The Irish Revolution and How It Came About

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 1, 7 January 1925, Page 7

The Irish Revolution and How It Came About

(By William O'Brien)

John Redmond did, indeed, quit the Convention Hall never to return. He had been suffering from an inward disease against which, in any case, he could not -have struggled much longer. ! But if ever an Irish leader died of a broken heart (as, woful to confess, is the normal penalty attached to the distinction), it may with truth be said that John Redmond died of Mr. Lloyd George's "Irish Convention," composed in the main of his own partisans, and that the tragedy is the only practical result—so far as Ireland is concerned— which that illomened body will be remembered. The ghastly attempt to prolong the sittings for some weeks after his death, and to juggle with the figures of the divisions so as to represent that something like a sub-majority vote of the majority had been engineered, fell absolutely flat in a country where the Convention only escaped aversion by perishing of contempt. "Ulster" stood precisely where she did, on the rock of a Partition sanctioned by Ireland's own "Nationalist" representatives, and these worthies, split up between those who would have clung to Mr. Redmond, and those who dismissed him to his deathbed, were united only in the destruction which overtook the entire body of 70 members of the Convention (with one soliJry exception) as soon as their constituencies A the opportunity of settling accounts with them at the General Elections, Parlia- ,;.,■'• mentary and Local. Mr. Dillon, who had been all along the masked leader, now became the responsible leader of "The Party," T but it was only to officiate as chief mourner .";• afrits funeral. *j|r Mr. Lloyd George the Convention was

CHAPTER XXll—(Continued.)

not so barren of results. "Ireland might starve but great George weighed twenty stone." Ireland was duped, and John Redmond in his grave, but Great Britain was throbbing with the sight of the United States despatching her soldiers in millions to the rescue of England. The Prime Minister had one other memorable satisfaction. On April 9, 1918, the day on which the "Report'' of the Convention was submitted to the cabinet, and without (as he confessed) doing the unfortunate document the courtesy of reading it, he announced that his word to Irelandwas to be broken again, and that Conscription was to be imposed upon Ireland in violation of his solemn promise to the contrary. CHAPTER XXIII—A TRUE "NATIONAL CABINET." The resistance to Conscription led to the first and last occasion on which all descriptions of Nationalists —Parliamentary, Republican and Laborite — unitedly together. One of the bribes by which Mr. Llovd George had secured the silence of the Hibernian Party, while "the Home R.ule Government," with a sweeping "Home Rule" majority was being transformed into a Coalition dominated by Sir E. Carson, was. the promise that Ireland Avpuld be exempted from Conscription. The promise was to he impudently broken now when the Hibernian Party had parted with its casting vote. By a grisly .-coincidence', ■ on the day when " the Report of the Irish Convention was submitted to the Cabinet, Mr. Lloyd George rose in the House of Commous to propose that the Conscription Act be extended to Ireland. His announcement wrung from mc the exclama-

tiori: "That is a declaration of Avar against Ireland!" It also wrought the rank and file of the Hibernian Party into an outburst of real indignation. Mr. Lloyd George had, however, his answer that out to silence the falsetto passion of their leaders. Pie was ready with quotations from the late Mr. Redmond, in which he said: "Let me state what is my personal view on the question of compulsion. I am prepared to say I will stick at nothingnothing which is necessary order to win this war," and from his successor, Mr. Dillon, who added : "Like Mr. Redmond I view the thing from the point of view of necessity and expediency. I would not hesitate to support Conscription to-mor-row, if I thought it was necessary to maintain liberty, and if there was no Conscription we ran the risk of losing the Avar." The Prime Minister had no difficulty in satisfying the condition of "necessity" by appealing to the desperate emergency of the moment, -when "with American aid we oat) save the war, but even with American help we cannot feel secure." After which he was able to give short shrift to the present blatant indignation of the Hibernian leaders and to the spluttering Avar-cries of their bemuddled followers. The fit of hypocritical virtue which always accompanies a breach of faith with Ireland by a sanctified assurance of rewards to come was not missing on the present occasion. Conscription there must be, to he enforced within tAvo or three weeks, hut Mr. Lloyd George sweetly warbled, .it was to be Avashed down with a new Home Rule Bill, which he only vaguely adumbrated as one to be founded on the Majority Report of the Irish Convention; hut inasmuch as, he casually mentioned that he had not yet read the Majority Report at all, and as the Majority Report turned out to be a make-believe, Avhich was impartially despised'on all sides, and was, in fact, never heard of more, the perfidy of breaking the promise Ireland understood to have been plainly given, was only aggravated hy the accompanying dose of British hypocrisy. It Avas late, hoAvever, for the Party Avho had parted with their Parliamentary power to make any impression in Parliament. Their wry faces made but little impression upon the serried ranks of the Coalition. It was in Ireland/' not in Westminster, Conscription had to bo encountered, and not with Avords. It was to gird Ireland up to the terrific trial to which the Conscription Act challenged her that my own protest Avas principally directed: "Whether Avisely or unwisely, all parties of politicians, both English and Irish, have done their worst to deprive my friends and myself of any effectual power of interfering in Irish affairs, but so long as I retain my seat in this House at all, I shall not shrink from the duty of making my protest, no matter hOAV poAverless it may be, against the mad arid wicked crime which, you are proposing tonight to perpetrate upon Ireland. For forty -years now Ireland has been pleading and hungering for peace with England upon the most moderate terms. For the last eight years the representatives of the Irish people have had sovereign power of life and death over this Parliament under tAvo successive Governments and the only fault of the Irish

• people was -that they -trusted you too - much; and allowed their vrepresentatives in this aHouse to use I their tremendous' powers greatest powers that Irishmen ever had over .■_■ your Parliamentonly too feebly and with: only toe merciful a regard for your interests. Even ; when this war broke out Ireland could l^have; destroyed you. One of your own statesmen then acknowledged that Ireland was the one bright spot on your horizon. What is Ireland's reward? Now, when in your wild ignorance you have taken it into your heads | the two latest Irish elections of South «rmagh and Waterford show* that the spirit of Sinn Fein is dying away, you have the country disarmed and are holding it down under Martial Law. You have your gaols packed with political prisoners whom you are treating as common felons for the selfsame offence of drilling a Volunteer Army, for which two of the most distinguished leaders of the Ulster Volunteers have been promoted : to be Cabinet Ministers. We have witnessed to-night another exhibition of the old trick of mixing up the.promise of a •milk-and-water Home Rule Bill which you know will come to nothing with a proposal of 'brutal military coercion by which you ask the Irish people to shed torrents of their blood — suppose by way of gratitude to the Prime Minister for the winds, as he did to-night, another s&plemn promise to the Irish nation. . . . li»you expect co-operation or gratitude alfl can tell you is you will receive - nothingjsnd deserve nothing but the destation of H, people who only a few months ago were all but on their knees proffering you their friendship and their allegiance. I say all this with bitter regret, because you have compelled me to renounce those dreams of a true and permanent reconcilation between these twfc countries with which I can truly say my/thoughts have been occupied night LA .and daSffor the past fifteen years. . . . if. Ido noffiSwant on an occasion of this kind to accentuate differences amongst Irish Nationalists. You have perhaps by this proposal to-night done something to lessen *. those differences and to ensure that however serious our differences have been and are, on this question of resistance to Conscription you will find all Irish Nationalists the world over who are worth their salt standing shoulder to shoulder against you. I dare say you have machine guns enough to beat down armed resistance, although you may not find it as easy a job as the Prime Minister imagines, but even if you succeed your troubles with Ireland shall be only beginning. Your own experience ought to have taught you that, in the 800 years you have spent in trying, you have never yet completely conquered Ireland and you never shall. What you will do, I am afraid, will be to drive resistance into other channels with which, with all your military power, you will never be able to deal, and you will be digging a gulf of hatred between the two countries "which no living man will see bridged over Jhich no hate to say will see bridged over gain. I hate to say it in your present hour of trouble, but in my solemn belief it is the '_■_. truth. By this Bill, instead of winning soldiers for your army, you are calling down y- . i * Five Hibernians were returned. .....

upon your heads the execrations of the entire Irish race in America and Australia and Canada, as well as in every honest Irish home, if not among the five ; hundred ; thousand men of Irish blood in your own military camps, and you are driving millions of the best men of our race to turn away their eyes from this Parliament for ever." Never was perfidy more swiftly punished. To the demand for her best blood, coming from the Government .which had just broken its word twice over, by the fraudulent Convention, and by the violation of its pledge to exempt her from Conscription, Ireland made answer that her blood would be spent rather in resisting the decree of her oppressors, and to the world's amaze, it was the all but unarmed "small nationality" that succeeded, and it was the Power counting its soldiers by millions that went down in the encounter. The happy idea of turning that resistance into a heavensent bond of National Unity occurred to the Lord Mayor of Dublin (Aid. O'Neill), who can truly be described as the only Irishman of our time, who lived through long years of civil war, and belonged to no Party, but gave noble service to them all. He summoned a Mansion House Conference at which the leaders of all sections met around the same board to organise the resistance. The Conference was so happily constituted as to deserve the description of it given by the official organ of Sinn Fein— The Irish Bulletin—that "it formed a National Cabinet." Its members were—For the Sinn Fein Party, Mr. de Valera and Mr. Arthur Griffith; for the Hibernian Party—Mr. Dillon and Mr. Devlin ; for the All-for-Ireland Party, Mr. T. M. Healy and myself; and for the Irish Labor Party, Messrs. Johnston, O'Brien, and Egan. The country was fused as it was-never fused before by the common danger into a glowing National unity so complete that any order countersigned by "the National Cabinet" would have been obeyed without question by every Nationalist of the race. Its sittings gave me my first opportunities of getting acquainted with Mr. de Valera. His transparent sincerity, his gentleness and equability captured the hearts of us all. His gaunt frame and sad eyes deeply buried in their sockets had much of the Dantesque suggestion of "the man who had been in hell." His was that subtle blend of virility and emotion which the Americans mean when they speak of "a magnetic man." Even the obstinacy (and it was sometimes trying) with which he would defend a thesis, as though it were a point in pure mathematics, with more than the French bigotry for logic, became tolerable enough when, with a boyish smile, he would say: "You will bear with me, won't you? You know I am an old schoolmaster." On the other hand the Memphis Sphinx could not well have been more mute than was Mr. Arthur Griffith during these consultations, but his silence had something of the placid strength and ; assuredness of that granitic Egyptian countenance. Nobody acquainted with his abundant and excellent. work as a publicist will suspect that he said nothing because he had nothing to say. So long as all went well, he was content to listen.. He

raised no difficulties. He . gave no hint of" personal preferences or fads. Throughout our sittings, Mr. Healy .was considerate and conciliatory to a degree that took away the breath of Mr. Dillon himself, and he contributed to our proceedings in the form of an Address to President Wilson, a statement of Ireland's historic case which will deserve to live in our National archives as a State paper of classic value. On the day of our first meeting at the Mansion House, the Irish Bishops were meeting also at Maynooth, twelve miles away. It will always be counted among my most consolatory memories that it was my good fortune to frame for submission to the Bishops a resolution outlining the form of National Resistance to be adopted. It was Mr. de Valera who drew up the words of the Anti-Conscription Pldge which we suggested should be solemnly taken in every parish in the country on the following Sunday. It was, indeed, a drastic one, and led to a logomachy between its author and Mr. Dillon so prolonged that I had to appeal to the Lord Mayor to force a decision, or the Bishops would have dispersed and our deputation would arrive too late. The.necessity for haste was . justified. When the deputation reached Maynooth, the Bishops had concluded their meeting with a resolution energetic enough as a Platonic protest against conscription but as water unto wine compared with the specific declaration of war of which our deputation were the bearers. Fortunately their Lordships reassembled and adopted with but few changes.even of words the substance of our recommendations "solemnly pledging the Nation to resist onscription by the most effectual means at their disposal," and inaugurating the National resistance by a Mass of Intercession in every church in the island to be followed by the public administration of the Pledge. The Bishops, who have not always /been so fortunate in their dealings with Irish political affairs, deserve the lasting gratitude of the nation for the fortitude (and - it was greater than persons without intimate secret knowledge could estimate) with which they faced all the perils of saving their race. It was the Bishops' solemn benediction to the resistance "by the most effectual means at the disposal of the Irish people" which killed onscription. Next,of course, to the known determination of the youth of the country to be worthy of their lead and to resist unto blood. Even the appalling experiences of the war let loose later on by Sir Hamar Greenwood will scarcely enable posterity to realise in what a perfect ecstacy of self-sacrifice the young men were preparing to meet conscription foot to foot. The Government on its own side seemed not Ises resolute. Every regiment that could be . spared was hurried over to Ireland, and Field Marshal French, fresh from the horrors of the Flanders battlefields, was sent over as Commander-in-Chief to superintend the operations which were to begin "in a week or two." Early on the morning of the day on which the Mansion; House Conference was to hold its first meeting, I was aAvakened in my bedroom at the Shelbourne Hotel by the noise of a military band escorting Field-Marshal French- on his arrival by

the morning mail from England. As he Stepped out of his motor-car to enter the Hotel,. I heard him saluted by waiters, porx ters and chambermaids from almost) every fL window l of the Hotel (once the most aristocratic in the metropolis) with shouts of "Up, : Easter /Week!" "Up, the rebels!" The 3 outburst so impressed the new Commander-in-Chief that he took his meals in his bedroom, and only from the hands of his orderly. ( »fyie Head Waiter once entering his room was ! **asked what did the people really mean to do about Conscription. "Well, any lord," was I the quiet reply, "we are seventy men in this ;house. We have all made our peace with : God. You may have our dead bodies, but : j you'll get nothing else." Another experience of mine will help better than any wealth .. of detail to an Understanding of the spirit now enkindled. General Gage, an honesthearted Englishman, who came over to Ireland for the first time to take command of the Conscription campaign in the South, called upon me to relate with an almost ;: comical surprise what had befallen him the previous day while he was motoring in the . -neighborhood of Mitchelstown with the High

Sheriff for the County (Mr. : Philip Harold Barry) who had himself publicly and with arm uplifted taken the pledge to resist Conscription. They questioned a priest whom they met riding down from the Galtee Mountains as to how feeling ran among the people. "I can't do better," was the reply of the priest, "than tell you what happened up the road there a minute ago. I met old Darby Ryan who complained that the jackdaws had been playing havoc with his field of young corn. ' Father,' he said, ' I went for the ould gun to have a shot at the divvels, but I found I had only five cartridges left, and, Father,' he said, ' I'm going to keep them for the first five sojers that come to take away my boy.' " Such was the spirit, it must with truth be owned, which alone could have brought the Ministers of England to repent their breach of faith on Conscription, but "in a week or two" it decided them _to drop a campaign which would assuredly have cost them a dozen casualties in their own ranks at the least for every conscript they could ever succeed in transporting whole to Flanders. (To be continued.)