LONG LIVE THE OLD ORDER-WHITE AUSTRALIA CHALLENGED-GOOD NEWS ABOUT PHYSICAL AMERICA-A NEW SORT OF PULPIT-AN IRISHMAN LOOKS AT HIS WORLD-THE NATIONALISTS-THE UNIONISTS-THE THREE FEARS OF ULSTER-WHY ULSTER WINS-HOPE IN PARLIAMENT DIES-SINN FEIN ENTERS-FOUR AIDS TO SINN FEIN-AN IRISH MONROE DOCTRINE-THE HEALTH OF THE WICKED CITY-IMPERIAL BOLSHEVISM-IS OUR GOVERNMENT IRRESPONSIBLE? LONG LIVE THE OLD ORDER! T HE peace conference might well have ended its sessions with the toast: "The old order is dead! Long live the old order!" For while the negative result of the conference may have been to loose in the world resentments that will one day wreck the old order, its positive result was to give the old order a temporary new lease upon life. Signs multiply in sickening accumulation that the post-war world is very much like the pre-war world. The luminous words of the new diplomacy have struck a stubborn darkness that they essay in vain to penetrate. high audacities of a new internationalism have been checkmated by the high ambitions of a new imperialism. The ancient parable of "The Sower" is reënacted with the world for a field. The Behold, sowers went forth to sow, at Paris, seed-bearers of a new order; and as they sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside, and the birds, ravenous vultures of a narrow nationalism, came and devoured them. And others fell upon the rocky places, where they had not much earth, where statesmanship dis played a stony indifference to fresh ideals, and straightway they sprang up, because they had no deepness of earth, only the passing repentant mood of wartime, and when the sun had risen, when the Parisian council was challenged to turn the dream into deed, they were scorched, and because they had no root they withered away. And others fell upon the thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them, the seed-principles of a new order were choked by the thorny mass of detailed problems in which a thousand piece-meal compromises obscured the avowed ideal. And others fell upon the good ground, and yielded fruit, some a hundred fold, some sixty, some thirty. Only here the parallel grows dubious. It may be said, however, that the peace conference revealed the old order for what it is. Imperialism may find it more difficult in the future to masquerade as an international evangelism. The masses have learned from the sophistries of Paris to distinguish between propaganda and a new heart in diplomacy. The mind of the masses is the good ground that may yet yield thirty, sixty. or a hundred fold. |