122 



The Review of Reviews. 



// I'Stniinstcr Gazette. \ 



The Protector. 



" I only want to protect you ! " 



I-ORD Londonderry 



Mr. Churchill and Mr. John Redmond : " It's very kind of you, Ixit we're 

 not 'Babes in the Wood,' and we aren't lost!" 



Westminster Gazette.] 



Fits from Dickens. 



Sir E. Carson and Mr. F. E. Smith as 

 Lord George Gordon and Mr. Gashford. 



derry have been imprisoned in Ireland for declara- 

 tions not one whit more illegal than the ukase 

 abolishing the right of free speech in Belfast. Unfor- 

 tunately when faced with a similar conspiracy to 

 silence unpopular speakers in London the Government 

 had taken the course of binding over the threatened 

 speaker to hold his tongue or go to gaol for three 

 months. If Mr. Birrell had acted on Mr. McKenna's 

 principle, Mr. (Jhurchill would have been bound 

 over to stay away from Belfast, or sit in gaol for six 

 months if he declined to give sureties for his silence. 

 Mr. Asquith, however, is enjoying a holiday in .Sicily, 

 and, no one apparently being in command, Mr. 

 Churchill oflfered to temporise. He would not go to 

 Ulster Hall, seeing that was regarded as provocative 

 of a riot. He would content himself with some other 

 place of meeting. To this Lord Londonderry assented, 

 but Lord Londonderry's followers, by engaging all 

 the other halls for the night in question, rendered it 

 impossible to hold the meeting, except in a huge 

 tent erected for the purjjose. 



There appears to be little doubt 



Not Politics, but that the original arrangement 



but War. ^yas made quite innocently. No 



one has ever objected before to 



any Home Rule speaking in Ulster Hall. But Sir 



Edward Carson's pilgrimage of passion has roused 



the fighting devil in the [loor zealots of the Orange 



Lodges, and they could not resist the temptation to 

 strike a Wow at the apostate son of the patriot states- 

 man who a quarter of a century ago had declared 

 that " Ulster would fight, and Ulster would be right." 

 Mr. Churchill's visit seemed to afford them an 

 opportunity of showing that they meant business, and 

 were in for war and not for politics. The First Lord's 

 proposed exclusion to Belfast served the purpose of 

 a reconnaisance which unintentionally unmasked the 

 enemy's position. The spirit of dark rebellion, squat 

 like the .Satanic toad at the ear of Eve, had for weeks 

 past been filling the Orange mind with-- 



Dislonipercd, discontented thouj;hts, 

 Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires, 

 Blown up with high conceits engendering pride. 



Upon the foul fiend thus engaged comes ^\'instoll like 



Ithuriel in Milton's epic : — 



Ilim thus intent Ithuriel with his spear 

 Touch'd liglitly ; for no falsehood can endure 

 Touch of celestial temper, but returns 

 Of force to its own likeness ; up he starts 

 Discover'd and surprised. As when a spark- 

 Lights on a heap of nitrous powder, laid 

 Fit for the tun, some magazine to store 

 Against a runiour'd war, the smutty grain 

 With sudden blaze <liffiiscd inflames the air : 

 So started up in his own shape the fiend. 



It was well to know what these gentry were plotting, 

 It would have been madness to play into their hands 

 by trying to hold the meeting as if it was only on 

 political matters. It is not politics l)ut war in Belfast 





