The Evolution of Sinn Fein Part 3

Of the committee which took charge of the movement during its earlier stages some were (or had been) supporters of Sinn Fein, others were Republicans, more than a third were supporters of the Parliamentary Party and a few had never identified themselves with any Irish political party of any kind. And the manifesto to the Irish people issued by the committee bore clear indications of its composite origin. It took sides neither with nor against any form of Irish Nationalism and it contained no word of hostility against the Ulster force. "The object proposed," it said, "for the Irish Volunteers is to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to all the people of Ireland. Their duties will be defensive and protective, and they will not contemplate either aggression or domination.

Their ranks are open to all able-bodied Irishmen without distinction of creed, politics or social grade.... In the name of National Unity, of National Dignity, of National and Individual Liberty, of Manly Citizenship, we appeal to our countrymen to recognize and accept without hesitation the opportunity that has been granted them to join the ranks of the Irish Volunteers, and to make the movement now begun not unworthy of the historic t.i.tle which it has adopted." Volunteers were to sign a declaration that they desired "to be enrolled in the Irish Volunteers formed to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to all the people of Ireland without distinction of creed, cla.s.s or politics." The final words of the declaration were an answer to the charge, printed in an English newspaper a few days before, that the new movement was to form a Volunteer force of Catholics in hostility to Protestants, and an answer by antic.i.p.ation to the charge, made freely afterwards, that the Volunteers were intended to deprive Unionist Ulster of her just rights. The att.i.tude deliberately adopted towards Ulster could not have been better put than it was by the President of the Volunteers, Professor Eoin MacNeill, in his speech at the inaugural meeting. "We do not contemplate," he said, "any hostility to the Volunteer movement that has already been initiated in parts of Ulster. The strength of that movement consists in men whose kinsfolk were amongst the foremost and the most resolute in winning freedom for the United States of America, in descendants of the Irish Volunteers of 1782, of the United Irishmen, of the Antrim and Down insurgents of 1798, of the Ulster Protestants who protested in thousands against the destruction of the Irish Parliament in 1800. The more genuine and successful the local Volunteer movement in Ulster becomes, the more completely does it establish the principle that Irishmen have the right to decide and govern their own national affairs. We have nothing to fear from the existing Volunteers in Ulster nor they from us. We gladly acknowledge the evident truth that they have opened the way for a National Volunteer movement, and we trust that the day is near when their own services to the cause of an Irish Nation will become as memorable as the services of their forefathers."

This was n.o.ble and chivalrous language and it loses none of its force when one recollects that many of the platforms in Ulster were ringing at the time with denunciations of "our hereditary enemies" and with references to Irish Catholics as "hewers of wood and drawers of water," "the men whom we hate and despise."

But in spite of the fact that the leaders of the Irish Volunteers wished to preserve, and largely succeeded in preserving, a non-provocative att.i.tude towards the Ulstermen, the governing facts of the situation could hardly be ignored completely. Phrases used at meetings for the enrolment of Irish Volunteers appreciative of the spirit of Ulster were strongly resented by many Nationalists who saw in the Ulster Volunteers a menace not to the English exploitation of Ireland but to the national hopes. And even the leading spirits in the movement could not conceal the fact that the Ulster Volunteers, whatever they might prove to be in the future, were certainly a present obstacle to the attainment of Home Rule, which, little regarded by Sinn Fein and the Republicans as a final settlement, was undoubtedly the only approach to a settlement that could be looked for in the near future. The blame of this it was sought to throw on the English Tory Party. "A use has been made," said Professor MacNeill, "and is daily made, of the Ulster Volunteer movement, that leaves the whole body of Irishmen no choice but to take a firm stand in defence of their liberties.

The leaders of the Unionist Party in Great Britain and the journalists, public speakers and election agents of that party are employing the threat of armed force to control the course of political elections and to compel, if they can, a change of Government in England with the declared object of deciding what all parties admit to be vital political issues concerning Ireland. They claim that this line of action has been successful in recent parliamentary elections and that they calculate by it to obtain further successes, and at the most moderate estimate to force upon this country some diminished and mutilated form of National Self-Government. This is not merely to deny our rights as a nation. If we are to have our concerns regulated by a majority of British representatives owing their position and powers to a display of armed force, no matter from what quarter that force is derived, it is plain to every man that even the modic.u.m of civil rights left to us by the Union is taken from us, our franchise becomes a mockery and we ourselves become the most degraded nation in Europe. This insolent menace does not satisfy the hereditary enemies of our National Freedom. Within the past few days a political manifesto has been issued, signed most fittingly by a Castlereagh and a Beresford, calling for British Volunteers and for money to arm and equip them to be sent into Ireland to triumph over the Irish people and to complete their disfranchis.e.m.e.nt and enslavement."

All this was true, but it was only half the truth. It was true that the Tory Party was making use of the threat of armed force; but the threat had been made before the Tory Party could make use of it, and it had been made by a body of armed Irishmen. But the followers were, as often happens, less virulent than their leaders; and months after this the sight might have been witnessed in Belfast of Ulster Volunteers and Irish Volunteers using the same drill ground through the good offices of a tolerant Ulsterman: and though the Ulster Volunteers were prepared undoubtedly to fight for their privileges, some of the most vicious appeals to their pa.s.sions and their prejudices came from men who were not of the Ulster, not even of the Irish, blood. Right through their tragic and tempestuous career the Irish Volunteers in spite of countless difficulties and provocations continued their att.i.tude of punctilious courtesy to the Ulster force. When the Ulstermen succeeded in their great coup of running a cargo of rifles from Hamburg to Larne the _Irish Volunteer_ congratulated them heartily and warmly. Their att.i.tude towards their fellow-countrymen was deeply regretted, but for what they had done to a.s.sert the freedom of Irishmen from English dictation they were accorded generous praise. The spirit of the leaders in this matter permeated the force. The head of the Irish Volunteers in Tralee wrote at a time when threats of suppressing the Ulstermen with the help of the army were made: "To my mind the Volunteers should prevent if possible and by force the English soldiers attacking the Ulster rebels. Say to the English soldiers and to the English Government, 'This is our soil and the Ulster rebels are our countrymen; fire on them and you fire on us.'... Ulster is not our real enemy, though ... Ulster thinks we are her enemy. Time will prove who are Ulster's friends and ours."

But the history of the Irish Volunteers, though indispensable for the understanding of the development of Sinn Fein is not the history of Sinn Fein. Individual Sinn Feiners were prominent in the movement and brought into it the spirit of national unity and disregard of the differences of creed which kept Irishmen divided: but the Sinn Fein organization remained distinct, praising, warning and criticizing the new movement and the tactics of its leaders. It pointed out at once that for the Volunteers to combine and to drill was not enough: they must have rifles and rifle ranges, and urged that the provision of them should be seen to without delay. But though it wished the Volunteers to be equipped as effectively and as quickly as possible it still regarded an armed force of Irishmen as inadequate to the task of winning Irish freedom. "To help the Volunteer movement," said _Sinn Fein_, "is a national duty: they may not defeat England, but the movement will help to make Ireland self-reliant." And _Sinn Fein_ was emphatic in urging the dangers of a sectional policy, of any attempt to narrow the basis upon which the new force was to be built up. "It is better," ran a leader on the subject, "at the beginning of the National Volunteer movement there should be frank speaking and frank understanding. If it were designed to be a movement confined to or controlled by any one Nationalist section we would not write a word in its support. It would fail badly.... It is quite true that we must work through public opinion in the circ.u.mstances of Ireland rather than through force of arms, but it is a poor thinker who does not realize that the public opinion which lacks the confidence, the calmness, the steadiness, the judgment, the resolution and the understanding which a training in arms gives a people is a poor weapon to rely upon in times of crisis."

The Volunteers were in the opinion of Sinn Fein a useful auxiliary in the task of developing the one quality from which alone ultimate success was to be expected, the self-reliance and moral resolution of the Irish people. But [Greek: autos ephelketai andra sideros]--the mere "sheen of arms" has an attraction superior to all arguments and all policies: and there is little doubt that the superior attractions of the Volunteers proved too strong for many young and ardent Sinn Feiners and induced them to put the means first and the end second. The phrase of _Irish Freedom_ in noticing the inauguration of the Volunteers probably gives the view of most of the younger generation: "In this welcome departure from our endless talk we touch reality at last."

The Irish Volunteers were not the only militant body which the example of Ulster had formed in Ireland. While the Ulster campaign was in full swing the workers of Dublin had been engaged in a bitter industrial struggle with their employers in which after a prolonged battle victory had somewhat doubtfully declared itself against them. The Labour leader, Jim Larkin, decided to found a Citizen Army for Irish workers. "Labour," he said in addressing the meeting at which the new force was inaugurated, "in its own defence must begin to train itself to act with disciplined courage and with organized and concentrated force. How could they accomplish this?

By taking a leaf out of the book of Carson. If Carson had permission to train his braves of the North to fight against the aspirations of the Irish people, then it was legitimate and fair for Labour to organize in the same militant way to preserve their rights and to ensure that if they were attacked they would be able to give a very satisfactory account of themselves." He went on to say that the object of the Citizen Army was "that Labour might no longer be defenceless but might be able to utilize that great physical power which it possessed to prevent their elemental rights from being taken from them and to evolve such a system of unified action, self-control and ordered discipline that Labour in Ireland might march in the forefront of all movements for the betterment of the whole people of Ireland." The Citizen Army thus formed, never very numerous, efficient or enthusiastic, was practically destroyed by the formation of the Irish Volunteers. Most of its members joined the Volunteers, partly because they were the more numerous and popular body, but princ.i.p.ally because a national policy had more attraction for them than one which was purely sectional. Captain White, who had trained the first Citizen Army, now urged that it should be reorganized upon a broader basis and in March, 1914, the Citizen Army, which afterwards played such a memorable part, was put upon its final footing. The new const.i.tution was as follows: "That the first and last principle of the Irish Citizen Army is the avowal that the ownership of Ireland, moral and material, is vested of right in the people of Ireland: that the Irish Citizen Army shall stand for the absolute unity of Irish nationhood and shall support the rights and liberties of the democracies of all nations: that one of its objects shall be to sink all differences of birth, property and creed under the common name of the Irish People: that the Citizen Army shall be open to all who accept the principle of equal rights and opportunities for the Irish People."

It might have seemed that the const.i.tution and principles of the Citizen Army were wide enough and national enough to justify a union or at least a close co-operation with the Irish Volunteers. But at first the two bodies held sternly aloof. The Labour Party had not been invited to send representatives to the meeting at which the Volunteers had been inaugurated, and many of the Volunteer Committee were suspected, rightly or wrongly, of being entirely out of sympathy with Labour ideals and Labour policy. When members of the Labour Party began to flock into the Volunteer ranks their action was the occasion of a bitter controversy in the official Labour organ. The Sinn Fein movement, whose spirit was supposed to preside over the Volunteer organization, had never been on cordial terms with organized Labour, and the members of the Irish Citizen Army were publicly warned to keep clear of these "Girondin politicians, who will simply use the workers as the means towards their own security and comfort." Nor were the members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians and of the United Irish League who belonged to the Volunteer Committee any more to the taste of Labour; they regarded these two bodies as bitter and implacable opponents of their rights. Regarding themselves as the true successors of the Nationalism of Wolfe Tone and John Mitchel, they called upon the Volunteers for an explicit declaration of what was meant by "the rights common to all Irishmen" which they were enrolled to maintain. Did they mean the right to Home Rule, or to the const.i.tution of 1782 or to an Irish Republic? The Volunteers could not have said "Yes" to any one of the three alternatives without driving out members who desired to say "Yes" to one or other of the remaining two. The Volunteers had deliberately left in abeyance controversies which the Labour Army wished to fight out in advance. They, undoubtedly, desired a Republic and meant to say so. When it was announced that the Irish Volunteers would be under the control of the Irish Parliament (when there should be such a body to control them) Labour became more suspicious still; was not the only Irish Parliament even in contemplation to be subordinate to the Parliament of England? The Volunteers seemed to treat the Citizen Army with indifference, if not with contempt: and a bitter antagonism was developed which only common misfortune was able to mitigate.

In all this welter of sharp antagonisms and conflicting policies the only party which walked in the old political ways was the Parliamentary Party.

They expected confidently that political conventions would finally be observed or that Parliament would deal effectively with those who tried to break them. It was becoming plain, however, as time went on that the conventions were not going to be regarded and that Parliament was as likely as not to acquiesce in the breach of them. And the Party was not aware of the change that was slowly pa.s.sing over Ireland. A long tenure of their place among the great personages and amid the high doings of Westminster seemed to have made them somewhat oblivious of the fact that Irish politics are made in Ireland. They did not feel the thrill of chastened pride that shivered gently through Ireland when the quiet places of Ulster echoed to the march of the Ulster Volunteers. They did not know how many Irishmen regarded the action of Ulster not as a menace to the dignity of the Parliament in which the Party sat but as the harbinger of national independence. They underrated (as who then did not?) the influence of Sinn Fein; they regarded the foundation of the Irish Volunteers as the work of "irresponsible young men," though the "young men" were nearer the heart of Young Ireland: like O'Connell, they "stood for Old Ireland and had some notion that Old Ireland would stand by them."

Ireland, though no one guessed it at the time, was the crucible in which were slowly melting and settling down all the elements that were to go to the making of the future Sinn Fein.

Sinn Fein was at the time to all outward seeming an insignificant and discredited party with an impossible programme. It still published a small weekly paper with no great circulation. It did not agree with the parliamentarians: it had a standing feud with the Labour Party: it gave a dignified and pontifical blessing to the Volunteers without committing itself to their whole programme. Its only electioneering venture, outside munic.i.p.al politics, had been a disastrous failure: it had won a few seats on the Dublin City Council: it had tried and failed to run a daily paper.

When all Nationalist Ireland was waiting for Home Rule it declared Home Rule to be a thing of naught. To the buoyant confidence of the Parliamentary Party it opposed a cynical distrust of their aims and methods, a constant incredulity of their ultimate success. When the Party pointed to what it had done and to what it was about to do Sinn Fein reminded the country that the very existence of a Parliamentary Party was an acknowledgment of the Act of Union. When the Liberal Government was engaged in an embittered and apparently final struggle for supremacy with the Tory Party in the interests of Ireland, Sinn Fein professed entire disbelief in its sincerity; it a.s.serted that the Liberals really loved the Tories very much better than they loved the Irish. With a querulous and monotonous insistence it preached distrust of all English parties and even of the English nation, towards whom it displayed a hostility that seemed almost to amount to a monomania. To Irish Labour this indiscriminating att.i.tude seemed insensate bigotry: to the Irish people as a whole it seemed incomprehensible that a Nationalist Party should regard the Liberals as enemies and the Ulster Volunteers as brothers in arms. Sinn Fein never seemed less certain of a future in Ireland than when events were preparing to make Ireland Sinn Fein.

Early in 1914 _Sinn Fein_ saw in the King's Speech at the opening of Parliament indications that the Cabinet and the Opposition had arranged "a deal" over Home Rule and foretold an attempt at compromise. The next month the Prime Minister proposed the part.i.tion of Ireland between the Unionists and the Nationalists and the Irish Party accepted the proposal as a temporary device to ease the parliamentary situation for the Cabinet. No proposal better calculated to offend the deepest instincts of Irish nationalism could have been made: no concession more fatal to the party which agreed to it could have been devised. The mention of it provoked an outburst in Ireland which did more to smash the Parliamentary Party and leave the field open to their rivals than anything which had happened since Home Rule was first mooted. The criticisms pa.s.sed upon it by the non-Parliamentary Nationalists were important, not so much on account of the quarters they came from, as for the grounds on which they were made, and their words awakened deeper feelings than had come to the surface for years. "To even discuss," said _Sinn Fein_, "the exclusion of Ulster or any portion of Ulster from a Home Rule measure is in itself traitorous.

When G.o.d made this country, He fixed its frontiers beyond the power of man to alter while the sea rises and falls.... So long as England is strong and Ireland is weak, England may continue to oppress this country, but she shall not dismember it." "If this nation is to go down," wrote _Irish Freedom_, "let it go down gallantly as becomes its history, let it go down fighting, but let it not sink into the abjectness of carving a slice out of itself and handing it over to England.... As for Ulster, Ulster is Ireland's and shall remain Ireland's. Though the Irish nation in its political and corporate capacity were gall and wormwood to every Unionist in Ulster yet shall they swallow it. We will fight them if they want fighting: but we shall never let them go, never." Sinn Fein and the Republicans were no more emphatic than the Labour Party. James Connolly in the _Irish Worker_ said of Part.i.tion: "To it Labour should give the bitterest opposition, against it Labour in Ulster should fight even to the death if necessary as our fathers fought before us." It even used the menace of part.i.tion as an argument in favour of joining the Citizen Army and urged that Volunteers should transfer their membership to a body which "meant business." "The Citizen Army," said an article signed with the initials of one of its princ.i.p.al organizers, "stands for Ireland--Orange and Green--one and indivisible. The men who tread the valleys and places Cuchullain, Conall Cearnach, Russell and McCracken trod are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. Because they may have a different creed does not matter to us; it never mattered to the Government: an Irish Protestant corpse dangled as often at the end of a rope as did the corpse of an Irish Catholic."

But Sinn Fein saw that, though part.i.tion was unacceptable, it was no use continually asking the Ulstermen to name the safeguards they wanted. They would not name what they did not want: no safeguards would secure them in a democratic modern community against their chief objection to Home Rule--that in an Irish Parliament Protestants, as such, would be in "a permanent minority." It was of the very nature of things that they should be, if representative inst.i.tutions were to be recognized at all. But though in a minority they need not be, as they a.s.serted they would be, subject to disabilities, and Sinn Fein held that every offer to allay their fears compatible with free inst.i.tutions should be made. A Sinn Fein Convention held in Dublin towards the end of April, 1914, agreed to make the Ulstermen, on behalf of Sinn Fein, the following proposals: (1), increased representation in the Irish Parliament on the basis partly of population, partly of rateable value and partly of bulk of trade, the Ulster representation to be increased by fifteen members including one for the University of Belfast: two members to be given to the Unionist const.i.tuency of Rathmines; (2), to fix all Ireland as the unit for the election of the Senate or Upper House and to secure representation to the Southern Unionist minority by Proportional Representation; (3), to guarantee that no tax should be imposed on the linen trade without the consent of a majority of the Ulster representatives; (4), that the Chairman of the Joint Exchequer Board should always be chosen by the Ulster Representatives; (5), that all posts in the Civil Service should be filled by examination; (6), that the Ulster Volunteer Force should be retained under its present leaders as portion of an Irish Volunteer Force and should not, except in case of invasion, be called upon to serve outside Ulster; (7), that the Irish Parliament should sit alternately in Dublin and in Belfast; (8), that the clauses in the Home Rule Bill restricting Irish trade and finance and prohibiting Ireland from collecting and receiving its own taxes, or otherwise conflicting with any of the above proposals, should be amended. These proposals, the most statesmanlike and generous proposals put forward on the Nationalist side, were, though approved of generally by the Belfast Trades Council, contemptuously ignored by the Ulster leaders.

The offer of part.i.tion likewise was promptly rejected by Ulster: like the Irish Citizen Army they "meant business." They meant to smash Home Rule for good and all, for the South as well as for the North of Ireland, and in conjunction with the English Tories they felt strong enough to do it.

They began openly to tamper with the allegiance of the army. Nor were their efforts without success. Not only did large numbers of ex-officers offer their services to the Ulster Volunteers, but many officers upon the active list announced their intention of refusing to obey orders if despatched to preserve order in Ulster and forestall the intention, broadly hinted, of some of the Ulstermen to seize military depots in the province. It was an open boast in Belfast that the ship conveying the arms from Hamburg to Ulster had been sighted, but allowed to pa.s.s unchallenged by officers of the Royal Navy on the ships detailed to intercept it. They seemed deliberately to have adopted the policy of Catiline, _ruina exstinguere incendium_, "to put out the fire by pulling down the house."

If the Protestant interest were to go down in Ireland, then should the British Const.i.tution which had fostered it go down with it.

All this was, of course, matter for unfeigned delight to all the "advanced" people both in Ireland and outside of it. If officers were to have the option of obeying orders or not at their will why should a like lat.i.tude be denied the common soldier? If officers refused to act against Ulster why should a private be required to fire upon strikers? Thanks were publicly returned by _Irish Freedom_ to "the gallant British officers who have helped their beloved Empire on to the brink above the precipice." But so far as England was concerned, the crisis was tided over by the usual method of compromise. There had been a "misunderstanding" for which both sides were more or less responsible. There had been no actual intention of employing force in a political dispute and therefore the question in debate did not arise. The Minister of War was dismissed on a side issue, the Premier a.s.sumed his responsibilities and everybody was more or less satisfied, except the Irish.

Whatever were the rights or wrongs of the dispute between the Army and the Government, it was plain that the dispute had been composed at the expense of Home Rule. Part.i.tion in some form or other was now certain to accompany Home Rule, if Home Rule were not actually shelved. The Irish Party were solemnly warned by the advanced Nationalist papers. "Mr. Redmond has had his chance," wrote one of these. "When part.i.tion is again mentioned, let him stand aside even at the cost of the 'Home Rule' Bill. There is a force and a spirit growing in Ireland which in the wrangle of British politics he but vaguely realizes."

But Mr. Redmond was not so preoccupied with "the wrangle of British politics" as he seemed. He realized quite clearly that the Irish Volunteers were growing in numbers and in influence and that neither their object nor their existence was compatible with the principles of Home Rule. They proclaimed their intention of putting themselves eventually at the disposal of the Irish Parliament: but the Bill contemplated a Parliament which should have no right to accept their services. They were largely controlled by men who thought little of Home Rule and everything of the "rights of Irishmen," which might mean just what the Liberal Government proposed to give but might also mean a great deal more. They were a menace to the success of the parliamentary policy, and it seemed to be his plain duty to suppress or to control them. To attempt suppression would be dangerous: to control them seemed not impossible. He decided to demand the right to nominate on their committee twenty-five "tried and true" Nationalists whose allegiance to his policy was unquestioned. The committee, faced by the alternative of either declaring war on Mr. Redmond (a course as dangerous to them as to declare war on them would have been to him) or of submitting to his demand, decided to submit. The twenty-five new members (four of whom were priests and the majority of the remainder Dublin Nationalists) joined the Committee and the Irish "military crisis"

seemed to have been solved. In reality it was only beginning. The Citizen Army promptly declared war upon the reconst.i.tuted Volunteer Committee. "Is there," asked _The Irish Worker_, "one reliable man at the head of the National Volunteer movement apart from Cas.e.m.e.nt who, we believe, is in earnest and honest?... We admit the bulk of the rank and file are men of principle and men who are out for liberty for all men: but why allow the foulest growth that ever cursed this land (the Hibernian Board of Erin) to control an organization that might if properly handled accomplish great things." It accused the committee of having pa.s.sed the Volunteers over to a "gang of placehunters and political thugs" and called upon the rank and file to sever all connection with them: "Our fathers died that we might be free men. Are we going to allow their sacrifices to be as naught? Or are we going to follow in their footsteps at the Rising of the Moon?" The Citizen Army was gradually coming round to a standpoint more and more national, and saw in the control of the Volunteers by the Parliamentarians nothing but disaster to its idea of what nationalism involved. _Sinn Fein_ was equally vehement: "Redmond is only a tool," it wrote, "in the hands of Asquith and Birrell who wish to destroy the Volunteers as Lord Northington was a tool in the hands of Fox, to whom he wrote in 1783: 'They have got too powerful, and there is nothing for us but for our friends to go into their meetings and disturb the harmony of them and create division.'" When Mr. Redmond appealed to America for money to "strengthen" the Volunteers it pointed out that if he had been in earnest he would have asked not for money but for arms, and would have had the Arms Proclamation withdrawn by the Government. It printed a series of letters to the Volunteers, of which the first contained the words: "The object [_i.e._ of the Volunteers] is obtaining and maintaining the independence of Ireland. Those who are in earnest should have their own committee, independent of Redmond and Co."

_Irish Freedom_ headed its leader on the transaction "The Kiss of Judas,"

and declared that "after the British Government the Irish Parliamentary Party in its later years has been the most evil force in Ireland."

The original members of the Volunteer Committee were clearly uneasy and tried to put the best face they could upon the matter. In their official organ; _The Irish Volunteer_, they informed the public "The control of the committee by Mr. John Redmond does not matter, provided his nominees represent the feelings of the Volunteers: if they do the Irish Party will see to the withdrawing of the Arms Proclamation and proceed to arm the Volunteers at once." But the Irish Party did neither; and if Mr. Redmond was expected to share the feelings of the Volunteers, the Volunteers cannot have shared the feelings of the committee. A month before this the _Irish Volunteer_ had printed the following: "For over a generation Ireland has taken her national views from men whose whole lives were bound up with the preservation of the peace. Suddenly, in a day, in an hour, the whole situation has undergone a change. Force has reappeared as a factor in Irish political life.... It is to be hoped that men are not joining the national army from any motives but those which actuated the founders. The object of the Volunteers is to maintain and preserve the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland. There is no question of preserving merely the 'legal' rights graciously permitted us by a foreign power." If the original committee seriously expected Mr. Redmond and his nominees to acquiesce in the views expressed in the last sentence they must have been simple to a degree. They were admittedly in a difficult position; but they knew what they meant and they knew what Mr. Redmond meant; and the sequel might have been foreseen.

It was put upon record later by a member of the committee that in the task of arming the Volunteers the new members gave little effective a.s.sistance, and that when arms were obtained they tried to have them taken from the men who had paid for them and handed over _gratis_ to the Hibernians of the North to use (without, it is true, a supply of ammunition) to overawe the aggression of the Ulster Volunteers. But the members of the original committee procured arms upon their own responsibility. In July they succeeded in imitating the exploit of the Ulstermen at Larne. They ran a cargo of rifles into Howth and another was landed at Kilcool. But the forces of the Crown, absent at Larne and inactive in Ulster ever since, displayed their unsuccessful vigour at Howth. The Volunteers were intercepted on the way back, but after a scuffle succeeded in getting away with their guns. The soldiers on the return journey fired upon a provoking but unarmed crowd in the streets of Dublin. The country had barely time to appreciate the contrast between Larne and Howth, when the sound of the German guns in Belgium broke upon its ears.

SINN FEIN, 1914-1916.

John Mitchel had prophesied that "in the event of a European war a strong national party could grasp the occasion" in Ireland, and Mitchel held too high a place in the estimation of Irish Nationalists for his words to have been forgotten or ignored. When Saurin (who, though an Orangeman and a Tory and, after the Union, one of the law officers of the Crown in Ireland, opposed the policy of Castlereagh) uttered his famous dictum on the validity of the Act of Union, he provided Irish Nationalism with one of its most authoritative maxims: "You may make the Union binding as a law, but you cannot make it obligatory in conscience: it will be obeyed as long as England is strong, but resistance to it will be in the abstract a duty and the exhibition of that resistance will be a mere question of prudence." Irish Separatists did not always find it prudent to speak with the precision of the future Attorney-General: but the principle which he laid down was always understood to be one of which they acknowledged the validity. It had been repeated in language less cla.s.sical, but equally emphatic, by Parnell and Mr. Redmond; but the occasion to put into practice the prudence of which Saurin spoke had either never come or never been seized. But that it would come some day and in an unquestionable shape was a maxim of the Separatists. The increasing signs of antagonism between England and Germany had not since the beginning of the century escaped watchful eyes in Ireland. In the year 1900 _The United Irishman_ in discussing German diplomacy had referred to the alliance between Irish and Germans in the United States which (it added) "is such a welcome feature of contemporary politics." When, two years before the war, Mr.

Churchill had referred in guarded language to the necessity to England of a "loyal Ireland" in the near future, _Sinn Fein_ commented as follows on his words: "We have, for instance, no illusion whatever on the subject of Germany. If Germany victorious over England comes to Ireland, Germany will come to stay and rule the Atlantic from our sh.o.r.es. She will give us better terms than England offers. She will give us that Home Rule which all the States of the German Empire enjoy.... We have no doubt whatever that Ireland under German rule would be more prosperous than she has ever been under the rule of England.... The fact would not induce us to love Germany or to fight for a mere change of masters. But as a matter of bargaining we can say to Mr. Churchill, when he offers us a bogus Home Rule for aiding British policy against Germany, that Ireland would get better terms from a successful Germany if she withheld that aid." This was the language of a journal which voiced the opinions of a party definitely committed against an Irish policy of force: the Republican Party, not so committed used words less nebulous and guarded. In 1911 _Irish Freedom_, printed a letter from John Devoy of New York, a prominent Irish-American and ex-Fenian, pointing out that a German war was coming in the near future, that England would need conscription before it was over, and that Ireland must fight either for England or against her. A month or so later an editorial returned to the point: "Wolfe Tone, though he appealed to France for aid, did not ask Irishmen to sit idly by; and the arguments Tone advanced with considerable success to induce France to aid in establishing an Irish Republic can be applied to-day in the case of Germany." Later in the year an article ent.i.tled "When Germany fights England" discussed the policy of Ireland, having first stipulated for her complete independence, throwing her weight on the side of Germany in a war. Germany, it was thought, might play the same part as Tone had hoped that France would play in 1798--might release Ireland from English domination and then declare her absolute independence. No doubt seems to have been entertained that such a policy would be acceptable to Germany; for in Germany the Separatists saw, not an ambitious empire grasping at world power, so much as a brave and efficient people trying to burst the bonds with which English policy, and English intrigue had surrounded them.

Sinn Fein had taken its official economic policy from the German List, and pointed to its success in establishing German industry upon a sure footing (in spite of the industrial rivalry of England) as an augury for Irish success and as a model for Irish effort. Germany was looked upon as the one European nation at once bold enough and strong enough to challenge English supremacy and vitally interested in challenging it effectively.

For, with Ireland in the possession of England, the key to the Atlantic was in English hands: if Ireland were independent then the key would go to whatever hands framed the most favourable alliance with Ireland.

But whatever the wisdom or the folly of such expectations, there is no doubt that the Separatists looked to Germany not to annex but to free Ireland. They did not desire that Germany should take Ireland from England; but that Germany should declare Ireland to be an independent sovereign State. Nothing less than this could have satisfied their aspirations. For Germany to have offered less would not have secured their a.s.sistance; if Germany had annexed Ireland they would have welcomed a deliverer from Germany as eagerly as a deliverer was looked for them from the domination of England.

But in the actual circ.u.mstances that accompanied the outbreak of war in 1914 there was no disposition to take sides with Germany on the merits, or to stake everything upon the success of an understanding with Germany. It is true that the official statement of the English case for the declaration of war was received with a certain degree of quiet scepticism.

The commercial rivalry of the two empires, the prophecies of a coming war that had been openly made for years, the _Entente Cordiale_ with the French Republic, of the real meaning of which France at least made no secret, had been too well known and had been too openly and too long canva.s.sed for the violation of Belgian neutrality by Germany to receive the importance which was attributed to it or to be regarded as much more than a blunder adroitly utilized. There was not so much sympathy with Germany as a want of sympathy with England: there was not so much a lack of sympathy with Belgium as a distrust of the appeals which were insistently made to that feeling.

When war was declared the Home Rule Bill had not pa.s.sed into law. A great effort had been made to come to terms with the Ulster and the English Tory Parties and had failed. It seemed as if the Government must either go forward with its policy and take the risks or own defeat. It was a.s.sumed as a matter of course that a foreign war ended _ipso facto_ all disputes between the great English parties and that till the war should be over internal opposition to the Government should cease. But what about Ireland? Would the two Irish parties sink their differences in the same way in the interest of the Empire? Would the Irish people give their whole-hearted support and sympathy in the struggle to an England which had so far failed to satisfy what they regarded as their elementary rights?

The choice fell to Mr. Redmond. On the one hand prudence counselled the use of a unique opportunity: he might offer Irish support in return for the immediate enactment of Home Rule and throw upon the Ulster Party the onus of refusing to support the Empire in its deadly struggle. He might on the other hand offer Irish support without conditions and leave the satisfaction of the national claims of Ireland as a debt of honour to the conscience of English statesmen. Had he bargained (and got his terms) Nationalist Ireland would have been with him almost to a man: with that simplicity of character, which, as the Greek historian says, "makes up a great part of good breeding," he promised without conditions: England might withdraw her soldiers from Ireland; the sh.o.r.es of Ireland, North and South, would be guarded by her armed sons. The House of Commons, England and the Empire were greatly impressed: the _beau geste_ of the Irish leader was universally applauded. The Home Rule Bill was presented for the Royal Signature and signed; a Suspensory Bill was hurried through providing that its operation should be postponed; the Prime Minister promised the enemies of Home Rule that before it was allowed to be put into operation the Government would introduce and pa.s.s a Bill amending the measure in such a way as to make it acceptable to its opponents; and Mr.

Redmond hurried home to rally Ireland to the cause of the Empire. The situation was summed up later with brutal frankness by a Belfast Unionist paper: "If the Nationalists will not enlist because the war is just, they should not do so because they have got Home Rule; because they have not got it. The Unionist Party has declared that when it comes into power it will not allow the Act to stand." Even so between 40,000 and 50,000 Irish Nationalists joined the Forces during the first year of the war.

By the time Mr. Redmond had returned to Ireland the att.i.tude of all Irish parties to the war had become pretty clearly defined. The Ulster Volunteers, after about a month's hesitation on the part of their leaders, had received official intimation that they were free to enlist. Any delay there may have been was due, not to the feelings of the rank and file, but to the tactics of the politicians, eager to extract the last possible advantage from the situation. The bulk of the Nationalists, like the bulk of the Ulstermen, were in sympathy with the cause of England and her Allies as against Germany and the two parties sent recruits in almost equal numbers. The att.i.tude of Sinn Fein is put so clearly in a leader in its official organ that it deserves quotation: "Ireland is not at war with Germany: it has no quarrel with any Continental Power.... There is no European Power waging war against the people of Ireland: there are two European Powers at war with the people who dominate Ireland from Dublin Castle.... To-day the Irish are flattered and caressed by their libellers.

England wants our aid and Mr. Redmond, true to his nature, rushes to offer it--for nothing.... If England wins this war she will be more powerful than she has been at any time since 1864 and she will treat the Ireland which kissed the hand that smote her as such an Ireland ought to be treated. If she loses the war, and Ireland is foolish enough to identify itself with her, Ireland will deservedly share in her punishment.... We are Irish Nationalists and the only duty we have is to stand for Ireland's interests, irrespective of the interests of England or Germany or any foreign country.... Let it (_i.e._ the Government) withdraw the present abortive Home Rule Bill and pa.s.s ... a full measure of Home Rule and Irishmen will have some reason to mobilize for the defence of their inst.i.tutions. At present they have none. In the alternative let a Provisional Government be set up in Dublin by Mr. Redmond and Sir Edward Carson and we shall give it allegiance. But the confidence trick has been too often played upon us to deceive us again. If the Irish Volunteers are to defend Ireland they must defend it for Ireland under Ireland's flag and under Irish officers. Otherwise they will only help to perpetuate the enslavement of their country.... Germany is nothing to us in herself, but she is not our enemy. Our blood and our miseries are not upon her head.

But who can forbear admiration at the spectacle of the Germanic people whom England has ringed round with enemies standing alone, undaunted and defiant against a world in arms?" This was a clear declaration of neutrality coupled with an offer of terms of friendship. But as the negotiations in Parliament proceeded, as it became clear that, while Home Rule was nominally to be pa.s.sed, no effect was to be given to it for the present, and no permanent validity to attach to the pa.s.sing of it, the tone of the Sinn Fein and Republican Press grew harder. "If the Home Rule Bill," said _Sinn Fein_, "be signed, but not brought into immediate operation, by the appointment of a Home Rule Executive Government, Ireland is sold and betrayed. Let every Irishman get that into his head and keep it there." "We regard no enemy of England as an enemy of ours.... It was Grattan, the greatest of our const.i.tutional leaders, who declared that if the interests of the Empire clashed with the liberties of Ireland, then he and every Irishman would say 'Live Ireland--perish the Empire.'" _Irish Freedom_ which printed in capitals across its pages mottoes such as "Germany is not Ireland's enemy," "Ireland First, Last and All the Time,"

said, "If England withdraws her troops utterly from Ireland the Irish Volunteers will take and hold the country, hold it not alone against Germany but against anybody else who attempts to interfere with it. And on no other conditions will the Volunteers consent to move a step.... We are not prepared to buy even freedom--were it offered--at the price of our honour." It declared that "the psychological moment" had arrived for the union of Irishmen, for the attainment of Irish liberty, and proposed for the last time a working arrangement between the Irish Volunteers and the Ulster Volunteers to further the real liberties of Ireland. The Labour paper was even more outspoken. It ridiculed the parliamentary leaders for their lack of ability in driving a bargain as compared with the more astute Ulstermen; it ridiculed the advanced Nationalists who still talked nonsense about a junction of the two forces of Volunteers: it declared stoutly, "If England wants an Empire, let her hold the Empire.... Let no Irishman leave his own land.... Keep your guns for your real enemies."

While it deplored the success of the recruiting campaign it allowed (with, considering its own strongly expressed views, a commendable toleration) articles to appear from Labour men giving their reasons for supporting the war. But it had no illusions as to what was in store in the end for Irishmen who put its ideas into practice. "For some of us," James Connolly wrote, "the finish may be on the scaffold, for some in the prison cell, for others more fortunate upon the battlefield of an Ireland in arms for a real republican liberty." But as a last resort even Connolly proposed terms of accommodation: he thought that the Volunteers by the bold policy of refusing to move until their terms were conceded might force the Government to repeal all clauses in the Home Rule Bill denying to Ireland the self-government enjoyed by Canada and Australia. The last number of his paper bore the legend "We serve neither King nor Kaiser." It had been decided by all the political parties that then seemed to count in Ireland that Irishmen must serve, if they served at all, not because they had been given Home Rule but because they had not been given it--because Ireland was still an integral part of the United Kingdom, bound to its fortunes till the issue of the war should be determined. Three months after war was declared the Sinn Fein, Republican and Labour papers were suppressed by the police.

The public discussion of the terms upon which it might have been possible to range even Separatists against Germany, the granting to Ireland of something of her own to defend, being thus declared not to be in the public interest, it seemed as if no obstacle remained in the way of raising recruits all over the country. Irishmen were credited with a love of mingling in a fight without any nice discrimination as to the grounds of the quarrel or the merits of the dispute. "Is there not wars?" seemed to some of the authorities to be a sufficiently potent appeal. But it was found that there existed a confused and vague feeling that England as a whole had at last, in spite of much English opposition, come to take a friendly view of the Irish claim to self-government; that, if the war had not occurred when it did, some way out of the difficulty would have been found; that the Government was honest in its intentions and could hardly be blamed for the tactics of its opponents. Even a slight and doubtful indication of real friendliness on the part of England raises in Ireland a response which must often seem to be out of proportion to the cause which excited it; and at the beginning of the war Nationalist Ireland was ready to respond to the call for men in a way which roused the cynical criticism of the advanced wing of the Nationalist Party. "No English city," wrote the _Irish Worker_ in September, 1914, "is displaying more enthusiasm than Dublin in sending its bravest and best to murder men with whom they have no quarrel." The Scottish Borderers, leaving for the Front, received an enthusiastic send-off from the city in which a short while before they had had to be confined to barracks; all over the country men were flocking to recruit in the first few weeks of the war. Anti-English feeling was practically smothered in a wave of enthusiasm. The Irish Volunteers, now apparently under the a.s.sured control of the Parliamentary Party, became the subjects of an almost embarra.s.sing interest. Unionist peers and gentry, retired militia officers and other people, not (to say the least) distinguished for Irish patriotism, hastened to enrol in their ranks and to proffer their services. The name of Major the Earl of Fingall appearing as Chief Inspecting Officer of the Irish Volunteers in Meath in an order signed by Colonel Maurice Moore, "Inspector-General, Irish Volunteers,"

would have seemed strange six months before and stranger still a year afterwards. But it provoked little comment in August, 1914. It seemed as if a miracle were about to happen and it became the apparent business of the authorities to take steps to secure that it should not happen.

Enlistment had not been growing in popularity in Ireland for some years before the war. In 1908, _Sinn Fein_ had pointed out with satisfaction that the army returns showed that the number of Irishmen in the regular army had then fallen to the lowest point upon record. The Boer War and the anti-recruiting propaganda in Ireland had not been without their effect upon Irish feeling and the real position and work of the army in Ireland had been closely scrutinized. "The Curragh Mutiny" had provoked some very pointed comments upon the spirit which really animated the army in Ireland: it came to be looked upon as the citadel and symbol of all the forces that opposed the claims of Ireland. "We all know in our hearts,"

said Roger Cas.e.m.e.nt and Eoin MacNeill in a manifesto published in April, 1914, in the _Irish Volunteer_, "that the 'Union' means the military occupation of Ireland as a conquered country: that the real headquarters of Irish government on the Unionist principle is the Curragh Camp to which the offices of Dublin Castle are only a sort of vermiform appendix." And the functions performed by the army in Ireland would certainly have seemed strange to anyone who felt any attachment to the views generally accepted in England as to the relation of the army to the civil power. In the General Orders for the guidance of the troops affording aid to the Civil Power in Ireland, issued in 1891, the following paragraph is to be found: "All officers in command of corps or detachments are to transmit to the Deputy Adjutant General an immediate report of any outrages, large meetings held or expected to be held for political or other purposes, or occurrences that may take place in the neighbourhood of their posts connected with the state of the country, whether they have or have not been called upon to afford a.s.sistance to the civil power." The functions of an army acting upon instructions like these are hardly to be distinguished from those of an army of occupation, and Nationalist Ireland was well aware of the efficiency with which these functions were performed. To make enlistment popular in Ireland, even in a moment of enthusiasm, was thus a work requiring a certain amount of tact and discretion.

The first real difficulty arose with the Volunteers, whose services as an army of defence had been pledged by Mr. Redmond to the Government. The pledge had been given without the consent, or even the knowledge, of the Volunteer Committee and they resented the implication that they could be disposed of as if they were the private property of other people. They had been enrolled with a definite object and any duty for which their services were to be given must be shown to be at least not inconsistent with that object. The committee, however, so far endorsed Mr. Redmond's offer as to pa.s.s a resolution declaring "the complete readiness of the Irish Volunteers to take joint action with the Ulster Volunteer Force for the defence of Ireland." The Prime Minister promised in Parliament that the Secretary for War would "do everything in his power, after consultation with gentlemen in Ireland, to arrange for the full equipment and organization of the Irish Volunteers." Whether the powers of the Secretary for War were less extensive than the Prime Minister believed, or whether the "gentlemen in Ireland" had other views, the scheme drawn up by General Sir Arthur Paget and his staff "by which the War Office may be supplied from the Irish Volunteers with a force for the defence of Ireland" was rejected by the War Office. This, it is true, made little difference in the end, for the Volunteer Committee, when the scheme was submitted to them, demanded the inclusion of certain "primary conditions" which it was not at all likely that the War Office would have accepted: but the immediate rejection of it by the military authorities in England is significant of the spirit in which the question of Irish recruiting was approached. It was hostile not only to Irish ideals but to Irish sentiment, to everything except the use to which Irish soldiers might be put. The contrast between the treatment accorded to Irish Nationalist recruits and the privileges granted to the Ulster Division can only be explained on the a.s.sumption that the War Office desired to show appreciation of the latter and suspicion of the former. The Ulster men were allowed to retain their own officers and their own tests of admission: the "regiments" formed under the Provisional Government of Ulster were taken over, without alteration, by the English authorities: they were allowed to refuse Catholics or Nationalists who offered to enlist in their ranks: their recruiting marches were accompanied by bands who played Orange party tunes through Catholic and Nationalist hamlets while they went through the farce of lecturing the inhabitants on their "duty to the Empire in this crisis." In November, 1914, an advertis.e.m.e.nt appeared in the Dublin _Evening Mail_ announcing that a new Dublin Company of the Royal Irish Fusiliers was to be formed to which none but Unionists were admissible, intending recruits being directed to apply at the Orange Hall. The Ulster Force was trained as a body in camps of its own, while Ulster Nationalists had to take train for the South or were shipped to England. Similar privileges were bluntly and persistently refused to the Nationalists. The Ulstermen had their own banners: the Nationalists might not fight under any emblem but the Union Jack, the symbol of the defeat of their nationality, of the very Act of Union against which they were known to be in protest. Treatment such as this could have only one result: the people who decided upon it must have known what the result would be, and by persisting in it showed that the result was desired. By cooling down the enthusiasm of Nationalist Ireland they made it possible to declare that Nationalist Ireland was "disappointing expectations" and to hint that they had suspected all along that it was less eager to fight than had appeared. Incidentally the result was held to justify the suspicions which had brought it about. Irish soldiers were divided into two categories: those whom the authorities delighted to honour and those whom they decided to employ. It must be added that these manufactured animosities faded away in the stress of battle. Ulstermen and Nationalists fighting side by side covered themselves with glory and did equal credit to the old land; and no more stringent criticisms of the treacherous and malignant policy that divided them can be heard than from the lips of some of the men who survived the glorious ordeal of the Somme.

But an influential body had from the first decided that the duty of Irishmen, and especially of Irish Volunteers, was to remain in Ireland; these were the members of the original Volunteer Committee and their adherents: outside the Volunteer ranks they were supported by Sinn Fein, the Republican Party and the Citizen Army. To them the supreme and immediate duty of Irishmen, and in a special degree of the Volunteers, was to safeguard the liberties of Ireland--a duty to which the fact of a European war was irrelevant, except in so far as it might afford an opportunity to strengthen and secure Irish liberty. There is little doubt that some members of this party hoped that Germany would be victorious, not in the interests of Germany but in the interests of Ireland, which had little prospect of winning concessions from an England rendered invincible by the overthrow of her most formidable rival: some of them regarded the war as a mere struggle for commercial supremacy in which Ireland had no interest at stake: but they would all alike have defended the sh.o.r.es of Ireland against a German army which invaded them for the purposes of annexation and conquest. To all alike the proposition that Irishmen had any duty to enlist for foreign service in the English army was a denial of the very fundamental article of their creed. When Mr. Redmond, then, in his address to the Volunteers at Woodenbridge in September, 1914, urged them to enlist for service overseas the inevitable crisis was provoked.

But the original provisional committee were now in a minority in the counsels of the organization they had founded, and they were hampered by a fundamental (and, indeed, intentional) ambiguity in the Volunteer pledge.

"The rights and liberties common to all Irishmen" was not a phrase which carried its interpretation on its face. It was open to the Volunteer followers of Mr. Redmond to say that the democracy of Great Britain had conferred upon Ireland a "charter of liberty" and that it was the duty of Irishmen to fight for Great Britain, keeping faith with those who had kept faith with them. It was open to others to say that "the Thing on the Statute Book" fell far short of conferring upon Irishmen the rights and liberties to which they were ent.i.tled, and that the duty to secure first that to which they were ent.i.tled precluded them from the prior performance of any other task. The members of the original committee who took the latter view could also urge that Mr. Redmond's original pledge that the Volunteers would "defend the sh.o.r.es of Ireland" was not capable of the gloss that "the sh.o.r.es of Ireland" under the circ.u.mstances was a legitimate figure of speech for the trenches in the front line in France.

The difference of interpretation developed into a split. The members of the original committee met in September and called a Volunteer Convention for November 25, 1914, at which it was decided "to declare that Ireland cannot with honour or safety take part in foreign quarrels otherwise than through the free action of a National Government of her own; and to repudiate the claim of any man to offer up the blood and lives of the sons of Irishmen and Irishwomen to the services of the British Empire while no National Government which could act and speak for the people of Ireland is allowed to exist."

Before the split the Volunteers had numbered about 150,000; and it would appear that the great majority of these at first sided with Mr. Redmond.

Many of them enlisted: many of them, under the t.i.tle of the National Volunteers, continued to exist as a separate body in Ireland: some at least of them afterwards found their way back into the ranks of the Irish Volunteers.

From the time of the Volunteer split the air was cleared politically in Ireland: for the first time people began to know precisely where they stood. The National Volunteers and the Parliamentary Party under Mr.

Redmond's leadership were committed, as were the Unionists, to the unreserved and energetic prosecution of the war: all the other parties, Sinn Fein, the Republicans, the Irish Volunteers, and the Citizen Army adopted an att.i.tude of watchful neutrality. Their view was bounded by the sh.o.r.es of Ireland or when they cast a glance abroad it was as the husbandman observes the clouds. They continued to differ (sometimes sharply and vehemently) from one another: but the public, with a prophetic disregard of the mere obvious present, began to label them indiscriminately as Sinn Feiners. In truth common adversity was drawing them closer together, and the apparently heterogeneous elements which went to make up the Sinn Fein of present-day Ireland were being welded into a unity of aim and resolution.

The results were soon apparent. During the month or so when the Volunteers enjoyed the fleeting sunlight of aristocratic favour, the Foreign Office had written (18th August, 1914) to H.B.M. Consul-General at Antwerp to a.s.sist Mr. John O'Connor, M.P., and Mr. H. J. Harris in arranging for the shipment to Ireland of certain rifles belonging to the Volunteers, permission to export them having been obtained from the Belgian Government by the Foreign Office. It was, no doubt, an oversight that no ammunition for them was obtained, or could be obtained afterwards; but the rifles came. Three months later an officer of the Volunteers who was employed in the Ordnance Survey was dismissed without charge or notice and ordered to leave Dublin within twenty-four hours. He was only the first of a series of Volunteer organizers who suffered deportation under similar circ.u.mstances. The Birmingham factory which was engaged in making guns for the Volunteers was raided, its books and correspondence seized, and it was ordered not to remove any goods from its premises. To be an Irish Volunteer was to be "disaffected," and to be "disaffected" was to be liable to summary measures of repression.

The autumn of 1914 saw the appearance of a new Separatist paper, _Eire-Ireland_, which appeared as a weekly on October 26th and was changed to a daily after the second number. It is significant of the change in Irish feeling that it was now possible to run a Separatist daily paper in Dublin, and of the gradual rapprochement between Irish parties that this paper, intended as the organ of the Irish Volunteers, was edited by Mr.

Arthur Griffith, the founder of the Sinn Fein movement. Its att.i.tude towards the war was defined in an article by Roger Cas.e.m.e.nt in the first number: "Ireland has no quarrel with the German people or just cause of offence against them.... Ireland has suffered at the hands of British administrators a more prolonged series of evils deliberately inflicted than any other commun