Document No. 2 has nothing to do with it. Of course, Deputy Mulcahy does not like at all to have the situation examined. It hurts, and yet we are the people who will not face facts. If we are to see the situation properly, and know where we stand, we must examine the facts and not close our eyes to them. If the alternative is to be that of Deputy MacDermot: to acknowledge ourselves slaves, and not to have the courage to go and effect our emancipation, I say it is still worse to try to hide yourself from that position, if it is the position, and to pretend to yourself, in order to avoid the necessity for making the effort, that you are not slaves, when it is obvious to everybody that you are.
Let us face the situation. I am using Deputy MacDermot's words. If he has used them in one connection I have the right to use them in the other. If, then, we are going to see where we stand we must examine these things properly. We are supposed to have Dominion status. Where is the British Dominion that has its ports occupied by British maintenance parties? Are the ports of Canada occupied? Are the ports of Australia occupied? Are the ports of South Africa occupied? Of course, they are not, and if Canada or Australia or South Africa wants to-morrow to be effective in its neutrality and to say: not merely will we not actively engage in a British war on our territory— whatever there may be from a purely theoretical point of view in the point that when the King is at war we are all at war—but a foreign nation anyhow will see that British troops are not in our ports. As a rule, when there is a war on a nation that is fighting does not want to add to its enemies, and unless South Africa or Australia or Canada were, by some active steps, to engage in a war its neutrality, I believe, would be respected by other Powers. I will admit that if there was some exceptionally good reason there would be an excuse in that theoretical doctrine that when the King is at war all the States of the British Empire and the States of the British Commonwealth similarly would be at war, but in our case the occupation of our ports does deny us one of the fundamental rights that a free nation should have, and that is the right to keep out of a war if it did not want to be in that war and if it did not feel that its interests were affected.
We have not got, then, the essence of Dominion status as it is called. We have not got that in reality here in the Twenty-Six Counties so long as our ports are held by British troops. To talk of the freedom of Ireland, when the Six Counties are occupied, as they are at present, indistinguishable from the point of view of politics from Britain, is almost as nonsensical as to talk of this part of Ireland being really free. You might as well talk of the freedom of the prow of a vessel, the stern of which is anchored to the shore. While it is capable of certain movement, it is not capable of getting freely out to sea. By these two facts, the partition of our country, and the occupation of our ports by British troops, we have not got here what any Irishman in the past ever called freedom or, in the present, could honestly call freedom. If we are going to have true statesmanship, we have got to secure the fundamentals which will enable our people to live the fullest life; we have got to try to work for that freedom in the best manner that appears open to us.
Deputy MacDermot is able to do all sorts of things. He can interpret the minds of the British Government for us; he can interpret the minds of the British nation. He is able to assure us that if we take the steps to secure as much of that freedom as we think at the moment is within our grasp, there would be no action taken by Britain with regard to it. Of course he tells us there would not be military action. That is quite possible. But we would rather have even that much from the mouths of Mr. Thomas and Mr. MacDonald and from British statesmen than from the all-knowing mind of Deputy MacDermot.
We asked for an assurance in this matter. We asked it in circumstances which made it reasonable that we should ask for it, because the suggestion by Mr. Thomas was: "Oh, you want to have it both ways." He said, in other words, what Deputy MacDermot said, that we were not prepared to face the consequences of being a separate nation or, as he put it, "a foreign nation." I say we are. I say that the majority of the people are. I said that we would put it to the test. The moment these threats are removed it can be put to the test. I have no doubt whatever that the moment it is tested, the only consequences the Irish people need apprehend from their action would be that they would become to Britain as Denmark, Holland, Russia or some other country would be to them; that then the majority of our people would be prepared to face the position that Switzerland has to face, that Holland has to face, that Denmark has to face, that all small nations of the world beside bigger political units have had to face. At the start, of course, we would have to suffer a considerable shock. British policy has strained and turned us away from the natural equilibrium here. Our whole economic policy has been strained, and like elastic when strained, if it is cut it will recoil. When we were children we tried that many times. If you are suddenly turned from a position in which there is equilibrium, and if there is an economic strain, there is certain to be a sharp recoil. Those responsible for the welfare of our country have to bear that in mind. I think the majority of our people bear it in mind. They may not analyse it as Deputy MacDermot, perhaps, would analyse it, but they have that shrewd judgment, instinct, if you like, which explains all that to them. Naturally, in a case of that kind, they like to get a little time to reorganise, in order that the recoil would not be as sharp or as severe as it would be otherwise. Deputy MacDermot was taunting us, that the courageous thing was to cut our loss and take the economic and other consequences. He is particularly brave in that, but he wants a line of action in which such consequences would not occur.
He reminded me of a scaffold in front of a large building. We all know the pulley and the bucket that is used for lifting up cement. I can imagine a few of those regular fellows there, having hoisted one of their companions a pretty good distance with the rope, sneering at him when he was at the top, saying: "If you object to the position, why can you not loose yourself, by cutting the rope?" That is what Deputy MacDermot wants to see done. I say commonsense would suggest to anybody with the interests of this country at heart, that we should get a little nearer to a state of equilibrium before the final cutting would take place. One of the things this Government is trying to do by its general economic policy is to get the country into a position of strength for the time when the final cutting will take place, as I am sure it ultimately will. I do not believe in attempting to prophesy. It is a vain thing. The world is changing and events change. It is a foolish person who really believes in his own prophecy to the extent that he regards it as certain. But I am willing to prophesy that that cutting, whatever may be the relationship entered into afterwards, will take place. It is becoming easier as time goes on, because there is, in the first place, realisation on the part of the British, who are forcing certain connections upon us, that these forced connections are not ultimately to their benefit. There is also, as far as this country is concerned, and the world generally, a consolidation of opinion, which gives greater hope of ultimate unity than has been possible in the past, so that the ultimate cutting, to my mind, will take place. Under the policy the Government is developing, a policy of self-sufficiency, a policy to make us less dependent than we were on the British market, when the time comes for the ultimate snapping of these connections, it will have less reaction on events here, and our nation will suffer far less than it would otherwise suffer.
Deputy Curran was speaking a short time ago about our green fields. He stated that we have in our rich land our share of the world's wealth; that that is our compensation for being denied some of the rich mineral resources that other countries have. I was sorry the Deputy was interrupted at a certain point, because I was hoping the sequence of his idea would lead him to ask what these green fields were for. Were they not intended to maintain a population? Were they meant simply for bullocks and herds, or were they meant to maintain the natural population which this country should have? Were they meant for those markets which we heard spoken of from the opposite benches, desirable markets which we had built up? I remember a colleague once saying to the British: "You did not buy our butter from us because of our beautiful blue eyes."
The British gave us these markets because they got from us goods of a certain class which they wanted and which we were able to supply better than any country in the world. Though they may resist that tendency for a time, they will not be able to resist it permanently and just as in the past they desired certain things from us because they were the best that could be supplied—when I say "the best" I mean both in quality and in price and better than could be supplied by other countries—so in future, if there are goods which we have to offer, which would be, taking all things into account, better value than they could get elsewhere, you may be perfectly certain they will come and take them.
But it was not we who built up these markets. I do not think those who speak about our building up these markets would like to suggest that the Irish people consciously got rid of half their population in 80 or 90 years in order to secure these markets. We heard about the relative price of wheat and store cattle as if there were some wonderful unexplainable thing about it, some mystery that economists could hardly hope, even with much burning of midnight oil, to understand. As far as we are concerned in any case, the prices for wheat were determined by the fact that there was a world market for wheat here and that the prairie areas, the undeveloped areas in Canada and elsewhere, were permitted to supply this market in competition with us. The world price of wheat went down and the price of store cattle, we were told, went up. It went up because our market was the most convenient source from which the British could obtain their supplies, whether of fat cattle or store cattle. They wanted to take their people off the land and put them into the workshops, knowing that in the factory and in the workshop they were going to get a better reward for their labour than they would if they were to remain on the land. They were only anxious that in the farmers of this country they should have a source of supply and we supplied them. We supplied them with fat cattle but they had certain agriculturists too, and they thought to themselves that they would do better by giving us the less profitable part of the trade, that they would have the quick turnover and the quick profits which were involved in the finishing of the store cattle which they got from us.
We worked in with the general British economic policy. It suited them and we suffered from that because they had the industries and we were left as the agricultural backwoods, if I might so put it. We are suffering and have suffered, as some of the Western States of America are suffering.
A few days ago I was speaking to a former member of the Government in Western Australia. He was complaining of the neglect of the interests of that part of Australia by the towns and the industrial centres in the East. We were the agricultural hinterland from which they got their supplies and they got them practically at their own price. It was a price better than the price we might have got elsewhere, with world competition I admit, but we had a special place in that market on account of our position. It was so much better that our people went into that industry but finally we had to go into it, in competition with other places like the Argentine and so on, with the result we are not to-day what we were half a century or three-quarters of a century ago.
To-day our supplies are in competition with the chilled and frozen meat of countries thousands of miles away. You have the position in the British market to-day, as everybody who studies the position will have to admit, that the British agriculturists, on account of the change in taste, the ability to buy, and the general competition of foreign countries, are complaining almost as loudly as a section of our farmers here are complaining, some of them more so. What are we to do? We have been taunted with saying that that market is gone. I say that we have got to face the economic facts if we are to bring about any remedy. We have to face the fact that the market that we enjoyed in the past, economic war or no economic war, will never be there for us again.
