The Irish Revolution and How It Came About

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LII, Issue 7, 25 February 1925, Page 7

The Irish Revolution and How It Came About

(By William O’Brien)

CHAPTER XXYII (Continued)

The Sinn Fein attitude during the war has not made matters easier. No British Statesman could coerce Ulster in order to place it forcibly under the control of de Valera and the men who were undoubtedly intriguing with the German to stab Britain in the back at the very moment when Germany was making a special effort to overwhelm her armies in France. I very much regret having to say this for I have always been a consistent supporter of every Home Rule Bill introduced into the House of Commons during the past 30 years. But it is no use ignoring facts. I know you to be a man of supreme courage and therefore prepared to face unpalatable truths. Ever sincerely, Lloyd George. William O’Brien, Esq. Private and Confidential. July 19, 1919. Dear Mr. Lloyd George,— Before you finally make up your mind to '-the most lamentable decision to which you are tending, there are a few considerations which I would ask you to weigh well. 1. If I was “fundamentally right” in struggling for the conciliation of “Ulster,” it is not wise to forget that these efforts were steadily ignored by a Liberal Home Rule Government while Sir E. Carson’s men were declaring in the House of Commons that it was still possible to win the consent of Ulster. No concession of any kind was offered, until at the last and under threat of rebellion there was offered the one inadmissible and impossible concession— of Partition and the whole object of the Home Rule Bill sacrificed. 2. That Partition was offered with the concurrence of the .late Irish Party is no argument against the Irish people, who, the - moment they got the chance, and mainly on account of their acceptance of Partition, : annihilated that Party at the polls. 3. Irish resentment is only exasperated by the’ allegation that “the Irish Convention I failed to agree to a settlement.” As you may . possibly remember, I pointed out to you at ' the time, 90 out of 100 members of the Convention were pladged to Partition (which only - for the Sinn Fein victories of East s dare and Kilkenny they would certainly have fallen back upon). The Convention represented everybody except the Irish people, as is proved by the' fact that not three Na- - tionalist members of the Convention could -obtain ©lection by any ■ constituency in the country. On the other hand, you have only to refer to the class of names I suggested f for a Conference of • ten or twelve known

friends of peace to make sure they would have come to an agreement, and that, on a Referendum, their agreement would have been accepted by as large a majority as d is possible for any country to show upon any contested issue. That way, and that way alone' a .settlement still lies. 4. The argument as to Sinn Fein having “stabbed England in the back” is only worthy of Sir E. Carson, whose preparations for his own rebellion were far more responsible for England’s troubles with Germany. It must be remembered that the Easter Week Rising was a reaction from the failure of forty years of earnest petitioning for peace on the part of the Irish people, culminating with the prooosal of Partition, which is as intolerable to Ireland as a proposal of peace would be to France on condition of the alienation of onefourth of her territory. If Sinn Fein had stooped to a real policy of treachery, they would have flooded your army with Irish recruits, and by wholesale desertion m battle have imitated the desertions from the Austrian Army of her Bohemian, Creation, Rumanian, and Italian subjects, to whom you have given liberty as their reward for their rebellions, 5. Nationalists are not pledged to a policy of “putting Ulster in the same position as Munster or Connaught.” On the contrary, they are ready with one voice now to concede to Ulster the special terms my friends and myself struggled for all alongterms which would secure her all but half the votes in an Irish Parliament. They would probably, accept, further, some such exceptional appeal to the Imperial Parliament for a limited time as we proposed six years ago. Any conceivable danger of oppression would now be met by an appeal to the League of Nations, who will have a jurisdiction in the affairs of minorities much larger than the “Ulster” minorities who have been incorporated in the new States of Poland, Bohemia, Servia, and the Italian Tyrol. 6. If the offer of unqualified Dominion Home Rule for all Ireland were propounded even now on the responsibility of the Government and accepted by an overwhelming majorityeven in Ulster itself — Referendum, it is not conceivable, especialy if the verdict of Great Britain were obtained at a General Election, that physical force would be necessary to obtain obedience to the law. I am too old to be any longer of much account, but it would be a wrong to the two countries to conceal from you my conviction that if the reasonableness of the most in-

fluential leaders of Sinn Fein be now spurned and nothing done, so long as Sir E. Carson : bars the way, you will leave many millions y of the new generation of Irishmen at home and in America and Australia with no alternative but to ! place their hopes in England’s difficulties either through perilous rivalries with America or in some Socialist revolution at home in some paralysis of English trade. You will not, I hope, complain if I have been free spoken in offering advice of a sort which up to the present has not often turned out to be astray in the affairs of Ireland. “Sincerely yours, “William O’Brien. “Rt. Hon. D. Lloyd George, M.P., Prime Minister.” “If they are honestly dealt with, all will be well, but God help the Government that will try any further tricks on them!” It was the complete manual of wisdom in the matter, but the manual was placed under the eyes of the blind. Plainly, it was the incorrigible British fault all over again: Mr. Lloyd George read the first hint of good-will on Mr. de Valera’s part as a sign that he was a beaten man. As likely as not, he concluded that he had caught Mr. Mr. de Valera and myself in a conspiracy to balk him of the victory already in the hands of the Black-and-Tans. Here was the small smartness which so often marred his imaginative greatness as a statesman. Had he at that time honestly opened negotiations for peace, he would have avoided most of the difficulties which were later to imperil everything when the Irish Republic had to be dealt with as an accomplished fact. The Bail had not yet been formally called together; its members had not yet sworn the solemn oath of allegiance to the Irish Republic which it thenceforth became the principal difficulty of delicate minds to recall. ' It seems certain that Mr. de Valera’s scruples about arranging the terras of an “external association” with the Empire would never have assumed their subsequent seriousness, and that the vast bulk of the nation would have'welcomed peace in ecstacy. Nevertheless, in the very letter in which he acknowledges that I was “fundamentally right” (and consequently he himself fundamentally wrong) in the advice I had for years been tendering, the Prime Minister once more rejects my counsels, will talk of nothing except the old bitterness of Easter Week, and the failure of his own precious specific .of “The Irish Convention,” and obviously dismisses the subject with the comfortable feeling that his own policy of the Black Hand was winning. CHAPTER XXVIII THE BLACK ANDTANS. Forced by England’s deliberate plan from its quiet administration of Corporations and Co. Councils, its Arbitration Courts and peaceful picketing of the ; Royal Irish Constabulary, to fight for its life, Sinn Fein at last stood on its guard and fought. Since young David took up his sling to tackle Goliath never seemed there so unequal a match. Between regulars, policemen, and • naval ratngs, England' disposed of an army of 100,000 of the best equipped troops in ’the

Avorld, being at least one armed soldier for -every able-bodied man of the population in the eight or ten counties to Avhich the bur"\den of the battle Avas confined. Against this < host there was arrayed no visible force of • - **£any kind except bands of half-drilled young- ■■■", " sters, without so much as a field piece, Avith f the scantiest equipment even of rifles, Avith ■ no really serviceable Aveapons at all except revolvers to confront the heavy artillery, the tanks and armored. cars massed against them under famous generals fresh from their victory over German armies counted by millions. Before the revolution Avhich the World War made in methods of warfare as in the Avhole structure of civilisation, no Irishman outside a padded-cell could have dreamed of' pitting these parcels of raAV youths in the open field aganst the ironclad might of England. By n curious irony it Avas a Avar in which the armaments of England surpassed tenfold any in her history that caused Ireland, Egypt, and India to laugh at her colossal military poAver, and it Avas after the war, on its great fields, had been triumphantly concluded .that her armies were covered Avith disgrace and shame by a Young Ireland furnished Avith Aveapons little more dangerous than blackthorns. '“lt Avas, of course, solely because the principle of the sacredness of the liberties of the small.nationalities on Avhich she had been forced to - - fight the Avar, if she Avere to obtain the aid of America,, hoav interposed its veto against the annihilation of Ireland by her militarist armies, and the fine chivalry Avith Avhich she had egged on or mvarded Avith their National Freedom the rebels of the Austrian, A the Russian and the Turkish empires, was ]f uoav retorted upon herself and withered her arm Avhen she came to deal Avith the Poles, and Tcheco-Slovaques and Jougo-Slaves of her own Empire. Mr. Lloyd George, hoAvever, stripped England of all the credit she might have had if she had of her oavia motion added Ireland to the constellation of free nations it Avas her boast to have set shining by the Treaty of Versailles. He took a course which digged a new gulf of hatred betAveen the tAvo islands, he tore open centuried AA'ounds AA'hich. Avere all but healed. He tortured the patient nation-builders of the original Sinn Fein programme out of their peacefulness and he supplanted them Avith the Irish Republican Army. Ho affected to mistake a Avorld-Avide race for a murder-gang, and never gaA'e up the policy of “frightfulness” and insult by which he calculated upon coAving them, until he had kindled them into a war of liberty Avhich was the admiration of the world, and until the beaten bully Avas reduced to suing for a visit to his Cabinet Room at' DoAvning Street from the most noted of the murdergang. It was not, hoAvever, until he had first compelled the tortured nation for tAvo years to undergo a SAveat of blood. This is hot the place to relate the history of events, quorum pars minima fui which I Avas com-*-v. polled to Avitness in blank and helpless in- { action and of AA'hich the recital must be left to those Avith a better title to Avrite from I first-hand information. Tavo things it may safely be affirmed 'will appear with more certainty the more searchingly the investigations hitherto forbidden are pushed home —

there will be found no page in England’s story more shameful than the war of the Black-and-Taife, and none in which the fortitude of the youth of Ireland, and their idealism as lofty if'sometimes also as cloudy as our Irish skies will figure more proudly in the eyes of their posterity. The Irish Republican Army could not hold the open field for an hour against ten thousand regular troops; they nevertheless succeeded in worrying an army of a hundred thousand out of the country. Battalions without end poured into the remotest villages, without any visible resistance to their armored cars and great artillery but the practical results of their occupation vanished as promptly as the fortifications built by children on the foreshore, to be quietly swallowed up by the next tide. Not less unchain able was the ocean that swelled around their barrack-walls, for its ebb and flow was moved by the two primeval attractive forces that agitate the soul of the multitudinous Irish —the Spirit of Liberty and the Spirit of Religion. The nation was seized by a holy fire such as inflamed the first Crusaders at the call of Peter the Hermit. The Republican army into which the young men flocked was not more truly an army than a great religious Confraternity as fanatical as the processions of the White Penitents which traversed Europe in the Middle Ages. They went into fire or mounted the scaffold with the placid conscience of those who have received Extreme Unction and are about to step straight into Heaven, Not only had death no terrors for the finest among them ; they courted it and insisted upon it as the most precious of honors, and that with the modesty of true heroes. Kevin Barry, a medical student of sixteen, who was hanged for an attack on a military lorry in one of the streets of Dublin, was a perfectly fair specimen of the Republican recruit. Two days before his execution, the boy met some of his comrades in the prisonyard at Mount joy, and was permitted to shake hands with them. As they parted, his dying speech was: “Well, good-bye, boys: I’m off on Monday!”that and nothing more. Death, even under what might well seem to the young soldier ignominious conditions, was too much a matter of courts to Avaste. words about. Against happy warriors such as —who recited their Rosaries or sang their “Soldier’s Song” with equal fervor — appeared and disappeared on the track of the British troops with the mysterious facility of Ariel —who accepted sentence of penal servitude or death without answering a word in recognition of England’s Courts-martial—-who even in the depths of the English prisons where they were entombed carried on the war as stoutly as ever, raised barricades and engaged their torturers with bare fists, escaped over the prison Avails under the eyes of their gaolers, died of hunger by inches, rather than acknowledge any criminal taint, held their dances in the intervals of their ambushes in their mountain bivouacs and in all these Avild years never laid an irreverent hand upon a Avoman, or tasted intoxicating drink, or bred a single informer in their ranks — against the spirit of ten thousand Kevin Barrys, the garrisons of the armored cars

might as Avell discharge their great guns against the heavens. More amazing even than the fanaticism of the Republican Army Avas the genius Avitli Avhich their operations were conducted. Nobody kneAv Avho were the men in command. Nobody knoAvs for certain even yet. The young clerks and schoolmasters and artisans like Michael Collins, Oathal Brugha, Richard Mulcahy, and Major General McKeown, “the blacksmith of Ballinalee,” aaTlo are uoav the legendary heroes of the fights, r ere at that time unknoAvn even by name outside their secret council-chambers. But General Macready and the most acute of his staff officers Avere the first to. recognise the military genius of the anonymous captains who lay in wait for them and baffled —the accuracy Avith which their plans Avere worked out to their smallest particular—the versatility Avith Avhich, as soon as one mode of attack was exploded, they turned to another and a more provokingly ingenious one —the ruthless punctuality with Avhich they anSAvered “reprisals” by “counter reprisals”— the methodical precision with which the account for the hanging of six soldiers of the Republic in one morning in Cork was squared by the shooting of six soldiers of England the same evening in the same cityand the cheerfulness with Avhich they took their punishment Avhenever even native Avits like theirs Avere no match for the overpowering army against Avhich their revoHers and shot guns Avere pitted. As, the plot thickened, savage crimes began to dog 'the march of the Republicans as Avell as of the Black-and-Tans. .4 la guerre comine a la,guerre I Avas spoken by the most chivalric of the war-nations; Avar is ahvays and everywhere a hideous and bloodguilty thing obeying its law of nature which is to beat the enemy into subjection by Avhatever, brutalities it may. But these Avere only the rare blots upon a guerilla Avar Avhich. would have been the admiring Avonder of England and the enthusiastic theme of her poets had it been Avaged against any poAA'er in the Avorld except her own —a guerilla Avar as gallant as that Avhich drove the French out of Spain more effectually than Wellington’s ArmyAvaged against far more terrific odds than that of the Greeks AA'hich excited Byron’s lyric raptures—and perhaps Avith more scrupulous ' Aveapons than those employed against Austria by Mazzini whom, as these lines are Avritten, Mr. Lloyd George has been extolling as “the greatest name in the history of Italy”—the name of Dante himself being forgotten, if ever heard of. ' (To be continued.)