could not do other than regard with scorn professions they knew to be false, and were bound to assert their right, if only to let the world see how false the professions were. They would have been unworthy of freedom if in the circumstances they had failed to render this great service to Ireland and to mankind. We proudly submit the fact of their having done so as powerful additional support of Ireland's claim, and the execution of those patriots as criminals, in flagrant breach of the international convention of The Hague, 1907, Clause c, after they had fought for their country's independence, surrendered and laid down their arms, as conclusive evidence of England's unfitness to rule Ireland. England's appeal for recruits having been successful in getting millions of men to fight and slay each other, we now ask the Peace Congress to require the States which made those professions and thereby got what they wanted, to fulfil their promises to the small nations. We ask especially that this be done in the case of England. We really want, not central countries only, but all countries, to be free from the danger of militarism; and it is clearer now than it was when the belligerents said so that an essential condition for the abolition of militarism and the durability of peace is the re-establishment of the independence of oppressed nations.

XI. Ireland's purposes on resuming independence are those of peace and progress. While on the one hand no right of inquisition exists to require a nation on re-entering the society of independent States to declare her intentions in advance, and on the other, any such declaration before power had been recovered would be merely academical and therefore unsatisfactory; nevertheless, we are willing, subject to those qualifications, to gratify a natural desire, and it may be to help the Peace Congress to satisfy itself on this subject. We are the more willing from the fortunate circumstance of being able to refer to our past for corroboration so strong that we actually make it one of the foundations of our claim. To emulate that past in harmony with the very different circumstances and with the greater facilities and varied interests of modern life, we hold to be a worthy ambition. We calculate that the essential work of rebuilding our State and most of its interests from the ruins, ridding ourselves of costly evils forced upon us, curing gross neglect. reviving and practicing our characteristic ideals, releasing faculties blasted by foreign rule, and fostering our domestic aptitudes, will occupy most of us for a considerable time. A private individual's outline of our probable activities will be found in the part of this Statement to which this summary refers. It has no authority save the writer's, but may be accepted as typical of current thought.

XII. Ireland's sovereign independence is essential to the Freedom of the Seas. That her sovereign independence is essential to

her own freedom of commerce is self-evident, and is demonstrated by the number and stringency of English laws for the destruction and prevention of Irish commerce; last illustrated by England's prohibition of the Hamburg-Amerika line of steamships from calling at an Irish port in 1913, and by the fact that now, under direct English rule, most of Ireland's harbors are empty and have no commerce. The necessary liberty to engage in commerce is one of the most important of our objects after independence itself; because, favorably situated as we are, we look with confidence to a great commercial future for an independent Ireland, and to a considerable revenue from that source. Ireland's geographical position makes its freedom, while vital for itself, important for other countries also. A powerful State intolerant of free commerce in a country subject to it would, in favorable circumstances, be equally intolerant of any commerce but its own, and is capable of using the geographical position of Ireland, in conjunction with other strategic points in her possession, to the detriment and danger of all international commerce. The freedom of the seas would then be an idle dream. The sovereign independence of Ireland is essential to make it a reality.

XIII. England is disqualified and unfit to rule Ireland. This is abundantly demonstrated by every section of this Statement, as by every governmental act of England over Ireland. Unconstitutional and criminal as that record is, it is not of misgovernment we complain, but of foreign rule, whatever its character. Its bad character is only secondary evidence for us; but it is primary evidence against England. England first established her colonial parliament in Ireland; made it the most corrupt assembly that ever bore the name; made it a fit instrument for enforcing penal laws against religion and civilization and for keeping the colonists and the nation at permanent enmity; made it a classic exhibition of the futility of a subordinate parliament for any legitimate purpose; and when, under popular pressure, the parliament showed a tendency to amalgamate with the Gaelic nation, bribed it to commit suicide. In the history of the subsequent relations between the two countries, since ameliorative legislation began to be talked of, it is the uniform experience admitted by all, English as well as Irish, that the one thing that can always be predicated with certainty of any English measure for Ireland-other than a coercive measure-is that it will be bad in itself, or spoiled by its limitations, or by something hateful accompanying it, by rubbing poison into an open wound, by delay, by the manner of giving, or by some of the many ways in which it is humanly possible to spoil a measure. In not one solitary instance has this rule been departed from. In the case of any other country, this phenomenon might be attributed to unfortunate coincidence. But the calculated result of English rule evidenced in the present

deplorable condition of Ireland is an irrefutable reminder of deliberate injustice still being perpetuated by the continuing effects of that rule aided by fixed policy and administration; that England is profiting by her injustice to Ireland; that England's spirit is unchanged; and that it is only the persistence of the effects and the profits renders violently unjust measures unnecessary now. In these circumstances, to attribute England's hostility to gaucherie or coincidence, might be charitable, but would be highly fantastic. We charge her before the nations with the supreme crime of wilful destruction of a sister nation. We deny that she has any right to rule Ireland, well or ill. Both on that ground and on the character of the rule, we ask the Peace Congress to declare England disqualified and unfit to rule Ireland.

XIV. Ireland claims recognition and intervention by the Peace Congress, restitution and reparation by England, and an international guarantee for her future security. Every section of this Statement which shows Ireland being treated as a victim country enforces this particular claim on grounds of justice and morality as well as of international law. Several of the facts revealed make intervention incumbent under that law as a duty on civilized States. Of this character is the policy of extermination. That policy imposes on the Irish a duty of resistance even when there is no prospect of success. The indefinite continuance of such an unequal and deadly struggle is, in many respects, a most undesirable condition to allow. As it ought not to be borne by the victim nation, neither ought it to be tolerated by nations which hold that such victimization is a breach of international law and a danger to international peace. The outrage is aggravated and the danger not lessened by the plea that the victimization of one nation by another is a domestic concern of the latter with which other countries have no right to interfere. The Congress will note that England, which uses the plea, has herself frequently interfered, and indeed boasts of her interference, in precisely similar cases under other powers, insisting that the abuses were matters of international concern. Her plea therefore assumes that international law is subject to England's interests, and that the States represented in the Congress are, like England, immoral entities. International recognition of her plea would be conclusive proof that civilization was really in danger, and would make peace necessarily unstable by divorcing it from justice. On all these grounds Ireland now claims

SOVEREIGN INDEPENDENCE

comprising the rights and powers

Of designing, framing and establishing an Irish national constitution;

Of territorial inviolability, including islands and territorial waters as internationally recognized;

Of self-preservation by prevention of, defense against, and resistance to, economic or military hostility, war or peace, as self-preservation may demand;

Of free development of national resources by internal action, and by commerce, treaties, and relations with other States;

Of absolute control and jurisdiction over all persons, things, and rights within Ireland and its islands and territorial waters;

Of protection of her lawful citizens wherever situated; and

Of recognition of her government and her flag and the external marks of honor and respect:

and she claims partial restitution and reparation to the amount, namely, of 500,000,000 pounds, and an international guarantee for the security of her independence.

IRELAND'S CASE FOR FREEDOM

I.

The Irish Nation Earnestly Desires the International Peace Congress to Be Pure and Impartial in Its

Constitution and Proceedings.

Assuming that this Peace Congress for the adjustment of differences amongst nations in the interest of future peace and progress will be constituted as its high purposes require, and will be guided by the spirit of justice, it will have conscience, competence, knowledge, and impartiality commensurate with the magnitude and complexity of its task, and therefore with every part of the task and every international dispute submitted to it and within its jurisdiction, with or without the concurrence of any party to such dispute, such party having been given due notice of the submission of the case. Fully realizing the greatness of this occasion and its vast possibilities for good, we thank God that we live to witness it when, for the first time, an international tribunal of this character assembles for purposes so worthy. Knowledge of one of the cases to be submitted to it compels us to realize also the possibility and danger of the beneficent purposes of the Congress being frustrated; an event which mankind would rightly regard as a calamity of the first magnitude.

It is commonly assumed that the Peace Congress will comprise representatives of States that have indulged for several years in physical conflict and in accusations of the basest crimes against each other. Of these States also some have been exposed as principals and some as accomplices in secret treaties conflicting with their professed purposes in the war, and even conflicting with each other; and shown by their secrecy and by their character to have been entered into without any popular sanction; and therefore that vast numbers of men have been induced to fight and slay each other on a false issue. When Governments and States stand revealed in this enormous guilt, stealthily leagued together in an immoral and unconstitutional conspiracy against the free will of their own democracies, and against the self-determination of nations for whose independence the democracies have been induced to fight; gambling in the lives and liberties of peoples they misled; deflecting in advance the proceedings of this Congress; complicating its task and treating it with contempt which the pettiest court of justice would within its own jurisdiction restrain and punish, the villification of character during the war is seen to be justified as applied to such States; and