of Ireland should be as complete as that accorded to any other country with which we have diplomatic relations. Later, I am going to ask Mr. Frank Walsh, who has been recently in Ireland as a member of the commission on the Irish Republic, to go more fully into a recital of the conditions as they exist in Ireland, as to what the Government of Ireland is doing in the way of functioning along practical lines. Some people who came here very recently to our shores have said that there were two governments in Ireland, and I think that is absolutely a truth that will have to be found by any jury before whom the evidence shall be laid. I think it will be enough to warrant them in so passing upon the facts of the situation. I think there is no doubt-and I say it in no spirit of bitternessthat the British Government is only holding its position there by the naked use of force; that it is only holding its position by setting aside all the safeguards of civil liberty; that it is setting aside all the conditions which are supposed to exist in any country in which there is liberty; that they have done away with trial by jury, with the writ of habeas corpus; that they have suspended the right of peaceable assemblage for the purpose of public discussion; that they havẹ suspended the publication of papers; that they have proclaimed whole provinces and are continuing their government of Ireland under martial law. They have in possession of the country now an army as large, at least, as the entire British Army was at the time that the great war broke out, the army that was sent as the contribution of the British Empire to the armed forces on the continent of Europe.

The CHAIRMAN. May I interrupt you there?

Judge COHALAN. Yes.

The CHAIRMAN. Is the government of Ireland a de facto or a de jure government?

Judge COHALAN. Which one do you mean? [Applause and laughter.]

The CHAIRMAN. I mean the government of the Irish Republic.
Judge COHALAN. I was just coming to that.

The CHAIRMAN. I should like to hear you on that. To my mind, that is the crux of the matter.

Judge COHALAN. I was just going to point out the conditions that exist as opposed to the government or what is called the government-of naked force over there. Take the Irish government as it exists; take the conditions under which it came into existence. On the 14th of last December, almost exactly a year ago, there were elections held in all of the 105 divisions in Ireland— the divisions that were formerly represented in the British Parliament by members elected from Ireland.

Now, if you will try to visualize the conditions that existed at the time that election was held, I think you will have an opportunity of coming to an understanding of the situation existing there more easily than you can in any other way. There was an army in occupation, as I say, which was rated by different people-spokesmen for England, that is—and I have gone over the statements in the London Times and the statements in the Manchester Guardian and other papers as they were reported at the time-rated all the way from 120,000 to 200,000 men. It was equipped as well as a modern army can be equipped, by the British Government. It had all the

branches of the service there; not only the infantry and the cavalry, but it had an aviation force and it had its artillery force. It had many of their chosen and picked troops-among them 10,000 men of the hill tribes of India-supposed to be the fiercest fighters that England, in all her broad domains, can produce. Trial by jury had been suspended and martial law was in force practically all over the country. Certain counties, like County Clare and other southern counties, were especially made prohibited areas, so that the people were not allowed to travel from one part of the country to another. The right of assembling for the purpose of advocating peacefully any point of view that people had on any political question was taken away from the majority.

Most of the chosen leaders of the people, like those who had been elected to Parliament, were in jail; and not in jail in Ireland, and not as a consequence of any indictments against them, but by reason of the fact that they had been summarily arrested and summarily also taken out of their own country and taken over to England, where they were incarcerated. In addition to the members of Parliament, the chosen leaders of the people to the number of some forty-odd1,500 of the most active men and women of Ireland, who believed in the establishment of an Irish republic, were also under arrest and were held, without indictment or trial, in the jails of England and Ireland. I am only running over a few of the things against which the people had to contend. Newspapers were seized without due process of law; their publication was suspended; their printing presses were broken into bits. They were put in the position of being physically unable, even though they were legally free, to publish at all.

And then, in the face of that situation, the people of Ireland on the 14th of December last year went to the polls and upon a square proposition advocating, so far as they could advocate anything, thẹ establishment of the Irish republic and the separation of Ireland from England by a vote of something over 1,207,000 on that side to 308,000 on the other side-I have the exact figures here and decided in favor of the policy of self-determination which had been laid down as one of the points upon which peace was to be made among all the nations of the world. They elected 79 representatives on that platform and as against that squarely upon the proposition of having conditions remain as they were-in all of Ireland there were only 26 members of Parliament elected on the other side. The election was held on the 14th of December. The announcement of the result-and I am not going to go into the question of what was happening to the votes in the meantime at all. I only state that if they could be held as long in some parts of America it would not be certain that they would be counted exactly as cast-was on the 28th of December, two weeks afterwards.

The announcement was then made of the result, that by a popular vote of 1,207,000 as against 308,000 the will of the people had been expressed. It turned out, in terms, to be this way, so far as the election was concerned: 73 men and women were elected squarely in favor of the establishment of an Irish republic. Six of what were called the old Nationalist members, up and down the country, were returned in favor of the policy of self-determination as against the establishment of an Irish republic; and 26-including 3 for the Universities of Trinity and Belfast-were returned in favor of retaining the existing relations between Ireland and England

On the 21st day of January, the following month, all of the elected members were summoned to a meeting, and a large majority of the 73 men and women who had been elected-one woman, the Countess Markowitz among them-assembled in Mansion House in the city of Dublin and declared the establishment of an Irish republic, and elected Eamon de Valera as president of the republic.

They have started to function, so far as any government can function that is not in sole possession of the physical forces of the country. The CHAIRMAN. You concede that they are not in physical possession of the country?

Judge COHALAN. Not in physical possession in the sense in which we are in possession of America; yes, of course. In the sense that there is a foe upon the shores of Ireland who has been in control by the naked use of force for over 700 years, of course that concession must be made; but in so far as the government in any sense can be said to express the will of the people over it whom it is supposed to rule, I maintain that the government which is represented by the chosen spokesmen of the people in Ireland is the real government of Ireland, and the government of Ireland that in the next few years is going to be recognized by all the liberty-loving people of the world. [Applause.]

Mr. FLOOD. I think you are certainly right in that, too.

Judge COHALAN. I am glad, Mr. Flood, that as on so many other questions on which we have agreed in the past we agree on this. Now, as to the functioning of the Government.

Mr. CONNALLY. In order to get at the concrete situation that would present itself if this resolution was passed: Your contention is that of course there is an Irish Republic in existence now. Suppose that we should pass this resolution and send a representative over there to Ireland, representing the United States, and suppose that these Britishers should be contrary about the matter and still continue to hold Ireland; what would be the attitude of the Irish Republic then? Judge COHALAN. I think, Mr. Connally, that I know England so well and I know Ireland so well-and I take it that Mr. Connally, with that name, also knows it—that if the United States were to do just that, and that is one of the things that I want to stress, it would not alone be doing the just thing and the right thing, and the thing which eventually public opinion will compel them to do, but the most friendly act which has been done in hundreds of years to the people of England. [Applause.]

I am giving you my opinion there, Mr. Connally.

Mr. CONNALLY. Do you think that answers my question?

Judge COHALAN. No; I am coming to that. I think the consequence of that being done would be, while there would be some considerable noise, and while there would be the expression of many opinions such as were expressed at the time of President Cleveland's message on the Venezuela question, and while there would be declarations that they would never, never give way, that knowing their own power to be hanging by the slenderest kind of a thread, as the governing class of England do so know, the result that would be forced, not only by their respect for America and their recognition in their hearts that that was the right thing to do, but forced by the opinion of the mass of the people of England itself, would be that the British Government itself would say, "We think after all that it is

a thing that is going to be a benefit and a credit to us and instead of being an injury it is something that we should welcome." [Applause.]

But I want to point out to you, if I may, that if there is to be an end to war, as we all hope and pray, if there is to be the establishment of universal peace, if we are going to work out the things for which it was said that we entered the war, there must be a settlement of this Irish question that will be satisfactory to the people of Ireland. May I point out to you here that with all the skill and with all the subtlety and all the adroitness and all the ability of the English statesman—and I say and have been saying, in and out of season, that I think he has never had an equal, much less a superior, in all human history-in spite of that, in spite of the marvelous manner in which he has imposed his will upon other people, and in spite of the tremendous power of the visible empire of England and of the invisible empire of England, I say in spite of all that, the one great failure in English diplomacy has been in this Irish question. There never can be peace, and an end of war, there never can be the friendship between nations that should exist between nations, until this question has been settled.

The English statesmen who have been working at this question in season and out of season in every generation, whether by open force or by the power of intrigue or by diplomacy or negotiation, who have been working at it down through the generations, in all the years have failed. I am not going to quote anybody who is opposed to England, in support of that statement, but rather Lloyd-George, who said in the House of Commons last year that it was just as far from being settled now as it was the day when the first Englishman went into Ireland, and that English rule is as unpopular in Ireland as it was in the days of Oliver Cromwell. Now, I contend, Mr. Chairman

The CHAIRMAN. Before you go on, Judge, I would like you to answer my question as to whether or not the Irish republic is a government de jure or de facto?

Judge COHALAN. I think there is no question of its being both a de facto government and a de jure government. I think it will be recognized by the powers as being both.

But before I go to that, the way in which this Government to-day, without possession of any regular army and not in possession of the physical forces of the country, is having its will followed by the masses of the people of the country, is an extraordinary thing. You can find no precedent for it in any quarter.

The fact is that no longer are the masses of the people going into the English courts of law with questions to be passed upon, to have the disputes arising in the ordinary affairs of life settled by courts where judges appointed by the English Government are presiding. They are having them passed upon by the judges appointed by the Irish government; they are going voluntarily into the courts of the Irish republic and having their disputes settled.

The CHAIRMAN. You think it is a de facto government?

Judge COHALAN. Yes, I think it is. Not to the extent to which the American Government is so, but in the sense that it is functioning in many ways; in the sense that in spite of its lack of physical control its will is being obeyed; that its judgments are being followed by more than three-fourths of the entirety of Ireland; that it is in

practically only one section that its will is not followed out. In all of the great cities in the south and west and east and much of the north, it is being followed as the government which has the right to impose its will, and it is the only government which has any right to impose its will upon the people of Ireland. [Applause.] Now, I want to point out, if I may

The CHAIRMAN. You stated a while ago that the government of the republic of Ireland was not in physical possession of Ireland? Judge COHALAN. Not in the fullest sense.

The CHAIRMAN. If that be true, how can you have a de facto government without possession? Does not a de facto government have the right to recognition solely by reason of possession? That is a question that is troubling me very much.

Judge COHALAN. Let me say, as to that, that there is a difference between the possession that the United States has of every inch of American territory and the possession which the British Government has of any inch of territory in Ireland.

The CHAIRMAN. Our Government is not only de facto; it is de jure. Judge COHALAN. It is both. It is the de facto Government of the United States, and it is the de jure Government of the United States; and that is what I insist must presently be the status of the elected government of the people of Ireland. Take this situation into account. Look at the conditions in Ireland to-day; look at the conditions in Cork or Limerick or Waterford, or most of the ports of Ireland. The King's writ, as they call it over there in the law courts, practically does not run without the assistance of an army, in order to enforce a right. That is not a condition of government which is to be found in a country where the government is recognized as possessing not only the power but the right to exercise that power. They are practically in the position where they only enforce their will upon the people of Ireland by reason of their possession of cannon and bayonets, by reason of the presence of these hundreds and thousands of soldiers gathered from the nations of the earth and brought in there to enforce the will of not the majority of the English people but of the class that are in control of the British Government, and that I claim are the only enemies left of the enjoyment of life and liberty, all over the world.

Now, I am going to leave that to be gone into in extenso by Mr. Walsh, who has seen more at first hand of existing conditions than I have seen. For many years I was in Ireland every year, but I have not been there since 1914. Mr. Walsh, Mr. Michael J. Ryan, former public service commissioner of the State of Pennsylvania, and Gov. Dunne, former governor of Illinois and a former mayor of the city of Chicago, were sent over as the American commission on Irish independence, in order, practically, not only to put into effect the Gallagher resolution, which has been referred to and has been read into the record here, but also to carry into effect the suggestion in the Borah resolution, which was passed by a vote of 60 to 1 by the Senate of the United States, asking that the peace conference should settle this entire question in a way satisfactory to the people of Ireland in order that this great cause of dissension and war might be removed, and we could get into a position where there might be peace for generations to come. I say I am going to leave that, but I want to make this suggestion: I urge that this bill should pass not only as a matter of justice, not only as a matter of following the best