Ireland in Travail

Out of the whirlpool of lies, misunderstandings, prevarications, distortions, inaccuracies and passions which go to the making up of history, can one secure some of the causes and effects connected with the Irish struggle since the Sinn Fein movement put aside pacific methods and became militant? Are there conclusions to be drawn?

Three separate traditions seem to have been welded together for the purpose of uniting Ireland in a common cause. One tradition is the political tradition that Ireland possesses a national individuality, and must continue to struggle for the expression of that individuality until it is obtained. A second tradition is the Gaelic tradition, that Ireland must revive and cherish the Gaelic spirit, the Gaelic culture, the Gaelic language and literature. The third tradition is the tradition that internal affairs must be altered and improved. These three traditions came together in the Sinn Fein movement. The Irish Republic was to be an independent republic, it was to be as far as possible a Gaelic republic, and as a state it was to be an example to the world.

Each generation of Irish leaders, to grind their patriotic axes, have insisted that Ireland is a conquered country, suffering the fate of the conquered. The statement is too sweeping. Ireland has been part of a united kingdom with a common legislation. She has suffered to a certain extent from the too centralised parliament at Westminster, where her local affairs have frequently been crowded out. She has been legislated for as an industrial country when she is in reality an agricultural country. She has suffered from absentee landlords, another effect of centralisation. She has suffered in other ways; but she has suffered most of all from herself, from her inability ever to become united, to hold an individual opinion, to cease being hag-ridden by religion, which has starved her educationally.

There have been bills passed for the rest of the British Isles which have not been passed in Ireland owing to the veto of the Catholic Church. One has only to compare the educational differences of the Irish people and the Scottish people, two nations of the same size, to comprehend what a heavy reckoning the Catholic Church will have to answer to some day.

The Catholic Church has allowed ignorance and superstition. A certain intolerance can also be laid at its door, but not in any great degree. But in Ulster, Protestant Ulster, Protestantism has bred a ferocity of intolerance, which is astounding in the twentieth century. Ireland staggers about with these two religions upon her back.

The old cry, Home Rule Rome Rule, was probably a false one. One of the results of the struggle for Irish independence has been the breaking of the power of the Catholic Church. The young men have in part educated themselves, and prevailing conditions have, whether for better or worse, matured their characters before their time. There is still a profound reverence and love for the Church; but the day has gone when it can dictate to the nation. While Sinn Fein was in its infancy the Church condemned the movement, when it grew strong the Church had to walk beside it with trembling steps and grave forebodings. The young generation of priests threw themselves into the Republican movement body and soul.

But Ireland is still hag-ridden. So long as North and South take their religions as violently as they do, the two parts of the Irish nation can never come together. It does not look as if North or South will relinquish its belief. Protestantism fits the vigorous masculine Northerner, Catholicism suits the feminine, imaginative, easy-going Southerner. Because Ireland is Ireland the two religions make a fence which keep the peoples apart. It is a calamity. What a people might the intermarriage of North and South produce!

So this fated nation has never had a single voice, and the British Government has perpetually listened to several contrary requests in place of one demand. The result has been that those things which ought to have been done have been left undone. One of the things which ought to have been done was to give Ireland such few original privileges as she asked a very long time ago.

Let us pass on.

The history of Ireland has been a series of periods of agitation, sometimes culminating in open rebellion, alternating with periods of quiet, at the end of which time political firebrands once more bludgeoned the people into discontent. There had been such a period of calm, and then came the birth of the Gaelic League and a Celtic renaissance to herald in Sinn Fein. It was a bellows for the Sinn Fein spark.

The manner in which the British Government dealt with the Sinn Fein situation when it did become a menace showed lack of imagination and lack of information. Two errors in policy were made, and in the second case the error was persisted in. Irishmen of all shades of political opinion have informed me that the irresolute conduct of the Cabinet over the Irish conscription issue during the European war was directly responsible for subsequent happenings. The young men of Ireland had become impregnated with the bellicose spirit which was abroad in the rest of Europe, and that spirit must finally find a way out through some channel or other. A firm conscription policy would have caused it to flow outwards to the discomfiture of the Empire’s enemies; the irresolution of the Government caused it to flow inwards. The British Cabinet was harassed at the time, and did not dare to put the issue to the test. The youth of Ireland took the Government change of mind as a sign of weakness, all the world knows with what results. Irishmen of all political opinions have assured me conscription could have been carried out.

The second case has been happening before my own eyes during the last eighteen months, and has been evidence of the lack of imagination and the little knowledge of the Irish temperament in Government circles.

There were two alternatives for dealing with the Republican movement. One was to strike it a hammer blow while it was in its infancy, using all the impedimenta of war if necessary, aiming at speed in all things. The other alternative was to be generous and give a satisfactory measure of Home Rule.[1] The course the Government did adopt was doomed to failure. The Irish are a sensitive people and a spirited people. Public opinion in Ireland was dead against the Easter week rising of 1916, the British soldiers were cheered when they arrived; but four or five years of repression, of Irishmen hunted by Englishmen, of mistaken arrests, of wrong houses raided, of troops tramping Irish streets, of police and more police, brought about the alteration in feeling. From my personal observation I am under the impression that the British Government was continually being misinformed on the progress made against the Republicans, and while, like a cancer, Sinn Fein was sending out new shoots about the country, the British Cabinet was officially told the movement was collapsing. Thus the matter was spun out, and first in tens, then in hundreds, finally in thousands, Loyalists went over to the other camp. I saw it for myself. It was obvious to anybody with eyes.

The Government’s influence was further weakened through its affection for Ulster. Though there was repression in the South, repression which was reluctant, but which grew more and more vigorous as difficulties increased, the Government had not the moral strength to adopt a firm attitude to the North. To be found with arms in the South and to be found with arms in the North was a different matter. Absolute impartiality throughout the length and breadth of the country and iron firmness in the beginning might have done much to mend matters; but the Government proved human, and was unable to belabour a man for loving it.

Again, the Government was hampered by the spell which fell on the civilian population at the mention of Sinn Fein. The Republican movement manifested itself as a gigantic and spreading secret society, and the civilian population was as putty in its hands. It was illuminating to the outsider to discover with what ease a small organised, ruthless body of men can overawe and control a vast disorganised body.

It is time to speak of the type of war waged. The Republicans called the struggle a war, and used war’s phraseology in connection with it; but it never assumed the proportions of war. Call it a war and say that it was one of the most inglorious wars ever fought. Own at the same time that it is difficult to suggest what other means of aggression Sinn Fein could have adopted in the face of its military inferiority, and acknowledge also on behalf of the Crown Forces that there was no means of striking at the enemy other than by reprisal. Loyalist and Republican were caught in the web of circumstance. If one judges the struggle by its outer manifestations, it astonishingly lacks elements of glory; but if one searches below the surface one finds alike in Republican and Loyalist the usual qualities bred of war, energy, courage, fortitude, sacrifice.

That is in the past now, and Ireland is in the hopeful present. Sinn Fein has left Ireland with her internal affairs in her own hands.

The door of an enlightened and ordered future is here: it is not yet open; but the key has been given into the hands of Irishmen. Will they throw it wide open, or will they stay arguing outside? Is there to be another Kali Yuga, a dark age, because Irishmen have split again? Let Ireland remember the words of “a certain minister” and stop talking and get on with the work. She is still drunk with nationality. Let her work off her intoxication as quickly as she can, keeping nationality’s choice qualities, a fine inspiration, a noble ideal; but rooting out the faults of nationality, provincialism, prejudice, narrowness. She has won her separation; let her not now set about working herself too much out of the world. To have a world influence, to produce a world people, she must stay within the world.

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