1922

Embittered nation

The admitted blot on the Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland is Partition. That defect, which even the greatest supporters of the Articles of Agreement accepted with the reluctance born of condition which they could not for a moment control, was in some measure at least nullified by the guarantee to set up a Boundary Commission.

This guarantee was an essential part of the Treaty, and was accepted as such by Catholics and Nationalists in the six North-Eastern counties, who saw in it a means to secure the full benefits of the Free State Constitution for homogenous communities whose political outlook, whose sentiments, and whose interests had nothing in common with the narrow minority which would hold the nation divided so long as they could retain a political footing within any part of it.

Indeed, the Boundary Commission was the great staying clause in the Treaty. With the instincts of a true statesman, the late Mr. Michael Collins, a few weeks after the signing of the Treaty, made the offer to Sir James Craig to seek to arrive at an amicable settlement of the border question, and thus pave the way for further and fuller national unity on other matters.

This generous gesture of Mr. Collins was approved by the nation as a whole; people saw in it the first real advance towards the settlement of a feud that has discredited the North-East and divided and embittered Ireland. But ascendancy had “dug itself in” in its last stronghold and Sir James Craig declined to accept the offer.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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