1 Copy 13th June, 1916. My dear Vernon, Many thanks for your letter and for the nomination for
Miss Lendrum. I troubled you in this matter after George Brooke
had written to say he did not think he could do anything. I
had applied to him first, as these Lendrums were tenants on the
Colebrooke estate, and George Brooke always professes to take an
interest in the pit from which he was digged. George Brooke,
however, told me last Thursday that he had had a form sent to Miss
Lendrum. I am writing to Lendrum to tell him if his daughter
receives two forms to fill that she should fill them both, and
in sending the second explain that she is the same person as
sent the first. I hope this will not create any inconvenience. We had a choice of evils before us at Belfast yesterday.
I think we choose the least. If the information given us in
private by Carson and Craig as to the condition of public opinion
including Unionist opinion in England is correct it is clear that whatever
party first placed difficulties in the way of this preposterous
settlement would alienate the sympathy of all parties in Great
Britain. We did the best we could; but as Redmond says he
understands the proposal to be for a temporary arrangement during
the war, and Carson says he will have nothing to say to it unless
it is understood that the six counties are permanently excluded
from the provisions of the Home Rule Act, I do not see how the
negotiations are to go on; and we may perhaps be made responsible. 2
for their rejection after all. I am afraid the Nationalists
and Radicals are much clevere r than we are. The case of Cavan,
Donegal & Monaghan is a difficult and distressing one.
Your protest is very well worded. I hope the action of the
representatives of the six counties in taking the responsibility
for an arrangement leaving them outside the excluded Ulster will
not be very bitterly resented. What you have lost or given up
is a big thing as regards sentiment, but in substance it was
really not worth twopence. We could have done nothing for you,
even before the war upset all our calculations. It was well
known that General Richardson held that if it came to fighting
the first thing he would have to do would be to withdraw all
the Covenanters from these three counties within the borders
of the six. The choice we had was really between all Ireland being placed
under a Home Rule Parliament, or all Ireland minus six counties
and I believe, odious as the position is, that we choose right.
What is difficult to understand is (1) how the American pressure
to which the Cabinet has unanimously yielded can be strong enough
to justify their action, and (2) how it is possible that the
sort of Home Rule it is proposed to give can satisfy the feeling
that is at the back of this pressure. If the country was under the government of a great man
instead of an Asquith some other way would surely have been found
to meet the American and other pressure: as it is Carson, who is 3
not the man to be frightened by bug bears seems to regard the
forces at the back of Lloyd George's proposal to be for the
moment irresistible. I am sure you know how deeply we sympathise with you
about your sailor boy. I would have written had I not felt
that letters of condolence are terribly futile things under
such circumstances. Yours very truly,