TRAGEDY OF ERRORS

New Zealand Tablet, 31 March 1921, Page 11

TRAGEDY OF ERRORS

(By J. L. Hammond.)

THE NATION (LONDON) IRISH SUPPLEMENT, JANUARY 8, 1921.

“I say to the Government that they may to-morrow withdraw every one of their troops from Ireland. Ireland will be defended, by her armed sons from invasion, and for that purpose the armed Catholics in the South will be only too glad to join arms with the armed Protestant Ulstermen.” John■ Redmond. CHAPTER I. The Irish Offer. Redmond’s delaration on August 4, 1914, was an act of faith; it was also an act of statesmanship. The world was plunging into a storm of anxieties and hopes in which everyone had to find some absorbing emotion. We talk in a struggle like this of the tenacity of a people, but what really happens is that men and women anchor themselves in some immediate task or duty. Englishmen for the next four years were either serving in the army or making .munitions, or helping in war work of one kind or another; they had something to fill their thoughts. A man or woman O cl> t suddenly deprived of a war task realised at once that it was only this sense of acting, and acting in common with millions of others, that kept them from madness or despair. In one sense it is true that the war lasted so long because there were so few spectators. For one man who was watching its devilish panorama, there were a hundred whoCe eyes and "minds were glued to their personal share in it. Irishmen do not find ip easier than Englishmen to put their imaginations to sleep. They are an emotional people, and they were living in an atmosphere of intense excitement. For two years the Home Rule Bill had been a passionate topic of politics. A powerful Irish party had organised a rebellion; a powerful English party had promised to help. Two great armies were marching and drilling: first the Ulster Volunteers, then a much later creation, the Irish National Volunteers. Ulster had imported arms from Germany and seized the Customs House at Larne; the Nationalists had followed suit; Dublin Castle, inactive in the North, had intervened in the South, and three lives had been lost in the streets of Dublin. This incident happened a few days before the August Bank Holiday, and for nine Irishmen out of ten it overshadowed the German ultimatum to France. Thus auger, hope, and fear were all making a tumult of the Irish mind. One thing should have been evident: it was impossible to postpone the Home Rule Bill and to expect the Irish people to go on buying and selling cows andvpigs and butter with nothing to occupy their minds. Something would seize their imaginations. What was it to be ? To Englishmen there were two parties in Ireland: the Unionists, who wanted no change in the system of government, and the Nationalists, who wanted Ireland to have a Parliament of her own, with certain specific powers. Both of these parties lived in one sense by the clocks of 1886. Ulster had not budged from her old antagonism ; the Nationalists still stood for Parnell’s demand. Irishmen knew that for 20 years there had been growing up a spiritual movement which had sought to give a form and scope at once richer and more ambitious to Ireland’s personality and Ireland’s claim, 'the Gaelic League revived Irish culture and the Irish language. Sinn Fein, though it did not oppose the Home Rule Bill, aimed at a more definite national emancipation, -to be secured by the means preached by Thomas Davis and practised afterwards by the Nationalists of Hungary under Deak. For these men the ideal was not the Home Rule Bill, but the Renunciation Act of 1783, which declared that the people of Ireland should be “bound only by laws enacted by his Majesty and the Parliament of that kingdom' in all cases whatever.” Their method was not action in Parliament, but seces-

sion and the organisation of Irish life. They showed more imagination and more statesmanship than the Nationalist party in.judging the Ulster problem; they were ready to propose generous concessions to Ulster for the sake of Irish unity, and they set their face against intolerance, whether practised by Catholic or Protestant, the Ancient Order of Hibernians, or Orange Lodges. They were not Republican. Their movement was attractive to the youth of Ireland, who felt towards the veterans of the Irish Party, with their preoccupations with particular interests and traditions in Irish life, rather as Young Ireland had felt towards the tired energies of O’Connell. There were other forces, too, Republican in aim and ready for physical violence, fired not a little by the example of Ulster, which had grown out of the Labor movement, so harshly and unwisely handled by the Government in the Dublin strike, and the survivors of the Fenian tradition. This world, where the past beckoned with such dangerous power, could not escape the emotions of the war. Ireland would either think about the war, or she would think about her history. The fortunate peoples of the world think little about their history; those who have suffered are apt to think of little else. Ireland would either throw herself into the war, or she would live with her ghosts, and her noble ghosts are rebels, and rebels against British rule.' Redmond knew that if she stood aside, without self-government, she would slip into the angry shadows of her history. There is a stone in Donegal where the Irish boy lingers before crossing the seas, because it is said to have a charm against “thinking long,” the Irish name for homesickness. Redmond wanted a charm against the homesickness of the Irish memory This choice, and nothing less, hung upon Redmond’s action and England’s answer. Was Ireland going to help or hinder in the war? ' Were England and Ireland going to make peace or war? One thing was certain. Ireland would emerge from this struggle either the friend or the enemy of England : when emotions are put into such a furnace as this there is no room for any more dispassionate relationship. In Ireland Redmond was triumphantly successful. Irish recruits poured into the Army throughout, Nationalist Ireland as well as in England and Scotland the Irish Volunteers, where Redmond’s influence was not authoritative, were eager to help in a system of defence. Only 12,000 out of 170,000 followed Professor Mac Neill in his secession as a protest against the promise to help overseas'. By the end of the year 16,500 Volunteers had joined the Army. Redmond’s offer was criticised by some as too trustful of England: by others as taking a decision which the Irish people alone had authority to take. But these criticisms scarcely counted at the moment, and there was little difference between England and Ireland in the early weeks of the war. They were just serious enough to serve as a warning to British Ministers that Redmond’s offer must be answered at once, in the spirit in which it was made, if Ireland was to remain in the war. The Cold Sponge. The warning came to Ministers who were listening hard, but no longer listening to Ireland. The world as they had known it was in chaos and confusion;; Ireland seemed a small element in the vast problem they were facing, and facing with courage and good sense; in that wild hour she seemed to present a new and comforting stability and peace. In this atmosphere a Government, already old and fatigued, with a habit encouraged by the procedure of the Parliament Act of letting things drift, failed to grasp the essential' truth that the treatment of Ireland imaginative and sensitive people, offering help to England for the first time since the Union—was a political operation of the first consequence. It could only be successful "if Ireland were treated as if she were in fact what she was on paper, a self-governing people. What actually happened was that Nationalist Ireland was treated like a Crown Colony. Mr. Lloyd George, speaking two years later of these months, said, “Some of,-the —I want to get the right word—some of the stupidities which

pometimes look almost like malignancy, which were perpetrated at the beginning of recruiting, in Ireland are beyond belief.” (October 28, 1916.) Mr. -Lloyd George found the right word. There was stupidity, but something behind the, stupidity. In this crisis the old prejudice against Nationalist Ireland ruled our military administration. The Ulster Division had its badge. The Irish Division was not allowed a badge. The officers of the Ulster Volunteers were given commissions ; the officers of the Irish Volunteers were compelled to have further training. The Ulster Division was treated as an Ulster army ; the Irish Division as a unit of the British Army. The National University alone of Irish Universities was not allowed an O.T.C. Great difficulties were put in the way of giving commissions.to Catholics in the Irish army, though the Ulster army, was allowed to exclude officers on account of their religion or their politics. All Redmond’s suggestions were refused. He wanted the Tyneside Irish to be trained in Ireland ; the War Office insisted on keeping them in Northumberland. The Irishwomen were not even allowed to make colors for the Irish battalions; Mr. Devlin’s 4000 recruits were not allowed to march through Belfast ; it was only after Lord Roberts’s intervention that the Irish army was allowed its full complement of Catholic chaplains.* In many places the-Unionist agent was made recruiting officer. Redmond, with a nation’s sympathies in the balance, counted for less than the most obscure English M.P. known only to the Party Whips. One suggestion that he made repeatedly is specially significant in the light of later history. He urged that both the Ulster and the Irish Volunteers should be recognised and given military duties. There were two alternatives. " The Volunteers could be used or they could be disarmed. Redmond wanted the first; the second was inpracticable as Sir Edward Carson said he would not allow a gun to be taken out of Ulster. The worst course of all was to keep them armed and keep them idle. The causes of this supreme blunder were two. Ireland was thrown to the War Office as if the problem were a problem of equipment or technical organisation. The War Office is a machine in which feelings count for little and imagination less. No Department was less fitted for this task. But behind the mechanical conservatism of the War Office there was the active ill-will of the Unionist leaders. The man who could have led the Unionist Party with a generous imagination was dead ; if Orange intolerance had not been too much for him the Wyndham Act would not have been his only contribution to Irish peace. The man who could least forget the bitter memories of party strife was its leader. The most ardent Orangeman has an Irishman beneath the skin; Mr. Bonar Law is an Orangeman' without an Irishman beneath his skin. Redmond’s offer touched England, but it did not touch Mr. Bonar Law, who, not allowing strife a moment’s respite, went to Belfast in September, with the Germans sprea 1ing over Belgium, to redouble his threats. Against these forces Liberal Ministers who, ever since the successful resistance of Ulster, had been doubtful of than authority, were unable to do justice to the generous instincts of the British people. Mr. Asquith went to Dublin to say that England wanted a free gift from a free people. That was precisely what Ireland wanted to give; it was precisely what the British Government refused to let her give. And as it became clear’that this was not what England wanted from her, the thermometer in Ireland went steadily down. It fell much faster in the spring when Sir Edward Carson was given office in the first Coalition (April,

1915). Redmond declined office, and urged that both he and Sir Edward Carson should be left out. Rec miring dropped from 6000 'to 3000 a month. The two fiercest adversaries of Home Rule were now Ministers, and Sir Edward Carson was so little changed in temoer that he refused to speak at a recruiting meeting w.th Redmond. Against such obstacles Redmond, intent on an alliance of the two peoples, was fighting a losing battle. He had not misjudged Ireland, but British Ministeis had learnt less than this Irishman from the war. It seemed to Ireland, with the War Office and politicians applying the cold sponge to all her zeal, that though Ireland had forgotten her hatred, England had not forgotten her contempt. Steadily and fatally the war became less and less Ireland’s war. CHAPTER 11. The Rebellion and its Sequel. In Easter week, 1916, there was a rebellion in Ireland. It took the British Government by surprise: it took Redmond by surprise ; it took Ireland by surprise. That fact alone shows what an inconsiderable element it represented#!! Irish life. It was, in truth, the act of a few men, leading two small forces : a section of the Dish Volunteers, as the Volunteers who broke away at the secession were called,* and the Citizen Army, or the Workers’ Army, in Dublin, led by Connolly. Judged by numbers, the rebellion was insignificant; it was the quality of its leaders, and, still more, the history of its punishment, that gave it such importance. The Irish Volunteers had continued a steady propaganda against recruiting, making, naturally, great use of the arguments which the British authorities presented to them. They gained in vigor and popularity with the steady discouragement of the National Volunteeis by the War Office. It was not easy 7 tor Ministers who had winked at the Ulster rebellion to take active measures against them, unless some association were proved with Germany. Such association was discovered on April 17, when a German shin landed Casement and brought rifles from Germany. On Saturday morning Dublin Castle decided to act, but though a parade of the Irish Volunteers was ordered for Easter Sunday, action was postponed. The Volunteers’ parade was cancelled by Professor Mac Neill, but some of the Irish Volunteers, acting under Pearse and Macdonagh, with the Citizen Army, acting under Connolly, seized the Post Office, and proclaimed the Irish Republic. Severe fighting was practically' limited to Dublin ; there were outbreaks in Galway, Drogheda, and Wexford, which the National Volunteers helped to suppress. But in Dublin street fighting lasted from Monday to Saturday: great destruction Avas done;. 106 soldiers and 180 civilians were killed, and 334 soldiers and 614 civilians wounded. These events excited great indignation for two reasons. In the first place, the rebellion had caused much bloodshed ; in the second place, it was concerted with Germany. Germany was to land Casement and arms in Ireland and simultaneously to attack the East Coast of England. To English people, therefore, the act seemed a brutal stab in the back, and they could find no excuse for such conduct. The Home Rule Bill was on the Statute Book. Was not that proof of our goodwill? They did not understand that Irishmen had lost confidence about that Act when they found that the Ministers who had passed it were .less powerful than those who had resisted it, and that Ireland was treated in the matter of recruiting in a way in which no Government would have dared to treat Scotland or Wales. They had enough to think about in their own affairs and prospects without trying to think about the affairs and prospects of Ireland. For the moment this misunderstanding, which was to count later, counted for little, for Ireland and England were at one in their indignation. It has been said, very justly, “There was a rebellion in Ireland;

there was no Irish rebellion.”* The number of rebels was small; the Irishmen who liked Germany, or would act with her, or take help from her, were few ; the first troops attacked by the rebels were Dublin troops Dublin suffered heavily and felt towards the rebels as any society feels towards a set of men who suddenly plunge it into chaos and bloodshed ; the National Volunteers helped to put down the rising.; Ireland condemned the rebellion as hotly as England: Never in Irish history had rebels so little sympathy, or rebellion so little encouragement for the future. The Opportunity of the Rising. In this atmosphere there was an unexampled opportunity for British statesmanship, and it happened that there was an illuminating precedent before the eyes of the Government. There was a rebellion in South Africa in the first winter ; it was more extensive, for at one time there were 10,000 Boers in the field against. Botha, and it was more serious, because Do Wet was a much greater figure in South Africa than Pearse or Connolly in Ireland. Botha punished one man with deathan officer who had deserted a battle —the chief leaders with heavy fines and two or three years of imprisonment, and the rank and file with short sentences and loss of civil rights. Before the end of the year, the prisoners were released. “The Government came in for a good deal of criticism,” says the ''Annual Register, “on the part of British South Africans for the mild manner in which they treated most of the insurgents, but General Botha declared that his object was to enable the country to forget the unhappy occurrence as soon as possible. Tie had his reward at the next election. If he had been severe, that election would have been a bitter struggle between British and Dutch, and the consequences of victory for either party would have been disastrous. As it was, Botha, remained Prime Minister, representing British and Dutch electors; that act of imagination saved South-Africa and the British Empire from a discord that might have been fatal in the hour of danger. ° It was not easy for Ministers treating Irish rebels who lived across the sea to follow Botha’s superb example in dealing with Dutch rebels who lived under the same sky. England, having passed through a week of wearing strain, was in no temper to look bevond the shock and passion of the hour: in the indiscriminate bloodshed of a great war, when men die in thousands tor the acts of others, human nature does not trouble itself about the fate of men who die for acts of their °^ n * would have taken a great statesman to grasp all that hung on the decisions taken at that angry moment : decisions that went far bevond immediate problems of justice, for they were political events that would mark a crisis in the relations of two neoples. So little did this aspect strike the minds of Ministers that they confided their authority to a military ruler. . . ere are soldiers who can manage a political crisis, but they are not common. If the. Government could have summoned Sir Ralph Abercromby or Sir John Moore or Sir Charles James Napier from the ead they might safely have resigned their task to such hands. They chose a soldier with the ohtlook of a soldier, to whom the problem seemed much simpler •fn In Same problem had seemed to Botha, a soldier with the outlook of a statesman. With the habits of is profession,* Sir John Maxwell believed that the way to prevent rebellion, reviving, when once order is restoredms to strike fear: to a Problem so simple he apled the simplest and the oldest of solutions. Day after a 7, ? m May 3 men were tried in secret and brought out to be shot; tne last of them, on the 11th, Connolly, v ose thigh had been broken and who could not stand. -Fifteen men were thus put to death in a manner designed to create the most powerful impression in Ire-

land.*. This was the soldier’s object. For Sir John Maxwell wanted not, like Botha, that Ireland should forget the rebellion, but that she should remember it with fear. No Irishman finds it difficult to remember, but he remembers with something more dangerous than fear. Any statesman who knew what a part her haunting memories have played in Irish politics would have realised that it was more important than anything else to let Ireland forget that episode. Ireland had & condemned the rebellion ; ' there was one way of making her forgive it. She had thought it a shameful act ; there was one way of making her think it a noble act. the Government took that way. Ministers who had fused to let Redmond bring Ireland into the war as a free people, sent her back to the ghosts who had tried to make her a free people. And among the men shot here were rebels of a quality to walk in Elysium with Emmet and Wolfe Tone. A series of panic measures followed. The rebellion was the act of a few men. The Government proceeded to sweep into prison or across the sea all those whoso politics seemed dangerous to the soldier’s eye. In districts where there had been no (race of the rebel spirit, men were seized and flung into prison without trial. A Government which makes the soldier judge, prosecutor, and policeman soon fills its gaols. . The effect in Ireland was instantaneous. Sinn hem had not organised the rebellion; but Sinn Fein reaped the fruits of the repression because it stood for Irish independence. Men who had never heard of Sinn Fein began to ask about its ideas: Pearse, Connolly, Macdonagh, Plunkett, some of them strangers to nine Irishmen out of ten, became heroes : the rebels were forgiven everything, for they had meant, in their wild, mad way, to help Ireland, and the Government that punished them only meant to humble her The crimes of Cromwell, Pitt, and Castlercagh, which still have such power to embitter the Irish mind, lie lightly on the English conscience, for the Englishmen who are alive to-day are as little responsible "for them as the Irish. ■ But now, by the act of living Englishmen, a new legend had been added to the traditions that divided the two peoples. And as fast as that legend grew Emu Fein gained power. ’ ° The Violated Treaty. One last blunder completes the story of 1916. Mr. Asquith had given his countenance to this policy of repression, but during his visit to Dublin he had mm something to soften its administration and he knew that repression alone could not give Ireland peace. In a Jew words, which stand in striking contrast to the deeds that^followed, he announced (May 25, 1916) that Irish administration had broken down, and an effort must e made to construct a new form of o-overnmeut The history of this effort is not the least remarkable of the events of this year. Mr. Asquith chose Mr. Lloyd George for his new negotiations and sent him to treat with'Redmond and bir Edward Carson. Redmond knew that the Irish situation was more delicate than ever, and that a false step on his part would mean his ruin as a political leader, and the loss of his plan for co-operation between

They were shot in batches: for clays the lesson was hammered home in stroke after stroke that these men were entitled neither to open trial and proof of then guilt before execution, nor to the treatment of captured enemies. The conclusion drawn by National . 16 and was i that if they had been Englishmen they would have been tried by English courts and sentenced by the judgment of their own 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 class apart, members of a subject race the mere property of a court martial. The applause of Parliament when the Prime Minister announced the executions was taken to represent the official sanction attitude^ 1 ? 118 P t P i e and T their agreement with this attitude towards Ireland. It was resented in Ireland with a fierce and sudden passion; a tongue of flame seemed to devour the work of long years in a single night. Evolution of Sinn Fein, p. 221. 5

England and Ireland. He therefore demanded and received a written document. The Government’s proposals were inat an Irish Parliament, with an Irish Executive responsible to it, should be set up at once; that the six counties should be left out during the war; that at the end of the war an arrangement should be submitted to a Council of the Empire before the final settlement by the British Parliament. Until this settlement was reached Irish membership at Westminster was to stand at its original figure. This was the plan put before the Ulster Council on June 13, 1916, and accepted. It was put before the Nationalist Convention at Belfast on June 23, and though strong opposition was offered, Mr. Devlin succeeded in carrying the proposal. Ireland had done her part. All that remained was for England to ratify the agreement. It should have been plain that delay or failure on England's part would be fatal to the Irish Parliamentary Party. The Nationalist elements in Ireland were divided into those who thought that England could never be trusted, and those who were ready to act and treat with her. At the time of Redmond’s declaration the first school was small; after 18 months of the cold and sour temper of the War Office it was larger after the punishment of the Rebellion it was beginning to be a formidable rival to Redmond’s power. If Ireland were tricked now, or if Redmond, having made a compromise intensely unpopular in Ireland, should prove to have made that compromise for nothing, what remained of the case for his policy ? Mi. Asquith apparently took a different view of the situation. He was in difficulties with his Unionist supporters, and he dreaded the prospect of a dissension which might weaken his Government for the purposes of the war. This overshadowing anxiety must be remembered if we are to do justice to his conduct at this crisis. Lord Selborne disliked the idea of the negotiation and resigned before it was entered upon. Lord Lansdowne disliked it and remained. On June 29, when the Nationalists were waiting for the promised Bill, Lord Lansdowne announced in the Lords that the consultations were authorised bv the Government, but not binding on it, and that he, speaking for the Unionist wing, had not accepted the proposals. Then began the chapter of prevarications and recriminations which are inevitable when men disagree upon the scope or the importance of a promise. It was the story once again of the misadventure of Fitzwilliam without a Fitzwilliam; of promises made and expectations held out which the Government that made them recalled at the first suggestion of hostility. It became known that Sir Edward Carson had been assured before going to Ulster that the exclusion was to be permanent. Redmond had known nothing of this assurance. This was the first shock. The second soon followed. Lord Lansdowne announced that permanent and enduring structural alterations would be introduced into the Home Rule Act. Redmond had seen the draft of the Bill lor carrying out the agreement, and he knew that Lord Lansdo words must mean, as was the case, that that draft had been altered. On July 22, Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Herbert Samuel sent for Redmond ■o te 1 him that the Cabinet had decided on new proposals on which they did not intend to consult him the exclusion was to be permanent and Irish membership was to be reduced. Mr. Lloyd George has a face that can speak with anger, or humor, or indignation, or pride; it must have worn a wry look on that sorry errand of recantation. The agreement had been broken and the plan was in ruins. In the debates that followed, Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Bonar Law did not combat the contention that an agreement had been made with Redmond which had not been kept. Mr. Lloyd George said that the Unionists would , not agree to the retention of the Irish members, and, therefore, the Government had thrown over the agreement. Mr. Bonar Law agreed that there was a breach of the agreement, but argued that there ad been no breach of faith, because the negotiations were subject to the approval of the Cabinet. Mr Asquith said that neither he nor Mr. Lloyd George had power to bind their colleagues, and he seemed to think

that a question which had been eagerly discussed in Ireland as the governing issue was unimportant, because into that Ulster should not be coerced still held the field. All this was said of a settlement which had been urged on Redmond by the Government, of which the Government had been warned that it would be no easy matter to get Ireland to assent to it. The agreement was that Ulster, i.e., six-county Ulster, was to be excluded in the provisional Bill, with the understanding that the whole question should be settled at the end of the war. Mr. Asquith held that there was no difference between this arrangement and the formal and permanent exclusion of Ulster in 1916, because in neither case could Ulster be included against her will. But Redmond held that if the question was reopened at the end of the war, Ulster and Ireland having fought on the same battlefields, would come to an agreement, and that to give her permanent exclusion in 1916 would prejudice this prospect. Once again the Unionists had overborne the Liberals, They objected to keeping the Irish members at full strength because it would put their party at a disadvantage. The Unionist dissentients were ready to resign if the agreement was kept. No Liberal was ready to resign if the agreement was broken. Could any of the Ministers have thought this, in Bacon’s phrase, “fair and round dealing between man and man” if they had been dealing not with Ireland, but with a friend or acquaintance in private life * In the debate, Mr. Asquith stated that an Advisory Committee, with Mr. Justice Sankey as chairman, had investigated the cases of the men under detention, and recommended the release of 1272 men out of 1840, and he announced that the Irish Government had been reconstructed by the substitution of Mr. Duke, a Unionist, lor Mr. Birrell, as Irish Secretary. Dublin Castle had been re-established with a Unionist staff. A few months later (December, 1916) Mr. Asquith resigned, and the most unaccountable man in politics became Prime Minister. In such hands the Irish situation was certain to become either much better or much worse. CHAPTER ITT. The Drift. In 1917 the war was no longer a cause it had become a servitude. England had gone into it like a knight ; she fought now as a prisoner of circumstance. The glory of emancipating the world had faded into a cruel and harsh and monotonous and interminable duty. The dreadful rhythm of the machine had succeeded to the buoyant energy of the human will. England’s courage did not flag, but she had. lost illusions that stimulate ; the task of saving the world seemed not so much an honor as a burden. In such a mood England, knowing little of what Ireland had offered or given, drifted away from her. She thought of Ireland as a place where people still had enough to eat, and forgot that in return for her heavier taxation, Ireland got no extra employment, for munitions were not made there. Ireland was drifting away from England. The great controversy between Redmond and his critics had been settled, and not in his favor. England had not wanted Ireland’s help as the help of a free people. The school in England which treated Ireland as a subject people, which felt towards Ireland as Austria to the Czechs, had gained the day. If Ireland took part in the war she could only take part on those terms. And what motive had Ireland for such a sacrifice—the sacrifice not of her sons merely, but of her status? Were her interests those of Great Britain ? She wanted freedom; it was just freedom that England had refused her for a century and refused her still. Mr. Asquith said in the House of Commons that nobody could take

v ' '' " • y the Home Rule Bill off the Statute Book. The Irishmen thought otherwise. Experience has justified them. And all the great train of historical grievances had been set in motion byirecent events. Englishmen think of.flrishmen as a people for whose benefit they have passed numberless Acts. Irishmen think of England as a nation that took away their rights and property, and makes a great virtue "of a partial and tardy restitution. It was inevitable then that England and Ireland should drift apart. The new temper of Ireland was seen in the growing influence of Sinn Fein and the growing definiteness of Sinn Fein teaching. Redmond had said to Ireland, “Trust the British. Parliament and the British Government; throw yourself into the war and you will recover your right to self-government.” The failure of this policy was now manifest. Sinn Fein’s alternative was obvious and it was definite. “Think no more of the British Parliament; it l is either indifferent or hostile; be an independent nation; act like an independent nation ; wear no foreign Government’s uniform ; fight no foreign Government’s war ; when the war is over go to the Peace Conference and demand your rights. This policy had two results of importance. First of all, it drew Ireland away from Redmond ; secondly, it kept Ireland from violence because Irishmen were looking to the Peace Conference for the rescue of their country. The new power was revealed in February, 1917, when Count Plunkett was elected at a bye-election for Roscommon by a large majority. Mr. Lloyd George’s first act on becoming Prime Minister had been wise and bold, lie had set free all .the deported Irishmen, except those serving sentences of penal servitude. But by that strange law which seems to govern his political conduct, his next step was in the opposite direction. Plunkett’s victory, which ought to have been a warning against coercion, was followed by rearrests and deportations. In March, 1917, the Parliamentary party made a great appeal to Lloyd George not to pursue this policy, but to remove martial law, keep no untried men in prison, and “confer upon Ireland the free institutions long promised her.” The debate was notable for a last appeal from Major Willie Redmond. “In the name of God, we here, who are about to die perhaps, ask you to do that which largely induced us to leave our homes.” The House was moved, but Mr. Lloyd George replied in a speech which, if it had been made eight years earlier would have changed the course of politics. He had found that Ireland was not one nation but two. The Parliamentary party in despair . withdrew after Redmond had warned the Government that..they were killing the Constitutional party. Two months later, Sinn Fein won a second seat at South Longford. Willie Redmond returned to France where, three months later, he died from his wounds at Messines.* England had given him nothing that he wanted for his country in return for his sacrifice. His constituency, with an act that was painfully significant, gave his seat to de Valera, who defeated his Nationalist opponent by 5000 votes. All this time coercion was in full swing, with the political results that Redmond prophesied. The Convention. In May, Mr. Lloyd George suggested that Ireland should have the Home Rule Act with a clean cut of the six counties, or that an Irish Convention should be set up to discuss schemes for the government of Ireland. A new turn was thus given to Irish politics, and for some weeks there was an atmosphere of subdued hope, during which the Nationalists won two elections, their last successes. Mr. Lloyd George promised that if “substantial agreement” should be reached as to the character and scope of the constitution for the future government off Ireland within the Empire, the Government would accept the responsibility for taking all the necessary steps to enable the Imperial Parliament to give legislative effect to the conclusions of the Convention. The proposal was welcomed warmly by Redmond, criti-

cised by William O’Brien, and rejected by Sinn Fein, which could not, of course, accept the limitation put on the scope of the deliberations. The Government was urged to release all prisoners, and,-after a delay which robbed the act of its grace they took this step, releasing, among others, de Yelera, who now became Sinn Fein leader; with his election as President (November, 1917), Sinn Fein became implicitly Republican. The Convention sat through the autumn and winter. It was, within sharp limits, a representative body, including among its 90 members, five Nationalists, five Ulster Unionists, three Southern Unionists, four Catholic bishops, two bishops of the Church of Ireland, 31 chairmen of county councils, four mavors, eight representatives of urban councils, seven Labor representatives (the Labor Party in Dublin and the South refused to take part), and a number of distinguished Irishmen like Dr. Mahaffy, the Provost of Trinity College, Lord Mac Donnell, Lord Desart, Sir Bertram Windle, Mr Edward Lysaght, and “A.E.” The chairman was Sir Horace Plunkett. The Convention sat through the autumn and winter. The most important facts about its history are these. It proved that outside Ulster, Unionists and Nationalists were not irreconcilable. It proved that the Ulster Unionists, armed with the famous formula that Ulster should never be coerced, were not ready to make any concessions.* Not least important, in view of what followed, it published a report of a sub-committee on questions of defence, declaring unanimously that it would be impracticable to impose conscription on Ireland without the Irish Parliament's" consent. The members of this sub-committee were Lord Desart and Mr. Powell (Unionists), the Duke of Abercorn (an Ulster Covenanter), and Captains Doran and Gwynn (Nationalist Members, serving with the forces). In the closing days of the Convention Redmond died: he had lived too long for happiness,- but he escaped the final blow that fate and General Ludendorff and Mr. Lloyd George were conspiring to deal to all his hopes. “Better for us never to have met than to have met and failed,” he declared, lie died before Mr. Lloyd George had destroyed the work of the Convention and the work of Redmond’s life. The Demand for Irish Conscription. On April 8, 1918, the report of the Convention was signed. Next day Mr. Lloyd George announced that conscription was to be extended to Ireland. By the 13th the proposal had been carried through Parliament after nearly eight hours of debate. Mr. Asquith made a powerful and impressive appeal to. the House of Commons, warning it of the inevitable consequences in Ireland, but the German advance was in full tide, and neither Ministers nor Members kept cool heads. It is incredible that any Englishman could have supposed that Ireland would provide a single company of conscripts, but there were many who thought that England could not be asked for a final effort unless Ireland was drawn into the common bondage. The effect in Ireland was instantaneous. This was the most emphatic declaration ever made that Ireland was England’s property, that she had just as much or just as little right to her own life as the Czecho-Slovaks or the Poles, forced to send their sons into Austrian or German armies ; that, Ireland was a subject people of whom her rulers could claim tribute of blood and of money at their pleasure. No Irishman with a spark of national feeling could acknowledge that claim, and the

claim was made at a moment when the Irish spirit was more self-conscious and more sensitive than at any time for a hundred years. In face of this threat all Nationalist elements united. It was no longer Sinn Femers only who declared that the Convention had been from the first a mere device to pacify America and to bring her into the war. Mr. Lloyd George made light of the work of the Convention, and it is doubtful whether he knew the character and extent of its ment. It did not matter what he said, for his acts killed it. He promised to bring in a Home Rule Bill, but month after month dragged on and no Home Rule Bill appeared. He announced in April that the Government had discovered a far-reaching Sinn Fein plot to help Germany. Lord Wimborne, who had just ceased to be Viceroy, declared his scepticism, and when the Government published its proofs, they were received with laughter in England as well as Ireland. Mr. Lloyd George had done everything that man could do to drive Ireland into the arms of Germany, but there was no evidence that he had succeeded. What he had done was to drive Ireland* into the arms of Sinn Fein. In the election of December, 1918, Ireland returned seven Nationalists* and 73 Sinn Feinersf. Among the 73 were disillusioned soldiers who had served in the Army in the war. In a few months’ time one of them was serving a sentence of penal servitude. CHAPTER IV. I The New Problem. In the spring of 1918, Sir Mark Sykes declared in the House of Commons that the British Government would cut a strange figure at the Peace Conference if Ireland was then held down bv an army of occupation. Sir Mark Sykes represented qualities of imagination that are more common in the British people than. in the men whom our political system brings to the top. He had put his finger on one aspect of the Irish situation which, though* British politicians might be blind to it, had a great significance for the world at large, and in particular for the Irish people. It was said of the French intellectuals of the 18th century that they talked about the wrongs of the French peasants, forgetting that the peasants might overhear them. In 1918 we flung Liberal phrases broadcast; in particular, we placarded them in Ireland, where we asked the Irish people if they were likely to be served worse than the Czecho-Slovaks if the Allies won. Phrases of this kind mean less to people who use them, having no wrongs of their own, than to those who hear them, burdened with a history of baulked hope. In Ireland they had a magical effect. Ireland could not believe that the rest of the world would be set free and Ireland kept in subjection. She looked forward to the Peace Conference with ardent hopes as the tribunal that would give her the justice Britain had denied her. She was now embarked on her new policy. After the election of December, 1918, she had her Sinn Fein Parliament; she set up a Sinn Fein Government: she appointed an Economic Commission to inquire into Ireland’s resources, and she instituted a series of Arbitration Courts which gradually won the confidence of all classes. In fact she displayed resources of will and courage a genius for construction, and a sense of statesmanship that would have won the ■whole-hearted admiration of England if any other flag than the British had been flying over Dublin Castle. The British Government had now before it a new problem and a new opportunity. Ireland was not the Ireland that Redmond had brought as an ally in 1914. Disappointment, repression, rebellion, new animosities, and new hopes had produced a new temper the spirit of revolution in the world had awakened new expecta-

tions. Thus, England going to Paris to make a peace based on the right of self-determination was faced with a demand for self-determination at her doors. But peace which brought this new problem gave England a free hand. The nation was no longer in danger; the German fleet was sulking in the British harbors ; the German army was scattered ; .British power was unchallenged. For the first time for five years England could think about Ireland' without thinking about Germany. Ireland no longer asked for a Bill prepared by British England. She asked to negotiate with England as one people with another. England and Ireland were united by ties of history, trade, and politics. Ireland could not simply walk out of the Empire ns from a house in which she had nothing but an umbrella. But it should have been just as impossible for England to tell her simply that she had to stay in the Empire under such arrangements as England should determine; If the rights of small nations meant anything, Ireland was entitled to choose her own future, and if the lessons we had read the world meant anything, it was clearly our part to discuss that future with her. It would be strange if England and Ireland could not find in such a discussion an arrangement that would secure the dignity of Ireland without compromising the safety of England. Unfortunately the false pride which prompts a Government to use to the full every advantage of power — the pride that had brought three Empires to their ruin—forbade any such act of statesmanship or imagination. The British Government preferred to give the answer that those Empires had given to the same question. It replied by tightening the grasp of soldier and constable on the life of the Irish people. Ireland Again Loses Patience. For two years Ireland had kept the peace under unexampled provocation. In 1918 there were over 1100 political arrests. Twelve Irishmen had been shot or bayonetted or died in prison in two years : one constable had been killed. The raiding of houses, the suppression of fairs and games, arrests without trial, deportations, courts-martial, these were the leading features of Irish administration. Men were sent to prison for two years for reading a manifesto, for six months for hearing it read, for two months for playing a pipe. Girls and women were sentenced for speaking Irish, for singing songs (“Songs,” said Mr. Dillon, “that have been sung in Ireland since I was a boy”), for carrying flags, for “whistling derisively at the police.” When England was celebrating the final triumph of freedom in the world, men, women, and children were being imprisoned in Ireland for acts that might formerly . have been punished in Poland or Hungary or the Turkish Empire, but nowhere else in Europe. It was this system that the English Government, free now from all. military danger,' and, therefore,'destitute of all excuse, made more rigorous in answer to Ireland’s constitutional demand for freedom. It was soon as dangerous to be an Irish M-P. under English rule, as it had been to be a Croat M.P. under the rule of the Magyars.* There followed the inevitable sequel. Ireland had kept- her patience so long as she had hopes of the Peace Conference. Peace, instead of freeing her from this tyranny; had only made the tyranny sharper. Her patience broke, and violence began. In Ireland-alone in these islands— police are the agents of an alien Government, and the police were first attacked. Violence took three main forms, acts of private revenge.

the murder of spies, and attacks on soldiers or constables to secure arms. Sinn Fein had declared the right of Irishmen to carry arms. This may seem a O ~~ J J childish gesture, it was utterly lamentable in its consequences. To understand it we must remember that Ulster had asserted this right against a British Government, and that, in spite of public declarations to the contrary, British Ministers, when disarming the National Volunteers, had not dared to disarm Sir Edward Carson’s followers.!' The Government’s answer to violence was further coercion. Coercion, in its turn, was followed by a terrible increase in crime. Between January, 1919 and March, 1920, there were 22,279 raids on houses, 2332 political arrests, 151 deportations, 429 proclamations suppressing meetings and newspapers § By the summer of 1920 nearly a hundred constables had been murdered. In the summer of 1920 Parliament passed an Act of unparalleled severity. Most Irish coercion Acts have been directed against social disorder. This was directed against the political ambitions of the Irish people. Irishmen were punished now, not as Land Leaguers or Moonlighters, but as Irishmen thinking of Ireland as Englishmen think of England. Every single right that an Englishman values was taken from the Irishman. Court-martial justice became the rule, and he could be tried before such a court for having had in his possession a “seditious document,” or detained indefinitely without trial for association with the Gaelic League or with Sinn Fein, two bodies that embraced the great majority of the Irish people. Nine Irishmen out of ten held their liberties at the pleasure of policemen and soldiers, and Ireland was put under a military rule as absolute as the rule from which Belgium had been released. Coercion had steadily increased in severity. In Mr. Shortt’s time Sir Henry Duke was remembered as a tolerant Liberal. Mr. Macpherson’s grip was fiercer than Mr. Shortt’s. Under Sir Hamar Greenwood a new weapon was to be added, drawn from the resources of Governments with which England had hitherto had little in common. CHAPTER V. , The Collapse of Custom. Reprisals began as a series of outbreaks on the part of soldiers and constables, who burnt houses in retaliation for the murder or kidnapping of their comrades. At first they attracted little notice. Month after month houses were burnt and men murdered and flogged until the population in parts of Ireland began to live in such a state of terror that it was the rule for women and children to sleep in the fields or on the mountains. At last a particularly flagrant outrage, at Balbriggan (September, 1920), within 15 miles of Dublin, drew the eyes of England to practices which had already shocked the outside world. The nation was disturbed. Lord Grey and Lord Robert Cecil called for an inquiry: Mr. Asquith and Mr. Henderson supported him. Mr. Lloyd George replied with a speech making fun of the destruction of creameries, and Mr. Churchill with a speech in which he said that if the armed forces of the Crown were punished for their conduct they would revolt. A few weeks later Parliament met. At the beginning of every revolution men hope, f On November 18, 1918, after Nationalist houses had been raided by the thousand for arms, Mr. Dillon said to Mr. Short! in the House of Commons, “Have you ever searched the hoitse of, or prosecuted, a single Ulsterman?” Mr. Shortt replied, “I cannot answer that question.” Under Sir Hamar Greenwood this difference of treatment between Ulster and Nationalist Ireland was carried to the widest lengths. A thousand ex-soldiers were driven from their homes and their work in Belfast in September, 1920, by the Orangemen. If a hundred ex-soldiers had been so treated in Sinn Fein Ireland, what a scene there would have been in the House of Commons! The Government replied by making the Orangemen special constables. § Erskine Childers, Military Ride in Ireland.

for they think of all that mankind may gain in a new world ; in its next phase they fear, for they think of what mankind may lose. The European war, the greatest revolution in the world’s history, had destroyed that custom which is the basis of common life. Custom is the thinking of indolence and routine which forms over every abuse the, crust of lazy acquiescence. But custom is also a habit of conscience and intellect, by which man has built a barrier between his life and the raw passions of the race. England has contributed two great principles to the civilised government of the world: the first, the principle that no citizen shall hold his rights at the pleasure of soldier or official ; the second, that Parliament is a Court of Justice to which men denied all other protection can appeal for inquiry into their wrongs. Every jurist gives us credit for the first; so bitter a critic as Karl Marx gave us credit for the second. Our aristocracy, which has left us many burdens of injustice and wrong, left us also this noble inheritance. When the House of Commons met it was seen what a shattering blow the war had struck at custom. For in the atmosphere which clings to its benches, as if no windows had been opened since the Armistice, all feeling for English tradition had been overwhelmed. For years her rulers had talked the language of force, used the weapons of force, urged the reasons of force, practised the morality of force; engaged in a supreme effort of force, they had forgotten all that mankind has learnt from freedom. Ten years ago no British Mouse of Commons could have refused an inquiry when women and children were being driven from their homes, or have allowed that the armed servants of the Crown should be put above the law. This House of Commons treated with derision anyone who spoke like an Englishman ; whether it was Mr. Asquith* whose deepest instincts were outraged by this savage licence, or Mr. Henderson, speaking for the trade union horror of military oppression, or Lord Robert Cecil, speaking for all that remained of the chivalrv of his party. For the present House of Commons has the war mind. There is one war mind, whether it is found in London, or Berlin, or Paris, or Petrograd ; it is neither democrat, nor aristocrat, nor militarist, nor Jacobin, nor Bolshevik. When the war mind governs, or dispenses justice, man goes back to his cave. The Terror. The Chief Secretary’s speeches, and still more the questions and answers, give a picture of the life of [reland under this new rttjime. Constables could burn, loot, and murder without punishment. The men who sacked Balbriggan were considered suitable guardians of order in a population denied the protection of courts of law. Men were dragged from-their beds to be killed in the presence of their wives. Constables, in no kind of danger, could shoot bystanders of either sex and all ages; in one district men were warned by the police that they would be shot if they had their hands in their pockets ; it was a common experience for them to be killed for refusing to halt at a constable’s order ; prisoner’s were killed almost every dav “attempting to escape” a crowd watching a football match could be fired on as if it were a hostile army. Coroner’s inquests were rarely held, and the military courts that replaced them sat, as a rule, in secret. The Government did not make the lives of its servants more sacred by making the life of an Irishman as cheap as the life of a Balkan brigand. Ireland has now her Carbonari the English Government a force, recruited in England, which resembled the force that kept an uneasy order in Italy seventy years ago. Crime grew rapidly in this atmosphere, and one series of murders in Dublin reproduced all the features that gave their most terrible character to the outrages of the police force brought from England for purposes of repression. The Irishman now held not merely liberty but life and home at the pleasure of the man in uniform. And to the armed constables enjoying a licence unknown in Europe outside the Balkans, the Chief Secretary issued each week a paper which printed every incitement to

reprisals to be found in the press of the time, and specific threats to murder Sinn Feiners in places where constables were murdered, threats which were afterwards put into force. As a last resource of British power, Irish fathers and mothers were warned that the crime of giving shelter to their sons, if they were rebels, was punishable with the penalty with which Germany had punished Edith Cavell. Step by step we were making Ireland a second Belgium. While this was happening the Home Rule Act was removed from the Statute Book and a contemptuous measure was passed through Parliament. The Government paid as much regard to the wishes of Ireland as they would have paid to the wishes of Kamschatka. The suggestions of Sir Horace Plunkett, the most distinguished Irishman now in public life, free as few men from any suspicion of faction, were treated with special derision. The most important feature of the Bill was its division of Ireland into two nations, one of 26 counties and the other of six; one a population of 1| millions, the other a population of 3|- millions. The British Parliament decreed that Ireland could only have a single legislature if the 3-| millions agreed to give half the representation to the T|- million. In this contest between the British Government and the Irish people it is easy to trace failures of statesmen of all parties, Irish and British; but the ruling error is unmistakable. England treats Ireland not like a sister nation but as a subject race. This fatal fixed idea ruined the co-operation of the two peoples in the war; it is the one obstacle to peace. Epilogue. Mr. Cornford has described in his powerful book, Thucydides Mythistoricus, the dramatic instinct that made Thucydides write the Melian dialogue, the famous dialogue between the Athenian Government and the delegates of the Island of Melos, -which ended in war and a massacre of the islanders. As a military episode the conquest of this small island was the merest incident as a moral episode it stands out in- the pages of the greatest history ' ever written. Athens had done noble things for liberty: she had overthrown the Persian Empire ; her statesmen and orators and poets and philosophers had lighted the imagination of the world with their ideas. Thucydides wanted to show in all its play of argument and emotion the infatuation that was drawing her to her ruin. We are engaged in such a dialogue. On one view Ireland counts as little as Melos in the present misery of the world ; her whole population would scarcely fill two or three of the dying cities of Europe. England, who argues with her, has produced great and generous statesmen, orators, and poets; her ideas hold a commanding place in the history of progress. She, too. has overthrown a proud Empire by the willing self-sacrifice of thousands of her sons. They made peoples free by their blood; England could make a people free by one act of justice. A Member of Parliament, speaking of Ireland in the House of Commons, reminded the Prime Minister that we had given the Czecho-Slovaks their freedom. “You forget,” retorted the Prime Minister, “ that Austria was beaten and broken in the war.” “Of divinity we believe,” said the Athenian politician two thousand years ago, “and of humanity we know that everywhere, under constraint of nature, it rules wherever it can hold the mastery. We did not make this law, nor are we the first to observe it. It existed already when we inherited it we shall bequeath it to exist for ever.” A few months later the Empire of Athens passed to its catastrophe.

_ ___ \ 1 - -7 * “Not one of the 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.” John Redmond's Last Tears, by Gwynn, p. 174.

* The Volunteers \vho stuck to Redmond were called National Volunteers.

t> * Ireland 3i e . Last Fi f l V Tears. the % Ernest ■Barker. Second Edition. '

* Redmond moved a vote of censure in October, 1916, and described more openly than before the treatment that had made recruiting so difficult in Ireland. He mentioned that at that moment 157,000 Irishmen were serving in the army— 9s,ooo Catholics and 62,000 Protestants. 11

* He was 56, two years older than the Prime Minister. ' i

* This formula was as great an obstacle as the old Polish liberum veto; so long as Irish government was treated as a problem to be settled by England, it meant that a British Government could carry no reform to which this minority objected. The true solution, of course, was to leave the problem to Ireland to settle. Ulster with Belfast and its munitions was in no con-. ceivable danger of coercion ; with the English ‘ ‘complex” (to use the fashionable psychological term) removed, she would have no native, for recalcitrance. When neither party can coerce the other, and each needs the other, agreement is possible. /

* Willie Redmond had suggested some months before his death, in despair over the British Government’s action that the whole Parliamentary Party should retire and make room for,younger men. _ t They were pledged to abstain from attending Parliament at Westminster.

* While this persecution was in progress Sir Edward Carson went to Ulster (July, 1919), and threatened to renew the Ulster rebellion if the Government brought in a Home Rule Bill that was not to his liking. Ministers were asked if they meant to prosecute. Sir Gordon Hewart replied that he had not brought himself within reach of the law. Mr. Bonar Law said that if Sir Edward Carson had broken the law no private friendship would save him. A few months earlier a boy of 16 had been sent to prison for carrying the' colors of Sinn Fein, and a man for two years for singing “The Felons of Our Land.”