But there is a third contingency I have nowhere seen discussed or hinted at, and yet it is at least as likely as No. 1, and far more probable than No. 2—for I do not think that the annexation of Ireland by a European power is internationally possible, however decisive might be the overthrow of England. It is admitted (and it is upon this hypothesis that the discussion is proceeding) that Great Britain might be defeated by Germany, and that the British fleet might be broken and an enemy's sword might transfix England. Such an overthrow would be of enormous import to Europe and to the whole world. The trident would have changed hands, for the defeat of England could only be brought about by the destruction of her sea supremacy. Unless help came from without, a blockaded Britain would be more at the mercy of the victor than France was after Sedan and Paris. It would lie with the victor to see that the conditions of peace he imposed were such as, while ensuring to him the objects for which he had fought, would be the least likely conditions to provoke external intervention or a combination of alarmed world interests. Now, putting aside lesser consideration, the chief end Germany would have in a war with England would be to ensure her own free future on the seas. For with that assured and guaranteed by a victory over England, all else that she seeks must in the end be hers. To annex resisting British colonies would be in itself an impossible task—physically a much more impossible task than to annex Ireland.
To annex Ireland would be, as a military measure, once command of the seas was gained, a comparatively easy task. No practical resistance to one German army corps even could be offered by any force Ireland contains, or could of herself, put into the field. No arsenal or means of manufacturing arms exists. The population has been disarmed for a century, and by bitter experience has been driven to regard the use of arms as a criminal offence. Patriotism has been treated as felony. Volunteers and Territorials are not for Ireland. To expect that a disarmed and demoralized population who have been sedulously batoned into a state of physical and moral dejection, should develop military virtues in face of a disciplined army is to attribute to Irishmen the very qualities their critics unite in denying them. "The Irishman fights well everywhere except in Ireland," has passed into a commonplace: and since every effort of government has been directed to ensuring the abiding application of the sneer, Englishmen would find, in the end, the emasculating success of their rule completely justified in the physical submission of Ireland to the new force that held her down. With Great Britain cut off and the Irish Sea held by German squadrons, no power from within could maintain any effective resistance to a German occupation of Dublin and a military administration of the island. To convert that into permanent administration could not be opposed from within, and with Great Britain down and severed from Ireland by a victorious German navy, it is obvious that opposition to the permanent retention of Ireland by the victor must come from without, and it is for this international reason that I think a German annexation of any part of a defeated United Kingdom need not be seriously considered. Such a complete change in the geography of Europe as a German-owned Ireland could not but provoke universal alarm and a widespread combination to forbid its realization. The bogey that Ireland, if not John Bull's other island, must necessarily be somebody else's other island will not really bear inspection at close quarters.
Germany would have to attain her end, the permanent disabling of the maritime supremacy of Great Britain, by another and less provocative measure. It is here and in just these circumstances that the third contingency, and one no Englishman I venture to think, has ever dreamed of, would be born on the field of battle and baptized a Germanic godchild with European diplomacy as sponsor. Germany, for her own imperial ends and in pursuit of a great world policy, might successfully accomplish what Louis XIV and Napoleon only contemplated. An Ireland, already severed by a sea held by German warships, and temporarily occupied by a German army, might well be permanently and irrevocably severed from Great Britain, and with common assent erected into a neutralized, independent European State under international guarantees. An independent Ireland would, of itself, be no threat or hurt to any European interest. On the contrary, to make of Ireland an Atlantic Holland, a maritime Belgium, would be an act of restoration to Europe of this the most naturally favoured of European islands that a Peace Congress should, in the end, be glad to ratify at the instance of a victorious Germany. That Germany should propose this form of dissolution of the United Kingdom in any interests but her own, or for the beaux yeux of Ireland I do not for a moment assert. Her main object would be the opening of the seas and their permanent freeing from that overwhelming control Great Britain has exercised since the destruction of the French navy, largely based, as all naval strategists must perceive on the unchallenged possession of Ireland.
That Ireland is primarily a European island inhabited by a European people who are not English, and who have for centuries appealed to Europe and the world to aid them in ceasing to be politically controlled by England, is historic fact. And since the translation of this historic fact into practice European politics would undoubtedly effect the main object of the victorious power, it is evident that, Great Britain once defeated, Germany would carry the Irish question to a European solution in harmony with her maritime interests, and could count on the support of the great bulk of European opinion to support the settlement those interests imposed. And if politically and commercially an independent and neutral Irish State commended itself to Europe, on moral and intellectual grounds the claim could be put still higher. Nothing advanced on behalf of England could meet the case for a free Ireland as stated by Germany. Germany would attain her ends as the champion of national liberty and could destroy England's naval supremacy for all time by an act of irreproachable morality. The United States, however distasteful from one point of view the defeat of England might be, could do nothing to oppose a European decision that could dearly win an instant support from influential circles—Irish and German—within her own borders.
In any case the Monroe Doctrine cuts both ways, and unless at the outset the United States could be drawn into an Anglo-Teutonic conflict, it is clear that the decision of a European Congress to create a new European State out of a very old European people could not furnish ground for American interference.
I need not further labour the question. If Englishmen will but awaken from the dream that Ireland "belongs" to them and not to the Irish people, and that that great and fertile island, inhabited by a brave, a chivalrous and an intellectual race (qualities they have alas! done their utmost to expel from the island) is a piece of real estate they own and can dispose of as they will, they cannot fail to perceive that the Irish question cannot much longer be mishandled with impunity, and that far from being, as they now think it, merely a party question—and not even a "domestic question" or one the colonies have a voice in—it may in a brief epoch become a European question.
With the approaching disappearance of the Near Eastern question (which England is hastening to the detriment of Turkey) a more and more pent-in Central Europe may discover that there is a Near Western question, and that Ireland—a free Ireland—restored to Europe is the key to unlock the western ocean and open the seaways of the world.
Again it is Mr. Gladstone who comes to remind Englishmen that Ireland, after all, is a European island, and that Europe has some distant standing in the issue.
"I would beseech Englishmen to consider how they would behave to Ireland, if instead of having 5,000,000 of people, she had 25,000,000; or if instead of being placed between us and the ocean she were placed between us and the Continent." (Notes and queries on the Irish Demand, February, 1887.) While the geographical positions of the islands to each other and to Europe have not changed, and cannot change, the political relation of one to the other, and so the political and economical relation of both to Europe, to the world and to the carrying trade of the world and the naval policies of the powers may be gravely altered by agencies beyond the control of Great Britain.
The changes wrought in the speed and capacity of steam shipping, the growth and visible trend of German naval power, and the increasing possibilities of aerial navigation, all unite to emphasize the historian Niebuhr's warning, and to indicate for Ireland a possible future of restored communion with Europe, and less and less the continued wrong of that artificial exclusion in which British policy has sought to maintain her—"an island beyond an island."