The tone of these letters, coming from no fire-eating Nationalist but the staunchest of Unionist peers, is sufficient proof that Lord Kitchener's action or inaction was resented by those who knew Ireland and had the best interests of Ireland at heart. The Irish Times wrote in the same sense; and on October 19th a formal attack was launched in the Daily Chronicle, which drew a sharp contrast with the treatment accorded to Ulster. "Up to this hour," the writer said, "the Irish Division asked for by Mr. Redmond has been refused sanction by the War Office." This was an overstatement, but it was true that up to this time such a belief naturally prevailed, because the War Office could not be induced to make the desired announcement that sanction had been given. Moreover, although the concession had been made, it was made in a very different way from that used in dealing with Sir Edward Carson. Redmond had no voice whatever in the organization. The choice of a divisional commander was of infinite importance; and it fell upon Lieutenant-General Sir Lawrence Parsons, K.C.B., an artillery officer of great distinction, a man of wide general knowledge and culture and of strongly marked individuality. Yet his individuality did not make him easy for Redmond to work with. He was not simply a typical professional soldier of the old Army; he was an idealist in his profession; and part of the professional soldier's idealism is to resent and despise political considerations. He recognized that Redmond had spoken and acted with a statesman's vision; he failed to recognize that in many matters political tactics are necessary to carry out a statesman's plan. Also, it was very difficult for him or for any other professional soldier to realize that recruiting, under such conditions as then prevailed, was a politician's task, not a soldier's, even in Great Britain; and that this was tenfold more true of Ireland.
The point requires to be emphasized, because it applies to a greater personage—Lord Kitchener himself. I believe that Lord Kitchener honestly desired the success of Redmond's mission. To my personal knowledge he sent for one officer long known to him and took him from a command in which he was comfortably placed and sent him, against his will, to raise one of our battalions in a difficult area. The choice was absolutely sound, and success was achieved by methods which did not always follow strictly the letter of King's Regulations. But these departures from rule were quite in accordance with the spirit of the old Army, and Lord Kitchener was ready to stand over any of them. He would do the best he could for our division on the old lines. He would, I am certain, have said that he had done the best thing possible for it in appointing to the command an Irishman who was a first-rate soldier and a first-rate man to supervise the training of troops. So far as my judgment is able to go, the credit for making the Sixteenth Division what it was when we went to France belongs chiefly to the divisional general under whom we trained.
General Parsons had the gift, which appears to be rare in soldiers, of imparting ideas not merely about discipline but about the art of war; and he had an enthusiasm which communicated itself. But these were the qualities of the soldier in his own sphere, with which Redmond had no contact. What Redmond knew was the writer of letters which now lie before me. Running through them all is the tone of a soldier in authority who accepts assistance from a friendly, influential, well-meaning but imperfectly instructed civilian. There is no recognition of the fact that Redmond was the accepted leader of a Volunteer Force numbering over a hundred thousand men; no glimpse of any perception that morally, and almost officially, Redmond was the accredited head of the nation in whose name the division was being raised—a nation to which the statutory right of self-government had just been accorded.
The whole position was extraordinary. Legally and theoretically, Redmond was a simple member of Parliament. Practically and morally, he was the head of Ireland, exactly as Botha was of South Africa; and he was trying to do without legal powers what Botha was doing by means of them. He was far more than the Leader of the Opposition in Great Britain; for in Ireland there really was no Government. Moral authority, which must proceed from consent of the governed, the Irish Government had not possessed for many a long day; but its legal status had been unimpeachable. Now even that was gone; it was merely a stop-gap contrivance, carrying on till the Act of Parliament should receive fulfilment; and, as a bare matter of fact, it was powerless. No operative decision of any moment was taken or could be taken at this moment in Ireland. Everything was referred to the Cabinet, and that body had no power to carry out a popular policy in Ireland.
Redmond had put forward a policy which they had accepted in principle. It could only be carried out through him, and for success he must be consulted in detail. Neither Lord Kitchener nor General Parsons in fact recognized the status which this implied. They were prepared to listen to suggestions from him; they were not prepared to accept guidance, as they must have done had he been Prime Minister of the country.
It was impossible that Redmond's attitude in dealing with General Parsons should not imply some sense of the position which he held; equally impossible, from the temper and mentality of the man, that there should not be in General Parsons's letters an underlying assertion that in military matters the military must decide.
The correspondence between the two men opened by a letter from Sir Lawrence Parsons, who had just established his headquarters at Mallow; and its chief purpose was to direct Redmond's attention to the fact that an Irish Division was a much finer and nobler unit than an Irish Brigade. Two points in it, however, are of interest. "I have been appointed by Lord Kitchener," said General Parsons, "because I am an Irishman and understand my countrymen." Also, "I have had a considerable share in selecting the officers of the Division, almost all Irishmen of every political and religious creed."
What lay behind the first of these sentences was a profound conviction that the writer thoroughly understood the necessities of the situation. That was a disastrous mistake. To understand Ireland at such a moment was difficult for anyone, impossible for a man who had not been in close touch with the mental condition produced by all these extraordinary happenings. The effect of the preparations for rebellion in Ulster, of the Curragh incident, and of the collision between troops and people in Dublin—the effect of the existence of a permitted Nationalist Volunteer Force—the effect of Redmond's appeal: these were three completely novel and conflicting currents in the stream of Irish life. Nobody could hope to estimate these developments from a general view, however intelligent, of Irish history and character, nor even from the most intimate and sympathetic acquaintance with Irish troops of the old Army.
A proof of the unhappy lack of comprehension is furnished by the second sentence I have quoted. General Parsons had been most rightly allowed by the War Office to assist in selecting officers for the Division. But it had never occurred to either party to consult Redmond on this critical matter. Does anyone suppose that Sir Edward Carson had no voice in the staffing of the Ulster Division? He had at all events received from the first a clear promise that all professional soldiers who had been officers in the Ulster Volunteers would be officers in the Division, and that any who had been mobilized should be restored to their associates in the Division.
General Parsons brought to this whole matter the fine principle that no man's religious or political beliefs should stand in his way. He omitted to consider the effect produced on the situation by the fact that the Ulster Division had been actually allowed to exclude all Catholics, as such, and to accept no officer who was not politically in sympathy with Unionist Ulster. Redmond had not the least wish to exclude either Protestants or Unionists; he wanted all Irishmen on an equality. But he was bound by common sense and by a perception of realities to desire that Protestants and Unionists should not appear to monopolize the command.
Not one of the three brigadiers appointed was generally known in Ireland, personally or by his connections. One was an Englishman. Of the officers originally appointed not one in five was a Catholic. No Catholic commanded a battalion, scarcely half a dozen were field officers. The only Catholic field officer appointed to the Division who had been prominently connected with the Volunteers was Lord Fingall, and he had severed his connection with that body.
All this was a terrible blunder. Whether it was wise or unwise to allow the formation of a division having the peculiar character of the Ulster Division may be argued—but certainly Redmond never took exception to it, and no man who ever saw these Ulstermen in the field can regret its inception. But once it was formed, its existence created a situation which had to be recognized. An equivalent ought to have been given; but no genuine attempt to do this was made.
In replying to Sir Lawrence Parsons, Redmond raised no controversy as to what had been done; he was, indeed, not cognizant of the facts. But he addressed himself from the first to making friendly suggestions.
Amongst other things he referred to an appeal which Sir Lawrence Parsons had addressed to the women of Ireland, that they should provide regimental colours for the battalions of the Division. This appeal was promptly met, to Redmond's great delight—delight which was soon changed into vexation, for the War Office stepped in, declared the proceeding irregular, and prohibited the holding of colours by any temporary battalion. General Parsons was obliged to publish an explanation which must have been galling to himself, and which went far to confirm the impression that the War Office, with all its preoccupations, had time to keep an unfriendly eye on the Nationalist recruiting effort.
Another trivial matter led to prolonged and irritating controversy. Towards the end of October the Belfast and Dublin papers announced that the Army Council had approved of "an Ulster badge similar to that worn by Ulster Volunteers" as a cap badge for all troops in the Ulster Division. It was pointed out that this would have the effect of preserving the identity of the Ulster Division. Immediately, and not unnaturally, the demand for a similar concession was put forward on behalf of the Sixteenth Division. General Parsons was opposed, as any old soldier would be, to a variation in the distinguishing marks of old and famous regiments. He did not allow for the fact that we needed to attract new soldiers in masses—men who as yet knew nothing of regimental tradition. Still, he co-operated in forwarding Redmond's desire, which was to meet a widely spread sentimental demand. Now that the war is over, many soldiers argue that there is no reason in the nature of things why Irish regiments should not have a clearly distinguishing uniform, as the Scots or the Colonials do. In the last months, when recruiting was a matter of urgency, Colonel Lynch induced the War Office to consent to equipping an Irish Brigade with a completely distinctive dress; unhappily the pattern was (after several months) still under discussion when the war ended. I have little doubt that from the point of view of recruiting even the badge, to say nothing of a distinctive uniform, would have been an asset; I have no doubt at all that the refusal of it was a set-back, because it was a refusal given after a discussion and correspondence which lasted from November till February. The most interesting point, however, is that Lord Kitchener found time to occupy himself repeatedly with this question in the period between the first and second battles of Ypres. If his intervention had been judicious, it would have been as impressive as the spectacle of a battery elephant stopping in action to pick up a pin with his trunk.
On one point Redmond's representations, heartily backed by General Parsons, were successful. Catholic chaplains, of whom no adequate number were at first provided for Irish troops, were secured. It is pleasant to note that Lord Roberts, who before the war had been vehement on the Ulster side, used his personal influence to support this application. A month or two later, when death came to the veteran, dramatically, among the troops in France, Redmond told the House of Commons how on that question Lord Roberts had met him in the friendliest way and endeavoured to arrange for attending the great meeting at the Dublin Mansion House.
On another matter Redmond was able to assist the equipment of the Division. He suggested, and General Parsons fully admitted the value of, regimental bands; but the War Office made no grants for them. Redmond drew upon a large sum which had been placed at his disposal by a private individual to further his campaign, and all our battalions were indebted to him for their fife and drum equipment. There was, in short, no detail in which he was not willing and anxious to assist the Division and its commander. But the friction between the two men was unmistakable.
The most serious cause of it was the line taken by General Parsons about the appointment of officers. He laid down a rule, which I think would have had excellent results if enforced throughout the whole of the new armies, that no man should be recommended for a commission without previous military experience, and that candidates lacking that experience must put in a period of service in the ranks. He set apart a special company in one battalion, the 7th Leinsters, to which such men should be sent, so that while drilling and exercising with the rest of the battalion, and enjoying no special privilege, they ate and slept and lived together in their own barrack rooms.
Yet the obstacle thus set up deterred a good many of the less zealous, who could not understand why that should be made a condition in the Irish Division which was not so in the Ulster Division—nor, indeed, so far as I know, anywhere else at that time. Men who had been officers of Ulster Volunteers got their commissions as a matter of course; the officer of National Volunteers had to prove his competence in the cadet company. General Parsons fully admitted this difference of treatment, and justified it by saying to Redmond that in consequence of it he would be very sorry to change officers with the Ulster Division. One cannot refuse to admire such a spirit; but he ought to have asked himself whether it was fair to impose a handicap on Redmond's efforts. Everything turned on getting representative young men from the Volunteers, and from the correspondence it appears that few were coming from the South and West. From the North they poured in. In our 47th Brigade, the 6th Royal Irish Regiment was mainly composed of Derry Nationalists; the 7th Leinsters and the 6th Connaught Rangers were almost to a man followers of Mr. Devlin from Belfast.
Next after Redmond, Mr. Devlin was the man to whom our Division owed most. But the first and the main impetus came from Redmond himself. He spoke on October 4th at Wexford, the capital of his native county; on the 11th at Waterford, his own constituency; on the 18th at Kilkenny, the constituency of his close friend Pat O'Brien. A week later he was at Belfast and in the glens of Antrim, among the Nationalists of Ulster. Then Parliament kept him for a few weeks; in December he was back, and spoke at Tuam and in Limerick. Everywhere the Volunteers turned out in great numbers to receive him; and to them his appeal was primarily addressed.
At Wexford he laid stress on Mr. Asquith's pledge that the Volunteers should remain as a recognized permanent force for the defence of the country, and this led him to raise frankly the question of control. Who should have authority over Volunteers in a State? Surely the elected and responsible government. But pending Home Rule, "the policy and control of the Volunteers must rest with the elected representatives of the country."
More generally, he reminded them that he had always spoken of the possibility of some great political convulsion that might destroy their plans. "Nothing but an earthquake can now prevent Home Rule," he had said. "The outbreak of this overwhelming war might easily have overwhelmed Home Rule. But we have survived it."
And he went on to argue that the delay might be a blessing in disguise. Civil war between Irishmen had always seemed to him an impossibility. That impossibility was now universally admitted. In a passage of unusual heat he denounced the "so-called statesmen" who came over unasked to our country to inflame feelings—as Mr. Bonar Law had done; and he appealed to all sections "to enable us to utilize the interval before a Home Rule Parliament assembles to unite all Irishmen under a Home Rule Government."
At Waterford he was largely occupied with repelling the charge that he and his colleagues had made a bargain with the Government to ship Irish Volunteers overseas to fight whether they would or no. This was the line on which opposition was developing, and it was assisted by articles in the English Press, which laid it down that unless the Irish furnished a sufficiency of recruits, Home Rule should be repealed.
An extension of this argument, that Redmond was buying Home Rule with the blood of young Irishmen, raised the question whether Home Rule was worth the price. While the Bill was not yet law, it was a flag, a symbol. Once it became an Act, men's attitude changed; they turned to criticizing what they had got; and one powerful newspaper, bitterly hostile to the Parliamentary party, expended much ingenuity in exaggerating the limitations of what had been gained. While one set of critics endeavoured to show how miserable was the price obtained, another dwelt on the unrighteousness of making such a bargain without Ireland's consent. In Redmond's speech at Kilkenny there was a note of resentment. He refused at any great crisis to consider "what might please the gallery or the crowd, or might spare him the insults of a handful of cornerboys."
But the kernel of all his thought was put into one sentence by him at Belfast. "The proper place to guard Ireland is on the battlefields of France." It was from Belfast after this meeting that the first striking demonstration of response came—organized and inspired by Mr. Devlin. On November 20th nearly a full battalion of recruits, many National Volunteers, entrained for Fermoy; a week later they were followed by another great detachment. The example spread; and when Redmond spoke at Limerick on December 20th, the Irish Times in a friendly leading article admitted that "the National Volunteers were now coming forward in large numbers and the Irish Brigade was going to be a credit to the country." This was a very different note from that which had come from Unionist quarters at earlier stages.
III
So far as recruiting went, Redmond had won. He was sure of making good to England. But in what concerned making good to Ireland, he had no progress to report. He stated that already nearly 16,500 men from the Volunteers had joined the Army, and he could not understand why Government was so chary of giving assistance to train and equip this force. There was no doubt as to the mass of men available. Figures supplied by the police to the Chief Secretary estimated that between September 24th, when the split took place, and October 31st, out of 170,000 Volunteers, only a trifle over 12,000 adhered to Professor MacNeill.
But in Dublin the opponents were nearly 2,000 out of 6,700; and two strong battalions went almost solid against Redmond. These battalions, along with the Citizens' Army, were destined to alter the course of Irish history. It was specially true of them, but true generally of all the minority who left Redmond, that they were kept together by a resolute and determined group who had a clear purpose.
The "Irish Volunteers," as the dissentients called themselves, were made to feel that they were a minority, and an unpopular minority in more than one instance. In Galway, when they turned out to parade the streets, they were driven off with casualties—retaliation for their interference with our meeting in September. In Dundalk there was a somewhat similar occurrence. But they got more than their own back one day in November by a bold coup—forerunner of many. Ninety rifles belonging to the National Volunteers were being moved in a cart from one place to another. Half a dozen men armed with revolvers held up the cart and its driver and carried off the rifles. At their Convention, held in the end of October, Professor MacNeill said: "They would go on with the work of organizing, training and equipping a Volunteer force for the service of Ireland in Ireland, and such a force might yet be the means of saving Home Rule from disaster, and of compelling the Home Rule Government to keep faith with Ireland without the exaction of a price in blood."
That forecast has not as yet realized itself; and many of us think that the chief achievement of this section has been to turn to waste a heavy price that was paid in blood by other men for the sake of Ireland. But unquestionably they were, though the minority, far more of a living reality than the mass of the original force—and for a simple reason. Their purpose, whether good or bad, was within their own control. The purpose of the majority was to carry out Redmond's policy—which was to make the Volunteers part of an Irish army of which the striking force was designed to defend Ireland on the battlefields of Flanders. But to carry out that policy the National Volunteers must be accepted as a purely local Irish military organization for home defence—controlled, in the absence of a popularly elected Irish Government, by the elected Irish representatives. The War Office thwarted that policy. Lord Kitchener would not accept it. He continued to be of the opinion that by equipping Redmond's followers he would be arming enemies.
It is worth noting that one of the ablest and most detached students of Irish affairs was wholly on Redmond's side. Lord Dunraven, appealing on behalf of "the new Irish Brigade," pointed out that both sides of Redmond's policy must be accepted. "No scheme which fails to take some account of the National Volunteer Force can do justice to what Ireland can give," he wrote. But was there everywhere a desire to do justice to what Ireland could give—and was willing to give? Redmond was warned in those days by an influential correspondent in England that a deliberate policy was being pursued by the opponents of Home Rule, who undoubtedly had strong backing in the War Office. The National Volunteers were to become the objects of derision and contempt, which would extend to himself. By keeping the Volunteers out of active participation in war service, it could be proved that Redmond did not speak for Ireland or represent Ireland; that the Irish were raising unreal objections so as to keep an excuse for avoiding danger. It was urged on him that he should press for the extension of the Territorial Act to Ireland and endeavour to bring his men in on this footing.
There were two difficulties in the way of this scheme which nevertheless attracted him strongly. The first was that enlistment in the Territorials for home service had been stopped—so that the proposal had little advantage, if any, over enlistment in the Irish brigades. The second was due to the Volunteers themselves, many of whom, though willing to serve in the war, were unwilling to take the oath of allegiance.
There were limits to the length to which Redmond felt himself able to go, and he never dealt with this objection by argument. The example which he set was plain to all. He joined in singing "God save the King," in drinking the King's health, and at Aughavanagh now he flew the Union Jack beside the Green flag. He was willing to take part in any demonstration which implied that Nationalist Ireland under its new legal status accepted its lot in the British Empire fully and without reserve. It was superfluous for him to argue that Nationalists might consistently take the oath of allegiance when Nationalists were pledging their lives in the King's service beside every other kind of citizen in the British Empire. Over and above his own example was the example of his brother and his son. On November 23rd Willie Redmond addressed a great meeting in Cork and told them, "I won't say to you go, but come with me." He was then fifty-three—and for most men it would have been "too late a week." But no man was ever more instinctively a soldier, and to soldiering he had gone by instinct as a boy. He was an officer in the Wexford Militia for a year or two, till politics drove him out of that service and drew him into another. Now he went to the war gravely but joyfully. I think those days did not bring into relief any more picturesque or sympathetic figure.
One thing ought to be said. Mr. Devlin wished to join also, but Redmond held that he could not be spared from Ireland, where his influence was enormous; and he was placed in a somewhat unfair position, even though everyone who knew him knew that his chief attribute was personal courage. But he was indispensable for the work which had to be done, of helping at this strange crisis to keep Ireland peaceful and united at a time when Government was at its lowest ebb of authority.
Trouble threatened. On October 11th, the anniversary of Parnell's death, three bodies of Volunteers turned out in Dublin—the National Volunteers, the Irish Volunteers, and the Citizen Army. A collision occurred which might easily have become serious. This passed off, but early in December the Government suppressed three or four of the openly anti-British papers, which were, of course, still more virulent against Redmond. They reappeared under other names. But a meeting of protest against the suppression was held outside Liberty Hall. Mr. Larkin had, by this time, gone to America. His chief colleague, Mr. James Connolly, who was the brain of the Irish Labour Movement, presided, and at the close declared that the meeting had been held under the protection of an armed company of the Citizen Army posted in the windows and on the roof of Liberty Hall. Had the police or military attempted to disperse the meeting, he said, "those rifles would not have been silent."
Ulster was not the only place where armed men thought themselves entitled to resist coercion.
Dublin was the more dangerous because the war, which created so much employment in Great Britain, brought no new trade to Ireland, outside of Belfast. Agriculture prospered, but the towns knew only a rise of prices. Redmond began with high hopes, which Mr. Lloyd George fostered, of rapidly-developing munition works, which would at the close of hostilities leave the foundation for industrial communities. Here again, however, Redmond's representations were in vain. When the heavy extra tax on beer and spirits was levied by the first supplementary Budget, he opposed it angrily:
"You are doing some shipbuilding at Belfast, you are making a few explosives at Arklow, you are buying some woollen goods from some of the smaller manufacturers, but apart from that, the bulk of the hundreds of millions of borrowed money which you are spending on the war is being spent in England and in increasing the income of your country."
This tax on alcohol would curtail the most important urban industry of the South and West of Ireland, and he feared that it was the old story of crushing Ireland's trade under the wheel of British interests.
Here again Redmond could only plead with the Irish Government that they, in their turn, should plead with the Imperial authorities. He should have been able to act in his own right as the head of an Irish Ministry, knowing the importance of providing employment at such a time. He saw the need and how to meet it; but he had none of the resources of power. As compared with the other men who occupied, in the public eye, a rank equivalent to his—with General Botha, for instance—he was like a commander of those Russian armies which had to take the field against Germans with sticks and pikes.
Yet power he had—power over the heart and mind of Ireland—the power which was given him by the response to his appeal. From January onwards the Sixteenth Division grew steadily and strongly. Recruiting began to get on a better basis. The appointment of Sir Hedley Le Bas in charge of this propaganda brought about a healthy change in methods. Appeals were used devised for Ireland, and not, as heretofore, simple replicas of the English article. Heart-breaking instances of stupidity were still of daily occurrence, but imagination and insight began to have some play; and there was no longer the complete separation which had existed between the effort of Redmond and his colleagues and the effort of men like Lord Meath. In January Willie Redmond was posted to his battalion, the 6th Royal Irish, at Fermoy, where the 47th Brigade had its headquarters. In his case, as in my own, there had been much avoidable and most undesirable delay; but his presence with the Division was worth an immense deal. There was delay also about his younger namesake, John Redmond's son—who was for a long time refused a commission in the Division in whose formation his father had played so great a part.
Naturally, trained speakers who had joined the Division were utilized for recruiting purposes. Willie Redmond did comparatively little of this work. It is no light job to take over command of a company, if you mean really to command it; and with him, from the moment he joined everything came second to his military duty. But private soldiers have a less exacting time, and there was scarcely one week of my three months in the 7th Leinsters in which I did not spend the Saturday and Sunday on this business—generally in company with the most brilliant speaker, taking all in all, that I have ever heard. Kettle, then a lieutenant in the battalion, was wit, essayist, poet and orator: whether he was most a wit or most an orator might be argued for a night without conclusion; but as talker or as speaker he had few equals. He was the son of a veteran Nationalist, who had taken a lead in Parnell's day; but the farmer's son had become the most characteristic product of Ireland's capital, which, rich or poor, squalid or splendid, is a metropolis—a centre of many interests, a forcing-house of many ideas. Nothing in Ireland is less English than Dublin, and its tone differs from that of England in having active sympathy with the continental mind.
Kettle was always to some extent in revolt against the theories of the Gaelic League, which he thought tended to make Ireland insular morally as well as materially. He was a good European because he was a good Irishman; and because he was both, he was, though largely educated in Germany, a fierce partisan of France.
More than all this, he had seen with his own eyes the actual martyrdom of Belgium. Sent out by Redmond to purchase rifles, he was in the country when Antwerp was occupied, and he wrote with passion of what he heard, of what he saw. Louvain to him was more than a mere name. All the Catholic in him, and all the Irish Catholic, for Ireland's association with Louvain was long and intimate, rose up in fury; he went through Ireland carrying the fiery cross.
Everywhere we went we had friendly and even enthusiastic audiences; the only place where I met any suggestion of hostility was at Killarney, and there it took the form of avoiding our meeting. We were cheered and encouraged—but we did not get many recruits, so to say, on the nail. Yet they came, generally dribbling in afterwards. From one small meeting in county Waterford we came away badly disappointed, having thought an effect was made, yet we did not take a single man. I heard later that within the next fortnight thirty men from that parish had come in by ones and twos to sign on—but at a town several miles away. Local pressure, personal not political, was against us, especially that of the mothers; and there was a shyness about taking this plunge into the unknown.
One exception stands out, in my mind, unlike the general run of these gatherings. It was the first field day of our brigade, when, dressed in the khaki that had at last been served out, we mustered on the race-course at Fermoy, five thousand strong; and I went from the review to the train for Waterford. There was no mistaking the temper of Redmond's constituency; we got men there in hundreds, including a score or so of cadets—young men of education—for our special company of the Leinsters, which was filling up fast.
At that meeting we had one force with us which was not often active on our side. The Bishop of Waterford was strong for the war; the leading parish priest of the town took the chair and spoke straight and plain, while one of the Regulars, a Carmelite friar, made a speech which was among the most eloquent that I have ever listened to.
At the beginning of April I was gazetted to a lieutenancy in the 6th Connaught Rangers, and began to know the Division from another aspect. Broadly speaking, the men with whom I had been sharing a hut were Nationalist by opinion and by tradition—though by no means all Catholics. There were Unionists, but they were few. In the society which I now joined—a joint mess of the Royal Irish and the Rangers—matters were different.
The personnel of the 6th Royal Irish was strongly characteristic of the old Army. The commanding officer, Curzon, was of Irish descent, but of little Irish association; his second in command was an Irish Protestant gentleman of a pleasant ordinary type. The senior company commander was an Englishman. As an offset, Willie Redmond had one company, and another was commanded by an ex-guardsman, who had been a chief personage in the Derry Volunteers, and brought so many of them with him that General Parsons gave him a captaincy straight off.
In my own battalion, no Catholic had then the rank of captain. The colonel and the adjutant belonged to well-known families in the North of Ireland, deeply involved in Covenanting politics. My own company commander was a very gallant little Dublin barrister, who, before the war, had exerted on English platforms against Home Rule the gift of racy eloquence which he now devoted to recruiting. Not half a dozen of the subalterns would have described themselves as Nationalists.
It is easy to see how all this could be represented, and was represented, to the outside public of Ireland. From the inside, one thing was clear. In our battalion every man desired the success of the Division, and more particularly of the Connaught Rangers, absolutely with a whole heart. Anything said or done that could have offended the men—practically all Catholic and Nationalist—would have drawn the most condign chastisement from our commanding officer. I never heard of any man or officer in the battalion who would have desired to change its colonel; we were fortunate, and we knew it. There was very little political discussion, and what there was turned chiefly on the question how far Redmond might be held to speak for Ireland. So far as Redmond himself was concerned, I think there were few, if any, who did not count it an honour to meet him—and some who had never been won to him before were won to him for his brother's sake.
Looking back on it all, it is clear to me that a change wrought itself in that society. I do not know one survivor of those men who does not desire that accomplishment should be given to the desire of those whom they led. In not a few cases one might put the change higher; some opinions as to what was good for Ireland were profoundly affected.
Yet this also is true. The atmosphere of the mess was one in which Willie Redmond found himself shy and a stranger. He had lived all his life in an intimate circle of Nationalist belief. Knowing the other side in the House of Commons, where many of his oldest friends and the men he liked best (Colonel Lockwood comes most readily to my mind) were political opponents, he had nevertheless always lived with people in agreement with his views; and you could not better describe the atmosphere of our mess than by saying that it was a society in which every one liked and respected Willie Redmond, but one in which he never really was himself. He was only himself with the men.
In short, so far as the officers were concerned, our Division was not a counterpart to the Ulster Division; it was not Irish in the sense that the other was Ulster. No attempt was made to make it so, and General Parsons would have quite definitely rejected any such ideal—though less fiercely than he would have repudiated the idea of handicapping a man for his opinions or his creed. Yet many persons without design, and some with a purpose, spread broadcast the belief that Catholics and Nationalists as such were relegated to a position of inferiority in the command of this Catholic and Nationalist Division.
The worst of our difficulties lay in the long inherited suspicions of the Irish mind. At a recruiting meeting one would argue in appealing to Nationalists that the Home Rule Act was a covenant on which we were in honour bound to act, and that every man who risked his life on the faith of that covenant set a seal upon it which would never be disregarded. The listeners would applaud, but after the meeting one and another would come up privately and say: "Are you sure now they aren't fooling us again?" The Sinn Féin propaganda, always shrewdly conducted, did not fail to emphasize the pronouncement of the Tory Press that there should be no Home Rule because Ireland had failed to come forward; or to point the moral of Mr. Bonar Law's excursion to Belfast, with its violent asseveration that Ulster should be backed without limit in opposition to control by an Irish Parliament. Ireland, always suspect, has learnt to be profoundly suspicious; and suspicion is the form of prophecy which has most tendency to fulfil itself.
In one part of the Irish race, however, this cold paralysis of distrust had no operation. The Irish in Great Britain, always outdoing all others in the keenness of their Nationalism, were nearer the main current of the war, and were more in touch with the truth about English feeling. They had a double impulse, as Redmond had; they saw how to serve their own cause in serving Europe's freedom; and their response was magnificent. Mr. T.P. O'Connor probably raised more recruits by his personal appeal than any other man in England.
A great part of Redmond's correspondence in these months came from Irishmen in England who were joining as Irishmen, and who had great difficulty in making their way to our Division. Many thousands had already enlisted elsewhere; hundreds, at least, tried to join the Sixteenth Division, and failed to get there. But there was one instance to which attention should be directed. In Newcastle-on-Tyne a movement was set on foot to raise Tyneside battalions, including one of Irish. Mr. O'Connor went down, and the upshot was that four Irish battalions were raised. They were in existence by January 1, 1915, when General Parsons was already writing that unless Irishmen could be found to fill up the Division, we must submit to the disgrace of having it made up by English recruits. The obvious answer was to annex the Tyneside Irish Brigade. Redmond, moreover, held that to bring over this brigade to train in Ireland, and to incorporate it bodily in the Sixteenth Division, would please the Tyneside men—for a tremendous welcome would have greeted them in their own country—and would have an excellent effect on Irish opinion generally. But the proposal was rigorously opposed by the War Office. It was argued that these men had enlisted technically as Northumberland Fusiliers and Northumberland Fusiliers they must remain. In reality, as far as one can judge, the War Office were penny wise and pound foolish. "We have got these men," they said, "and we have a promise from Redmond to fill a Division. Why relieve him of one-third of his task?"
Redmond knew, and we all knew, that the essential was to get our Division complete and into the field at the earliest possible moment. He had confidence that once they got to work they would make a name for themselves, which would be the best attraction for recruits. Let it be remembered that at this moment popular expectation put the end of the war about July. When I joined the Rangers in April 1915, our mess was full of young officers threatening to throw up their commissions and enlist in some battalion which would give them the chance of seeing a fight. We could not expect to move to France before August, and by that time all that we could hope would be to form part of the army of occupation. Rumour was rife, too, that the Division would be broken up and utilized for draft-finding, that it would never see France as a unit. All this talk came back to Redmond and increased his anxiety to make the work complete.
He held, and I think rightly, that the whole machinery of recruiting worked against us; that every officer had instructions to send no man to the Sixteenth Division who could be got into a draft-finding reserve battalion. Knowing what we know, I cannot blame them; but the game was not fairly played. A man would come in and say he wanted to join the Irish Brigade. "Which regiment?" Often he might not realize that a brigade was made up of regiments, but if he knew and answered, for instance, "The Dublins," he was more likely than not to be shipped off to the Curragh, where the reserve of the regular battalions was kept, instead of to Buttevant, where our Dublins were in training.
Still, with all our troubles, things were marching ahead in that April of 1915; recruits were coming in to the tune of 1,500 a week. Then came a political crisis and the formation of a Coalition Government. Redmond was asked to take a post in it. The letter in which the invitation was conveyed made it clear that the post could not be an Irish office.
Redmond refused. He said to me afterwards that under no conditions did he think he could have accepted. But he added, "If I had been Asquith and had wished to make it as difficult as possible to refuse, I should have offered a seat in the Cabinet without portfolio and without salary."
He was well aware how many and how unscrupulous were his enemies in Ireland; he was not prepared to give them the opportunity of saying that he had got his price for the blood of young Irishmen and the betrayal of his principles. Even apart from the question of salary, the tradition against acceptance of office under Government till Ireland's claim was satisfied would have been very hard to break. Yet Redmond saw fully how disastrous would be the effect on Irish opinion if he were not in the Government and Sir Edward Carson was.
Knowing Ireland as he did, he knew that the acceptance of Sir Edward Carson as a colleague would be taken in Ireland to imply that the Government had abandoned its support of Home Rule. Ireland would assume that the Ulster leader would not come in except on his own terms. Redmond made the strongest representations that he could to the Prime Minister to exclude both Irish parties to the unresolved dispute. But Sir Edward Carson in those days was making himself very disagreeable in the House of Commons and Mr. Asquith, as usual, followed the line of least resistance.
The effect of the Coalition as formed was seen when recruiting in Ireland dropped from 6,000 in April-May to 3,000 in May-June. It stayed at the lower figure for several months, till it was raised again by efforts for which Redmond was chiefly responsible. I do not know whether Sir Edward Carson's presence in the Attorney-General's office, or his absence from the Opposition benches in debates, was worth ten thousand men; but that is a small measure of what was lost in Ireland by his inclusion.
IV
The formation of the Coalition Government marks the first stage in the history of Redmond's defeat and the victory of Sir Edward Carson and Sinn Féin.
Of what he felt upon this matter, Redmond at the time said not a word in public. Six months later, on November 2, 1915, when a debate on the naval and military situation was opened, he broke silence—and his first words were an explanation of his silence. He had not intervened, he said, in any debate on the war since its inception. "We thought a loyal and as far as possible silent support to the Government of the day was the best service we could render." This silence had been maintained "even after the formation of the Coalition"—when the Irish view had been roughly set aside, and when the personal tie to the Liberal Government with which he had been so long allied had been profoundly modified. He claimed the credit of this loyalty not merely for himself but for the whole of his country. "Since the war commenced the voice of party controversy has disappeared in Ireland."
This was pushing generosity almost to a stretch of imagination, for the voice of party controversy had not been absent from the Belfast Press, nor had it spared him. But he was speaking then, and he desired that the House should feel that he spoke, as Ireland's spokesman; he claimed credit for North and South alike in the absence of all labour troubles in war supply. "The spectacle of industrial unrest in Great Britain, the determined and unceasing attacks in certain sections of the Press upon individual members of the Government and in a special way upon the Prime Minister, have aroused the greatest concern and the deepest indignation in Ireland," he said. "Mr. Asquith stands to-day, as before the war, high in the confidence of the Irish people." The "persistent pessimism" had effected nothing except to help in some measure "that little fringe which exists in Ireland as in England, of men who would if they could interfere with the success of recruiting."
No doubt there was an element of policy, of a fencer's skill, in all this. Sir Edward Carson had not maintained silence and certainly had not spared the Prime Minister. But in essence Redmond was relying on the plain truth. He had pledged support and he gave it to the utmost of his power, even at his peril. Mr. Birrell in the posthumous "Appreciation" which has been already quoted has this passage:
"Although it was not always easy to do business with him, being very justly suspicious of English politicians, he could be trusted more implicitly than almost every other politician I have ever come in contact with. He was slow to pass his word, but when he had done so, you knew he would keep it to the very letter, and what was almost as important, his silence and discretion could be relied upon with certainty. He was constitutionally incapable of giving anybody away who had trusted him."
Nothing but considerations of loyalty had kept him publicly silent in the months of this year when so much was done, and so much left undone, against his desire and his judgment. In June, the Sixteenth Division was within 1,000 of completion. The shortage existed in one brigade—the 49th—which had been formed of battalions having their recruiting areas in Ulster—two of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, one of the Inniskillings and one of the Royal Irish Rifles. The conception had undoubtedly been to provide for the Nationalists of Ulster. But, as it proved, these men vastly preferred to enlist in units which were not associated with the avowedly Unionist Division, all of whose battalions belonged to one or other of these three regiments; and the 49th Brigade was not nearly up to strength. The Tenth Division was now on the point of readiness for the field; but when the final weeding out of unfit or half trained men was completed its ranks were 1,200 short. The War Office decided to draw, not on both the other Irish Divisions, but on the Sixteenth only, and only upon the deficient brigade. When the offer of immediate service was made, every man in its four battalions volunteered, and the Tenth Division was completed; but the Sixteenth was thrown back, and the discouraging rumour that it was to be only used as a reserve gained a great impetus. Redmond was very angry. He wrote to Mr. Tennant demanding that at least the Division's deficiency should at once be made up, by giving to us the full product of one or two weeks' recruiting in Ireland. Nothing of the kind was done to meet his request.
It was, however, some compensation to think that at least one of our purely Irish formations was going to take the field; and we hoped that its fortunes might remedy a complaint which began to be loudly made—that credit was withheld from the achievements of Irish troops.
The main source of this grievance was the publication of Admiral de Robeck's despatch concerning the first landing at Gallipoli. In the original document, a schedule was given showing the detail of troops told off to each of the separate landings; and the narrative, in which a sailor spoke with frank enthusiasm of the desperate valour shown by soldiers, was written with constant reference to the detail given. As some evil chance willed, the narrative mentioned by name several of the regiments engaged; but when it came to describe the forlorn hope at "V" Beach, it dealt fully with the special difficulties, and said in brief but emphatic phrase, "Here the troops wrought miracles." The War Office, in editing the despatch for publication, suppressed the schedule, as likely to give information to the enemy, so that in this case it did not appear to whom the praise applied.
Certain things are unbelievable. No officer and no man that ever lived could from a partisan feeling against Ireland have sought to rob regiments who had done and suffered such things as the Dublins and Munsters did and suffered at "V" Beach of whatever credit could be given to them. Yet in such times as we were living in, the unbelievable is readily believed, and men saw malice in the suppression of what could not long be secret: Ireland had too many dead that day. What made the suggestion more incredible only gave a poignancy to resentment, for Admiral de Robeck was an Irishman, with his home some few miles from the regimental depot of the Dublins.
Two things, however, should be said. If only in fairness to Admiral de Robeck, the explanation should instantly have been given: it was never given in full until he came before the Dardanelles Commission, many months later, and it has not been officially published to this hour. And further, whoever edited the despatch was presumably a soldier, and knew how jealous soldiers are, and how jealous their friends are for them, of every word that goes to the recognition of such service. The effect of omitting the schedule ought to have been foreseen.
Even before the middle of August, when angry letters over this despatch were appearing in the Irish Press, other news began to come to Ireland, ill calculated to help recruiting. The Tenth Division had come into action, but under the unluckiest conditions. When the great attempt was made to cut across the peninsula by a renewed push from Anzac and by a new landing at Suvla Bay, the Irish were among the reinforcements told off for that surprise. But from lack of room on the island bases it was considered impossible to keep them together as a division, and one brigade, the 29th, lay so far off that it could not be brought into the concerted movement on Suvla. It was therefore sent separately to Anzac, and joined in with the Australians. Broken up by regiments and not operating as a unit, it furnished useful support; but no credit for what the men did could go to Ireland. The other two brigades, the 30th and 31st, were left under the command of their divisional general and were to attack on the left of the bay. But owing to some defect in exploration of the coast-line, the movement was not so carried out; six battalions out of the eight were landed on the south of the bay and were attached to the right-hand force. Thus, in the actual operations Sir Bryan Mahon had under his command only two battalions of his own men. The remaining six operated under the command of the divisional general of the Eleventh Division, who delegated the conduct of the actual attack to one of his brigadiers. It is sufficient to say that immediately after the action both these officers were relieved of their commands. The same fate befell the corps commander under whose directions this wing of the concerted movement was placed.
In face of these facts it would be absurd to deny that the troops were badly handled. They suffered terribly from thirst, and the suffering was in large measure preventible. The attack was a failure. All the success achieved was the capture of Chocolate Hill, and the Irish claim that success. It is disputed by other regiments. This much is certain: the Irish were part of the troops who carried the hill, and at nightfall, when the rest were withdrawn to the beach, the Irish were left holding it.
But they had paid dearly, and in the days which followed many more were sacrificed in the hopeless effort to retrieve what had been lost when the surprise attack failed. The loss fell specially on a picked battalion, the 7th Dublins, which had grown up about a footballers' company, the very flower of young Irish manhood. Grief and indignation were universal when tales of what had happened began to come through.
But of all this Redmond said no word in public. He threatened disclosure in debate at one period; yet on a strong representation from Mr. Tennant—in whose friendliness, as in the Prime Minister's, he had confidence—he refrained. To this abstention he added the most practical proof of good will. Lord Wimborne, now Lord-Lieutenant, seriously concerned at the continued drop in recruiting, which had not shown any sign of recovery since the Coalition Government was formed, came to him with the proposal for a conference on the subject. In pursuance of this suggestion Redmond went to London, where an interview took place between him and Lord Kitchener, Mr. Birrell and Mr. Tennant assisting. Redmond put in a memorandum stating his complaints, and thrashed out the subject to satisfactory conclusions on all points that directly affected recruiting. The conference ultimately met at the Viceregal Lodge on October 15th. It included the Primate of All Ireland, Lord Londonderry, Lord Meath, Lord Powerscourt, Sir Nugent Everard, the O'Conor Don and Colonel Sharman Crawford, the Lord Mayors of Dublin, Belfast and Cork, and Redmond. The military were represented by Major-General Friend, commanding the troops in Ireland, with whom Redmond always had the most cordial relations.
Only those who understand something of Irish tradition will realize how great a departure from established usage it was for Parnell's lieutenant and successor to take part formally in a meeting at the Viceregal Lodge—or indeed to cross its threshold for any purpose. But Redmond always had the logic of his convictions. As part of a compact, he was helping to the best of his power the Government which must carry on till Home Rule could come into operation; and here as elsewhere he was ready to mark his conviction that the enactment of Home Rule had made possible a complete change in his attitude.
Among his papers is a very full note of what passed on this occasion. It is confidential, but one may note the extreme friendliness of attitude as between Redmond and the Ulster representatives, and also the fact that the operative suggestions agreed on were proposed first by Redmond himself. They were the result of his interview with Lord Kitchener. Recruiting in Ireland should no longer be left to voluntary effort, but a Department should be formed corresponding to that over which Lord Derby had been appointed to preside in Great Britain; and the Lord-Lieutenant himself should accept the position of its official head, and should appoint or nominate some man of known business capacity to preside over the detail of organization. Redmond pressed also that the country should be told definitely what Lord Wimborne had told the conference, that the need was for a total of about 1,100 recruits per week.
He insisted also very strongly on the publication of a letter which Lord Kitchener at his instance had written to the conference. Its last paragraph read:
"The Irish are entitled to their full share of the compliments paid to the rest of the United Kingdom for their hitherto magnificent response to the appeal for men: but if that response is to reap its due and only reward in victory, the supply must be continued."
Over 81,000 recruits had been raised in Ireland since the war started—a period of eighty-two weeks. Viewed in comparison with Lord Kitchener's original anticipations, the result might well be called "magnificent." But it was necessary to maintain the same weekly average, and for four months the figure had been much below this. The result of the new campaign was to raise nearly 7,500 men in seven weeks.