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\"THE Irish Question is an international imposture.

Ireland, in order to justify her rebellion and treason, makes out that she is oppressed. Nowadays the oppression of Ireland by England is a myth, and a very feeble one at that. Macaulay said: \"The Irish, on the other hand, were distinguished by qualities which tend to make men interesting rather than prosperous. They were an ardent and impetuous race, easily moved to tears or to laughter, to fury or to love. Alone among the nations of Northern Europe they had the susceptibility, the vivacity, the natural turn for acting, and rhetoric, which are indigenous on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.\"

Ireland therefore possesses the power of playing upon our emotions as she chooses, but the accusations which she makes are so startling, and so contrary to all we know of British rule in other dependencies, that we must be careful to verify her statements.Professor Pearse, one of the ringleaders of the Dublin rebellion, who was shot the following week, stated on the eve of the rising: \"It will fail in its direct object, but the moral effect before the whole world will be immense, and form a glorious chapter in Irish history.\" The Professor believed that the world was very simple-minded, easily taken in by resounding phrases and theatrical poses. Possibly he was not mistaken. We need not mock, it was more successful than we realize.

Ireland has always harped upon this note with great effect. How many Frenchmen and Americans have been caught in the snare? Yet what Pearse was asking those rebels to do was nothing less than to stab us in the back when our fate was in the balance at Verdun, and when our soldiers were writing in their blood at Vaux and Douaumont the most heroic page in the history of France. It were well, then, if his scheme should not reap all the success which he anticipated.\"