FROM THE ARCHIVES:After a week of public debate in the Dáil on the Treaty in 1921, The Irish Times took for its editorial on Christmas Eve the theme of Christmas and peace and made clear its view on how the Dáil should vote.
Not in seven hundred years has a more fateful Christmas dawned on Ireland than that which will dawn tomorrow.
It will mark the end of a long struggle between two nations or the renewal of strife. The first six months of the present year were months of horror and bloodshed. Then came the blessed relief of the truce and then the negotiations at Downing street. The fruit of negotiation was the Treaty of Peace which Britain has accepted and Ireland is now required either to accept or to reject. Whatever Mr de Valera may say, and however artfully Mr Erskine Childers may weave words, there is no middle course.
Acceptance will mean the opening of a new career for Ireland, more richly endowed with privilege and power, more rife with golden opportunity, than any which providence has put in the hands of a small people since the world began. It will mean not only international friendship, but – an even harder thing to win – national unity. Rejection of the Treaty will mean a hopeless renewal of conflict and, so far as Ireland is concerned, the end of all things. The choice ought to have been made in five minutes; but Dáil Éireann, having discussed the Treaty for a week, still withholds its verdict.
Now Christmas intervenes. It is in this hallowed and gracious time that Ireland must decide between peace and war, between forgiveness and revenge, between the things that her Creator loves and the things that He hates. We say “Ireland”, because what the people enjoin Dáil Éireann must fulfil.
The familiar message will be given tomorrow from every pulpit in the land; but on this occasion it will have a special and very solemn teaching for the Irish people. God’s benediction of peace is not for everybody; it is only for men of “good will”. Which party stands for good will in Ireland today? Certainly it is not the party that prefers the sword to the hand-clasp, that cannot forget the injuries which it has suffered and inflicted, that seeks to perpetuate strife, that, during the past week, in response to a noble offer, has revived ancient litanies of malediction.
The “men of good will” are those who yearn to end the age-long quarrel, to set Jerusalem in Ireland’s green and pleasant land, to make life happier and more spacious for their children than it has been for themselves. It will be a sin against Ireland if the “men of good will” do not assert themselves at this season of good will in which Fate has staged the turning point of the national drama.
We hope that all the Churches will plead tomorrow for the Treaty of Peace – not bringing politics into religion, but bringing the first principles of religion into politics.
We hope that every member of Dáil Éireann will review his attitude to the Treaty in the light of his duty to God and to Ireland.
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