THE ORIGIN OF SINN FEIN

New Zealand Tablet, 10 July 1919, Page 11

THE ORIGIN OF SINN FEIN

(By Sir Fkancis Vane, in.the New Witness.)

: vSo much 'confusion appears to exist in respect of the origin of Sinn Fein as an active, militant, and political force, that a few words in explanation. may not be wasted. It is a psychological problem of immediate and intense interest. Now, it happens that the Anglo.-Saxon race, otherwise prosaic, not to say stolid, enough,, is more influenced by bogey words than either the Latin or the Celt. It is a problem which may well deserve,the attention,, of the folk lorist and even the psychist, for it may throw back to that earlier time when' they inhabited the swamps of the Elbe, and were nightly misdirected by will-o'-the-wisps. Nerve-destroying expressions ; need not be understood by them to be ..effective. There are few of the persons to-day who repeat in terms of horror the word "Bolshevist,',' who have the remotest conception of what it means, but-attach to it all the. gruesome characteristics which in their childhood they associated with the Devil, .visualised in print in books published by the less scrupulous among the religionists. v: Bolshevists, it may be presumed, vary from Tolstoyans to Red Anarchists (if such a person as an anarchist exists), but the name is sufficient to cause us to tremble for our bank balances, and to prepare us for the early loss of our wives. "The Scarlet Woman," "Boney," "The Russian Ogre," "Krooger," have in a century or so played their useful roles in frightening the fools in the interests of the profiteers—and now comes Sinn Fein as the ..incarnation of equally evil propensities. Let us see how it arose as a powerful political force. Up to the Irish Rebellion in 1916, Sinn Fein existed as a literary movement, having as an object to create a revival of interest in Irish history and institutions. Among its members were some of the leading loyalists in Ireland, as also some of the most profoundly disaffected.- It so happened that a considerable number among the leaders of the small rebellion belonged to this organisation, and this offered an excuse to the more wooden-headed Unionists (who had always feared a movement which encouraged the Irish people to study the glories of their past), to describe it as a Sinn Fein uprising. It was a profoundly stupid move, because it gave to a revolt which was in the greater part a protest against the scandalous conditions of life in the slums of Dublin a distinctly patriotic character. It united the. Labor and the Nationalist causes, which never should have been separate ,but undoubtedly were so. ■ ■■. ■ ■ ■

From this time forth Sinn Fein became the Nationalist cause, swallowing the old Nationalist (or Constitutional) Party at one gulp. How this came about is simple enough. The leaders of the rebellion, Pearse, MacDonagh, Mac Neill, and the rest, were' hot' only patriots ready to display the only form of patriotism which is respected of any peoplenamely, to die for the causebut they were, moreover, severely logical. 'lf Ireland) be a nation, in tradition, history, and temperament, separate from Britain, then as such she must have'the right to selfdetermination.- There is no right" to half-freedom, to colonial or any other form of Home Rule, within the group of the. commonwealth," but only to freedom. The slave -cannot- logically claim -liberty, such, for instance, as , villeinage, but r must claim freedom first and then make whatever arrangements of an economic nature he wishes with the man who was his overlord. The rebel leaders of 1916, writers, poets, and very practical'dreamers/ saw this, and claimed on it. They made the only claim the representatives of a live nation can make—they claimed to be free. ' This did not mean that if the claim; were granted -they would not accept national service within the Empire, as Canada does, nor does it . now. , They claimed liberty, and swept the country on this claim. And why did these leaders of a * miniature rebellion carry all before them? A rebellion of much less than 10,000 men out of a popula-

tion of 4,000,000, fighting as they were ' an t unpopular cause, or at. least one which the vast mass of the people < regarded as introduced at -an ■untimely moment! = The answer is "' simple enough. Sinn Fein; as: a great political therefore revolutionary cause, was made in Downing Street, and not, at Liberty Hall, or on Tara Hill. It-was made by senile "reactionaries in the Kildare Street Club with their policy of "blood and pinchbeck, backed by military would-be BismarcksV and never countered as they might have been by a strong civil Government. The Cabinet was afraid of offending the Brahmins of the War Office, and they in their turn played the game of the Irish Administration. When a high official of the Irish Government told me, on May 1, that they intended to have a bloody revenge on the rebels, I foresaw what would happen and tried to prevent it. What did happen was this. - For a miniature rebellion, 16 men were put to death at the slow marchtwo or three a day for a fortnight, the murders of 15 innocent men in North King Street were entirely concealed from the British public, though every woman and child in Ireland knew what had been done; and the Portobello murders would have been hushed up with a score or so of murders added to them, but.for the accidental presence of the present writer. The collective result of this method of Government was/to throw the Irish mentality back to the days of the famine and of '9B. Whereas, since the Land Act, and more especially since England took the part of Belgium and France in the late war, the people of Ireland had begun to believe that the British Government had changed its methods,- that in respect to small nations it had become more humane and chivalrous. Suddenly all this was changed by the brutal and callous treatment of" the Government in the suppression of what was not more than an emeiite. For it never should be forgotten that the Irish, at the end of 1914, in spite of the patronage of the Ulster rebels by British Unionists, were as enthusiastic for the Allied cause as the Britons, They were more so, if anything, for they remembered that their old ally, France, and a small nation like Belgium were being attacked, as they themselves had so often been, by superior and bullying force.

In a moment it was flashed to them that in respect to Ireland, the leopards of England had not changed their spots, that the old ferocity was there, for they naturally did not distinguish between Government and people. This is why Sinn Fein has developed from an interesting literary movement into a powerful political force with a distinctively anti-British character. It only remains for some statesman— can hardly look for such in England—to use the energy of National sentiment for a great constructive movement, which cannot be done by attempting to counter it, but most certainly can be done by accepting and directing it.