Sir Mark Sykes and Ireland

It has not been the least of the minor factors in the Anglo-Irish tragedy that the old Catholic families of England have almost all been strongly opposed by tradition to the claims of Irish nationalism. This constant divergence of views and sympathies between the Catholics of the two countries has in recent years produced incidents that will not easily be forgotten on either side. Irish Catholics can scarcely be expected ever to admit any excuse for the amazing action of the Duke of Norfolk when he played a conspicuous part in the mass meeting of the Unionist party at Blenheim on July nth, 1912, which gave its solemn benediction to Sir Edward Carson on the eve of his departure for Belfast to organise the Orange Volunteers. It may be thought probable indeed that, were he still alive, the Duke of Norfolk would even in his extreme old age have repudiated the deliberate campaign of political anarchy and religious hatred to which he then gave his approval, although he was the leading Catholic peer in England. His successors in the leadership of the English Catholic Unionists have generally accepted the subsequent verdict of the world’s opinion upon the Ulster campaign, and upon the savage outrages against the Catholic minority in East Ulster which it provoked. But his public support of the Ulster campaign was an incident that will live in history. Had the attitude of the Duke of Norfolk and of the large number of influential Catholic families in England who always thought much as he did, been less narrow in regard to Irish nationalist aspirations, it can scarcely be doubted that their influence could have at once checked the extreme violence of the Unionist campaign before the war, and simultaneously assisted towards a less bitter view of English Unionism on the part of Irish Catholics.