The Evolution of Sinn Fein Part 4

The official "War News" printed in the Irish papers was read with detachment and reserve; stories of German atrocities were received with unimpressionable scepticism. This was not due to any pro-German bias, or to any Sinn Fein propaganda. Peasants in remote villages who never saw any paper but an odd copy of the _Freeman's Journal_ or the _Irish Daily Independent_, and who were Redmondites to a man, discussed these matters with a completely open mind, and with (to those who did not know them) surprising ac.u.men. People accustomed for years to read that their county or their province, in which some unpopular grazier had been boycotted, was "seething with outrage and disorder," to be told that a district in which there was known not to be as much crime in a year as there was in an English district of the same size every month was "in a state bordering on almost complete lawlessness," were not moved when the Germans were charged on the same authority with crimes against civilization. The word of "our English correspondent" was simply "not evidence" against anybody. This invincible scepticism, born of experience, was quite wrongly interpreted as being the result of "pro-German" sympathies when it proved an unexpected obstacle to the recruiting campaign.

The gradual growth of Sinn Fein and anti-English (which was only accidentally and not on principle pro-German) sentiment during the war, and the increasing difficulties found in the way of the recruiting campaign, were due mainly to a growing disbelief in the sincerity of English statesmen in their dealings with Ireland. The Government had gone too far in the direction of Home Rule to make Unionists sure that the promised Amending Bill would secure that they should not be "coerced": it had not gone far enough to make Nationalists sure that it really meant to do what it had promised. The result was the conviction upon all hands that their rights must be secured by their own efforts not by reliance upon the lukewarm sympathy of others. This conviction was not a matter of a sudden growth nor did it always find expression in the same way: it acted at once in favour of, and to the detriment of, recruiting: it was professed both by Nationalists and by Unionists. At first recruits joined because the war was just, because the Empire was in danger, because England had granted Ireland a "charter of liberty," because the civilization of Europe was threatened, because there was fighting afoot. Probably the majority enlisted for one or other of these reasons. But the theory of "a free gift of a free people" expounded by Mr. Asquith in Dublin fell more and more into the background. It began to be represented on both sides that the more recruits either party sent to the war the stronger would be the lien of that party upon the sympathy of the English Government. Unionists whose blood had flowed for England in Flanders could not be abandoned after such a sacrifice: Nationalists who had given their best and bravest to the cause of freedom could not be denied the freedom for which such a price had been paid. The official recruiting campaign wavered in its appeal between the two points. Its minor inept.i.tudes need hardly be taken into account. It was hardly politic to cover the walls of police barracks in Protestant villages in Ulster with green placards drawing attention to a few weighty words of Cardinal Logue: these follies did neither harm nor good. But it was different when appeals to the chivalry and bravery of Irishmen alternated with deductions from the famous phrase about "the rights of small nations." When Irish Nationalists were implored to rally to the defence of the Friend of Little Nations the size of Ireland was not likely to be forgotten. The inference that in fighting for the liberties of small nations Irishmen would be helping their own nation to secure the same liberty was the inference intended: but it was not always the inference actually drawn. The person who first conceived the idea of making use of that phrase for recruiting purposes in Ireland did the cause of recruiting an unforeseen but serious disservice. Was it, after all, really true (it was asked) that England could not recognize the freedom of Ireland until Ireland had first helped England to force Germany to recognize the freedom of Belgium? Was the freedom of Ireland then not a matter of right but the result of a bargain--the equivalent of how many fighting men? Had England been the friend of small nations before the war, was she to be their friend during the war, or was Ireland only to help her to be their friend after the war was over? The right of Ireland to more freedom than she had enjoyed had seemed to be recognized before the war had been spoken of; what had become of the recognition of it? And even bargaining, however distasteful, has its usages: it was no bargain when one side was called upon to pay up and the other carefully refrained from promising anything definite in return.

The bulk of the recruits enlisted during the first year of the war, and enlisted for worthy and honourable motives: when recruiting became, as it did become later, a question of party tactics the results were less favourable. But quite early in the war it became plain that there was going to be a contest between the two Irish parties as to which should have most to show for itself at the end, and there was no burning desire to a.s.sist political opponents to obtain recruits. Sir Edward Carson refused absolutely to stand on the same recruiting platform as Mr.

Redmond; the Belfast Unionist papers found it a grave lapse from principle in the present Lord Chancellor of England that he addressed a recruiting meeting in Liverpool in the company of Home Rulers. The Ulster Volunteer Force was informed practically that it had a two-fold duty, to fight for the Empire abroad, and to keep up the organization at home. It was plain from the first that in Ireland there was to be no "party truce," and it was recognized on all hands before long that when the war was over the old fight was to be renewed. The position of the Home Rule Act, penned in the Statute Book, with an Amending Bill waiting to tear it to pieces when the time came for it to be allowed out, made this inevitable. And the Government did not find it in its heart to hold an even balance between the parties: and when the balance began to dip the end was in sight for those who had eyes to see.

The only party really able to turn to account the situation thus created was the Sinn Fein party. It had preached for years that the English governing cla.s.ses, indeed the English nation, were not, in spite of their apparent readiness to listen to the Parliamentary Party, the friends of Irish Nationalism in any real sense: that they had no intention (and never had) of satisfying the just claims of Ireland: that the Parliamentarians were mere p.a.w.ns in a party game, to be sacrificed when it suited both or either of the English parties: that the word of English statesmen could not be trusted, and that Ireland had nothing to gain from them: that self-reliance, vigilance and distrust of England were "the sinews of good sense" in Irish politics. It had hinted, not obscurely, that the opportunity of Ireland would come when England should be involved in a European war, and that Ireland must be prepared when the day came to use the opportunity. It now pointed a triumphant finger to what was going on in Ireland and asked which had been the truer prophet, itself or the Parliamentary Party. It quoted the returns of recruiting in Ulster in support of its thesis: "The fact that out of 200,000 Unionists of military age in Ireland--men who talked Empire, sang Empire and protested they would die for the British Empire--four out of every five are still at home, declaring they will not have Home Rule, is proof that the Irish Unionist knows his present business." That Irish soldiers were to be used to further English interests, and not the cause of Ireland, was (it held) proved by extracts from English newspapers, where in unguarded moments the naked truth peeped out: it gave prominence to a quotation from the _Liverpool Post_ of September 12, 1914: "His Majesty could make a triumphal tour of Ireland, North, South, East and West, and in reply to his personal appeal, there would be 300,000 Irishmen of all creeds and cla.s.ses for the Front in less than a week. In England the question becomes more and more important in the interests of the efficiency of our trade, whether we can spare any more skilled mechanics for the ranks of battle.

The capture of the German trade is almost as vital to the existence of the Empire as the destruction of Prussian militarism."

By the end of 1914 all avowedly Sinn Fein papers had been suppressed, and the two American papers, the _Gaelic American_ and the _Irish World_, had been prohibited in Ireland. The latter had been a supporter of Mr.

Redmond's policy but had parted company with him on the question of recruiting in Ireland. The editor of _Sinn Fein_ countered the suppression of his paper by an ingenious device. He began to publish a bi-weekly called _Scissors and Paste_, which contained nothing but extracts from other English, Irish, Colonial and American papers. It was introduced to the reader in the only editorial it contained, ent.i.tled "Ourselves": "It is high treason," it ran, "for an Irishman to argue with the sword the right of his small nationality to equal political freedom with Belgium or Servia or Hungary. It is destruction to the property of his printer now when he argues it with the pen. Hence while England is fighting the battle of the Small Nationalities, _Ireland_ is reduced to _Scissors and Paste_.

Up to the present the sale and use of these instruments have not been prohibited by the British Government in Ireland." The columns of the _Times_, the _Daily Mail_, and the _Morning Post_ supplied the German Wireless messages: the _New York Times_ was drawn upon for James O'Donnell Bennett's articles protesting against the reports of German atrocities. In addition it printed suitable extracts from _The Reliques of Father Prout_, from Barry's _Songs of Ireland_, Thomas Davis's _Essays_ and Sir Samuel Ferguson: it reprinted Curran's speech in defence of the printer of _The Press_ in 1797. It ransacked the _Daily Mail_ for that journal's vigorous denunciations of the French in 1899: "If they cannot cease their insults their colonies will be taken from them and given to Germany and Italy--we ourselves want nothing more.... France will be rolled in the blood and mud in which her Press daily wallows." The paper ran for a little over a month. Its undoing was an extract from the _Irish Times_, a copy of a notice posted on a Sunday morning in January, 1915, in places near a number of Roman Catholic churches in Wexford: "People of Wexford, take no notice of the police order to destroy your own property and leave your own homes if a German army lands in Ireland. When the Germans come they will come as friends and to put an end to English rule in Ireland.

Therefore stay in your homes and a.s.sist as far as possible the German troops. Any stores, hay, corn or forage taken by the Germans will be paid for by them."

Just before the disappearance of _Scissors and Paste_, the _Irish Worker_, three weeks after its suppression, appeared again in Glasgow, where it was printed by the Socialist Labour Party, and began to circulate once more in Ireland.

After five months Mr. Arthur Griffith was again able to start a paper. The Dublin printers could not be induced to take the risk of printing for him again: but Belfast supplied one with the necessary enterprise. On June 19, 1915, _Nationality_ appeared as a penny weekly paper and continued to appear until the Easter Rising in 1916. In tone _Nationality_ was a reproduction of its predecessors and as the main characteristic of Sinn Fein propaganda was its directness and simplicity two extracts from its columns will suffice. An editorial (signed C.) on "The Fenian Faith"

written towards the end of 1915 contains the following: "The Fenians and the Fenian faith incarnated in Allen, Larkin and O'Brien were of a fighting and revolutionary epoch. They can only be commemorated by men of another fighting and revolutionary generation. That generation we have with us to-day. For we have the material, the men and stuff of war, the faith and purpose and cause for revolution.... We shall have Ireland illumined with a light before which even the Martyrs' will pale: the light of Freedom, of a deed done and action taken and a blow struck for the Old Land"; and a month or so later: "The things that count in Ireland against English Conscription are national determination, serviceable weapons and the knowledge of how to use them." Under the stress of circ.u.mstances Sinn Fein seemed to have abandoned the policy of the days of peace and to have come round in time of war to the policy which, even two years before the war, had been enunciated in _Irish Freedom_: "Ireland can be freed by force of arms; _that_ is the fact which ever must be borne in mind. The responsibility rests with the men of this generation. They can strike with infinitely greater hopes of success than could their fathers and their grandsires: but if they let this chance slip ... if they strike no blow for their country, whilst England herself is in handgrips with the most powerful nation in Europe, then the opportunity will have pa.s.sed and Ireland will be more utterly under the heel of England than ever she was since the Union." This was written in September, 1912. But the task of putting the policy into practice, of welding the (at times) discordant elements of anti-Parliamentarian Nationalism together and making possible a united effort was reserved for other hands and another mind than those of the founder of Sinn Fein.

During the vigorous years of its youth Sinn Fein had not confined its propagandist activities to public meetings, the foundation of branches and the publication of a paper. The National Council of Sinn Fein had issued a series of "National Council Pamphlets" dealing with those aspects of Sinn Fein policy upon which the public seemed to require instruction.

The first of these was a general exposition of the Sinn Fein policy by Mr.

Griffith. Others were "The Purchase of the Railways," "England's Colossal Robbery of Ireland," a study of the financial relations between the two countries since the Act of Union, "Ireland and the British Armed Forces,"

"Const.i.tutionalism and Sinn Fein" and "How Ireland is Taxed," an exposition of the fact (often ignored) that under the Union Ireland is the most heavily taxed country in Europe. Finally, in 1912, a pamphlet by Mr.

Griffith, "The Home Rule Bill Examined," was a general review of the powers conferred and withheld by the Home Rule Bill and an examination of the real bearing of that measure upon the political and economic situation of Ireland. The increasing difficulties which attended the publication of a newspaper during the war, the increased demand for information upon the situation created by it, the increasing number of those who felt that they had something to say which required more s.p.a.ce than could be afforded in a newspaper, led to a revival of the publication of pamphlets. Early in 1915 a series of "Tracts for the Times" was projected by the Irish Publicity League. The first of these was a tract "What Emmet means in 1915,"

significant of the direction in which minds were turning at the time. It was followed by "Shall Ireland be Divided?" an impa.s.sioned protest against the policy of part.i.tion and by "The Secret History of the Irish Volunteers" (which ran through several editions), an account by The O'Rahilly of the formation of the Volunteers, their policy, their attempts to secure arms and their relations with the Parliamentary Party. The traditional Sinn Fein view was enforced in "When the Government Publishes Sedition," an a.n.a.lysis of the official census returns, showing that under the Union the population of Ireland had been reduced by one-half, and in two pamphlets on "Daniel O'Connell and Sinn Fein" an attempt was made to commend the policy by an argument that O'Connell both in his methods and his aims was really a Sinn Feiner, and by an exposition ("How Ireland is Plundered") of the question of the Financial Relations in O'Connell's day and since. Other pamphlets were "What it Feels Like" on the prison experiences of the writer who had been imprisoned under the Defence of the Realm Act for his political activities, "Ascendancy While You Wait" and "Why the Martyrs of Manchester Died." During the same time the c.u.mann na mBan, the women's branch of the Irish Volunteers, added to their activities the publication of a "National Series" of pamphlets "Why Ireland is Poor--English Laws and Irish Industries," "Dean Swift on the Situation" and "The Spanish War," a reprint of a pamphlet published in 1790 by Wolfe Tone, urging the Irish Parliament to take into account in the consideration of the threatened war with Spain solely and simply the interests of Ireland, the only interests which it should allow itself to consider. The Committee of Public Safety also in 1915 published a pamphlet on "The Defence of the Realm Act in Ireland" showing how the Act was administered for the suppression of Nationalist propaganda. The speech which Mr. F. Sheehy-Skeffington delivered in the dock when charged under the same Act with interfering with recruiting was published as a pamphlet about the same time. The articles contributed to _Irish Freedom_ by P. H.

Pea.r.s.e were reprinted under the t.i.tle of "From a Hermitage" in the autumn of 1915 as one of the "Bodenstown Series" of pamphlets, the first of which had been Mr. Pea.r.s.e's "How Does She Stand?" a reprint of two speeches delivered in America in 1914 at Emmet Commemorations in New York and Brooklyn and of the eloquent speech delivered at the grave of Wolfe Tone in Bodenstown Churchyard in 1913. The funeral of O'Donovan Rossa in August, 1915, also produced some pamphlets on Rossa's life and his significance as a Fenian leader and a protagonist of the Irish Republican cause. These pamphlets, and others, had a wide circulation; they were eagerly discussed, especially among young Nationalists; they widened the rift between the Parliamentary Party and their opponents, and had much to do with the shaping of Irish Nationalist opinion.

Meanwhile the activities of the Irish Volunteers continued. The secession after the dispute with Mr. Redmond had withdrawn a large majority of their original numbers: indeed some authorities go so far as to say that immediately after the formation of the National Volunteers, the original committee could not count upon a following of more than 10,000 or 12,000 men. Be this as it may, the arrest and deportation of several of their organizers, the constant supervision over their proceedings exercised by the police authorities and the sure drift of Nationalist opinion away from the Parliamentarians and their policy, not (it is true) so marked then as to cause serious official misgiving, tended to increase their prestige and popularity. The funds had for the most part gone with the National Volunteers, but the Irish in America, who sided not with Mr. Redmond but with the Irish Volunteers, supplied large sums of money for equipment and organization. The report of the Second Annual Convention held in November, 1915, contains a speech by the President on the history and aims of the movement which concluded: "Further I will only say that we ought all to adhere faithfully and strictly to the objects, the const.i.tution and the policy which we have adopted. We will not be diverted from our work by tactics of provocation. We will not give way to irritation or excitement.

Our business is not to make a show or indulge in demonstrations. We started out on a course of constructive work requiring a long period of patient and tenacious exertion. When things were going most easily for us, I never shrank from telling my comrades that success might require years of steady perseverance--a prospect sometimes harder to face than an enemy in the field.... Great progress has been made, more must be made.

The one thing we must look to is that there shall be no stopping and no turning back." There were at this time over 200 corps of the Irish Volunteers in active training and the movement was spreading, if not rapidly, yet quietly and surely. The leaders waited for time to do its work, to bring fully home to Irish Nationalists the difference between a policy in which the necessities of Empire held the first place and one in which the claims of Ireland were supreme: meanwhile it was intended that the Volunteers should act as "a national defence force for Ireland, for all Ireland and for Ireland only," ready to ward off any a.s.sault upon Irish liberty, but resolved not to provoke or to invite attack.

But in spite of official policies and intentions there had slowly been formed a small but determined minority in Ireland who looked to revolution as the only sure and manly policy for a nation pledged to freedom. This, the creed of the Fenians, had not been openly avowed in Ireland for almost half a century: Nationalists had come to regard it either as a forlorn hope, a gallant but hopeless adventure, or as a policy out of harmony with modern civilization and progress. Here and there a lonely but picturesque figure might be seen, "an old Fenian," in the world but not of it, who spoke with a resigned contempt of the new men and the new methods, an inspiration but hardly an example to the younger generation. There was still in existence the Irish Republican Brotherhood, an obscure and elusive body, mysterious as the Rosicrucians and to all outward appearances of hardly any more political importance. A secret but apparently innocuous correspondence was understood to be kept up by them with America where, among an important and influential section of the expatriated Irish, the hope was more widely and more openly cherished of a day when Ireland would shake off the lethargy of a generation and revert to the age-long claim for independence. For a short time it seemed as if the prospect of the grant of Home Rule would quench the last embers of the revolutionary fire, as if the English democracy had at last stretched out a friendly hand and that the rest would be the work of time. Ulster's appeal to arms quickened the embers to a flame; in less than two years'

time a revolution was spoken of more openly than had been the case for fifty years. No man in Ireland would have taken up arms to secure Home Rule: it was a "concession" which to some Nationalists seemed the greatest that could be obtained, to others (and perhaps the majority) to be a step upon the road to a larger independence: both sections were agreed that it should be sought by const.i.tutional methods. But force might be the only means of retaining what it had been proper to secure without it, and the Irish Volunteers were prepared to fight those who attempted to take from the people of Ireland any right which they had been able to secure.

But it was not to be expected that the purely defensive policy of the Volunteers would commend itself to all sections of Nationalist opinion nor could the formula of their a.s.sociation produce more than an outward and seeming unity. So much had been true before the war; and when Europe was involved in strife, when the issue between England with her Allies and the Central Powers seemed to hang in the balance, a purely defensive and waiting policy seemed to be a criminal neglect of the opportunity offered by Providence. Mitchel's prophecy of the fortune that a continental war might bring to Ireland seemed about to be fulfilled, unless the arm of Ireland should prove nerveless and impotent. Not alone in Ireland were voices raised to point the lesson: the Irish in America who still professed the Fenian faith urged insistently the use of the opportunity.

Two books written by James K. Maguire and printed by the Wolfe Tone Publishing Co. of New York, "What Could Germany do for Ireland?" and "The King, the Kaiser and Irish Freedom" had a considerable circulation in Ireland during 1915 and 1916. Written by an Irish-American who had been educated at a German school in Syracuse, and was well known for his German sympathies, they boldly announced that in a German victory lay the only hope for the establishment of an Irish Republic. They a.s.serted not only that Germany would establish and guarantee the independence of Ireland, but that she would help Ireland to develop her industries and commerce, her resources in coal, metals and peat, which still after a hundred years of the Union were no further developed than they had been in the middle of the eighteenth century. To most Irishmen the panegyric of German disinterestedness was an idle tale, and Sinn Fein had been proclaiming (not without success) for nearly a score of years that the development of Ireland must not be expected from outsiders but from Irishmen themselves.

But there were those who thought that the power to raise the heavy hand of England must be found, not in the slow efforts of a painful and hampered self-reliance, but in a hand heavier still: and it was a.s.sumed that German aid once given to free and re-establish Ireland would be withdrawn before it became tutelage and exploitation. No one dreamed of an Ireland that should exchange the penurious restraint of the Union for the prosperous servitude of a German Province: the end of all endeavour was the sovereign independence of Ireland.

The German Foreign Office, with the sanction of the Imperial Chancellor, had quite early in the war, on the motion of Roger Cas.e.m.e.nt, given what was taken for an unequivocal a.s.surance on this point. "The Imperial Government," the statement ran, "declares formally that Germany would not invade Ireland with any intentions of conquest or of the destruction of any inst.i.tutions. If, in the course of this war, which Germany did not seek, the fortunes of arms should ever bring German troops to the coast of Ireland, they would land there, not as an army of invaders coming to rob or destroy, but as the fighting forces of a Government inspired by goodwill toward a land and a people for whom Germany only wishes national prosperity and national freedom." Even a slight acquaintance with methods of imperial expansion would point to the necessity for a rigorous scrutiny of the terms of such a declaration and no such scrutiny would p.r.o.nounce this declaration to be even moderately satisfactory: even if it stood the test it would not (so mysterious are the ways of State policy) have been worth the paper it was written on. But "cows over the water have long horns"--the German promise was an anchor sure and steadfast.

Whatever aid might be expected from Germany to secure the success of a revolution, nothing could be done without a party in Ireland united in its aims and able to take advantage of any aid that might be sent. No single party in Ireland could have been said to fulfil the conditions. The only Nationalist section which could have combined with an outside expeditionary force landing in Ireland was the Irish Volunteers, but not one of them was, by virtue of his Volunteer pledge, in any way bound to do so. Nor was there any guarantee that their views as to the ultimate form which a free Irish const.i.tution should a.s.sume were identical: in fact it was known that they were not. Official Sinn Fein still found the independence of Ireland in the Const.i.tution of 1782: the Republicans would have nothing but a "true Republican Freedom." The Citizen Army was Republican in its teaching but it was openly hostile to both sections of the Volunteers. To it Sinn Fein and many of the Republicans seemed a bourgeois party, from which the workers need expect nothing. To James Connolly, their leader, the vaunted prosperity reached under the independent Irish Parliament was the prosperity of a cla.s.s and not of the community, and he could point to the writings of Arthur O'Connor, ignored by orthodox Sinn Feiners, in proof of his contention. To establish the political ideals of Sinn Fein the Citizen Army was not prepared to raise its little finger. The Republicans might have seemed more sympathetic and congenial allies; but many even of them seemed too remote and formal in their ideals, too much wrapped up in visions of a future Ireland, free and indivisible, to have time to spare for the formulation of the means by which all Irishmen might really be free. But there were not wanting men on both sides who saw the necessity of union in the face of a common danger for the furtherance of a common purpose, who taught that if Labour should pledge itself to Ireland, Ireland should also pledge itself to Labour.

This union when it came about was mainly due to James Connolly and P. H.

Pea.r.s.e.

James Connolly had been for several years the acknowledged leader of Irish Socialism. His book on _Labour in Irish History_ written in 1910 is recognized as a standard work: his _Reconquest of Ireland_, his pamphlet _The New Evangel_, and his articles in _The Irish Worker_ were widely read and had great influence among Irish Nationalists who belonged to the Labour movement. His att.i.tude to the two main Irish parties was one of hostility: he was hostile to the Unionists as representing the party of tyranny and privilege, to the Home Rulers as the followers of a policy which was "but a cloak for the designs of the middle-cla.s.s desirous of making terms with the Imperial Government it pretends to dislike." To ardent and vague talk about "Ireland" and "freedom" he opposed the cool and critical temper of one who was accustomed to look stern facts in the face: "Ireland as distinct from her people," he wrote, "is nothing to me; and the man who is bubbling over with love and enthusiasm for 'Ireland,'

and can yet pa.s.s unmoved through our streets and witness all the wrong and the suffering, the shame and the degradation brought upon the people of Ireland--aye, brought by Irishmen upon Irish men and women--without burning to end it, is in my opinion a fraud and a liar in his heart, no matter how he loves that combination of chemical elements he is pleased to call 'Ireland'." Connolly believed in Irish Nationality, but he would not have been satisfied with the right to wear the badges of independence; a national flag, a national parliament, a national culture were in themselves nothing; but if they meant the right of the common men and women of Ireland to control their own lives and their own destinies then they meant everything in the world to him. Like Wolfe Tone he believed in "that numerous and respectable cla.s.s, the men of no property"; to secure their rights in Ireland he was ready for anything. The national mould in which his Socialism came to be cast did not always appeal to his followers and a.s.sociates: they regretted his increasing devotion to Irish Nationalism and his apparent indifference to pure Socialism; as one said later, "The high creed of Irish Nationalism became his daily rosary, while the higher creed of international humanity that had so long bubbled from his eloquent lips was silent for ever." As a matter of fact he tested alike theoretical Nationalism and theoretical Socialism by the facts; Nationalism, to be worth anything, must secure the rights of the common men and women who make up the bulk of the nation: Socialism, to be worth anything, must secure the rights not of "humanity" but of the human beings which compose it, and the princ.i.p.al human beings whose destiny an Irish Socialist could influence were the Irish. Connolly had never shared the extreme hostility to the Irish Volunteers which was characteristic of the bulk of the Citizen Army: while he championed the rights of his cla.s.s he recognized that they formed, along with others, an Irish nation and that their surest charter of freedom would be the charter of freedom of their country. But it must be a real, universal and effective freedom if it were to be worth the winning. Under his guidance and influence the ideals of the Citizen Army began to approximate more closely to those of the Irish Volunteers.

The Irish Volunteers on the other hand were learning under other guidance to examine more closely the implications of the phrase "the independence of Ireland." Their guide was P. H. Pea.r.s.e, a man of great gifts, a high and austere spirit filled with a great purpose. Through all his work, both in English and in Irish, plays, poems and stories, runs the thread of an ardent devotion to goodness and beauty, to spiritual freedom, to the faith that tries to move mountains and is crushed beneath them. For many years his life seems to have been pa.s.sed in the grave shadow of the sacrifice he felt that he was called upon to make for Ireland: he believed that he was appointed to tread the path that Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone had trodden before him, and his life was shaped so that it might be worthy of its end.

To Pea.r.s.e the ideal Irishman was Wolfe Tone, and it is significant that one of the first occasions upon which the Irish Volunteers and the Citizen Army held a joint demonstration was a pilgrimage to Tone's grave at Bodenstown. It was here that Pea.r.s.e in 1913 delivered an eloquent and memorable address in which he proclaimed his belief that Wolfe Tone was the greatest Irishman who had ever lived. "We have come," his speech began, "to the holiest place in Ireland; holier to us even than the place where Patrick sleeps in Down. Patrick brought us life, but this man died for us." Pea.r.s.e saw in Tone the greatest of all Irishmen because he saw in him the most complete incarnation of the Irish race, of its pa.s.sion for freedom, its gallantry, its essential tolerance: and he urged his hearers not to let Tone's work and example perish. Quoting Tone's famous declaration of his objects and his means, of breaking the connection with England by uniting the whole people of Ireland, Pea.r.s.e concluded: "I find here implicit all the philosophy of Irish Nationalism, all the teaching of the Gaelic League, and the later prophets. Ireland one and Ireland free--is not this the definition of Ireland a Nation? To that definition and to that programme we declare our adhesion anew; pledging ourselves as Tone pledged himself--and in this sacred place, by this graveside, let us not pledge ourselves unless we mean to keep our pledge--we pledge ourselves to follow in the steps of Tone, never to rest, either by day or by night, until his work be accomplished, deeming it to be the proudest of all privileges to fight for freedom, to fight not in despondency but in great joy, hoping for the victory in our day, but fighting on whether victory seem near or far, never lowering our ideal, never bartering one jot or t.i.ttle of our birthright, holding faith to the memory and the inspiration of Tone, and accounting ourselves base as long as we endure the evil thing against which he testified with his blood."

To show that Wolfe Tone was a revolutionary, that he aimed at the complete overthrow of English ascendancy in Ireland and at the severing of all political connection between the two countries, that he believed in an Ireland in which the designations of Catholic and Protestant should be swallowed up in the common bonds of nationhood--all this needed no proving, for it was matter of common knowledge with all to whom Tone's name was known. But it was necessary to do more than this. Pea.r.s.e had to show in the first place that Tone might be taken as the normal and cla.s.sical representative of the Irish national ideal, and in the second place that he was no mere ordinary const.i.tution-monger but a teacher of a philosophy of nationality, valid not for his own age only, but always, capable of furnishing guidance in the just and orderly upbuilding of a modern community, of satisfying at once the claims of the nation and the claims of its humblest member. To this task he gave the last months of his life: the last four "Tracts for the Times" were from his pen: the first was written at the end of 1915, the last in March, 1916, a fortnight before the Rising. The first of these four pamphlets was ent.i.tled "Ghosts," a t.i.tle borrowed from Ibsen. It is an exposition of the national teaching of five Irish leaders, Wolfe Tone, Thomas Davis, James Fintan Lalor, John Mitchel and Charles Stewart Parnell, all of whom held and taught that the national claim of Ireland was for independence and separation; their ghosts haunt the generation which has disowned them, they will not be appeased till their authority is again acknowledged. A few sentences will make the thesis of this tract (and to some extent of the following tracts) clear. "There has been nothing more terrible in Irish history than the failure of the last generation. Other generations have failed in Ireland, but they have failed n.o.bly; or, failing ign.o.bly, some man among them has redeemed them from infamy by the splendour of his protest. But the failure of the last generation has been mean and shameful, and no man has arisen from it to do a splendid thing in virtue of which it shall be forgiven. The whole episode is squalid. It will remain the one sickening chapter in a story which, gallant or sorrowful, has everywhere else some exaltation of pride.... Even had the men themselves been less base, their failure would have been inevitable. When one thinks over the matter for a little one sees that they have built upon an untruth. They have conceived of nationality as a material thing whereas it is a spiritual thing.... Hence, the nation to them is not all holy, a thing inviolate and inviolable, a thing that a man dare not sell or dishonour on pain of eternal perdition. They have thought of nationality as a thing to be negotiated about as men negotiate about a tariff or about a trade route.... I make the contention that the national demand of Ireland is fixed and determined; that that demand has been made by every generation; that we of this generation receive it as a trust from our fathers; that we are bound by it; that we have not the right to alter it or to abate it by one jot or t.i.ttle; and that any undertaking made in the name of Ireland to accept in full satisfaction of Ireland's claim anything less than the generations of Ireland have stood for is null and void.... The man who in the name of Ireland accepts as a "final settlement" anything less by one fraction of an iota than separation from England will be repudiated by the new generation as surely as O'Connell was repudiated by the generation that came after him. The man who in return for the promise of a thing which is not merely less than separation but which denies separation and declares the Union perpetual, the man who in return for this declares peace between England and Ireland and sacrifices to England as a peace-holocaust the blood of 50,000 Irishmen is guilty of so immense an infidelity, so immense a crime against the Irish nation, that one can only say of him that it were better for that man (as it were certainly better for his country) that he had not been born." The pamphlet concludes with a historic retrospect of the Irish struggle for independence till the end of the seventeenth century, of the Anglo-Irish claim for independence in the eighteenth century, and with quotations from the five great Irish leaders since the last decade of that century joining in the same claim.

The next tract, "The Separatist Idea," was a detailed study of Wolfe Tone's political teaching. Tone was not merely a "heroic soul," he possessed an "austere and piercing intellect," which, "dominating Irish political thought for over a century," had given Ireland "its political definitions and values." Tone had written in his _Autobiography_, "I made speedily [in 1790] what was to me a great discovery, though I might have found it in Swift or Molyneux, that the influence of England was the radical vice of our Government, and that consequently Ireland would never be either free, prosperous or happy until she was independent and that independence was unattainable whilst the connection with England existed."

In a pamphlet called "An Argument on behalf of the Catholics of Ireland"

Tone (signing himself "A Northern Whig") had tried to convince the Dissenters "that they and the Catholics had but one common interest and one common enemy: that the depression and slavery of Ireland was produced and perpetuated by the divisions existing between them, and that, consequently, to a.s.sert the independence of their country, and their own individual liberties, it was necessary to forget all former feuds, to consolidate the entire strength of the whole nation and to form for the future but one people." In his earlier years Tone had not been a Republican, but Republicanism was the creed which he finally professed. He defined the aim of an Irish Const.i.tution as the promotion of "The Rights of Man in Ireland." To secure this end reliance must be had not on a section of the nation but on the nation as a whole. "If the men of property will not support us," he said, "they must fall: we can support ourselves by the aid of that numerous and respectable cla.s.s of the community--the men of no property." "In this glorious appeal to Caesar,"

comments Pea.r.s.e, "modern Irish democracy has its origin." Tone then was not merely a Republican and a Separatist but a Democrat prepared for a democratic and revolutionary policy.

In his next tract "The Spiritual Nation" Pea.r.s.e a.n.a.lyzed the national teaching of Thomas Davis, who was to him the embodiment of the idea of the spiritual side of nationality. Davis was a Separatist (Pea.r.s.e puts this, by quotation from his writings, beyond reasonable doubt) but he laid stress more upon the spiritual than upon the material side of Irish independence. He saw in nationality "the sum of the facts, spiritual and intellectual, which mark off one nation from another," the language, the folklore, the literature, the music, the art, the social customs. "The insistence on the spiritual fact of nationality is Davis's distinctive contribution to political thought in Ireland, but it is not the whole of Davis." To secure spiritual independence, material freedom is necessary, and such freedom can only be found in political independence. One rhetorical paragraph of Davis's makes his att.i.tude clear. "Now, Englishmen, listen to us. Though you were to-morrow to give us the best tenures on earth--though you were to equalise Presbyterian, Catholic and Episcopalian--though you were to give us the amplest representation in your Senate--though you were to restore our absentees, disenc.u.mber us of your debt, and redress every one of our fiscal wrongs--and though, in addition to all this, you plundered the treasuries of the world to lay gold at our feet and exhausted the resources of your genius to do us worship and honour--still we tell you--we tell you in the name of liberty and country--we tell you in the name of enthusiastic hearts, thoughtful souls and fearless spirits--we tell you by the past, the present and the future, we would spurn your gifts if the condition were that Ireland should remain a province. We tell you and all whom it may concern, come what may--bribery or deceit, justice, policy or war--we tell you, in the name of Ireland, that Ireland shall be a nation."

In the last pamphlet, "The Sovereign People," Pea.r.s.e essayed the hardest task of all. It was introduced by the short preface, dated 31st March, 1916, "This pamphlet concludes the examination of the Irish definition of freedom which I promised in 'Ghosts.' For my part I have no more to say."

It is told that he entreated the printer to have it published at once: he wished his last words, the final manifesto of his party, to be in the hands of the public before he went into the Rising. The tract is an attempt to establish, on the basis of the writings of James Fintan Lalor, the thesis that the independence claimed for Ireland is of a republican and democratic type. He expressed his views clearly and unequivocally upon such questions as the rights of private property, the individual ownership of the material resources of the community, and universal suffrage.

Pea.r.s.e's views as expressed in this pamphlet are seen to be practically identical with those of James Connolly, and there is little doubt that it was upon the basis of some such understanding that Pea.r.s.e's followers and those of Connolly joined forces at the last. "The nation's sovereignty,"

the exposition runs, "extends not only to all the men and women of the nation, but to all the material possessions of the nation, the nation's soil and all its resources, all wealth and all wealth-producing processes within the nation. In other words, no private right to property is good as against the public right of the nation. But the nation is under a moral obligation so to exercise its public right as to secure strictly equal rights and liberties to every man and woman within the nation.... No cla.s.s in the nation has rights inferior to those of any other cla.s.s. No cla.s.s in the nation is ent.i.tled to privileges superior to those of any other cla.s.s.... To insist upon the sovereign control of the nation over all the property within the nation is not to disallow the right to private property. It is for the nation to determine to what extent private property may be held by its members and in what items of the nation's material resources private property may be allowed. A nation may, for instance, determine, as the free Irish nation determined and enforced for many centuries, that private ownership shall not exist in land, that the whole of a nation's soil is the public property of the nation.... There is nothing divine or sacrosanct in any of these arrangements; they are matters of purely human concern, matters for discussion and adjustment between the members of a nation, matters to be decided on finally by the nation as a whole; and matters in which the nation as a whole can revise or reverse its decision whenever it seems good in the common interests to do so.... In order that the people may be able to choose as a legislation and as a government men and women really and fully representative of themselves, they will keep the choice actually or virtually in the hands of the whole people ... they will, if wise, adopt the widest possible franchise--give a vote to every adult man and woman of sound mind. To restrict the franchise in any respect is to prepare the way for some future usurpation of the rights of the sovereign people. The people, that is the whole people, must remain sovereign not only in theory but in fact.... It is in fact true that the repositories of the Irish tradition, as well the spiritual tradition of nationality as the kindred tradition of stubborn physical resistance to England, have been the great, faithful, splendid, common people, that dumb mult.i.tudinous throng which sorrowed during the penal night, which bled in '98, which starved in the Famine; and which is here still--what is left of it--unbought and unterrified. Let no man be mistaken as to who will be lord in Ireland, when Ireland is free. The people will be lord and master." These theses are enforced by quotations from Lalor, the most outspoken Democrat and Radical in the tradition of Irish nationalism. The pamphlet concludes with a defence of John Mitchel (who adopted Lalor's teaching) against the charge of hating the English people. "Mitchel, the least apologetic of men, was at pains to explain that his hate was not of English men and women, but of the English thing which called itself a government in Ireland, of the English Empire, of English commercialism supported by English militarism, a thing wholly evil, perhaps the most evil thing that there has ever been in the world."

On Palm Sunday, 1916, the Union of Irish Labour and Irish Nationality was proclaimed in a striking fashion. In the evening of that day Connolly hoisted over Liberty Hall, the headquarters of the Citizen Army, the Irish tricolour of orange, white and green, the flag designed by the Young Irelanders in 1848 to symbolise the union of the Orange and Green by the white bond of a common brotherhood. On Easter Monday the Irish Republic was proclaimed in arms in Dublin.

AFTER THE RISING.

There are many interesting topics of enquiry in connection with the Easter Rising: but they relate to points of detail or affect the responsibility of individuals; they do not concern the history of Sinn Fein. The Rising was the work not of Sinn Fein, but of the leaders of the Republican Party in the Irish Volunteers and of the Citizen Army. Of the signatories to the proclamation of the Republic only one had any sort of connection with Sinn Fein and he had been a reforming, rather than an orthodox, Sinn Feiner.

But the general public, some from mere instinct, others from a desire to discredit a movement which they disliked and feared, persisted in calling the Rising by the name of the "Sinn Fein Rebellion," and subst.i.tuted "Sinn Fein" for "Irish" in speaking of the Volunteers. In truth it would have been impossible for Sinn Fein, even if it had wished to do so, to repudiate all responsibility for the Rising. It had from the beginning proclaimed the independence of Ireland, not (it is true) in the form of an Irish Republic, but in the form of a National Const.i.tution free from any subordination to the Parliament of England: it had renounced the idea of an appeal to arms in view of the certain failure of an armed rising: but it had not repudiated revolution upon principle and it had admitted that in certain contingencies Ireland might with propriety appeal to arms to secure its independence. The only criticism it could make upon the Rising would have been that it was a well-intentioned error of judgment, the error of men who had mistaken their means and their opportunity for accomplishing an object good in itself. It is highly improbable that any such criticism would under the circ.u.mstances have been made in public by the leaders of Sinn Fein: in any case they were not afforded the opportunity to make it, for they were arrested and deported as part of the measures of repression taken after the Rising had collapsed.

At the time of the Rising Ireland was still far from being either Sinn Fein or Republican. The prestige of parliamentarianism had been shaken and its strength impaired: expectations had been disappointed, but the reasons for the failure were still the subject of keen discussion, and the Sinn Fein explanation was by no means universally accepted. Convinced Republicans were a minority, insignificant except for their ability and fervour. The ma.s.s of Nationalists felt disturbed and uneasy. It was plain that their cause was losing ground, and that mere pre-occupation with the war was not the sole reason for the growing indifference of England to the government of Ireland. Nationalist Ireland was represented (by people who affected to speak more in sorrow than in anger) as having disowned the patriotic lead of Mr. Redmond and as failing in its duty, and this view was clearly becoming the prevalent view in England. The policy pursued by the War Office towards Nationalist recruits (a policy described by a member of the War Cabinet as "malignant") was slowly killing recruiting, and the decline of recruiting was claimed to be a justification of the policy that produced it, and that by people perfectly well aware of the facts. The favour shown to the Ulster Volunteers had not induced them to go in a body to the war: but while they were reported to have done magnificently, the National Volunteers were held to have done little and to have done it with a bad grace. The advent of the Coalition Government, which included some of the bitterest enemies of Irish Nationalism, did not mend matters. Mr. Redmond, it is true, was offered a seat in the Coalition Cabinet and declined the offer. It seemed to many Irishmen at the time that Mr. Redmond might very well have accepted it: that having stretched a point in promising Irish a.s.sistance in the war out of grat.i.tude for a coming recognition of Irish claims, it was a mere standing upon ceremony to refuse to stretch another point and enter an English Ministry. But Mr.

Redmond decided in view of the state of feeling in Ireland that he had gone as far as was prudent. His generous enthusiasm had received a shock, first in the hints of Irish disapproval at his failure to take full advantage of his opportunity, secondly when he came into contact with the cold hostility of the War Office. His slowly waning influence in Ireland might have vanished if he had advanced farther on the path of unconditional co-operation. It had been for years a maxim--the maxim--of the Nationalist Party to accept no office under the Union Const.i.tution, and no office under the Crown until the claims of Ireland had been conceded. These claims had not been conceded, and the prospect that they would ever be conceded was growing fainter. Had he represented Ireland under an Irish Const.i.tution, even a Provisional Const.i.tution, the case would have been different: Nationalist Ireland would have followed him, as England then followed Mr. Asquith: but to enter the Cabinet under the circ.u.mstances as the representative of Ireland seemed to be merely to forfeit by his entry the only ground upon which he had a claim to enter it. His decision left the way open to the almost unfettered activities of the opponents of his policy both in England and in Ireland. The strength of England in time of war, the readiness of her public men to subordinate, within limits, the strife of parties to the interests of the Commonwealth, meant the weakness of Ireland in the end. It was loudly proclaimed in England that the happy co-operation of days of stress must not be allowed to be broken up when peace dawned: that the strife of parties must be mitigated when war was over: but Ireland knew that she had been in later years their chief battleground, and that any mitigation of their quarrel, while it might be to the advantage of English public life, could only be brought about at the expense of her national hopes. And in Ireland the Executive, pursuing a fixed anti-national policy, tempered only by the prudence, the theoretical liberalism, or the bland indifference of successive Chief Secretaries, could henceforth count on the steady backing of friends in power over the water.

The Rising came like a flash of lightning in an evening twilight, illuminating and terrifying. It was not entirely unexpected: those whose duty and those whose pleasure it is to suspect everything had been uneasy for some time. The few people who were in touch with the inner circles of the Irish Volunteers had long known that something was in progress. But the authorities had nothing definite to go upon, and the majority of Irishmen knew nothing definite about it. When news came that Dublin had been seized, that an Irish Republic had been proclaimed, and that troops were hurrying across from England, the prevailing feeling was one of stupefaction. Even the Unionist newspapers, never at a loss before in pointing the Irish moral, were stunned for the moment. When the facts began to be realized, Unionist and Nationalist joined in a common condemnation of the Rising, which, unable to accomplish its professed aim, could have no real effect beyond that of hampering the Allied cause. Later on Nationalists began to fear and Unionists to hope that it meant the death of Home Rule, or at least its postponement to an indefinite future.

When the Rising was crushed and the leaders and their followers had surrendered it is questionable whether the fortunes of Republicanism in Ireland had ever been at so low an ebb. All their plans had miscarried; their very counsels had been contradictory and confused. German a.s.sistance had disappointed them; the country had not supported them; and the army had made an end of their resistance and had brought their strongholds about their heads: their leaders were in custody, not even as prisoners of war: all of their followers who had shown that they could be counted on were either dead or in gaol. There was no district in Ireland that had not sent men to the war: many of them had died at the hands of the Germans to whom the Republican leaders had looked for aid, many of them were risking their lives every hour; it was not from the friends and neighbours of these men that sympathy for the Rising could have been expected. Sinn Fein was involved in the general feeling; if it had not fomented the Rising, what had it done to discourage it? Was it not the stimulus which had spurred more daring spirits into action?

A bruised reed never seemed less difficult to break or less worth the breaking. It was decided to break it _ad majorem cautelam_.

Four days after the surrender Pea.r.s.e and two others after a secret trial were shot in the morning: the next day and the next others were shot.

There was a pause of three days, and the shooting was resumed till thirteen had paid the penalty. After the thirteenth execution, a proclamation was issued that the General Officer Commanding in Chief had "found it imperative" to inflict these punishments, which it was hoped would act as a deterrent and show that such proceedings as those of the Rising could not be tolerated. Two more executions followed, that of James Connolly and another. At the same time arrests took place all over the country. Three thousand prisoners who had taken no part in the Rising were collected, many of them as innocent of any complicity in the affair as the Prime Minister. To have been at any time a member of the Irish Volunteers was sufficient cause for arrest and deportation. They were taken through the streets in lorries and in furniture vans at the dead of night and shipped for unknown destinations.

In a normally governed country, a strong Government enjoying the support of the community has a comparatively easy task in dealing with an unsuccessful rebellion, if a rebellion should occur. It can shoot the leaders, if it thinks them worth shooting, or do practically what it pleases with them, and gain nothing but credit for its firmness or clemency (as the case may be). But in a country not normally governed (and no one either inside or outside Ireland considered the Irish government to be normal) the matter is more intricate. If the Government is united, has clean hands and unlimited force, and is prepared to employ force indefinitely, it may do as it pleases: but few Governments are in this position and those which are not have to pick their steps. In the case of the Easter Rising the Government began by going forward with great confidence beyond the point whence retreat was possible and then determined very carefully to pick its steps back again. At first it acted "with vigour and firmness": it handed the situation over to the care of a competent and tried officer, who proceeded to treat it as a mere matter of departmental routine. He was alert, prompt and businesslike. He did not hesitate to take what seemed "necessary steps" or to speak out where speaking plainly seemed called for. He let it be known that he had come to act and he did what he had come for.

During the week of the executions an almost unbroken silence reigned in Ireland. The first hint that anything was wrong came on the cables from America. The men who were shot in Dublin had been accorded a public funeral in New York. Empty hea.r.s.es followed by a throng of mourners had pa.s.sed through streets crowded with sympathisers standing with bared heads. Anxious messages from British agents warned the Government that a demonstration like this could not be disregarded. The executions were over, but the Prime Minister decided to go to Ireland to enquire into the situation on the spot. When he landed the tide of Irish feeling had already turned.

The catastrophic change of feeling in Ireland is not difficult to explain.

The Rising had occurred suddenly and had ended in a sudden and hopeless failure. The leaders and their followers had surrendered, and the authorities held them at their absolute disposal. The utter hopelessness of any attempt to establish a Republic, or effect any other change in the government of Ireland by armed force, especially at such a time, had been clearly demonstrated. England held Ireland in the hollow of its hand.

After four days' cool deliberation it was decided to shoot the leaders.

They were not brought to open trial on the charge of high treason or on any other charge: the authorities who carried out the sentence were those who pa.s.sed judgment upon their guilt and the only people who ever heard or saw the evidence upon which the judgment was based. They were shot in batches: for days the lesson was hammered home in stroke after stroke that these men were ent.i.tled neither to open trial and proof of their guilt before execution, nor to the treatment of captured enemies. The conclusion drawn by Nationalist Ireland was that if they had been Englishmen they would have been tried by English courts and sentenced by the judgment of their countrymen: that if they had been Germans or Turks they would have been treated as prisoners of war: but that being Irishmen they were in a cla.s.s apart, members of a subject race, the mere property of a courtmartial. The applause of Parliament when the Prime Minister announced the executions was taken to represent the official sanction of the English people and their agreement with this att.i.tude towards Ireland. It was resented in Ireland with a fierce and sudden pa.s.sion: a tongue of flame seemed to devour the work of long years in a single night. After the execution of Pea.r.s.e it would have been vain to argue against him that he had appealed to Germany for aid and invited to Ireland hands red with the blood of Irish soldiers: the reply would have been that he might have done so or he might not; that it had never been proved what he did; that he had acted for the best; that

What matters it, if he was Ireland's friend?

There are but two great parties in the end.