Six days of the Irish Republic Part 16

In an orgy of majority government both stood out for the sanct.i.ty of minorities, especially when those minorities represented inviolable principles of vital import to the majority.

It was the method of suppression that really did most of the mischief, for in addition to casualties and damages there was also considerable distress, and it at once became necessary to organize a system of food distribution and relief for the sufferers.

This was largely undertaken by the St. Vincent de Paul Society, under Sir Henry Robinson, Vice-President of the Local Government Board, and with the help of the military authorities, who lent motor-lorries and money, food was distributed to over one hundred thousand persons.

House-to-house visitations were made, and these revealed all forms of distress, from lack of food, which, of course, it had been impossible to obtain as long as the city was in a state of siege, down to absolute ruination of whole families.

In places the city looked like Antwerp during the siege, or London upon the arrival of the Belgian refugees.

No one has yet been able to estimate the full extent of the material damage sustained by the reckless bombardment of the city--for no other word can be used; and though Captain Purcell, the chief of the Dublin Fire Brigade, gave the rough figure of 2,500,000, this must be taken as a mere minimum of the extent covered by the conflagrations.

It cannot represent the loss of business, employment, goodwill, trade, and the thousand and one other losses inseparable from such a catastrophe.

Take, for example, the loss of the Royal Hibernian Academy, with thousands of pounds of pictures. No price can repay these, for they represented perhaps the culminating point, or at least the turning point, in careers which had had years of hard struggles, and which had set perhaps a lifetime's hopes upon a single canvas.

From all accounts, too, it was the merest chance that the whole northern portion of the town did not fall a victim to the devouring flames, and it is hard to understand the psychology of the military mind which could risk even the mere possibility of such an event, as it is hard to understand why the firemen were fired on by the rebels when trying to extinguish the flames.

The hardest part of it all was, moreover, that the blow fell almost entirely upon the shoulders of the innocent, viz. the merchants, tradesmen, shopkeepers, and employees, who were thus ruined at a single stroke within the s.p.a.ce of a few hours without even a chance of a protest.

People began to ask seriously whether it had really been necessary at all, and the verdict was not always complimentary to the authorities.

Mr. Healy raised the question in the House whether any such measures had ever been really necessary, considering that the rebels held such few positions, and these could have been isolated by the munic.i.p.al water supply being cut off. It certainly seems plausible that some less brutal methods could have been adopted, considering the way Cork was saved from a similar catastrophe by the tact of the clergy, who would only have been too willing, and undoubtedly would have had the power, to act as mediators between the rebels and military in the name of the civil authorities and in the interests of the inhabitants princ.i.p.ally and Ireland generally.

A very cute suggestion I heard from Mr. George Atkinson, the well-known Dublin artist, as we were preparing the cover of the present volume in his studio, struck me as particularly plausible.

"As long as the rebels were in their strongholds untouched," he said, "they were practically powerless, and could only have covered themselves with contempt and ridicule if they had been left alone.

"These men were asking for martyrdom and the glory of battle: why on earth give them their admitted object?

"They were in possession of the Post Office. Very well, but they could not have run the postal service. They were in possession of the railways. Well and good, but they would not have been able to conduct the train service. They had a.s.sumed the reins of government, but would the people of Ireland have acknowledged them? Certainly not. They had taken over the management of the capital, but were they able to police it even, or protect private property? Why, from the very first moment of their victory--if victory it could be called--the whole place had been at the mercy of the mob.

"Again, they issued receipts in the name of the Irish Republic's exchequer, but what financier would have honoured their bills? Could they have even taken the gold from the banks they could not have got credit or cash for any further transactions. They had a.s.sumed sole authority over the people of Ireland, yet they could not have commanded enough votes to secure a single const.i.tuency.

"These men, left to themselves, in fact, and treated with a sense of humour, were on the highroad to the greatest political fiasco the world had ever seen, and could only have made themselves ridiculous and contemptible in the eyes of their own countrymen and others throughout the world.

"They had appealed to Germany: very well; let them look to German help for a.s.sistance, and in the meanwhile let them know that Cas.e.m.e.nt had been captured already, before the rising, and the phantom Prussian armada had been sunk to the bottom of the sea.

"What could have happened? You say 'Pillage and murder.' They were not out for that, in the first place, nor were they that type; and it may be questioned whether, had they set about it with deliberate purpose, they would have worked such havoc as the military and naval artillery wrought in that fatal week."

The theory is certainly one which would have had no precedent to recommend it, but to my mind it was just this that was its best recommendation; in fact, what was most needed was to avoid a repet.i.tion of the old fatal precedents which had turned so many futile revolts into glorious outbursts of patriotism.

Just imagine the situation. England would first of all have told them she wished for no bloodshed beyond the punishment of those who had actually shot defenceless men or whose orders had led to these murders.

It would have redounded entirely to the credit of the Englishman.

England would then have asked the politicians and people alike if they in any way sympathized with such a revolt, and let the penalties be known--the immediate erasure of Home Rule from the Statute Book and the cessation of land purchase, as well as the stoppage of all commercial or financial transactions.

Finally, if these failed and the people of Ireland really wished for war in its full reality, they could have it, but they must not ever afterward appeal as const.i.tutional partners in the Empire, but merely as a conquered race: mercy they might have, rights they would have forfeited by conquest.

Had such a course been followed, there would not only have been an opportunity upon the part of the nation at large to disown the usurpers, who would then have had not even the vestige of a grievance upon which to establish their preposterous claims to continuance in the position they had taken up.

In a word, the English would have made fools of them, or rather allowed the Irish to make fools of them. Instead of this, all the old fatal, discredited methods were employed with the same fatal results, and they became national heroes, whose suppression by force could only give them greater power.

The whole thing would have taken no longer than the campaign; no further blood would have been spilt, and time would have been allowed for the great adventure to reveal itself in the true grotesqueness of cold reality.

Possibly it was looked upon as _infra dig._ to treat with rebels, but it was so obviously a mental case that it is hard to see how anything could possibly have been _infra dig._ under such circ.u.mstances.

On Monday and Tuesday the Republic was no more representative of the people of Ireland than the tailors of Tooley Street were the people of England, but upon the old Grecian principle that the sufferings of one citizen are the sufferings of the whole State, it became national from the moment the national sentiment had been aroused by the indiscriminate shedding of blood.

It was in their defeat that the Sinn Feiners won their great victory, and they knew it. They had been scoffed at, derided, denounced by the official party almost to--in fact, actually to--a state of desperation, and an act of despair became their last resort. The Statute Book indeed proclaimed Ireland a nation once again, but the Government treated Ireland more like a province than ever, and her own representatives seemed to acquiesce; so, as Mrs. Pea.r.s.e, the mother of the "President,"

told me afterwards, "there was nothing left for them but to accomplish the sacrifice demanded to save the soul of Ireland and proclaim her on the scaffold once again unconquered and unconquerable."

It was an act of folly, if you like, to try to set up a republic, especially during such a crisis as this war, but since the death of the leaders brought out their true character, it has ceased to be looked upon as a piece of knavery, for these men, according to all accounts of the priests, died the death of saints, not scoundrels; so that we now realize the old, old story of the tragedy of misunderstanding, as much, indeed, by their own countrymen as by the Englishman.

If it was to ill.u.s.trate in one dramatic coup that misunderstanding which has been growing between all parties in Ireland, then they have not died in vain, for every party must feel to a certain extent responsible for the catastrophe. Several things, however, seem to stand out prominently amidst the chaos.

Castle government is dead as Queen Anne and Home Rule as natural and as inevitable as the morrow's sunrise; Unionism, in the English sense of Empire, survives: everyone is a Unionist now; but what still remains inexorable is the att.i.tude of Sir Edward Carson, whose "Unionism" is merely a euphemism for "bureaucracy," and who, with the Ulster Volunteers still in arms, equally prepared to resist const.i.tutional government, whether from Westminster or from Dublin, is the greatest Home Ruler of us all--or should we say Sinn Feiner?

Personally, I have always thought, and still think, that the Orangeman has more to gain in an Irish Parliament than anyone else as representing the layman, the business man; but I, for one, should be sorry to see Home Rule at the cost of a single Ulster Volunteer's life.

Mr. William O'Brien has for years, as a species of political outcast, been preaching the doctrine of conciliation, and has suffered in consequence, but his successful opponents have not gained the victory, for we are now rapidly drifting towards the total exclusion of several counties--the thing of all things they most wished to avoid.

All the while people are wondering whether it is the people themselves or the politicians who are responsible for the antagonism, and three of the greatest national movements since the days of tenant grievances stare us in the face as outside, if not politics, at least outside the ordinary conventional politicians--I mean Sir Horace Plunkett's Co-operative Movement, Larkin-Connolly's Labour Movement, and Sinn Fein.

Surely something is wrong if such movements cannot be a.s.similated by either of the great political parties, as they should have been if those parties were together completely representative of the nation.

All our greatest men were isolated--Redmond, Carson, Plunkett, O'Brien, Connolly, W. M. Murphy, the Lord-Lieutenant--all appealing to or threatening the unfortunate Premier, already sufficiently occupied with the intricacies of English politics, let alone European.

The step must come from the Englishman in his own defence: English politics must no longer be dominated by the votes or the threats of any Irishman, and some method must be found, while safeguarding the Imperial link, to force Irishmen to meet each other and settle with each other: for the only result of ruling Tipperary from Downing Street is that Westminster is ruled from Dublin or Belfast.

According to the "political correspondent" of the _Manchester Guardian_, the tendency is towards an Irish Coalition. "The question," he writes, "is not whether there will be a change. The old and anarchic system of Dublin Castle seems to be definitely doomed. The question is rather what the change will be. Speculation, which may or may not be partially informed, concentrates upon the scheme of a new Irish Advisory Council.

I may offer a more detailed sketch of this scheme, of which I will only say that some responsible Irish members think it is very likely to be near the mark. An Irish Council, if created now, would probably be an advisory body, resembling the Viceroy's Council in India. The Lord-Lieutenant, who ought to be an active and energetic administrator, would no doubt preside over it. As to the membership, it would have to consist of representatives of both Irish Parties. It is thought possible that some Nationalist and Ulster Unionist members of the House of Commons would be on it, and would, of course, sit with it in Dublin. In addition there might be responsible Irish public men (like, for example, Sir Horace Plunkett), both Home Rulers and Unionists, who are not members of the House of Commons or officially attached to a party. There might also, in view of the educational problem of Ireland, be one or two representatives of the Churches. This would form what is talked of as the Irish Coalition, in which it is a.s.sumed both Mr. Redmond's Party and Sir Edward Carson's would join."

The tribute which Mr. Birrell paid to the Irish Literary Revival and its influence upon Irish life is worth quoting, for it indicates one of the sources whence much may be hoped in the work of reconstruction.

"This period," he said, referring to the period immediately preceding the rebellion, "was also marked by a genuine literary Irish revival, in prose, poetry, and the drama, which has produced remarkable books and plays, and a school of acting, all characterized by originality and independence of thought and expression, quite divorced from any political party, and all tending towards and feeding latent desires for some kind of separate Irish national existence. It was a curious situation to watch, but there was nothing in it suggestive of revolt or rebellion, except in the realm of thought. Indeed, it was quite the other way. The Abbey Theatre made merciless fun of mad political enterprise, and lashed with savage satire some historical aspects of the Irish revolutionary. I was often amazed at the literary detachment and courage of the playwright, the relentless audacity of the actors and actresses, and the patience and comprehension of the audience. This new critical tone and temper, noticeable everywhere, penetrating everything, and influencing many minds in all ranks, whilst having its disintegrating effects upon old-fashioned political beliefs and worn-out controversial phrases, was the deadly foe of that wild sentimental pa.s.sion which has once more led so many brave young fellows to a certain doom, in the belief that in Ireland any revolution is better than none.

A little more time, and, but for the outbreak of the war, this new critical temper would, in my belief, have finally prevailed, not indeed to destroy national sentiment (for that is immortal), but to kill by ridicule insensate revolt. But this was not to be."

With regard to "Separatism," I believe this--and I think in so saying I am echoing the sentiments of most of my fellow-countrymen, that the only way to liberate Ireland is to dominate England, not physically, for this would be as useless as it would be impossible, but mentally and morally.

If the Irishman has been persecuted and tyrannized over, it is in virtue of certain ideals and principles which are ethically and economically inferior to his, and which he has consequently to crush in the very source, as much for his own sake as for those other members of the Empire to which, if it has been a misfortune to belong in the past, it may be an advantage and an honour to belong to-morrow.

If Castle government is wrong in Dublin it is wrong elsewhere; if militarism was wrong and foolish and futile in Cromwell's day, it is wrong to-day, to-morrow, and for all time; if England really intends at the great Peace Congress to come forward as the champion of small nations, she must be able to show an Ireland prosperous, contented, and freely allied to her without the aid of a single soldier or a single threat.

Such at least is the hope of all those who believe that only when we have solved the Irish problem have we solved the problem of Empire.

Primarily, however, the task is in Ireland's own hands: for England at this moment stands not unwilling or hostile so much as perplexed and bewildered at the strange eruption that has taken place, and which must be taken rather as an indication of a chronic state than the expression of any concrete or definite complaint.

In other words, there is already a new nationalism in the making, more idealistic, more spiritual, more constructive, and more comprehensive than the old nationalism, which was to a large extent geographical, material, and traditional to an almost stifling degree: the eyes of the younger men are fixed on the future, those of the older men are fixed upon the past.