There is no way that I can see. That reminds me of suggestions that were made formerly about trying to bring the question of Partition to the League of Nations. There are certain questions that the League of Nations will refuse to deal with. They have enough problems which definitely and clearly come within their scope, but it would be extremely difficult to get them to deal with that. In regards to matters of that kind, there is no use trying to move unless you can see your way to success, and get your cases properly brought forward. It is not enough to say that there is a case if you cannot get them to deal with it. Consequently, I do not think there is any solution along these particular lines. You would have to get the agreement of both parties, probably, to allow it to be brought forward. There is no international court able to enforce its will on two international States if there is disagreement, or if one appears and the other refuses to appear. There is no way that an international court can impose its decision, and, therefore, it is vain to try in matters like that to begin in that particular way. We have to try another way.
Those who were interested in the Citizenship Act know that because of the privileges and advantages our people got by being treated in Britain without discrimination between them and citizens of Britain, we have provisions by which there are mutual reciprocal concessions. It is along lines of reciprocal concessions of that kind we have to deal with this question. We cannot expect to have it both ways, any more than we will not allow others to have it both ways. The only way you can have an arrangements is to have an international agreement on the lines of reciprocal arrangements. If they give advantages which we consider are useful to our citizens, we can give reciprocal advantages of a similar type. That is the line on which we are trying to solve the question.
The next question, more or less international, was the whole question of defence. I cannot hope to deal with that here as part of several questions. On a previous occasion I spoke on defence, and the Minister for Defence on more than one occasion dealt with the subject. However, the statement made by Deputy O'Higgins was a very serious one. He raised a question of principle, and raised a question of importance and of practical bearing.
In regard to principle, I do not agree with him at all. I cannot imagine an army of a State being built up on the basis that the soldiers were to be told in advance what particular use was going to be made of them. I think that would be impossible. It is quite impossible to foresee clearly what are the circumstances under which a State might have to use its army. I think that foolishness is behind a lot of the difficulty which has arisen here with regard to the Government's attitude. There are people prepared now, in advance of the circumstances in which an outbreak might take place, to say what the national attitude should be. I have indicated what the Government policy will be, and that is that we will try, in so far as it is possible—the aim of all our policy will be—to keep this country out of a war, to save this country, if we can, the horrors of being in a war.
Once we are clear about that, that that is to be genuinely the aim of our policy, we have to go into it and consider a number of other matters around it. But, before I talk in this connection—and now that the matter has been raised, I suppose I had better deal with it—I want to talk about the general principle on which the Army is based. The Army is the instrument of the Executive, and the Executive is subordinate to the national control in connection with all questions of the use of the Army. Is that clear? That is what it is, and what it must be. If you tell any members of the Army that they are enlisted for this, that or the other purpose, then you are going to make the Army, sections of the Army, the people who are going to determine whether or not they will allow themselves to be used as an army. That is clearly putting the Army above the civil authority.
Any army, whether it be a volunteer or a regular army, must be the servant of the Executive, just as the Executive is the servant in a representative assembly of this sort—the servant of the Parliament as a whole. This Government cannot have any policy which will not have the approval of the majority of the elected representatives of the people. If we are clear upon that basis, we can talk about other things, but I desire that we should be clear upon that. If we are asking for recruits to join the Army, it must be clear that they become soldiers when they join and that they are there to carry out the orders given to them by their legitimate authorities in regard to any defence that there may be of national interests.
I think Deputy O'Higgins, by his talk, is helping to create a tremendous amount of confusion in the country on that particular head. Nobody should join—and I believe the people have a duty to join—with the idea that he will be used for this, that or the other purpose, because then you would have a purely sectional army and you would have an army that was not at the disposal, as it must be, of the Executive, in the defence of national interests in accordance with the judgment of the Executive, which itself has to submit its policy and judgment to the Parliament as a whole. I hope, then, that everybody in the Army itself, and outside the Army, will remember that in this matter they are not the judges. The judges of how the Army is to be used are the members of the national Parliament, and that is so in accordance with the Constitution, and it is in accordance with the general practice wherever we have really representative government.
A soldier cannot determine for himself what is the particular type of action in which he will engaged and what is the particular cause that he will defend. In general, he surrenders his will in that regard to the Parliament and the Executive. As an individual, there are certain moral questions which arise which a man can determine at his own risk from the disciplinary point of view. But he will run a very big risk. There are certain questions from a moral point of view in which he has to be the judge and master, in which, according to his own conscience, he has to be the judge and master. If he was asked to do something against which his conscience directed him, he would do it at his own personal risk. It would be quite impossible to have an organised army, to defend the national interests, at the disposal of an Executive, if each individual were to have the right to be the judge of what particular cause he would or would not engage in.
It seems to me that the views put forward by Deputy O'Higgins, in so far as I understand them in that regard, are completely disruptive and would make any sort of real army impossible in any country. With regard to the rumours that he says are going around, I do not know whether they are or not. But if he says we are asking people to join because we want to use the Army against the North, there is no ground whatever for that suggestion. I think the attitude of the Government in regard to the application of coercion, as far as any section of our people in the North are concerned, has been stated for many a long year and we have never departed from that position. Our trouble with regard to Partition is that there is at this moment a coercion which is not justifiable, a coercion of a certain section of our people, and we claim that, in regard to these people, by no right whatever should they be coerced. We claim that they are coerced and held against their will by a small minority of people in an area to which they do not want to belong. I do not want to go into the whole aspect of Partition here again. I have already done so in the Seanad, and what I have said on that occasion I stand by, and if any Deputy wants to know my views, they are there to be read.
With regard to any definite and immediate plan, if you rule force out of it, I think there would be no plan, because I have the same views as to what would be the result, finally, as the Deputies on the opposite benches have. But if you talk of any particular and immediate plan, I do not think anybody can point definitely to a plan that will inevitably produce this result. We have done many things in our time— I mean many things were done in the time of members on the opposite benches as well as here—but a definite plan that could make certain of ensuring results could not be pointed to. You had to move in a certain direction, taking advantage of certain circumstances that arose, to advance you along the line you wanted to go. Deputies opposite say that some of our actions put us backward rather than forward. That is a question on which we will agree to differ. Our plan has been to try to get issues, on which we were divided here, removed, on the political side, as quickly and as far as possible, and we have done that very largely, and we have almost isolated this as being the specially remaining political objective.
We think this can be said, that we have a common objective, that there is nobody arguing that it should not come about. We may argue as to whether the steps we are taking will advance or retard the day we all hope for. We have done this, we have put this as the supreme objective before the Irish people, whether they are here or in any other part of the world, in other places abroad where prejudices that have been fostered are not as strong as they are here, immediately at home, in the northern area particularly. We hope that these will be of help to us, in breaking down the prejudices that exist here. The fact that old Unionists abroad are proud of Ireland is going to be a great help to us in breaking down these prejudices. They are anxious to see the Irish nation figuring as largely as possible in the world. I am talking of those living abroad, who were in the past associated with what used to be the Unionist element, but what is now, unfortunately, the partitionist element. Everyone of them has an interest and a pride in this nation as a whole and they know that, with any division, that pride which they can take in this country and its achievements cannot be as great as if we had a united Ireland.
I have never held out undue hopes, and I think Deputy Dillon was wrong in that, and misrepresented me—and it was not the first time that I called his attention to the fact that he was misrepresenting me. He said that I held out hopes to the people at the time of the British Agreement, hopes which I knew could not be fulfilled. I was most careful at the time not to do anything of the kind. I wanted the British people and the British Government to realise that this was a fundamental issue as far as the relations between the two countries were concerned. I had to put it in the forefront because, in fact, it was the most important issue that was dividing the countries. How was I going to do it? Was I to keep silent about it? Because I put it in its proper place, some people misrepresented my attitude and suggested that I had put it there in order to hold out false hopes to the people in the North that I knew could not be fulfilled. I said that I would make no agreement if that agreement was going to retard the unification of the country, and, we accepted agreement because we believed that it did not retard the unification of the country. It is quite false, however—I do not want to use any stronger words—to suggest that, because I put that in the forefront as one of the things that was an issue between Great Britain and ourselves— the most important issue, as it was— I was holding out, by doing so, hopes to the people of the North that there was going to be an ending of that question. I was trying to do my best to make it an issue, if I could, and to get it settled, if I could; and I think that the British Government were very foolish in neglecting it and not giving it the prominence it deserved instead of more or less avoiding it, because as long as the issue remains it shall be the duty of Governments here and the interests of the people here to bring about a settlement of that issue and to see that any possibilities of doing so will not be neglected.
I do not think I should go into the question of Partition any further, but I did touch on the question of defence, and I think I should continue on with it a little bit further. I tried to point out what an army has to be and to point out that the members of an army —those who join an army—must surrender their right to judge as to what cause they should fight for. Now, there will be people who will say: "Oh, well, then, we will do our best to prevent people from joining an army for national defence on that basis; we will tell them that, unless the Government is going, in advance of all the circumstances that may arise, to tell them exactly in what particular manner they are going to be used, they should not join." As I have said, if the Government were to do so, and if circumstances came around that they had not anticipated, and a world war took place—of course, some people may think that they can judge of these things in advance, but I do not claim that clairvoyance and certainly will not claim to say what may be the circumstances connected with a world war of that magnitude—the Government policy and aim will be to try to keep this nation out of war, if it can. It would be all a simple matter if our will were going to determine the matter and if what we want to do in connection with defence were going to settle the matter once and for all, but everybody knows that neutrality is effective only if you have the power to defend it: if you are strong enough, in other words, to prevent anybody interfering with you or to prevent anybody from making you side with them rather than with somebody else. The difficulites of that situation can be seen by anybody who has studied the last war and considered the position of the smaller countries in the north of Europe, when each of the two contending parties in such a war, as in the last war, will be striving to use all the resources, or the armies, if you like, of the neutral countries and trying their best to get the neutral countries on their side.
Again, with regard to the rumours, I have said that there is no justification whatever for the rumour that this Army is being recruited with a view to engaging against our people in the North. There is no basis whatever for that suggestion. The main purpose, and the only purpose—the comprehensive purpose, I meant to say—for which the Army is being recruited is for national defence, defence of this nation's right to maintain whatever policy the nation decides to be in its own interests. That is what the Army must be recruited for, and for nothing else. Deputy O'Higgins says that he wants to recruit an army to be used against the Axis Powers. I say that our Army should not be used against the Axis Powers unless they attack us. If they did attacks us and interfere with us and our liberty of action, then we would have to defend ourselves and, under these circumstances, there would be action by our Army against whatever nation might attack us to that extent. Is there any other direction in which they could possibly be used? I say that they are there as a protection to this State, so that the State will not be involved in a war in which it does not want to be involved, in so far as our added strength would enable us to keep out of war and enable us to prevent our being used in a way in which we do not want to be used— again, in so far as our strength would make that effective.
Now, with regard to goods or trade, I think it was Deputy Dockrell who mentioned the question of whether we are going to continue our trade with Great Britain in the case of a war. My view is that that trade is essential for the life of this nation—absolutely essential. Deputy Dockrell pointed out that the cattle we sell to England would have to be killed off or destroyed if there were a war, if that was not undertaken as a war measure. That trade is our ordinary mode of trade, and whatever Powers might be at war with Great Britain might hold that that trade would be detrimental to their hopes of winning. The Central Powers have been mentioned, but I prefer in these discussions, as far as possible, not to mention particular countries. However, if it were held by say, Great Britain, that the continuances of our trade with some other country was detrimental to their hopes of winning the war, it is possible that they might try to stop it; but that trade is our life, our economic life at the moment, and we would insist on our right, in the first place, of sending out these goods that are necessary for the continuances of our economic life, and we would try, naturally, to have a bargain so that the goods which we need, in return for the goods we send out, would be got in the only way in which they are being got at present, which is mainly through Great Britain, that is, the supplies of certain raw materials and so on.