John Redmond's Last Years Part 24

How shall we write his own?

No attempt has been made in this book, and none shall be made, to represent him as a hero. But there are certain attributes which malice itself can scarcely deny him. All his ideals were generous. His love of country, the master-motive in his life, had nothing in it exclusive or tribal or partisan. His was a policy forward-looking and constructive; without narrowness or jealousy, it aimed to bring the destinies of Ireland into the hands of Irishmen, not greatly caring what Irishmen they were--indeed, if they were in a real measure responsible to Ireland, not caring at all. In this spirit he grasped masterfully at the chance which the war offered; in this spirit, he went out to meet his fellow-countrymen in the Irish Convention.

And not only towards his countrymen was he magnanimous. His love of Ireland was free from all attendant hates. His resentment was never on private grounds, and it was without rancour. He spent his whole life in opposition, and was not embittered; his mind remained constructive after thirty years spent in criticism. His experience of political life and of English Ministers had rid him of any credulous faith in mankind; yet his instinct was always to perceive the best in men. The friend who knew him best in Convention, and who had seen him in his darkest hours then and long ago, said this of him: "He was always an optimist." The speaker did not mean--he could not have meant--that in those last months Redmond was sanguine. He meant, I think, that he had faith; that in a country where suspicion is the prevailing disease, he credited men with honest motives and with his own love of Ireland.

If he went wrong at any time, he went wrong by too generous a judgment of other men, too open-handed a policy. Perhaps, too, he may have erred--it was his characteristic defect--in not pressing his policy upon others with more vehemence. He had not the temperament which, when once possessed with an idea, rests neither night nor day in pursuit of it and spares neither others' labour nor its own to carry the conception into effect. There was an element of inertia in his nature, and of the ordinary self-seeking motives which impel men not a trace. Ambition he had none--none, at all events, in the last ten or fifteen years, during which I have known him. As for vanity, I never saw a man so entirely devoid of it. His modesty amounted to a defect, in that he always underestimated his personal influence. A man less single-minded, vainer, more ambitious of success, might with the same gifts have achieved more for Ireland in thrusting towards a personal triumph. A man with more love for the homage of crowds might have kept himself in closer touch with the ma.s.s of his following.

The way of life to which he was committed was in its essence distasteful to him. I do not believe that history shows an example of a statesman who served his country more absolutely from a sense of duty.

All this might be admitted without conceding greatness to him. But he was a great man, unlike others, cast in a mould of his own. Without the least affectation of unconventionality, and indeed under a formal appearance, he was profoundly unconventional. His tastes, whether in literature, in art, in the choice of society, in the choice of his way of life, were utterly his own, unaffected by any standard but that which he himself established. Without subtlety of interpretation, his judgments cut deep into the heart of things. You could not hear him speak, could not be in his presence, without feeling the weight of his personality.

A statesman, if ever there was one, he was never given the opportunity of proving himself in administration; he can be judged only by his gifts in counsel and by his power of guiding action. As a counsellor, he was supreme. He had that faculty for antic.i.p.ating the future, that broad, far-reaching vision of the chain of events which can proceed only from long, deep and constant thought, and which is truly admirable when united, as it was in him, to a sovereign contempt for this or that momentary outcry. In these qualities of insight and foresight I have only seen one man approach him, the late Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, to whose credit stands the greatest work of Imperial reconciliation accomplished in our day. But Redmond had supremely what the wise old Scotsman lacked--the gift of persuasive speech, to win acceptance for his wisdom and his vision.

He could persuade, but he could not compel. His was not the magnetism which constrains allegiance almost in despite of reason--the power which was possessed by his first and only leader, Parnell. Redmond's appeal was to men's judgment and convictions, not to those instincts which lie deepest and most potent in the heart of man. That was the limitation to his greatness. He could lead only by convincing men that he was right.

If in the end it is true he failed to convince his countrymen and failed to carry them with him, this book has told what difficulties were set in his way, not so much by those who desired a different end than his, but by those who desired the same end. Yet admit that he failed and that he fell from power. No man holds power for ever, and during seventeen continuous years he held the leadership among his own people with far more than all the personal ascendancy of a Prime Minister in one of the oversea Dominions; and he held it without any of the binding force which control of administration and patronage bestows. He left his people improved in their material circ.u.mstances to an almost incredible degree, as compared with their state when he began his work.

Yet Ireland counts his life a failure, and he most a.s.suredly accepted that view; for he died heartbroken, not for his own sake but for Ireland's, because he had not won through to the goal. His action upon the war was his life's supreme action; he felt this, and knew that it had failed to achieve its end. By that action let us judge him, for all else is trivial in comparison beside it.

It is said by his critics that he bargained badly. If reply were made that he believed the Allied cause to be right and desired to lead his country according to his conception of justice, we should be answered that he was in charge of his country's interests, not of her morals; and he would have admitted an element of truth in this. Yet, as in the Boer War he had led his countrymen to support what he conceived to be the right cause, even with certain injury to their own, so now a.s.suredly he would not have acted as he did, had he not been convinced that Ireland's honour was to be served as well as her advantage.

But when there is talk of bargaining, it is well to consider what he had to bargain with. No one in August 1914 antic.i.p.ated the course of the war. No one foresaw the need for the last man available. It was more than a year before Great Britain could even equip the men who pressed themselves forward for service. All that he really had in his hand to give or to withhold was the value of Ireland's moral support. Could he by waiting his time have made a better bargain?

When that critical hour came, Redmond knew in his, bones the weight of Ireland's history; he knew all the propensities which would instantly tend to a.s.sert themselves, unless their play was checked by a strong counter-emotion. He knew that if Ireland said nothing and did nothing at the crisis, things would be said of Ireland which would rapidly engender rising pa.s.sion; and with the growth of that pa.s.sion all possibility, not of bargaining but of controlling the situation between the two countries would be gone. In plain language, if he had not acted at once, his only chance for action would have been in heading an Ireland hostile to England. In this war, with the issue defined as it was from the outset, he could only have done this by denying all that he believed. But apart from his judgment of the merits, there was his purpose of unity to be served. Ulster was the difficulty; all other obstacles were disposed of.

How could he hope for an Ulster united to Ireland, if Ulster were divided from Ireland on the war?

Everything depended on an instant and almost desperate move. He might have left the sole offer of service from Ireland to lie with Sir Edward Carson. What he did actually was to offer instantly all that the Ulstermen had offered, and more, for he proposed active union in Ireland itself. It was a bold stroke, but it was guided by an ideal perpetually present with him--the essential unity of Ireland. To set Irishmen working together at such a crisis in the common name of Ireland was an object for which he was willing to jeopardize the whole organization which stood behind him, at a moment when he could speak of full right for three-fourths of his countrymen. And, when he is called a failure, let it be remembered that in this he did not fail.

This fight is not yet ended, the long battle is not lost. Had Ireland from the first stood aloof, had she been drawn at the war's opening into the temper which she displayed in its closing stages, then indeed we might despair of any hopeful issue, any genuine peace between these two neighbouring islands, and, what matters infinitely more, between the strong yet divergent strains that make up Ireland itself.

But as the mists of pa.s.sion clear and deeds rather than words come into sharp light, it will be seen and realized that for a thousand Irishmen who risked their lives to defeat Redmond's effort there were fifty thousand who at his summons took on themselves far greater hardships and faced dangers far more terrible. By them we take our stand--we who followed Redmond, who believed and still believe in his wisdom. We wish no word of his last years unspoken, no act undone by that great and generous-hearted Irishman in the supreme period of his life. In his defeat and ours, we accept no defeat; we shall endeavour to keep our will set, as his was, for a final triumph which can mean humiliation for no Irish heart. Tangled as are the threads of all his policy, he leaves the task far nearer to accomplishment than he found it; and if in the end freedom and prosperity come to a united Ireland, they will be found to proceed--however deeply overlaid by years and by events may be the chain of causation--from the action which John Redmond took in August 1914, and upon which his brother, with a legion like him, set the seal of his blood.

To have served long and faithfully without reward--to have given all of life to one high purpose--to have faced a great crisis greatly--these are claims enough for Redmond that the allegiance of his comrades and followers may be justified when it is judged. The grave has closed over him, and the rest is for us to do, that a coping-stone may be set on his life's labours, and that reparation final and conclusive, for what he suffered undeservedly, may yet be offered to the dead.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: When ultimately we did meet, these were the elements which a.s.sembled.]

[Footnote 11: His notes here are only references to quotations. I supplement on this page by my own notes.--S.G.]

[Footnote 12: He was knighted for his work in connection with the war.]

[Footnote 13: These are my notes, jotted as he spoke.--S.G.]

[Footnote 14: Subject to the publication of a Report signed by Bishop O'Donnell, and these in agreement with him reaffirmed their view.]

[Footnote 15: The following, though unavoidably absent at the critical moment, joined with us: M.K. Barry, Cork County Council; J. Butler, Kilkenny County Council; Patrick Dempsey, Belfast; M. Governey, Carlow Urban Council; M.J. Minch, Kildare County Council.]