April 25 1924
“After prolonged discussion, it was not found possible to reach an agreement.”
So ended the Irish Boundary Conference convened by the Prime Minister of Great Britain, opened at the beginning of last February, adjourned for a month again because Sir James Craig wanted to train in the Mediterranean for the final round, and wound up at last in the British Foreign Office yesterday evening after discussions extending over five-and-a-half hours.
Mr JH Thomas presided at the last meeting of the Conference, and he was “supported” by the British Home Secretary [Arthur Henderson]. Mr [WT Cosgrave and Sir James Craig were there – each attended by two colleagues.
It would be silly to say that the result was not anticipated. Sir James Craig’s attitude precluded the possibility of agreement. If the British Colonial Secretary had a scheme, it was, obviously, rejected.
No details of the discussion have been furnished to the Press; nor indeed any importance be attached to the circumstances under which the experiment failed. What matters now is the next act of this weary and profitless drama of cross-currents and cross-purposes played between three governments since the first days of 1922 at the expense of 450,000 North-of-Ireland nationalists whose vital interests in their own country have been sacrificed so that politicians may shirk the consequences of their own ineptitude and folly.
Apparently one course only lies open to the Government of the Irish Free State: insistence on the prompt appointment of a Boundary Commission on the terms and conditions laid down in Article XII of the Treaty. Then the British Government must either implement the Article in full or declare their inability to do so, and admit thereby that the Treaty itself was an imposture – just a “scrap of paper” in respect of its most essential provision.
Sir James Craig’s position has been plainly defined. It is for the inheritors of the original contract to deal with him. The validity of the Treaty is involved in the issue raised by yesterday’s failure at Whitehall.
We regret the failure of the Conference – generally anticipated as that failure had been. But the inability to reach an agreement formally announced last evening should make further hugger-mugger impossible: and, even this belatedly, it is well to know that a definite decision cannot be delayed.