Ang. 19.
While the conference sat, the multitude outside prayed with bared heads for peace. Later, the Lord Mayor, addressing the Corporation, declared: "Peace is in the air. During the past three hours one of the most delicate and momentous conferences ever held in Ireland has occurred and I have the greatest hopes for it.""
This was what was happening in the streets of Dublin on July 6 while, within doers, the Sinn Fein Council sat.to decide whether to accept Mr. Llosd George's invitation to Mr. de Valera to come to London and negotiate peace. And from the state of public feeling thus revealed, comes the one remaining hope that the Sinn Fein leader's allowed to stand. Since July 10 or 11 (the date is not quite clear from the telegrams) there has been a truce in Ireland; and once a truce has really begun, it is not so easy to set men io fighting again. The Sinn Fein forces have known the pleasure of their own homes for six weeks and may not be so keen to take to the mountains again. And there is no question but that the overwhelming majority of Irishmen long for peace. Will that majority allow itself to be betrayed by the minority of extremists, to whom de Valera again and again refers as the deciding factor, even while he illogically pretends to speak for all Ireland?
The staggering message received to-day is so much at variance with the generally hopeful tenour of the peace negotiations that we can only conclude either that the reports of those negotiations have been utterly at fault, or that some tremendous obstacle has arisen at the last hour, It is true that, in replying on June 28 to Mr. Lloyd George's invitation to a conference, de Valera wrote that he saw no chance of peace "'if the essential unity of Ireland were denied."' But on July 8, accepting the invitation, he wrote ''that Irishroen share the desire for feelings of neighbour ly harmony,'' and he indicated that the Sinn Fein Council fully approved his, going to Tondon. This letter was written just after General Smuts's visit to the Sinn Fein leaders. Now the latter can hardly have persuaded themselves that Great Britain meant to agree to an Irish Republic. If she did, she had only to say so: there was no need for any London conference. Hence it seems reasonable to assume (especially remembering the then recent conversations with General Smuts) that de Valera went to London prepared for some such offer of Dominion status as has actually been made and if he were not prepared to consider a settlement on these lines with at least some view to acceptance, why did he go? It is possible that the steady refusal of Ulster to combine with Southern Treland has a good deal to do with de Valera's attitude. Home Rule is not attractive to the Sinn Feiner unless he can lay hands on the province in which all the wealth of the country is centred. Another theory is that, as Britain, which is being pressed upon her; because she knows she would look the British offer bitter rejection offi in her desire for peace has already may not be granted so much, even to the re-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.