Dividing Ireland: World War I and Partition

142 THE EASTER RISING AND AFTERMATH
We claim the right to decide what is to be our nation. We
refuse them the same right…. After three hundred years
England has begun to despair of being able to make us love
her by force. And so we are anxious to start where England
left off, and we are going to compel Antrim and Down to love
us by force. 69
Among all shades of Nationalist opinion the unpopularity of any
form of partition was widespread. Nationalists could not accept ‘the
geographical definition that “Ireland is three parts of Ireland and
one part Great Britain”’; 70 or, as K.Roantree O’Shiel of Omagh,
wrote in the Irish Independent:
Ireland is a compact, perfect nation, bound on all sides by the
broad Atlantic, and no one has a right to confine or alter
those natural boundaries, but God…. Once we assent to the
theory of partition, either actively or passively, we cease to
believe in Ireland’s national entity. We cannot give away that
which we have not to give. We Irishmen, living in this country
at present, have only a passing or a life interest in the land of
Ireland. We hold it in trust for our children and our children’s
children until the end of time…. If we once admit this theory
of exclusion for minorities…there is no knowing how far, or
into what absurdities, it will carry us. For if the Protestant
Unionists of Ulster are a homogeneous entity with a right to a
separate existence then so are the Turks of Greece, the
English of South Africa, the Jews of England, and the huge
Irish Home Rule population of North Britain. 71
Opposition to the partition proposals crystallised amongst the
Roman Catholic Church’s hierarchy On 8 June 1916, a meeting was
held at Omagh in Ulster at which letters were read from the
Catholic Bishops McHugh, McKenna, MacRory and O’Donnell.
McHugh protested against any proposals that would be
inconsistent with the ideal of ‘Ireland One and Undivided’.
McKenna claimed that partition would be the ‘grossest insult to
the spirit of Irish nationality. It would be utterly subversive of the
National ideals’. MacRory expressed opposition to the exclusion of
Ulster or any part of it. Only O’Donnell appeared more flexible,
stressing the need for a joint conference of leading Nationalists in
the threatened area. What the bishops feared most was the
creation of a Protestant-dominated Education Office in the
partitioned area, for, as McHugh wrote, what caused more alarm
than ‘the voluntary surrender of the National ideal’ was the