As Attrition has suggested, sufferage was restricted in the same way for the rest of the UK, a lot of the men who fought in WWI were not eligable to vote until after the war rather like the better known case of women. It Ireland it was not so much a North/South divade as the border today suggests, as the heart of British rule was in Dublin from the time of King John in the early 13thC right up to partition.doogal wrote:Political control through the act rested on Suffrage in Ireland which was restricted to adult male landowners with means. In the 1800's a large majority were protestant backed gentry who had been supported by the English crown and her military over generations.
The many Irish who did fight in WWI saw themselves as full citizens of the UK first and only after that did they split off down religious lines for the most part. Even today there is often more ill-feeling between Irish Protestants and Catholics than between either community and the rest of the British people, they may not love the mainlanders but they can often hate their fellow Irish of the opposite religion.
With regards the idea of a German victory in WWI, the peace would have been dictated by Hindenburg and Ludendorff, like the HL decrees that ruled Germany in the late war years, the same Ludendorf who concluded 'The best security for the nation followed from the total annihilation of other nations.' as quoted in the link Doogal provided. This is borne out by the terms of Brest-Litovsk and Bucharest, so the idea a peace with the west would be less punitive than Versailles is fairly obviously incorrect if Germany was capable of enforcing her terms.
