INVINCIBLE TD TCIJ It J. C .WALSH THE INVINCIBLE IRISH The Invincible Irish BY J. C. WALSH 7 met with Nap per Tandy And he took me by the hand' NEW YORK THE DEVIN-ADAIR CO. Copyright, 1919, by THE DEVIN-ADAIR CO. JUAHfc \iT3 239753 BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY CHESTNUT HILL. MASS. REV. RICHARD H. TIERNEY WHOSE NAME IS HONORED IN ERIN CONTENTS I. Independence or Re-conquest. 9 II. "I Met with Napper Tandy" . 25 III. Ireland under the Microscope 35 IV. The Men of Clare 62 V. The Policy of Self Reliance. . 85 VI. Forcing Frames of Freedom. 107 VII. Whitecaps on a Rising Sea. . . 123 VIII. The Irish Valiant Woman. . . 140 IX. What Can Be Done to Help. . 153 APPENDIX Ireland's Right to Freedom 169 INDEPENDENCE OR RE-CONQUEST ONE day, early in February, in the win- ter garden of the Grand Hotel in Paris, I ran across an American business man who had come to Europe after the ar- mistice to see for himself what were the possibilities for American trade. "I see," he remarked, "that over in Ireland they have declared a republic, and got away with it." I knew that the Irish members who had been elected, in the previous De- cember, with the declared intention of stay- ing away from London, had held a meeting in the Dublin Mansion House, but the Paris newspapers were very careful, all through the Peace Conference, about what news from Ireland they published, for the Paris [9] The Invincible Irish press was under a very firm control by the French Government, and in those days of delicate manipulation it was thought to be very bad policy to print anything which might be disagreeable to England; on all that pertained to Ireland, one very able Frenchman commented to me, "our English friends are extraordinarily sensitive." Therefore, while I knew that the Dail Eireann had been set up, that an appeal to the world had been issued, that delegates to the Peace Conference had been named, that a Republic had been proclaimed and a President had been elected, it remained true that the newspapers had presented the news in such a way as to suggest that the new or- ganization had but a very tenuous hold upon existence, and what now caught my attention was the comment of this shrewd American that they had "got away with it." When one came to think of it, the fact that [10] Independence or Re-conquest all this had been done did seem to be in- vested with significance, for had not other men, not three years earlier, signed their names to a republican proclamation, and were not the bodies of all of them committed to the destroying quicklime? Afterwards I heard more of this meeting. It came about naturally enough, and even for the success with which the participants "got away with it" there was an adequate explanation. When the British Cabinet decided that a general election should be held between the signing of the armistice and the opening of the Peace Conference, public opinion in England directed itself to one set of facts, public opinion in Ireland to another set altogether. Mr. Lloyd George offered to the English people a pretentious pro- gramme of reform. The people refused to pay any attention. What they were inter- [ii] The Invincible Irish ested in was that Germany must be made to pay and that the Kaiser must be hanged. Mr. Lloyd George dropped his election programme and was satisfied to take his majority on the terms upon which it was offered. In Ireland, instead of looking eastward towards Germany, they preferred to look westward towards America. They saw in the fourteen points of President Wilson the assurance that every European nationality was to escape from subjection, and they acted accordingly. The election was held on the single issue of the assertion of Ire- land's freedom, and the election posters were a faithful paraphrase of President Wilson's utterances. It was amazing, no doubt, that such things could be, but it was so, and when the fact was realized the re- sponse was overwhelming. As an index of the situation, it may be stated that Arch- [12] Independence or Re-conquest bishop Walsh of Dublin, who, since his episcopal consecration, had felt it to be his duty to abstain from voting, concluded that since the impossible had happened, and since it was now practicable, in the most regular way, to signify his desire for the political independence of his country, with no room for misunderstanding what the vote would mean, there was nothing for it but to cast his ballot in the company of the rest of his countrymen. It can never be argued, therefore, that Ireland had left her- self exposed to the chance that the Peace Conference might decide in ignorance of her wishes. It was inevitable that the men who were elected, in these circumstances, to stay at home in Ireland, should meet and give effect to the declaration which Ireland had thus most solemnly made. This they did, on January 21, or rather those of them [13] The Invincible Irish did who were not still in prison. A fact of the first consequence is that they were permitted to meet and to declare their pur- poses. Dublin Castle did consider prevent- ing the meeting, and it is said the decision not to interfere was taken on the narrowest margin. On the other hand, I have been credibly informed that the meeting would have been held, even if it had been forbid- den, if not at the Mansion House then else- where, and that the necessary dispositions to prevent interruption of the meeting by force had been effected. There is no disguising that both the elec- tion and the meeting at which the Republic was proclaimed were held behind the breastwork of Wilsonian prestige. The im- portance of America in the negotiations for peace also helped. In none of the Euro- pean chancelleries, at that moment, was it thought expedient to risk Mr. Wilson's Independence or Re-conquest disfavor or to do anything to invite American hostility. When Mr. Wilson came to London, on Boxing Day, one could feel it in the air that people were undecided whether it was a friend or an enemy who was at hand. Could it possibly be a friend who so inconsiderately interfered with the sacred custom of spending the Christmas holidays in the country? For a whole week the newspapers labored to overcome this impression by printing columns of the most fulsome adulation of Mr. Wilson from their Paris correspondents, something which shocked the English sense of dignity to the core, but which attained its end, for the reception to him when he came was not unworthy of London's reputation for street spectacles. When he went away again the impression had got abroad that, if his favor had not been secured for all England's de- mands, at least his measure had been taken. [15] The Invincible Irish Long afterwards, in Paris, Mr. Wilson was reported as having said to an intimate that he did think an understanding had been ef- fected, only to find that, when the time came for Mr. George and Mr. Balfour to sup- port him, somehow the realization of his desires had been made impossible. The story may be true ; at least it epitomizes the failure of the Peace Conference insofar as, in the American view, the Conference failed. But in December, when the elec- tions were held, and in January, when the meeting of Dail Eireann was held, and for some time after, it was one of the highest concerns of English policy not to allow Mr. Wilson's mind to be disturbed. Hardly anything less could have operated to induce Dublin Castle to hold its hand. Unless I mistake, we shall learn sometime that mem- bers of the American Peace Delegation, perhaps even the highest of them, knew [16] Independence or Re-conquest what the Irish were going to do. I don't say they inspired, but I think they knew. Sometimes I even think my friend who was impressed by the fact that the Irish had "got away with it," may have reflected the mental attitude of some of those at the Cril- lon Hotel whose devotion to Mr. Wilson's ideals was at the time unclouded by the dis- appointment which long afterwards drove them home in despair. Still, at the Conference itself, Ireland's case did not make headway in official favor. Mr. O'Kelly, duly accredited, came over and formally presented, through the post office, his country's case. He got very few acknowledgments and no attention. Lest "the susceptibilities of our English friends" should be wounded, Ireland was taboo in Paris. For a long time the argument was advanced that Ireland could not hope to get the Conference's attention, as the sole [17] The Invincible Irish business in Paris was to liquidate the affairs of the defeated Empires. Even to this there were limits, for when it came to Turkey's turn to be divided there was a sudden up- flaming of Mahometan anger, and the Ma- harajah of Bekanir rushed back to Paris with a warning to go slow. Perhaps we shall learn, all in good time, that the trouble in India smoothed the way for the success of Japan in the matter of Shantung. Ireland's turn came, as eve^body who had followed the League of Nations discus- sion saw it must come, with the appearance of Article X of the first draft of the League Covenant. No doubt the original purpose of that article was to ensure to the small nations being called into existence in East- ern Europe that they were to be born viable and were not predestined for enumeration in the infant mortality returns. The lan- guage of the article, however, plainly ex- [18] Independence or Re-conquest tends the guarantee of territorial integrity to the possessions of the victorious powers. Its effect upon Ireland was, according to the general interpretation, to confirm Eng- land's title thereto. As one jurist com- mented, it adjudged that this and all such titles were sound, always had been and al- ways would be, and did so without exami- nation or hearing of adverse claim. At this point appeared the importance of the action of Ireland in declaring its inde- pendence in December and January. The Conference might ignore Ireland, might set up every other European nationality as a separate state and leave Ireland out, but it could not change the fact that Ireland, by her own act, and without waiting for favors, had completed the Conference's work. Mr. O'Kelly and his colleague, Mr. George Gavan Duffy, issued to the mem- bers of the Conference a forceful remon- [19] The Invincible Irish strance against Article X and against the acceptance of the peace terms for Ireland by any but the duly authorized representa- tives of the Irish Government. Into this situation came the delegates of the American Committee on Irish Inde- pendence, Mr. Frank P. Walsh, ex-Gover- nor Dunne, and Mr. M. J. Ryan. Their work, and they were very active, rested upon the assumption that Ireland, which had declared her independence, had the right to do so and to have her action recog- nized and confirmed; from which it fol- lowed that Article X, or any other article in the League of Nations Covenant, or the Covenant itself, if designed to reverse the decision of the Irish people, or if likely to be operative in the sense of depriving Ire- land of her formally affirmed independence, was to be condemned and resisted. In Amer- ica, condemnation had already found voice. [20] Independence or Re-conquest They had access to President Wilson and to the American Peace Delegation, and were therefore in position to do for Mr. O'Kelly and Mr. Duffy what these gentlemen found great difficulty in doing for them- selves, namely, to establish personal contact with one of the delegations engaged in the work of the Conference. The Irish-Ameri- can Delegation, in fact, upset all the con- ventions that had been arranged with great care for visitors such as they. All other such delegations were, if lucky, received; then they were forgotten; then, unless pre- vented, they went home. The process was started in the orthodox manner with Mr. Walsh and his colleagues. Mr. Walsh saw the President. They all saw other members of the American Delegation, some of whom evidenced a very proper sense of the utility of being nice to men of notable political importance at home. Mr. Lloyd George, [21] The Invincible Irish having been informed by a most capable sec- retary how things were heading, expressed a desire for an interview; then, realizing the danger he was running, he kept putting it off, while friends of his, fearful of the consequences of such levity, sought the means of cancelling the appointment. Be- fore an opening appeared the delegates an- nounced their desire to go to Ireland. Their action there gave Mr. George his chance to escape, but it did more. It gave Ireland the limelight, with two continents looking on, for two weeks. It gave the people of Ireland an opportunity for self-expression, and they took it, took it to the full. When the delegates returned to Paris, their field of action had been expanded. Never for a day were they victims of neglect, as the other lesser delegations were. And when at last they returned to America, to renew the struggle there, they left in Paris a bu- [22] Independence or Re-conquest reau for the continuation of the European phases of the work. When they came back to Paris, I went to Ireland. The treaty with Germany was ready for signature, the hotels which housed the delegations were emptying, the corre- spondents were homeward bound, and I de- cided to spend some time in Ireland, to see and hear for myself. When I got home to New York, I found myself saying, at a meet- ing I attended, that I knew what Free Ire- land was, for I had been there; that if Ire- land was not free, then we had to inquire into the dwelling-place of freedom, for if freedom has its seat in the hearts of men and women, Ireland was free; and that change, if change there was to be, must con- sist in taking from them something they have, rather than in giving them something they have not. I know the English army is there, but that does not affect the argu- [23] The Invincible Irish merit. Its presence will only alter the sit- uation if England decides upon a re-con- quest of Ireland, and if that enterprise is carried to success with the world looking on. There is a government in Ireland sup- ported and sustained by the people. There is an army in Ireland whose mission it is to hold the island for a foreign power. How long will the condition last, and which way will it end? It seems an absurd question after what the world has just been through. [24] II "I MET WITH NAPPER TANDY" THERE is a saying that the Europe you see is the Europe you take with you when you go to see it. I suppose that is true of Ireland too. After some conversa- tion with the American delegates on their return to Paris I was prepared to find Ire- land an exciting place to visit, and I was not disappointed. The hotels were closed, because of a labor disagreement, and I was fortunate enough to be accommodated in a private house. I was told on the second day not to be surprised if the police turned up in my bedroom any hour of the morning, as they were rather given to that sort of thing and there were rumors about that they meant to be more active than usual. They [25] The Invincible Irish didn't come, however. If they had, and if they had ordered me to seek other quar- ters, what was I to do? Go ask some kind householder to take me in, first requiring from him a certificate that he wasn't the sort of person whose house might be searched? Fortunately it didn't come to that. But I lived in the midst of alarms. Going into the Knights of Columbus Club on Ascension Thursday to ask for mail, I saw, crossing Baggot Street, just below, three armored cars. A half hour later, on Leeson Street, three whippet tanks passed me as fast as they could go. Up above an airplane was circling. I made up my mind that the expected blow had fallen, or was about to fall. Continuing on my way to the University Church on St. Ste- phen's Green, whom should I see but Mr. DeValera, carrying his little document bag, walking along in quiet conversation with [26] "I Met with Napper Tandy" a friend of his who trundled a bicycle. Not but what there have been a great many searches. The offices of the Irish Repub- lic, at 6 Harcourt Street, a house Cardinal Newman once used as a residence, are searched quite frequently and very thor- oughly. Mr. Griffith says they don't mind any more, which shows one can get used to anything. Of course it rather interferes with the careful filing of official records to have the whole stock removed at irregular intervals, but the proceeding must be an excellent check upon the tendency to red tape which limits the efficiency of most gov- ernment offices. Nobody seems to think this one is inefficient. There were questions about the Ireland I brought with me from Paris which seemed to me to be in more urgent need of answer than this daily and nightly one concerning the police. They all harked back, in the [27] The Invincible Irish main, to the expression of my friend whose real interest was in the fact that they "got away with it." Could they really hope to go on doing so? If they could, upon what were their expectations based? I had a lot of queries all ready to put when I ar- rived in Dublin, all running to the famous one of Napper Tandy, "How is poor old Ire- land, and how does she stand?" Had they started something they could not finish? What was the measure of the resources upon which they could depend if they were in for a long period, say, of passive resist- ance? Could they see light in the direc- tion of Ulster? How far could they ex- pect to get in the working out of any plans they might make for the development of Ireland with Dublin Castle still in posses- sion of the purse? Was the national spirit strong enough, and disciplined enough, to raise any considerable doubt in London [28] "I Met with Napper Tandy" as to what might be gained by turning loose the soldiery? What addition to the national staying power, if any, had resulted from the recent increase of facilities for university education? Could the country hold its population, and not be thrown back into the old round under which the young men and women went to America as soon as they were grown? What was the condi- tion of existing industries, and what the prospect for new ones? What increase of sustaining strength had resulted from ob- taining possession of the land? What had been done about labor, and was the incidence of the labor problem likely to make for na- tional strength or for weakness? What were the materials out of which it could be hoped that a direct foreign trade might be built up with other countries than England? Were there, in short, the elements required to organize a state, even supposing the men- [29] The Invincible Irish ace of a hostile army of occupation to be withdrawn? Or to carry on supposing it not to be withdrawn? Had Ireland ad- vanced far enough from its old position as "the most distressful country" to warrant the assumption that it could function as a nation unless prevented from so doing by measures of military repression? Part of the new world policy incorporated in the treaty of peace which assumes to make over the world, rests upon recognition that there are peoples who have to undergo an ap- prenticeship, under a master more or less disinterested, before they are fitted for free- dom, which, however, they are then to have. Is Ireland in that class, or has she passed out of it? She has passed out of it. Her people are fit for freedom and ready for it. If she is not to be admitted to a league of free nations, the fault is not hers. If she is admitted she [30] "I Met with Napper Tandy" is well able to discharge all the obligations that will devolve upon her. That is why the leaders take the stand they do in regard to the treaties of peace. They think Ireland better prepared for freedom than most of the nations to which freedom has been given, and as well pre- pared as some that had it before. They do not accept the interested silence of Paris as an answer with which they can or will be satisfied. They are not dismayed by the Ulster dif- ficulty. They regard Ulster as part of Ire- land, refuse to think of it as anything else, and look forward to the adjustment of dif- ferences of any sort, within Ireland, with no greater strain upon the resources of con- ciliatory statesmanship than is involved in any other country where such differences arise. The only Ulster that gives them worry is an Ulster used by England to di- [31] The Invincible Irish vide Ireland so that England may rule all and Ireland be prevented from controlling the peaceful ordering of its own life. As to England, they have but one word : "We are ready to be friends with her on the single condition that she takes herself out of our house." The idea that England would have in a free Ireland an enemy neighbor commands no support in Ireland itself. They are stronger than they were when O'Connell led them, stronger and wealthier, because they have the land and its earnings, than when Davitt and Parnell began the thirty years of struggle to get rid of the landords who kept them impoverished in purse and timorous in spirit. They have built up industries, although prevented from giving fiscal or other gov- ernmental help, by cultivating the Irish na- tional spirit under the inspiration of the old [32] "I Met with Napper Tandy" Irish language, to the point where sentiment is almost as effective as a tariff. Whereas, under the old penal dispensa- tion and its survivals, the priest was almost the only leader of trained intelligence, there is now a large and ever-increasing univer- sity class, so large as to bear the burden the priest formerly had to bear alone, and to permit of his returning, to his great joy, to the single sphere to which his vocation called him. In their present temper, and with the ca- pacity they have attained, it would be an extremely difficult thing to govern the Irish people with the naked sword. The value of Ireland's material resources is known; their fullest use awaits only the control of legislation which any national government should have, and which in this instance is forcibly withheld. There are commodities for export, and [33] The Invincible Irish will soon be more. There are demands for imports which would help sustain an American shipping venture, and a French. The life of Ireland can be organized, its energies can be directed, through many agencies that can escape the control of Dub- lin Castle; but Ireland, even if her life can- not be effectively controlled by agents of a foreign country or by a foreign military force, is entitled to the freedom of move- ment which all other nations enjoy. Even where there is that freedom, the struggle for sound social existence is severe enough. Why should one white nation be handi- capped as against all the others? England may not want to withdraw from Ireland, but neither did Spain want to with- draw from Holland, or Germany from Bel- gium, or Russia from Poland. Yet they did, and at bottom it was because the people they sought to rule refused to forego their right to be free. [34] Ill IRELAND UNDER THE iMICROSCOPE "T SOMETIMES think," commented my A hostess, who has greatly served Ire- land, and whose father was an Irish clergy- man, "that those whose main thought is of the next world may lack something of the temperament that is needed for a time like this." "So you would have it," I ventured, "Seek ye first the Republic of Ireland and all else shall be added unto you." "For my part," broke in a member of the So- ciety of Friends, "I am convinced that the Kingdom of Heaven and the Republic of Ireland are not so far apart in the souls of the people hereabouts." "That is true, [35] The Invincible Irish indeed. When Professor M. was here last he said to me : 'When I left you the other day it was with the feeling that I might never see you again. Before I went home I had all my affairs settled, for this world and for the next. DeValera was to come next day, processions had been forbidden, and there were all sorts of probabilities that many of us would be killed.' Another friend told me that on that morning the churches were filled with young men receiving Com- munion, all of them looking quite splendid- ly happy. They tell me the police watch the churches now, and when they see un- usual numbers going to Confession the fact is reported to the Castle." "That is what I meant," said the Quaker, "by the remark I made a minute ago." * * * A corner of Fitzwilliam Square. Two policemen and a plain-clothes man stand- [36] Ireland under the Microscope "ing. Across the street a house at the top of which Mr. DeValera has his quarters. When the door opens the police opposite have a clear view of the hall, if the door opens wide enough. Two men on bicycles come down the street. One stops at the corner where the police are and waits, while the other enters the house. Two more of the secret-service men appear. The men of law take turns walking round the man standing motionless by his bicycle. The other man comes out, both mount their bi- cycles and go off, followed by another offi- cer on a bicycle, up to now hidden behind the foliage in the park. Nothing happens. The man who went inside is M. C, member of An Dail Eireann, and an official in the "elected Government of the Republic." He is one of a hundred or more men in Ireland who are "on the run," that is, due to be in prison, but unwilling to go. This one is [37] The Invincible Irish known to be so very unwilling that the po- lice do not like to argue the matter. The bicycle saves their faces when they are in numbers and on foot. The rider who stood at the corner is his bodyguard. A son of the Lord Chancellor told this to a friend : "The night the American dele- gates were received by the Lord Mayor, one of the guests, a doctor, started to cross Dawson Street towards the Mansion House. A policeman recognized him and made a movement to stop him. He shook off the detaining hand and went across at a run. Arrived at the other sidewalk, he turned back, came half across the street, knocked down a particularly offensive detective he had imperfectly recognized in transit, and then walked quietly into the Mansion House." Ten days later Padraic Pearse's play, "The Singer," was being put on at the [38] Ireland under the Microscope Abbey Theatre. A good many in the au- dience knew who was to take the leading part. He was the principal in the adven- ture just related. The performance was for a popular charitable object, and it would be too bad if anything happened to spoil it. Would the actor come? Would he come — before he was arrested? He came, and the evening was quite a success. * * * It being half-past eight, a fine night, and the sun still high in the heavens, I decided to keep a promise made to Shawn O'Kelly in Paris and went to call on his friend, the Lord Mayor. Turning down Dawson Street from St. Stephen's Green, I noticed some policemen, and across the street a score or more of boys and men. Mr. O'Neill was in the country, and I made an appointment for next morning. Turning north, I ran into nine policemen. Nine others faced [39] The Invincible Irish them from across the way. Farther on were eighteen more. Then about twenty soldiers, with two non-commissioned officers. Feel- ing that I must have been doing something wrong I stopped to inquire, greatly daring, of the officers, whether this was the usual thing or something special. The first offi- cer, whose conversation was inarticulate and void of sequence, gave me to understand that the soldiers had a grievance : "We are always being turned out like this on false alarms, and when we get here they don't come. I wish they would come." The other, who, I suppose, was equally prepared for "them" but less indignant over "their" non-appearance, explained that there was to be some sort of a meeting, he did not know about what, but it had been pro- claimed by the viceroy. A policeman told me that it was something about a protest against Jim Larkin's brother being kept in [40] Ireland under the Microscope jail in Australia. It developed, later, that the crafty Dubliners, noting the show of force, went quietly off and held the meet- ing in another place, without any resulting convulsion of law and order, and were just dispersing when more police came to in- form them that the meeting must not be held. This gave me a good conversational opening next morning, and when I was through, the Lord Mayor said : "If it wasn't that tragedy is always so near the surface, I declare there isn't a morning I rise out of my bed but there's a laugh in it. Just this minute before I came to you, I had an application for the use of the round room for Friday at 7.30, and from whom, do you think? From the police themselves. And for what? For a strike meeting. Here is a copy of their ballot." Among other things it demands release of the force from mili- tary control. "And did you give it?" "I [41] The Invincible Irish did." "And will the meeting be pro- claimed?" "It will." It was. A few nights later there was to be a concert in the same hall. It was a labor function, in honor of James Connolly's birthday. The women were let through the lines, the men were kept back. Suddenly shrieks were heard and men coming out of a fashionable club found a girl wounded and bleeding on the doorstep. Three policemen were also wounded. Tragedy had come to the sur- face. * * * Two rather active young men were en- joying a smoke when a letter for one of them was handed in at the door. (This was not in Dublin.) It proved to contain a plan of a spot on the Kerry coast well adapted for landing arms, with an accom- panying written description. "That looks like a good document to burn," said one of [42] Ireland under the Microscope them, and they burned it. Half an hour later the house was raided and searched. When the incident was reported to Dublin the comment was that a better use might have been made of the "planted" papers, and that it was worth running some risk to keep such evidence where it could be used. I asked one of the leaders what he had to say about the poster found in Tip- perary (I think it was) declaring forfeit the lives of all in police or military uni- form, which Lord Chancellor Smith used so effectively in the House of Lords. His answer was, "Can you tell me who printed and posted it? It was very handy for Smith, wasn't it?" * # # I met E — B — one afternoon at Arthur Griffith's office, where he described to me what was being done in the way of sub- stituting dead-meat industries in Ireland [43] The Invincible Irish for the shipment of cattle on the hoof to England. Of that, more later. He is a big, lanky, soft-spoken Ulsterman, who, when the Irish impulse caught him, went off to Kerry to learn Irish. He came round the same evening to a little soiree, and I man- aged to drag out of him the story of how, under the leadership of Austin Stack, a group of prisoners took possession of a wing of Belfast jail. Such a gentle, humorous description, not a tinge of complaint or un- kindness. I remember particularly the de- scription of how the governor, feeling that he ought to visit a part of the prison beyond where the men were, explained his position to Mr. Stack and was permitted to pass and repass under a guard. B — has spent most of the last two years in prison. This night he was complacently contemplating spend- ing another couple of years there. He had gone to a meeting, where an envelope was [44] Ireland under the Microscope handed to him by a local leader. He put it unopened into his pocket. Presently the platform was surrounded, and he was searched. The inspector of police must have seen the letter handed to him, for he insisted on its being opened. Reading it over the policeman's shoulder B — realized that there were purple passages in it which did little credit to the prudence or intelli- gence of the writer, and which probably would mean prison for him. He did not complain. "The worst of it is," said he, "that my bicycle is being repaired, and I won't have it for a week." "Oh, no mat- ter," was the answer, "mine is here, and you can take it along." B — was one of two Protestants in that room. The other was a woman. She, too, had gone from the North to Kerry for her Irish. Her hus- band is one of those who were kept long in prison. She told me quite calmly of the [45] The Invincible Irish plans she has made for herself and the two children when her husband is carted off again, which is apt to be soon, as he is both intelligent and useful. I know of four offers made to B — of quarters preferable to his own in the circumstances. I wish it were permissible to tell from whom some of them came. When I last saw him I tried my tongue on one of the two or three bits of colloquial Irish to which my ear had be- come accustomed. The vernacular equiva- lent is something like "The blessing of God with vou." * * * Among those taken in the net last year was a woman (her name is known every- where) who upon being liberated was or- dered not to return to Ireland. Her house had been let by her friends to a writer who has interpreted Ireland, most of the time from London. One morning a very old [46] Ireland under the Microscope woman rang the bell. The tenant pene- trated the disguise, and he was greatly alarmed. That just shows how the London outlook differs from the Dublin outlook. On the other hand, when I asked a woman who used to spend most of her year in Lon- don why she had come to Dublin at a time like this, with exposure to raids and seiz- ures, her answer was that life anywhere but in Ireland just now would be intolerable for her. When she wrote her name in one of her books for me she said, "This is my hundred and third birthday," which was an exaggeration, it is true, but a suggestive one. * * $ Some little girls in Killarney started out one morning to collect money for the Dail Eireann. They were poor little girls and Killarney is not a very wealthy town. The police swooped down upon them and they [47] The Invincible Irish were arrested for not having a police per- mit. When they were brought to trial they refused to recognize the authority of the court, and would not do any of the things the custom of courts imposes upon law- abiding prisoners. However, the sentence was heavy enough to show the young recal- citrants they could not terrify the British Empire as represented by the Royal Irish Constabulary. The same happened to a boy of eighteen, from near Cork, who was confined in a northern prison. The court officials could not master the intractable youngster enough to make him conform to the rules of the court, and he was still shout- ing his Republican faith when they carried him out. Down in Wexford, moreover, when seven men refused to recognize the court, and those present applauded, the magistrate ordered the room to be cleared. The prisoners went with the rest. Invited [48] Ireland under the Microscope back, they came, but still finding conditions not to their liking they put on their hats and went home. A girl in the west sent to the member in Dublin, who showed it to me, a transcription of the order by which the general officer commanding the troops cautioned a boy of sixteen that he must not be found in the province of Connaught or three named counties outside that province. And I saw another letter in which a young woman complained that a large force of police and military had entered the shop kept by herself and her sister, had removed or disturbed their stock-in-trade, and for explanation said only that the sisters had been warned long ago they must stop their seditious practices. The losses were stated in very respectable figures, but the letter was not written in such terms that any spirit of repentance could be discerned. * * * [49] The Invincible Irish As you go towards Limerick from Ne- nagh any young fellow in the compartment will show you the cottage upon the side of Silvermines mountain whence a military rifle was taken when the soldier was away. The father was killed in the process. Three prisoners were taken, but the evidence against them has not been completed. On the other side of Limerick, on one of the Clare roads, you come to a workhouse to which one Byrne was brought in a weak state from prison. A rescue party broke in, and the inquest showed that the prisoner was shot, while in bed, by one of the police guards. He was taken to a house farther along the road, where he died. Some of the police were killed or wounded. Another raid for arms was made at a place called Solohead Beg, outside Tipperary, and a prisoner was being taken away. A rescue party boarded the train at Knocklong. [SO] Ireland under the Microscope There was a bloody battle, beginning with a police revolver leveled at the prisoner. There were casualties on both sides. It is stated that two Colonial soldiers who were on the train got the prisoner away. The wounded rescuers have not been found, though on one day every part of a large area was searched by combined police and military. The roads into Dublin are watched lest any of them be brought there for treatment. I can credit this, for one evening, having stayed so long at Maynooth that the last train for Dublin pulled out too soon for me, I took a motor to catch the tramcar at Lucan. At Lucan a policeman stopped the car, examined the license of the very taciturn driver, satisfied himself, I suppose, concerning the other occupant of the car, and very politely told us where we might expect to overtake the tramcar. I think I might add here, at whatever risk of [51] The Invincible Irish misinterpretation, that, coming home rather late one night, I dropped my latchkey, which bounced from one to another of the stone steps with which Dublin abounds. (If the Dublin hotels had not all been closed because of the lockout this need not have happened.) Out of the adjacent dark- ness a policeman came to help me find it, and, when we failed, a second policeman with a searchlight. One could not but feel himself well shepherded. At an airdrome, at meal time, forty rifles were left in charge of two men. Later the two men were found, nicely bound, a couple of miles away, but not the rifles. So it goes on. # * # Meanwhile, the evidences of effective military occupation are sufficient. Soldiers are entering Dublin almost every day, and going on to other places. You see them at Athlone, for instance. You see them parad- [52] Ireland under the Microscope ing for church at Limerick. You see them encamped at Clare. The airplane you see at Cork comes down, you are told, from Fermoy. The crated pigeons you see at a railway station are designated for liberation during daylight hours. Some say the sol- diers do not like their mission any too well, and that the Scotch troops, especially, get so friendly with the people that they have to be moved every few weeks. Some of them even desert and come back, and when they are caught are sometimes aided to give their captors the slip. Still, there they are, with all the approved appurtenances, and there is no telling from day to day what may come of it. Most people have become familiar with the conditions to the point of indifference. Some, as suggested by the raids for arms, are not indifferent. An Eng- lish Radical Labor paper gives currency to the idea that British troops are being [S3] The Invincible Irish trained in Dublin in the occupation of mili- tary vantage points in a city with some con- sciousness on the part of the military au- thorities that the training may sometime be found useful in English cities. That may be only a guess, but in Ireland there are many who believe it a good one. Anyhow, training in the occupation of Ireland as a whole is in active progress. They say in Dublin that the old Duke of Wellington interfered in the early railway plans and caused the roads to be located with an eye to their military value. If so, then one of their proposed uses is being well served, which is something, for there is very general complaint that in other respects the service of Ireland by railroads owned in England and controlled in London is far from what it might be. * * * Stopping one Sunday afternoon at a way- [54] Ireland under the Microscope side public house in the hills of Clare, somebody pointed through the window to a hurling match going on a quarter of a mile away. There were smiles and chuckles, the meaning of which was, "There may be an English camp two miles away on the other side, but here in Clare we play Irish games." For in Ireland, while cricket is loyal and respectable, hurl- ing is seditious and dangerous. The wrong sort of people are so apt to foregather at Gaelic games. Of course, the foreign mili- tary could never hope to control that and many other things which might be happen- ing in a normal way all the time. They would never get to know. It is by the police that Ireland is kept under the microscope, and while the police are a military body they are Irish. They know, and they know how to learn. It is not as simple as it used to be. These Volunteers and Sinn Fein [55] The Invincible Irish young men do not disclose in front of bars the information for which the Castle is waiting and which in earlier crises it used to get. When Mr. Ryan saw three young men for whom the police and military had been searching all one afternoon step out of the Mansion House and shake hands with hundreds of people in the street, he experi- enced a great emotion. "Thank God," he said, "the informer is no more." One can- not be quite sure. The police whisper to the contrary, but events do not seem to jus- tify their statements. They even begin to feel, if one may judge by their expressed desire to be relieved from the duty of carry- ing arms, that their position is that of the scapegoat. Some of them have undoubted- ly developed the man-hunting passion, but many of them, when they began, believed they were entering upon an honorable ca- reer. The true opinion of their masters is [56] Ireland under the Microscope shown by the fact that in all affairs of mo- ment they make the police hunt in couples, obliging each to send in a separate report, which may include comment upon the ac- tion of the other. I have heard enough to be convinced that this is a very wise pre- caution — and that it is sometimes evaded. At present, the English authorities are im- posing upon this body of Irishmen, with- out whom they would be helpless in Ire- land, a very great strain. It is they who have to do all the dangerous and difficult work, to enforce all the prohibitions which must be as offensive to their own instincts as to those of any other Irishman. Only in the Westport district is there real military rule, and there, were it not for the necessity felt in London of giving Ireland a bad name, the experiment would soon be abandoned. The military bustle the people about a good deal, turn them back from [57] The Invincible Irish their accustomed church if it is on the wrong side of the line, forbid priests who know all the byways, and who pay no at- tention to the order, to cross the lines even on sick calls, and do everything but pro- duce the murderer of the magistrate Mill- ing, whom some of them say, nevertheless, they could name if required, and whom they believe to be one of their own class back from the war. Ireland has served notice that the anom- aly of being kept in subjugation by an army of Irish mercenaries must presently cease to be. The counsels proposed are various. I much liked myself the speech of Father O'Flanagan, who, when requested by the police to disperse a meeting he was billed to address, did so in these terms: "We are controlled here, and deprived of our right of free speech, by a body of silent men, Irishmen like ourselves, who conform their [53] Ireland under the Microscope action to the orders of a single man. Let us train ourselves, also in silence, to follow that example. Then before long, please God, this hateful thing will disappear." In silence, perhaps, but not in idleness. They are making of the police a laughing-stock as well as of the foreign military. Mr. Bar- ton, an ex-army captain, another Protestant who speaks Irish, having served notice that further acts of police or Castle vindictive- ness would be visited upon the head of the Governor — whose social habits render him somewhat vulnerable — and having been im- prisoned therefor, left his card for the jail governor with regret at not being able to say good-bye in person. While an investi- gation was proceeding, news came that twenty-nine more had just scaled the prison wall. The presiding officer adjourned the inquiry to go and report the excellent joke to his friends at the club. Mr. Barton [59] The Invincible Irish is at his home in Wicklow, except when wanted. The others have still a free foot. The police microscope cannot be held tight- ly over Ireland when police influence has been subverted by patriotism and weakened by ridicule. * # # Still these microscopic views, which could be indefinitely multiplied, help us to gauge the difficulty of the task that confronts the men who have turned their backs on West- minster, men who, with millions of their countrymen, believe in the doctrine of one Woodrow Wilson ("Candle Press," Dub- lin, "As passed by censor") that the world should "be made safe for every peace-lov- ing nation, which, like our own, wishes to live its own life, determine its own institu- tions, be assured of justice and fair dealing by other peoples of the world, as against force and selfish aggression." I suppose, [60] Ireland under the Microscope having watched the Peace Conference at close quarters for six months, one ought not to hark back to those dim, far off, forgotten things, but in Ireland one is impressed with the truth of what an author has recently written (Butler, "Confiscation in Irish His- tory," p. 196) about "the credulous opti- mism of the Irish, their idea that logic and right should overrule might, their belief in the justice of their cause leading them to ask for the unattainable." Besides, Mr. Wil- son did not mention at the time that these things were "unattainable" in Ireland, and one finds so many people who think he meant what he did say, and that a hundred million more of us also meant it when we said we agreed with him. [61] IV THE MEN OF CLARE "I deliberately affirm, that a Minister of the Crown, responsible at the time of which I am speaking for the public peace and the public welfare, would have grossly and scandalously neglected his duty if he had failed to consider whether it might not be possible that the fever of political and religious excitement which was quicken- ing the pulse and fluttering the bosom of the whole Catholic population — which had inspired the serf of Clare with the resolution and energy of a freeman — which had in the twinkling of an eye made all consideration of personal gratitude — ancient family connection — local preferences — the fear of wordly injury — the hope of wordly advantage, subordinate to the one absorbing sense of religious obliga- tion and public duty; whether, I say, it might not be possible that the contagion of that feverish excitement might spread beyond the barriers which, under ordinary circumstances, the habits of military obedience and the strictness of military discipline oppose to all such external influences." (Sir Robert Peel, "Memoirs," p. 122.) The week of the insurrection in 1916 Mr. John Dillon spent in his house in Great [62] The Men of Clare George Street, Dublin. The street was on the edge of the conflict. From his window he witnessed a continuous coming and going of women, silent, hurrying women, always hurrying, always silent. After the surren- der (which was received by a general officer who shook hands with Pearse and Connolly and complimented them, as soldier to sol- dier, upon the efficiency of their defense), Mr. Dillon's house was filled day after day with relatives of the Volunteers who had heard of executions in contemplation. He went to General Maxwell and inquired about the truth of the report that more than fifty were marked for summary execution. Maxwell's answer was that he meant to make such an example that sedition would never raise its head in Ireland again. Mr. Dillon reminded him that there had been in South Africa, since the war began, an insur- rection, after whose suppression there had [63] The Invincible Irish been only one execution. Maxwell replied, "My dear Mr. Dillon, Botha was dealing with his own people; we're not." "What?" said Mr. Dillon, "was not the first regiment I saw going into action the Dublins? Was not the first officer I saw Lieutenant Sheehy, a son of my own colleague? Did they stop to ask whether the rebels were their own people?" The executions proceeded. The Dublins were even forced to furnish firing squads. Arrests followed in all parts of Nationalist Ireland. The new chapter in Irish history opened then. Of course the material was always present, but it was Maxwell's act, revealing as it did the truth about the essential basis upon which the "Union" rests, that brought to the surface much that had been submerged during the long period when it had seemed as though the Irish cause could be advanced under the rules of the English Parliamentary arena, it [64] The Men of Clare being always assumed that to any decision obtained there the English would honorably conform. Upon Mr. Dillon's return to London he made a speech which, at any other time, would have marked the opening of an attack upon the Government along the whole line. Mr. Redmond's judgment was that, because of the attitude the Irish Parliamentary Party had taken at the outset of the war, when it elected to trust to the honor of England as witnessed by the affixing of the King's signature to the thrice-passed Home Rule act, this course was not open. For my part I have no doubt that Mr. Redmond, at this crisis, so far from making an arbitrary decision in accord with his own preferences, had a clear vision of what the consequences must be. If the representatives of Ireland in Parliament could not carry on the fight there, then, if later events showed a fight [65] The Invincible Irish had to be made, first it must be made in Ire- land without echo in London, and second it must be made by others than those who had confidence in the adequacy of recourse to Parliament; finally, the issue as to whether continuance of Parliamentary gov- ernment as a medium through which the Irish people could hope to exercise the rights, fundamental to the success of that system in its English environment, of peti- tion and redress, was thereafter to be wholly in the hands of the English Cabinet, the English parties, and English statesmanship. The clear-sighted and courageous Bishop O'Dwyer of Limerick was the first to pro- nounce sentence of definite failure, for Ire- land, upon Parliamentary government un- der the Union. As developments in Ireland were neces- sarily contingent upon the success or fail- ure of English parties to preserve the credit [66] The Men of Clare of their institutions when put to this test, it will be both useful and convenient to con- sider that aspect of the subject first. The excitement over the executions was still running high (and not only in Ireland but also in America, not then in the war but al- most hostile to England because of the shock produced by the executions and the resur- gence of old memories of Hessian methods) when the Prime Minister, Mr. Asquith, authorized Mr. Lloyd George to open ne- gotiations with Mr. Redmond and Sir Ed- ward Carson for a settlement. They agreed upon a basis, which involved concession to the principle of partition. True, it turned out afterwards that Lloyd George had given Carson assurances of which Redmond was not informed and which were at variance with the written agreement. It was the de- vice of a gamester whose stakes, and they were high ones, were in America, but Red- [67] The Invincible Irish mond and Dillon were not without their suspicions. They said to Lloyd George, "Now we are going to Ireland to do a thing most offensive to us and which only the ex- ercise of what authority remains with us can possibly enable us to do. But if we suc- ceed, where will we be then? You, after all, are not Prime Minister, and we do not know what the Cabinet may do." Mr. George answered that he was delegated by the Prime Minister and the Cabinet to this mission, and that if, on acceptance, the Cab- inet interfered, he and Mr. Asquith would go to the King and present their resigna- tions. On that assurance they went to Ire- land and, by the persuasive eloquence of Mr. Devlin and Mr. Redmond's veiled threat of resignation, succeeded. In the end Mr. Redmond and Mr. Dillon were asked to the War Office, where Mr. Samuels told them, Mr. George being present, as a final- [68] The Men of Clare ity and not as a matter for discussion, that the Cabinet had rejected the agreement. In similar circumstances in the seven- teenth century, when the Irish adherents of Charles II were tricked out of lands by law restored to them, Sir William Petty, the Carson of his day, who then secured posses- sion of the estates which descended to Lord Lansdowne, a prime mover in this twentieth century betrayal, wrote : "Upon the playing of this game or match upon so great odds, the English won and have (among and be- sides other pretences) a gamester's right at least to their estates." To the question what he now proposed to do, Mr. Lloyd George replied that his im- portance in the councils of the Empire pre- cluded his resigning. Mr. Dillon com- mented that he supposed they realized they had destroyed constitutionalism in Ireland, and that, while in a career of forty years he [69] The Invincible Irish thought he had been the witness of the worst that public men could do, this announce- ment revealed that there were depths to which statesmen could descend beyond what even he had thought possible. And I am told Mr. Redmond said: "You and your Empire may go to" — the place reserved by Cromwell for the Irish who had prejudices against Connaught. He was a patient man, but I hope the story is true. When, the next year, America entered the war, not only did Mr. Balfour turn Jeffer- sonian Democrat in America, but, to make assurance doubly sure, Mr. Lloyd George set up the Irish Convention. Again he loaded the gamester's dice, for he gave Car- son the assurance that nothing would be done unless Carson's friends assented, whereupon they resolutely refused to assent to anything, and at the end of a year Lloyd George rejected the findings of the Conven- [70] The Men of Clare tion, which lay before him unread, as he publicly owned. I have seen a letter writ- ten by Mr. Redmond just before the Con- vention broke up, possibly the last he wrote, for in a month he was dead, in which he said he was hopeless of the Convention do- ing any good; that Lloyd George had as- sured him the report would be followed by legislation, but that he was unable to believe either that Lloyd George would stand up to Ulster or that he would offer anything Ire- land could accept. Lloyd George did in- troduce legislation — to conscript Ireland by England. Mr. Redmond had gone on rec- ord as to the consequences that must follow if Irish leaders who trusted England were thus "let down and betrayed." I remember writing of him in May, 1916, in a paper I founded for him, that his epitaph would be : "He trusted England." But of the Irish Convention something [71] The Invincible Irish more should be said. The Government did try to make it the means of outgaming Ire- land. There was a time when, had the Irish, led within the Convention at a cer- tain crisis by Bishop O'Donnell of Raphoe, in whom there appeared a rebirth of the intrepid spirit of his ancient warlike clan, been willing to forego the control of the customs and excise, something might have been done to let Parliament, under cover of the Convention's authority, produce a meas- ure that would have been utterly unaccept- able. At that moment, first the Viceroy and then the Chief Secretary offered to another influential member of the Convention his choice of titles if he would withdraw his support from Bishop O'Donnell. The bait was rejected. At another moment, Lord Londonderry was ready to draft a measure for the government of Ireland, but his asso- ciates dissuaded him. Another powerful [72] The Men of Clare Ulster delegate had no other answer to make, to a friendly critic, than this: "Re- member that while we are all fighting Home Rule we get along very well with Labor." Others, none too fond of England, however willing to dissimulate in public, knowing only too well the industrial history of Ireland, were deterred by fear of what England would do to their business if they became Irish and not an English garrison in Ireland. 1 However, thanks to Bishop O'Donnell and his friends inside the Convention, in- cluding George Russell and Edward Ly- saght, both of the Plunkett school, who ^'Ireland would very soon find that, with a policy framed not to suit the United Kingdom, but Britain alone, laws would be passed that would have no regard to the interests of Ireland, and very soon would place her in the position she once was in, when, before the Union, her trade was ruined by laws selfishly enacted to promote the interest of Britain." — Sir Edward Carson, New York Herald, June 22, 1919. [73] The Invincible Irish would not assent to consecrating anew that English overlordship of Irish industry which they knew had been consistently used for its destruction, and still more thanks to what was going on in Ireland outside, the Convention failed to do the work of any and all who sought to use it for Ireland's injury. Lloyd George threw into the waste basket the report of its deliberations — and his own solemn promise, made for American con- sumption, to be guided by its findings. And now as to what went on outside. Here something new had happened. We have been accustomed to chant a long litany of the names of men who were leaders of Ireland. If anyone wishes to know the true name of Mr. Redmond's successor, I think I can tell him. It is The People of Ireland. "You ask can we depend upon the people," I heard Father O'Flanagan say. "I tell you I reverence the people of Ireland. They [74] The Men of Clare arc better than I am, better than any of us, better than all of us who presume to speak for them." The milestones on the road traveled under this leadership have been, Roscommon, Longford, Clare, Cavan, gen- eral election — and what has followed. When Roscommon fell vacant, Mr. Dil- lon was furnished with proof of the accu- racy of his predictions. The people were next neighbors to his own riding, and had known him for forty years. They must have spared him the personal declaration of their thought, for he believed the Party can- didate would win. But Roscommon had sent for Count Plunkett, who had one son in Maxwell's quicklime, another in an English prison, who had been in prison himself, and his wife as well. He had just been re- moved from an important position in the field of Irish letters at the demand of the ascendancy class. He was elected. Next [75] The Invincible Irish came Longford. "Here," said a young editor in describing it, "we had our first thrill. We used to go to the meetings with the flag of the Easter Republic waving from a score of motor cars. The enthusiasm was wonderful." After the voting an old par- liamentarian was asked by Lloyd George, "What does this mean?" "It means the end of the constitutional movement." "That will be a bad business for the Empire, won't it?" "I think before you're through you will find it a d d bad business." Next came Clare. The party candidate was very popular and universally respected. There were long conferences among the people as to w T ho should oppose him. Finally they said, "Let us finish this business. Give us a soldier." In three minutes they nominated DeValera. From Limerick as many as 6,000 people would swarm out through the hills, in cars and carts, on bicycles or on foot, [76] The Men of Clare thirty miles if necessary, men and women, to his meetings. The vote was two to one in his favor. Then Cavan. By this time the governors of Ireland were seeing a great light. Ninety men and women went in to organize Cavan. The Government arrested eighty-six of them and took them off to prison in Eng- land. The world was told, by the most reputable statesmen in England, from the floor of the mother of parliaments, that they were arrested because a German plot had been discovered. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Wimborne, an honorable man, told the world from his place in the House of Lords that there was no German plot. No matter. They stayed in jail and no charges were ever made against them. By an accident which must have been much regretted, the police overlooked one man who knew all about election organization. [77] The Invincible Irish He quickly replaced the eighty-six leaders with eighty-six seconds, perhaps more. The result was as decisive as it would have been had the police been spared the trouble and the statesmen been spared the misstatement. And in time followed the general election, at which the people of Ireland elected seventy-three men to stay away from West- minster and see what they could do for Ire- land at home. They had appealed to the people to vote for the independence of Ire- land, and with most of the candidates in jail, including all the leaders, with Mr. Redmond dead, broken-hearted, after being once too often "let down and betrayed" by Parliament and Cabinets in London, and with the Wilson appeals to the world ring- ing in their ears, the people voted for free- dom and for a self-reliant Ireland. The old Party men, almost all of them feeling that events had marched with the stateliness [78] The Men of Clare of Greek tragedy since the day when they, rather than embarrass the Government in the midst of war, turned over to English statesmen the responsibility for the reputa- tion of constitutional agitation and the fu- ture efficacy of Parliamentary action, stood up honorably and faced certain defeat, many of them well satisfied to be recorded as victims in the pleasure it gave them to witness the awakening of the soul of Ire- land. The spirit shown was no new thing in Ireland. They tell us, sometimes, that the Irish leaders are but applying the principle enunciated by Patrick Henry, but long be- fore Patrick Henry thundered in Virginia, this language was held in Dublin by Thomas Fizgerald, Silken Thomas of the Sword : "If it be my mishap to miscarry as you seem to prognosticate, catch as catch may. I will take the market as it riseth, [79] The Invincible Irish and will choose rather to die with valiant- ness and liberty, than to live under King Henry in bondage and villainy.'' His in- itials are to be seen where he carved them afterwards in the stone of the keep in the Tower of London before his option was made good. Prisons in England and Ire- land are today filled with Irishmen of his way of thinking. Thousands more are ex- pecting the call thither, and they show no concern. It has actually been testified in court against a man that he was arrested "because he had a determined face, like a Sinn Feiner." Sir Robert Peel's descrip- tion fits. But what is in the minds of the modern wearers of the mantle of Sir Robert Peel? I do not pretend to know, but there are some sidelights which may be helpful as in- dications, if not as guides. What I have written about the Irish Convention indi- [80] The Men of Clare cates that Mr, Duke, who succeeded Mr. Birrell as Chief Secretary, tried to do some- thing with the Convention. Bishop O'Don- nell prevented his doing a mischief, and probably the Cabinet were equally inhibi- tive in another sense, for he went from Ire- land to London with a great show of forc- ing an issue — and was appointed a judge. Mr. Shortt, who succeeded him, had the idea that he could pacify Ireland by ar- ranging for industrial and commercial de- velopment, under English auspices, with the help of a grant from the treasury. He went to London, got the consent of the War Cab- inet (Mr. Bonar Law being a member) and then went to the Chancellor of the Ex- chequer (Mr. Bonar Law) for the money — and was refused. He became quite angry and — was promoted to the office of Home Secretary. Mr. MacPherson, who gives no indication of rising above the level of a [81] The Invincible Irish time-serving politician, causes great amuse- ment by the precautions he takes, when in Ireland, for his personal security, and offers the opinion that what is wrong with Ireland is that too many male children have attained their growth at home instead of emigrating. Mr. Birrell declared on oath in the Har- dinge inquiry that a parrot calling "Ireland, Ireland" would have more influence in the Cabinet than the Chief Secretary for Ire- land, and Mr. MacPherson is of political and intellectual stature far below Mr. Bir- rell's. I am told that Lord French, believ- ing that he was the ruler of Ireland, and finding that he could not get dependable information, attempted to organize a service of reports of his own, but neither the Castle nor the general officer commanding the army of occupation would hear of such a thing. The very astute Lord Haldane visited [82] The Men of Clare Dublin to endeavor to ascertain whether Sinn Fein could be got to discuss a form of solution he knew perfectly well the Cabinet would not ofler while Carson was there to wield his whip. Carson has no policy at all, except that of "extending to Ireland all measures that are found beneficial to Great Britain," a policy which covers keeping Henry Ford out of Cork because his works, if in Southampton, would be "found bene- ficial to Great Britain." Carson, indeed, is the one person quite satisfied, if America will only agree with him that nothing need be done about Ireland except defame its people from the Woolsack — and be liberal with money credits. Nobody in Ireland is willing to engage in conversations to which Lloyd George is a party. The men who have had most experience with him are the least willing of all. British Labor is looked upon with a not unfriendly eye, but it is felt [S3] The Invincible Irish that, with the exception of the Irish in Lan- cashire, British Labor, in its inmost heart, is slavishly subservient to the English ruling class. Is it to be wondered at, therefore, if those who carried on the Clare election un- der the eyes of an army corps, and voted for independence in presence of an army of oc- cupation, are content to go on without much caring what British statesmen are thinking, building their hopes on self-reliance — and believing that America will not see them hurt? [84] V THE POLICY OF SELF-RELIANCE 1 SPENT a week-end in Sligo and Mayo. My host, who had gone from Ireland as a boy, and who had made a notable busi- ness and municipal success in Lancashire, is living in a large house some miles out of Ballina. On his property is the castle of one of the O'Dowds, dating from the period of Elizabeth. It is well preserved, and gives clear indication that the owners lived in conditions of ease and power, which must have been based upon the revenues from a populous and prosperous countryside. When the lands were taken from the Irish, a Protestant Planter obtained possession. It is in the house long occupied by this family that my friend now lives. He has the land [85] The Invincible Irish which immediately surrounded the manor, much of it planted with trees that are now very old. In front are the Ox mountains. These old Planters knew how to build for a view. All the rest of the estate is cut up, thanks to the hard-won triumph of the cam- paign for the land, into farms of about thirty acres, with pleasant two-story cottages. "Do you realize," asked my host, "that within a single lifetime all this was covered with poor cabins containing a large population; that the people were deliberately driven away to America; that their cabins were razed, their fences destroyed and the whole land given over to cattle and sheep to graze ; and that already, after a struggle made in face of the heaviest odds, the people are back on the land? And still they tell us the Irish are a flighty, volatile people, without capacity for persistence in the attainment of a great object; still they speak with con- [86] The Policy of Self-Reliance tempt of agitation in a country where every proper patriotic impulse is restrained in its expression by visible and invisible force di- rected by exterior agencies hostile to Irish interest." One afternoon we walked three Irish miles across country to Inniscrone, at the head of Killala Bay, and as we came back I remarked to him, "Twenty years ago we used to be told that the sheep on the hill- sides were a great wrong to Ireland. Now, presumably, the sheep and cattle which we have seen in nearly every field are matter for pride. But does it not seem to you that with almost all of the thirty acres divided be- tween fields for grazing and fields for fod- der the problems of population are pres- ently bound to press? These little farms must surely represent an economic mini- mum, and what is to become of the children a farmer dares to raise on a farm which does [87] The Invincible Irish not admit of division?" I had the same thought on Sunday. We went to Mass at what, not long ago, was a practically aban- doned church. The sheep of the old days were not good parishioners. Now the build- ing has been extended and improved. Two galleries have been constructed in the tran- septs, and they were filled with young men of from eighteen to twenty-five. They were the new crop of the land in this corner of the O'Dowds, and they had not gone to America. I commented to Dr. McCaffrey, President of Maynooth, afterwards, that evidently this condition imposed upon the priest, the only one at present in position to serve, new obligations in the way of what we on our side of the Atlantic describe as social service. He answered that the need had been recognized and that the necessary machinery had already been put in motion, at least in its beginnings. [88] The Policy of Self- Reliance Later, in Dublin, I had the opportunity of discussing the farm problem with a Bal- lina merchant, and this is what he told me : "I saw long ago the danger in the conditions you describe. So I used to tell the farmers they ought not to depend wholly on live- stock. I encouraged them to grow apples, offering to take all they produced. I wish you could see the first they brought in to me. But I showed them the profit to be had from proper picking and packing, and today there is a heavy business done, and both the revenue and value of the farms have in- creased. I am doing the same around Gal- way, where I have another place, and there I am starting a factory for preserving the fruit." "You know what will happen, I suppose," commented one who was present. "It is true they have just fined the Keillers, of Scotland, for daring to export marmalade to Ireland, but if you start in Galway they [89] The Invincible Irish will undersell you there until you have to close up. They have the sugar. They con- trol our shipping. They control our rail- ways. They control our banks. Your fac- tory will not be very big, but one way or another they will not let you have it." "No matter," was the answer, "I have thought of all that; and I am going to do it. If I can provide for a quarter of the demand of the Province of Connaught, it will do for a good while yet. And I don't think the con- trol of our transportation, which they are handing over to an English Minister, will stop me either, unless he commandeers the motors which we already operate on all the main roads." At the same conference the question of banks came up. "Let me give you two in- stances," said one man. "I buy a certain line of goods in Philadelphia. Now, in any other part of the world banking service [90] The Policy of Self-Reliance would be available to enable me to pay for such goods on their delivery accompanied by a bill of lading. Not in Ireland. I have to send the money for my goods to Phila- delphia, and if there is anything wrong when they come so much the worse for me. I could have all the money I want if I chose to be guided by the bank manager and buy certain shares the investment in which is encouraged by his directors. Mark you, this is Irish money, the savings of Irish people, but it is controlled from London, and London is not concerned about encour- aging industry or business in Ireland. Quite the contrary. Not long ago I secured a con- tract for £12,000 a month for foodstuffs, all to be had in Ireland, from a South African firm, wealthy Jews, who operate a chain of shops and whose credit is high. There was no banking money in Ireland to see that through its initial stages. So I went to Lon- [91] The Invincible Irish don. They said to me, 'Your business is too small to interest us. We would rather give a credit of £100,000 to a London trading house than be bothered with these small things.' So I had to give up the contract and an Englishman got it. He could get the discount he needed. I dare say he is even rilling the order with Irish goods." This reminded me of another story I had been told. An American who saw in Paris a London invoice for £1,000 for Irish lace had the curiosity to trace the material, and found it had cost £550 in Ireland. Ireland is trying to establish direct trade relations with France, but neither England nor any of the transportation or banking interests controlled by England in Ireland are eager to help her do it. Some time ago, a great English manufac- turer was in trouble. He had opened a branch in Ireland, and the success of his [92] The Policy of Self-Reliance dealings with the British government de- partments, he was given to understand, de- pended upon his withdrawing from this venture. He succeeded in getting clear, and fire has since completed the deliverance. But during conversations with him and his manager it came out that they had made a secret survey of the resources of Ireland, and found it to be one of the richest coun- tries in the world. In one county, for ex- ample, they found the best conditions for a pottery industry known to pottery experts anywhere. But why seek to develop this op- portunity, with Staffordshire ready to sup- ply Ireland and the rest of the world with all the pottery needed? The ships and rail- ways exist to bring English manufactures into Ireland, not to take Irish wares out, and the freight tariffs for Ireland are con- trolled in London. Dublin shipping is con- trolled by the interests most intimately con- [93] The Invincible Irish cerned, of which the chief is the London and Northwestern railway and the least is Ireland itself. Advantage has been taken of war conditions to reduce Irish-owned ship- ping to the vanishing point and even to pre- vent the one remaining Irish shipping con- cern from making good the losses sustained by government commandeering of ships and sinkings by the submarines. Away up in the hills of Donegal, in one of those fringes where men and women man- aged to live and no more by going to the English harvests (where they were per- mitted to share the accommodations of the beasts of the fields and subsisted on a far lower scale), a man with vision established a glove-making industry which gives work at home to the people who live there among the stones which shelter the little patches of made soil — people to whom the Irish intel- lectuals now send their children that they [94] The Policy of Self-Reliance may hear and learn to speak the old Irish tongue and imbibe a little of the spirit which enabled such people to survive after being driven from the fat grazing meadows to these rocky wastes. Well, this was a prac- tical man, and he contracted with an Eng- lish agent for the sale of the gloves. Irish people would like to buy these gloves, but Irish shops cannot get them. In Cork I sought and met with a man who, landing in New York when a boy, learned what was to be known of mill or- ganization, made a little money, and went back to Ireland. Let me interject here that the manager for the great English factory before referred to, when asked about the efficiency of Irish workers, replied that at first, not having behind them generations of training and experience as in England, they were somewhat trying to a superintendent's patience, but that after a couple of years [95] The Invincible Irish they were better than the English. This other man, having taken a little woolen mill, had to overcome the same condition. After two or three years, however, the mill suc- ceeded, and now there is work for every available worker, man or woman, within four miles. Going one day to buy a piece of machinery in an abandoned mill, he was asked whether he would not help the neigh- borhood by starting that mill too. He did, and made a success of it. This man said to me, "We would like to add to these plants, but prices are so high and the control of materials has been so vexing that just now this cannot be done. But it will be. We must build our industrial life, which Ire- land must have, on our own foundations. For years there has been no emigration from the countryside where our first mill is, and that should be true all over Ireland, for we must stop the drain upon our national life- [96] The Policy of Self-Reliance blood. There is no good reason why there should not be industries dotted all over Ire- land. It was that way in the old days. But when two millions of the people perished for want of the abundant harvest that was sent away for rack rents, and when millions more were driven abroad to make way for the cattle that England wanted, the little mills were destroyed, and the young men and women have been going off ever since for the want of them, till the commonest sight in Ireland was the weeping of the desolate mothers at the stations as the youth of the land went off to America." I know myself a place of which the description was "a church and a chapel, a mill and a castle, all on one acre of ground." Only the mill is gone now. "I am getting on now," he continued, "but, thank God, I have six sons. We in Ireland must work out this problem for ourselves. We know they will try to [97] The Invincible Irish stop us from England, but perhaps we are better so. We do not want Ireland to be only a meat farm for England, but we do not want Englishmen to develop Ireland in- dustrially for their own benefit either, mak- ing of us only so many numbered slaves of English capital. We know the difficulties in our way, but we are ready to face them and to do our best to provide a good living in Ireland for those who are born here. But," he ended, as he took my hand in a strong grip, "do not you desert us. Let us always be able to feel that you in America will stand by us. If you do not, we will still go on, but it may be over hard." I promised. The interference is sometimes subtle. Just now they are very anxious in Cork about the work started there by Henry Ford. I sup- pose everybody knows that while Mr. Ford's agreement with the Cork corpora- [98] The Policy of Self-Reliance tion was before Parliament, to which, like everything else of consequence in Ireland, it had to go for confirmation, every effort, public and private, was made to dissuade Mr. Ford from going to Cork and to induce him to start in England. Mr. Ford per- sisted. But the work lags. Some in Cork say this is to be explained by the difficulty of getting raw materials in, others by the dislocation of the Russian market for trac- tors. Others note, with uneasy feelings, that the Englishman who is in charge of Mr. Ford's business has just been knighted. A kind word from Mr. Ford would be very welcome in Cork. Some years ago there was an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease among Irish cattle. It was promptly dealt with in Ireland, the markets were closed, business was reduced to zero. A time came when in Ireland they considered the episode was over, but Eng- [99] The Invincible Irish lish cattle interests, satisfied to have posses- sion of their markets, preferred to think otherwise. In these circumstances an ad- venturous person went to Hamburg and got a large order. The heads of the cattle trade were delighted. A few days later, after some fresh conversations with English buy- ers, they began to be doubtful. Another few days and the foot-and-mouth plague was of- ficially at an end. The lesson of the inci- dent was that the Irish cattle trade was not only subject to the dispensations of Provi- dence but also to the influence of adverse cross channel influences. The co-operative principle was resorted to, and a packing house was started at Wexford, whose busi- ness now amounts to over a million dollars a year. Another has been started at Dun- dalk, another at Drogheda. There are whispers that the American beef trust has been casting sheep's eyes at the movement. [100] The Policy of Self-Reliance Also there are preparations for tannery treatment of the hides. There are mountains around the coast of Ireland upon which there is a very heavy rainfall. Unless there is some exception to the law of gravitation, this water must come down the hillsides. It does get down some- how, for now and then quantities of it rise above the central plain and flood the fields. If it could be caught coming down, it could be turned into electricity, a great deal of electricity. The trouble is, they tell you in Dublin, that this water which falls in Ire- land is controlled in England, and that so long as this is true efforts to change its fall- ing force into electricity would first have to pass English hostility exerted in parliamen- tary committees. Success there, vastly im- probable, would be only a preliminary to the antagonism of local landed interests, also English, which again could only be [101] The Invincible Irish overcome by appeal to the English Parlia- ment, where English commercial interests are supreme and Irish interests count for nothing. That Ireland, deprived of the use of her resources in electricity, is prevented, in fact, from keeping step with civilization does not worry anyone in England, any more than the refusal of the London-controlled Irish railways to build lines to the Irish coal fields. All such trifles are covered by the lament that the rest of Ireland cannot agree with Carson, who will not agree with the Irish as long as his English paymasters for- bid him. Some years ago, the Galway farmers on the west side of Lough Corrib, desiring to save themselves and their cattle a day's journey around the lake to the market town on the east side, arranged with the local councils to start a public ferry, to op- erate across a neck of water where the lake narrows. Parliament's permission had to be [102] The Policy of Self-Reliance sought, and the project failed because one of the members for London was opposed to municipal ownership. Galway town, one would think, should be the seat of a con- siderable development under the stimulus of electricity transmitted from the hills, but the best that can be done now, by patriots who had time in English jails to discuss such matters, is to revive all the little mills they can. I met in Dublin a professional man on his way to Galway from prison who gave me particulars of the undertaking he is go- ing in for, and how it differs from several others in which doctors, professors, and some others are engaged. They have a sort of local Lloyds at Galway, where they look over the field, discuss possibilities, and each adventures according to his taste and means. Meanwhile the excessive rainfall in the hills is idle, except for drowning out the potatoes. [103] The Invincible Irish While the war was still not half over, the British Government began plans for recon- struction, of which one phase ran to the sur- vey of economic resources. The study has proceeded, in Sir Edward Carson's phrase, as if Ireland were a department. What is in Ireland, or what is to be done with it, it may be worth England's while to know, but the official attitude is that it is none of Ireland's business, and certain Irish protests were re- ceived with something like shocked amaze- ment. I cannot help thinking that an Irish- American economic commission, tendering its services to Dail Eireann, could render quite as great a service as the political com- mission, which woke up two continents. In the meantime, so oppressively con- scious are they of the limitations placed upon every essay in Irish development, whether commercial, industrial or, bound up with these, social and even political, by [104] The Policy of Self-Reliamce the English economic encirclement, that they say in Dublin and Cork the coming of one cargo of American coal in an American ship would be an event of the first magni- tude. Others who are trying to work their way out of the maze propose that, without too meticulous a concern for forms or names or sanctions, business representatives of Ire- land should be installed in America, France, Spain, Italy, or wherever there is a chance for direct trade, or for profitable trade, however indirect. There is hardly a doubt that this will be done, done by and for Ire- land, and not through England. What the thinking men see, and there is plenty of hard thinking being done, is that in general terms industrial development in Ireland will be upon the French model, not running to competition in bulk commodities like steel, but productive of articles in which Irish brain and labor, Irish taste and [105] The Invincible Irish touch will count for most. Here, it is seen, there is the best hope of catering to that ex- port trade which will permit of production on a scale large enough to be profitable, the first essential of permanence. Need I add that for a market for such wares they look hopefully to that already great Irish market which is beyond the seas, and in which the exercise of a sentimental preference in little things would have, in the aggregate, so great and beneficial an in- fluence? Already there is a "made in Ire- land" trade-mark whose rights have been successfully defended before the Supreme Court of the United States. It ought not to take very much effort to induce the Irish in America, and all who admire the spirit of Ireland, to look a little closer if they see it, or to ask if they fail to see it, on something they might be disposed to buy. [106] VI FORCING FRAMES OF FREEDOM THE battle of Aughrim was fought on the land of one O'Kelly, who had managed somehow to keep possession when Cromwell was taking the land of Ireland away from the Irish. O'Kelly was a "prac- tical" man. He believed in making the best of his farm and fought shy of the perils to which he thought a plain farmer to be ex- posed by participation in politics. He had a model farm, to whose production and in- creasing fertility he gave unceasing and in- telligent attention. One of the old Irish bards whose chanted story of the William- ite wars has come down to us, devoted a rather bitter quatrain to the worthy man. O'Kelly's fields, he sang, are now all that [107] The Invincible Irish his heart would wish. They will never lack for plentiful manuring from this time for- ward. There is enough of the rotting car- casses of men and of horses on them to fer- tilize them forever. Och, ochone — O'Kelly's well-tended highly-producing fields were given to one of William's soldiers. In Ireland they have long recognized — as where is it not recognized? — that their ability to achieve their high resolves is in direct ratio to the willingness with which they bear the attendant inconveniences and to their determination not to be denied. When Ireland asked Parliament in the fam- ine years for an order to close the ports and feed the people from the harvest — and got a coercion act, there was a rebellion and the leaders of Ireland were deported as felons. The seemingly hopeless demand for dises- tablishment of an alien church sustained by levies upon a people it did not serve brought [ 108] Forcing Frames of Freedom into existence the Fenians, men not soft in will. The movement, springing from a peasant tenantry, by which the Irish land was re-won, was probably the highest single achievement passive resistance has to its credit, but Michael Davitt did not begin that movement until he and the constitution- alist leaders had enlisted the support of John Devoy, Matt Harris of Ballinasloe, Patrick Egan, and many a man hidden away in quiet corners of Ireland whose temper had been hardened and whose fibre had been tested in the earlier struggle. Today the friendliest thing one hears said about the Maxwell regime is that in putting Pearse and Connolly and the others out of the way those who represented the English intention to rule Ireland as a conquered province paid the highest compliment of which they were capable to those who faced them with their own methods of force. [109] The Invincible Irish What is perfectly patent in Ireland now is that, if the elected of Irish constituencies stay away from Westminster, set up a gov- ernment of their own, and address them- selves with every show of confidence to the development of Ireland in all its attributes as a nation, despite the presence in Dublin of a foreign government backed by an army of occupation, it is the dispersion all over Ireland of men who have been confined with them in English prisons upon which they must and do depend for that solidarity without which they could have no great hope of success. "Labor in Ireland," George Russell (AE.) explained to me, "has advanced by leaps and bounds since James Connolly gave Labor a martyr." Af- terwards I stood with one of the Labor leaders in Liberty Hall in front of a map on which the progress of the Labor move- ment was charted. "It seems to me," I com- [110] Forcing Frames of Freedom mented, at one point in the conversation, "that there is in all this much that fortifies the nationalist movement, but also, given certain conditions, some potential of disrup- tion. " "Quite true," was the reply. "This is a Labor movement, a necessary thing, as we see it. When Connolly died, there were five centers. Now there are eight hundred. A new adhesion has been telephoned to me since we have been talking. We must ad- here to our definite ideals, and we do, and doubtless there are plenty who do not like them or like us. I know that efforts will be made to turn us against the Dail. For the last three months they have been at it. But take my case. I was not in the Labor ranks before or during the rising. I was with the Volunteers. Afterwards I spent six months in prison with DeValera. Now he is there and I am here, and do you think they can make a cleavage between us? There are [mi The Invincible Irish literally thousands of us who, in English prisons and under the eyes of English jail- ers, have thought out and talked out the present problems of Ireland, and while some are in our movement and some are not, we have carried to all Ireland the gospel learned in those seminaries which they called our prisons, where they thought by offense to our bodies they could break our spirit." DeValera's only word to those who lead single phases of the movement is, "Be careful only lest you be tempted to sub- stitute some other inspiration for that of Ireland." I think I can fairly say that at Plunkett House itself, and in the published books of some of its inmates, I have found as much accurate and detailed information touching the restrictive influence of English commercial domination upon Irish devel- opment as at the offices of the Dail. But there are no martyrs or prisoners behind [112] Forcing Frames of Freedom Plunkett House. If the relief they seek is obtained, it will be conceded to the deter- mination of the others. George Russell, I must say, I found with as healthy an Irish fury in his breast as any of them all. The last time I left him he was bursting with scorn of the Unionist delegation which had gone over to London to warn the timid English of the baleful presence in Ireland of 1,083 co-operative Soviets, that being precisely the status to which the Plunkett co-operative movement had been brought by over thirty years of effort. His theory was that these gentlemen derived their inspiration as to Irish politics from the whiskey and soda of their London clubs, and he was writing an article to say so. It was Mr. Russell who went to Eng- land, in the conscription period, to explain to English Labor that conscription in Ire- land was not a military measure by first in- [113] The Invincible Irish tention, but was a necessary preliminary to the maintenance of the conscription policy after the war. There seems to be excellent reason for al- lowing it to be understood that there is a reservoir of firmness in the country. Lloyd George has indeed condemned the War Office regime in Ireland in the early years of the war, 1 but his condemnation did not prevent its destroying Ireland's reputation as "the one bright spot" nor the relegation of Home Rule to the Greek Kalends. I am informed, by one whom I believe, which is to say by one anybody would believe, a man outside Sinn Fein and the Parliamentary a Mr. Lloyd George, answering Mr. John Redmond in the House of Commons (Oct. 18, 1916), said: "I wish I could give answer to my hon. friend's criticisms; but some of the stupidities (which sometimes almost look like malignities) which were perpetrated at the beginning of recruiting in Ireland are beyond belief. I do not know who was re- sponsible. I remember that I was perfectly appalled at the methods adopted to try and induce the Irish people to join the ranks. It really looked as if someone were discoura- ging them." [114] Forcing Frames of Freedom Party, that at one of those times when there was reason to think a policy of stark repres- sion was imminent, a decent English general got wind at the War Office of an unauthor- ized plan which contemplated bloody busi- ness in Ireland, that he hurried to Dublin, accused some of the high officials, and on their denial confronted them with their own signatures. He spoiled that plot, but who knows when there will be another, with all the war machines lying about, and with, perhaps, need to distract the attention of England from its own troubles? And how much would it have availed Ireland, if, after the thing then contemplated had been done, there had been official disclaimers of responsibility made with much unction in Parliament? The representative of a Lon- don paper called upon an Irish lady a few hours before I did. He told her that Eng- land has now become stronger than ever, [115] The Invincible Irish that she was no longer under obligation to anyone, that she meant to do about Ireland just what she chose, and that interference would not be brooked from any quarter. This gentleman was making a study of Ire- land just after the visit of Messrs. Walsh, Dunne and Ryan. I asked her whether any- thing was likely to be useful to Ireland in presence of this attitude, very general in England, except to oppose to it an equally consistent attitude resting upon a rounded out conception of Irish character. She an- swered that she saw nothing else for it. The opinion of some of the older men among the Nationalists I saw was that the sturdy spirits who stood behind Davitt had the great advantage of being years removed from the period of their early stress, and were therefore not exposed to the errors of heady youth, and not apt to respond so easily to artful provocation. There is no [116] Forcing Frames of Freedom apprehension on this score among the younger men themselves, who feel that dis- cipline and other rigors must count for something. Still, it is of the nature of po- litical movements carried on as they must be in Ireland against ever threatening force that the ship must sail very close to the wind. I asked a well-known magazine writer, while in Paris, to come to Ireland with me. He declined, for the reason that he would expect to lose interest in everything else. "All I want to know," he said, "is whether the Irish can go along without fighting. Their best chance to win now is to refuse to be drawn, but as far as I have been able to judge them, that is the hardest thing for them to do." There is one factor he prob- ably does not count upon. The Irish can laugh. If it were not for that they might indeed go mad. * # * [117] The Invincible Irish The Labor movement, as I have said, is making rapid headway. It is boldly, skil- fully and honestly led. How honestly, may be inferred from the fact that when the wife of one official accepted a present all the others resigned in protest. It goes without saying that the movement is influenced by the trend of the commotions in the rest of Europe, but as capitalism in its baneful im- perialistic aspect has not made much prog- ress in Ireland, the task that commands the best efforts of Labor's intelligence is chiefly constructive in character. One of the classes calling for helpful guidance is that which includes great numbers of farm laborers. They are, in a very real sense, the agricul- turists, with all the term involves in knowl- edge of the problems of the soil and the variations of season. The farmer rests a sort of aristocratic claim upon the owner- ship of land and the raising of cattle. There [118] Forcing Frames of "Freedom is all the rigidity of caste in his relation to the laborer. But the laborer is not content, and is going to be still less content, with the estimate of his value this relation in- spires. He is therefore headed straight for co- operative association as the sane and sound way of demonstrating his earning power. Some years ago there was rather strong and general protest against a system of eleven months' leases, under which much land that might be used for tillage is kept under grass for cattle owned by townspeople and others. One who has been in all the movements of the last thirty years predicted in a talk I had with him that the next concentration would be brought to bear against this sys- tem, and that a corollary would be the ac- quisition of lands from whose cultivation the labor agriculturists might make the larg- est incomes their skill could command. In [119] The Invincible Irish the cases of many of the other unions, the evident intention is to form groups strong enough to enable the members to take the wage scale out of the realm of haphazard, to catch up, so to say, both as to wages and other conditions now considered elemen- tary, with the practice in other countries. Something of the kind was surely needed; of that the sudden upsurging of hundreds of new unions all over the country is sufficient proof. The leaders see, however, that the remedies to be sought are not precisely those which might be had in a highly industrial- ized community, and they are sensible that one function of the labor union in Ireland will be to advance the social education of increasing numbers of young men and women, and that another will be to encour- age co-operation in all the ways in which it can be used to make whatever earnings are available go farther than they did. [120] Forcing Frames of Freedom Naturally, with the Bolsheviki bugaboo so present to all minds, there is a good deal of trepidation over the rather purple language the organizers sometimes permit themselves. But speech, while an excellent and often an attractive thing, is not now regarded as so vital a matter as it was once thought to be. Thus, while some of the older clergy stop their ears, some of the younger ones get into personal contact with the Labor leaders and find they are excellent, well-meaning men, working with truly apostolic spirit for the alleviation of evil conditions which give rise to manifold human ills. The associa- tion is exhilarating to a young and zealous priest, who is sure to make good his own contribution to whatever work is done in common. In the North, within the sphere of Belfast influence, Labor adheres to its English and Scotch affiliations. If it ever looks southward it will find a welcome, but [121] The Invincible Irish there is not at present any urging. There are many who think, they do not know quite why, that Labor will solve the Ulster diffi- culty. One gets a glimpse of the possible justice of this view when he hears of in- stance after instance of southern Irishmen, fugitives from British law, going confident- ly and securely to the Orangemen of the North for refuge which is never denied. That is another thing the humor of which the Irish always see, the invaders never. [122] VII WHITECAPS ON A RISING SEA "But some say the day will come when the Dord Fiann will be sounded three times, and that at the sound of it the Fianna will rise up as strong and well as ever they were. And there are some who say Finn, son of Cumhal, has been on the earth now and again since the old times, in the shape of one of the heroes of Ireland." — "Gods and Fighting Men," Lady Gregory. THE visit to Ireland of the three dele- gates from America, Mr. Walsh, Mr. Dunne and Mr. Ryan, arrested the atten- tion of the English press by reason of the freedom with which they spoke of things that in England are not considered proper subjects for Irish discussion. Freedom from foreign invasion is a holy thing — in Eng- land. Resistance to military occupation is the sign of a proud and noble people — in Belgium. Permeation of a country's [123] The Invincible Irish institutions by an alien and hostile neigh- bor is to be resisted to the death — in France. Americans are encouraged to speak freely about all such matters, pro- vided they are careful about the application and provided they stay at home. It is a breach of the conventions to mention these topics at all in connection with Ireland, and the real objection of England to the be- havior of the delegates arose from the feel- ing that they had done something shock- ingly rude in using the same formulas in Ireland they had been encouraged to adopt at home. The effect produced in Ireland itself is to be traced to a different, but still abnormal, condition of mass mentality. In Ireland self-effacement is the standard of conduct. It is practised by the leaders; it is the daily habit of the people. All forms of nationalist expression are forbidden by the men who govern for England, and if at- [124] Whitecaps on a Rising Sea tempted are repressed under threat or by ap- plication of force. I never saw a Volunteer in Ireland, never heard the Soldiers' Song, never heard a speech. But I have heard man after man and woman after woman ex- plain how meetings had been prevented or broken up. I was chatting with Mrs. Skef- fington one day when the door opened and in came Countess Markievicz with a joyous explanation of how she had fooled the po- lice by holding a meeting that had been for- bidden, but not just where it was announced, and had got away by motor car over an un- watched road. Mrs. Skeffington herself had appointments cancelled by the police or the military almost every other day. I have al- ready described how Father O'Flanagan "put one over," as we say. The Irish lead- ers are always going to meetings, but they never speak. The people had become ac- customed to this regime of suppression. And [125] The Invincible Irish then these three gentlemen came among them and made speeches. The effect was astounding. All the time they were there they did not call a meeting, but everywhere they went a meeting came to them. They spoke, and they were not interfered with. Their progress was only comparable to that of the prophets of old. I have been told that all of them — and they are all case- hardened to crowds — were profoundly moved by the sight of the masses of men and women who came to welcome them back from Limerick. They might speak; what a marvel! They spoke of elemental things; what a triumph! It was his failure to foresee this unbelievable thing that brought down upon Lloyd George's devoted head the storm of English indignation. They never knew how popular they were, but I came across some queer indications of it. A butcher quietly put away a joint he [126] Whitecaps on a Rising Sea was selling. "That will never do for them," he said, as he reached for a better one. Shop after shop broke all its rules when their comfort was in question, and taxi patrons had to wait with what patience they could for drivers engaged even remotely in their service. It was a tremendous time. Only a few weeks before, a Catholic prel- ate from one of the Dominions, who in his home sphere had caught something of the glamor of the imperialist pretension, had slipped into Ireland unobserved. When he came out he reported that the people were being driven like poor cattle, that if he had stayed a month he would be either mad or in jail, and that he had come away disap- pointed and disillusioned. It is under these conditions that the men and women work who have been called to leadership. There was a taste of their ef- ficiency in the way the American trip was [127] The Invincible Irish stage managed, amazingly well according to the British correspondents, but only on rare occasions is there any indication of how hard they may be working. What is more to the point, it is hard for the public to form a just estimate of their qualities. Mr. DeValera, for example, really came to his present eminence on the unanimous endorsation of the contingent in prison. His reputation as a speaker and organizer was just well enough established to make it easy for the people at large to ratify the choice. His first act was to begin to organize the agencies available to him as thoroughly as if there was no other government nearer than London, and to do it without letting the Castle know what was done. He works so hard that he outrages all conventions con- cerning the taking of nourishment. If he has to attend to too much detail himself it is because he cannot always find new men [128] Whitecaps on a Rising Sea ready to take the places of helpers in whom the police show too much interest. He sees an immense number of people in the course of a week, and just works and smiles. Eng- lish writers express mistrust of the good humor of the Irishmen they see. It some- times almost looks as though the Sinn Fein- ers might be laughing at them. DeValera's smile is as disarming as any. When he chooses to be serious there is a very engag- ing simplicity about his speech. He speaks simply because he sees things clearly. Any- one can see that, and everyone does. One advantage, for him, in the present situation is that he is spared the trouble of frequently explaining. The people leave it to him, for indeed he is greatly trusted and profoundly admired. Arthur Griffith is what some of the op- ponents of Sinn Fein call its "brains carrier." As becomes a working journalist, he is a [129] The Invincible Irish storehouse of information. He likes his controversy hot, and gives and takes in that sense. Like Brougham and his colleagues of the early Edinburgh Review, who "culti- vated genius on a little oatmeal," Griffith was long supposed to be able to run a paper without capital and live without personal expense. Therefore his marriage was as great a shock to his friends as the stoppage of the sun was to Joshua's. But in twenty years he has familiarized a people with his ideas. He has made the paper Nationality pay. The best story I have heard of him was told me by a professor of French, one of whose pupils, a young namesake of mine, had written a thesis which, in the profes- sor's views, fairly reeked of Nationality. The French visitor who read the thesis, and to whom Griffith was a god unknown, was enchanted by the essay, which opened to him new vistas of thought, a very surprising [130] Whitecaps on a Rising Sea and wholly delightful experience. He was tremendously complimentary to the happy student. I found very bright business men full of confidence that anything in the eco- nomic field that needs to be done in and for Ireland can be done if Griffith will put his name down as approving. John MacNeill is another remarkably well informed man, very delightful in conversation, one of those Northerners who know how to go to the heart of a situation and to make the most of a political oppor- tunity. It is a sin and a shame, however, that the disturbed state of the country makes it necessary for him to withdraw for an hour from his work as a historian. He has a long family of small children, and when he goes away on his jail vacation he misses their company. However, they have his brother James, who came home to enjoy life after a Jong career in the Indian service, and who [131] The Invincible Irish apologizes to his friends for the untoward condition of some of his much-loved flower beds on the plea that he took too much pleasure out of the company of John's chil- dren. Bless him! This interest in other people's children is a fad around Dublin, anyway. A woman told me it was not until a good four months after the rising that they were able to satisfy themselves with the pro- vision made for the orphans left by those who had fallen. Almost any day one can see Count Plunkett on an outside car starting off for the Roscommon train to intervene in a labor dispute or to comfort some constituent who has come into collision with the forces of Empire. The Count and his lady, who ex- perienced a lot of very ungentle handling by the English prison authorities, have adopted Lord Morley's formula that to be, to do and to do without are real social de- [132] Whitecaps on a Rising Sea siderata, especially for patriots. Almost any day, too, in the warm weather one who enters the courtyard of the National Uni- versity just before one o'clock can see and hear Dr. Douglas Hyde and a score of his pupils under the trees carrying on an ani- mated discussion in Irish. If this fails, one can go to St. Stephen's Green at the fall of night and see another teacher and his class of young men and women perfecting their freedom in the ancient tongue while walk- ing and chatting among the beauty spots of the Green. Nor does one escape it by going indoors. I felt very humble one night among twenty persons of both sexes who all spoke Irish, and another evening with six of them. Among these were three or four of the younger leaders who get hardly any pub- licity at all, but who are working all the time. The Dail Eireann had two good men in Paris, J. T. O'Kelly and George Gavan [133] The Invincible Irish Duffy, both of whom wear the gold ring pin which means that when one wearer meets another they are pledged to talk Irish. This did not prevent their headquarters in the Grand Hotel being the center to which drifted Egyptians, South Africans and many of the other delegations from little countries in search of cheer or comfort or advice, for be it known that Paris wore a grey and for- bidding look to the score or more of delega- tions representing non-powerful states, who were encouraged by the Big Four to chafe in idleness in their own quarters until the spirit moved them to go home unheard or uncon- sidered. They all much admired the way the Irish and their American associates obtained a share of the limelight for Ire- land. Maybe they thought the little gold pins account for it, but it was not that. It was brains and ability and that curious Irish quality of sympathy they possess which [1341 " Whitecaps on a Rising Sea brought to them friendly visitors from all over Europe and from the best informed quarters in Paris, and put them in position to show others how to do what they did so well themselves. Whether to Douglas Hyde the praise be given — I am sure he would be the first to disclaim it — or whether boys will be boys, the fact remains that the young men of the University spread themselves along the highest cornice of the noble new university building the day the American delegates were there. The truth is that in the student body Irish Ireland is very conscious of itself and of the times in which its youth is passed. Having learned how many of the boys of Pearse's school had followed the school- master into the streets of Dublin the week of the Rising, I ventured to put to a woman devoted to the cause, and who knew the cir- cumstances, this question: "How do you [135] The Invincible Irish account for it that boys whose parents sent them to school found themselves in the midst of war?" I confess her answer floored me. "Why do you suppose we sent our boys to that school? Why do you suppose I sent my boy? (He was present at the conversa- tion) I wanted him to learn what it is to be Irish and to fight for Ireland." Somebody had told me that if all the men were carried off the women would take up their work. Anybody who wants to may disbelieve that. I don't. I got into an argument with a little wisp of a university woman as to what might happen if Mr. Wilson should con- trive in Paris to have offers made to Ireland compromising the full Wilsonian doctrine. "And who is Mr. Wilson," asked she, "that he should propose for us, as good enough for us, the half of what he has fought for and got for others who do not deserve it near as much as we?" The word, as M. [136] Whitecaps on a Rising Sea Clemenceau says, is to President Wilson. One more Lost Leader? Ah well, one more or less, — what is that in Ireland? Going up to Paris from Rouen one day, I met in the train an American colonel, who had been spending his leave in Ireland. His ancestors had come from there a hundred and fifty years ago. In Dublin, at one of the closed hotels, the proprietor had said, "You are American, aren't you?" and found him a room. At another place, when he registered, he was told that his name was a familiar one around there. "You have your choice of the hotel and the club," he was told; "I am the manager of both, and I recommend the club." He sat next day and watched the people on parade, and con- cluded they were the most courteous, con- siderate, best set up men and women he had seen in Europe, and that the respect shown for women by the poorest dressed men was [137] The Invincible Irish the equal of anything he had ever witnessed in a drawing room. All he saw afterwards confirmed these impressions, and he came away feeling there were no people like them. In London he met many fine up- standing fellows and many beautiful wom- en, whereat he was greatly pleased also. Must there really be conflict? He hoped not. As we parted he said: "I wish my father had been spared to be home when I get there. We were four brothers, and he used to tell us the way we were going we would all have violent ends. Well, I am the last. One went at San Juan Hill, one the night Madero was murdered, one in an accident. I have just been through the Ar- gonne and Lorraine and I haven't a scratch. I wish I could report to him. Still," he continued, "I don't know. If there's going to be any rough handling of these Irish people I've seen there may be a chance of it [138] Whitecaps on a Rising Sea yet." The worst of soldiering is that it de- velops habits of direct thinking that are very unsettling to the painstaking investi- gator mind. [139] VIII THE IRISH VALIANT WOMAN THE taxicab was waiting at the gate of St. Enda's School. "Come here, now," said Mrs. Pearse, "and I'll show you where I said good-bye to my boys." We walked a few steps, and she pointed to a spot in the road. "There's where they left me ; my two fine boys. And I said to them, 'Good-bye, my darlings, and if I don't see you again in this world, I will in the next' " I asked her if she had seen them again. "I never saw Padraic," she said, "but I saw Willie. They let me see him the night be- fore his execution. I asked him did he see Padraic. *I did not, mother,' he said. They said I was to see him, and they took me out, but I only heard the firing, and I'm sure it [140] The Irish Valiant Woman was he.' Well, thank God, my faith was strong. 'Never mind, Willie/ I said, 'You'll soon be with him, and when you see him, tell him mother will be braver than ever.' My two fine boys!" "A nation is what its women make its men." The mother of the Pearses has re-opened the school. She thinks it ought not to per- ish. Some months ago there was an incident on the mountain near by. The military, for want of a better recourse, occupied the school, remaining there several weeks, and the children had to be transferred else- where. The men were rather heavy, and the gymnasium suffered, and in other ways the change was not good for the fine old house under whose hospitable roof Robert Emmet and Sarah Curran used to meet. (Her father's house, the Priory, is just across the road.) Padraic Pearse's study is kept [141] The Invincible Irish closed. The officers did not allow it to be entered, and did not enter it themselves. When they all went away, at last, the chil- dren came back. About the same time the present headmaster was released from the English prison in which he had been kept, with so many others, for many months. Among the pupils are two little sons of James Larkin, the meteor leader of the Dublin strike of 1913. There are some odd bits of sculpture which prove that Willie Pearse was a true artist, and there are many convincing evidences that Padraic, the teacher, lived as he wrote, under the in- spiration of the Man of Sorrows and "in the hard service of the Poor Old Woman," Kathleen the daughter of Houlihan. Mrs. Concannon, the scholarly biogra- pher of St. Columba, entering a new field, has just published a volume of beau- tiful studies of the Women of 'Ninety- [142] The Irish Valiant Woman Eight. One reads it with an irrepressible feeling that the years between count for nothing, with a realizing sense that the spirit of the women is the same now as it was then, and with apprehension that will not down that we may be on the eve of tragedy as great "In many a forgotten grave, from Antrim to Wexford," writes Mrs. Concannon, "lies the dust of the women who died victims of the yeomanry and the military, let loose on the country to goad its manhood into a rising." It has not quite come to that yet, but who knows that it will not? It has gone so far that no house is safe from raid and search at any hour of the day or night and that whole countrysides are subjected to intimate tyr- anny by police and military. Indignities have been suffered by women, young and old, in this process. And not wholly in meekness has it been borne. What can be [143] The Invincible Irish argued from the killing of one of the little tyrants in open day on a crowded street, with none to name the murderer, none to raise the hue and cry, unless it be that the com- munity by its very silence has rendered a verdict? Where force is substituted for the forms of law, as against the people, is it so very strange that the example is followed? "There are two sorts of prophets," com- mented Curran in a great trial, "one that derives its sources from real or fancied in- spiration, yet are sometimes mistaken; the other class composed of persons who prophesy what they are determined to bring about themselves." Prophets of this latter sort were very potent in 1798, They are very potent now. And we have the recent declaration of the London Morning Post, organ of the class which has always sus- tained their enterprises, that "the Govern- ment will eventually be faced with the [144] The Irish Valiant Woman choice between giving Ireland complete in- dependence and re-conquering that country. That hour is fast approaching." (July 8, 1919.) By what means, one cannot help wondering, is the hour to be advanced? With all the troops there are in Ireland, it might come very suddenly. And yet it is quite impossible to convey to any who have not been in contact with them, with what serene belief in the triumph of the right the Irish people await the forcing of the issue. And this is as true of the women as of the men. Indeed, I doubt whether there is a parallel anywhere for the new and beau- tiful relation between men and women which in Ireland the presence of crisis has brought into existence. They are comrades, co-workers, taking counsel together, equals in a sense foreign to the conception of most advocates of equality between the sexes, [14S] The Invincible Irish for theirs is an equality of which not ad- vantage but sacrifice is the test, and to which the road lies not through advancement but through suffering and effacement. One hears many stories illustrative of the way the women have played their part. When James Connolly lay wounded and guarded he contrived with a stub of a pen- cil, writing on his knee and under the sheet, to write what he thought he ought. All that would have been labor in vain but for his brave little daughter, who took the mes- sage under the eyes of the guards, and car- ried it to its destination. She is now one of the organizers in the Labor Movement, and a very competent one. There are two young women, sisters, who were in the Rising. One of them stuck to her work at the Post Office until the Thurs- day, when she was told to get away, as the struggle had become hopeless, and to take [146] The Irish Valiant Woman an important message with her. She passed the military guard safely, and a few days later did her best to convince the police that it was she, and not her sister, that was "wanted." They refused to take her and did take the sister. The message was de- livered. On the day the Rising began, two other sisters took a train from a western town. The train stopped a few miles from the starting place and word came that "they were up in Dublin." Later the train pro- ceeded, reaching Dublin at nightfall. The sisters sat all day without a word, went straight from the train to the Volunteers' headquarters, got their orders, and returned to their home next day. Another woman carried an order across Ireland, returned, spent the week within the lines, and got safely away at the end. Of another, it was told me that when [147] The Invincible Irish the executions began, she would sit up far into the night talking to the photographs of the men who were gone and that towards the end her resolution failed, but with the beginning of the period of wholesale ar- rests her determination returned and she has never since faltered. In a noble passage in his speech at Madi- son Square Garden, which most of the news- papers failed to report, Mr. Frank P. Walsh told of the emotion he had experi- enced as the remains of Edith Cavell were carried through Trafalgar Square, and of how there flashed across his mind the mem- ory of the white face of Mrs. Tom Clarke. Mrs. Clarke is in prison, not for anything she has done, but by way of recognition that her spirit is true to the memory of her husband, whose body rests in Maxwell's quicklime. John McBride is there, too, and his wife, who was Maud Gonne, has been [148] The Irish Valiant Woman in prison and has come out unshaken. So one might go through a long list of familiar names of heroic women, and a longer list of women whose names are not known at all. For one who has suffered in person, thousands of women have taken up patient- ly and uncomplainingly the burden im- posed by the imprisonment of the bread- winner. And who knows how many more are placidly awaiting the hour when it may be their turn to suffer? Sometimes it has seemed that not enough has been made of the story of Anne Devlin, the woman who could have betrayed Robert Emmet. The military prodded her with bayonets. Then they hanged her till she was half dead. Then she was offered £500. Then they put her in solitary confinement. Then they brought her into the courtyard where Emmet was walking and she re- fused to recognize him and contrived that [149] The Invincible Irish he should not speak to her. She was taken, the day after Emmet's execution, past the place, and the cart was stopped that she might look upon his blood. Sent back to prison, she was subjected to mental torture by a prison official, as was afterwards dis- closed, in a way that was "shocking to hu- manity, and exceeds credibility. He drives, through exasperation, the mind to mad- ness." She came out broken in health and crippled in limb, but she had never flinched. It all seems very far away, as one reads it in a book, but it seems marvelously close again as one hears the quiet comment of the women of Dublin while the tanks and armored cars are speeding through the streets, the airplanes circling overhead, the machine guns crossing the city with soldiers in steel helmets marching behind with bay- onets fixed. There is a word that ought not to go un- [150] The Irish Valiant Woman said, about an incident that has to do with the Irish woman. Much is made, by those who have nothing better to say, about the exclusion of American sailors from Cork. It is not necessary to follow the stories which had it that some sailors behaved badly and were set upon. That might have happened in Paris, in Nice, in London. But if it did, it would have been only an incident. The great point is that what was always happening in Paris and London, without effective protest from either the people or the authorities representing the people, would not be tolerated in Ireland at all. Paris was cynically indifferent to the im- molation of its womanhood. London had sunk to a depth where the greatest doctors threw off all pretence that virtue was a matter for concern. Ireland takes another view, and will suffer no disparagement of the virtue of its women. In the Abbey [151] The Invincible Irish Theatre in Dublin, they have in a frame the notice sent by the censor of plays when Synge's "Playboy of the Western World" was first being rehearsed. He counselled the excision of the words "the loosed kharki cutthroats" because he thought it dangerous to bring into disrepute the services of the Crown. Solemnly the censor wrote it and as solemnly the Irish Theatre framed the gem of unconscious humor. The British Admiralty did a wise and sensible thing when, recognizing the essential difference between the Irish way and some other ways of looking at these problems, it took meas- ures accordingly. The motive has been misrepresented, but the great fact remains that the Irish view of Irish womanhood pre- vailed. It would have prevailed anyhow. It always will. [152] IX WHAT CAN BE DONE TO HELP THE first newspaper I saw on return- ing from Ireland had an account of a speech in the course of which Senator John Sharp Williams expressed some impatience with his colleagues for making too much of the Irish issue, with a rather disparaging reference to the number of Irish-Ameri- can votes. It did occur to my mind that the Southern Senator owes to these same votes a little something, for he has had, and has used discerningly, a great opportunity dur- ing seven years of Democratic party rule made possible, in no small degree, by just such votes. But what the reading of the paragraph brought back to me, with sudden rush of pleasant memory, was a day I spent, [153] The Invincible Irish some years ago, in New Orleans. There, in the museum in the old Cabildo, I had sat down beside the death mask of a great general. A man came up, taking his glass- es from his waistcoat pocket, and asked, "Is this the Napoleon mask?" "No," said I, "it is Grant." "Oh," he said, replacing the spectacles in his pocket, "I don't know as I'm so much interested in Grant." And then he very obligingly showed me over the place, and I learned, as we walked and talked, that in his youth he had lived for weeks in the building, as one of the armed guard of the Louisiana judiciary, which continued to function in this old building while the judges who came with the carpet baggers from the North, upheld by the tri- umphant Federal military, endeavored to affirm their authority behind the walls of another famous building a few hundred yards away. Now I felt quite sure that [154] What can be Done to Help Senator Williams must be politically and intellectually kin to my courteous New Or- leans host, and it seemed to me that if he at all realized how the young men of the Dail Eireann are struggling to do, in all es- sentials, what was done in the South in his young days, he could not hold any bitter- ness in his heart against them or display impatience with American friends of their cause. It seemed to me then, as it seems to me now, that he must be one among a great many who do not sense the reality of the Irish position; from which it follows that the main business of those of us who feel keenly upon the subject ought to be to make the mere truth of the position more widely and yet more widely known. In the same way, I have noted how super- ficial are the many letters, finding fault with the Irish, and brimming over with unlovely bitterness, with which our papers have been [155] The Invincible Irish filled. First there was a chorus about the alleged inhumanity of Irishmen in presence of the Lusitania disaster, then a chorus about the hostility to American sailors in Cork, then a chorus about the booing of the President. I met in Ireland the National- ist Irishman who held the coroner's inquest over the Lusitania affair. His conduct was vigorous enough, as we all remember, and yet there is in all Ireland no more forcible critic of England's bad faith. Mr. De Valera has given the lie to the statement about inhumanity, adding that in Ireland they have not yet produced men of the Bara- long breed. The affair of the sailors in Cork I have already discussed. I would prefer, with Mr. DeValera, that the dis- appointment, deeply felt, over the failure of the Peace Conference to realize the ex- pectations built upon the President's speeches, might be manifested in ways that [156] What can be Done to Help better reflect the sincerity of the emotion. But what must impress, and what must dis- appoint, anyone with the slightest concep- tion of what perils impend in Ireland, is the absence, in all these letters, and in the attitude of the papers in which they were printed, of any outcropping of that vein from whose depths the riches of American political feeling have always been drawn. The inherent right of people to their free- dom, the foundation of government upon the consent of the governed, never a hint of that. Therefore, it is of the first im- portance that those who value liberty for its own sake be guided to an understanding of the imminent danger there is that another people, who have greatly and nobly risked their all in asserting their freedom, may be made victims of a re-conquest while the world looks on with indifference. I seem to remember that in the oration in which [157] The Invincible Irish George William Curtis described the first appearance of Wendell Phillips, he told how, in Faneuil Hall, resolutions had been offered which made it appear that Love- joy, giving his life for a fugitive slave, "died as the fool dieth," and that Phillips would have none of it and forced his way to the platform to invoke the memory of Ames and Adams in protest. Pearse, too, and Plunkett, Connolly and McDonagh, Ashe and Coleman, yes, and Redmond and Ket- tle, they would have us believe, "died as the fool dieth," in dying that Ireland might live, soul free, shaking off oppression. The comment upon all this oftenest to be noted is the sneer of some great newspaper. There is even something like a competition in the game of defamation. It is not a worthy spectacle. Those who thus advertise their inability to recognize, even from afar off, obvious manifestations [158] What can be Done to Help of nobility of soul, deserve, did they but know it, the pity of men for whom freedom is something more than a fetish. For, let us not be deceived about it, when a disarmed people of four millions assert their independence under the frown of sixty thousand rifle muzzles, representing the entire power of forty millions, it is not a mean but a heroic thing they do. Such re- solves are not taken until after all less des- perate recourses have failed, as in Ireland's case they had failed. And just as the "shot heard round the world" has been and will ever be an inspiration, so will the first shot fired, if it ever is fired, in the re-conquest of Ireland, bring execration to those who would rule by force and humiliation to those who, believing in liberty and ardently cherishing their own, have refused to see what the broad light of day reveals. For those who do not seek to disguise [159] The Invincible Irish their concern, particularly for such as are of the blood, there is more to do than wait helplessly for the signal of destruction to sound. They have some right to assume that at a time when every other nationality in Europe has been constituted a state, the old- est conscious nation of them all cannot be dragooned back into subjection in the full view of an unapproving world. Rather should they cast about to see whether they cannot, in all proper ways open to Ameri- cans mindful of their responsibilities, hold up the hands of those who have entered upon this great adventure. "Ireland will be hopelessly handicapped," writes Sir Horace Plunkett (June 28, 1919), "in the world- wide struggle of nations for existence if she has to face the necessity of adjusting her social and economic machinery to the con- ditions of a new era under a Government over which her people have no control, [160] What can be Done to Help and which has no authority over them save what it derives from force." Ireland has to face that necessity, and has to face it with the foreboding that, somewhere in the world, perhaps in Mexico, perhaps else- where, a screen may at any time be erected behind which the rigors of ever present force may be applied against Ireland, with relative freedom from outside attention. Even as things are now, with English pol- icy favoring Irish emigration, Ireland has to contrive to keep her people at home; with English policy discouraging Irish in- dustry, Ireland has to provide work for these men and women ; with English inter- ests operating to prevent the development of Ireland's resources, Ireland has to find ways of using these resources for her own advantage ; with English directors discrimi- nating against Ireland in the control of the Irish transportation agencies, Ireland has [161] The Invincible Irish to devise means of averting economic ruin ; with Irish savings subject to the whim of English bankers, Ireland has to find the money to finance undertakings that are vital to her prosperity; with English mer- chant marine laws and mercantile combi- nations throttling every effort to build up direct trade relations between Ireland and other countries, Ireland has to contrive that goods made in Ireland shall find their way into foreign markets to be there exchanged for foreign wares. The men who have to arrange all this must do it with the sword poised to strike their country and the prison doors open before them at every step they take and at every turn they make. To think that in the country of Samuel Adams and Gouverneur Morris, it is possi- ble for such men to be spat upon in the daily press which is assumed to reflect the ideals of the people! But, it is said, they seek the [162] What can be Done to Help unattainable. Even were that so, where the right of a people to order its own life is in issue, what other quest would be so well worth while? If I were asked, as I have many times asked myself, What can be done to help by those who would like to be helpful? the an- swer would have to be sought, where it can readily be found, in the catalogue of im- perative requirements. We can give the Irish people assurance that their ideal is one with which we are familiar, and which we prize. We can extend a kindly welcome to their chosen spokesmen, and give attentive ear to the speakers and writers who have the power to transmit to us a true view of Irish civilization as Irish men and women live and feel and know it. We can display the sympathetic interest of a conscious democracy in the experiment [163] The Invincible Irish of establishing a new industrial organiza- tion under enlightened dispensations for the welfare of Labor. We can be of practical assistance in en- suring the success of bureaus designed to make known to ourselves the merits of Irish articles of commerce. We can encourage students who come here to learn that they may return to teach American methods of business organiza- tion. We can make it a rule to include among our Christmas presents at least one object, bearing the Irish trade-mark, into which have gone something of Celtic taste and something of Irish handicraft. We can tender the services of highly trained engineers, successful captains of in- dustry, experts in salesmanship, masters of the problem of transportation, wise coun- sellors in finance, hardy adventurers in com- [164] What can be Done to Help merce, to assist them to a knowledge of their opportunities and of how to make the best use of their resources. We can help them to charter ships and to arrange for cargoes. Seeing that when they would collect money for themselves they are pounced upon by the military and police, we can provide them, in reason, in exchange for certificates of indebtedness, with such sums as any Government faced by their problems of development might similarly obtain with a view to activating the processes. We can do much, and almost without ef- fort, to lift the pall beneath which it might be calculated their aspiration would be smothered in the despair that succeeds to helplessness if they were left unaided and uncheered. Thus we can keep the urge towards free- dom in motion through the period in which [165] The Invincible Irish it might be expected to exhaust its potential. Why take the trouble? Because it was not a vain thing nor a little thing the most American of Americans had in mind when he called upon his countrymen to "highly resolve that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not per- ish from the earth/' and because in Ireland alone, among the earth's white peoples, that sublime aspiration remains to be striv- en for and is still to be concededly attained. God grant that soon it will be. [166] APPENDIX IRELAND'S RIGHT TO FREEDOM MARTIN CONBOY IRELAND'S RIGHT TO FREEDOM Speech Delivered at the Banquet of the Friendly Sons of St Patrick, in New York, March 17, 1919, by Martin CONBOY. THERE has never been an anniversary celebration in the entire history of this ancient organization when the speaker addressed himself to his subject with a deeper feeling of responsibility, but at the same time with less apprehension and greater certainty than on the present occa- sion, for to-night we celebrate the triumph of all those fundamental and essential truths of civilization that the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick have advocated since the founda- tion of the Society. The responsibility is involved in the careful and appropriate application of the principles that have triumphed, to the con- ditions to which they apply. The assurance [169] The Invincible Irish and certainty are justified by the fact that once these conditions are defined, the appli- cation follows of necessity from the essen- tial character of the principles. The old order has passed, giving way to the new. Military power developed by the highest efficiency to the most formidable proportions has been destroyed by the irre- sistible courage and determination of free peoples. The oppressed of the earth have been championed by the common justice of humanity. The world, throughout its length and breadth, in all the places where men abide, has been made safe for democ- racy. The secure era of peace is now to suc- ceed the eras of the past with their appre- hensive periods of war. It remains to make sure only that there shall be no cloud to mar the dawn of the new day, no exception to conflict with the common purposes of men all over the world. [170] Ireland's Right to Freedom It is true that there are still portions of the globe where the presence of an armed soldiery evidences the supremacy of the military power and the subordination of civil authority. The western frontier of Ger- many is occupied by troops of our own army, but the condition is only a temporary one that will cease when peace has been for- mally established. In the frozen reaches of Northern Russia men of our armies and of the armies of our co-belligerants are strug- gling with the forces of disorder to bring peace to a distraught and unhappy land, to quell the menace of a spreading social revo- lution that threatens the structure of civil- ization. The former condition is a necessary con- sequence of a danger that until recently was a continuing menace to the peace and the lives of nations. The latter is just as neces- sary a preventive of a danger that threatens [171] The Invincible Irish the peace of the future. Each is a condition that is not only justifiable but necessary for the safety of world democracy; the insur- ing of a lasting peace is not possible of ac- complishment unless each menace is de- stroyed and the apprehension of mankind removed. But there is one other place where the presence of an army is not justified by either of these considerations. No threat of Bol- shevism comes nor can come from it, for the character and genius of its people reject and abhor the idea of social and political an- archy. The peace of Europe is not threat- ened there by any attempt at world domin- ion, for all that that people want is their own country. The soldier in Ireland is an indefensible anachronism. He is the sole survivor of a day that is gone, gone we hope never to return. The soldier in Germany and in Russia has his proper and necessary [172] Ireland's Right to Freedom place in the present scheme of things, the soldier in Ireland is a contradiction of the gospel of democracy, a denial of the truth that is on every man's lips and in every man's heart. The world will be made safe for democracy if the purpose of the soldier in Germany and Russia is accomplished, the world will be made unsafe for democ- racy if the purpose of the soldier in Ireland is accomplished. Other small nations will achieve self-determination if the soldier stands guard against the aggressions of the Hun and the Bolshevik, one small nation can never achieve self-determination so long as a British army throttles the expres- sion of that determination in Ireland. A lasting peace may be accomplished if its bases are good faith and justice and the ac- ceptance of the principle of self-determina- tion, but a lasting peace cannot be achieved if these fundamental truths are denied ap- [173] The Invincible Irish plication in one spot on the earth, especially, for us who are here, if that one spot is Ire- land. The Irish situation at this time is not in principle or fact a domestic but a world question, because the principles that apply to it and by which it is to be solved are those principles that have been accepted by every nation that fought with us and against us in the war so recently concluded, and because the elements of that situation are conditions that were present in other places, the rem- edy for which by the same uncontested and universally accepted principles is now be- ing applied by an international concert of action. To reach any different conclusion would be to convict the nations of the earth of the most consummate hypocrisy and to brand the greatest statesman of the age, the spokes- man of them all, with unparalleled decep- t 174 ] Ireland's Right to Freedom tion. When Woodrow Wilson announced what henceforth were to be the cardinal points by which the rights and obligations of nations should be determined, marking a new era in civilization, he did not suggest that Ireland was to be excepted from an otherwise universal application. When England accepted these principles she ac- cepted them without qualification. If there is any man in this room to-night who would deny the right of self-determination to Ire- land, I cannot imagine, in the language of our President, how he can live and not live in the atmosphere of the world, I cannot imagine how he can live and not be in con- tact with the events of these times, for he is out of harmony with the new conception of freedom declared by our great President, accepted, aye, acclaimed, by the statesmen of the world, and purchased with the treas- ure of America and the blood of her brave [175] The Invincible Irish sons, who perished on the battlefields of France, that the sacred fire of democracy might burn everywhere wherever there was an altar of civilization. And if all the rest of the world should fail in the present test to conform action to utterance, and to subordinate expediency to principle, the United States is committed, in accordance with the oft-repeated declara- tion of the President, to insistence upon the right and condemnation of the wrong. Never was an undertaking more solemnly avowed. "We accepted," said President Wilson in his memorable speech of September 27th, "we accepted the issues of the war as facts, not as any group of men here or elsewhere had defined them, and we can accept no outcome which does not squarely meet and settle them. Those issues are: Shall the military power of any nation or group of [176] Ireland's Right to Freedom nations be suffered to determine the for- tunes of peoples over whom they have no right to rule except the right of force? Shall strong nations be free to wrong weak nations and make them subject to their pur- pose and interests? Shall peoples be ruled and dominated, even in their own internal affairs, by arbitrary and irresponsible force or by their own will and choice? Shall there be a common standard of right and privilege for all peoples and nations or shall the strong do as they will and the weak suffer without redress? Shall the assertion of right be haphazard and by casual alli- ance or shall there be a common concert to oblige the observance of common rights? "No man, no group of men, chose these to be the issues of the struggle. They are the issues of it, and they must be settled by no arrangement or compromise or adjustment of interests, but definitely and once for all, [177] The Invincible Irish and with a full and unequivocal acceptance of the principle that the interest of the weakest is as sacred as the interest of the strongest. "This is what we mean when we speak of a permanent peace, if we speak sincerely, intelligently and with a real knowledge and comprehension of the matter we deal with." On November 11, 1918, an armistice was arranged in which our enemies specifically accepted the President's principles, includ- ing the fourteen points, together with the principles just quoted from the speech of September 27th. Our associates in the war likewise specifically accepted these prin- ciples with the single reservation for discus- sion of the point relating to the freedom of the seas, a point that, in view of the turn the negotiations at the Peace Conference have taken, has, according to the President, be- come academic. And now the associated [178] Ireland's Right to Freedom delegates are in conference in Paris avowedly endeavoring to build out of these acceptances the permanent peace of which they are the foundation. At the second plenary session of the Peace Conference, held on January 25, 1919, with Premier Clemenceau in the Chair, President Wilson in the course of his address to the delegates made the fol- lowing explanation of his purpose in attend- ing the conference: "\y e * * * are here to see that every people in the world shall choose its own masters and govern its own destinies, not as we wish, but as they wish." No language can be more explicit than this. In this Conference there are doubtless some national matters which take preced- ence over others. It is perhaps premature, therefore, to complain that the name of [179] The Invincible Irish Ireland has not so far been mentioned by the conferees. This situation rightly under- stood affords no cause for dismay, no reason for discouragement, for the work of the conferees cannot conclude except in failure unless Ireland's case is heard. Ireland's time must surely come, her case must even- tually be reached on the calendar of that court which cannot conclude its labors and adjourn until that necessary business is transacted. No one wishes to hamper the Conference in its work or embarrass it in its deliberations by insisting upon a premature consideration of Ireland's case. Whenever the time arrives for the presentation of that case, can there be any question but that it will have a steadfast and sturdy champion in the man who in his historical writings has expressed himself in no measured terms regarding British rule in Ireland and has championed the cause of small nations [180] Ireland's Right to Freedom everywhere? What evidence have we upon which to base the expectation that Ireland will be betrayed, when all the proof incon- testably supports the assertion that what is humanely possible for him to achieve for Ireland, he will be eager and proud to achieve? The case of Ireland must be heard by the conferees, for the permanent peace of jus- tice cannot be established so long as the present condition continues in Ireland. No man of peace can shut his eyes to the fact that because the Irish have demanded their liberty under the new law, a state of war exists in Ireland. The Irish have never assented to be members of the British Em- pire. Even the Irish union, unlike the union between England and Scotland, was not the voluntary act of two free peoples, each seeking only a reasonable and mutual advantage, but the act of a stronger against [181] The Invincible Irish a weaker party, done wholly for the ad- vantage of the former and forced upon the reluctant and unreal consent of the latter by an unscrupulous use of conscription and so- cial pressure. The Irish have waged a con- tinuous fight for freedom punctuated only by the truces of famine and exhaustion. It is obvious to everyone, much as we may de- plore it, aye, even though we condemn it, that so long as there is an Irishman left the Irish will wage war against those who oc- cupy but cannot subdue Ireland. There can be no peace of justice so long as Ireland continues to be held in bondage, for just so long there will be no peace on the Irish front in the war for the freedom of small nationalities. And lacking that peace in Ireland, what assurances have we that any future agree- ments into which we may enter with our associates of the late war will be fulfilled? [182] Ireland's Right to Freedom We are now asked to be party to a covenant of a League of Nations. All mankind is in favor of the League of Nations, not this or that league, but the league, the league which the President outlined for us before and during the war. A league is now pro- posed which leaves us largely at the mercy of the rest of the world, and into it we are asked to go with an England that holds Ire- land in subjection. Can we trust our coun- try in such a league? Measured by the case of Ireland, are we entering into a compact with a power incapable of covenant? What would that compact mean to us? As a war measure we temporarily surrendered our sovereignty to the extent of pooling our re- sources ; to secure universal peace it is sug- gested that we make sacrifices of power and pride and of our traditional isolation. It is conceivable that such sacrifices we might make, but if so we must know that in terms [ 183 ] The Invincible Irish of democracy we are on an equality with our co-contractors. Otherwise, is it not the better policy for us to withdraw now from European affairs and await the day when freemen here may safely covenant with free- men there? Not only can there be no lasting peace of justice with Ireland in subjection, con- stantly striving to vindicate her right of self- determination, but there can be no such compact of a League of Nations as is pro- posed so long as that condition continues, for it is inconceivable that the United States will become party to a covenant prepared and presented by Great Britain that will guarantee the permanent subjection of Ire- land, and this is what the proposed covenant will accomplish if it is accepted anterior to the settlement of the Irish situation. Article 8 of the covenant declares that — "The high contracting parties recognize [184] Ireland's Right to Freedom the principle that the maintenance of peace will require the reduction of national arma- ments to the lowest point consistent with na- tional safety, etc." The national safety of the United King- dom, if we consider Ireland as an integral part thereof, involves the occupation of Ire- land at the present moment with a British army of 200,000 men equipped with tanks, aeroplanes, artillery, machine guns, and all other modern implements of slaughter. This 200,000 means an armed soldier to every 20 of the population of Ireland, a ratio that may need to be increased or de- creased. Therefore, so long as England holds Ireland in subjection, England will require from the executive council of the League permission for a vast army to be used as an army of occupation in Ireland. Can American representatives grant that permission? Are we not in effect even [185] The Invincible Irish called upon, under this covenant, to help subdue Ireland? And if — an unthinkable contingency — such permission were granted by our representatives, would we not for our own safety's sake require a pro rata in- crease in the American army? Would we not need to burden ourselves with the cost of an additional army of 200,000 men to equalize ours with the military strength of England in Ireland alone? And what is true for the military forces is equally true and demonstrable as regards the naval forces. Therefore, from every standpoint, since the status of Ireland constitutes an excep- tion to the principles for which we fought the war, conflicts with our attempts to pro- cure peace and adds to us an unnecessary burden for armaments, it can not be prop- erly characterized as a domestic question affecting England alone. [186] Ireland's Right to Freedom Moreover, the basis of the whole theory, the very assumption of the covenant of the League of Nations, is that the status of every nation must be determined by all for all time; and the covenant is an English proposal. England suffers from no mis- apprehension on the subject. She explicitly demands that the integrity of the United Kingdom be guaranteed by the League, for she asks in Clause X of the covenant (which Jan Smuts prepared and Lord Robert Cecil presented) that — "The high contracting parties shall under- take to respect and preserve as against ex- ternal aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all States members of the League. In case of any such aggression or in case of any threat or danger of such aggression the executive council shall advise upon the means by which the obligation shall be fulfilled." [187] The Invincible Irish Let us contemplate for a moment the effect of this provision. Clauses 8, 9 and 18 seek to regulate the private production of armaments; therefore, subject States will henceforth be kept unarmed by the common action of all parties to the League. Clause X forbids such help as France gave us in 1779. America, in being asked to insure the effective disarmament of Ireland, to join in guaranteeing the territorial integrity of the high contracting parties, and, on occasion, to assist in defending that terri- torial integrity, is of necessity invited first to examine what she is to insure and to guar- antee and to defend. She is obviously ex- amining the territorial integrity of Italy before guaranteeing it; and she seems to be examining also the extensile boundaries of Japan before guaranteeing them. America cannot enter into this compact without in- viting inspection of her own territorial [188] Ireland's Right to Freedom possessions, nor can America enter into this compact without subjecting to inspection the territorial possessions of her associates. As this is St. Patrick's night we limit our- selves to the consideration of such conse- quences of the proposed covenant of the League of Nations as implicate America in Irish affairs. The invitation extended to us in Clause X to examine the territorial in- tegrity of Great Britain, that we are asked to guarantee, invites us this evening to con- sider Britain's claim to the territory of Ire- land ; and a decision on that claim must be made before we can accept the clause. The very assertion of that claim requires England, even as we speak, to hold Ireland by means of an army of occupation, to ad- minister Ireland through a military gov- ernor, and to govern Ireland by that suspen- sion of law and justice which is called martial law. It requires, in other words, [189] The Invincible Irish the existence of a state of war; and the pur- pose of the covenant of the League of Na- tions is peace. The assertion of that claim requires the negation of every principle for which we have fought, and especially of the principle which we have been told will alone insure peace, "the unequivocal prin- ciple that the interest of the weakest is as sacred as the interest of the strongest." The assertion of that claim, moreover, is made in face of the fact that Ireland has achieved the most remarkable democratic victory of the war, for in spite of the army of occupation, in spite of an alien electoral system, under the very franchise imposed by England, and in conformity with the rules and the decree of her Imperial oppres- sor, Ireland has held an election on one issue, and only one, the issue of separation from England. Sir Horace Plunkett has stated (New York World, March 16, 1919) that: [190] Ireland's Right to Freedom "Adherents of the program for absolute independence point with reason to the De- cember elections as indicating the temper of the people most affected. There was ab- solutely no ambiguity about the issues on which the candidates in those elections went to the polls. They stated quite clearly to the electors who voted for them that they would pledge themselves to a severance of relations with England, first by abstention from Parliament and thereafter by the establishment of an independent republic." Of the candidates for the suffrage of the Irish people, over two-thirds of the elected were separatists. After the election, such of Ireland's elected representatives as were not in jail or in exile met in Dublin as a National Assembly, declared her inde- pendence, proclaimed an Irish Republic, and openly appealed to the free peoples of the world for recognition of that Republic. [191] The Invincible Irish In face of this exhibition and exercise of national function, in face of the united na- tion of Ireland speaking through a govern- ment of the elected representatives of Ire- land, can America guarantee to England perpetual or even momentary possession of the territory of Ireland? The international status of the Irish Re- public now requires the most scrupulous ex- amination at our hands. Ireland claims she is de jure, no longer a part of the Brit- ish Empire, that she, in the election of De- cember 14, 1918, peacefully exercised her right to determine her political destiny. Having been so long "Under the con- tinued impulse of American and English tutelage by which all nations are declared to have the inalienable right to determine their own form of government," she now re- minds her teachers and all the rest of the world that self-determination is an imme- [192] Ireland's Right to Freedom morial right of freemen ; that in the past, re- sistance to invasion and revolt against con- quest were instinctive to Irishmen as to all freemen menaced in, or deprived of, their freedom; that Irishmen have continuously exercised this right of self-determination from England's first aggression down to the present day, although hitherto without suc- cess and at the forfeit of their lives; that in consequence of victory in this war to end war, this war to make the world safe for democracy, to put right above might, deter- mination by ballot has replaced determina- tion by bayonet or bullet, and that self-de- termination of nations in the new world order is to be achieved by vote, not by vio- lence. The Irish point out that, in 1905, long before the war, Norway thus peace- fully separated from Sweden; that in 1918, during the war, Iceland in like manner separated from Denmark; that after the [ 193 ] The Invincible Irish armistice the representatives of the North Slesvigers, who had been elected on a Ger- man franchise to the German Reichstag, met under the leadership of Erik Hanssen and unanimously decided in the name of the people of North Slesvig, and in accord- ance with the doctrines of self-determina- tion proclaimed by President Wilson, peacefully to separate from the German empire; that Hanssen first communicated this decision to the Foreign Minister of the German Republic, who acquiesced in it, as he stated, "in accordance with President Wilson's doctrine of self-determination," and then communicated it to the Danish Government together with a request that North Slesvig should be incorporated in the Kingdom of Denmark, seeking at the same time Denmark's mediation at the Peace Conference; that already President Wilson and other delegates hare expressed [194] Ireland's Right to Freedom their approval of the course taken by North Slesvig, but that thus far no sign of approval from a mediating government has been vouchsafed to the Republic which Ireland has peacefully established in accordance with the doctrine of self-determination which we steadfastly proclaimed as our slogan throughout the war. The Republic of Ireland has by procla- mation sought recognition from the "free peoples of the world," but so far has sought in vain. Without such recognition, Ireland under the old law is still an integral part of the territory of the British Empire. We are asked to guarantee the territorial integ- rity of that Empire, to pledge to maintain England in perpetual possession of Ireland. That possession, it should be pointed out in passing, implies one law for the conqueror, another for the conquered. It implies re- ward for imperial rebels, condonation of [195] The Invincible Irish the treason which led Carson and his ac- complices to flout the sovereignty of the Empire, to nullify a statute of Great Brit- ain, to invite the aid of the German Kaiser and thereby to precipitate the Great World War. It implies the massacre of Batchelor Walk for the Irish, promotion to the Cab- inet for the traitorous Carsonites. It im- plies the utter futility of all peaceful and constitutional methods of agitation for Irish freedom. It implies periodic recurrence of the forlorn hopes of 1798, of 1803, of 1848, of 1867, of 1916; of the valiant efforts of the unconquerable Irish with their naked hands to wrest from their armed masters the free- dom that is dearer than life. We are asked to be a party to the destruc- tion of the newborn Republic of Ireland, a Republic modeled in the image and like- ness of our own, inspired by our own free spirit, instituted by men of our own blood, [196 J Ireland's Right to Freedom and fashioned upon the principles that were triumphantly vindicated for the rest of Europe by our own soldiers. We gave recognition to the Czecho-Slo- vaks when they were an army of 50,000 ex- Russian prisoners of war in the depths of Siberia fighting against those who freed them. We gave them $8,000,000 to sustain them, and it would appear that we are only at the beginning of our giving. What do we owe to the Czecho-Slovaks that we do not owe a millionfold to the Irish? We have insisted upon the presence at the Peace Conference of three reprsentativs from Bra- zil, whose contribution to world freedom yet remains to be paid, but we have not insisted upon the presence at the Peace Conference of a single representative of the Irish, we, the beneficiaries of 140 years of Irish sacri- fice for democracy, the beneficiaries of 500,- 000 Irish born who fought in this war, the [197] The Invincible Irish beneficiaries of that race that under the Selective Service System had a greater per- centage in Class I and a smaller percentage in deferred classes than any alien race in the United States. What does our attitude towards Ireland mean? Unless it means national apostasy of every principle to which during the war we dedicated ourselves and our fortunes, an unequivocal expression from us on the Irish question is long overdue. We can never maintain our national self-respect, if by conduct or silence we imply that there is to be one law for Poland and the other small nations lately subject to Germany, and another for Ireland subject to England. We can never even contemplate a tacit ac- ceptance of Ireland as the only subject na- tion in Europe. It is unthinkable to us, as Americans, that America, the mother of republics, will be party to the crime of [198] Ireland's Right to Freedom^ strangling at its birth the latest and mosf promising of her offspring. Inaction on our part at this time is scarcely less repre- hensible than overt attack upon Irish free- dom. Ere our delegates become party to pacts which may consign Ireland to per- petual bondage, the least we can and must do is to demand for the elected representa- tives of the Irish Republic a full and open hearing of their case at the Peace Confer- ence. Such demand could not result in tfie with- drawal of England from the Peace Con- ference, for certainly England protests that a solution of the Irish issue is the one thing that she most fervently desires, British labor has declared for Irish self-determination, and contemporary history furnishes the proof that the solution cannot come from England. The Irish issue must be solved. Where can a more correct solution be [199] The Invincible Irish reached than at the Peace Conference? Who with greater propriety can demand its solution than the people of the United States? What more successful method of effecting its solution can be devised than a declaration by the American people that until the status of Ireland as an independent nation is established, the United States will never become party to a covenant that, in view of the present status, would compel us to repair and refasten beyond the possibility of breaking them the shackles that chain a weak nation to a strong one, an unwilling people to an unrelenting conqueror? We who combined our might and power with the cause of justice for men of every kind everywhere will not now combine that might and power with the cause of injustice against men of any kind anywhere. In this city, on the night of March 4th, [200] Ireland's Right to Freedom the President accurately pictured the trag- edy that failure would mean. If men," said he, "cannot now, after this agony of bloody sweat, come to their self-possession and see how to regulate the affairs of the world, we will sink back into a period of struggle in which there will be no hope, and therefore no mercy. There can be no mercy where there is no hope, for why should you spare another if you your- self expect to perish? Why should you be pitiful if you can get no pity? Why should you be just if, upon every hand, you are put upon?" Let us ere it be too late, animated solely by justice to ourselves, by justice to Ireland, by justice to England, by justice to the world, make the demand that Ireland must be heard, thereby proving that we are "true Americans, lovers of liberty and of the right." [201] Date Due (Clte^r*-} A T V 1 8 iqqq MrM ' v \sJJ\J