And then
suddenly came the rebellion in Dublin. I cannot find words to
describe my own horror when I heard of it. For I am bound to admit
to you that I was not thinking merely of Ulster; I was thinking of
the war; I was thinking, as I am always thinking, of what will
happen if we are beaten in the war. I was thinking of the
sacrifice of human lives at the front, and in Gallipoli, and at
Kut, when suddenly I heard that the whole thing was interrupted by,
forsooth, an Irish rebellion--by what Mr. Dillon in the House of
Commons called a clean fight! It is not Ulster or Ireland that is
now at stake: it is the British Empire. We have therefore to
consider not merely a local problem, but a great Imperial
problem--how to win the war."
He then outlined the representations that had been made to him by the
Cabinet as to the injury to the Allied cause resulting from the
unsettled Irish question--the disturbance of good relations with the
United States, whence we were obtaining vast quantities of munitions;
the bad effect of our local differences on opinion in Allied and neutral
countries.
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