The reaction of Anglo-Saxondom to this Irish experiment in the teaching of the Allies has been somewhat similar to that described in the case of Russia, on the analogous occasion of the revolutionary realization of theories reserved for the academic leisure of the English upper classes. Mr. Lloyd George, that distinguished Liberal, was most insistent upon the "moral right" to impose military service upon subject races, his contention was echoed by all "responsible" statesmen, and the lofty example of Austria was cited as a model. This was a daring instance of associating with enemy ideas, only permissible to the chemically pure in heart.
If only the Hun had served the Bible as he served Bernhardi, the Lord would not have deserted him in his hour of need. In Ireland, however, the devil of imperialism quoted the Scriptures to no purpose, for this is an island, not only of Saints and Scholars, but also of theologians and politicians, who proved equal to this ingenious conflict of moralities. This alliance was particularly obnoxious to those who had engineered the politico-religious Carsonade of North-East Ulster. Just as the Allied governments have standardized the business of rescuing small nationalities, so the dominant British statesmen have the exclusive right to combine religion and politics. A Covenant of "loyalists," in full Protestant regalia, organizing treason to the King and Parliament recognized by them, is but an incident on the path to political preferment and the honours of public life. A national pledge to resist the greatest infamy one nation can inflict upon another becomes a Papist plot. An Irish bishop is a sinister intruder only when he does not wear the shovel-hat and apron of the Episcopalian minority.
In the greater Anglo-Saxondom across the seas, particularly in the Wilsonian Republic, the spectacle of Irish freedom was most offensive. An American critic once summed up the different characteristics of North and South in the Civil War by saying: "The Southerner was an imitation of an English gentleman, the Northerner was an imitation of an English cad." In other words, society in the South was a shadowy reflection of the British landed aristocracy, in the North, it followed the example of the capitalist class. In terms of present day America this definition must be modified to meet the change effected by the triumph of the North, and the general disappearance of the old South. An American to-day is an English Liberal ... only more so. He combines the anti-social commercialism of the industrial early nineteenth century with the empty, verbal radicalism of the Cocoa Press tear-squeezers. Needless to say he has shown, on the whole, a more ferocious intolerance of minorities and individuals than any other belligerent in the present war. His hatred is more bestial; his patriotic zeal more inquisitorial. The slowly mounting tide of perverted Puritan legislation has broken over America, swollen by the tributaries of war lust, until the country is a vast wilderness of freak prohibitions aimed at the destruction of freedom. In these circumstances it is not surprising to find American journals occasionally protesting against the excessive zeal of the Administration in suppressing opinions and harassing individuals, because of pro-Irish sympathies which have been granted expression even in England. The New York _Nation_, a respectable and orthodox journal, written by and for intellectually anæmic college professors, sighs in vain for such toleration in Irish affairs as that of the _Manchester Guardian_. A striking tribute to the decadent anglicization of the Benighted States!