policy pursued in Egypt is not Sir Eldon Gorst's but the Government's. He is even indignant that any attack should be made upon the

British Agent. Whatever that official does, says Sir Edward Grey, is done in accordance with instructions from home. Though we regret the changed situation, Sir Edward Grey's statement does not persuade us to modify in any way the opinions which we expressed last month. We would observe only that Lord Cromer's success lay in his unwillingness merely to register the decrees of others, and that Sir Eldon Gorst in signing his remarkable report was equally culpable, whether it expressed his views or the views merely of his Government. If it did not express his views, it was his bounden duty to resign. So

long as he remains in Egypt, amicably obeying the behests of the Foreign Office, he cannot expect to escape censure or to evade responsibility.

However, Sir Edward Grey, having taken upon himself the whole burden of our Egyptian policy, proceeded to discuss the situation in the spirit of levity which has long possessed our Radical Ministers. He said little or nothing concerning the rebellious press. Though he confessed to a general agreement with the sentiments of Mr Roosevelt, he spoke no word in condemnation of the excesses perpetrated in word and deed by the Nationalist Party, and thus committed himself to an open and complete contradiction. He indulged in the usual platitudes about self-government, as though self-government was of itself and in all circumstances the greatest boon that can be conferred upon mankind. He boasted of Provincial and Legislative Councils and of General Assemblies. He assured the world that for the last three years he had been endeavouring to make Egyptian Ministers more of a factor in the Government of their country. But he did not explain why he had made this attempt, nor did he admit, as he should have admitted, that the attempt had been a pitiful failure. It is difficult, indeed, to condone the pedantry which is apparent in every line of Sir Edward Grey's speech. Popular government, says he in effect, has succeeded in England; there

more

fore it must be bestowed as an inestimable privilege upon Egypt. The fallacy that underlies this argument is obvious. No form of government is good that does not make a country happier and prosperous. If innocent blood be shed, if peace be turned to hatred, only a pedant from a debating society can find any palliation in observing that the blood was shed, the evil was engendered, under the auspices of an untrammelled democracy. As Mr Arthur Balfour said in his admirable speech, selfgovernment is not a question of superiority or inferiority. It is merely a form which the West has accepted with more alacrity than the East. "A true Eastern sage," to cite Mr Balfour's precise words, "would say that the work of government, the sort of work which we take upon ourselves in Egypt and elsewhere, is not the work worthy of philosophy, that that is the dirty work, the inferior work of carrying on the necessary labour.' Sir Edward Grey has not the imagination to understand this difference between East and West. Parrot-like, he repeats the word "self-government," and believes that there is a virtue in its sense and sound that all men, Jew and Greek, bond and free, of all hues and all nationalities, acknowledge.

must perforce

The truth is far other than this. Government is not a state of mind but an art which only those can exercise who have been trained rigidly in the proper school.

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