ng and still finances its continuance.
We are hopeful, however, that Partition will be ended soon, and we base our hopes on the following factors:
(1) The Constitution of Sovereign Ireland claims the whole of Ireland in what may be termed the Second Declaration of Independence. Though the fact is recognised that Irish Sovereignty cannot operate in the Six Counties at present, the incorporation can be effected, once assent is secured, by a mere resolution of the legislature. Our claim is made, it is known to the world, and this fact has roused the Irish race as it has not been roused since the days of the armed struggle; while, day by day, fresh tokens come from foreign sources that Ireland has recovered the sympathy of the world. In a little while, all the forces that carried the Irish cause forward between 1916 and 1921 will be mobilised in all their strength once more; and now the obstacle on which they must be bent is comparatively small beside the tremendous forces which opposed them seventeen years ago.
(2) England has abandoned ground that seemed nigh impregnable in 1921. She has faced and accepted the Republican principle which she then declared to be intolerable. We no longer have to struggle against a mountainous assumption of the necessity of Irish subjection. English statesmen with their characteristic flexibility have accepted what they formerly declared to be out of the question; and behold you, they are inviting the friendship of a State which they tried to prevent from coming into existence. They know—they have been told by our leaders and the spokesmen of nationality in the Six Counties, the Northern Council for Unity, that friendship hangs on one condition—the rectification our supreme wrong, partition. Now, they have nothing to gain by upholding partition with their arms, money and Press. The Six Counties, now that the Twenty-Six are independent, are no use to them, but rather a financial drain and an obstacle to their desire for Irish friendship. Hence we are certain that the rising tide of national indignation against the wanton holding of our sacred counties—the Primatial See and the United Irishmen’s own Down and Antrim—will constrain the wiser England of to-day.
(3) We see the greatest hope of all in the awakening of patriotism among those who have been opposed to us hitherto. Every day brings fresh declarations of goodwill from Protestant prelates and Unionist writers, to say nothing of agitation among the discontented Protestant victims of Partition rule. These people realise that the days of Partition are numbered—-that England does not want them and that the world scorns them while they stand in the way of Irish well-being and peace between nations. They see that there is no future for them in a fragment of a province, deserted by their former friends, and they are discerning that splendid opportunity is before them as citizens of renascent Ireland. The election of Dr. Douglas Hyde, who is of their religion, to the highest office in the State, has shown them that a welcome awaits men of every “race and creed and clan” who choose to give their talents to Ireland’s grand common store.
Unification will not be easy; but if we consider what immense gains have been won since Eamon de Valera was a boy in County Limerick, when the Land War still was incomplete and the winning of a little measure of Home Rule seemed almost too much to hope for, we may feel confident that our strength is ample, if only we press forward with courage and loyalty, prudence and good-will. What grandeur the prospect offers, in a free Irish nation, uniting in the common service all those powers and all that genius which was occupied in the past in conflict—when Irishmen at last are as free to live for Ireland as hitherto they were nobly ready to die for her! Indeed, as the vision grows, the determination to achieve it mounts; and so, with humble hearts, we pray that we may be with Eamon de Valera when he proclaims Ireland
SOVEREIGN, FREE AND UNITED!
By Fear Faire