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IRELAND 
 
 AN ENEMY OF THE ALLIES? 
 
IRELAND 
 
 AN ENEMY OF THE ALLIES? 
 (L'Irlande — Ennemie ?) 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF 
 R. C. ESCOUFLAIRE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY 
 
 681 FIFTH AVENUE 
 
alo V 
 
 v<f 
 
 Copyright, 1920, 
 E. P. DUTTON & COMPANT 
 
 All Rights Reserved 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 APR -I 1920 
 •©CU5654.T2 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The Irish Question is an international impos- 
 ture. 
 
 Ireland, in order to justify her rebellion and 
 treason, makes out that she is oppressed. Nowa- 
 days the oppression of Ireland by England is 
 a myth, and a very feeble one at that. Macaulay 
 said : 
 
 "The Irish, on the other hand, were distin- 
 guished by qualities which tend to make men in- 
 teresting rather than prosperous. They were an 
 ardent and impetuous race, easily moved to tears 
 or to laughter, to fury or to love. Alone among 
 the nations of Northern Europe they had the sus- 
 ceptibility, the vivacity, the natural turn for act- 
 ing, and rhetoric, which are indigenous on the 
 shores of the Mediterranean Sea." 
 
 Ireland therefore possesses the power of play- 
 ing upon our emotions as she chooses, but the 
 accusations which she makes are so startling, 
 and so contrary to all we know of British rule 
 in other dependencies, that we must be careful 
 to verify her statements. 
 
 Professor Pearse, one of the ringleaders of 
 the Dublin rebellion, who was shot the follow- 
 
vi PEEFAOE 
 
 ing week, stated on the eve of the rising: "It 
 will fail in its direct object, but the moral effect 
 before the whole world will be immense, and 
 form a glorious chapter in Irish history." The 
 Professor believed that the world was very sim- 
 ple-minded, easily taken in by resounding 
 phrases and theatrical poses. Possibly he was 
 not mistaken. We need not mock, it was more 
 successful than we realize. 
 
 Ireland has always harped upon this note with 
 great effect. How many Frenchmen and Amer- 
 icans have been caught in the snare? Yet what 
 Pearse was asking those rebels to do was noth- 
 ing less than to stab us in the back when our 
 fate was in the balance at Verdun, and when 
 our soldiers were writing in their blood at Vaux 
 and Douaumont the most heroic page in the his- 
 tory of France. It were well, then, if his scheme 
 should not reap all the success which he antici- 
 pated. 
 
 The rebellion was followed by punishment; 
 mercy was shown to the rank and file, the ring- 
 leaders were executed, and Ireland wailed with 
 grief and decorated their graves with flowers. 
 George Bernard Shaw, an Irishman who owes 
 his reputation as a humorist to the amusing 
 paradoxes of his race, dared to write : "Nothing 
 in heaven or earth can prevent the men shot tak- 
 ing their place beside Emmet and the Manehes- 
 
PEEFACE vii 
 
 ter martyrs in Ireland, and beside the heroes of 
 Poland and Serbia or Belgium in Europe." This 
 comparison is an insult to noble little countries, 
 and the reason of this these pages will endeavor 
 to show. 
 
 There is an amusing side to this, that is, to 
 see the German press waxing indignant at the 
 destruction of a small nation, and Austria — save 
 the mark ! — applauding a national revolt. 
 
 We should do well to be very cautious of the 
 word Nationalism; it covers such a multitude 
 of artificial claims. In its name we have 
 Egyptian "patriots" in the pay of the wire-pull- 
 ers of the Committee of Union and Progress — 
 and such progress! — who want to purge their 
 country of Western corruptions and restore the 
 benefits of Ottoman Kultur. Of late years, too, 
 we have had Hindu nationalists demanding 
 Home Rule for that immense peninsula with its 
 hundred different races. Who are they? Young 
 Bengali lawyers without a mandate, claiming to 
 represent 200,000,000 illiterate and apathetic 
 peasants, without counting 100,000,000 Moham- 
 medans who loathe them, and are quite satis- 
 fied with English rule, and would not tolerate 
 a change. When shall we do justice to these ill- 
 timed jests? 
 
 It is certain that before the war opinion in 
 Latin countries inclined towards the small com- 
 
viii PKEFACE 
 
 plaining nation, not going very deeply into the 
 matter, as usual, but applauding these tirades, 
 and a priori suspecting England, the silent, who 
 is such a bad defender of her own cause. An 
 Englishman always believes that his cause is per- 
 fectly plain and needs no comment. 
 
 "Will you defend yourself?" says Meredith's 
 Princess Ottilia to her friend, after listening to 
 the diatribe of a pretentious Boche. 
 
 "Well, no, frankly, I will not. The proper de- 
 fense for a nation is its history." * 
 
 No doubt, but it is not known to everybody. 
 By the time an Englishman makes up his mind 
 to reply to his accusers he has generally ten or 
 twenty years of calumny to contend with, and 
 some of the dirt will stick. 
 
 It is no easy matter to destroy a legend, and 
 if the Irish Celts had not given us such stinging 
 blows during the war we should probably have 
 gone on for a long time believing them to be 
 inoffensive and unfortunate victims. They may 
 be humorists, but they overestimate our credu- 
 lity. They ask for applause. If their recent at- 
 titude, by directing all eyes towards them and 
 attracting closer observation, ends by confound- 
 ing them, and bringing them in more kicks than 
 halfpence, and if they are on the way to lose the 
 last and best of their friends in America, they 
 
 1 The Adventures of Harry Richmond, chapter xxviii. 
 
PEEFACE ix 
 
 have no one to blame but themselves. This 
 frightful war will have had one good result; it 
 will have taught us to recognize our friends and 
 know our enemies. 
 
 There is no doubt that the verdict will be a 
 severe one, and unfortunately many good and 
 noble men will suffer from this national crime; 
 among them will be those Irishmen who recog- 
 nized and fulfilled their duty — and let me say at 
 once that there are many such, several hundred 
 thousand. Mercifully there are still many 
 sound hearts in Ireland, and this indictment is 
 not directed against them. 
 
 We shall denounce the clergy who have gone 
 astray, but we shall be most careful to exclude 
 the English Eoman Catholics, both priests and 
 faithful, whose conduct during the last four 
 years has been irreproachable in act and word. 
 They do not condone the Irish bishops; on the 
 contrary, they suffer through being compromised 
 by their folly. 
 
 We shall have hard words for Irish politicians, 
 but we shall not forget that, in every party, in 
 Ireland as elsewhere, there are men of good faith 
 and perfect loyalty. 
 
 But besides them, and in spite of all these 
 reservations, these distressing facts remain — 
 the falling-away of a nation, the hostility of a 
 
x PREFACE 
 
 people in whose generosity we believed, the lying 
 pretexts with which we were to be deceived. All 
 this we shall try to describe and explain. 
 
 Need I say that the writer is in no man's pay? 
 Some will insinuate that he is, in the bewilder- 
 ment of seeing their Anglophobe prejudices thus 
 clearly and categorically demolished. 
 
 Is this work, then, not impartial? Let us un- 
 derstand one another. Impartial in its point of 
 departure certainly; but frankly partial in its 
 conclusions. After I had examined this ques- 
 tion, weighed words and deeds in the balance, I 
 was perforce obliged to take sides. To try to 
 please everybody and never ruffle preconceived 
 ideas is not always the way to find out the truth. 
 
 On this subject I shared the illusions— and the 
 ignorances — of almost all my fellow-country- 
 men, until one day an Irish-American friend, who 
 died an heroic death eight years ago as one of 
 the pioneers of aviation, handed me Sir Horace 
 Plunkett's Ireland in the New Century, and 
 warned me that it contained many surprises for 
 me. These were so great that I was fired with 
 the desire to go into the matter more deeply, 
 and to complete the investigation by the study 
 of men and books — past and present. The first 
 result of this was a contemporary study of the 
 social and political condition of Ireland in 1909. 
 
PKEFACE xi 
 
 Having since retained, needless to say, the 
 deepest interest in this question, and followed 
 from day to day, at the very heart of the Anglo- 
 Saxon Empire, the incidents of this endless quar- 
 rel, I was often distressed to see the way the 
 French public and press either attributed the 
 blame and responsibility wrongly, or else, 
 amazed at Ireland's misguided folly, gave up 
 trying to understand the business, and relegated 
 it to the mysteries of censored war-news. 
 
 Unfortunately even those who were sent to 
 Dublin on missions of inquiry or propaganda 
 were sometimes taken in by the plausible 
 speeches of the local orators. Doubtless Froude's 
 fiction would be denounced to them, Froude, 
 who falsified history by literature and preju- 
 dice, and, instead of showing Ireland in her true 
 colors, crowned her with the palms of injured 
 innocence. Then the more accurate and honest 
 work of Lecky would be shown to them. Lecky 
 was the great historian of eighteenth-century 
 Ireland, an epoch during which Ireland played 
 indubitably a creditable part. But were they 
 told that Lecky, in the face of contemporary 
 events, became the opponent of Home Eule just 
 as Froude had been? 
 
 Were our friends thoroughly conversant with 
 all the complex facts of the question? I know 
 that some of them, unfortunately, returned hav- 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 ing formed hasty and ill-considered judgments, 
 actuated more by sentiment than reason. This 
 book has been written in the humble hope of 
 enlightening them a little. 
 
 R C. E. 
 
 Paris, 
 August 15th, 1918. 
 
CONTENTS xv 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE INSURRECTION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 
 
 Rebellion in Dublin — General Maxwell arrives — "Moral 
 effect" — Mr. Birrell resigns — Rebel recriminations — 
 Mr. Lloyd George called in — Mr. Duke Chief Secretary 
 — Mr. Redmond's difficulties — Deadlock again — Mr. 
 Lloyd George's attitude — The Convention — Sinn Fein 
 and the Convention — Warnings from America — Mr. 
 Redmond's death — Points in dispute — Chimerical fac- 
 tories^ — Hopes and wishes 199-237 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 CONCLUSIONS AND FORECASTS 
 
 Sir H. Plunkett's hopes — Irish claims — American ignorance 
 —America begins' to see — Mr. Stead's opinion — Still far 
 from Home Rule — Germano-Irish Society — The "Wild 
 Men" — Folly and Vanity — Clerical intimidation — Offi- 
 cial optimism — A negative conclusion — Useless conces- 
 sions — Kuno Meyer 238-268 
 
IRELAND 
 
 AN ENEMY OF THE ALLIES? 
 
IRELAND— AN ENEMY OF 
 THE ALLIES? 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE IRISH ENIGMA 
 
 Why is Ireland not on our side? Why should 
 this little country, athirst for independence, re- 
 serve her sympathy for predatory Germany? 
 Moreover, she wants us to take her part ; can we 
 do so? 
 
 Ireland has not the excuse that she did not 
 understand the facts of the case. She could 
 read in the original all the Foreign Office docu- 
 ments, Sir Edward Grey's dispatches — never was 
 diplomacy more frank and outspoken, more loyal 
 or more damaging in its obvious good faith. 
 Ireland had to choose between that and the out- 
 rageous depravity, the disgusting cynicism, of 
 the Wilhelmstrasse. She chose ill. She is al- 
 ways accusing her "stepmother" of breaking this 
 promise or that. But in this case it was Ger- 
 many who dishonored her oaths, and England 
 
 l 
 
2 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 who risked the whole of her Empire to keep her 
 sworn faith. And Ireland stood aloof and was 
 critical — but of England only. "Can England's 
 motives ever be pure?" she mutters. 
 
 War broke out. 
 
 On August 1st, 1914, Ireland was on the verge 
 of civil war, for there were two Irelands: one, 
 consisting of three-quarters of the island, had 
 just obtained its charter of autonomy, the Home 
 Kule Act, which only needed the royal signature. 
 The other part, that of the Ulster Protestants 
 in the north-east, had sworn a solemn covenant 
 two years before, that it would not submit to 
 this law; in it, Ulster read her death-warrant, 
 and that literally. She was ready for resist- 
 ance ; for months she had been arming and drill- 
 ing and having military maneuvers with great 
 seriousness. She was prepared for any sacri- 
 fice in order to keep her place in the Empire, in 
 spite of the Imperial Parliament. Her army, 
 consisting of 100,000 picked volunteers, had just 
 been reviewed by its leader, Carson. 
 
 Everything was ready and the die was cast. 
 These men expected no quarter from the Irish 
 Nationalists, to whom they had been delivered 
 by the party bargains of the English Radicals; 
 they were determined to sell their liberties 
 dearly. 
 
 No less determination was shown by the op- 
 
THE IRISH ENIGMA 3 
 
 posing side. The Nationalists had also raised 
 an army; they had the same number of volun- 
 teers, but far less well armed; but, to make up 
 for this, it is true, they had the support of the 
 Imperial Government and Parliament. Ulster 
 had no one to rely upon but herself. 
 
 The forces of Redmond and Carson are face 
 to face. A few days later blood will flow. Yes, 
 but in another theater and in vaster floods. The 
 trumpet sounds another blast, another call to 
 arms. A truce to childish games, to the minia- 
 ture war of Irish factions. The world is bowed 
 under a greater anguish, and on the lurid hori- 
 zon arise the symbols of Right, Justice, Liberty, 
 Respect for Treaties, Defense of the Weak. 
 Fighting for these on the plains of Belgium, the 
 Irish Volunteers, Catholic and Protestant, would 
 not betray their own cause. Are these not the 
 very principles which they invoke daily against 
 one another? 
 
 Their leaders realized this. Carson and Red- 
 mond instantly gave orders to their partisans 
 to suspend hostilities, and give their services to 
 the greater cause, the cause which embraced 
 theirs. Carson sent his men "to defend the Em- 
 pire," that was all ; Redmond made reservations, 
 he offered his brigades "to defend the shores of 
 Ireland." But that was better than nothing. 
 What response was there? Ulstermen could not 
 
4 IKELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 hesitate. They had armed themselves in order 
 to preserve by force their union with the Em- 
 pire, and the Empire asked of them a greater 
 sacrifice, and they did not hesitate. They had 
 to choose between three incentives: fear of op- 
 pression by a Catholic majority; traditional 
 hatred of those who were to become their mas- 
 ters — selfish incentives if you like ; sincere devo- 
 tion to the Empire — which meant putting their 
 own grievances on one side, and giving up all 
 safeguards, sending their sons to be massacred 
 in Europe, and finding themselves afterwards 
 disarmed in the hour of their own peril. Their 
 devotion won the day, but we must remember the 
 alternative, for we owe Ulster a debt of honor 
 for her choice. 
 
 And what of the rest of Ireland? I wish I 
 could say that she did not hesitate either. But 
 it would be false. When, in September, 1914, 
 John Eedmond, their leader at that time, great- 
 hearted and clear-sighted, pointed out their duty, 
 a certain number of National Volunteers an- 
 swered the call. But the others, the majority, 
 waited. 
 
 Yet the first victim to protect was Belgium, 
 innocent, without a doubt, chivalrous, heroic and 
 Catholic too, which is an important point to an 
 Irishman. Yet Ireland made no move. 
 
 A month later we are no longer dealing with 
 
THE IRISH ENIGMA 5 
 
 iniquitous diplomacy, but with crimes which dis- 
 gust the basest minds; the whole world had just 
 heard of the atrocities of Aerschot and Dinant. 
 Louvain was in ashes, its priests taken to Ger- 
 many in cattle trucks or massacred on the Brus- 
 sels road. Many Irish priests had been edu- 
 cated at the University of Louvain, hundreds of 
 Belgian priests and nuns had arrived in Ireland, 
 fleeing from violation and murder, telling of 
 their tortures, and crying for vengeance. Will 
 Ireland rise? Yes, but not as you would ex- 
 pect. 
 
 All the "National Volunteers" who had sulked 
 during their leader's appeal made up their minds 
 at last ; they denied Redmond and went to swell 
 a new army, the "Irish Volunteers," opposed 
 alike to Redmond, England, and the Allies. In 
 the first month of the war the German press in- 
 formed us that these Irish had their ambassa- 
 dor at the court of Potsdam — no less a person 
 than Sir Roger Casement ! x 
 
 In December a tragic voice was heard, crying 
 aloud for vengeance; Cardinal Mercier, whom 
 young Irish priests had known and revered at 
 the School of Philosophy in Louvain, solemnly 
 affirmed the barbarism, the revolting cruelty of 
 
 1 Casement's "mission" was mentioned in German news- 
 papers I found in Belgium as early as August 25th, 1914. 
 
6 IKELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 the invader, the ignominies inflicted upon the 
 priests and nuns of Belgium. 
 
 Was that enough to convince the Irish clergy? 
 On the contrary, several of the Bishops attacked 
 England, our ally, with redoubled vituperation. 
 Other things hardly interested them. 
 
 In 1915 the German atrocities came nearer 
 home. On a cold spring morning, poor, 
 drenched, miserable, exhausted creatures were 
 landed on the Irish coast, while not far off the 
 bodies of children were thrown up by the tide. 
 A wave of horror swept over the world; the 
 Lusitania had been torpedoed. Was Ireland 
 roused? Hardly at all. 
 
 Civilized men howled execration, the brutal 
 Boche from Berlin, New York, and Madrid re- 
 plied with satanic laughter. This is only the 
 beginning, it seems; the submarine has shown 
 what it can do, we shall see more of its handi- 
 work. Vce metis I the wrath of Germany is ter- 
 rible. This is by no means displeasing to some 
 of the Irish, since they are now the allies of Ger- 
 many. 
 
 In the outrages which the Bernstorff gang per- 
 petrated in New York, you will often find Irish- 
 men in very sinister company. But it does not 
 seem to worry them. 
 
 Little by little, as Germany developed her sub- 
 marine campaign, a rumor spread; the most 
 
THE IRISH ENIGMA 7 
 
 profitable coups always seemed to come off some- 
 where near Ireland. Would not her lonely, de- 
 serted shores, with myriads of inlets, creeks, and 
 reefs, mysterious caves and outlying islands, 
 make admirable bases for supplying the pirates? 
 Was this hateful suspicion far-fetched? Many 
 Irishmen did not appear to resent it. Are we 
 not at war, and is not England the enemy? 
 
 Gradually the rumor began to crystallize. 
 Here a chatterbox could not hold his tongue, 
 there a patriot bragged too loud ; but still there 
 was not enough evidence for a magistrate to con- 
 vict. It took two years to find the proof ; it was 
 forthcoming at the rebellion in 1916, much to 
 the confusion of the incredulous, and at the time 
 of Casement's trial. Rebel Ireland had official 
 dealings with Admiral Tirpitz's pirates. 
 
 During the following months the contrasts 
 which have been a salient feature of Irish history 
 for the last twenty-five years became still more 
 accentuated; on the one hand the English gov- 
 ernors doing their utmost to cajole and satisfy 
 Ireland, on the other every effort being made to 
 discourage them. Elsewhere I have emphasized 
 this attitude; the war in no way altered it. 
 
 Locked in a struggle which became ever more 
 deadly, pitted against a foe more dangerous than 
 she had foreseen, Great Britain gave up her com- 
 forts, her pleasures, habits, and cherished tra- 
 
8 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 ditions. The all-powerful Trade Unions im- 
 perium in imperio were asked to suspend their 
 privileges. She sacrificed all her liberties by the 
 Defence of the Eealm Act, of which one clause, 
 the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, will 
 show the significance. Hundreds of minute reg- 
 ulations and burdensome taxes created havoc in 
 every sphere, in commerce, industry, agriculture, 
 amusements, drink, restaurants, railway jour- 
 neys, rationing, requisitions, etc. And to al- 
 most every regulation, however necessary and 
 far-reaching, would be appended a clause or sim- 
 ilar amendment, "this regulation does not apply 
 to Ireland." 
 
 The result was what might have been expected 
 (one need only read a few pages of the history 
 of Ireland to guess what would happen) : the 
 more concessions were made, the greater grew 
 the rebel army; the more favors Redmond ob- 
 tained for Ireland, the less gratitude she showed, 
 and the more she repudiated him. Redmond, 
 poor man, who had once succeeded to ParnelPs 
 prestige, and had led the Nationalist party for 
 a quarter of a century, was now a king without 
 a kingdom. He ruined himself on that day when 
 he dared to say to his fellow-countrymen, "Eng- 
 land has a right to your help, give it to her." 
 His convictions as to the origin of and responsi- 
 bility for the war never varied; his brother, 
 
THE IKISH ENIGMA 9 
 
 William Kedmond, M.P., died a noble death at 
 the head of an Irish battalion, and his son fought 
 on our side. 
 
 But the National Volunteers of 1914 did not 
 follow them ; they went over to the opposite camp 
 and became the "Irish Volunteers'' of Sinn Fein 
 who attempted the rebellion of 1916. 
 
 This metamorphosis did not take place in a 
 day. The Government was warned twenty 
 times, by the police, by questions in the House, 
 by the press, and by the magistrates, of the plot 
 which was being hatched and of the growth of 
 extremist views in Ireland. But the Govern- 
 ment maintained its usual deliberate lofty se- 
 renity; its only Irish policy was laissez-faire. 
 At the slightest sign of trouble it turned to the 
 Nationalist politicians, its allies, and the offi- 
 cial representatives of Ireland. They were most 
 optimistic. "Never fear, trust Ireland, give her 
 her head, do not irritate her, study her psychol- 
 ogy, sympathize with her, you will see all will 
 be well." They forgot that their constituents 
 were becoming less and less disposed to endorse 
 their promises. 
 
 Towards the end of 1915 a Belgian Kecruit- 
 ing Commission visited Dublin, in order to enroll 
 several categories of refugees. The Lord Mayor 
 gave them a kindly reception at the Mansion 
 
10 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 House, speeches of mutual admiration were ex- 
 changed, unimpeachable sentiments, for the bene- 
 fit of the public and the reporters. But in pri- 
 vate our friends received curious impressions of 
 their visit, and were able to see how the land 
 lay. It was quietly suggested to them that they 
 should be broadminded and not worry the refu- 
 gees too much, nor pull the chestnuts out of the 
 fire for the old ogress over the way. Then fol- 
 lowed whispered confidences about the said 
 ogress — Caillaux's methods, in short. I 
 
 According to the laws of hospitality, no pro- 
 tests nor expressions of surprise could be made ; 
 the puzzled visitors had happened upon a state 
 of mind of which they had had no warning. If 
 this were the attitude of the well-disposed Irish, 
 to whom Mr. Asquith at Westminster gave tes- 
 timonials for their civic virtue and their loyalty, 
 what must be the attitude of the masses of whom 
 Redmond was no longer the leader? 
 
 One of our friends had an inkling the follow- 
 ing day. Some English officers invited him to 
 go for a motor run into the beautiful Irish coun- 
 tryside. Before they had gone far they came 
 upon a strange spectacle — crowds of young fel- 
 lows, thousands of them wearing caps or soft 
 felts ; words of command ; distant rifle shots ; In- 
 dian files going along the hedgerows; patrols 
 
THE IRISH ENIGMA 11 
 
 signaling on the crests of the hills ; motor-cyclist 
 scouts. 
 
 "What's all this?" 
 
 "Oh, nothing — a Sinn Fein field-day." 
 
 "In broad daylight? So near Dublin? Is the 
 Government not alarmed?" 
 
 Silence on the part of the English officers, who 
 shrugged their shoulders and smiled uneasily. 
 
 "You had better ask Mr. Birrell or Lord Wim- 
 borne; they will give you reassuring explana- 
 tions." 
 
 The crisis reached its height in 1916. After 
 having enrolled 3,000,000 volunteers, Great Bri- 
 tain asked her sons to 'make a supreme effort — » 
 conscription. The more desperate the struggle, 
 the more inexorable became the need for it. 
 Every day her resolution was strengthened by 
 some fresh horror; delenda est Carthago. Par- 
 liament consented, the nation submitted, and 
 conscription was passed. 
 
 But the Government made a fatal mistake, 
 having forgotten everything, yet learnt nothing. 
 As though all the recent concessions to Ireland 
 had not failed in their aim and left her more in- 
 tractable and more hostile, this final favor was 
 granted her, she was exempted from conscrip- 
 tion. A little blackmail was enough to enable 
 John Redmond, alarmed at the disappearance of 
 his popularity, to veto that. 
 
12 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 Redmond and his friends added promises t( 
 their threats: 
 
 "Conscription will exasperate Ireland, you wil] 
 need more soldiers to enforce it than you wil] 
 ever raise from Irish conscripts. Try to under 
 stand Ireland, O clumsy Saxons! Show trusl 
 and sympathy, and you will get far more. Lei 
 us manage her, do not annoy her, we will speal 
 to her — she has a generous soul and will un 
 derstand." 
 
 Mr. Redmond did his best in all good faith 
 The Viceroy asked for a minimum of a thou 
 sand recruits a week, so that he might say thai 
 Ireland had done her duty as the sister island, 
 
 Redmond had reckoned without his host; no1 
 only had everybody quite made up their mind 
 to laugh at him behind his back, but Dr, 
 O'Dwyer, the notorious Bishop of Limerick, wenl 
 farther and forbade his flock to serve under the 
 hereditary enemy, recalling the fact that the 
 Vatican, the mouthpiece of divine wisdom, had 
 remained neutral during this worldly conflict, 
 In his Pastoral the Bishop grew bolder; he not 
 only abused England, but every member oi 
 our diabolical alliance; Serbia was a criminal 
 and we were every one of us tricksters. Pool 
 Serbia, writhing in agony, Monsignor O'Dwyei 
 thanks Heaven for having punished you. . . . 
 It will be as well to quote him fully : 
 
THE IRISH ENIGMA 13 
 
 "Then see the case of the small nationalities 
 on whose behalf many people have believed that 
 the war is being waged. 
 
 "What good has it done for them? What part 
 have they played in it except that of cat's-paws 
 for the larger nations that used them? Belgium 
 delayed the German advance for two weeks and 
 gave time to the English and French armies to 
 rally. For her pains she has been conquered and' 
 ruined. Servia began the war by an atrocious 
 crime, and as reparation for it might weaken 
 Russia's aims in the Balkans she was encouraged 
 to resist. She, too, has played her temporary 
 role and has followed in the wake of Belgium. 
 Montenegro is the next to go ; and it would seem 
 that the great belligerent nations look to them- 
 selves only, and use their weaker neighbors for 
 their own purposes. 
 
 "This war is not waged by any of the Great 
 Powers as a quixotic enterprise for lofty ideals. 
 'Small nationalities' and other such sentimen- 
 tal pretexts are good enough for platform ad- 
 dresses to an imaginative but uninformed peo- 
 ple, but they do not reveal the true inwardness 
 of this war. 
 
 "All the belligerents have had practical and 
 substantial aims in view. France wants her 
 lost provinces of Alsace and Lorraine; Russia 
 wants Constantinople; England wants the un- 
 disputed supremacy of the sea and riddance from 
 German commercial rivalry ; Austria wants domi- 
 nation in the Balkans and an outlet in the; 
 iEgean; Italy wants Trieste and what is called 
 Italia Irredenta; Germany wants a colonial em- 
 
14 IKELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 pire and a powerful navy ; and all these Power* 
 have formed alliances and laid their plans mani 
 a day, simply for the realization of their re 
 spective purposes. 
 
 "They planned and schemed solely for the sak< 
 of power and material gain. All the talk abou 
 righteousness is simply the cloak for ambition 
 and the worst of it is that some of the belli 
 gerents have gone on repeating the profession o 
 their disinterestedness until they have come t< 
 believe it themselves. 
 
 "Truth, and right, and justice have had verj 
 little to say to this war, which is an outbreak o: 
 materialism and irreligion. The peoples did no 
 want this war ; there is no hatred of one anothei 
 amongst them ; but the governing cliques in eacl 
 country have led or driven them like sheep t( 
 the slaughter. God has been ignored; His lav 
 has been put aside; Christianity is not allowec 
 to govern the relations of nations. And nov 
 the retribution is on them all, the fair dream* 
 of victory and expanded empire and increased 
 wealth and prosperity with which they set om 
 have vanished long ago, and there is not a Gov 
 ernment amongst them but is trembling for the 
 day when it shall have to answer for its stew 
 ardship to its own people." 
 
 This is the stuff which was preached from Iris! 
 pulpits during the battle of Verdun. Such i 
 document might well be considered seditious 
 and His Majesty's Government might have re 
 called the Bishop to his senses. But on this 
 
THE IRISH ENIGMA 15 
 
 point Ireland has always taken a firm stand. 
 "If you touch our holy prelates we will have civil 
 war instantly." As usual the Government gave 
 in, in order to afford no ground for accusations 
 of tyranny nor occasions for calumny. So suc- 
 cessful was this move that on April 7th, 1916, 
 Mr. Sheehy Skeffington, an Irishman, whose evi- 
 dence is valuable, wrote, "Sinn Fein (the army 
 in the pay of the Wilhelmstrasse) is at present 
 enrolling more than a thousand volunteers a 
 week — the exact figure which Lord Wimborne 
 asked for, for the Imperial Army." 
 
 In 1916 I traveled from London to Paris with 
 a young Australian lieutenant, who had just lost 
 an arm near Albert, and had spent a month of 
 convalescence with an uncle, a farmer in Ire- 
 land. He told me that his host had welcomed 
 him most kindly and admired him, but had al- 
 ways seemed to be keeping something back. At 
 last, when he said good-by to him and sent af- 
 fectionate messages to his parents in Melbourne, 
 he unburdened himself. "You are a fine boy, I 
 like you, but take that off." That was the khaki 
 tunic, the "badge of slavery." Since then I have 
 met others who have told me of similar efforts 
 at "conversion." 
 
 We are told of persecutions in Ireland, of hu- 
 miliations, of slavery. Judge for yourself. 
 The Englishman has a broad back. 
 
16 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 That is why English widows — there are legions 
 of them to-day — smile bitterly when they think 
 of the young men in the distressful island, and 
 why the English Tommies frown when you men- 
 tion the "warm-hearted Celts." You can under- 
 stand the amazement of the American sailors 
 who landed at Queenstown, their base, in 1917, 
 primed Yv T ith the Anglophobe legends of the 
 Fenians of their own country, and found the 
 place thronged with lusty sneering young men. 
 You can understand above all that Ulster, threat- 
 ened with union with these people, and obliged 
 to submit to them, does not see any prospect of 
 a happy future. This last fatal weakness of the 
 Asquith Cabinet soon produced the usual con- 
 sequences: shouts of triumph from the leagues, 
 glorying in a victory won as they thought by in- 
 timidation, followed by immensely increased in- 
 fluence. It was only logical. Germany had the 
 sense to make the most of it. When she thought 
 the moment had come for direct intervention, 
 her instrument properly adjusted, the "Irish 
 Volunteers" sufficiently numerous and organ- 
 ized, she took them seriously and gave them a 
 place of honor in her strategy. 
 
 Just at that time, in the spring of 1916, her 
 plans were vast; formidable blows were to be 
 directed against Verdun; a bold sortie was in- 
 tended to pierce Jellicoe's line; finally a well- 
 
THE IRISH ENIGMA 17 
 
 organized insurrection in Ireland, shorn of 
 troops — with small chance of ultimate success 
 no doubt, but sufficient at all events to oblige 
 England to immobilize there a strong force in- 
 stead of sending it to the help of Verdun. Sad 
 to say, Ireland consented to play this part. 
 
 You all know what happened: the plan was 
 checkmated and put down. Unfortunately, 
 though the Irish patriots burned their fingers, 
 the German scheme succeeded up to a point ; in 
 a few days 50,000 men had to be sent to Dublin, 
 and to reinforce the permanent garrisons 
 throughout the island. They are still there, to 
 the joy of our enemies and to our detriment. 
 
 If the rebellion of 1916 were the chief feature 
 in our picture of Ireland during the Great War, 
 we could now stop. But to do so would be to 
 deprive ourselves of the most instructive lessons 
 of the episode, of those which alone can throw 
 a little light upon the tangled and paradoxical 
 history of "the distressful country." 
 
 I may be reproached for having been unjust 
 in speaking thus of "Ireland" as a whole with- 
 out qualifications. I have paid to Ulster the 
 homage due to her, and also to those National- 
 ist Volunteers who followed the Eedmonds and 
 came to die for us. But during the first year of 
 the war even the mass of the population was not 
 open too much to criticism. Its attitude was in- 
 
18 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 different, but not yet hostile. Suspicious acts or 
 words were at most the work of agitators and 
 of some of the leagues, not enough to accuse 
 "Ireland" of them. 
 
 What is more serious is that as time went on, 
 the more the world was horrified by German 
 crimes, the more that Irish minority which was 
 ready to strike us in the back became the ma- 
 jority. The fatal change has been constant, con- 
 tinuous, irresistible. We shall soon see what 
 excuses were made for her. 
 
 When the insurrection broke out in April, 
 1916, most Irishmen were much surprised at it, 
 and even went so far as to deplore it. Two 
 months later, they were full of admiration and 
 indulgence for the unfortunate rebels, and from 
 that moment the Sinn Fein party recruits more 
 men than it can absorb, proclaims its schemes 
 without the smallest concealment, gets popular 
 support everywhere, and in the by-elections wins 
 all the seats of the orthodox Nationalist mem- 
 bers — so much so that several of the latter be- 
 come turncoats and incline towards those who 
 have the upper hand. This became so pro- 
 nounced that in 1917 and in 1918 Mr. Lloyd 
 George's Cabinet feared fresh risings, and it was 
 only due to their vigilance, firmness, and pre- 
 cautions that we were spared them. 
 
 In spite of all, we must have no illusions on 
 
THE IRISH ENIGMA 19 
 
 the matter; the situation is still alarming, Sinn 
 Fein is making headway. Germany has too good 
 a trump card not to try to play it again. The 
 deserted shore of the west coast affords ample 
 shelter for submarines, and who knows when the 
 next explosion will startle us? 
 
 As the European drama became more alarm- 
 ing, and the barbarian wallowed in the blood 
 of his mutilated victim, and the British Empire, 
 body and soul, and particularly soul, became in- 
 dispensable to the cause of Right, the more mis- 
 guided and irrational did Ireland become. 
 
 Armenia had been exterminated by a slow and 
 hideous martyrdom. Serbia had paid the pen- 
 alty of her heroism, stabbed in the back. Who 
 would not pity them? The horrors of the prison 
 camps became gradually known, and there were 
 Irishmen among the prisoners in Germany. As- 
 to Belgium — if the great Cardinal's evidence 
 were not sufficient, we now have the revelations 
 of Lord Bryce's Commission. Lord Bryce is one 
 of Ireland's staunchest friends, the first Secre- 
 tary under the new Liberal Government, and, 
 so far as I know, Ireland has never doubted Lord 
 Bryce. 
 
 All the Colonies, where Irishmen are so nu- 
 merous and powerful, understood their duty and 
 adopted our cause of their own free will. Eng- 
 land allows her Dominions as much freedom as 
 
20 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 an English mother does her daughters. Were 
 they likely to have yielded to a passing passion, 
 and acted unreasonably? Events did not make 
 them change their mind ; far from it. 
 
 What of the United States— "New Ireland," 
 whence the so-called martyred island was wont 
 to draw all the money and moral support for 
 her conspiracies? The United States took three 
 years to take up the cudgels, smothering their 
 wrath, and giving credence to the lies of the 
 Boche, whether obvious or subtle ones. In the 
 end they were obliged to submit to reality, and 
 it appears that the Irish-Americans themselves 
 were on our side. Two years have passed since 
 the dramatic conversion of the most impartial 
 of neutral democracies. Has Ireland followed 
 the example? Not at all. Is she likely to do 
 so? There is no sign of it; she is thinking of 
 other matters. 
 
 The Irish are by way of being a warm-hearted 
 people, sentimental, champions of the ideal as 
 against "the abject materialism of the Saxons." 
 Why at every fresh crime on the part of Ger- 
 many did Ireland draw a little nearer to her? 
 
 A magic word reached her, the cry of a Ba- 
 varian poet, Lissauer's Hymn of Hate, which is 
 her religion too, an anathema bequeathed to her 
 by her ancestors, and which the last Irishman 
 
THE IKISH ENIGMA 21 
 
 will shout to his dying day. "Wir hassen dich, 
 England!" 
 
 Then for the first time during the war Ire- 
 land was roused. She remembered her old prov- 
 erb, "England's difficulty, Ireland's opportu- 
 nity." She forgot all the rest — the stains on 
 the hands which were held out to her, the blood 
 of women and the scattered brains of children, 
 orgies followed by massacres. Disgust was swal- 
 lowed up in hatred. In a world united by the 
 holy war this hatred could find but one ally, Ger- 
 many, and did not even blush at this alliance. 
 
 You will not forget this, will you, when you 
 are told — as you will be — that Ulster alone is to 
 blame, by refusing to join hands with Eoman 
 Catholic Ireland? You would do w r ell to re- 
 member that Ulster has good reasons. 
 
 Are not these aberrations very extraordinary? 
 It remains to be seen how matters came to this 
 pass. The Irishman has an inexhaustible bat- 
 tery of excuses; to enumerate them all would 
 need volumes. We shall endeavor to collate the 
 better known, to ascertain the respective share 
 of facts and of psychology, and to get them into 
 some better order than Hibernians can manage 
 to do in their flow of turgid eloquence. There 
 are all manner of excuses, historical, religious, 
 economic, and sentimental, and all have the same 
 conclusion. Ireland is a "little bit of heaven," 
 
22 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 as the popular song says, peopled with angels, 
 of course, whose downfall has been planned by 
 the Powers of Hell. 
 
 The most serious aspects, so far as we are 
 concerned, are the contemporary ones, for Ire- 
 land, feeling in spite of her subterfuges that she 
 was on the horns of a disagreeable dilemma, has 
 at last defied all common sense and taken her 
 stand against us, just as Lenin and Trotzky have 
 done; she has tried to deny the purity of our 
 intentions and our sincerity when war broke out. 
 It is time, so it seems to me, to put a stop to it, 
 and speak frankly to her. Father O' Flanagan 
 said in January, 1916 : "Ireland should become 
 an independent country in alliance with Ger- 
 many." 
 
 She wanted to be summoned to the Peace Con- 
 ference as a sovereign nation, and who knows? 
 England may be broad-minded enough to make 
 some such concession. 
 
 The time has come to know on which side she 
 is going to stand, and, before receiving her com- 
 plaints or judging of her grievances, to have at 
 least some idea what foundation there is for 
 them. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 
 
 When we say "that is ancient history" we 
 mean that a thing has lost much of its impor- 
 tance. In Ireland you mean the opposite. If 
 you drive along a pretty valley in one of those 
 comic vehicles where you sit sideways with your 
 feet hanging over the wheels, as if you were rid- 
 ing a Spanish mule, and begin to talk to the jar- 
 vey: "Whose land is that?" "That, your Honor, 
 belongs to the Macdiarniids." You will be much 
 astonished when you spend the evening with the 
 village priest to learn that the aforesaid Mac- 
 diarmids had disappeared from the neighbor- 
 hood three hundred and Mtj years previously, 
 and that the land belongs to Lord So-and-so. 
 
 When the English try to make friends and say : 
 "We confess all our mistakes, and will forget 
 all yours. We will help you, and what fine re- 
 sults we shall have when we work together!" 
 it is the same thing. The Irishman does not un- 
 derstand. He lives in another age, and forgets 
 nothing. Before any reconciliation he wants 
 
 23 
 
24 IKELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 reparation, and it would not be so exorbitant if 
 he did not insist on reparation for damage done 
 in 1615 or 1649. You will allow that the claim 
 takes some swallowing. 
 
 It is true that we insisted that Germany 
 should restore Belgium before we made peace 
 with her. But if Europe had to liquidate to- 
 morrow all its horrors of the past, from Charles 
 the Bold to the Duke of Alva ; from the Sicilian 
 Vespers to the Palatinate — great heavens ! when 
 would peace be signed. Koughly speaking, that 
 is what Ireland is asking. If you think that I 
 am exaggerating, open an American newspaper 
 of January, 1918. In it you will find an account 
 of some Irish committee offering a statuette of 
 Eobert Emmet to President Wilson; Emmet 
 was an unfortunate rebel, implicated in the as- 
 sassination of the Lord Chief Justice of Ireland 
 and executed in 1803. In Ireland they are al- 
 ways talking of the past, and every year they 
 celebrate in all seriousness the anniversary of 
 a defeat of the Danes at Clontarf in 1014. 
 
 "If you only knew how we had suffered!" 
 Irishmen are for ever saying. "We? You mean 
 your great-great-grandfathers, for you seem to 
 me to be fairly flourishing. But still if you are 
 so anxious to do so, let us stir the ashes." 
 • ••••• 
 
 In Ireland in the Middle Ages, there were, 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 25 
 
 besides the innumerable monks, who gave it the 
 title of "Island of Saints," swarms of bards, 
 some of them domestic adherents of some clan 
 or chief; others who wandered about the coun- 
 try with the right of asking for food and shelter 
 wherever they pleased, descended from a druidi- 
 cal hierarchy, and enjoying privileges conse- 
 crated by custom. They were so numerous that 
 they formed one-third of all the free men; they 
 were sometimes amusing, but idle and noisy, 
 poets more or less, but burdensome parasites 
 above all. Those whose hospitality or patience 
 was not up to their standard were given cause 
 to repent; these rustic minstrels did not spare 
 them. 
 
 One of the kings wanted to be rid of them and 
 banish them. Saint Columba took up their 
 cause, and contrived to turn them into school- 
 masters, giving instruction gratis to all, which 
 evidently turned the country into a nursery of 
 scholars. This era produced the most ancient 
 Western epic, "Hibernicus Exul," in honor of 
 Charles the Great, philosophers like Scotus 
 Erigena, and sent to Gaul and Germany hordes 
 of monks before the days of St. Boniface. 
 
 On the other hand, these bards, transformed 
 into teachers, poets, and chroniclers, had a dis- 
 astrous influence on their country. They kept 
 up the spirit of o?.d times, and all the vices of 
 
26 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 their foundation; if they sang of saints and he- 
 roes, it was to travesty them by over-emphasis, 
 flattery, fabulous exaggeration. Divided into 
 "suide," who were compilers of pedigrees and 
 genealogical tables, and "filid" minstrels, excit- 
 ing the vanity and flattering the vices of their 
 patrons, all achieved the same result — that of 
 perpetuating the pride of the chieftains and clan 
 rivalry. 
 
 Now, clan spirit is one form of that feudalism 
 which our great nations had to outgrow before 
 they could arrive at their modern social and 
 political order; Ireland, to her misfortune, could 
 not do it in the specified time. At the time 
 when great national unities were being consoli- 
 dated, she who could have unified so easily, 
 dallied too long with the petty quarrels of 
 princelings and tribes. She was not very far 
 behind us, but she has never been able to make 
 up lost time. 
 
 The bards whose business it was to write the 
 national chronicle outbid one another in stories 
 of the clans. The chroniclers who had to draw 
 from this source found nothing but fables and 
 rubbish. In spite of the astonishing number 
 of documents, few histories have been more ob- 
 scure or misleading. 
 
 Our jarvey was satisfied with going back three 
 or four centuries, but the "suide" have gone 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 27 
 
 one better. Their Irish legend takes race and 
 dynasty back to Noah, no less, with disconcert- 
 ing accuracy! Neither the maze of prehistoric 
 times nor flights of fancy have any terrors for 
 Celts! 
 
 Here is another example less excusable be- 
 cause more recent, and even contemporary with 
 the chroniclers. In the ninth century Norwe- 
 gian pirates came to ravage the shores of Ire- 
 land, and, needless to say, their methods were 
 not gentle. Thereupon there arose the legend 
 of a personage in whom every cruelty was in- 
 carnate : Turgesius the Viking. An Irish manu- 
 script overwhelms him with detail, then the 
 story is taken up and enlivened by Giraldus 
 Cambrensis and the monk Jocelyn; this is the 
 first specimen of those national complaints, in 
 which Ireland figures perpetually as the perse- 
 cuted victim, and of which the rest of her his- 
 tory is simply another edition. 
 
 Now, no research has ever been able to prove 
 that Turgesius ever existed! There is no trace 
 of him in any other chronicle nor in Scandi- 
 navian Sagas. But, on the other hand, there 
 was at that time in Ireland, beside the usual 
 endemic war of clans, never very humane, one 
 Fedlimid, King of Munster and Bishop of 
 Cashel, who, in order to become supreme king 
 over the whole island, put it to fire and sword, 
 
28 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 devastating and pillaging with extreme feroc- 
 ity. At last it was realized that the best part 
 of the atrocities ascribed to the mythical invader 
 Turgesins bore a remarkable resemblance to 
 those of Fedlimid, whose praises were still be- 
 ing snng by his bards and chroniclers. This is 
 the first of the "persecutions" of Ireland — a sorry 
 precedent for the veracity of narratives to come ! 
 • ••••• 
 
 The Middle Ages pass, and gradually we ap- 
 proach the fatal day when the Irish lose their 
 independence for good and all — if independence 
 means killing one another with great persever- 
 ance! 
 
 Up to 1150 the Norman kings who had been 
 in Great Britain for nearly a century had not 
 yet cast longing eyes upon Ireland. 
 
 In 1155 Pope Adrian, by his bull "Laudabili- 
 ter," swept away their scruples. 
 
 "There is no doubt that Ireland and all the 
 islands which have known the light of Christ, 
 the Sun of justice, and have received the teach- 
 ings of the Christian faith, belong legitimately 
 to St. Peter and to the Holy Roman Church. 
 Knowing that you will assist by your power the 
 welfare of religion and the Church, we grant 
 you the government, reserving all our ecclesias- 
 tical rights, and on condition that you pay to 
 St. Peter for each hearth one penny a year." 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 29 
 
 According to the law of that day, the title is 
 in order, and for good Irish Catholics it is a 
 bitter commentary on the past which they love 
 so w^ell. King Henry, who had much to do in 
 France, did no more than record the grant. 
 
 In 1156, a somewhat unpleasant fellow — per- 
 haps Irish historians give him that character 
 because he is responsible for all that follows — 
 Dermot MacMurrough, banished and deposed 
 from his kingdom of Leinster, went off to Aqui- 
 taine to ask help from Henry II, the first of the 
 Plantagenets. According to the usages of those 
 days, there was nothing very shocking in that. 
 The king, still busy elsewhere, told him to make 
 some arrangement with one of his barons, Rich- 
 ard de Clare, Earl Strongbow, and authorized 
 him to levy troops. 
 
 An understanding was arrived at, some ad- 
 vance-guards were dispatched, and Strongbow 
 disembarked at Waterford. 
 
 "Earl Strongbow," the Annals of Lough Ce' 
 tell us, "came to Erin with Dermot MacMur- 
 rough to avenge his expulsion by Roderick son 
 of Turlough O'Connor. Dermot gave him his 
 own daughter and part of his patrimony, and 
 since then the Saxon foreigners have always re- 
 mained in Erin." 
 
 Finis Hiberniae! Irreparable subjection. 
 Strongbow's progress was rapid, and the king 
 
30 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 soon saw that it was time to put in an appear- 
 ance in person unless he wished to see his lieu- 
 tenant supplanting him. He therefore duly ar- 
 rived in Ireland in 1172, Alexander III having 
 confirmed Adrian IV's Bull by several letters. 1 
 Roger Hoveden's chronicle describes the ar- 
 rival : 
 
 "All the Archbishops, Bishops, Abbots of all 
 Ireland came to the King of England at Water- 
 ford, and received him for King and Lord of 
 Ireland; swearing fealty to him and his heirs, 
 and the power of reigning over them for ever ; 
 and then they gave him their instruments — and 
 after the example set them by the clergy, the 
 aforesaid Kings and Princes of Ireland (namely 
 the Kings of Cork, Limerick, Ossory, Meath, and 
 Reginald of Waterford) who had been sum- 
 moned by King Henry's command to appear in 
 his presence and almost all the nobles of Ire- 
 land (except the King of Connaught) did in 
 like manner receive Henry, King of England, for 
 Lord and King of Ireland, and they became his 
 men and swore fealty to him and his heirs 
 against all men." 
 
 Roderick O'Connor, King of Connaught, did 
 likewise in 1175. 
 
 In 1185 Henry II sent his youngest son John 
 of ignoble memory as viceroy, and Pope Urban 
 
 1 These letters are still preserved in the Black Book of the 
 Exchequer. 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 31 
 
 III — the Pope again ! — sent to this villain whom 
 he was afterwards to excommunicate a crown 
 of peacock's feathers and letters of recognition. 
 
 Thus was accomplished the conquest, brutal 
 and unjustifiable according to the Irish, of one 
 of the nations which was most faithful to the 
 Pope. Yet we see that it was made at the re- 
 quest of a King of Ireland, under the aegis of 
 three successive Pontiffs, and with the acclama- 
 tions of the national clergy whose absolute pow- 
 ers of direction both in politics and in religion 
 Ireland has never questioned. It is as well to 
 insist upon these clear and definite statements 
 made before the traditional hostility of the two 
 races had been formed, with its interminable in- 
 terplay of abuses and rebellion, rebellion and 
 repression. Ireland will often have the right 
 to our indignation and to our pity, but not when 
 she forgets that she herself sent for the abhorred 
 "Saxons" and put herself completely in their 
 power. 
 
 As she confused the Saxons with the Norman 
 barons who were her actual masters, it has been 
 suggested that she was ignorant of feudal law 
 and did not know for what she was letting her- 
 self in. It is quite possible, but is it probable? 
 Certainly not, as regards those high ecclesias- 
 tical dignitaries, the only learned men of the 
 time, who came to render "homage" and who 
 
32 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 must have known its significance. The right is 
 there, all the same ; and it must be admitted that 
 in those days few suzerainties owed their origin 
 to more formal titles or more explicit oaths. 
 
 When Henry had received homage, he pro- 
 ceeded to distribute the lands to his great vas- 
 sals as was the custom in France, Normandy, 
 Great Britain, and the whole feudal world 
 (hence nowadays in Irish titles the name "Fitz" 
 occurs so frequently, which shows descent from 
 royal or princely bastards). The natives, clans, 
 and chieftains had not foreseen this. They 
 could do nothing but give up the best places and 
 seek refuge in the mountains. This was their 
 first trouble and it was a very real one. 
 
 On their side the newcomers soon had troubles 
 of their own, scarcely less serious; representa- 
 tives of a more advanced civilization and accus- 
 tomed to more advanced juridical ideas, they saw 
 with amazement that the Celts by no means ap- 
 preciated these presumed advantages, refused to 
 associate with them and preferred to live aloof 
 under the laws of their antiquated but national 
 custom. Similar differences soon spread to the 
 clergy of the two races, and the Norman abbeys 
 excluded Irishmen for a long time. 
 
 Polygamy, marriage of brother and sister, 
 slavery of hostages, allowed by druidical cus- 
 tom, had never been entirely suppressed by the 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 33 
 
 efforts of the Christian missionaries. Period- 
 ically, whenever the power of the Church was 
 shaken by some invasion or civil war, the Celts 
 relapsed into their ancient vices, and a new evan- 
 gelization was needed to correct them. When 
 one remembers that in the clans murder, except 
 in the five royal lines, was not punished by death, 
 but could be compounded for; when we see how 
 mercilessly we endeavor to stamp out in our colo- 
 nies everything which conflicts with our funda- 
 mental morality (will they ever dare to ask us 
 to tolerate human sacrifice or incestuous prac- 
 tices in the name of respect for nationality?) — 
 we can understand better the haughty bearing 
 of the Anglo-Norman nobles towards the incor- 
 rigible semi-barbarians. 
 
 This contempt has been perpetuated and not 
 without reason ; with all due respect to the Irish, 
 who are charming people, there has been ever 
 since then a difference of several degrees of 
 civilization between the two races, the dwellers 
 on the banks of the Thames and the Shannon. 
 Possibly the Celt has suffered more from this 
 than from other more concrete grievances; he 
 has a proud, sensitive spirit, and the reproach 
 of moral inferiority exasperates him very nat- 
 urally. 
 
 Unfortunately he has never grasped the fact 
 
34 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 that it is not enough to deny, and he has wasted 
 time — nay, centuries — in eloquence and vitupera- 
 tion. Nowadays even, in the twentieth cen- 
 tury, the supreme ambition of his most modern 
 interpreters, the Sinn Fein society, is to revert 
 to the costume, Gaelic tongue, and national spirit 
 of the twelfth century! for they claim that in 
 those days they formed a nation. 
 
 "Do you, then, wish to go back to your in- 
 fancy?" the English protest. 
 
 "Why not? Your tutelage has been nothing 
 but rottenness and corruption; we will make a 
 clean sweep of everything you have taught us." 
 
 Is this only the folly of visionaries? Not so. 
 This program is hailed with acclamation by 
 bishops, by a press, and by a university. No 
 wonder John Bull shrugs his shoulders. 
 
 Let us now recapitulate three of the first les- 
 sons which the past has taught us : 
 
 The legality of the Anglo-Saxon sovereignty; 
 the moral resistance of the Celts to the progress 
 of law and social life; the spoliation of native 
 property (but not forgetting that the latter be- 
 longed not to the individual, but to the clan; 
 that 700 years of prescriptive right has greatly 
 weakened the claim; and that the evictions did 
 not go beyond the fertile valleys of two or three 
 counties). 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 35 
 
 T will spare you the story of the Irish muddle 
 until the reign of Henry VIII. The Anglo-Nor- 
 mans, so richly dowered by their king, did not 
 have an easy time, warring without respite as 
 much among themselves as against the chieftains. 
 The latter continued to exterminate one another 
 with indefatigable perseverance. The power of 
 the Crown was never anything but a myth, for 
 if the viceroys issued vexatious edicts, no one 
 paid the smallest attention to them, and they 
 remained a dead letter and were not enforced. 
 For instance, an edict forbidding the wearing 
 of a mustache applied to English subjects, who 
 ignored it as much as the Irish. It is therefore 
 useless to catalogue that under the heading of 
 "Saxon oppression." 
 
 When the dynastic quarrels of York and Lan- 
 caster were dyeing England with blood and tak- 
 ing a heavy toll of the old nobility, the Irish 
 barons joined in the fray, lost a good many of 
 their number and thus weakened their position 
 in Ireland. Consequently they were gradually 
 forced back to the east and were confined within 
 a narrow strip round Dublin called the Pale. 
 Elsewhere the clans had recovered a free hand. 
 
 One of Henry VIII's first cares, in order to 
 bolster up this flagging authority, and at the 
 same time to score another point in his contest 
 against Rome, was to take the title of "King of 
 
36 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 Ireland." He was not satisfied with holding 
 the island by papal delegation as had been done 
 since Henry II. The move succeeded; the no- 
 bles of Ireland, and not only those of English 
 origin, rallied round him. Henry, who could 
 be very tactful and pleasant when it suited him, 
 received at his court more than one chieftain 
 with a good Celtic name. The legal point more- 
 over was soon to be definitely decided by Mary 
 Tudor; Pope Paul IV granted her for good his 
 so-called sovereignty over the Island of Saints. 
 
 Henry VIII was less successful with his re- 
 ligious revolution. Ireland was certainly the 
 promised land of prebends and monasteries, for 
 Saint Patrick's foundations had been most pro- 
 lific. The dioceses were not limited as in 
 France by ancient Roman boundaries; bishops, 
 according to legends of the primitive Church, 
 were as numerous as priests. Probably they did 
 not exaggerate; nowadays for 3,000,000 Roman 
 Catholics there are four archbishops, twenty- 
 three bishops, and three suffragans. The Bishop 
 of Ross has twenty-eight priests under his juris- 
 diction, Killala thirty-nine, Achonry fifty-one, 
 etc. The average is seventy priests per diocese. 
 In Belgium, with double the population, one 
 archbishop and five bishops suffice. 
 
 In 1515 the organization was almost exclu- 
 sively monastic ; the Augustine canons alone had 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 37 
 
 no less than three hundred houses, the Cister- 
 cians ran them close, the mendicant friars of 
 every order were legion, and the minor abuses 
 from which the Church was to suffer so much 
 were naturally the same in Ireland as in Eng- 
 land. The clergy, so eminent in the era of Pat- 
 rick, Brendan, Bridget, and Columba, had lost 
 their fine character. Scandalous anecdotes 
 hailed from Dublin as well as from the English 
 abbeys, and Henry's courtiers knew how to make 
 the most of them; in 1549 the Archbishop of 
 Dublin had to pawn his crozier, and it took 
 eighty years to redeem it. 
 
 By the measure which extended his power the 
 king had no difficulty in getting possession of 
 the Church's estates; the new owners seized 
 upon them greedily without scruple, as else- 
 where; and the "native" nobility were not be- 
 hindhand. There was no lack of Celtic chiefs 
 among those who carried out the confiscations. 
 Bat the colonized region where such things were 
 possible was limited in area, and in the remain- 
 ing three-quarters of the island, that is, in the 
 more distant countries, the Church kept its power. 
 Its immense personnel did not assist the healthi- 
 ness of the body, whose activities were at one 
 time beneficent, but now were swamped by an 
 excessive number of parasites. Yet this solid 
 
38 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 mass encompassed the mystical Celts so surely 
 that they could not escape from it. 
 
 The Protestant propaganda was always fee- 
 ble in Ireland and never had much hold in the 
 country districts. Only the court party or the 
 English colonists in the garrisons or adminis- 
 trative posts conformed to it; the natives did 
 not come in contact with it. As in other coun- 
 tries which resisted the early enthusiasm of re- 
 form, the psychological moment, once it had 
 passed, did not return; where the Church was 
 not reformed by schism she took herself in hand 
 and reformed herself. Ireland is still the most 
 Catholic country in the world. 
 
 On the whole the English Reformation did 
 not treat her with much severity. Some violence 
 in an age of brutality was to be expected, but 
 there was no general persecution, and beyond 
 the Pale and the large towns the Celts were not 
 interfered with in their beliefs. Queen Eliza- 
 beth even enjoined toleration and clemency upon 
 Essex. We should give her due credit for this 
 when we remember the affronts inflicted upon 
 her woman's feelings, her queenly pride, her 
 filial memories and religious prejudices, the 
 Pope's insult to the young sovereign, the at- 
 tempts upon her life, the horrors of Saint Bar- 
 tholomew's Day and the Spanish Inquisition, 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 39 
 
 above all the obsession of Spain, at once her 
 worst political and religious enemy. 
 
 Ireland gave Elizabeth a good deal of anxiety 
 in other ways. She meant at first to use firm- 
 ness in her administration only in the districts 
 which she could reach, taking care to avoid any 
 attack upon the mysterious beyond, the haunts 
 of intractable and un-get-at-able chieftains. But 
 fate forced her hand. During her reign an- 
 archy in Ireland reached its height, civil war 
 raged, as did clan warfare, vendettas among the 
 English nobility, massacres, unbridled atrocities. 
 Elizabeth could not remedy matters except piece- 
 meal, and the appalling difficulties would have 
 daunted a less stout heart. If her lieutenants 
 put down a rising in the south, others broke out 
 in the north and west, and everywhere, a tan- 
 gle of intrigue whicli would have made most peo- 
 ple lose their heads, and would have discouraged 
 the most determined. Everything had to be be- 
 gun again. She stood firm. At the end of her 
 long reign her law had penetrated to every cor- 
 ner of the island, all the rebels had been pun- 
 ished, every coalition with the foreigner de- 
 feated; she alone had really accomplished this 
 conquest, which her ancestors and her father had 
 only embarked upon and never completed. 
 
 But from this moment the great resistance be- 
 came conscious and definite, thanks to a fresh 
 
40 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 factor which was to dominate antagonism in the 
 future : that is, the identity of the two races with 
 the two opposing religions. Ireland had a fresh 
 grievance; after having lost her land she saw 
 her religious hierarchy scorned and overthrown. 
 When it was merely a question of vague agra- 
 rian or national troubles, there was nobody in 
 that half-civilized lay world to denounce or plead 
 the cause. But on the other hand, as soon as the 
 Church was affected, she who alone was expert 
 in those arts could provide any number of spokes- 
 men; they were legion, and ever since then the 
 cause of political independence has been con- 
 fused with that of the traditional Faith. It 
 meant fair warfare and made hostility almost 
 incurable. 
 
 This would not have signified so much, for 
 after all supremacy once lost may be restored, 
 despised institutions may by the changing for- 
 tune of royal or popular favor recover their pres- 
 tige, but there is worse than this. During this 
 century the distinct temperaments of the two 
 races became crystallized and antagonistic. Un- 
 til then the two peoples had points in common, 
 or rather vices in common, in government and 
 political morality. In the sixteenth century 
 they were divorced. Since then the English have 
 made more and more use of their great panacea, 
 compromise, with astonishing success and with 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 41 
 
 results which neither Latin logic, nor German 
 theory, nor the sentimental insistence of the 
 Celts can understand. It has become their sec- 
 ond nature, the standard of their empire. Have 
 they not even managed, incredible though it ap- 
 pears, to make a compromise with their State 
 religion? Macaulay has exposed it in too mas- 
 terly a fashion for it to be necessary for me to 
 recapitulate it. For the last three centuries 
 they have been satisfied with anomalies and half- 
 measures, borrowing from Rome and Calvin, try- 
 ing to avoid the extreme of both, fearful of af- 
 fronting either party, starting from a constitu- 
 tion conceived by Archbishop Cranmer, of whom 
 none now dare speak well. Compromise is less 
 happy in theology than in politics or in diplo- 
 macy, but it suits the English admirably. 
 
 The Irish will never be resigned to it; con- 
 cessions are hateful to them. Have they not con- 
 fused the means with the end? The end of their 
 rebellion against Anglican compromise is the 
 safety of their Faith. It does not follow that 
 compromise in other spheres is necessarily bad; 
 it is the secret of political wisdom as of com- 
 mercial stability. The Irish will have none of 
 it, and have thereby lost all its advantages. 
 Never having progressed as have the English, 
 they blame the latter; have they ever tried to 
 imitate them? 
 
42 IKELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 The two enemies were now face to face, the 
 glove had been thrown down, the terms of the 
 challenge had been clearly announced. Ireland 
 was going to fight for her soil and for her re- 
 ligion. A little later she will become conscious 
 of her nationality, and we shall have a third ele- 
 ment, politics. 
 
 But now England also, besides her authentic 
 title-deeds, had a new grievance, in order to jus- 
 tify her severity. Historians are practically 
 unanimous in agreeing that the war against 
 Philip II and foreign politics absorbed Elizabeth 
 and her people far more than the religious quar- 
 rel. For the first time the country felt its in- 
 tegrity threatened. Mary Tudor had given it a 
 foretaste of the reprisals it would have to face ; 
 the queen's youth aroused all its chivalrous 
 wrath. The horizon clouded quickly; it was a 
 matter of life or death — the enemy was at the 
 gates, cruising outside Plymouth. The empire 
 whose destiny was to be so brilliant was only 
 saved from the terrible Armada by its lucky star. 
 
 It was at this fatal crisis that Ireland sowed 
 in the heart of England the germ of constant 
 and well-deserved mistrust. On several occa- 
 sions the enemy disembarked on the island which 
 is Great Britain's bastion, and some of the Irish 
 • — I will not say "Ireland," so that I may not be 
 accused of making unjust generalizations, yet 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 43 
 
 are there many Irish who do not approve of these 
 things? — some of the Irish held out a friendly 
 hand and allied themselves with the detested 
 Spaniards. 
 
 That is not altogether ancient history, for it 
 has repeated itself often since then. When 
 statesmen in London consider Irish claims and 
 problems, can they ever forget those memories 
 or ignore the dangers? Would they not be mad 
 not to take them info account? Those who im- 
 prudently forget their history and neglect pre- 
 cautions as was done in 1916 have had cause to 
 repent. 
 
 The most serious of these appeals for help 
 from the enemy took place in 1601, shortly be- 
 fore the death of Elizabeth, and the danger which 
 threatened from the two great Ulster rebels, 
 O'Neill and O'Donnell, was very real. Mount- 
 joy, the Queen's skillful lieutenant, only over- 
 came it by a very drastic measure: he began to 
 burn the crops, and the horrified rabble laid 
 down its arms. The Spaniards were helpless, 
 and were killed and captured as they landed. 
 
 The incident is a memorable one ; it marks the 
 close of an era, the end of a long impunity. From 
 this date the Irish rebels will never defy their 
 masters with the same light-heartedness, for sup- 
 pression, which until then had been half-hearted 
 
44 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 and undecided, was now to change its tactics. 
 
 In Whitehall also a change had taken place. 
 The power of the Crown, the authority of the 
 Government, the prestige of royal power, the 
 cohesion of the State had all grown during the 
 century of the Tudor dynasty. Modern political 
 systems were in course of construction. Par- 
 liamentary control had not so far made itself 
 felt, for Elizabeth was sufficiently tactful not to 
 exasperate her subjects or her advisers, and gave 
 in to them gracefully, but other parts of the con- 
 stitutional structure were changed and strength- 
 ened. Respect was shown for law. The Eng- 
 lish nation began to live in peace, to be a civi- 
 lized society, to work; regular industries need 
 legality and security in order to prosper. Lieu- 
 tenants and viceroys were no longer the maraud- 
 ing adventurers of old days. Rebellion ended 
 in punishment, not by an exchange of titles of 
 nobility, or of land or money. Things had now 
 to be taken seriously. 
 
 This is the explanation of another misunder- 
 standing, one of Ireland's gravest complaints 
 against England. Ireland is always some gen- 
 erations behind the progress of European poli- 
 tics. True, she has the excuse of her isolation, 
 she has no standard of comparison. "To take 
 things seriously" therefore seems to her to be 
 an intolerable tyranny; why should she not di- 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTOBY 45 
 
 vert herself as of yore? The hated Saxon im- 
 posed a new mode of life upon her and gave her 
 no warning; this was sufficient reason for blam- 
 ing him for everything. 
 
 One class had no such excuse, namely, the na- 
 tional clergy, whose mission it was to learn and 
 to instruct others, who lived in contact with the 
 principle of authority, and ought to have known 
 how it was enforced elsewhere if only by means 
 of the new order of Jesuits, imported from Spain. 
 But the clergy were obsessed by the idea of the 
 Eeformation, and, in order to avoid at all costs 
 pernicious imitations, they preferred, and do so 
 to this day, to confuse different spheres, foster 
 nationalist illusions, and maintain that the po- 
 litical and social progress of England is not 
 progress at all. We are not going to be taken 
 in by that. The English have been reproached 
 for having treated this sensitive race too roughly, 
 and for not having been more tender to their 
 susceptibilities. Was such treatment customary 
 in those days? What were those susceptibilities 
 worth? 
 
 For all practical purposes Ireland was half 
 civilized compared to the nations which she af- 
 fected to despise so heartily. In 1567 Sidney, 
 one of Elizabeth's lieutenants, wrote to the 
 Queen: "There was never a people of worse 
 minds, for matrimony is no more regarded in 
 
46 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 effect than conjunction between unreasoning 
 beasts. Perjury, murder, and robbery are 
 counted allowable. ... I cannot find that they 
 make any conscience of sin." National heroes 
 were desperate brutes; one of them, O'Donnell, 
 had to his credit in 1564 the murder of 500 peo- 
 ple of quality and 14,000 poor men — enough to 
 make our most successful komitadjis green with 
 envy! "In Ulster," wrote Fitzwilliam to Cecil, 
 "all is murder, incest, and lying." Possibly 
 there may have been traces of that religious fear 
 so dear to Celtic mysticism ; but every other no- 
 tion of right or morality had disappeared. 
 
 In order to punish rebellions, the Crown made 
 use of radical methods, forfeiture and feudal 
 confiscation. If this seems to us oppressive we 
 must remember that forty years later in Eng- 
 land the Long Parliament made use of the same 
 measure against the supporters of Charles I. In 
 Ireland the ancient Brehon Custom maintained 
 tenure of land and stock by clan and not by the 
 individual ; the head of the clan or "tanaist" was 
 administrator and manager. The more power- 
 ful the chief and his clan, the more enormous 
 were the confiscations, and the more difficult to 
 accomplish. These forfeitures, the largest of 
 which consisted of 500,000 acres in Munster in 
 1583, had never been completely carried out, nor 
 rigorously enforced, but Elizabeth bequeathed to 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 4.7 
 
 her successors more serious methods of coercion. 
 
 On his accession in 1603, Mary Stuart's son 
 had to punish Ulster, which Mount joy had con- 
 quered, and as the chiefs had fled to Spain or 
 elsewhere, there was nothing more to be done 
 than to record, the loss of their rights. Now 
 James I came from Scotland and wished to con- 
 solidate the union of the two kingdoms, but found 
 an obstacle in his way: on the Border between 
 the two countries there lived a fierce and warlike 
 race, perfectly brave and loyal, but living by 
 raids on the rich English counties over the Bor- 
 der, making a pretext of the wars which were 
 practically continuous between the two coun- 
 tries. This had to be put down. 
 
 As he had lands in Ulster to dispose of, and 
 tiresome subjects to get rid of, James colonized 
 after the manner of those days : he took the Scots 
 of the Border wholesale and planted them out 
 in Ireland with a small contingent from Lon- 
 don. At the same time the English courts by 
 judicial decisions suppressed the ancient agra- 
 rian custom of the Irish clans and unified the 
 law of property in the two countries. That mat- 
 ter also was never forgiven. 
 
 From these unwilling colonists, who were de- 
 ported men rather than immigrants, were de- 
 scended the Ulster Presbyterians, who form one 
 quarter of the Irish to-day, a race most faithful 
 
43 IKELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 to the empire, industrious and enterprising, 
 which has contrived to be prosperous in one of 
 the poorest and most arid corners of the island, 
 in spite of adversity and obstacles without num- 
 ber. 
 
 For three centuries they have been exposed to 
 the hostility of the former inhabitants, who were 
 driven westwards, abandoned by their chiefs, 
 neglected. Such hatred is excusable, but need 
 it be eternal? After all the newcomers would 
 gladly have dispensed with the gift; they had 
 some difficulty in realizing that they were 
 grudged the deserted bog where their king had 
 thrust them. The cruelties which they suffered 
 can never be forgiven. If nowadays the aver- 
 sion is mutual, whose fault is it? We shall see. 
 
 The two races had only one common charac- 
 teristic : both were equally attached to their po- 
 litical and religious liberties. Both were equally 
 persecuted by those Stuarts from whom they 
 had every reason to expect more sympathy. The 
 Eoman Catholics, in memory of his mother's 
 martyrdom, expected from James I at least a 
 tolerant indulgence; this monarch, at once ca- 
 pricious, mean, and obstinate, soon undeceived 
 them. In 1605 he banished severely all Koman 
 priests, and the papists were more harassed un- 
 der his reign than under the Tudors. 
 
 Charles I did no better, but extended op- 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 49 
 
 pression to the whole population, including 
 Protestants. His tyranny was of a different or- 
 der; religious matters were relegated to the 
 background without being any less bitter, and 
 his main interest centered in the royal preroga- 
 tive with its arbitrary fiscal rights indispensable 
 for paying his Pretorian guard and for defying 
 Parliament. Ireland had to provide a large 
 share of funds for his privy purse. In 1635 the 
 notorious Strafford, Charles's evil genius and 
 right-hand man, fertile of brain and firm of pur- 
 pose, arrived in Dublin as Lord Deputy, and 
 Ireland was to know a system of customs, fines, 
 and industrial taxation as odious as it was use- 
 less. 
 
 She might have consoled herself with the 
 thought that England was even more exasperated 
 and had more extorted from her by the same 
 men. Not at all. Ireland ignores or forgets 
 this, and the English are thus accused of crimes 
 and extortions from which they suffered equally, 
 and for which they themselves exacted the death 
 penalty. 
 
 Finally Strafford was recalled in order to 
 mount the scaffold, and his departure left the 
 whole structure in peril. While all this dirty 
 linen was being washed at Westminster, and the 
 King lost his favorites and the instruments of 
 his revenges, then fled, and started fighting, Ire- 
 
50 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 land was left alone and had time to breathe. 
 
 At this moment she committed her greatest 
 mistake. She profited by the respite to commit 
 a grievous crime, the massacre of the Ulster 
 Protestants. As in 1641, so in 1916. "England's 
 difficulty is Ireland's opportunity." A danger- 
 ous phrase, and fallacious precept. All Irish 
 modern history can be dated back to that ; every- 
 thing else can be traced to it, a series of links in 
 the chain of circumstances. 
 
 The monstrous crime brought suppression in 
 its train, as soon as England had put her af- 
 fairs in order ; suppression fanned hatred, whence 
 grew fresh crimes which had to be suppressed, 
 and so on in a vicious circle. 
 
 Thus on October 23rd, 1641, the wild men of 
 Ulster came down from their mountain fast- 
 nesses, and took their revenge upon the colo- 
 nists of James I. They did many things, ac- 
 cording to the order of their leader Phelim 
 O'Neill: "Kill all Protestants, irrespective of 
 age or sex." The rest of the island soon joined 
 in. The priests had to send in a return of their 
 victims every week; they reckoned about 154,- 
 000 between October, 1641, and April, 1642. Sir 
 William Petty's calculation comes to about the 
 same figure, as does that of a priest in Cork in 
 1645 exhorting to fresh slaughters: "You have 
 already killed 150,000 enemies in these four or 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 51 
 
 Rye years. I think more Heretic enemies have 
 been killed; would that they had all been! It 
 remains for you to slay all the other heretics, or 
 expel them from the bounds of Ireland." 
 
 Enthusiasm such as this did not mince me- 
 thods, and the tortures were hideous, such as 
 "boiling the hands of little children before their 
 mothers' faces." Wholesale drowning was re- 
 sorted to when they wanted to put in quick work, 
 or else, a favorite form of torture in Ireland, the 
 victims were left to be sucked down in those fa- 
 mous bogs which leave no traces. There is a 
 long report on this matter by Sir John Temple, 
 with forty folios of depositions, preserved in 
 Trinity College, Dublin. 
 
 Sir John Temple adds this damning comment : 
 "They were completely taken by surprise, hav- 
 ing so far lived in perfect amity with the native 
 Irish," and there is other evidence which con- 
 firms the pacific attitude of these Ulster Scots 
 prior to this bloody treachery. Besides they had 
 prospered on unfavorable soil ; what better proof 
 that they had worked hard instead of worrying 
 their neighbors; had they not prospered where 
 the clans had left barrenness? One can under- 
 stand what covetous greed, burning regrets, and 
 implacable resentment were aroused. 
 
 "Those outsiders have stolen the best part of 
 our island." 
 
52 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 "Pardon me. They never wanted to come. 
 And if yon call it the best part of your island, 
 who made it so? Of what value was it in your 
 day, when ravaged by your quarrels and under 
 your antiquated Custom?'' 
 
 In similar circumstances in feudal times the 
 prosperous tenant was evicted. Instead of copy- 
 ing feudalism in many things which would have 
 been profitable, Ireland followed its example 
 only in this unfortunate practice. She reckoned 
 without Cromwell. 
 
 He dealt with the situation with no light hand, 
 and for the second time Ireland was compelled 
 to take things seriously. 
 
 Masters of England and Scotland, Oliver and 
 his Ironsides landed at Dublin in 1649. They 
 came to punish not only the turbulent Papists 
 and the intrigues of Rinuccini, the Papal Nun- 
 cio, but a party of royalist refugees led by Queen 
 Henrietta Maria. The Ironsides were the most 
 highly disciplined army of that day; their 
 leader, after seven years of a stern school, un- 
 derstood strategy. A few towns tried to resist; 
 he deported one inhabitant out of every ten to 
 the Barbadoes. 
 
 Having once made an example, he treated the 
 others, we must admit, with more clemency than 
 was usual among conquerors in those days, and 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 53 
 
 the day after an attack lie had one of his veter- 
 ans hanged for stealing a fowl. 
 
 He was prompt and severe. But was he just? 
 His victims have never been able to mention 
 him dispassionately. Yet history does not paint 
 him as the arch-villain which Irish rancor would 
 have us believe. It would be difficult to accuse 
 him of meanness or petty hatred. Though he 
 was inexorable in the service of a cause which 
 he considered holy, England and Scotland had 
 more cause to complain than Ireland; if he 
 quelled the latter with more severity and bit- 
 terness, it was because he found her more bar- 
 baric, more guilty, and more incorrigible. And 
 think how hateful must the presence of a for- 
 eigner, a Roman legate, have been to this great 
 patriot, jealous guardian of national sovereignty. 
 
 Cromwell's main act of suppression was a rad- 
 ical one. He drove the Celts to the far side of 
 the Shannon, which cuts the island in two from 
 north to south, just as we now treat African 
 tribes, or the Americans the Red Indians. In the 
 east he confiscated thousands of acres and in- 
 stalled his faithful Ironsides as soldier-farmers. 
 
 Was this blind and unjust spoliation? No 
 doubt it was, as are all collective reprisals. They 
 are none the less necessary sometimes ; the causes 
 of them are too quickly forgotten. The posses- 
 sions of the royalist English nobles and those 
 
54 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 of the Anglican Church were affected just as 
 much as those of the murderers of 1641. The 
 latter had slain 150,000 Protestants. Should 
 they have been brought to book one by one? 
 Would it have been possible? Besides, it did 
 not last. The soldier-farmers, knowing nothing 
 of the business, could not farm. They did not 
 settle, but sold their land to their officers. 
 
 As soon as the Protector had other matters 
 in hand — European wars, fractious Parliaments, 
 dynastic ambitions — all his victims rallied 
 round the party of Charles Stuart, the Pre- 
 tender. After the Restoration the Ironsides 
 were soon harassed in their turn, and emigrated 
 to New England. 
 
 Ireland had her revenge during the next reign. 
 The only compact bodies of Protestants left were 
 in Ulster, and Ulster had to submit to the tyran- 
 nies of the royal bigot James II, instigated by 
 the Earl of Tyrconnell, a Catholic Irishman, and 
 the Jesuit Petre. Thanks to them no Protes- 
 tants were allowed in the army, in the magis- 
 tracy, nor in municipal corporations ; and worse 
 than this, what was particularly oppressive in 
 those times and places, Protestants were not al- 
 lowed to carry arms. 
 
 This measure did not only wound the dignity 
 of the gentlefolk; to understand its full signifi- 
 cance we must note a new fact. Massacres like 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 55 
 
 those of 1641 had been more or less spontaneous 
 reactions, without much preliminary organiza- 
 tion ; therefore there was not much fear that they 
 would occur very frequently. Now, on the con- 
 trary, all that changed. Though the progress 
 of other races came to her slowly and late in the 
 day, Ireland came into her own at last. The 
 rebel people began to organize. We now have 
 the first appearance of secret societies, still more 
 or less nebulous, and with them what we may 
 call propaganda by direct action. They were to 
 play a dominating part in the history of the is- 
 land. 
 
 When the Celtic clans and chieftains had been 
 driven beyond the Shannon by Cromwell, many 
 of them, ruined and miserable, preferred to defy 
 the edict. They led the life of outlaws hidden 
 in swamps and bogs, harassing Cromwell's colo- 
 nists to the best of their ability. They were 
 nicknamed Tories, and this name, which was 
 adopted by the royalists and all who hated the 
 Protector, the republicans, and the Puritans, has 
 remained to this day the name of the Conserva- 
 tive party. 
 
 A little later, under James II, Rapparees or 
 robbers came upon the scene; then Houghers in 
 1710, Whiteboys in 1761, Defenders in 1760, In- 
 vincibles, Molly Maguires, Ribbonmen, and more 
 recently Fenians. The name of these bands 
 
56 IEELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 changed often, but the Eapparees had many imi- 
 tators, and their methods have survived. They 
 flourished exceedingly under Mr. Birrell's benefi- 
 cent protection for ten years, and are now held 
 in high esteem. 
 
 All these bandits have a common name, "moon- 
 lighters" ; they work by night. Usually they un- 
 dertake the dirty work of political associations 
 of outward respectability, such as criminal boy- 
 cotting, firing ricks, ham-stringing horses and 
 cattle, etc. They go farther when they dare. 
 
 It was in the face of all this that James II dis- 
 armed Ulster, and the Eapparees made the most 
 of it. In 1688 another massacre was certainly 
 contemplated, but fortunately William of Orange 
 came to the rescue of English liberties. 
 
 Before James II resigned himself to exile at 
 St. Germain, he made an attempt at a rising in 
 Ireland with French assistance. The situation 
 was favorable. Thus for the second time, in 
 espousing the cause of a dethroned English king, 
 Ireland's reasoning was logically unsound. She 
 rebelled against English sovereignty — that we 
 take for granted — but why should she be more 
 legitimist than England when it was a question 
 of restoring the Stuarts? Because James II was 
 a Eoman Catholic, Ireland all of a sudden for- 
 got her so-called inalienable rights, began to 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 57 
 
 wear the white cockade, and for fifty years she 
 sang: 
 
 "Twas all for our rightful King." 
 
 Eightf ul ! Is that not rather an embarrassing 
 memory for her to-day? 
 
 James II had, it is true, done well by his re- 
 ligion in Ireland. From the moment of his ar- 
 rival, his severity, confiscations of property, and 
 sentences of death upon two or three thousand 
 noted Protestants drove them all towards Ul- 
 ster, where they were confined and trapped in 
 their turn. Finally, in 1691, William of Orange 
 was able to deliver and avenge them by the de- 
 cisive victory of the Boyne, which Ulster still 
 celebrates every year. The last of the Stuarts 
 threw up the sponge with a cowardice of which 
 his Irish and French allies kept a poignant me- 
 mory. 
 
 William III had to put down the Rapparees. 
 That was soon done; he put a price on their 
 heads, and the success was beyond his dreams: 
 "brothers and cousins cut one another's throats" 
 to get the reward. Six months later the Rap- 
 parees were no more. The vanquished party re- 
 lapsed into dissensions and quarrels, and the 
 last of the chieftains, Hugh O'Donnell, sold him- 
 self for an annuity of five nundred pounds. 
 
 A fresh reaction set in. According to Irish 
 
58 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 ideas, all the oppressive measures violated the 
 treaty of capitulation of Limerick, by which re- 
 ligious liberty had been promised them. The 
 fact is that the text of the treaty left a loop- 
 hole for evasion, and neither side was in those 
 days very scrupulous about keeping treaties. It 
 is too much to hope that a piece of parchment 
 can prevent the workings of natural and popu- 
 lar reactions as irresistible as the forces of na- 
 ture. 
 
 The first punitive measure was, as usual, the 
 confiscation of a million acres. We must ad- 
 mit that William rewarded persons much less 
 reputable than Cromwell's soldiers, and for much 
 less worthy services. Ireland became, as under 
 the Plantagenets, the portion of political crea- 
 tures, court intriguers, and royal mistresses. It 
 was adding insult to injury. Not that William 
 of Orange was by nature low, disloyal, and 
 tyrannical, but his accession could not alter all 
 at once customs and a court circle which his two 
 predecessors had corrupted. Both the men and 
 the system were rotten. 
 
 This explains a whole series of economic mea- 
 sures which were utterly stupid, initiated at first 
 under Charles II and aggravated by his suc- 
 cessor. They consisted of customs restrictions 
 which were always one-sided. 
 
 In 1663 Ireland was excluded from the Navi- 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 59 
 
 gation Act, and her maritime interests were in- 
 jured. In 1666 Ireland was forbidden to export 
 to England horses, cattle, meat, butter, or 
 cheese; after that nothing but jmtatoes was 
 planted. When Charles II forbade the export 
 of cattle, Ireland set to work to rear sheep, and 
 soon produced the best wool in Europe. William 
 III forbade her to export it. 
 
 The only remedy was smuggling. From every 
 little lonely and deserted bay on the coast, Ire- 
 land sent her wool to France, and received in 
 exchange wine, which she handed on to England. 
 Bordeaux wine was at that time known in Lon- 
 don as "Irish wine," and some Irish dealers in 
 the capital acquired a great reputation. This 
 traffic, so vividly described by Fronde, brought 
 in enormous profits, but the moral effect was 
 disastrous ; as a result of living by her wits and 
 defying authority, with the excuse of oppressed 
 patriotism, Ireland made deplorable progress in 
 this art, and became once more a lawless country. 
 
 Protestant Ulster was no better treated. Her 
 specialty was the culture of flax and the linen 
 industry. She had been promised protection, 
 but English competitors opposed it. In spite of 
 all, by sheer tenacity and hard work, these Ul- 
 stermen managed to prosper, just as they had 
 succeeded a century before in cultivating their 
 bogs. 
 
60 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 All this is reiterated so often nowadays in 
 polemics, that it is just as well to make some 
 comments upon it. First of all let me point out 
 that Ireland owes this state of things to the 
 Stuarts, who were the dynasty of her choice, and 
 whom she helped with such a willing hand. 
 
 Moreover at the time they w^ere enacted these 
 measures did not cause ruin; by devoting her- 
 self to sheep and wool under Charles II, Ireland 
 attained great prosperity, and her archives prove 
 that the island had never been before and never 
 w T as again equally flourishing. We have seen 
 how smuggling remedied the restrictions upon 
 woolen exports. There were abundant compen- 
 sations, and Ireland, full of money, became one 
 of the best markets for English trade. 
 
 We must not forget that this kind of abuse 
 was universal at a time of petty restrictions 
 from which all the colonies without exception 
 suffered until the end of the eighteenth century ; 
 an epoch when other countries had their salt 
 taxes, municipal import duties, and so forth, 
 which were much more vexatious. 
 
 Ireland has some difficulty in explaining how 
 Ulster, under identical conditions and obstacles, 
 was able to survive and progress, while the rest 
 of the island vegetated and retrograded. 
 
 She urges that though the disappearance of 
 her industries did no great harm in 1700, it left 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 61 
 
 her disabled a century later when the United 
 Kingdom became a great manufacturing State. 
 Is that not a very far-fetched way of excusing 
 idleness and apathy? Does not Ulster's exam- 
 ple show that the excuse is a poor one? Was 
 free trade between the two islands not restored 
 in 1779? 
 
 Finally the Orange reaction had a third as- 
 pect, the best known and the most hateful — the 
 penal laws against the Catholics. They extend 
 over several years and the chief one dates from 
 Queen Anne's reign. It is the retort to all that 
 James II had promulgated against the Prot- 
 estants, and to all that the English Puritans had 
 suffered under Charles II's restoration — Dra- 
 conian laws they certainly were. But it is ad- 
 mitted that they were not drafted in London, 
 but voted by a Dublin Parliament at the instance 
 of the Presbyterians who had been delivered 
 from the hands of the enemy. Ulster had been 
 too frightened, and had several good reasons for 
 insisting upon safeguards. 
 
 Let me assure all those tender-hearted souls 
 who are justly moved by Irish diatribe — all this 
 has been done away with long ago. I shall only 
 enumerate these laws in order to mention their 
 abrogation. 
 
 Catholics were allowed in 1778 to own real 
 estate on 999 years' leases; in 1782, to keep 
 
62 IEELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 schools after having obtained permission from 
 the Protestant Bishop of the diocese, to hear or 
 celebrate the sacrifice of the Mass, to have horses 
 worth more than £5 sterling, 1 to inhabit the 
 towns of Limerick and Gal way ; in 1792, to prac- 
 tice at the Bar, bnt without reaching the rank of 
 King's Counsel, to become attorneys, to open 
 schools without permission from the Protestant 
 Bishop, to marry Protestants if the service were 
 celebrated by a priest of the Established Church, 
 to own land on the same conditions as Protes- 
 tants. 
 
 In 1782 the right which allowed Grand Juries 
 to recover from Catholics all losses due to thefts 
 or rebellions was withdrawn. 
 
 In 1793 Roman Catholics were admitted to the 
 electoral franchise, to the magistracy, to the 
 Grand Jury, to municipal councils, to Dublin 
 University, to every rank in the army except 
 that of general. Those possessed of a certain 
 amount of means were allowed to carry arms, 
 etc. 
 
 Such were then those hateful penal laws of 
 1704. For nearly a century the Irish Catholics 
 
 1 Before then any Protestant had the right to remove the 
 horse of the first Irishman whom he met, by paying him £5. 
 There has been a lot of exaggeration on this subject; we must 
 not forget that even in England in Charles IPs time a saddle 
 horse was not worth more than £2 10s. (see Macaulay, King. 
 Davenant, etc.). 
 
SOME ANCIENT HISTORY 63 
 
 were pariahs. More than 500,000 of the young- 
 est and proudest emigrated between 1691 and 
 1745 ; they went to fight in European armies, and 
 the English met them again on the field of Fon- 
 tenoy. The remainder, too prolific for a coun- 
 try of pasture and bog, lived abject, miserable 
 lives, and were decimated by famine. 
 
 Is there any excuse for these reactionary se- 
 verities? Good heavens! Ireland had no 
 monopoly of wrongs and persecutions. We must 
 judge men and their deeds by the age and the 
 circumstances wherein they live, and in the cen- 
 tury which saw the Thirty Years' War, the 
 Dragonnades, and the revocation of the Edict 
 of Nantes, we must not condemn the English 
 alone, for having struck too severely after such 
 provocation. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 MODERN HISTORY 
 
 We have now arrived, through centuries of ter- 
 rible suffering and pitiless cruelties, at the 
 calmer days of modern times, at the era of re- 
 ligious and political toleration, of reparation for 
 shattered rights, of parliamentary guarantees. 
 Will Ireland have order and peace at last? 
 
 English legislators had become more indul- 
 gent, more enlightened, more conciliatory. They 
 were more inclined to make allowances for Ire- 
 land, and to loosen the reins. Then periodically, 
 every twenty or thirty years or so, they had rea- 
 son to regret it ; Ireland took advantage of these 
 acts of clemency and they had to be canceled. 
 It is one long round of "benefits forgot," and 
 the inevitable suppression following upon them 
 ■■ — the whole thing intensified by the fatal but 
 very tenacious illusion that English statesmen 
 only give in to fear. As Irish revolt is continu- 
 ous and endemic, it can always be shown that 
 threatening agitation has preceded conciliatory 
 laws, and it is easy to assume that they are cause 
 
 64 
 
MODERN HISTORY 65 
 
 and effect. For those who know the character 
 of Pitt, Wellington, Peel, and Mr. Balfour, this 
 is somewhat hard to believe, but Ireland always 
 insists upon ignoring good intentions, refusing 
 to be grateful, and perpetuating animosity. 
 
 The first serious attempt at concession was the 
 legislation at the close of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury abrogating the penal laws. 
 
 Ireland had at that time her Parliament sit- 
 ting at Dublin, with Lords and Commons, an 
 ancient institution dating from the days of the 
 Plantagenets, similar to the Parliament in Lon- 
 don, and having experienced the same evolution 
 and vicissitudes. For a long time it had been 
 composed only of nobles and prelates nominated 
 by the Crown. A celebrated statute of Henry 
 VIFs reign, "Poynings's Law," laid down its 
 functions until 1782 ; no Bill could be introduced 
 in Dublin which had not previously been exam- 
 ined and approved by the Privy Council in Lon- 
 don. Thus countenanced, the Bill might be re- 
 jected, though it might not be amended by the 
 Irish Parliament. That is roughly what the 
 Reichstag had to be content with under Wil- 
 liam II. 
 
 During the eighteenth century, both at Dub- 
 lin and at Westminster alike, well-known con- 
 stitutional and parliamentary progress was de- 
 fined. In 1780 the Irish House included remark- 
 
66 IKELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 able orators, such as Flood and Grattan, whose 
 eloquence is as traditional as that of Fox and 
 Burke. 
 
 Grattan, moreover, was a first-class states- 
 man, endowed with determination and practical 
 energy. It was he who specified what the na- 
 tional claims should be, carried out the repeal of 
 the penal laws and definitely emancipated his fel- 
 low-countrymen by two great legislative victo- 
 ries. In 1782 he obtained the abrogation of 
 Poyning's Law, thus restoring parliamentary 
 initiative to his country, and he could then claim 
 that Ireland was "a free country and a nation 
 once again." Afterwards, and as a logical con- 
 sequence, the Eoman Catholics acquired the 
 right to vote. 
 
 It is only right to observe that none of these 
 laws of equity could have succeeded without the 
 consent of George Ill's ministers. According 
 to the Irish, they only bowed before the storm 
 of warlike preparations on the part of the 
 leagues, Volunteers and Defenders, who were 
 all aflame with the theories of the French Kevo- 
 lution. We shall see if Pitt were the kind of 
 man to fear anything of the sort, and if he would 
 not show the iron hand wherever he thought it 
 necessary. 
 
 How did the Irish make use of their new lib- 
 erties which Grattan had won for them? In 
 
MODERN HISTORY 67 
 
 1791 they founded the League of United Irish- 
 men, on the principles of '89, imported from 
 Paris. Its object was to unite against England, 
 both Protestants and Roman Catholics; and the 
 Presbyterians of Ulster, disgusted by the intol- 
 erance of the official Episcopal Church, con- 
 sented to enroll in it. As a matter of fact they 
 were the dupes of plausible talkers who con- 
 cealed ugly motives; once the English were dis- 
 posed of, so they reasoned, there would be little 
 trouble in getting rid of these tiresome Protes- 
 tants, and woe to those who allowed themselves 
 to be cut off and led astray by vain promises ! 
 
 The project was revealed by a speech in the 
 Dublin Parliament by one Dr. Duigenan. 
 
 "Irish Catholics to a man esteem Protestants 
 as usurpers of their estates. To this day they 
 settle these estates on the marriage of their sons 
 and daughters. They have accurate maps of 
 them. They have lately published in Dublin a 
 map of this kingdom cantoned out among the 
 old proprietors." 
 
 A premature rising in 1793 opened the eyes of 
 the Protestants, and made them understand what 
 to expect; some of the boors who were taken 
 prisoners, unversed in the secrecy of conspira- 
 cies, confessed that "when matters were more 
 
68 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 ripe, all Protestants and Presbyterians were to 
 be killed in one night." 
 
 For two or three years, under the name De- 
 fenders of the Faith, an abominable band of 
 firebrands had raged over the island, correspond- 
 ing to the Chouans. Nocturnal crimes, agrarian 
 and others, became more and more frequent. In 
 Ulster an inoffensive Protestant teacher called 
 Barclay was thus murdered with all his family, 
 wife and children. The incident created a great 
 sensation. Ulster was obliged to admit that it 
 had been misled, and that Defenders and United 
 Irishmen were one and the same. The reaction 
 was violent; in their turn the Protestants 
 founded their League of Orangemen in 1795 and 
 swore to exterminate those savage brutes, whose 
 victims they had narrowly escaped being once 
 more. They took up again the old cry of Crom- 
 well's Puritans, "To Hell or Connaught." 
 
 From that time the Catholic rebels, searching 
 for other allies, made friends with the Conven- 
 tion and the Directoire, and Hoche came to give 
 them a helping hand in 1796. This put quite a 
 different complexion on the problem, and it made 
 Pitt, who had up to now been well-disposed 
 towards Ireland, an opponent in spite of him- 
 self. Pitt and England had at that time only 
 one idea, war to the death against the murder- 
 ous Jacobins. Ireland, by allying herself 
 
MODERN HISTORY 69 
 
 against such a man, and such a nation, signed 
 her own death-warrant, all the more because she 
 had just received so many concessions. As usual 
 the Martyred Island produced a pretext. Pitt 
 had recalled a viceroy from whom much was ex- 
 pected; a feeble excuse for calling upon the en- 
 emy for help. 
 
 The historic parallel is a tempting one, be- 
 tween the invasions of Queen Elizabeth's reign 
 and of 179G and the appeals to Germany in 1916. 
 When the Irish asked for help from the Span- 
 iards of Philip II, at least they were applying 
 to co-religionists, but that the Roman Catholics 
 should have opened their doors to the man from 
 Quiberon surprises us more, and is perhaps the 
 most absurd paradox among the many which 
 abound in the history of Ireland. 
 
 Between this rebellion and that of 1916 there 
 are other points of comparison. They both 
 broke out at a moment when it was most ill-fit- 
 ting that Ireland should complain of persecu- 
 tion, since she was on the contrary overwhelmed 
 with concessions. She w T as not in the least grate- 
 ful. We can also find in both crises the waver- 
 ing of the national clergy, whose influence is 
 so considerable. Wolfe Tone, the leader of the 
 rebels from 1796 to 1798, one of the earliest so- 
 cialists, and open disciple of the Jacobins, did 
 not conceal his hatred of priests. He did not 
 
70 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 consider them sufficiently sure and reliable al- 
 lies, since the Church could not approve his vio- 
 lent schemes. The leaders of Sinn Fein are 
 more moderate to-day, but they profess the same 
 impatience of the religious yoke. 
 
 On the one hand we find bishops reproving of- 
 ficially the brutal side ; on the other hand some 
 prelates take a different view and their indul- 
 gence is ill-concealed. Again, the young priests, 
 one and all, defy the pontifical charges, take part 
 in meetings or join leagues which their bishops 
 have condemned. Enthusiasm is infectious, and 
 the word "nationalism'' calms the scruples of this 
 most submissive hierarchy. The faithful make 
 the most of this encouraging example ; and why 
 should they hesitate, if the attraction is strong 
 enough to shake the discipline of the shepherds 
 of the flock? 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 Hoche's expedition failed ingloriously, but the 
 island was none the more peaceful for that. 
 Wolfe Tone and his United Irishmen continued 
 their agitation. Since the Government could 
 not, while war was raging, allow such coalitions 
 with the enemy to pass with impunity, martial 
 law was proclaimed; Ireland had to submit to 
 summary reprisals from a garrison of 60,000 
 men, incited by the Protestants to avenge them 
 
MODERN HISTORY 71 
 
 for all the outrages which they had suffered 
 against their persons and properties. 
 
 In the face of all this, Wolfe Tone's follow- 
 ers redoubled their excesses. Suddenly, in 
 1798, the insurrection once more gained the up- 
 per hand, with a repetition of the horrors of the 
 Thirty Years' War. It only lasted for a month, 
 but quite long enough to justify the most exag- 
 gerated fears on the part of the Protestants. In 
 the south they were seized everywhere, dragged 
 to Vinegar Hill to the revolutionary headquar- 
 ters, and shot after a mock trial, with prayers, 
 exorcisms, absolution, and sprinkling of holy 
 water. At Kildare a father and his child were 
 impaled and slowly roasted alive. At Sculla- 
 bogue 184 men, women, and children were burnt 
 alive in a barn ; some Roman Catholics protested, 
 and were thrown into the furnace. At Wexford 
 Bridge, men were drowned wholesale ; two brutes 
 stuck a pike into them and threw them into the 
 water. Including those who were punished, 
 there were altogether between 150,000 and 200,- 
 000 victims. 
 
 Ulster was spared, for the more compact Pro- 
 testant centers could protect themselves better. 
 But the slaughter in the south made Ulstermen 
 renew their steadfast vows never to accept such 
 masters, and never to relinquish English pro- 
 tection. Those vows have never been changed, 
 
72 IKELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 and it is as well to remember on what memories 
 they are founded. How can one ever expect par- 
 don and oblivion between Protestants, haunted 
 by the thought of the cold-blooded massacres of 
 1641 and 1798, and Nationalists who never depre- 
 cated them openly and still go on pilgrimages to 
 Wolfe Tone's tomb and honor his scoundrels as 
 martyrs? 
 
 The rebellion was quickly suppressed because 
 the help from France came too late. A century 
 earlier it would have brought upon Ireland piti- 
 less reprisals, but Pitt was above petty spite; 
 he was just and firm, but would not tolerate 
 cruelties. He drew from this turmoil only one 
 conclusion, that which is drawn by another his- 
 torian, Lord Eosebery, a statesman of moder- 
 ate views, eminently liberal, impartial and dis- 
 interested : "The one lesson of the rebellion was 
 that the whole system of Irish government must 
 be remodeled." 
 
 Grattan's eloquence had failed; it had de- 
 manded rights, but had not said enough about 
 duties. 
 
 Pitt decided upon Union; there would be no 
 more Parliament in Dublin, and in exchange 
 Irish deputies would come and vote at West- 
 minster. There was a happy precedent for this : 
 Scotland had adopted this plan in 1707 and was 
 none the worse for it. Pitt only neglected one 
 
MODERN HISTORY 73 
 
 thing — the consent of the Irish, no doubt think- 
 ing it superfluous to argue and negotiate with 
 chauffeurs ; 1 a Government worthy of the name 
 only stoops to that when other resources fail. 
 With such opponents, and on the morrow of such 
 horrors, he had no scruples about the choice of 
 methods, and he won the consent of the Irish 
 Parliament by corruption. 
 
 Every one knows how votes were bought and 
 sold in those days, how little comment it 
 aroused, and how Pitt himself was returned by 
 a rotten borough. But this does not affect Irish 
 agitators, who look upon this matter as fair 
 game, and the corrupt origin of the Union has al- 
 ways been their favorite argument. They forget 
 the causes, and win an easy success by laying 
 stress only upon the vitiated form. 
 
 No one can deny that the Dublin Parliament, 
 so deeply regretted, had always been venal; in 
 1800 it was at the same stage of development as 
 the Houses at Westminster were in 1730 in Wal- 
 pole's day. All the votes were bought by bar- 
 gaiuing with administrative posts, titles, or hard 
 cash. 
 
 Before deciding upon any scheme, the Viceroy, 
 representing the Cabinet in London, was asked 
 
 1 The Chauffeurs of the Revolutionary period in France were 
 highwaymen who specialized in roasting the feet of their vic- 
 tims to find out where money was hidden in the house. 
 
U IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 — "What are your wishes, and how much will 
 you pay us?" Every member of the National 
 Assembly had his price. By a supreme irony, 
 the great law of Catholic emancipation of 1792 
 had only been passed thanks to Pitt's express in- 
 structions and to the usual wire-pulling. 
 
 Before leaving for ever that Senate which he 
 had made illustrious, Grattan, in a moving pro- 
 test, vowed that the Union would alienate Ire- 
 land from England irretrievably. 
 
 But what could have been more hostile to Eng- 
 land than Ireland in 1798? Armed rebellion, 
 paroxysms of national hatred, and religious 
 fanaticism, three invitations to the enemy fol- 
 lowed by their landing — no light matter. What 
 more do you want? The wars of the Counter 
 Revolution have been compared with the Great 
 European War, and nothing has been exag- 
 gerated; then, too, England's existence was at 
 stake, and she could not afford to be distracted 
 by Irish pleasantries. Now that we are allies, 
 and that all our enemies both behind and before 
 us are the same, we ought to understand better 
 the spirit of the great Minister who watched so 
 jealously over her destinies when they were in 
 peril. 
 
 Grattan had been the champion of political 
 liberty, properly speaking. Another illustrious 
 
MODERN HISTORY 75 
 
 Irishman, Daniel O'Connell, now came to the 
 fore as the upholder of religious liberty. The 
 Catholics, although they had become once more 
 citizens, electors, and lawyers, still suffered from 
 numerous disabilities; every career was open to 
 them, but they were not admitted to the highest 
 ranks in the magistracy, they were not allowed 
 to become Ministers or generals. They might 
 enter the doors and sit in the ante-chamber, but 
 never at their master's table ; justice was meted 
 out to them so grudgingly as to be insulting. 
 
 O'Connell had been educated at the convents 
 of Douai and Saint Omer, and had witnessed 
 the excesses of the French Revolution; as a re- 
 sult he had remained resolutely Conservative, 
 and his patriotic and religious convictions were 
 always tempered by respect for established or- 
 der. Till the end he maintained the principle 
 — a novelty in the history of his race — of libera- 
 tion by lawful means. He found the moment 
 propitious for his program, owing to the fail- 
 ure of violent methods in 1798, which helped to 
 convince intelligent men; and owing also to 
 Pius VII's moderating influence in the direc- 
 tion of conciliation, which won over the clergy. 
 He therefore rose rapidly. His Catholic Asso- 
 ciation was soon supreme; it held monster as- 
 semblies which were under perfect control; all 
 the faithful were members without exception, 
 
76 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 and thanks to its discipline, irreproachable meth- 
 ods, the coherence of its ideas, and the justice 
 of its demands, its impulse was irresistible. By 
 rousing the nation through an enthusiasm which 
 was truly ideal, and by allying himself through 
 the nobility of his cause and the sincerity of his 
 propaganda with the giants of English Liberal- 
 ism and with farsighted Conservatives such as 
 Canning, the Liberator proved that a genuine 
 stirring of opinion can have as much force as 
 the convulsions of a riot and the terror of se- 
 cret societies. 
 
 The Duke of Wellington bowed before the 
 storm, and since 1829 there has been practically 
 not the slightest inequality, civil or political, 
 between Roman Catholics and Protestants. 
 
 The last intolerable injustice, that of having 
 to pay tithe to the Established Church, disap- 
 peared in 1838, and the final separation of the 
 Protestant Church of Ireland and the State was 
 completed by Gladstone in 1869. The Island of 
 Saints was in that respect more favored than 
 England, where tithe is still due, and where dis- 
 senters of all denominations have still to submit 
 to the existence of a State Church. 
 
 Shrewd lawyer as well as inspired orator, 
 O'Connell had never allowed his partisans to 
 deviate towards the illegalities which are so dear 
 to the national character. At the height of his 
 
MODERN HISTORY 77 
 
 triumph he was swept away by the demagogy 
 which he had inflamed. All Irish leaders have 
 known that reverse side of their glory, and en-" 
 dured the same remorse at their inability to con- 
 trol the exasperated mob. Social discipline has 
 never been inculcated in this people, and neither 
 by education nor by temperament can it enjoy 
 liberty for long without abusing it. 
 
 Already the campaign against the tithe, 
 started in 1830 immediately after England had 
 granted total rehabilitation, had plunged Ire- 
 land once more into an orgy of blood and crime. 
 O'Connell, although he disapproved whole- 
 heartedly of the methods of ruffianism, so con- 
 trary to his own, had to back up his friends, pro- 
 test against the rigors of the law which never- 
 theless he respected profoundly, and had to in- 
 veigh against authority, justice, police, by tak- 
 ing the part of the criminals. His attitude in 
 this business has often served as an example to 
 the leaders who followed him. Neither Isaac 
 Butt nor Parnell nor Redmond was the accom- 
 plice of the Fenian assassins of 1870, of the dyna- 
 miters of 1884, of the agrarian terrorists of 
 1909, or of the traitors of 1916. And yet they 
 were unanimous in deploring their punishment, 
 and in demanding boundless impunity for their 
 compromising followers. Out of this Ireland has 
 
78 IKELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 reared a misleading "martyrology," by mourn- 
 ing these dubious "heroes." 
 
 Absorbed by her struggles for religious free- 
 dom, Ireland had as yet hardly raised any ob- 
 jections to the Union of 1800. About 1840, 
 however, this question came to the front rank, 
 and became the great national cry; the repeal 
 of Pitt's Statute, return to Parliamentary au- 
 tonomy in Dublin, Home Eule and the right to 
 be master in one's own house were demanded. 
 
 The whole apparatus of monster meetings as 
 in 1828 was revived on an appeal from the 
 clergy, and in 1843 O'Connell thought he was 
 on the eve of a fresh victory. But he no longer 
 held the best trump card which he had played 
 before; he had lost the moral support of Eng- 
 land, which had been very considerable, and to 
 which he had owed much more of his earlier 
 success than he had imagined. 
 
 The majority of those who had seconded him 
 in the name of religious toleration grew impa- 
 tient of this incessant and noisy agitation ; they 
 realized that Ireland obtained quite easily at 
 Westminster anything which she asked for rea- 
 sonably, and saw through the adversaries' 
 game; they realized that the only reason for 
 which the Irish Parliament was to be revived 
 was in order to perpetuate an enmity of which 
 
MODERN HISTORY 79 
 
 no secret was made, and which was, at this stage 
 of the proceedings, frankly ungrateful. 
 
 O'Connell failed. England was not afraid, 
 which he had reckoned on, having misunderstood 
 the reasons for the concessions of former years. 
 Peel, who had been so conciliatory on a ques- 
 tion of conscience, on this occasion opposed and 
 crushed the movement for Repeal. 
 
 Ireland had now a fresh weapon which she 
 could use against her so-called stepmother. The 
 Union gave her 103 members in the House of 
 Commons, and about 84 of these represented hos- 
 tile constituencies. These were enough to alter 
 the English balance of parties, and naturally 
 their weight tended towards the Radical party, 
 crazy about national autonomy and always flirt- 
 ing with all movements for independence, even 
 the most artificial and unjustifiable, and more 
 and more indifferent to British dignity and Im- 
 perial cohesion. May England perish rather 
 than that the smallest humanitarian Utopia of 
 John Bright, Cobden's economic theories, or the 
 doctrinaire and humiliating diplomacy of Rus- 
 sell and Gladstone should go by the board ! The 
 Little Englanders have always been the natural 
 allies of anti-English Ireland. 
 
 They first united in opposition to the Cabinet 
 of Robert Peel. This coalition subsisted latterly 
 quite as much by parliamentary necessity as for 
 
80 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 love of principles, for the eighty-four votes of 
 the Irish Nationalists have often saved Whig 
 Governments. That is the reason why the lat- 
 ter were always against redistribution ; those 103 
 seats were attributed to Ireland when her 5,500,- 
 000 inhabitants constituted 35 per cent, of the 
 United Kingdom. Now they are only 10 per 
 cent., and she should not have more than 67 
 members out of a total of 670. We are still some 
 way from seeing England annihilate Ireland! 
 
 Thanks to this disproportionate influence, Ire- 
 land has had a large share of power and of fa- 
 vors, each time that the Liberals have been in 
 power. Beyond this she has had even more 
 abundant and substantial benefits from the Con- 
 servatives. Yet she still remains one of the 
 worst problems of modern Europe; from 1840 
 to the present day, now flattered by the Whigs, 
 and now petted by the Tories, she has never been 
 more unruly, tormented, discontented, sterile, 
 decadent, and refractory. She is the only fail- 
 ure of that Empire which is fortunate and pros- 
 perous above all others, the only nightmare of 
 the greatest of colonizing nations. Will she 
 make us believe that England is the only cause 
 of all her woes? England whose light hand 
 rules the most diverse races and the most vast do- 
 minions with a minimum of troops and troubles? 
 
MODERN HISTORY 81 
 
 Disraeli stated the problem in one of his first 
 parliamentary attacks upon Peel. 
 
 "What," he asked, "did this eternal Irish ques- 
 tion mean? One said it was a physical question, 
 another a spiritual question. Now it was the ab- 
 sence of an aristocracy, then the absence of rail- 
 roads. It was the Pope one day, potatoes the 
 next, . . . They had a starving population, an 
 absentee aristocracy, and an alien Church, and 
 in addition the weakest executive in the world. 
 That was the Irish question. Well, then, what 
 would honorable gentlemen say if they were 
 reading of a country in that position? They 
 would say at once 'the remedy was revolution.' 
 But Ireland could not have a revolution, and 
 why? Because Ireland was connected with an- 
 other and more powerful country. . . . What, 
 then, was the duty of an English Minister? To 
 effect by his policy all those changes which revo- 
 lution would do by force. That was the Irish 
 question in its integrity.'' 
 
 This was well said. Yet Disraeli had to con- 
 fess later on, when he had had to give up biting 
 criticisms and try his hand at ruling, that the 
 famous question was easier to define than to re- 
 solve. In 1845 Peel, when asking Parliament 
 for £9,000 for Maynooth, said : 
 
 "I call on you to recollect that you are re- 
 sponsible for the peace of Ireland. I say you 
 must break up, in some way or other, that for- 
 
82 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 midable confederacy which exists in that coun- 
 try against the British Government and the 
 British connection. I do not believe you can 
 break it up by force. . . . You can do much to 
 break it up by acting in a spirit of kindness, 
 forbearance, and generosity." 
 
 So spoke the Conservative statesman whom 
 Ireland has most abused; so have spoken and 
 performed all his successors since. All have had 
 the same disillusions. The Irishman is never 
 content. He says that he has excellent reasons 
 for it, but when he makes the "Saxon" responsi- 
 ble for all his woes, he exaggerates. Here is the 
 first example. 
 
 The island was decimated after 1830 by con- 
 stant dearth, and in 1847 by an appalling famine 
 during which 300,000 unfortunate people per- 
 ished; from 1847 to 1852, 1,300,000 inhabitants 
 emigrated and the population decreased by 20 
 per cent. Whose fault was it? You can guess 
 what answer the demagogues give. In reality 
 there were two causes which were entirely eco- 
 nomic. 
 
 After the unjust export duties of 1666, the 
 Irish poor lived solely by growing potatoes, for 
 which their soil is particularly suitable. The 
 potato has bad seasons. And since the Irish 
 peasantry, which has always been one of the 
 most backward in Europe in agricultural meth- 
 
MODERN HISTORY 83 
 
 ods, used to leave the crop in the ground instead 
 of looking after it carefully, and only dug it 
 up as it was wanted, the best part was often 
 frozen or rotted in bad winters. In 1846-47 it 
 had all these misfortunes. 
 
 On the other hand, as the race is most pro- 
 lific, the population had almost trebled in sixty 
 years. From 2,800,000 inhabitants in 1785, it 
 had grown to 8,300,000 in 1845. This would 
 have been all very well if the resources of the 
 soil had been sufficient. But a good quarter of 
 the island was uncultivated, and how could 220 
 inhabitants be supported on one acre of culti- 
 vated land, at a time when land lay fallow and 
 when the working was neither intensive nor in- 
 telligent, nor even continuous? All the Home 
 Rule in the world could not have spared them 
 the atrocious distress of 1847. 
 
 For what can England be blamed in this mat- 
 ter? For having under Charles II and William 
 III discouraged other forms of cultivation, left 
 Ireland without industries, left big properties 
 through absenteeism in the hands of agents who 
 were notoriously indifferent to the fate of the 
 unfortunate, and in any case took no trouble to 
 improve agricultural produce or to exploit poor 
 soils? 
 
 None of these things, blameworthy in them- 
 selves, would explain the great disaster like the 
 
84 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 two direct causes which we have mentioned. The 
 economic obstacles which are cited had disap- 
 peared in 1779, they had not prevented Ulster 
 from living in comfort. Besides, England was 
 not slow in remedying matters; she gave help 
 to Ireland with that haste and ample generosity 
 which she always brings to great catastrophes. 
 Parliament voted a subsidy of £10,000,000, an 
 immense sum for Budgets in those days; public 
 works of no importance were undertaken in or- 
 der to provide employment for 200,000 men and 
 to feed the same number of families, public 
 kitchens distributed nearly 3,000,000 rations 
 every day. Private charity vied with official ef- 
 forts, and we know that no people opens its purse 
 with the same large-heartedness as the English, 
 who are accused of selfishness. 
 
 As no people has ever met with so much in- 
 gratitude, the result might have been foreseen. 
 Ireland has never hated the English more furi- 
 ously than she has since 1850. I have before me, 
 as I write, a chronological list of rebellions, mur- 
 ders, crimes of every description committed in 
 the name of the national cause; one can hardly 
 believe that it applies to this century. I have 
 already filled a book with a summary of contem- 
 porary crimes, the history of three years of Irish 
 anarchy, from 1906 to 1909. 1 The remainder 
 
 1 La Demagogic Irlandaise, 1906-1909. 
 
MODERN HISTORY 85 
 
 would make an endless list. O'Connell died in 
 1847 and was no longer there to restrain passion, 
 and contain his people within the bounds of le- 
 gality, and once more the Irish cause was stained 
 by violence. 
 
 Another confederate now comes on the scene 
 in America. A powerful colony of Hibernians 
 was founded in the United States by the great 
 tide of emigration from 1840 to 1860. This col- 
 ony has been ever since the most powerful sup- 
 porter of rebel Ireland, the refuge of her outlaws, 
 the instigator of her plots. It has procured the 
 funds, inflamed hatred, armed or coached the 
 patriots who were detailed for special jobs. 
 
 As most of the professional politicians on the 
 other side are drawn from the ranks of the Irish, 
 they have encouraged ill-feeling in the United 
 States against England, the danger of which has 
 often been prominent and has disturbed the best- 
 intentioned American statesmen. On these oc- 
 casions the British Government has shown a 
 forbearance and patience, for which we should 
 give them due credit. Ancient countries have 
 the wisdom of the ages. They need it, for provo- 
 cation has been great. In 1864 the New York 
 Irish inaugurated the Secret Society of Fenians. 
 Two years later it was accredited with 380,000 
 members in America alone. Their activity was 
 prodigious, and in a few months they succeeded 
 
86 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 in inspiring terror throughout the Anglo-Saxon 
 world. They tried their hand at everything; 
 they landed arms, committed murders all over 
 the world, planned explosions and two invasions 
 of Canada, attacked Chester Castle, laid siege to 
 towns, garrisons, police posts, and coastguards, 
 made an alliance with the Boers, blew up a prison 
 in the middle of London, killing 150 innocent 
 people, proclaimed the Irish Republic, issued 
 paper money, etc. The Pope admonished the 
 Catholics, President Grant took a firm tone, but 
 no notice was taken. 
 
 The most characteristic incident of the whole 
 campaign was the affair at Manchester in 1867. 
 A prison van which was taking two Fenians from 
 prison to court was attacked, the prisoners re- 
 leased, and a warder killed. Five of the assail- 
 ants were arrested and condemned to death ; two 
 were reprieved, one of them because he was an 
 American citizen ; the other three, Allen, Larkin, 
 and O'Brien, were executed. These are now 
 honored as the Manchester martyrs! their anni- 
 versary is feted, they are held up as an example 
 to Irish youth, and extolled in national school 
 manuals. Every town in Ireland went into 
 mourning, every church celebrated solemn requi- 
 ems followed by huge processions. Irish patri- 
 ots, who are reputed to have a great sense of 
 humor — "fellows of infinite jest, of most excel- 
 
MODERN HISTORY 87 
 
 lent fancy" — yet contend quite seriously that 
 these crimes are not crimes of common law, but 
 political offenses; the only criminal part in the 
 business is taken by England, who dares to de- 
 fend herself. 
 
 The indictment is quickly forgotten, and the 
 condemned man often excites more respect than 
 his executioners. We who are so easily led 
 away by the mirage of independence might be 
 deceived by these sophisms, if we were not put 
 on our guard by similar aberrations from which 
 our Alliance suffered in 1916. On that occa- 
 sion there was likewise rebellion, bloodshed — 
 innocent blood — and then punishment. The day 
 after the executions, solemn requiems were sung 
 in Dublin churches for the martyrs of 1916, and 
 divine vengeance was called down upon blood- 
 thirsty Albion. 
 
CHAPTEE IV 
 
 AGRARIAN TROUBLES 
 
 We will not waste time by trying to calculate in 
 what proportion all the revolts of the past were 
 in reality inspired by agrarian grievances. No 
 popular upheaval has ever been exclusively re- 
 ligious, agrarian, or national ; if one or other ele- 
 ment predominates, the others have always 
 helped to swell the raging torrent. There is no 
 doubt that agitators were largely helped by the 
 sad and miserable condition of the Irish peas- 
 ants. 
 
 These unfortunate people had good cause for 
 complaint. The wholesale confiscations in old 
 days had concentrated property in the hands of 
 a small number of great nobles — not bad men, I 
 admit, but absent for three-parts of the time, 
 living in the capital or in more comfortable 
 mansions in England. A hundred years ago 
 Miss Edgeworth denounced this abuse in The 
 Absentee, and Thomas Drummond enunciated 
 his celebrated maxim, "property has duties as 
 well as rights." The tenants were in the 
 
 88 
 
AGRARIAN TROUBLES 89 
 
 clutches of agents, who in no country have a 
 reputation for gentle handling. 
 
 Besides, the best intentions could not have 
 cured the radical vice of the system : in an over- 
 populated island, without an industry to occupy 
 the surplus population, mainly laid out in pas- 
 ture, which gives little employment and requires 
 scarcely any labor, almost the whole population 
 was reduced to the status of agricultural labor- 
 ers on meager pittances, and small downtrodden 
 tenants, without prospects, without ambition, 
 and without sufficient to live in comfort. It 
 meant the inevitable atrophy of a whole race, 
 and could no longer be tolerated in our modern 
 democratic evolution. 
 
 If English legislators have never denied nor 
 ignored their duties on this subject, they have 
 naturally yielded to the fashionable ideas of their 
 day, and at first they tried to remedy matters by 
 philanthropic measures ; such was the great Poor 
 Law of 1838, and others which followed it. Even 
 in 1905, when Ireland had recovered a relative 
 prosperity, there were not less than 558,000 peo- 
 ple receiving relief, either in the workhouse or 
 in their homes. That makes one in every eight 
 of the population. In 1838 the dangers of pau- 
 perism were not fully foreseen, and neither in 
 Ireland nor England could these expedients be 
 lasting solutions. 
 
90 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 The peasant saw himself constantly threat- 
 ened by two catastrophes : recurring famine, be- 
 cause cultivation on a large scale did not draw 
 from the land all that it could produce, and 
 dread eviction, which drove out without mercy 
 the insolvent tenant. 
 
 In the face of such inequality at the hand of 
 Fate, on the one hand a few privileged persons, 
 on the other a mass of pariahs, justice could not 
 be too rigid. In the face of such cruel misery, 
 the former class were rightly asked to resign 
 some of their advantages, however legitimate, 
 in order to relieve the disinherited. A fresh par- 
 tition of property seemed essential. But a re- 
 form of this breadth could not be carried out in 
 one day; the English are too fond of compro- 
 mise, they have too much respect for tradition, 
 to lay themselves open to the convulsions of 
 1793, or to fall into a slough of Bolshevism. 
 
 In order to deal with what was most urgent 
 before turning the peasant into a peasant pro- 
 prietor, the Land Act of 1870 was passed in or- 
 der to protect him in his tenancy. In future the 
 landlord had to indemnify his tenant— 
 
 (1) In case of arbitrary eviction. 
 
 (2) For improvements made by the tenant to 
 the estate. 
 
 (3) If he refused sub-letting or alienation of 
 the tenancy. 
 
AGRARIAN TROUBLES 91 
 
 This was not all that was asked for; a rea- 
 sonable and legal fixing of rent was also de- 
 manded. 
 
 But it was a big measure of equity, marking 
 a new era of concessions in a spirit of good 
 augury, and promising future reforms and more 
 ample reparation. Then as usual the Irish 
 stepped in and muddled the whole business. 
 Those promises of a golden age almost made us 
 forget that we were in Ireland. 
 
 Those who fished in troubled waters were on 
 the lookout. Religious wrongs having been set- 
 tled, Fenian terrorism overcome and expiated, 
 they had to look round for fresh pretexts and a 
 new battle-cry. From what was poor Ireland 
 suffering now? From economic marasma, faulty 
 agriculture, an antiquated partition of property. 
 This was enough with which to open the cam- 
 paign, and the agitators now took the agrarian 
 movement under their wing. All titles to prop- 
 erty were gone into, as far back as Henry II, 
 Elizabeth, James I, or Cromwell. They de- 
 clared that everything had been stolen and must 
 be given back. The fat was soon in the fire. 
 It mattered little that these properties had been 
 taken from the Church, and that mortmain 
 would not be admitted by modern legislation; 
 or from clans which only allowed collective 
 property, and could not transmit individual 
 
92 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 rights ; or from rebels lawfully despoiled accord- 
 ing to the public law of the time. Three cen- 
 turies of prescription could not avail. 
 
 Davitt adopted the formula — "Shoot down all 
 landlords like thieves and rats"; he was a sur- 
 vivor of Fenian plots, had escaped from prison 
 and justice, and was an enthusiast blinded by 
 savage exasperation. 
 
 Upon this program Davitt founded his Land 
 League in August, 1879, profiting by fresh agri- 
 cultural distress, consequent upon a succession 
 of bad seasons. Just at this time evictions were 
 all the rage, for the landlords, hit by the three 
 clauses of the Act of 1870, but keeping the right 
 to turn out those who did not pay rent, had thus 
 an opportunity for revenge and used it freely. 
 They thought themselves victims of an unjust 
 law violating at their expense the common law 
 of property, and by trying to make examples 
 they were often cruel. Popular wrath was soon 
 aroused. 
 
 At this point Isaac Butt, the leader of the 
 Irish Parliamentary party, died; he was a pru- 
 dent law-abiding man, a follower in O'Connell's 
 footsteps. His successor, the famous Charles 
 Stewart Parnell, was of another stamp, no less 
 skillful than Butt or O'Connell at playing the 
 game of obstruction at Westminster, but far 
 more impetuous, remorseless and unscrupulous 
 
AGRARIAN TROUBLES 93 
 
 over the choice of methods, and openly encourag- 
 ing propaganda by direct action. All the ora- 
 torical triumphs of one of the greatest of mod- 
 ern tribunes cannot make us forget that he had 
 strange allies and encouraged ugly practices. 
 
 He consorted with Davitt, and in October, 
 1880, became President of the Land League. 
 Then he went to America and at Cincinnati pro- 
 nounced his memorable ukase : "The first thing 
 necessary is to undermine English power by de- 
 stroying Irish landlords. Ireland might thus 
 become independent, and let us not forget that 
 that is the ultimate goal at which we all aim, 
 to sever the last link in the chain which binds 
 Ireland to England." This is the doctrine of 
 total separation which neither his Parliamen- 
 tary predecessors nor his successor Redmond 
 ever dared avow so brutally. 
 
 When he returned home Parnell made his in- 
 structions still more definite. "To make an end 
 of evictions, we must punish any man who dares 
 to take a farm from which another has been 
 removed, by isolating him from his fellows as 
 if he was a leper of old." This method, very in- 
 genious because the law did not touch it, was 
 adopted with enthusiasm, and applied instantly 
 to all those whom the Land League denounced 
 publicly for vindictiveness, landlords or tenants, 
 
94 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 agents, or shopkeepers, any one who was ill- 
 disposed. 
 
 The first victim was Lord Erne's agent, Cap- 
 tain Boycott, whose name has passed into an in- 
 ternational vocabulary to denote the system. 
 He had refused to give a receipt to some tenants 
 who wanted to pay him less than the rent agreed 
 upon. Every one turned his back upon him, and 
 his crops would have rotted for want of labor 
 to harvest them, if fifty volunteers had not come 
 to his assistance from Ulster, guarded by 900 sol- 
 diers. 
 
 Parnell had had an inspiration, the whole of 
 Ireland relished the game; it still is one of its 
 calamities, and is always cropping up to infect 
 life over there. The boycotted victim could get 
 nothing to eat nor to drink in his neighborhood. 
 His affairs were ruined; nobody would buy his 
 cattle at the fair, the blacksmith would not shoe 
 his horse, the wheelwright would not mend his 
 cart. His friends gave him a wide berth when 
 they passed and crossed themselves, his children 
 were hounded away from the village school, no 
 one would sit near him in church. Fathers 
 dared not go into their son's houses; a shop- 
 keeper under suspicion of having sold anything 
 to the victim was deserted by his terror-stricken 
 clients. If he were ill no medicine would be pro- 
 
AGRARIAN TROUBLES 95 
 
 curable ; if he died no carpenter would make him 
 a coffin, no sexton would dig his grave. 
 
 These amenities were so successful that the 
 League had recourse to them in order to recruit 
 its members. It had its tribunals, pronounced 
 judgments, and woe to the lukewarm, the neu- 
 tral, and the law-abiding. The Cowper Com- 
 mission concluded its report in these words: 
 "The people are more afraid of boycotting than 
 of judgments of Courts of Justice." I leave to 
 the imagination what capital could be made out 
 of this system by personal spite, anonymous in- 
 formers, and petty sly revenge. 
 
 At the same time the old violent methods 
 were still in full swing, preferably mutilations 
 of cattle, and that other national specialty "cat- 
 tle-driving," which consists in turning cattle on 
 to the roads at night and driving them far from 
 their pastures. In 1881 there were 4,439 agra- 
 rian crimes of this kind. The League was all- 
 powerful with local committees in the remotest 
 corners of the island; there was even a Land 
 League for women, and another for children. In 
 spite of the pastoral letter of the Catholic Arch- 
 bishop McCabe, reproving this terrorist agita- 
 tion, there were no limits to their excesses. 
 
 In all crises of this nature, Ireland practices 
 the same abuse, and the representatives of vio- 
 lence are sure of the same protection; that is, 
 
96 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 the impossibility of finding witnesses to give evi- 
 dence or juries to convict; justice is reduced to 
 humiliating impotence. Hence the Government 
 is always reduced to one of the following solu- 
 tions, against which our honest Irish protest 
 with equal indignation : either they have to pack 
 the juries by keeping out the Roman Catholics, 
 who are certain to be accomplices and not judges ; 
 or they have to pass emergency legislation for 
 summary suppression, without making use of the 
 judicial formalities which the Irish have paro- 
 died ; or if they are at war, as in 1916, they pro- 
 claim martial law, and have order restored by 
 a general who will take matters seriously. In 
 all three cases Ireland says she is being perse- 
 cuted and sets to work to venerate fresh martyrs. 
 Gladstone, who was nothing either of a tyrant 
 or a judge, and who on the contrary encour- 
 aged too many insurrections by his ill-disguised 
 sympathies, was overwhelmed, and had to pass 
 laws for public safety, a Coercion Act and an 
 Arms Act, which forbade the carrying of weap- 
 ons. But like a good Radical, more indulgent 
 towards demagogy than towards established 
 right and tradition, he at the same time granted 
 to the Irish peasants a privilege which they had 
 demanded in vain in 1870, and which was con- 
 sidered by many to be exorbitant. Ireland's 
 agrarian charter is known familiarly as the three 
 
AGRARIAN TROUBLES 97 
 
 F's — "fixity of tenure, free sale, and fair rent." 
 The law of 1870 had established the first two; 
 that is to say, it guaranteed the prolongation 
 of leases by forbidding arbitrary eviction, and 
 allowed the tenant to alienate his rights, or be 
 indemnified by the landlord if this was op- 
 posed. There only remained fair rent : this was 
 granted by the Act of 1881. The rent was in 
 future to be fixed for fifteen years by a judicial 
 decision in case of dispute between lessor and 
 lessee, and after those fifteen years, upon the re- 
 newal of the lease another redress is open, either 
 to the landlord to have his rent raised, or to the 
 tenant to have it lowered. The former can no 
 longer evict the latter except for default of pay- 
 ment, and on the whole the compulsory legal 
 duration of fifteen years permits the tenant to 
 sublet on much better terms. Is it necessary to 
 lay stress upon the truly revolutionary charac- 
 ter of these reforms? We are far from the Na- 
 poleonic code and other Western legislation. 
 
 In 1882, in order to get unfortunate men with- 
 out resources out of difficulties, an Act of Ar- 
 rears was passed, which made them a free gift 
 of one year's rent up to the sum of £30. Finally 
 from 1887 onwards, the insolvent tenant could 
 remain on his holding for six months after the 
 decree of eviction, with the option of selling or 
 buying his holding during the interval. The 
 
98 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 landlords received no compensation for all these 
 encroachments npon common law, and their 
 property was all of a sndden considerably de- 
 preciated. 
 
 We may say that the Irish peasant now en- 
 joyed an unusual security, and would be envied 
 by our countrymen — if happiness could be given 
 by laws alone, and if individual qualities of 
 initiative and perseverance were not worth a 
 hundred times more. 
 
 Was Ireland satisfied at having obtained what 
 she had demanded so often? Not a bit of it. 
 The agitators, upset at seeing wrongs evaporate, 
 began to invent others. Realizing that the ten- 
 ants looked like settling down, and giving the 
 new regime an honest trial, Parnell, no doubt 
 in obedience to his American supporters who did 
 not want peace at any price, issued an interdict 
 and did his best to make the law of 1881 a fail- 
 ure. Gladstone, indignant at this outrageous 
 bad faith, lost patience and imprisoned Parnell 
 and Dillon. There were plenty of pretexts, and 
 hundreds of incitements to rioting and crime 
 would have justified these arrests long before. 
 The Land League retorted by enjoining the farm- 
 ers to pay no rent, and the winter passed in a 
 state of ferment. 
 
 All of a sudden, in May, 1882, Gladstone, with 
 one of his characteristic whims, repented him of 
 
AGE AM AN TROUBLES 99 
 
 his firmness, decided to change both personnel 
 and policy, set the prisoners free, parted from 
 two Ministers who declined to return to the fee- 
 ble tactics previously tried — Lord Cowper, the 
 Viceroy, and Mr. Forster, Chief Secretary for 
 Ireland — and sent in their place Lord Spencer 
 and Lord Frederick Cavendish. 
 
 The reply of the Leaguers was worthy of their 
 antecedents. The two Ministers, representatives 
 of clemency and laissez-faire, arrived in Dublin 
 on May 6th, 1882. That same evening Lord 
 Frederick and his under-secretary Thomas 
 Burke were walking in Phoenix Park, and were 
 stabbed to death. This notorious crime was 
 epoch-making; it ought to have shown all future 
 Governments once and for all that it is impos- 
 sible to parley with terrorism, and that it is folly 
 to pat a mad dog. Mr. Asquith and his Radicals 
 ventured, to do so once more, and misfortune 
 overtook them; no one was surprised by their 
 disaster in 1916. 
 
 Gladstone, death in his soul, had once more 
 to resign himself to stern treatment ; his Crimes 
 Prevention Act of July, 1882, was at last the 
 triumph of common sense. There had been 
 2,597 agrarian crimes during the first half of 
 that year; there were only 836 in the second 
 half. It killed the Land League, and another 
 society, the National League, took up its role 
 
100 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 and its program with no less hatred, but with 
 rather more circumspection. When the Crimes 
 Prevention Act, passed for three years, expired 
 in July, 1885, there were immediately 543 crimes 
 during the second half-year as opposed to 373 
 during the first half, and three times more people 
 were boycotted. 
 
 During the summer of 1885 Gladstone was 
 replaced for some months by Lord Salisbury and 
 a Conservative Government, and Ireland lost 
 nothing thereby. She was treated to less 
 rhetoric, but in exchange she was given a great 
 practical and constructive law. It is as well to 
 note that the contrast between the two parties 
 has been accentuated since this time; the Lib- 
 erals have been more and more inclined to treat 
 Ireland to fine speeches and sloppy sympathy,, 
 encourage her in her tempers and excite her ir- 
 ritability; the Tories on the other hand never 
 trifle with miscreants, insist upon submission 
 to law and order before coming to words, but 
 never refuse a conscientious and kindly exam- 
 ination of grievances, and in order to remove 
 them stinting neither material sacrifices nor the 
 concession of principles. 
 
 By the Land Acts of 1885 known as the Ash- 
 bourne Acts they proved to the demagogues 
 that it is possible to give to the poor without 
 robbing the rich as Parnell and Gladstone 
 
AGRARIAN TROUBLES 101 
 
 wished to do. With one step, after fifteen years 
 of interventionist muddles, of Radical and Com- 
 munist Utopias, we have returned to the path of 
 common sense. 
 
 To force a landlord to tolerate indefinitely a 
 tenant who never pays him ; to give the latter an 
 unlimited right to sublet and to deny the land- 
 lord a choice of tenants, to tax the assessment 
 of rent — all this may be very well-meaning, but 
 it is a mockery of social peace and elementary 
 economic laws. If you really wish to increase 
 the number of small holdings, you must have the 
 courage to curb popular acquisitiveness and pay 
 honestly for what you are going to distribute. 
 In two words, before you subdivide, purchase if 
 possible, expropriate if necessary ; this was done 
 by Ashbourne's, Balfour's, and Wyndham's 
 Acts. 
 
 In virtue of Ashbourne's Act the Exchequer 
 advanced to the tenants £5,000,000 sterling to 
 acquire the land of those landlords who were 
 anxious to sell ; the purchaser to repay the State 
 in forty-nine yearly installments. The subsidy, 
 doubled in 1888, was exhausted in 1891, but had 
 given 25,000 former tenants possession of their 
 holdings. 
 
 The success of this vast purchase system sur- 
 passed all hopes, but we must admit that the 
 English lender ran a great risk in face of the 
 
102 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 troubled state of Ireland, her incurable contempt 
 for Saxon laws, and the fact that the debtors 
 denied the "usurpers' " right to any mortal 
 thing. By toiling, learning, by paying their in- 
 stallments regularly, by becoming more honest, 
 more worthy, more interested in progress and 
 technical improvements, the farmers proved that 
 the Irish people is worth more than its leaders. 
 Unfortunately in 1885 the leaders were still its 
 masters, and Parnell the national hero. 
 • • • • • 
 
 The following year there arose a new factor 
 in the situation, of the greatest importance for 
 explaining the course of Anglo-Irish relations 
 from 1886 to the present day, the interplay of 
 parties, and the development of political pro- 
 grams; Gladstone returned to power with too 
 small a Liberal majority, and had to supplement 
 it by relying upon the eighty-two votes of the 
 Nationalist party. Ireland was now the arbiter 
 of the laws and government of her hereditary 
 enemy. This situation, with all the extortions 
 which it brings in its train, has been repeated 
 since on several occasions. 
 
 Gladstone was probably in favor of Home 
 Rule before 1886, but he had been the head of 
 the Cabinet for more than ten years before he 
 dared to throw in his lot with this measure. 
 This time Parnell would not allow him to shuffle. 
 
AGRARIAN TROUBLES 103 
 
 and he introduced the first Home Rule Bill on 
 April 8th, 1886. It is unnecessary to enumerate 
 the chief features of this abortive scheme. 
 
 A week later Gladstone paid the Nationalists 
 the second half of his ransom, by proposing a 
 perfectly iniquitous scheme for agrarian spolia- 
 tion. He wanted to purchase in three years, in 
 order to divide among the peasants, the proper- 
 ties of the Irish landlords at exactly half the 
 valuation which had been put upon them at a 
 recent census, which had made a notoriously in- 
 adequate estimate. These expedients of a dema- 
 gogue in distress met with a just return; Eng- 
 land was not yet soft enough to capitulate to 
 Fenians and boycotters. One of Gladstone's first 
 lieutenants, Joseph Chamberlain, formerly an 
 intractable Radical, suddenly fired by patriotism 
 as Mr. Lloyd George has been in our day, 
 sounded the alarm and withdrew his allegiance. 
 Old John Bright, one of the glories of English 
 Radicalism, did likewise ; the dissenting Liberals 
 took the name of Liberal-Unionists, and joined 
 the Conservatives. 
 
 Besides this exchange of shots between the 
 parliamentary patrols there was another move- 
 ment, we might almost call it a popular convul- 
 sion, which hastened the reaction of English' 
 public opinion. 
 
 Protestant Ulster, which we have had occasion 
 
104 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 to mention so frequently during the history of 
 the two preceding centuries, had been fairly 
 quiet since the Union of 1800. Her great moral 
 and national interests were safe, and, feeling se- 
 cure under Imperial protection, she had pre- 
 ferred to live in peace, working and developing 
 her magnificent industries, rather than waste 
 her time over the follies of her cousins in the 
 south. 
 
 All of a sudden Ulster was roused. Her 
 awakening was rude, the coalition of the great 
 Liberal party and Parnell aroused all her fears. 
 Was it not once more to be handed over in bond- 
 age to a Dublin Parliament, and no longer a 
 Parliament like Grattan's, dominated and kept 
 under control by London? When Ulster real- 
 ized that she was to be betrayed, abandoned to 
 Fenians, dynamiters, boycotters, there were ter- 
 rible riots in Belfast from June to the following 
 January, and England was warned that hence- 
 forth Home Rule would not save her from the 
 Irish nightmare. The rising of Ulster and these 
 Belfast incidents are the real point of departure 
 of the whole modern phase of the Irish question. 
 
 Finally, on August 5th, 1885, in spite of the 
 compelling eloquence and prodigious activity of 
 "the Grand Old Man," the nation confided its 
 mandate to* Lord Salisbury, and approved his 
 program of Irish policy — "twenty years of 
 
AGRARIAN TROUBLES 105 
 
 resolute government." The promise was kept, 
 and an opportunity soon presented itself. 
 
 The Irish Land Leaguers, surprised by the de- 
 feat of their English allies, conceived fresh tac- 
 tics known as the "plan of campaign." The 
 peasants were ordered not to pay more rent 
 than they considered reasonable, and if the land- 
 lord did not accept the offer, they were to hand 
 over the sum to a committee of the League. 
 The latter would then indemnify the evicted 
 tenants from these funds. What Irishman could 
 resist this temptation? He had no idea what the 
 League meant to do with his money ; an inquiry 
 in 1892 exposed the fact that it had received 
 £235,000, and had only refunded £125,000 to the 
 evicted. The rest had been absorbed as a con- 
 tribution to the national propaganda. That re- 
 calls the Irish-American who sent $25 to Par- 
 nell, "$5 for bread and $20 for lead." 
 
 In face of this return to anarchy, a man arose 
 to save Ireland in spite of herself, by a policy of 
 justice and firmness. Lord Salisbury handed 
 over the direction of Irish affairs to Mr. Arthur 
 Balfour, one of the finest figures among modern 
 statesmen. Ireland for a long time feared and 
 vilified his name, but has ended by respecting it. 
 
 He began by displaying firmness; he sup- 
 pressed the League, put rebellious districts un- 
 der the iron heel of emergency laws, ran to 
 
106 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 ground criminals and inciters to crime, took 
 from them the privilege of being heard before 
 corrupt or intimidated juries. Mr. Balfour had 
 the sense to turn a deaf ear to all outcry, vitu- 
 perations, false indignation, and sham pathos. 
 His business was to restore order and see that 
 the law was supreme — and the law was supreme. 
 Ireland, whether she knows it or not, owes to 
 him the foundations of her present prosperity, 
 security for her capital and the protection of 
 honest workers. 
 
 On the other hand he knew when to show 
 mercy to the unfortunate and justice to honest 
 men. We have already quoted the Act of 1887, 
 granting to the insolvent tenant a considerable 
 period in which to reinstate himself. In 1891 
 Mr. Balfour, realizing the good results of the 
 Ashbourne Act, conceived a vaster application; 
 he obtained from Parliament a credit of 
 £30,000,000. 
 
 A Congested Districts Board was authorized 
 to distribute this sum, either where needs were 
 pressing or where good opportunities for pur- 
 chase arose. 
 
 This Board, which obviously plays a consider- 
 able part in the life of Ireland, has not by any 
 means done what was expected of it. Mr. Bal- 
 four and his party, though opposed to the legisla- 
 tive separation of the two islands for strong 
 
AGRARIAN TROUBLES 107 
 
 reasons and in the highest interests, were yet 
 most willing to grant Ireland a large share in 
 self-government. They deemed it wise to arrive 
 at this progressively and to begin by granting 
 a moderate amount of administrative autonomy ; 
 the Congested Districts Board was the first at- 
 tempt, and for that reason it had to consist of 
 a majority of Irishmen. Mr. Balfour was soon 
 undeceived. The Board was dominated from the 
 first by cranks with economic theories, and by 
 patriots who were more anxious to injure the 
 English than to benefit their own people. Its 
 influence and its millions were soon used as 
 political instruments; it forgot its primary ob- 
 ject, and became a nest of intrigue. 
 
 The experience was useful none the less, and 
 Mr. Balfour must be congratulated. Some are 
 grateful to him for giving a practical demon- 
 stration that Ireland is in too great a hurry, and 
 is not yet ripe for the longed-for autonomy. 
 Others, the Irish, ought to thank him for this 
 great concession, a first step towards the path- 
 way of their dreams — but when will an Irishman 
 thank an Englishman? 
 
 In 1893 the Irish had another brief spell of de- 
 lirious joy. Gladstone returned to power with a 
 slender majority, once more at the mercy of the 
 Nationalist vote, and brought in his second 
 Home Rule Bill. It was more complex than the 
 
108 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 Bill of 1885; besides its Parliament at Dublin, 
 Ireland, was still to have eighty members at 
 Westminster. They would not be allowed to 
 vote on questions which only concerned England 
 and Scotland, but Gladstone himself confessed 
 that "it passes the wit of man" to draw a prac- 
 tical distinction between imperial and non- 
 imperial affairs. 
 
 England has always a weakness for Liberal 
 politics, but she could not tolerate being handed 
 over to the mercy of eighty Irish rebels when 
 their votes were needed; Gladstone, attempting 
 to put this yoke upon her for the second time, 
 was angrily turned out. Ulster's cry of distress 
 rang out once more, mass meetings were held 
 everywhere, and the House of Lords threw out 
 Gladstone's Bill by 419 votes to 41. The General 
 Election of 1895 confirmed this verdict, and 
 turned the Radicals out of power for ten years. 
 The hereditary Chamber had interpreted the na- 
 tional will with more courage and loyalty than 
 the demagogues. 
 
 Mr. Gerald Balfour succeeded his brother as 
 Chief Secretary for Ireland, and proposed a new 
 formula — "kill Home Rule with kindness." He 
 began by the Land Act of 1896, deciding uni- 
 formly in favor of the tenantry several contested 
 points in the Act of 1891, and giving them a num- 
 ber of small privileges, which amounted for the 
 
AGRARIAN TROUBLES 109 
 
 landlords to considerable sacrifices without com- 
 pensation. For example there was the obliga- 
 tion to sell to the occupiers every bankrupt es- 
 tate in the hands of a liquidator; for all im- 
 provements to a property made since 1850, a 
 legal presumption was given in favor of the 
 tenant, etc. 
 
 Two more important works are due to Mr. 
 Gerald Balfour — namely, a Board of Agriculture 
 for Ireland, and the great Act of 1898 on Local 
 Government. 
 
 The new Ministry was entitled the "Irish De- 
 partment of Agriculture and other Industries 
 and Technical Instruction." To it were trans- 
 ferred the various functions which till then had 
 been scattered among other ill coordinated De- 
 partments — management and distribution of 
 subsidies, inspections, introduction of modern 
 methods, organization of professional instruction 
 and education in general. The principal innova- 
 tion was to hand over all this expenditure to 
 Irishmen, and to Irishmen elected by their 
 fellows. 
 
 His other work, the Act of 1898 on Local Gov- 
 ernment, starts from the same principle — that is 
 to say, it lets the Irish more and more direct 
 their affairs themselves. Mr. Gerald Balfour 
 took up his brother's idea, and made it a suc- 
 cess; this reform gave Ireland the right to iix 
 
110 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 provincial rates and do what she would with 
 them by letting her elect County and District 
 Councils. It was an extension of the experience 
 attempted by Mr. Arthur Balfour in his Con- 
 gested Districts Board of 1891; a step farther, 
 taken with prudence and precaution, towards 
 the autonomy of the Nationalist program. 
 
 Alas! the practical results were not much 
 more brilliant, for these Councils did little use- 
 ful work, and much base and fruitless agitation. 
 Inaugurated in 1899, they at once seized the op- 
 portunity to demonstrate to the conciliatory Em- 
 pire the furies of Irish hatred ; almost all of them 
 passed resolutions insulting the Crown and sym- 
 pathizing with the Boers, and at every English 
 reverse they publicly applauded the victorious 
 enemy. During those dark days of defeat Ire- 
 land really tasted unmixed joy. 
 
 The generosities of the British Parliament, 
 agrarian or political concessions, far from ap- 
 peasing bitterness, only made the Irish more 
 greedy and more threatening; in spite of receiv- 
 ing their due, they made more exacting demands. 
 As all landlords did not despoil themselves at 
 the same moment, and as they had to wait for 
 opportunities to purchase, some counties and 
 some tenants got satisfaction quicker than the 
 others. And the latter became jealous and got 
 tired of waiting. 
 
AGRARIAN TROUBLES 111 
 
 In 1898 there appeared the most recent of the 
 agrarian leagues, the "United Irish League"; 
 soon every self-respecting patriot belonged to it. 
 It demanded two things — the suppression of 
 pasture lands, and compulsory purchase — the 
 radical expropriation of recalcitrant landlords. 
 "Force the landlords to sell us their land." It 
 had recourse to all the violent methods of earlier 
 leagues, boycotting, refusal to pay rent, and 
 so on. 
 
 The landlords, weary of these continual fights, 
 summoned the leaders of the League to confer 
 with them, promised them that they would be 
 only too glad to sell if they were only better com- 
 pensated, and they agreed to submit to the Gov- 
 ernment proposals emanating from both parties ; 
 the result of this was the last great agrarian law, 
 the Wyndham Land Act, or Irish Land Purchase 
 Act of 1903. This heroic measure opened an 
 enormous credit, first of all estimated at a total 
 of £100,000,000 and later at £180,000,000, raised 
 by annual loans of £5,000,000 on London. The 
 landlords who sold and tenants who bought 
 could debate their price freely and have it rati- 
 fied by three Estates Commissioners. 
 
 The Treasury gives the seller an addition of 
 12 per cent, on the price. The purchasers no 
 longer pay off by annual installments for forty- 
 nine years, as by the Act of 1885, but at sixty- 
 
112 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 eight and a half years' purchase — that is to say, 
 at 314 per cent, per annum on the capital ad- 
 vanced by the State to the landlord. In a word, 
 the State purchases outright with English money 
 the whole of the Irish land to hand it over to 
 the natives, and takes all the risks of non-repay- 
 ment, of economic crises, and of political revo- 
 lution. 
 
 Any other country but Ireland would have 
 been profuse in its thanks. People sometimes 
 venture to compare the Irish to the Poles of 
 Posen and the landlords to the Junkers, but they 
 forget that the laws of Herr von Bulow have the 
 opposite effect, by expropriating the natives in 
 favor of imported colonists — after the manner 
 of James I, and Cromwell, but without the ex- 
 cuse of having insurrections to put down. 
 
 From this date agrarian grievances — if not 
 discontent — have disappeared, and I will bring 
 my summary to an end. The number of evictions 
 fell from 5,200 in 1881 to 670 in 1895. Up to 
 1906 fair rents had been judicially fixed to 
 480,000 holdings, with an average reduction of 
 20 per cent, (see Report of Irish Land Commis- 
 &lonj 1905-6) : the total reduction amounted to 
 more than 172,500,000 francs. 
 
 But lastly, and more important than all, the 
 Irish people has changed its social condition. 
 
AGRARIAN TROUBLES 113 
 
 Of about 550,000 occupiers, 74,000 had already 
 become owners under Acts passed before 1903. 
 It is calculated that 240,000 others will profit by 
 Wyndham's Act. "Almost half the land under 
 cultivation in Ireland has already passed, or is 
 about to do so, from the landlord to the tenant. 
 This measure has changed the face of Ireland." 
 "The Act of 1903 has brought about the only 
 happy transformation which English legislation 
 has ever effected in Ireland." This was recog- 
 nized on November 23rd, 1908, in the House of 
 Commons by two men who were not over-indul- 
 gent to the Conservatives — Mr. Birrell, the 
 Liberal Chief Secretary, and Mr. TV. O'Brien, 
 the founder of the United Irish League. 
 
 This was a piece of good legislation, a promis- 
 ing evolution on wise and sound lines. But 
 troubles continued, and we will speak of them 
 again later on, for Anglophobe politicians and 
 separatists did not intend giving up this weapon, 
 and they wanted, in spite of all that had gone 
 before, to protest against grievances which no 
 longer existed and against abuses for which 
 awards had already been made. They have been 
 given the land; they now ask for the moon. 
 Faster, faster, expropriate everybody, down with 
 the landlords! Granted, but must selfish Eng- 
 land foot the bill again? Elsewhere I have said 
 on this subject: "Either this expropriation 
 
114 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 would be robbery and confiscation — that is to 
 say, it would not give an equitable return for 
 the value of the land — or it would be financially 
 impossible." In those days we were not ac- 
 quainted with the experience of the idealist 
 cranks in Eussia or the felicities of Bolshevik 
 expropriation. 
 
 Mr. Birrell, the Radical Minister, and crony 
 of the Irish demagogues, tried in 1908 to satisfy 
 them. He paid due homage to the admirable 
 results of Wyndham's Act, but he did his best 
 to make it unrecognizable. The premium to the 
 landlord was in future to be no more than 3 
 per cent. The seller was in future not to be 
 paid in cash, but in Government securities at 
 their nominal value, in spite of the disappoint- 
 ment caused by this same clause before 1903. 
 As naturally the landlords would not show much 
 enthusiasm for a transaction of this nature, their 
 consent was to be dispensed with; the three 
 Estates Commissioners and the Congested Dis- 
 tricts Board were to settle all these purchases 
 as they chose with coercive power, they alone 
 were to iix the price of sale, and were to make 
 symmetrical holdings, were to transplant 
 peasants who had no desire to leave their native 
 village, and so on. 
 
 The projects of Mr. Birrell have failed la- 
 mentably, as was predicted. Why in the name 
 
AGRARIAN TROUBLES 115 
 
 of heaven could he not remember Gladstone's 
 misfortunes, and the disastrous failure of dis- 
 honest laws of spoliation? In six years under 
 Wyndham's Act 115,000 tenancies had been pur- 
 chased, that is 19,000 a year. BirrelPs Act in 
 three years only liquidated 2,154, no more than 
 700 a year. 
 
 However that may be, we have shown in this 
 summary how much truth there is in the state- 
 ment that England has done nothing for Ire- 
 land. Nothing? How about forty-three Acts 
 or amendments between 1860 and 1904! The 
 Irish must be joking. Particulars and details 
 of the various Acts mentioned may be open to 
 criticism by punctilious jurists or politicians on 
 the make, but they do not deny the generous 
 spirit which permeates the mass of these reforms. 
 
 What evidence can be better than that of John 
 Redmond, speaking in 1915 in his town of Water- 
 ford to Irishmen from Australia? 
 
 "I went to Australia to make an appeal on 
 behalf of an enslaved, famine-hunted, despair- 
 ing people, a people in the throes of a semi- 
 revolution, bereft of all political liberties and 
 engaged in a life-and-death struggle with the 
 system of a most brutal and drastic coercion" 
 . . . (We will omit his exaggerations.) 
 
 "Only thirty-three or thirty-four years have 
 passed since then, but what a revolution has oc- 
 curred in the interval! To-day the people, 
 
116 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 broadly speaking, own the soil ; to-day the labor- 
 ers live in decent habitations; to-day there is 
 absolute freedom in the local government and the 
 local taxation of the country; to-day we have 
 the widest Parliament in the municipal fran- 
 chise; to-day we know that the evicted tenants 
 who are the wounded soldiers of the land war, 
 have been restored to their homes or to other 
 homes as good as those from which they had 
 been originally driven. We know that the con- 
 gested districts, the scene of some of the most 
 awful horrors of the old famine days, have been 
 transformed, that the farms have been enlarged, 
 decent dwellings have been provided, and a new 
 spirit of hope and independence is to-day 
 amongst the people. 
 
 "We know that the towns legislation has been 
 passed facilitating the housing of the working- 
 classes. ... So far as the town tenants are con- 
 cerned we have this consolation, that we have 
 passed for Ireland an Act whereby they are pro- 
 tected against arbitrary eviction, and are given 
 compensation not only for disturbance from their 
 homes, but for the goodwill of the business they 
 had created — a piece of legislation far in advance 
 of anything obtained for the town tenants of 
 England. I may add far in advance of any legis- 
 lation obtained for the town tenants of any 
 other country. 
 
 "We know that we have at last won educa- 
 tional freedom in university education for most 
 of the youth of Ireland, and we know that in 
 primary and standard education the thirty-four 
 years that have passed have witnessed an enor- 
 
AGRARIAN TROUBLES 117 
 
 mous advance in efficiency and in the means pro- 
 vided for bringing efficiency about. To-day we 
 have a system of old-age pensions in Ireland 
 whereby every old man and woman over seventy 
 is saved from the workhouse, free to spend their 
 last days in comparative comfort. We have a 
 system of national industrial insurance which 
 provides for the health of the people, and makes 
 it impossible for the poor hard-working man and 
 woman, when sickness comes to the door, to be 
 carried away to the workhouse hospital, and 
 makes it certain that they will receive decent 
 Christian treatment during their illness." 
 
 Poor Ireland! Cruel Albion! 
 
CHAPTER Si 
 
 Approach of the crisis, 1906-16 
 
 Such was Ireland's past. She has suffered 
 much, and she has often suffered from her own 
 faults. She has indulged in recrimination with 
 or without reason, she has gorged herself with 
 racial hatred, and prided herself on her violence. 
 Those who know her well; those who see her 
 at close quarters, assure us that nothing has 
 changed. The fact that she now rebels against 
 oppression which no longer exists makes one in- 
 clined to believe that her insurrections in the 
 past had no better justification. 
 
 Is not the psychology of this race baffling—* 
 chafing under caresses, more discontented at 
 every effort to satisfy it? We ought to give 
 some consideration to the Irish character in or- 
 der to explain these paradoxes, but you can 
 judge of it by deeds. The Irish and their friends 
 will tell you that they are not bad at heart; 
 that may be, but it is unfortunate that appear- 
 ances so often oblige them to protest their inno- 
 cence. I am sorry to say that in this respect I 
 
 118 
 
APPROACH OF THE CRISIS, 1906-16 119 
 
 cannot profess that indulgent sentimentality 
 which only pities the unsuccessful rebels. 
 
 But surely, you will say, are not some of the 
 revolts justified? Caresses have their charm, 
 says the mastiff in the fable, but the chain is 
 there! Is this true of Ireland in the twentieth 
 century? Is it possible that she really believes 
 herself to be justified? Unfortunately there is 
 no doubt that she is made to believe it. But for 
 ourselves, why should we be deceived as to the 
 justification of these grievances? 
 
 In our summary of this question, complex as 
 are all national questions, we have come across 
 three elements, the religious, the agrarian, and 
 the political. We have seen that the first two 
 have been removed. We shall be reproached for 
 having forgotten a fourth, the sentimental; it 
 certainly plays a great part in the patriotism of 
 the mystic and impulsive Celts. As a matter 
 of fact it is principally a plaything in the hands 
 of political leaders. 
 
 There are still some religious fanatics and 
 dissatisfied peasants, but their accusations are 
 too fanciful nowadays and too unreal to carry 
 much weight. The politicians are the only peo- 
 ple who pay any attention to them, and they use 
 them to substantiate their pleas. 
 
 What are these politicians after? Cynics will 
 say they want to be members of Parliament and 
 
120 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 councilors, to get profits and perquisites out of 
 a proletariat which is so easy to deceive and in- 
 timidate. But they are eloquent — with a Latin 
 eloquence, the sounding phrase and oratorical 
 gift unfamiliar to the English — and they vow 
 that they are going to die for independence, 
 for the nation, for their country. They do not 
 all lie, for some of them have indeed died; and 
 those who die for a good cause, even for a good 
 illusion, always deserve respect. But on the 
 other hand, all of them do not die ; they take good 
 care to survive in order to watch over the spoils. 
 Ah ! when there is a Parliament in Dublin, then 
 they will not be members, they will be ministers, 
 secretaries of State, magistrates, treasurers! 
 What a vision of Arcady! 
 
 Away with these petty suspicions, and let us 
 give these men all the credit we can. But we 
 must not be surprised if Ulster, which sees it all 
 at closer quarters and has greater interests at 
 stake, jeers at our confidence and does not 
 share it. 
 
 The present Irish question, after all agrarian 
 and religious grievances are eliminated, is in 
 the last resort nothing but a political question 
 of autonomy, separation of two races, and the 
 creation of a new State. But this new State 
 ought to comprise Ulster, who will not have it 
 at any price. And thus you have two Irish 
 
APPKOACH OF THE CRISIS, 1906-16 121 
 
 questions instead of one, the question of Ireland 
 and the question of Ulster. 
 
 We have insisted upon the distant historical 
 origin of this schism, we have seen the conflict 
 calm down after 1800, and flare up again in 
 1885 through Gladstone's fault. The parlia- 
 mentary necessities of the English Liberal party 
 have brought about the present impasse which 
 we will describe. 
 
 In 1906 the Liberals had a great triumph, the 
 country repudiated Chamberlain's scheme for 
 Imperial protection. Hardly any other subject 
 had been mentioned during the electoral cam- 
 paign, and it was evident that those returned 
 had neither asked for nor received a mandate 
 to grant Home Rule to Ireland. Two of the 
 new Ministers had the courage to confess it. 
 
 Mr. Asquith, on January 4th, 1906, said that 
 their majority had been given them to defend 
 free trade. To endeavor to use it in order to 
 introduce Home Rule would be a political dis- 
 honesty. . . . The Government would take steps 
 to give Ireland a more enlightened and liberal 
 administration. And Sir Edward Grey said the 
 same day that the great question of this election 
 had been free trade; they had been elected for 
 that, and it would not be loyal to profit by it in 
 • order to establish an Irish Parliament, but that 
 
122 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 they were free to develop local government in 
 Ireland. 
 
 The Liberal majority was a safe one. With 
 the support of Nationalists and Socialists, Camp- 
 bell Bannerman's Cabinet had 354 more votes 
 than the Unionists; without those allies he still 
 had 104 more votes than all opposition combined, 
 and therefore he was no longer the slave of the 
 Irish vote as Gladstone had been. But the Gov- 
 ernment's tenderness for Ireland was never in 
 doubt. Most of the members of the Cabinet were 
 Gladstone's former lieutenants, and convinced 
 Home Rulers; the son of the Grand Old Man 
 was of their number. The new Viceroy, Lord 
 Aberdeen, had already held the same post in 
 1886; the new Chief Secretary for Ireland, Mr. 
 James Bryce, a noted jurist and historian, was 
 appointed in the following year Ambassador to 
 Washington. All these Gladstonians were bound 
 sooner or later to take up the favorite schemes 
 of their former leader: moreover, they had all 
 sworn to do so when in opposition. It was 
 merely a question of time and opportunity. 
 
 "Ireland is quiet," said Mr. Bryce when he 
 took office. A year later Mr. Birrell declared 
 that Ireland was more peaceful than she had 
 ever been for six hundred years. It was true, 
 thanks to their predecessors. The unfortunate 
 thing is, that when one party is turned out it 
 
APPROACH OF THE CRISIS, 1906-16 123 
 
 is the fashion to abuse the best work it did, and 
 to try to do something different for the pure 
 pleasure of contradiction. That is what was 
 about to happen. 
 
 In 1906 nothing very striking occurred; the 
 parties were settling down and taking stock of 
 one another. Then very soon the Nationalists 
 wanted something to show — first of all a new 
 personnel in the administration at Dublin, men 
 who were agreeable to them, and who would 
 shut their eyes to their leagues and boycottings. 
 
 In 1907 Mr. Bryce went off to the United 
 States and his place was taken by Mr. Augustine 
 Birrell. Mr. Birrell is a wit, and an amusing 
 essay-writer, a lawyer and man of letters, a good 
 speaker and not a bad fellow — he has no enemies 
 —but too dilettante to understand that Ireland 
 sometimes needs to feel that she is being gov- 
 erned. It took him nine years to learn that you 
 cannot trifle with cattle-lifters and armed rebels, 
 and that weak indulgence is culpable; it took 
 the rebellion of 1916 to arouse him from his 
 placid dreams. His invariable formula was to 
 allow Ireland an autonomy de facto while wait- 
 ing for its constitutional sanction — but an au- 
 tonomy quite different from that of the county 
 councils and so on, with which up to now she 
 had been content. He simply put himself in 
 the hands of the Nationalists, and whatever 
 
124 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 they approved or condemned, the Minister en- 
 dorsed ; he was inspired by their slightest wishes, 
 took their advice and served them as a man of 
 straw. As for the results, he went by what they 
 told him and everything seemed to him to be for 
 the best in the best of all possible worlds. I 
 will now tell you something of the men in whom 
 he placed his blind confidence, and something of 
 the facts, the gravity of which he denied in or- 
 der to please them. 
 
 Agrarian reforms, especially those of 1903, 
 had brought about in Ireland not only a material 
 but a moral revolution. Tenants and landlords 
 had come in contact over negotiations for pur- 
 chase, had usually exhibited mutual good feel- 
 ing, and their traditional animosity had given 
 way to a spirit of peacefulness. At one moment 
 there was really some emulation to repair the 
 ruins; Ulster and England were delighted to 
 see signs of a practical spirit, unknown before, 
 among the Celts, and they thought it promised 
 to be Ireland's salvation. The principal busi- 
 ness men of the island — Lord Iveagh, owner of 
 the famous Guinness breweries, and Lord Pirrie, 
 head of the huge shipbuilding yards at Belfast 
 — offered to subsidize between them a motor ser- 
 vice to open up the poorer and more remote dis- 
 tricts where railways would not be likely to 
 penetrate. Lord Castletown started again 
 
APPKOACH OF THE CRISIS, 1906-16 125 
 
 propaganda for local industries, which had de- 
 creased lamentably, by a great exhibition of 
 national industries. Good seed was sown, men 
 were at work, and they hoped to reap the harvest. 
 Between 1895 and 1905 deposits in the savings 
 banks had doubled. 
 
 Lord Charles Beresford opened a club in Lon- 
 don for Irishmen of every opinion; Londoners 
 even wore shamrock on Saint Patrick's day. The 
 two countries had begun to understand one an- 
 other, perhaps they might end by mutual liking. 
 At this point the politician intervened. Alas! 
 Ireland is incapable of resisting the appeal of 
 agitators and extremists. The politician rea- 
 soned on the following simple lines : he saw that 
 this good understanding damaged his prestige, 
 and that there was no room for him in this har- 
 monious concert. He raised his traditional 
 alarm. "We shall be seduced by benefits — away 
 with benefits ! If the English are good to us, and 
 if we accept their bounties, how can we still 
 abuse them in order to demand independence? 
 Who will bother about independence if every- 
 thing is working smoothly without it? We must 
 see that things do not work smoothly." Let 
 Ireland perish sooner than Nationalism! 
 
 This crusade was preached as early as 1903 
 by Mr. John Dillon. Mr. Dillon is now the 
 leader of the Nationalist Parliamentary party 
 
126 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 since Mr. Redmond's death in 1918. He is sixty- 
 seven years of age. In his youth, in the days 
 when as Parnell's favorite he was imprisoned 
 with him for misdemeanors of the same kind, 
 he was the type of the Irish extremist. I should 
 not like to say that he is so no longer; during 
 the war he made some very disquieting speeches. 
 
 In 1903, then, Dillon attacked the leaders of 
 the Nationalist party who were willing to make 
 a loyal attempt by means of the Wyndham Act 
 to give the people at last the land they longed 
 for so dearly. Dillon thought them feeble and 
 foolish. He took upon himself to see that con- 
 ciliation failed, confessing quite openly his aim 
 and his objects. He harried especially the 
 Anglo-Irish nobility and landlords who were 
 most benevolent to their tenants, vowing that 
 he would make them tired of their benevolence 
 and making no effort at concealment. 
 
 No sooner was the Act passed than he organ- 
 ized skillful obstruction in order to nullify the 
 working of it. As it was necessary for the 
 purchase to obtain an annual loan of £5,000,000 
 from English capitalists, Dillon did his utmost 
 to discourage them and discredit the whole busi- 
 ness by stating in the House of Commons that 
 the Irish peasant would never pay his annuities 
 and that the English investor was taking a peril- 
 ous risk. Mr. Wyndham, having foreseen a 
 
APPROACH OF THE CKISIS, 1906-16 127 
 
 deficit, calculated on being able to reduce the 
 estimate for the police by £240,000, by cutting 
 down the number of constables by 2,000 now that 
 the island was so much more peaceful. The 
 opponents instantly provoked cattle drives and 
 agrarian crimes without the least excuse, and 
 succeeded not only in preventing any reduction 
 in the constabulary, but actually had it rein- 
 forced at an extra expenditure of £100,000. 
 Finally, Mr. Dillon knew that the land legisla- 
 tion of 1908 would annul all the good effects of 
 the Wyndham Act, and for that reason he ap- 
 proved it. In April, 1910, Mr. O'Brien an- 
 nounced that he had negotiated with Mr. Lloyd 
 George for a reduction in Ireland's contribution, 
 and had found the Chancellor of the Exchequer 
 quite prepared to do it, but Mr. Dillon had de- 
 liberately put a spoke in the wheel. 
 
 Was I not right in saying that Irish discon- 
 tent is more or less a manufactured article? 
 
 Since Mr. Birrell's regime, these tactics have 
 had free play. From 1906 to 1908 crimes against 
 property rose from 20 to 89; agrarian crimes 
 from 20 to 128 ; non-agrarian crimes from 36 to 
 65; cattle-driving from a negligible number to 
 681; the number of persons put under the per- 
 manent protection of the police from 196 to 335. 
 
 From 1905 to 1908 attempts at murder rose 
 from 11 to nearly 100; crimes committed by 
 
128 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 means of explosives or fire-arms from 61 to 213 ) 
 cases of boycotting from 162 to 874 (Mr. Birrell 
 for his part only counts 197 current cases of boy- 
 cott and does not include those which achieved 
 their aim during the year — that is to say, came 
 to an end owing to the submission of the vic- 
 tims). All this is done in broad daylight; the 
 leagues hold their assizes, announce their judg- 
 ments, the papers publish them with threats and 
 openly proclaim an interdict against peaceful 
 citizens without any steps being taken by the 
 Government. A "Saturnalia" of crime, groans 
 one magistrate. What does Mr. Birrell think 
 of it? 
 
 His reply is characteristic : "I will not simply, 
 even for the sake of getting a few more convic- 
 tions than I have been able to do up to the 
 present time, break up the great Liberal tradi- 
 tion and break up my own hopes for the future 
 of Ireland." * He therefore released, after a 
 fortnight, men who were condemned to three 
 months' imprisonment. This was hardly an 
 encouragement to the Bench. 
 
 For the rest, he quibbled, and thought there 
 were fewer crimes than in 1887 — he forgot that 
 his police had orders not to be too zealous, and 
 to tolerate a variety of things which formerly 
 would have been severely repressed. Pressed 
 
 1 House of Commons, February 23rd, 1909. 
 
APPROACH OF THE CRISIS, 1906-16 129 
 
 by apprehensive questioners, lie forgot himself 
 and said a foolish thing, "It is the duty of the 
 Irish people to protect their property in person." 
 What could be more encouraging for the tax- 
 payer! Why should they pay taxes for police? 
 The Chief Secretary also declared that boycot- 
 ting is not of much consequence. The unfor- 
 tunate victims were no doubt of a different 
 opinion; among hundreds of others, Mr. Harris 
 Martin, who could not go out without being 
 surrounded by seven policemen — or any other 
 landlord who, not wishing to sell his property 
 at a loss of 50 per cent., saw his ricks burned, 
 his beasts mutilated, his servants stoned, had 
 shots fired at himself after dark, etc. . . . Mr. 
 Birrell thought that was all quite harmless. De- 
 cidedly Radicalism does not engender good faith 
 — which is quite natural, since Radicalism means 
 prejudice. 
 
 Ireland has thus been handed over to the 
 mercy of the leagues. Mr. Dillon and his friends 
 are supreme. Mr. Redmond, who tried to pro- 
 test in 1903, gave in long ago ; Mr. O'Brien, who 
 protested, had to leave the party. 
 
 I can give you another example of this ill- 
 feeling and systematic obstruction. In spite of 
 all the agitators, Ireland was on the way to be- 
 come prosperous once more very speedily. One 
 of her good geniuses, Sir Horace Plunkett, had 
 
130 IRELAND—AN ENEMY? 
 
 at last given her good advice ; told her to work 
 and reorganize her economic life by counting on 
 herself and not upon the State as Providence. 
 Politics could wait, they could come back to them 
 later. Sir Horace did more than speak; he put 
 his back into the business, and created an ad- 
 mirable network of agricultural cooperative so- 
 cieties, country Farmers' Loans Societies, etc. 
 His sincerity, disinterestedness, conviction, and 
 experience inspired every one with confidence 
 and overcame ail obstacles. 
 
 Where was he to raise the money to start these 
 schemes? Once again from the so-called selfish 
 English — the great cooperative union of Man- 
 chester; in other words, the English working- 
 man consented to advance the necessary funds. 
 
 As the result of untiring devotion and in spite 
 of the greatest difficulties, success was within 
 reach. In 1908 the Irish Cooperative Society 
 had 100,000 members, with a turnover of 
 £2,000,000— a splendid result for small cultiva- 
 tors of modest resources, most of them insolvent. 
 In 1907 Irish trade showed an increase of 
 £4,000,000 and of deposits in banks and savings 
 banks in proportion. 
 
 Ireland, with better days in prospect, was per- 
 haps going to cease to complain! Instantly Sir 
 Horace was suspected by Dillon's party, and the 
 professional politicians performed prodigies of 
 
APPROACH OF THE CRISIS, 1906-16 131 
 
 cunning in order to damage his work. As he 
 always found them across his path, he had told 
 them some biting truths in 1904 in his remark- 
 able book, Ireland in the New Century. Having 
 left Parliament in order to do something better 
 than make futile speeches, he taunted them with 
 wishing to revolutionize society before improving 
 the individuals composing that society. Heaven 
 knows that the Irish lower classes were back- 
 ward in the extreme! The two systems were 
 irreconcilable, and it was made quite plain to 
 him; Campbell Bannerman's Radical Cabinet 
 lent itself to the intrigue with the basest in- 
 gratitude. 
 
 The Conservatives had put Sir Horace at the 
 head of the Department of Agriculture as the 
 most competent man for the post, and he had 
 proved his worth; the Nationalist rabble or- 
 dained that he should be turned out in 1907, 
 and the Liberals obeyed their behests with re- 
 gret after the manner of Pontius Pilate. On 
 the other hand, he had based his plans for co- 
 operation upon a society of which he was the 
 soul, the Irish Agricultural Organization So- 
 ciety, and the Conservatives had realized its 
 importance so keenly that they had allowed him 
 a subsidy of £4,000 a year. The Nationalists had 
 this removed in 1907 as a reward for twenty 
 years' service. The Irish peasant would have to 
 
132 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 suffer for this pettiness, but what of that? 
 Plunkett and his prosperity were thorns in the 
 flesh of the agitators. 
 
 In two years the peace of Ireland had gone to 
 the deuce. Satisfied with their good work, the 
 Nationalists were emboldened and took a high 
 hand, demanding from the Cabinet that it should 
 instantly introduce a fresh t Home Rule Bill. 
 Mr. Birrell asked nothing better; but as we 
 have seen, Mr. Asquith had made some embar- 
 rassing declarations on this subject at the time 
 of the last elections. The time had not yet come 
 when the English voter could be treated as a 
 negligible quantity. Yet there were some re- 
 marks made during the debate on March 30th, 
 1908, which are worth noting. 
 
 Mr. John Redmond, the Irish leader, con- 
 cluded with these words: 
 
 "Now, I ask, what argument against Home 
 Rule remains? Honestly I know of only one, 
 and that is an argument which, put nakedly, 
 would revolt the feelings of every man in this 
 House — I mean the argument of fear— fear of 
 the injury that Ireland with her 4,000,000 might 
 be able to do to this nation of over 40,000,000 
 if the Irish people had placed in their hands some 
 measure of self-government. Sir, that argument 
 is unworthy a great nation." 1 
 
 1 House of Commons, March 30th, 1908. 
 
APPKOACH OF THE CKISIS, 1906-16 133 
 
 In the name of the Unionists Lord Percy 
 retorted : 
 
 "There remains only the argument of senti- 
 ment: 'Trust the Irish people and you will be 
 rewarded with their enthusiastic loyalty.' Judi- 
 cial separation, which is ordinarily regarded as 
 at best a regrettable remedy for the evils of 
 matrimony, is in the case of Ireland to be the 
 means of effecting a 'union of hearts.' That is 
 the language used in England and on English 
 platforms, but in Ireland legal separation is ad- 
 vocated as the prelude to divorce, and to the 
 realization of Mr. Parnell's ambition to 'sever 
 the last link which binds Ireland to England.' 
 It is hardly surprising if, under these circum- 
 stances, we prefer to incur the slight inconven- 
 ience which arises from incompatibility of tem- 
 per to running the certain risks which we should 
 incur if we allowed our partner to set up busi- 
 ness on her own account, and contract possibly 
 a new alliance at our own lodge-gates with any 
 enterprising neighbor who happened to have an 
 eye to our plate and jewelry." 1 
 
 1916 and the Irish-German alliance have shown 
 which of the two was in the right. 
 
 We should also note, as a new element in the 
 problem, this sentence of Mr. Asquith's: 
 
 "I have always regarded what is called Home 
 Kule in Ireland as part and parcel ... of a 
 
 1 House of Commons, March 30th, 1908. 
 
134 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 more comprehensive change. The constitntional 
 problem ... is to set free this Imperial Par- 
 liament for Imperial affairs, and in matters 
 purely local to rely more and more on local opin- 
 ion and local machinery." x 
 
 Here we have the present bearing of this ques- 
 tion of Irish or colonial autonomy, which hence- 
 forth is embraced in the vast conception of 
 Imperial Federation. 
 
 By way of legislation during this period, be- 
 sides the Land Act of 1908, of which we have 
 seen the disastrous effects, Ireland obtained a 
 Roman Catholic University, officially recognized, 
 and afterwards Old Age Pensions, the greater 
 part of the expense of which falls upon the Eng- 
 lish tax-payer. 
 
 . • • • • 
 
 All of a sudden in 1909 there came a thunder- 
 bolt. The House of Lords had just thrown down 
 a challenge to the Radical- Socialist coalition, by 
 throwing out Lloyd George's revolutionary 
 Budget. He had to go to the country. The elec- 
 tion which took place in January, 1910, gave 
 the Unionists 111 more seats than in 1906, and 
 the Liberals had 98 fewer. But the result could 
 be interpreted in two ways; the Radical ma- 
 jority which fell from 334 votes to 124 still re- 
 mained a majority. The true conquerors were 
 
 1 House of Commons, March 30th, 1908. 
 
APPKOACH OF THE CRISIS, 1906-16 135 
 
 the Irish; for the third time they became the 
 arbiters of British politics. Another weapon had 
 been put into their hands, for the conflict which 
 raged round the powers of the House of Lords 
 seemed to them full of promise; were not the 
 Lords responsible for having forced Mr. Glad- 
 stone to submit his plans to the electorate on 
 two occasions, and have them rejected? 
 
 If Mr. Asquith wanted to take away from 
 them this right of referendum, what could be 
 better? said the Nationalists. We hold the 
 stakes, we are masters of Mr. Asquith, we will 
 make him do the trick and bring in Home Rule, 
 and the Lords will not be able to appeal to the 
 country any more. Mr. Redmond boasted about 
 it in America at the Irish Convention at Buffalo 
 in 1910, while Mr. Asquith was holding forth 
 on the dignity of democracies. 
 
 "I believe that the present leaders of the Lib- 
 eral party are sincere. Whether they are sincere 
 or not, we will make them — and we have got the 
 power to do it — we will make them toe the line." 
 This was done logically, coldly, cynically. The 
 Parliament Act of 1911 first of all suppressed 
 the veto of the Lords: the breach was made, it 
 only remained to go through it. Mr. Asquith 
 made out that the electors of 1910 gave him a 
 sufficient mandate, a general mandate to destroy 
 anything he chose, including Imperial security. 
 
136 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 In parenthesis I must tell you that Mr. Asquith 
 had not even drafted his Home Rule Bill, and 
 he did not introduce it until April, 1912; how 
 could he maintain that the electors of 1910 had 
 approved a text which was not in existence? 
 No, the English electorate had not given the 
 blank cheque which they were supposed to have 
 done ; the real question was never brought up, it 
 was evaded. The truth was another matter, and 
 the Prime Minister had the courage to recognize 
 it. "In introducing the measure the Government 
 would be acting in strict fulfillment of pledges 
 openly or deliberately given" 1 — the pledges of 
 a party without a clear majority, which could 
 not keep its power except by buying the eighty- 
 four Irish votes. I will tell you how they were 
 to set about it, and what they were to pass. 
 
 First of all comes the question of procedure. 
 It was certain that the Lords would throw out 
 the Bill when passed by the Commons. Accord- 
 ing to the Parliament Act the latter have to dis- 
 cuss it again, and vote on it again after three 
 readings. The Lords reject it again, and so on 
 for three times. After the Lords have vetoed it 
 for the third time, their consent is dispensed 
 with and the Bill becomes law automatically. 
 
 The principal clauses of Asquith's scheme 
 were the following. An executive was to be set 
 
 1 Speech to his constituents in Fife, October 21st, 1911. 
 
APPROACH OF THE CKISIS, 1906-16 13T 
 
 up in Dublin, a Senate and a House of Commons, 
 with the right to legislate for the peace, order, 
 and good government of the country. They were 
 not competent to deal with dynastic questions — ■ 
 the army, navy, treaties, and other subjects of 
 Imperial interest. 
 
 To the Parliament at Westminster was re- 
 served control of the operations for land pur- 
 chase described above, old age pensions, Irish 
 constabulary, Post Office savings banks, public 
 loans prior to the present legislation. 
 
 The Dublin Parliament was to be strictly pro- 
 hibited from endowing, favoring, or persecuting 
 and penalizing, directly or indirectly, any re- 
 ligion whatsoever. 
 
 Finally every law was subject to the Viceroy's 
 veto, and could in the last resort be annulled by 
 the Imperial Parliament. Irish representation 
 at Westminster was reduced from 102 to 42 
 members. 
 
 Financial organization was evidently the most 
 important point; in regard to that the English 
 took still more precautions. The English Treas- 
 ury was to continue to receive all taxes and cus- 
 toms, except those of the Post Office. It would 
 hand over to Ireland the necessary quota for 
 the services for which she was responsible, a 
 quota which was to be fixed by a joint commis- 
 sion, Dublin would have the right to set up or 
 
138 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 abolish a tax, but if it chose to raise or reduce 
 it, that was not to modify the quota which Lon- 
 don would take for Imperial services. 
 
 I must point out that under the Union which 
 the Irish are so anxious to abolish Ireland costs 
 the Imperial Treasury more than she brings in; 
 the annual deficit is about £2,000,000 and in- 
 creases every year as a result of land purchase, 
 social legislation, workmen's insurance, etc. 
 The Irish try to make out that the deficit is due 
 to extravagant administration by the English, 
 and they refuse to accept the debts of their in- 
 heritance. Mr. Asquith agrees, and even gives 
 the new Irish Government a free gift of £500,000 
 a year for the expenses of establishment. 
 
 Such is the great conquest of national au- 
 tonomy which the Nationalists extracted from 
 the Radical Cabinet. The reader will no doubt 
 be surprised at their moderation, not to say their 
 humility. What, is that all? All that shouting 
 about so little? For this Constitution, taking 
 it all round, is more humiliating than the Union 
 of old. If it is no longer a state of tutelage, 
 at all events the responsibility has remarkable 
 limitations. There was therefore much wrath 
 with its negotiators — smothered in Ireland (for 
 there they were masters of the League and the 
 League did not permit criticism), fierce in 
 America. A disapproving cablegram was sent 
 
APPROACH OF THE CRISIS, 1906-16 139 
 
 from the powerful society in the United States 
 with the ambitious name of Clan-na-Gael, and 
 signed by six judges of the Supreme Courts of 
 New York and New Jersey, by a Governor of 
 Rhode Island, by four judges of the secondary 
 Courts of New York, Municipal Courts, etc. 1 
 The Clan-na-Gael, which has been from early 
 days the soul of Anglophobe conspiracy, had 
 always provided the funds, and felt that it had 
 been duped. 
 
 But, looking more closely into the matter, say 
 the Unionists, our American cousins are wrong 
 to get excited about it. What really signifies in 
 a Constitution is not the spirit which created it, 
 nor even the accuracy of the text, but the spirit 
 with which it is applied; policy resolves itself 
 in the last resort into administrative action 
 just as law does into judicial interpretations. 
 Looked at from that point of view it is rather 
 the Unionists who have cause to fear ! 
 
 It is so easy to find thousands of trivial ways 
 of annoying when one is steeped in hatred. Even 
 bj a budget of inoffensive aspect it would be 
 possible to put pressure upon Ulster, with whom 
 there are old accounts to settle. It is so easy to 
 
 1 It is not surprising that magistrates of high rank should 
 appear in such a list; these American judges are chosen like 
 our mayors and councillors in districts where the Irish voter 
 rules the roost. 
 
140 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 cause injustice as between English and Irish in 
 hundreds of spheres: trade marks, copyright, 
 patents, and many more. The Irish program 
 has always included Protection against Eng- 
 land: in order not to alarm their friends the 
 Liberal Free Traders, the Nationalists do not 
 refer to it now, but who would count on that? 
 The Celtic imagination is a fertile one; it will 
 invent some way of penalizing English imports 
 in favor of American — or now, alas! German 
 imports. 
 
 See what happens during the war. The ques- 
 tion of food supplies is vital, and Ireland is one 
 of the principal sources for over-populated Great 
 Britain. If she refused to send over her surplus 
 potatoes, dairy produce, meat, bacon, what a 
 catastrophe there would be! Well, without 
 Home Rule, she tries to play this scurvy trick; 
 the Sinn Feiners intimidate the farmers who 
 want to export their pigs, and vow that if they 
 were masters it would be their supreme joy to 
 starve the accursed English. The old motto still 
 triumphs, "England's difficulty, Ireland's oppor- 
 tunity." William II has "brilliant seconds" 
 there! I am not even referring to all those 
 military alliances with the enemy from Queen 
 Elizabeth's reign to our days; we shall see far- 
 ther on that Mr. Dillon was not ashamed of it. 
 
 Mr. Asquith, so we are told, foresaw all that 
 
APPROACH OF THE CRISIS, 1906-16 141 
 
 in his Home Rule Bill ; lie included in it all the 
 desired guarantees and safeguards ; the last word 
 will always rest with London. Is that the case? 
 In point of fact it is impracticable. Provision 
 for this veto has always been made in all the 
 constitutions of autonomy granted to the 
 colonies, but it has never been possible to apply 
 it. English Free Traders have had to submit 
 humbly to Canada's customs dues ; Conservative 
 ministers have had to allow Australia to indulge 
 in socialism. Under present conditions any 
 reprimand or intervention on the part of the 
 Imperial Cabinet would bring about a conflict 
 which no one would venture to risk; and yet 
 these colonies are well disposed to the mother 
 country, as has been shown by the splendid vol- 
 untary help which they have given her since 
 1914 
 
 What would happen in the case of Ireland? 
 It would be civil war without a doubt. Her 
 leaders have promised it often enough, and they 
 are not in the humor to tolerate supervision of 
 this kind. We have just had an edifying ex- 
 ample of the sort of thing which would happen. 
 Remember that the Bill of 1912, with Mr. Red- 
 mond's express consent, reserved strictly to the 
 Imperial Parliament all matters concerning the 
 army and navy. On April 9th, 1918, after the 
 reverse at Saint Quentin, Mr. Lloyd George, 
 
142 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 when he decided to call up Englishmen to the 
 age of fifty-one, and even if necessary to fifty- 
 six, wanted at the same time to apply conscrip- 
 tion to young Irishmen of twenty-one, for the 
 contrast was too unjust and could not be justi- 
 fied any longer. Immediately there was a terrific 
 storm from the Nationalist benches! 
 
 "You have no right to do that without the con- 
 sent of an Irish Parliament," Of what value 
 is the promise made to Mr. Asquith concerning 
 the "reserved services" or Imperial services? 
 
 No, all those imposing safeguards stipulated 
 in the Bill only make old political philosophers 
 like Mr. Balfour laugh and no doubt they amuse 
 Mr. Asquith himself. Others, Ulster Prot- 
 estants, or English patriots, clench their fists, 
 only too certain of persecutions and treason in 
 the future. 
 
 The Nationalists will be the heads of the new 
 Dublin Government. What do they undertake 
 to do? Can their promises be relied on? In 
 April, 1912, Mr. Dillon, quite mild all of a sud- 
 den, said: 
 
 "For my part, as long as I live in Irish poli- 
 tics, I will adhere honorably to that pledge and 
 will do everything in my power to discounte- 
 nance any idea that we intend to use this Bill 
 as a leverage to extract more out of England, 
 or that we are not content to accept the position 
 
APPROACH OF THE CRISIS, 1906-16 143 
 
 which is the basis upon which this Bill is 
 founded." * 
 
 In 1911 Mr. Redmond asks for an Irish Parlia- 
 ment to deal with purely Irish affairs, "subject 
 to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament." 
 If the Nationalists are sincere, remind them that 
 Gladstone himself confessed that he was in- 
 capable of distinguishing between Imperial and 
 non-Imperial matters. 
 
 But the Unionists do not believe in this sin- 
 cerity. They call to mind other declarations, 
 more brutal, more outspoken, uttered when it 
 was not necessary to tread warily, to lull suspi- 
 cion ; for instance, Mr. Redmond's speech at Kan- 
 turk on November 17, 1895 : 
 
 "Ireland for the Irish is our motto, and the 
 consummation of all our hopes and aspirations 
 is, in one word, to drive English rule, sooner or 
 later, bag and baggage from the country." 
 
 Again, in 1893, in the House of Commons, he 
 said that there was no hope of success if the 
 decisions of the Irish Legislature were to be 
 submitted to the Imperial Parliament as a Court 
 of Appeal, either directly or indirectly. 
 
 Thus spoke the chief; now let us listen to his 
 lieutenants. This time it is Mr. Kettle, an hon- 
 
 1 Speech to the University of Dublin, April, 1912. 
 
144: IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 est man, the leading economist of the party, a 
 scholar rather than politician, reassuring his 
 American friends : "These are our tactics — if you 
 want to capture a fortress, first take the outer 
 works." 
 
 And now we have Mr. Devlin, President of 
 the great secret society, "The Ancient Order of 
 Hibernians," possibly the most powerful man in 
 Ireland, speaking at Philadelphia. "I believe in 
 the separation of Ireland from England — until 
 Ireland is as free as the air we breathe." 
 
 Finally Dillon, the unruly member of the 
 party. His friends have often reproached him 
 for talking too much, and with good cause; 
 confessions like this are certainly very embar- 
 rassing to-day : 
 
 "I strongly advise the Irish people to provide 
 themselves with arms," he said in effect in the 
 House of Commons. "The Irish people have not 
 the necessary means to carry on civil war. I 
 wish that they had. In old days when a more 
 efficacious weapon was used, one or two land- 
 lords were chosen out, fired at with a rifle, and 
 that had better results than all your constitu- 
 tional agitation." 
 
 In the same House in 1898 he pinned down his 
 leader : 
 
APPROACH OF THE CRISIS, 1906-16 145 
 
 Mr. Dillon: "You spoke of the repeal of the 
 Union, and the reopening of the Irish Parlia- 
 ment, as the full Nationalist demand. Now, I 
 say, in the first instance, that, in my opinion and 
 in the opinion of the vast majority of the ad- 
 vanced Nationalists of Ireland, that is not the 
 full Nationalist demand." 
 
 Mr. Redmond: "Separation." 
 
 Mr. Dillon: "Yes. That is the full Nation- 
 alist demand ; that is the right on which we stand, 
 the Nationalist right of Ireland." * 
 
 A member reminded him in June, 1912, of an- 
 other of his vows : 
 
 "When we come out of the struggle we will 
 remember who were the people's friends and who 
 were the people's enemies, and we will mete out 
 our reward to the one and our punishment to 
 the other." 2 
 
 It is not very reassuring for Ulster! 
 
 Such is the man who in 1912 gave "honorable" 
 pledges, who in 1918 was elected leader of the 
 Parliamentary Nationalist party. 
 
 In July, 1912, Irish Freedom wrote: 
 
 "Above all, in the transitory and half-way 
 house stage, it will keep a sharp eye on 'Sister 
 England's' administration of the Home Rule Bill 
 and it will devote its special attention to the 
 
 1 House of Commons, February 11th, 1898, 
 
 a Mr. Joynson-Hicks, House of Commons, June 11th, 1912. 
 
146 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 using of that Bill as a means to strengthen Ire- 
 land and weaken the British Empire, in so far 
 as it can be worked towards that end." 
 
 That can hardly be described as legitimate 
 self-defense, can it? 
 
 This Fenian newspaper is merely playing the 
 part one expects of it. But the contradictions 
 of a man of Mr. Redmond's standing are more 
 disturbing. In October, 1911, speaking at Man- 
 chester, he said: "We are not asking for the re- 
 peal of the Union, but merely for an amendment 
 of its terms." 
 
 That is all very well. He was speaking before 
 English people. "Why, then, was he so impru- 
 dent as to sign this in his Freeman's Journal, 
 December 16th, 1908?— "We have before us to- 
 day the best chance which Ireland has ever had 
 of tearing up and trampling under foot that in- 
 famous Act of Union." 
 
 Which are we to believe? 
 
 We might fill volumes with threatening quo- 
 tations such as these; they would at least make 
 us appreciate why English Unionists distrust 
 these wolves suddenly camouflaged as sheep. 
 Then there is past history, seven centuries of 
 hatred ! no light matter. Then there is that mor- 
 bid spite which is no longer justified, which the 
 English neither understand nor share, but with 
 
APPROACH OF THE CRISIS, 1906-16 147 
 
 which they are obliged to reckon every moment; 
 a perpetual insult — worse, vows of unappeasable 
 revenge. Can we reproach them for being on 
 their guard? 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE PRICE OF A BARGAIN 
 
 In this traffic between Radicals and Nationalists 
 there was a victim. Was it the Empire? No; 
 that is big enough to lose a bit of territory and 
 to defend itself when necessary. Was it Eng- 
 land? No; the English voter, gagged until the 
 next election, that is to say till 1916, had no one 
 to blame but himself for not having foreseen the 
 turn events would take, and had only to take it 
 as became a sportsman. But what of Ulster? 
 There it was no more a matter of the interplay of 
 parties, of skillful Parliamentary combinations; 
 it was a matter of life and death, of a race to 
 be given over to reprisals, sworn on a hundred 
 occasions, to be subject to a rival whom she not 
 only execrates, but despises, and she gives you 
 very good reasons for it. Sold by English dema- 
 gogues to their Irish fellows, Ulster hung out a 
 signal of distress, and armed for resistance. 
 Some rights are more sacred than laws. 
 
 From July, 1912, there had been bloody colli- 
 sions between Roman Catholic and Protestant 
 
 148 
 
THE PRICE OF A BARGAIN 149 
 
 workmen at Belfast, and on one occasion at a 
 big football match there were a hundred 
 wounded on the field. But the movement was 
 soon to outstrip these local fights and take on 
 other proportions, to become truly national — for 
 Ulster is a nation — and imperial, for the Empire 
 cannot look on calmly while her best sons are 
 put up for auction. 
 
 A man arose to give effect to these two warn- 
 ings, one of the leaders of the English Bar, en- 
 dowed both with an iron will and with some of 
 the best brains in the kingdom — Sir Edward 
 Carson. He had become the spokesman of 
 Ulster ; in the cottages of Catholic Ireland he is 
 suspected of being anti-Christ, and he is never 
 mentioned without the sign of the Cross or an 
 oath. His adversaries have never denied that his 
 straightforwardness is perfect, but his inexor- 
 able logic annoys them exceedingly. Few lead- 
 ers have been more hated by their enemies and 
 none has served a cause with more firmness, 
 courage, and good sense. 
 
 Carson began his campaign by a series of 
 great public meetings, big processions with 
 bands and banners, Orange demonstrations, etc. 
 All the Unionists of the district marched in 
 them, big manufacturers, ordinary workmen, 
 landowners, and farmers. The Ulster question 
 was opened. 
 
150 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 What does it consist of? We have seen whence 
 came the Presbyterian population of the north- 
 east of Ireland, drawn from Scotland and 
 planted by James I. I have summarized its prin- 
 cipal conflicts and vicissitudes, racial and re- 
 ligious hatred. 
 
 It is important not to confuse it with the 
 other section of Irish Unionists which is of Eng- 
 lish descent, from the nobility, from officials, 
 and from the soldier-farmers of Cromwell's day. 
 This latter party has kept from its origin the re- 
 ligion which was for a long time the only one 
 permitted to courtiers — Anglican Episcopalian- 
 ism ; the King's Court were compelled to belong 
 to the official Church called in the three king- 
 doms, Church of England, Church of Scotland, 
 Church of Ireland. Although scattered about 
 the island at the caprice of conquests and royal 
 favors, they are called Southern Unionists, in 
 order to distinguish them from Ulster Unionists. 
 They are hardly less important politically and 
 socially, for they comprise hereditary powers, 
 the majority of the nobility and Anglo-Irish 
 aristocracy; but they are less numerous and 
 more widely dispersed, and in a certain quarter 
 they are treated as a negligible quantity from 
 .a systematic contempt for heredity. Their influ- 
 ence has, moreover, decreased considerably since 
 they gave up their property to the natives. 
 
THE PKICE OF A BARGAIN 151 
 
 Ulster is composed otherwise; she forms a 
 complete nation comprising all classes of so- 
 ciety, She is practically the only part of Ire- 
 land which can seriously be called industrial. 
 Her capital, Belfast, the largest town in the 
 island, has a population of 400,000, nearly 
 100,000 more than Dublin; her celebrated spe- 
 cialties are her linen trade and shipbuilding. 
 
 We are now touching upon another point in 
 the great question of Ulster, upon an element 
 which we have so far subordinated to the claims 
 of race and religion, but which the nineteenth 
 century, as elsewhere, has changed into a pre- 
 ponderant element — the economic question. 
 Leaving the Southern Celts to moan and whine 
 with tub-thumpers and agitators, to curse Eng- 
 land while at the same time begging for help 
 from her, to vex the landlords and invoke the 
 State as Providence, Ulster has contrived to 
 grow prosperous, more prosperous than the 
 whole of the rest of the island put together — 
 and that, too, we cannot repeat too often, under 
 the same political fiscal and customs regime 
 which her unproductive fellow-countrymen 
 abuse at every turn. 
 
 Ulster is the gem of Ireland. Without her 
 the financial stability of the new State would 
 be impossible ; unfortunately, to the great indig- 
 nation of the Nationalists, she declines to be 
 
152 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 part of it at any price! She refuses to be the 
 milch-cow of hostile politicians, whose methods, 
 bias, program, and incompetence are alike 
 odious to her. She has known them for so long 
 and at such close quarters that her fears prob- 
 ably have some foundation. She reasons as a 
 business man or as a banker, who does not 
 neglect his guarantees for the finest promises 
 in the world. The Nationalists promise her 
 every sort of toleration and security. She will 
 have none of it. 
 
 "We have come into Ireland," said a Deputa- 
 tion from the Belfast Chamber of Commerce 
 which waited on Mr. Gladstone in the spring 
 of 1S93, "and not the richest portion of the island, 
 and have gradually built up an industry and 
 commerce with which we are able to hold our 
 own in competition with the most progressive 
 nations in the world. Our success has been 
 achieved under a system and a polity in which 
 we believe. Its non-interference with the busi- 
 ness of the people gave play to that self-reliance 
 with which we strove to emulate the industrial 
 qualities of the people of Great Britain. It is 
 now proposed to place the manufactures and 
 commerce of the country at the mercy of a ma- 
 jority which will have no real concern in the 
 interests vitally affected, and who have no 
 knowledge of the science of government. The 
 mere shadow of these changes has so depressed 
 the stocks which represent the accumulations 
 
THE PEICE OF A BAKGAUST 153 
 
 of our past enterprise and labor that we are al- 
 ready commercially poorer than we were." 
 
 The Protestant workingmen in Ulster think 
 likewise; they appear in force at every demon- 
 stration by the side of their masters. 
 
 The Nationalists covet greedily this fine spoil 
 from which the best part of their finances would 
 be drawn. It would be easy to squeeze her, since 
 numerically this rich corner would only be de- 
 fended in the Irish Parliament by one-quarter of 
 the total number of members. That is exactly 
 why these obstinate Scots will not undertake the 
 adventure! Ulster has not the smallest doubt 
 on the subject; she knows what lies in store for 
 her. Let us glance at the words of one of her 
 most moderate spokesmen, Lord Ernest Hamil- 
 ton; I summarize his clear and precise reason- 
 
 "The Protestant attitude is often stigmatized 
 as being uncompromising. It is uncompromis- 
 ing. . . . The fundamental idea at the back of 
 the Ulsterman's attitude is that what has once 
 happened may well happen again. [He has just 
 described all the massacres of the eighteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries.] . . . Such occurrences 
 invariably take the form of systematic attempts 
 to rid the country of the British element by any 
 
 1 The Soul of Ulster, by Lord Ernest Hamilton, pp. 107-39 
 passim. 
 
154 IRELAND—AN ENEMY? 
 
 and every means. . . . The soul of the native 
 Irish has not at the present day changed by the 
 width of a hair from what it was in 1641 and 
 again in 1798. . . . 
 
 "The only attraction of Home Rale to the in- 
 ner soul of the Irish (especially in Ulster) is the 
 hope that it will provide the machinery by which 
 the British colonist can be got rid of and Irish 
 soil revert once more to the Irish. . . . 
 
 "In Ulster, then, the cry of 'Ireland for the 
 Irish' is not the mere innocent expression of a 
 laudable patriotism; it has a deeper and far 
 more sinister meaning. It means the expulsion 
 from Ireland of the Protestant colonists, and 
 is so understood clearly by both sections of the 
 population. There are no sentimental illusions 
 in Ulster, whatever there may be in England. 
 
 "Among the Irish of the South and West the 
 popular conception of Ireland under Home Rule 
 may be said to be, and in fact is, nebulous. The 
 aspirations of the peasant, when reduced by per- 
 suasive inquiry to concrete form, will generally 
 be found to stop short at a kind of Pan-Celtic 
 Arcadia, where all will be rich on a minimum 
 of work and a maximum of whisky supplied by 
 American millionaires. . . . 
 
 "In Ulster, however, a very different spirit 
 broods over the land. . . . Half the lands of Ul- 
 ster, and these the best and the richest, are in 
 the hands of the stranger within the gates. It 
 matters nothing that the lands when originally 
 granted were waste, and that the industry of 
 the colonists has made them rich. . . . The na- 
 tives know none of these things; they are not 
 
THE PRICE OF A BARGAIN 155 
 
 politically educated on these lines. . . . And so 
 they cry, or, rather, they mutter under their 
 breath, 'Ireland for the Irish/ a cry which be- 
 comes freely translated into 'to hell or to the 
 sea with every bloody Protestant/ . . . Two 
 prima facie questions arise : 
 
 (1) "Are the aspirations of the native Irish 
 for a restitution of their forfeited lands justi- 
 fied? 
 
 (2) "Would Home Rule give practical expres- 
 sion to such aspirations? 
 
 "The first question obviously opens up prob- 
 lems which reach far beyond the case of Ulster. 
 It touches, more or less, the whole civilized 
 world. Should England be evacuated in favor 
 of the Welsh, the relics of the ancient Britons? 
 Canada in favor of the Red Indians? New 
 Zealand in favor of the Maoris? Should the 
 French clear out of Algiers, the British out of 
 Uganda, the Spanish out of the Argentine? 
 
 "The second question at once raises more prac- 
 tical issues than the first. Would Home Rule 
 result in attempts to dispossess the. Protestant 
 settlers of their footing in Ireland, and if so, 
 how? The first part of the question can be 
 shortly disposed of. The attempt would be 
 made; it has been made on every occasion in the 
 history of Ireland on which the native element 
 has been in the ascendancy, and it would be 
 made again. . . . 
 
 "The attempt would not be made by methods 
 of open violence, but by more characteristic 
 methods of which the more conspicuous would 
 be as follows : 
 
156 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 (1) "Petty injustices and persecutions which 
 may be further subdivided as follows : 
 
 (a) Taking the Parliamentary represen- 
 tation ; 
 
 (b) Establishing native officials in every 
 executive and remunerative post in the 
 country. 
 
 (2) "Agrarian outrages. 
 
 (3) "Tammany methods (shameless political 
 corruption, blackmail, intimidation, violence, by 
 which the Irish once made the Municipal Cor- 
 poration of New York notorious). 
 
 "Such have been the native methods from time 
 immemorial. . . . They are the fighting meth- 
 ods of the race, to which the fear of conviction 
 and punishment have always been the only de- 
 terrent; and under Home Rule neither convic- 
 tions nor punishment would follow. Magis- 
 trates, constables, judge and jury, would be on 
 the side of the perpetrators." 
 
 This is Ulster's idea of Home Rule, and we 
 agree that the picture is not an attractive one. 
 It is easy to laugh at it and describe it as fan- 
 ciful, but history — and that is why I have made 
 a point of reminding you of it briefly — history of 
 the past and of the present does not gainsay 
 them. 
 
 Ulster is quite happy in her Union with Great 
 Britain; she has the most profound reasons for 
 dreading separation and the yoke which will be 
 imposed upon her. By what right is it to be 
 
THE PRICE OF A BARGAIN 157 
 
 imposed? There is only one pretext, the "unity 
 of Irish nationality; Ulster is an integral part 
 of Ireland." Nothing more fatuous can be con- 
 ceived. It is the logic of more than one nation- 
 alism, lucubrations emanating from the brain 
 of three or four professors, poets, ethnologists, 
 geographers, and so on, which end by creating 
 in masses which are perfectly amorphous and 
 apathetic an "irresistible movement," with the 
 help of priests, lawyers, and school-teachers. 
 German science and intrigue have produced not 
 a few of these brilliant fabrications. 
 
 The case of Ulster is by far the most artificial 
 example, and those who cannot see it must be 
 shutting their eyes to facts. Moreover, the Na- 
 tionalists betray their confusion on the subject, 
 and alas ! also their bad faith. They do not even 
 try to reason; they assert, they threaten. As 
 they are masters of the Parliamentary majority 
 at Westminster, they are content to give orders 
 without mincing matters. 
 
 Mr. Dillon said: "The thing the Protestants 
 of Ulster cannot bear to accept is equality with 
 their fellow-countrymen," 1 or again : "The peo- 
 ple of Ulster will have to come down from that 
 proud eminence, bow their lofty crests, and ac- 
 cept equality with their fellow-countrymen." 2 
 
 Speech at Carlisle, June, 1912. 
 'Speech at Barnsley, May, 1912. 
 
158 IKELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 In plain English that means that Ulster must 
 submit to being strangled in the Dublin Parlia- 
 ment by three votes to one. 
 
 Ireland does not form one nation, replies the 
 Unionist, but two nations sharply divided by 
 race, religion, and politics. There are no rea- 
 sons justifying a Nationalist Parliament at Dub- 
 lin which do not similarly justify a Unionist 
 Parliament at Belfast. Ulster does not even 
 want that; she simply asks to stay united to 
 Great Britain and be ruled by the Government 
 in London. Why should she not have the right 
 to remain as she is? 
 
 What reply can be given to the following con- 
 clusions of the late Duke of Devonshire? 
 
 "The people of Ulster believe, rightly or 
 wrongly, that under a Government responsible 
 to an Imperial Parliament they possess at pres- 
 ent the fullest security which they can possess 
 of their personal freedom, their liberties, and 
 their right to transact their own business in 
 their own way. You have no right to offer them 
 any inferior security to that ; and if, after weigh- 
 ing the character of the Government which it is 
 sought to impose on them, they resolve that they 
 are no longer bound to obey a law which does 
 not give them equal and just protection with 
 their fellow-subjects, who can say — how, at all 
 events, can the descendants of those who resisted 
 King James II say — that they have not a right, 
 
THE PKICE OF A BAKGAIN 159 
 
 if they think fit to resist, if they think they have 
 the power, the imposition of a Government put 
 upon them by force ?" 1 
 
 This is what Ulster is compelled to do to her 
 great regret, and the Conservative party, the old 
 defender of established order and of the Consti- 
 tution, agrees with her and promises her sup- 
 port. On September 28th, 1912, Sir Edward 
 Carson appealed to all his partisans, and 218,000 
 men signed a solemn covenant at Belfast not to 
 recognize the authority of a Dublin Parliament. 
 A covenant is a religious vow and not a catch- 
 word for electioneering advertisement. Those 
 who know the dour resoluteness of the Scottish 
 character, without exaggeration and without 
 vain boasting, realize that the vow will be kept 
 and that nothing will bend them. Those forces 
 are not easily stirred, but woe to those who 
 resist them! 
 
 Carson began to raise an army of volunteers, 
 and imported arms, rifles, bayonets, and muni- 
 tions; in all the villages of eastern Ulster, 
 workingmen were practicing drill and rifle- 
 shooting with enthusiasm. Mr. Asquith and his 
 Kadicals, who began by laughing at the whole 
 thing, soon discovered that the time for speeches 
 
 1 The Life of Spencer Compton, eighth Duke of Devonshire, 
 by Bernard Holland, C.B., vol. ii., p. 250. 
 
160 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 and shifts had passed. There was hesitation in 
 the ranks. Anaesthesia was tried, the invalid 
 was to be put to sleep. Lord Loreburn, the Lord 
 Chancellor, suggested a conference for concilia- 
 tion. Mr. Churchill mentioned possible amend- 
 ments, and promised Imperial Federation, Home 
 Rule for everybody, believing that the word "Im- 
 perial" would seduce the Ulster patriots. Sir 
 Edward Grey suggested autonomy for Ulster 
 within autonomy for Ireland. 
 
 It was too late for all these palliatives ; Ulster 
 had no longer any confidence in this political 
 jugglery. Carson refused a conference which 
 could lead to nothing (events proved that he was 
 in the right), and appointed Lieutenant-General 
 Sir George Richardson Commander-in-Chief of 
 the Ulster Volunteers; he reviewed 100,000 men 
 outside Belfast. 
 
 Finally, in September, 1913, the Unionist 
 Council of Ulster adopted a distinct Constitu- 
 tion of Provisory Government in preparation for 
 the day when Home Rule would become law. 
 A large sum was raised by a subscription to in- 
 demnify the victims of the approaching struggle, 
 the disabled, widows and orphans. In England 
 a committee prepared an organization to receive 
 refugees from Ulster, who would have to flee be- 
 fore the horrors of civil war — the organization 
 was so thorough that a few months later Lady 
 
THE PEICE OF A BARGAIN 161 
 
 Lugard offered it to the Government for the Bel- 
 gian refugees, and for a long time it was their 
 principal refuge. 
 
 Everything was therefore ready for the fray, 
 and to such a pitch that on March 1st, 1914, it 
 was announced that the ranks of the Ulster 
 Army, consisting of 111,000 volunteers, were full 
 and that no further recruits were to be enrolled. 
 English public opinion was profoundly stirred, 
 and Liberal orators felt very conscious that their 
 audiences did not approve of them. It might 
 have been possible to defend a measure of gen- 
 erosity towards Nationalist Ireland, but it was 
 contrary to John Bull's idea of common sense 
 to sacrifice to this defiant, hostile rebel a vast 
 population which was perfectly loyal and 
 friendly. Therefore Mr. Asquith, though refus- 
 ing to solve the question by a general election 
 or a plebiscite, consented to offer the following 
 concession on March 8th. 
 
 As some counties in Ulster, namely those in 
 the west, were not Unionist, it would not be 
 just to treat the province as a homogeneous 
 whole; that agreed upon, each of the Ulster 
 counties might, by a vote with a bare majority, 
 decide whether it wanted to be under London 
 or Dublin. This was a tempting proposal with 
 which every one would have agreed . . . but it 
 was to be a beautiful dream without the reality. 
 
162 IKELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 At the end of six years every one was to fall 
 into line, and the refractory counties were to be 
 compelled to revert automatically under the law 
 of the Dublin Parliament. By the same amend- 
 ment the right of Protestant Ulster to decide her 
 fate was recognized, and yet after a short inter- 
 val it was to be taken from her! 
 
 In the name of his fellow-citizens Sir Edward 
 Carson refused this sentence of death of which 
 the execution was postponed for six years, and 
 afterwards stated his final conditions; he ac- 
 cepted the proposed geographical division, 
 though it was a bad dissection, for there are 
 many Protestants in the counties which would 
 pass under the Nationalist thumb, and many 
 Catholics in the others. But if he submitted to 
 the democratic injustices of the bare majority, 
 he insisted that at least this minimum of equity 
 should be durable and definite, and not re- 
 vocable. 
 
 This declaration will be historic, for it is prob- 
 able that any future solution of the Irish im- 
 broglio will have to take it into account. Na- 
 tionalists and Liberals, dismayed at seeing their 
 plans upset by this resistance, moaned daily 
 "Ulster is unreasonable," and reproached Carson 
 for his extreme intransigeance. They forgot 
 that he was master of the situation, and might 
 exact much more at a time when the Govern- 
 
THE PRICE OF A BARGAIN 163 
 
 ment was changing its tune, hesitating, and offer- 
 ing a compromise. Was he not meeting them 
 half-way when he accepted the stupid verdict of 
 the bare majority in questions of independence 
 and of national existence? Is there another 
 Constitution in Europe which would be satisfied 
 with it? 
 
 However that may be, Carson's reply was 
 very badly received. Mr. Redmond and Mr. 
 Churchill, the great military strategist of the 
 Liberal party — oh, shade of an illustrious ances- 
 tor! — called to arms, to the great dismay of Mr. 
 Asquith and the old Gladstonians, who are not 
 bellicose. Did they expect Ulster to retreat? 
 Sir Edward Carson immediately took up the 
 challenge, and on March 19th, after the Com- 
 mons had voted against his final recourse to a 
 referendum, he solemnly left the House amid the 
 applause of his party, announcing that he was 
 going to Belfast to put himself at the head of 
 his friends and await events. 
 
 The days which followed were stormy ones. 
 The day after Sir Edward's departure, orders 
 were received at the Curragh for troops to hold 
 themselves in readiness to march on Ulster. The 
 Secretary of State authorized the officers to leave 
 the army if they did not wish to take part in 
 the expedition ; a hundred of them resigned their 
 commissions. 
 
164 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 The Government, angrily questioned in the 
 House, vowed that it had only wished to take 
 the simplest precautions to protect public build- 
 ings. The Secretary of State for War ordered 
 those officers who had resigned to rejoin their 
 regiments, and General Gough, commanding at 
 the Curragh, returned from conferring with his 
 chiefs in London and announced that he had a 
 promise in writing not to have to send the 
 cavalry brigade to Ulster. Instantly the Radi- 
 cals protested against the "military camarilla" 
 and forced Mr. Asquith to repudiate the promise 
 given by the Secretary of State for War, Colonel 
 Seely, and countersigned by General French, 
 Chief of the Staff, and General Ewart, his chief 
 staff officer. In short, there were contradic- 
 tions, misunderstandings, and muddles, followed 
 by the resignations of Seely, French and Ewart, 
 etc. On his side Mr. Churchill, the First Lord 
 of the Admiralty, as ever on the lookout for mar- 
 tial glory, raised another storm by sending a 
 cruiser squadron to Belfast. 
 
 All this precipitated the change in public 
 opinion already noted above; and Mr. Asquith, 
 the subtlest orator in England, again adopted 
 a conciliatory tone, protested that the fears of 
 Ulster were vain, that before six years had 
 passed a vast system of Federation would extend 
 over the whole Empire and would ensure every 
 
THE PRICE OF A BARGAIN 165 
 
 guarantee to Ulster, etc. Sir Edward Carson, 
 coldly skeptical, was not convinced, and spurned 
 the proposal. His view amounted to this : 
 
 "It is not we who ask to make any change. 
 Do not include us in Home Rule, let the Na- 
 tionalists make their experiments in practical 
 government without us. If they do well, if they 
 dissipate our fears and reassure us, they will 
 win us by persuasion, as I wish with all my 
 heart that they may do. When we have seen 
 them at work, if they keep their fine promises 
 of wisdom, toleration, social and economic 
 progress, loyalty and good-will towards our 
 mother country, we shall be happy to cooperate 
 with them. But not before. We know only too 
 well on what our suspicions are founded!" 
 
 Mr. Asquith gave it up; bullied by his credi- 
 tors the Nationalists, he stuck to his original 
 scheme, his amendment, and the six-years' 
 clause. The House of Lords, on the other hand, 
 making use of what little initiative remained to 
 it, adopted a motion of Lord Lansdowne's to 
 exclude the whole of Ulster, including the west- 
 ern counties. This scheme was no more justifi- 
 able than the Nationalist claim to the Unionist 
 counties; Lord Lansdowne has never shown 
 much sagacity with regard to Irish problems. 
 
 The new conflict between the two Houses of 
 Parliament marks the culminating point of the 
 
166 IKELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 crisis, and it was hard to see how the Govern- 
 ment could avoid resorting to force. But to 
 what force? The regular army had failed; the 
 only alternative was the army of National Vol- 
 unteers which had just been started in Dublin, 
 modeled upon their rivals in Belfast, with the 
 official approval of Mr. Kedmond and his lieu- 
 tenants. 
 
 In face of imminent civil war King George 
 made a final attempt at pacification, and sum- 
 moned to Buckingham Palace eight leaders of 
 the English and Irish parties. Unfortunately, 
 on July 24th, 1914, the Conference broke down 
 on the question of the delimitation of the coun- 
 ties which were to be excluded. 
 
 At that moment other clouds were banking up 
 on the European horizon, and grave questions 
 brought about a truce in this intestine quarrel. 
 The diplomatic tension of the end of July, grow- 
 ing apprehension, dread of the gigantic drama 
 which was to be performed, finally the enthusi- 
 asm of August, the unanimous rising of the 
 whole British nation for the defense of the weak 
 and for Eight, all made the Irish squabbles and 
 the servile maneuvres of the Kadical Cabinet 
 appear infinitely paltry in comparison. 
 
 At Westminster, as at the Palais Bourbon, the 
 hour was poignant, vows were sublime, union 
 was to be sacred. There was to be an end of 
 
TEE PRICE OF A BARGAIN 167 
 
 spite, intrigue, individual or national selfishness. 
 Carson told Ms volunteers at once to go and fight 
 in Belgium, and Redmond himself recognized 
 with true nobility that our cause was just and 
 must take precedence of his. A united front was 
 presented to the barbarous enemy, and very fine 
 it was. 
 
 Alas! democracies have their organic vices, 
 and the truce did not last long ; we shall see that 
 the Irish policy of the Asquith Ministry had a 
 sad epilogue. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 IRELAND DURING THE WAR 
 
 The English Parliament, faithful to its resolu- 
 tions, gave for six weeks a fine example of con- 
 cord and moderation; the victory of the Marne 
 was a consolation to all, and every one had for- 
 gotten political chicanery, when all of a sudden 
 Mr. Asquith made a most unexpected move. 
 Thinking that his adversaries were distracted by 
 their patriotic emotions and the grave preoccu- 
 pations of the world-struggle, the Prime Min- 
 ister thought fit to profit by it to steal a march 
 on them. 
 
 The amendments proposed by Mr. Asquith to 
 appease Ulster had satisfied no one, but when 
 war broke out the House of Lords was still ex- 
 amining them and trying to correct them by 
 counter-proposals. Whatever might be the out- 
 come of any of them, one fact stood out as a 
 result of this long struggle between the two 
 Houses: the Government had recognized the ne- 
 cessity of giving Ulster a certain measure of 
 satisfaction. So long as this measure was insuni- 
 
 168 
 
IRELAND DURING THE WAR 169 
 
 cient or indefinite, Ulster had remained on guard 
 — until August 4th, 1914 ; since then on the con- 
 trary her patriotic self-denial had disarmed her. 
 
 On September 14th the Prime Minister an- 
 nounced that the Government was going to 
 present the Home Rule Act for the Royal sig- 
 nature without amendments, but would not put 
 it into force until after the war. As for the 
 amendments, he promised, but without specify- 
 ing them, that he would introduce them in a 
 separate Bill during the following session. You 
 can imagine how indignant the Unionists were 
 at this bombshell. In a word, Home Rule became 
 law, and instead of amendments there was noth- 
 ing but promises! And what promises? Mr. 
 Asquith began by breaking his pledges of March 
 9th and the express conditions of the party 
 truce concluded at the outbreak of war. 1 The 
 Times wrote that "once again Mr. Redmond had 
 compelled our Ministers to toe the line." 
 
 Sir Edward Carson that same evening issued 
 his manifesto "to the loyalists of Ulster" : 
 
 "By an act of unparalleled treachery and be- 
 trayal the Radical Government, at the dictation 
 of their Nationalist allies, have announced their 
 intention of passing into law, without discussing 
 the Amending Bill which they themselves intro- 
 
 1 Speech by Mr. Bonar Law, September 15th, 1914. 
 
170 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 duced, the detestable Home Rule Bill, which we 
 are pledged to resist at all costs. They are tak- 
 ing advantage of the situation created by the 
 war, which threatens the very existence of the 
 United Kingdom and the Empire, to inflict upon 
 us this degradation and humiliation. The Gov- 
 ernment have thought it an opportune moment, 
 when a great number of members of Parliament 
 are serving their country and so many of our 
 own people have nobly responded to Lord 
 Kitchener's appeal, and when, therefore, we 
 could not enter upon resistance without injur- 
 ing and weakening our country, to seek a party 
 triumph without any regard to national inter- 
 ests. The infamy of such a proceeding will, I 
 know, sink deeply into the heart of every loyal 
 and patriotic man, and will, I am sure, act as a 
 stimulus to the fight to the finish which we have 
 covenanted to carry out. 
 
 "But I ask my followers in Ulster to remem- 
 ber that this is not the action of the nation, but 
 of a despicable political faction, and our duty 
 at the present moment is towards our country 
 and the Empire. 'Our country first' is and al- 
 ways has been our motto. We must, therefore, 
 notwithstanding this indignity, go on with our 
 preparations to assist our country, and strain 
 every nerve to defeat its enemies. 
 
 "But you may rest assured that we shall not 
 slacken for a moment our efforts to be prepared, 
 when our country is out of danger, to carry out 
 our covenant to the end. I once more promise 
 to go straight on with you in the fight, strength- 
 ened by the belief that Great Britain will never 
 
IRELAND DURING THE WAR 171 
 
 forgive the base treachery of the Government. 
 "We will not have Home Rule — Never. 
 
 "Edward Carson." 
 
 September 15th, 1914. 
 
 Comment seems superfluous. For want of 
 anything better we will recall some of the prom- 
 ises made during the debate on September 15th, 
 and first of all we will quote Mr. Asquith: 
 
 "The employment of force, any kind of force, 
 for what you call the coercion of Ulster is an 
 absolutely unthinkable thing." 
 
 Then Mr. Bonar Law, leader of the Unionists : 
 
 "They said to themselves, 'Whatever we may 
 do, they are bound in a crisis like this to help 
 their country. Whatever injustice we inflict 
 upon them we can count upon them.' It is not 
 a pretty calculation, but I would like to say, with 
 the whole authority of our party, that it is a 
 correct calculation — they can count on us." 
 
 Finally, Mr. Redmond spoke in the name of 
 Ms Irishmen: 
 
 "This moratorium which the Government pro- 
 pose is a reasonable one. . . . There are two 
 things that I care most about in this world of 
 politics. The first is that the system of auton- 
 omy which is to be extended to Ireland shall be 
 extended to the whole country, and that not a 
 single sod of Irish soil and not a single citizen 
 of the Irish nation shall be excluded from its 
 operation. Let me say . . . that the second 
 
172 IRELAND—AN ENEMY? 
 
 thing that I most earnestly desire is that no co- 
 ercion shall be applied to any single county in 
 Ireland to force them against their will to come 
 into the Irish Government. . . . Catholic Na- 
 tionalist Irishmen and Protestant Unionist 
 Irishmen from the North of Ireland will be fight- 
 ing side by side on the battlefields of the Con- 
 tinent, and shedding their blood side by side. 
 . . . The result of all that must inevitably be 
 to assuage bitterness and to mollify the hatred 
 and misunderstanding which have kept them 
 apart, and I do not think I am too sanguine when 
 I express my belief that ... we may have been 
 able by this process in Ireland to come to an 
 agreement amongst ourselves whereby we can 
 suggest to the Government an Amending Bill 
 which they can easily accept and ratify. ... In 
 my opinion it will be the highest duty of every 
 Irish Nationalist . . . during that interval to 
 cultivate sedulously the spirit of conciliation, to 
 suppress the voice of faction, sectarian strife and 
 hatred, and to unite, as I hope we will be able to 
 unite, all the sons of Ireland in the great task 
 which this war imposes upon our nation. . . . 
 In the past the Irish people have furnished a 
 larger quota by far, in proportion to their pop- 
 ulation, than the people of England or Scot- 
 land. . . . What, I ask you, will be the record 
 now that the sentiment of the whole Irish people 
 undoubtedly is with you in this war? 
 
 "For the first time — certainly for over one 
 hundred years — Ireland in this war feels her in- 
 terests are precisely the same as yours. She 
 feels, she will feel, that the British democracy 
 
IRELAND DURING THE WAR 173 
 
 has kept faith with her. She knows that this is 
 a just war. She knows, she is moved in a very 
 special way by the fact that this war is under- 
 taken in the defense of small nations and op- 
 pressed peoples. . . . The manhood of Ireland 
 will spring to your aid in this war. ... I do not 
 think it is an exaggeration to say that on hun- 
 dreds of platforms in this country during the last 
 few years I have publicly promised, not only for 
 myself, but in the name of my country, that when 
 the rights of Ireland were admitted by the de- 
 mocracy of England, then Ireland would become 
 the strongest arm in the defense of the Empire. 
 The test has come sooner than I or any one ex- 
 pected. I tell the Prime Minister that that test 
 Will be honorably met. ... I would feel myself 
 personally dishonored if I did not say to my 
 fellow-countrymen that it is their duty, and 
 should be their honor, to take their place in the 
 firing line in this contest. . . . 
 
 "Just as Botha and Smuts have been able to 
 say that the concession of free institutions to 
 South Africa has changed the men who but ten 
 or a little more years ago were your bitter ene- 
 mies in the field into your loyal comrades and 
 fellow-citizens in the Empire, just as truthfully 
 can I say to you that by what of recent years has 
 happened in this country with the democracy of 
 England, Ireland has been transformed from 
 what George Meredith described a short time 
 ago as 'the broken arm of England' into one ot 
 the strongest bulwarks of the Empire." 1 
 
 1 House of Commons, September 15th, 1914. 
 
174 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 Thus spoke the leader, and he spoke well. I 
 have thought fit to quote his speech fully, for it 
 is so fine that one would like to see in it the act 
 of faith of a nation. Mr. Redmond had just 
 made similar promises to Cardinal Mercier, who 
 passed through London on his return from the 
 Conclave: "We shall avenge Belgium!" I be- 
 lieved in it, just as others did, and so firmly that 
 although I had made up my mind to write this 
 book for three years, I kept putting it off, hop- 
 ing to the end that Ireland would not go back 
 on the signature of her proxy. Not a voice was 
 raised from the Irish benches to repudiate Mr. 
 Redmond, not even Mr. Dillon's. 
 
 Yet, even from that day, a paragraph in Mr. 
 Redmond's speech ought to have given a warn- 
 
 "The Times in an article to-day, says : 'A Na- 
 tionalist Ireland still disowns her gallant sol- 
 diers, flaunts placards against enlistment, and 
 preaches sedition in her newspapers.' 
 
 "That is a cruel libel on Ireland. The men 
 who ure circulating hand-bills against enlist- 
 ment, and the men who are publishing little 
 wretched rags once a week or once a month — i 
 which none of us ever see — who are sending them 
 by some mysterious agency through the post in 
 this country and day by day to members — these 
 are the little group of men who never belonged 
 to the National Constitutional party at all, but 
 
IRELAND DURING THE WAR 175 
 
 who have been all through, and are to-day, our 
 bitterest enemies. If you take up these wretched 
 rags you will find praises of the Emperor of 
 Germany in the same sentence as are denuncia- 
 tions of my colleagues and myself." 1 
 
 Then the disloyal were merely exceptions? 
 Very well, that may have been so, but then why 
 are they to-day the favorites of Irish opinion? 
 Mr. Redmond has died recently, mortified by the 
 default of his people who did not keep the prom- 
 ises he made on their behalf. What followed? 
 His successor, Mr. Dillon, has thrown off the 
 mask which impeded him, and has joined the 
 men who are publishing little "wretched rags." 
 
 At the end of September Mr. Asquith, accom- 
 panied by Mr. Redmond, had a great welcome 
 in Dublin, and Mr. Redmond repeated his call 
 to arms. 
 
 "Her right to autonomy has been conceded by 
 the democracy of Great Britain, and therefore 
 Ireland will feel bound in honor to take her place 
 side by side with all the other autonomous por- 
 tions of the King's dominions in upholding her 
 interests. " 
 
 This time Mr. Dillon and Mr. Devlin on the 
 same platform announced their complete agree- 
 ment. A few days later Sir Edward Carson 
 
 1 House of Commons, September 15th, 1914. 
 
176 IKELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 and Mr. Bonar Law spoke at Belfast in their 
 turn : "Drop politics for the moment and serve 
 your country." 
 
 Ulster recruited well A In the rest of Ireland 
 there was rather more confusion, and it is im- 
 possible to say exactly what happened. It ap- 
 pears from Mr. Bedmond's declaration that he 
 wanted two separate things : an "Irish Brigade" 
 which would go and fight on the Continent with 
 Irish officers only, and perhaps if possible un- 
 der the green flag with the golden harp; and a 
 corps of "Irish Volunteers" for the defense of 
 the island — that is to say, that under this pre- 
 text the arming of the National Volunteers who 
 had been recently preparing to subdue Ulster 
 should be continued. Did he imagine that the 
 British authorities would giye arms to equip 
 what was after all a corps of partisans of doubt- 
 ful integrity? 
 
 The War Office showed no enthusiasm in en- 
 couraging these two schemes according to the 
 demands of the Irish. It gladly accepted re- 
 cruits from Ireland on the same conditions as 
 the others, to draft into the heroic Irish regi- 
 ments which were already in existence ; but not 
 to let them form a separate brigade, and to make 
 stipulations as to where they chose to fight, etc. 
 • — in short, to excite still further the old spirit 
 of separatist rivalry. 
 
IRELAND DURING THE WAR 177 
 
 The Nationalist leaders, seeing that their peo- 
 ple did not respond to the appeal as they had 
 promised, required nothing more to make them 
 put all the blame for their failure on the War 
 Office, and on the usual English stupidity. This 
 insinuation appears for the first time in a speech 
 of Mr. Redmond's at Waterford on October 11th, 
 1914 : a fortnight of propaganda had sufficed to 
 show him that among his fellow-countrymen 
 there was an indifference and a hostility which 
 augured ill. 
 
 On October 31st, after two months of friendly 
 reticence, The Times decided to lend him a hand 
 and speak openly. It asked why a meek Gov- 
 ernment allowed the multiplication and free dis- 
 tribution in Ireland of quantities of dangerous 
 and seditious leaflets, which conjured the peas- 
 ant not to sell his soul for the Saxon's shilling, 
 not to help England out of her cruel difficulty, 
 to abstain from an English war so long as the 
 Germans did not disembark on the island. . . . 
 It asked why Mr. Birrell, smiling as usual, al- 
 lowed so much freedom to these scribblers, while 
 the censorship was so severe for English news- 
 papers. It asked where the money came from 
 for so costly a campaign, and finally it pointed 
 out that the Irish bishops kept an ill-omened 
 silence, and had not yet approved Mr. Red- 
 mond's statements — prophetic remarks, whose 
 
178 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 deplorable accuracy the history of the following 
 months will reveah Great Britain has suffered 
 much from the errors, ambiguous associations, 
 tergiversations, and weaknesses of those who 
 governed her in 1914. Had not Mr. Asquith 
 confided the censorship of the press to Sir Stan- 
 ley Buckmaster, since become Lord Buckmas- 
 ter, and one of the leading lights of the pacifist- 
 defeatist cabal? 
 
 There was of course a certain amount of vari- 
 ation, a few fine movements along the right road, 
 and some of the Nationalist leaders made praise- 
 worthy efforts to spur on recruiting. But a 
 slight comparison seems to me to summarize very 
 well the attitude of the two great divisions of 
 Ireland : by the middle of November the munici- 
 pality of Dublin had sent 42 of their employees 
 to the army, Belfast 439. 
 
 About this time seditious tendencies became 
 more defined. It was no longer a question of 
 sly abstention, but of open sympathy for the 
 enemy. The poisonous press, led by The Irish 
 Volunteer, that flashy organ of the National Vol- 
 unteers, preached Germany's innocence, rejoiced 
 impudently over our reverses, calumnied in a 
 hateful manner French, English, and Algerian 
 troops, and promised that Albion's collapse 
 would shortly supervene. Irish Freedom wrote 
 that "when that putrid old carcass could no 
 
IRELAND DURING THE WAR 179 
 
 longer move, a psean of exultation would rise 
 from the Irish nation which would rend the 
 skies." The Irish Volunteer wrote: 
 
 "Do not, you Irishmen, fight for dirty little 
 England." and "our only path to the glorious 
 happy Ireland of our aspirations lies through 
 the downfall of the British Empire." * 
 
 Dear creatures ! It looks hopeful. But none 
 of this disturbs Buckmaster nor Birrell nor the 
 Viceroy Lord Aberdeen. What in the name of 
 fortune would upset their equanimity? Mr. Bir- 
 rell, in reply to a question in the House, even 
 asserted that — 
 
 "These publications appear to have an un- 
 usually large free circulation, particularly in 
 England. . . . Although I do not myself regard 
 them as a danger, I am sure they are an insult to 
 the sentiment of the vast majority of the Irish 
 people." 2 
 
 About this time, too, a society, which has since 
 been very prominent, took over the direction of 
 all this seditious agitation, the Sinn Fein Soci- 
 ety. "Sinn Fein" in Gaelic means "we our- 
 selves" ; in a word, it is the party which wants 
 integral autonomy, and it has a very realistic 
 and very practical program. Above all, Sinn 
 
 1 House of Commons, November 25th, 1914. 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
180 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 Fein professes great contempt for the Irish Na- 
 tionalist party and its Parliamentary efforts; 
 it simply wants to ignore the British Parlia- 
 ment, asserting that neither Mr. Redmond nor 
 his eighty-four deputies, nor even the great lead- 
 ers of the past, have ever achieved anything. 
 It has a Constitution: 
 
 "First : That we are a distinct nation. 
 
 "Second: That we will not make any volun- 
 tary agreement with Great Britain, until Great 
 Britain keeps her own compact which she made 
 by the Renunciation Act of 1783 which enacted 
 'that the right claimed by the people of Ireland 
 to be bound only by laws enacted by His Ma- 
 jesty and the Parliament of that Kingdom is 
 hereby declared to be established, and ascer- 
 tained for ever, and shall, at no time hereafter, 
 be questioned or questionable.' 
 
 "Third : That we are determined to make use 
 of any powers we have, or may have at any time 
 in the future, to work for our own advancement 
 and for the creation of the prosperous, virile, 
 and independent nation." 
 
 Then follow the methods which are to be em- 
 ployed : 
 
 The introduction of a Protective System for 
 Irish Industry and Commerce (against England, 
 of course). 
 
 An Irish Consular Service. 
 
IRELAND DURING THE WAR 181 
 
 An Irish Mercantile Marine, so as to dispense 
 with the English. 
 
 k The General Survey of Ireland and develop- 
 ment of its mineral resources. 
 
 An Irish National Bank and a National Stock 
 Exchange. 
 
 The creation of a National Civil Service; of- 
 ficials are to be appointed by the institution of 
 a common national qualifying examination and 
 a local competitive examination, the latter at the 
 discretion of the local oodies. Compulsory 
 teaching of the Irish language, of Irish history; 
 "national" ( ! ) methods of manufacture and agri- 
 culture — and other specimens of progress back- 
 wards. 
 
 The non-consumption of articles paying duty 
 to the British Exchequer. Withdrawal of all 
 voluntary support to the British Armed Forces. 
 
 The non-recognition of the British Parlia- 
 ments as invested with constitutional or moral 
 authority to legislate for Ireland. The Annual 
 Assembly in Dublin of persons elected ... to 
 formulate measures for the benefit of the whole 
 people of Ireland. 
 
 It is ambitious. The society started in a hum- 
 ble way at the time when the Nationalist party 
 was at its zenith, that party whose hegemony 
 it was one day to undermine. 
 
 Its founder is Mr. Griffith, a journalist of 
 
182 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 Welsh extraction, and the principal directors are 
 college and university professors, young poets, 
 etc. 
 
 At first they were laughed at and treated as 
 "visionaries," but it must be confessed that their 
 program is practical rather than Utopian, "Stop 
 begging for everything from England, let us get 
 to work ourselves." They began by opening a 
 bank, starting a newspaper, and asking for the 
 suffrages of municipal and provincial voters. 
 
 They dissociated themselves from the two ele- 
 ments which had led the country till now, the 
 clergy and the Nationalist party. "A century 
 of fine speeches has given us nothing." Evi- 
 dently the fine talkers, politicians by profession, 
 had no love for them and returned their insults 
 with interest. The clergy, more prudent, did 
 not commit themselves, but waited to see which 
 would win the day; but the young priests did 
 not conceal their sympathy with these out-and- 
 out rebels, and were present at Sinn Fein meet- 
 ings; it often happened that in a parish the old 
 priest was a Eedmonite and his curates enthusi- 
 astic Sinn Feiners. Lastly — Sinn Fein has an- 
 other ally, the group of revolutionary Socialists 
 in Dublin, led by one of the most violent of 
 demagogues, Jim Larkin, and delighted to find 
 this help for the coming great social upheaval. 
 
 What is the conspicuous feature in this move- 
 
IRELAND DURING THE WAR 183 
 
 ment? For the last century since O'ConnelFs 
 day, the official spokesman of Ireland, the elected 
 representatives and the Roman Catholic priest- 
 hood, have demanded under the name of Home 
 Rule an autonomy subject to the supremacy of 
 the Crown, promising to behave nicely and to 
 ask for nothing more, to be reasonable and main- 
 tain the same mutual advantages between the 
 two islands, and finally never to constitute a 
 military danger for England. As a guarantee 
 of good faith it was always understood that the 
 Imperial authorities alone would keep control 
 over military matters and international rela- 
 tions. And at the very moment when all this 
 was granted, when, as Mr. Redmond solemnly 
 asserted, her right to autonomy had been con- 
 ceded by the democracy of Great Britain, and 
 therefore Ireland would feel in honor bound to 
 keep her promises, a new party arose which re- 
 plied to Mr. Redmond: "You had no right to 
 make this promise ; w^e do not recognize any en- 
 gagement made with England. We do not want 
 either to have anything to do with your consti- 
 tutional transaction, we must have an inde- 
 pendent Republic." 
 
 Thereupon, in the course of two or three years, 
 the whole of Ireland turned its back on Mr. 
 Redmond, repudiated his declarations, and 
 adopted the new formula of Sinn Fein. The 
 
184 IRELAND—AN ENEMY? 
 
 game was up, and it might have been foreseen. 
 Had not Parnell sworn to sever the last link? 
 The situation was reached by slow stages, but it 
 was reached surely. Redmond's fine deeds and 
 moving phrases soothed the Radical idealists of 
 England and made them oblivious of many other 
 compromising threats. Unfortunately these were 
 the only statements in Ireland which were worth 
 anything. The Unionists were told to trust Ire- 
 land, and they shrugged their shoulders. Let 
 us see if they were mistaken. In December, 
 1914, as Mr. Birrell refused to intervene, the 
 military authorities, tired of the official inertia, 
 took upon themselves to seize these little sedi- 
 tious papers. And so the trouble began. Sinn 
 Fein complained of persecution, held some 
 stormy meetings and defied the police openly. 
 Its success exceeded all its hopes; the National 
 Volunteers deserted Redmond and turned over 
 wholesale to the Irish Volunteers of Sinn Fein. 
 Sinn Fein began to talk of "our brave allies 
 the Germans," and adopted a new motto, "Gott 
 strafe England!" Obviously Irish sympathies 
 were drawing closer and closer to Berlin. On 
 December 6th the German Dr. Kuno Meyer, for- 
 merly professor of the Celtic language at Dublin 
 University, announced to the Clan-na-Gael in 
 New York that Germany was engaged in form- 
 ing an Irish Brigade from among her prisoners. 
 
IRELAND DURING THE WAR 185 
 
 That was the first confession of this fresh in- 
 trigue. 
 
 There are only two things to note of the first 
 months of 1915 : the great prosperity of Ireland 
 — for though dissociating herself from the war 
 she did not refuse to profit by it — and the indif- 
 ference of English public opinion to what was 
 going on in the Emerald Isle. Ireland was not 
 provoked in any way — in fact, no notice was 
 taken of her, for England had other fish to fry. 
 Some other pretext must be invented to excuse 
 the attitude of suspicious Erin. 
 
 On March 15th Mr. Redmond complained at 
 Manchester that his Volunteers had not been 
 allowed to defend Irish soil by themselves. It 
 was a fairly naive hint to withdraw the English 
 garrison. Ulster had made fewer reservations, 
 and Belfast by March 1st had provided 19,000 
 men — that is, almost 5,000 for every 100,000 in- 
 habitants, more than any other town in the 
 United Kingdom; the Unionist counties of Ul- 
 ster represent 30 per cent, of the population of 
 Ireland, but they provided 60 per cent, of its 
 recruits. 
 
 During the month of May, Dublin, headed by 
 the Lord Mayor and its Nationalist members, 
 began to agitate on the subject of the new du- 
 ties on beer and spirits, for they would not even 
 help us financially. Thereupon Mr. Redmond 
 
186 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 produced his ultimatum, supported by the vocif- 
 erations of his whole party; and Asquith's Cab- 
 inet, unable to refuse him anything, yielded at 
 the first demand and withdrew its scheme. The 
 lesson was not lost; and the little scene was re- 
 peated every time that any help was asked from 
 Ireland. 
 
 A few days later England went through the 
 first serious crisis in internal politics since the 
 declaration of war. The slowing down of vol- 
 untary recruiting, the insufficiency of munitions, 
 the military disappointments of Neuve Chapelle 
 and Gallipoli, bickerings at the Admiralty, re- 
 verses in Galicia, an intrigue against Lord 
 Kitchener, who was thought to be opposed to 
 conscription — in short, there was a quantity of 
 dirty linen to be washed, and Lord Northcliffe's 
 press took charge of it with its accustomed 
 vigor. It was a question of getting rid of the 
 little petty back-stairs intrigues of pottering 
 Radicals, of putting an end to Mr. Asquith's de- 
 lays, of removing from office various lukewarm 
 if not suspect personages, of insisting upon new 
 blood, administrative reorganization, and per- 
 fect unity of all the party leaders for the con- 
 duct of the war. This produced the Coalition 
 Government, when Mr. Asquith took unto him- 
 self the great Conservative supporters, Lord 
 Curzon, Mr. Balfour, Mr. Bonar Law, Mr. Wal- 
 
IRELAND DURING THE WAR 187 
 
 ter Long, Mr. Austen Chamberlain, and the 
 Trade Unionist leader, Mr. Henderson. 
 
 In order to complete this nnion of willing 
 spirits, it was only necessary to summon the 
 leaders of the two rival factions in Ireland, Red- 
 mond and Carson. The latter gladly accepted 
 one of the junior legal appointments, but Mr. 
 Redmond declined the offer and preferred to 
 remain outside as a free lance. It is said that 
 he only refused because he was forced to do so, 
 to obey Ms party; at all events his refusal 
 marked a change and withdrawal from his fine 
 promises of August, 1914. 
 
 To tell the truth, the Nationalist party were 
 much dismayed to see the disappearance of the 
 Home Rule Cabinet which thejs had held in 
 bondage for so long, and they did not conceal 
 their annoyance. The rest seemed a secondary 
 matter. The rest! Civilization with its back 
 to the wall, the uncertain fate of other little na- 
 tions, unpunished crimes, martyrs to avenge — 
 no, Ireland did not trouble about them. Can 
 Nationalism only be racial egoism? 
 
 Do you know what Dublin got excited about, 
 a fortnight after the infernal affair of the Lusi- 
 taniaf In the reconstruction of his Cabinet Mr. 
 Asquith wished to appoint as Lord Chancellor 
 of Ireland a former political opponent, a capa- 
 ble and respected lawyer, but a convinced Union- 
 
188 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 ist. Instantly the Nationalists held a great 
 Council of War and Mr. Redmond hurled his 
 thunderbolts : "It is an insult to Ireland !" Mr. 
 Campbell withdrew his candidature in order to 
 appease these sensitive patriots; but what must 
 Ulster think about the matter — she to whom has 
 been promised later on under Home Rule the 
 most absolute impartiality in nominations? 
 
 In July there came another "insult to Ire- 
 land." Great Britain, having enrolled 3,000,- 
 000 men, saw that the flow of voluntary enlist- 
 ment was practically exhausted, and prepared 
 for conscription. For this purpose the popula- 
 tion had to be registered and classified into the 
 different categories from which fit men should 
 be drawn. Ireland protested, and as the new 
 Cabinet still contained Messrs. Asquith and Bir- 
 rell, Mr. Redmond ordered them to resort to the 
 traditional expedient. Registration shall not 
 apply to Ireland — only to Ulster. 
 
 But still promises were not fulfilled, recruit- 
 ing in Ireland was slack and far below the nor- 
 mal average. Fresh pretexts had to be found to 
 excuse this. There was much indignation at 
 Sir Edward Carson's appointment; it was in- 
 sinuated that the Ulster division was not being 
 sent to the front, but was being retained in its 
 camps with sinister motives, etc. It was even 
 maintained that the mere presence of Carson in 
 
IRELAND DURING THE WAR 189 
 
 the Government was enough to absolve recal- 
 citrant young Irishmen. 
 
 The apathy of these able-bodied young men 
 was, it is true, merely superficial. On August 
 1st this fact was suddenly revealed, and there 
 were many who thought it ominous. On that 
 day O'Donovan Rossa was buried in Dublin; he 
 was an old dynamiter of great age, of many 
 crimes ; he had been pardoned by Gladstone and 
 exiled to America; in a word, he was a perfect 
 type of an "Irish martyr.'' The funeral was 
 magnificent, and 10,000 Volunteers, both Red- 
 mondites and Sinn Feiners, marched in the pro- 
 cession in good order. At least 5,000 of them 
 were armed with rifles. Under the Birrell 
 regime the police were always forbidden to in- 
 terfere, and the recruiting sergeants could only 
 look on with envious eyes. And Mr. Redmond 
 was naively more and more amazed that the 
 War Office refused to recognize his Volunteers 
 officially! 
 
 At the end of October, Sir Edward Carson re- 
 signed, as he would not be responsible for the 
 pusillanimous diplomacy in the Balkans. His 
 opponents had then one excuse the less for neg- 
 lecting their duty, but recruiting did not im- 
 prove for all that. Mr. Redmond tried to com- 
 fort himself by pointing out the heroism of those 
 Irish who were serving, and of those who came 
 
190 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 from Australia and Canada. We certainly ad- 
 mire them all, but what had they to do with the 
 matter? I will just quote in passing a statement 
 on the same theme by an Irishman who, however, 
 has no ill-feeling. "The country was not with 
 it [i.e. the rebellion], for be it remembered that 
 a whole army of Irishmen, possibly 300,000 of 
 our race [he includes colonials], are fighting 
 with England instead of against her" ; and a lit- 
 tle farther on: "It was hard enough that our 
 men in the English armies should be slain for 
 causes which no amount of explanation will ever 
 render less foreign to us, or even intelligible" 
 (sic!). 1 The commentary spoils it all. 
 
 Redmond made out that he was very proud of 
 the attitude of his fellow-countrymen. He as- 
 sured Parliament on November 2nd that for the 
 first time in the course of history the whole 
 Irish race fully sympathized with England in the 
 war. It is true that Ireland was quiet, or ap- 
 peared to be quiet. The following months will 
 show us what that conceals. 
 
 In December, 1915, The Times raised another 
 alarm about Sinn Fein propaganda, and about 
 small leaflets, so called, which had a consider- 
 able circulation. Mr. Birrell was obliged to con- 
 fess that the Irish Volunteers tried to prevent 
 recruiting and to foment sedition. Unfortu- 
 
 1 The Insurrection in Dublin, by James Stephens, pp. 87, 88. 
 
IRELAND DURING THE WAR 191 
 
 nately he still did not decide to take any steps, 
 and bis panacea was as usual a policy of laissez- 
 faire. The malcontents armed themselves and 
 drilled with more enthusiasm than ever; the 
 Bishop of Limerick blessed their cause and wrote 
 that "this war does not concern Ireland." All 
 agreed upon a fresh argument. "We do not owe 
 England anything so long as she does not put 
 into force the Home Eule Act which she has 
 passed. Mr. Eedmond betrayed us when he ac- 
 cepted this postponement, when he neglected to 
 make use of circumstances to force Mr. Asquith's 
 hand and oblige him to give immediate and com- 
 plete satisfaction, including the submission of 
 Ulster. The English are in difficulties; the war 
 is giving them more trouble than was expected. 
 So much the better. 'England's difficulty, Ire- 
 land's opportunity.' Let us make the most of 
 it." Just at this time the Government wished 
 to retrench and reduce administrative expendi- 
 ture. A commission was suggested to examine 
 notorious abuses of Irish administration. Mr. 
 Redmond opposed it : "no Irish economies." The 
 Government gave in. Yet for forty years the 
 Nationalist party has been objecting to that very 
 wastefulness and extravagance in the Irish esti- 
 mates! How logical! How consistent! 
 
 In the New Year of 1916 the British Cabinet 
 
192 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 came to the stern decision to bring in conscrip- 
 tion. The idea was repugnant to Liberal Eng- 
 lishmen, but when people are willing they can 
 stifle their objections at so tragic a crisis and in 
 so noble a cause. The debate was a solemn one 
 and the Bill was passed by a very large major- 
 ity. 1 Here again Mr. Redmond opposed his veto : 
 the new Act was not to extend to Ireland. 
 Heaven knows what worries that clause has 
 caused ! 
 
 The speech of the Irish leader was feeble. His 
 main object was to assert that his country had 
 done her duty; is his assertion enough to make 
 us believe it? He even dared to risk a compari- 
 son between Great Britain and Ireland. Is it 
 not a challenge? To do it justice we produce 
 the exact figures which the Government had to 
 publish at the time. 
 
 Great Britain had up to October 23rd, 1915, 
 produced nearly 3,000,000 volunteers (in the 
 regular army, the reserve, the navy, and Kitchen- 
 er's army). 2 She still had 5,000,000 men of 
 military age of whom 2,830,000 came forward 
 under Lord Derby's scheme between October 
 23rd and December 15th — on the condition that 
 
 1 403 votes against 105, of which 60 were Nationalists. 
 'Before the war the regular army and the navy contained 
 26,000 Irishmen serving and 30,000 in the reserve. 
 
IRELAND DURING THE WAR 193 
 
 they would be called up in groups, unmarried 
 men first, etc. 
 
 At the instance of Mr. Redmond, Lord Derby's 
 scheme of enrolling men under categories had 
 also not been applied to Ireland. Mr. Birrell 
 drew up the following table for the four Irish 
 provinces: (1) men of military age on August 
 15th, 1915; (2) voluntary enlistments up to De- 
 cember 15th. 
 
 (1) (2) 
 
 Leinster (Dublin) . . 174,597 27,458 or 15.7 per cent. 
 
 Munster 136,637 14,190 " 10.4 " 
 
 Connaught 81,392 3,589 " 4.4 * 
 
 Ulster 169,489 49,760 " 29.5 
 
 The reader can see whether the percentages jus- 
 tify Mr. Redmond's patriotic pride so far as the 
 first three provinces are concerned, which belong 
 to his party. Mr. Campbell, member for Dub- 
 lin University, in one of the finest speeches in 
 the debate, said: 
 
 "I would not be honest — and in this matter 
 one is bound to speak plainly and frankly — if I 
 were to live up, or attempt to live up, to that 
 conspiracy of make-believe in regard to recruit- 
 ing in Ireland which prevails to-day. . . . There 
 are many parts of Ireland to-day in which you 
 could not hold a recruiting meeting. There 
 have been, to my own knowledge, in the last few 
 months many of those recruiting meetings 
 
194 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 broken up, hostile resolutions carried, and even 
 that great soldier Lieutenant O'Leary, who 
 gained the Victoria Cross as the result of con- 
 spicuous gallantry, has to my own knowledge 
 been received with jeers and hoots." 1 
 
 Mr. Campbell, in a fine passage, takes up and 
 turns round the hateful formula, "England's dif- 
 ficulty, Ireland's opportunity," in an ardent ap- 
 peal; yes, now is come the chance for Ireland, 
 the opportune moment, the hour for exalted in- 
 spiration; yes, let us be loyal to the cause of 
 justice and liberty, let us help England in her 
 noble task. Then, indeed, we shall have deserved 
 everything and we shall be able to ask for every- 
 thing. We shall have won our rights otherwise 
 than by rebellions and stabs in the back . . . ! 
 Alas! as Mr. Campbell is an old Unionist, the 
 Nationalists listened to all this with amusement, 
 and a voice whispers to them the new creed — 
 the motto of Sinn Fein — "Ourselves alone." 
 
 Sir Edward Carson protested in the name of 
 Ulster; his province was humiliated by this in- 
 sulting favor, and valiant Irish regiments will be 
 short of recruits. Mr. Redmond was angry; he 
 undertook that the Irish regiments would 
 not be thus neglected, there would be no lack of 
 volunteers. A fine promise certainly, but who 
 
 1 House of Commons, January 6th, 1916. 
 
IRELAND DURING THE WAR 195 
 
 would keep it? Was it not flouted a year ago? 
 No, Ireland will not have conscription, and the 
 hour is approaching when she will thank us 
 after her manner. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 Imperceptibly we draw near to the edge of 
 the abyss. The rebels prepared their plot un- 
 der better conditions than they could have ex- 
 pected; everything looked most promising for 
 their schemes. No one is thinking about them, 
 all eyes are turned elsewhere; the tragic anxi- 
 ety of Verdun engrosses every one, and since 
 midnight on March 1st there is unrestricted sub- 
 marine war. Poor Ireland! another insult, the 
 mortification of interesting nobody ! Even those 
 who ought to be thinking about her, such as Mr. 
 Birrell, do not appear to be doing so. The Sinn 
 Feiners have a clear field; they are no longer 
 content with field days in the country, they have 
 maneuvers in Dublin itself. Night maneuvers, 
 street fighting, sham sieges of the Castle, the 
 citadel of the Government; and all this is done 
 with modern rifles, with impunity, under the 
 eyes of a muzzled police. Mr. Birrell and his 
 subordinates make out that this is very amusing 
 and quite harmless. The reign of these non- 
 chalant gentlemen is drawing to its close, and 
 soon we shall have no need to refer to them, but 
 before forgetting them I will just recall one of 
 
196 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 the hundreds of little incidents which are typ- 
 ical of the methods of these ineffable adminis- 
 trators. 
 
 The Budget of 1916 instituted a tax upon pub- 
 lic entertainments, sports meetings, etc. In Ire- 
 land, where everything is politics, sports are 
 regulated by the Gaelic League, a sort of replica 
 of Sinn Fein. Football and hockey with new 
 names and trifling alterations have been turned 
 by the Gaelic League into "national games for 
 developing the national spirit.'' It simply 
 means that they object to one of the forms of 
 Anglo-Saxon influence, and no effort is made to 
 conceal it. Moreover, the rules of the League 
 exclude rigorously any Irishman "so cowardly as 
 to wear the English uniform," and no soldier 
 can enter its precincts. 
 
 Moreover, this League demanded that it 
 should pay no entertainment tax on gate-money 
 for its football matches, on the plea of the higher 
 interests of national idealism and other fool- 
 traps. Mr. Birrell was the fool: he gave way 
 with his usual suavity. Sedition was at a pre- 
 mium, and this happened a fortnight before civil 
 war in Dublin! 
 
 Finally, the Courts were useless. As soon as 
 a judge dared to show severity, he was repri- 
 manded by Government. The juries were the 
 accomplices in all misdemeanors: for a speech 
 
IRELAND DURING THE WAR 197 
 
 inciting to treason the fine was one shilling, and 
 the Kaiser was applauded in open court. No 
 steps were taken, the police had to keep quiet. 
 
 The forts of Verdun fall one by one, we are 
 being driven into a corner, the savage brute has 
 us at bay . . . we have only to be shot from be- 
 hind: Sinn Fein undertakes the job. 
 
 On April 25th, 1916, Easter Tuesday, the Ad- 
 miralty published a brief communique : 
 
 "During the period between p.m. April 20th 
 and p.m. April 21st, an attempt to land arms 1 
 and ammunition in Ireland was made by a ves- 
 sel under the guise of a neutral merchant ship, 
 but in reality a German auxiliary, in conjunction 
 with a German submarine. The auxiliary sank 
 and a number of prisoners were made, amongst 
 them was Sir Roger Casement." 
 
 That same evening there were other surprises : 
 the German cruisers come out, the east coast of 
 England is bombarded, an armed rebellion in 
 Dublin, the General Post Office seized by riot- 
 ers, etc. . . . We can all remember these events 
 as they were described in the newspapers. The 
 coincidences were conclusive: the German has 
 been at work, and the Irish, too. Ireland has 
 given herself away. And Mr. Birrell will have 
 
 1 20,000 rifles captured in Russia. 
 
198 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 to allow, before he goes into retirement, after 
 ten years of culpable weakness, that Ireland can- 
 not be won by kindness. May other statesmen, 
 no less sincere and well-meaning, not fall again 
 into his mistake ! 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE INSURRECTION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 
 
 Thus, during Easter, 1916, the authorities 
 charged with the duty of governing Ireland laid 
 aside all anxiety and suspicion; optimism was 
 the order of the day. The officers at the Curragh 
 were allowed to be present on the following day 
 at the steeplechases at Fairyhouse, and General 
 Friend, the Commander-in-Chief, went to Lon- 
 don on leave. Dublin Castle was guarded by 
 seventeen men. There were no more than 1,000 
 men in Dublin to hold all the barracks, maga- 
 zines, etc., and 2,500 at the Curragh. 
 
 Farther off, in the west, rumor was busy, se- 
 crets were whispered from one to another mys- 
 teriously. "The Germans have come to deliver 
 Ireland . . . 30,000 Prussians have landed in 
 Kerry, the same number of Irish-Americans at 
 Wexford . . . Verdun has fallen. France has 
 capitulated and signed the peace, England is im- 
 ploring for a separate peace . . . the Irish 
 coasts are surrounded by a cordon of subma- 
 rines, English reinforcements will not be able 
 to land . . ." 
 
 199 
 
200 IKELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 Easter Monday was a regular fete day with 
 glorious sunshine. A grand parade of Sinn Fein 
 Volunteers, in green uniforms, had been an- 
 nounced. In the streets of Dublin there were 
 many soldiers on leave, among them Canadians 
 and Australians who had come to see their dis- 
 tant cousins. British troops carry no arms 
 when not on duty, not even a bayonet. 
 
 Little squads of Sinn Feiners were all about, 
 on their way to the parade ; they were looked at 
 with curiosity, but the sight was nothing new. 
 All of a sudden a young English officer who had 
 just bought a stamp at the General Post Office 
 was told that he was a prisoner, turned round 
 and found himself between two Volunteers with 
 fixed bayonets. Outside, shots were heard ; Sinn 
 Fein was shooting down all the unarmed men 
 on leave — a vestige of that atavistic ferocity 
 which Ulster is so greatly blamed for mistrust- 
 ing. A fortnight later, Mr. Dillon, speaking in 
 the House of Commons, said that he regretted 
 to see the ardor of his fellow-countrymen so mis- 
 placed, but he was proud of their courage, and 
 they fought cleanly. The Irish have these 
 euphemisms ! Some cavalry were returning from 
 escort duty under a second lieutenant, their 
 lances at rest, and without other arms, and went 
 slowly along by the quays. When the officer, 
 quite a young boy, turned the corner into Sack- 
 
THE INSURRECTION 201 
 
 ville Street, several shots rang out ; he fell from 
 his horse, killed, then the sergeant. 
 
 At the gates of the Castle an old policeman 
 was on duty, a good old fellow, popular and well 
 known in Dublin. Seeing a patrol arrive and 
 thinking it was some new joke, such as he had 
 seen so many of in the last two years, he raised 
 his hand and said : "Now then, boys, be off with 
 you, no nonsense." He was shot down and 
 killed. The patrol was led by a woman who bent 
 down and spat in the face of the corpse. It took 
 two seconds, just time for the sentries to sum- 
 mon the guard. It was thus that Dublin Castle 
 was saved. 
 
 Motor-cars, lorries, etc., were stopped and 
 requisitioned for barricades. All civilians who 
 did not obey (for as yet no one took all this seri- 
 ously) were answered by a revolver bullet with- 
 out more ado. Saint Stephen's Green was 
 seized by another party, commanded by the fa- 
 mous Countess Markievicz, elegantly attired in 
 a green tunic, breeches, and soft felt hat. A 
 daughter of one of the best and oldest families 
 in the country, the Gore-Booths, aesthetic, ec- 
 centric, formerly mixed up with young art stu- 
 dents in Montparnasse, she had married in Paris 
 a young Polish count, and had brought him back 
 to Dublin, where she was at the head of the suf- 
 fragettes, socialist kitchens, futurist art and de- 
 
202 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 cadent theater, etc. An admirer attributes this 
 pious wish to the picturesque Amazon: "If I 
 could only shoot one British soldier I should die 
 happy !" Was the wish fulfilled? . . . Some of- 
 ficers coming out from lunch at the Shelbourne 
 Hotel on the other side of the square fell to the 
 ground — they were just casual visitors, and un- 
 armed. Finally the rebels installed themselves 
 in several large buildings, made loopholes in 
 them and sniped the last passers-by in khaki who 
 dared to come within their range. 
 
 This began at midday on the Monday. The 
 regular troops from the Curragh did not arrive 
 till that evening, and reinforcements from Eng- 
 land not till the Wednesday. In the meantime 
 only defenseless pedestrians were killed, quite 
 an orgy of the "bravery" so dear to Mr. Dillon. 
 Sinn Fein hoisted its white, green, and orange 
 flag on the Post Office and proclaimed the Irish 
 Republic : 
 
 "Irishmen and Irishwomen: In the name of 
 God and of the dead generations from which she 
 receives her old traditions of nationhood, Ire- 
 land, through us, summons her children to her 
 flag. . . . Having resolutely waited for the right 
 moment to reveal itself, she now seizes that mo- 
 ment, and supported by her exiled children in 
 America and by gallant allies in Europe . . ." 
 
THE INSURRECTION 203 
 
 During this time, while the armed Sinn Fein- 
 ers showed a certain amount of discipline, the 
 dregs of the Dublin slums pillaged the big shops 
 in the two main streets, Sackville Street and 
 Grafton Street, furriers, jewelers, sweet-shops, 
 etc. The next day white fox-fur muffs were 
 changing hands for one or two shillings in the 
 poor parts of the city. The men mostly chose 
 to attack the wine and spirit dealers ; drunk and 
 enraged they felled one another with the bot- 
 tles, and by the evening the Dublin hospitals had 
 many more wounded from that cause than by 
 rifle fire. 
 
 By nightfall Sinn Fein headquarters declared 
 that they were delighted, and the fact remains 
 that they had shown some tactical skill and a 
 well-concerted plan. The buildings in their 
 hands dominated the bridges and main roads, 
 etc. They had begun the work, and as for the 
 rest, they announced to the people that the Ger- 
 mans would complete it. Instead of Germans, 
 the steamers from England brought regiments 
 of Kitchener's army, with artillery, machine- 
 guns, armored cars; the men of the Irish bat- 
 talions were not behindhand in their determina- 
 tion to make the rebels see reason. 
 
 On the Wednesday martial law was pro- 
 claimed, and General Maxwell arrived charged 
 with the duty of reestablishing order. The Gen- 
 
204 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 eral had just come from defending the Suez 
 Canal and repulsing the Turks, and happened 
 to be in England in order to take up a more im- 
 portant command; in Egypt he had shown him- 
 self to be a skillful administrator as well as a 
 successful soldier. 
 
 Little by little the rebels were surrounded, but 
 they still held out for a few days. On Friday, 
 although they knew that all was lost, their head- 
 quarters issued a final piece of bravado: "The 
 English Army, so proud of the Dardanelles and 
 the Marne, has been conquered by us!" Then 
 the glorious War of Liberation came to an end 
 with the close of the week, and the whole party 
 surrendered on Saturday. The sum total of the 
 adventure was 124 soldiers killed, 400 wounded, 
 216 civilians killed, 514 wounded. The finest 
 streets in Dublin were destroyed and the dam- 
 age amounted to £4,000,000. The losses of the 
 Sinn Feiners could never be estimated; many 
 were buried and burned under the ruins of the 
 houses which had been fired, and most of the 
 wounded were carried away and hidden by their 
 friends. The majority of the rebels had only to 
 discard a rifle and bandolier to pose as inoffen- 
 sive spectators; and if there were instances of 
 summary justice, it was due to the fact that in 
 this case verily "the civilians had fired." Finally, 
 all the witnesses, journalists, officers, and magis- 
 
THE INSURRECTION 205 
 
 trates who saw the captured cases of ammuni- 
 tion, and the cartridge belts left upon the field, 
 agree that Germany had supplied her Irish min- 
 ions with explosive bullets. That would sur- 
 prise nobody. To-day the Irish will only remem- 
 ber the corpses of so-called civilians, with the 
 usual resounding anathemas from their melo- 
 dramatic repertoire. 
 
 Had the leaders of the movement ever reck- 
 oned sincerely on success? It is hard to believe 
 it. Their true motives may be found in two 
 points. It had been agreed in writing between 
 Casement and the Wilhelmstrasse that if the reb- 
 els could hold the capital for one week during 
 the Verdun offensive, Ireland would be repre- 
 sented at the peace negotiations as an inde- 
 pendent and sovereign nation. Sinn Fein kept 
 its part of the compact ; it is for us to see that it 
 gets no reward for having betrayed us. 
 
 The other calculation was better founded and 
 could not fail to succeed. "Our insurrection 
 will be put down, but the moral effect will be 
 immense. It will be followed by repression, and 
 that will be our victory ; Ireland the Martyr will 
 be grander than ever." 
 
 Sinn Fein left at the mercy of Sir John Max- 
 well about a thousand rebels taken with arms 
 in their hands, the only ones at least who were 
 wearing the green uniform and could not get 
 
206 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 through the surrounding cordon. Then, accord- 
 ing to the ancient formula, Ireland's martyrdom 
 began. The prisoners were taken before courts- 
 martial. "Bloody courts," howled the Irish. 
 Good heavens ! they are not set up to award good- 
 conduct prizes. All the signatories of the proc- 
 lamation were shot. Altogether there were fif- 
 teen executions ; sixty-nine others who were con- 
 demned to death, including Countess Markie- 
 vicz, were reprieved by General Maxwell, who 
 had plenary powers of life and death. The Irish 
 called this a butchery. The rest of the prison- 
 ers were deported to concentration camps in 
 England. 
 
 The moral effect on which Sinn Fein had 
 counted soon made itself felt. A week after 
 the capitulation General Maxwell passed into 
 Irish legend under the name of "sinister brute," 
 and other more or less Homeric epithets. "The 
 soldiery drowned Ireland in blood" ... it is 
 true that Mr. Birrell would have set about it less 
 severely. One heard of nothing but touching 
 episodes: the daring of Countess Markievicz, 
 kissing her revolver before handing it over to the 
 English officer; or young Plunket, a poet aged 
 twenty, marrying his fiancee in his cell at mid- 
 night before going to his execution. A frightful 
 fuss was made about some doubtful incidents, 
 about three bodies of "civilians" found hidden 
 
THE INSTJKKECTION 207 
 
 in a cellar, no doubt massacred by bloodthirsty 
 Tommies; or the death of Mr. Sheehy Skeffing- 
 ton, shot without trial. It was proved on the 
 one hand that Mr. Skeffington, one of the promot- 
 ers of anti-English propaganda, had never taken 
 up arms during the rebellion, and on the other 
 hand that his executioner was a convalescent 
 officer, not recovered from shell-shock which he 
 had contracted in Flanders. Skeffington's 
 widow, raised to the rank of national heroine, 
 now travels about the United States, crying 
 aloud for vengeance and presiding at Irish meet- 
 ings against recruiting. 1 Thus the two meth- 
 ods succeed one another without respite ; first ex- 
 plosive bullets, then pathos and sentiment. 
 Everything else is quickly forgotten! A year 
 later Bishop Fogarty, in Limerick Cathedral, 
 bowed at the name of the "brave and heroic Irish- 
 men shot at Dublin, with unmerciful brutality." 
 There are now only noble victims of Saxon bar- 
 barity. Oh, if the Sinn Feiners had had to deal 
 with their "gallant allies" ! If they could have 
 enjoyed the "preventive" mildness of Aerschot or 
 of Dinant ! 
 
 History repeats itself in its contradictions as 
 in its analogies. The man who prescribed for 
 
 1 She afterwards returned to Liverpool, and assisted in an- 
 other agitation because the English authorities would not 
 allow her to return to Ireland. 
 
208 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 ten years to the English Government the in- 
 fallible remedy "trust poor Ireland" did not fear 
 to turn accuser ; John Redmond asked the Prime 
 Minister on May 8th, 1916 : 
 
 "whether he was aware that the continuance of 
 military executions in Ireland had caused rap- 
 idly increasing bitterness and exasperation 
 among large sections of the population who had 
 no sympathy with the rising, and whether it 
 might not be better to follow the precedent set 
 up by General Botha in South Africa, where 
 only one had been executed and the rest exceed- 
 ingly leniently treated, and stop the executions 
 forthwith?" 
 
 All the Irish members joined in the chorus. 
 Mr. Asquith found himself treated as an assassin. 
 Poor Mr. Asquith ! to have coquetted with those 
 rebels for so long and come to that at last ! 
 
 Mr. Birrell and Lord Y^imborne, the Yiceroy, 
 resigned of course, bewailing themselves and 
 pleading that they had acted for the best. The 
 Radical party were much mortified, for they had 
 had too many warnings to be excused; but all 
 those who were responsible, Irish and English 
 Liberals, were quickly agreed upon the reply to 
 make: "All that is Carson's fault!" A grand 
 idea! Carson, who for two years had not said 
 a word, who had not uttered one complaint or 
 provocation, and had preached in Ireland noth- 
 
THE INSURRECTION 209 
 
 ing but peace; Carson, whose one thought was 
 for the great war, and who was entirely devoted 
 to the great Crusade! 
 
 Mr. Redmond and his friends have on many 
 occasions declared that the "Irish people" were 
 not implicated, and had shown no sympathy for 
 the rebellion. We must understand one another. 
 The armed rebels, it is true, only amounted to a 
 few thousands. But if the rest of the nation was 
 willing to insult and curse England, can one 
 say that it was not their accomplice? I believe 
 that Mr. Birrell's evidence before the Commis- 
 sion of Inquiry is conclusive, for no one can ac- 
 cuse the former Chief Secretary of prejudice 
 against Ireland. 
 
 "You had a certain number of prosecutions 
 for anti-recruiting and seditious meetings, but 
 you could not get convictions with a jury? — 
 No. It was not merely that the jury disagreed, 
 but they acquitted? — They acquitted, yes . . . 
 when it was a case against a schoolmaster for 
 having explosives and ammunition in his bag 
 and seditious literature and all that — we could 
 not get a conviction. That was before a jury." * 
 
 This was confirmed by all the witnesses at the 
 inquiry. Before this same commission, Major 
 
 1 Evidence before the Royal Commission on the Rebellion in 
 Ireland (Mr. Birrell), May 19th, 1916, p. 25. 
 
210 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 Price, one of the heads of the police, gave evi- 
 dence in these words : 
 
 "The one unfortunate thing which hindered 
 us a good deal was the attitude of the official 
 Nationalist party and their press. Whenever 
 General Friend did anything strong in the way 
 of suppressing or deporting the Sinn Fein lead- 
 ers from Ireland, they at once deprecated it in 
 the Nationalist press and said it was a mon- 
 strous thing to turn any man out of Ireland." 1 
 
 It is the same old cry of all riotings and all 
 rebellions: preventive measures are odious, re- 
 pression and retaliation are criminal ! 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 After the rebellion the Nationalist party, 
 which had for the last two years been forced by 
 its leader to adopt a dignified mien and a re- 
 serve to which it was unaccustomed, was de- 
 lighted to return to its guerrilla warfare, and 
 to be able to spit out all its accumulated venom. 
 It set about it with joy, it monopolized the at- 
 tention of Parliament, and questions and abuse 
 increased more and more. Would the Govern- 
 ment stop the arrests? the requisitions? restore 
 civil supremacy? see that troops were not 
 marched along the high roads of Ireland? treat 
 prisoners properly? treat them as prisoners of 
 
 1 Evidence before the Royal Commission on the Rebellion in 
 Ireland (Major Ivor H. Price), May 25th, 1916, p. 57. 
 
THE INSURRECTION 211 
 
 war according to international conventions ! etc., 
 etc. 
 
 I have had to read over all this rubbish, and 
 could find nothing in it but the most surprising 
 pettiness and irrelevance. There is not one 
 gleam of regeneration, no solid basis on which 
 to rebuild the ruins — nothing but obstruction, 
 hatred, rage, scorn. 
 
 Not one gleam? Well, yes, one; but it came 
 from England. On May 25th Mr. Asquith and 
 his Coalition Cabinet proposed to the Irish par- 
 ties that they should resume the conferences 
 which King George had summoned in July, 1914, 
 and try to find a modus vivendi between them- 
 selves. The idea was a good one; the quarrel 
 is no longer — if it ever was — between Ireland 
 and England, but between two enemy Irelands. 
 They must begin by examining the situation, and 
 by looking for possible points of contact. A con- 
 necting link was necessary, a president of the 
 court, a critic or an impartial adviser ; it should 
 be Mr. Lloyd George, at that time Minister of 
 Munitions. He is a Welsh Celt, his fervor and 
 imagination ought to please the Irish, and he 
 has no "Irish past" — he is not compromised by 
 any prejudice on the question. There is strong 
 hope that in this solemn hour, heavy with re- 
 morse and anguish, in the shame which must 
 make Irish patriots blush, and after a bloody 
 
212 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 awakening from too wild dreams, every one will 
 feel inclined to be generous and accommodating 
 over the transaction. 
 
 For some weeks people consoled themselves 
 with this illusion. According to gossip from 
 Parliamentary lobbies, Mr. Lloyd George was 
 conferring with the protagonists; he seemed to 
 be smiling and confident, the atmosphere was 
 good and promised an understanding between 
 all the, rivals; at last the eternal Irish question 
 was to be solved. Mirage! 
 
 There was still no official communique upon 
 the result of the conferences, but soon rumors 
 were crystallized: Sir Edward Carson was said 
 to have renewed the proposal submitted in 1914 
 to the Conference at Buckingham Palace — that 
 is to say, to take no further steps against Home 
 Eule if the Protestant counties of Ulster were 
 excluded — and Lloyd George was said to be ne- 
 gotiating on that basis. 
 
 That was enough to dispel the mirage. The 
 Nationalists grew excited, and threatened : "All 
 or nothing: Ireland is indivisible; you have no 
 right to dismember her." Eedmond might per- 
 haps have yielded, but he was carefully reminded 
 that he had no longer any authority and that he 
 represented nobody any more. The clergy de- 
 clared themselves flatly hostile, the Bishops is- 
 sued a proclamation against Lloyd George's pro- 
 
THE INSURRECTION 213 
 
 posal. The Southern Unionists were not con- 
 tent either, for to grant Home Eule thus on the 
 morrow of rebellion was not encouraging to law- 
 abiding men. And Sinn Fein was already exult- 
 ing openly and saying that its methods had 
 thrown England into a panic and made Minis- 
 ters bestir themselves. At once Redmond was 
 much alarmed at having accepted the exclusion 
 of the Ulster counties, and the only thing left 
 for him to do was to try to back out, recrimi- 
 nate, quibble over temporary or final exclusion, 
 get tied up in subtleties, trying to run with the 
 hare and hunt with the hounds, promising at the 
 same time to his partisans that Ulster would 
 have to "adhere automatically" to Home Rule 
 Ireland after a certain time, and to Ulster that 
 there would never be any question of constrain- 
 ing her by force. 
 
 In short, no agreement could be reached. Out 
 of the whole of this sterile conference we need 
 only recall two or three facts, and they will form 
 a fairly accurate summary of the Irish question. 
 
 1. Mr. Asquith, the Prime Minister, and Mr. 
 Devlin, the leader of the Roman Catholic Na- 
 tionalists of Ulster, both expressly admitted the 
 principle of the exclusion of Ulster. 
 
 2. The whole of the rest of Ireland was on the 
 contrary violently opposed to it. 
 
 3. The desire to arrive at a compromise ex- 
 
214 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 isted only in London. Several letters from Sir 
 Horace Plunkett reminded the English that in 
 Ireland no one either sought or desired compro- 
 mise. And if Mr. Redmond made undertakings 
 in the name of Ireland, all, people, press, and 
 clergy, unanimously repudiated him before- 
 hand ; once again his is a voice crying in the wil- 
 derness. 
 
 4. The only man who in the whole of the de- 
 bate spoke like a statesman and received con- 
 gratulations from all sides, both friends and ene- 
 mies, was again Sir Edward Carson, in the 
 speech which is perhaps the noblest in the whole 
 of his career: 
 
 "The Home Rule Act was put upon the Statute 
 Rook shortly after the war began, but there was 
 accompanying it a statement by . . . the Prime 
 Minister . . . that they never contemplated the 
 coercion of Ulster. . . . After that statement 
 had been made so far as I am concerned . . . 
 Ireland to a very large extent . . . had passed 
 out of my political consideration altogether. I 
 thought only of the war from that day forward. 
 . . . The war swallows up everything. . . . Let 
 there be no idea of the coercion of Ulster. Let 
 it be completely struck out of the Bill, and then 
 go on to win her if you can. . . . She can be 
 won when good government is shown or admin- 
 istered in the rest of Ireland. . . . But what 
 have you to look forward to when the war is 
 over? . . . We will resume our old quarrels over 
 
THE INSURRECTION 215 
 
 how Ulster is to be excluded when we have just 
 come to terms as to how she should be dealt with. 
 I look forward to it with horror. There is one 
 thing : At the end of the war we will have had 
 enough of fighting." * 
 
 But as the whole of Nationalist Ireland is of 
 a different opinion, Lloyd George and his nego- 
 tiators received nothing but groans and booings, 
 and England got a little more abuse. 
 
 And Ireland returned to her routine of sulki- 
 ness, pin-pricks, and outbursts of fury. A new 
 Chief Secretary was appointed, Mr. Duke, one 
 of the most well-meaning men in the world, who 
 felt sure that he would soon have splendid re- 
 sults by his gentleness and tact. Could he for- 
 get so speedily the avatars of his predecessor? 
 
 Ireland was again plunged in obscurity, for 
 the other conflict continued, far more terrible, 
 and during all that time there were many more 
 urgent matters to think about than the Irish 
 imbroglio — the battles of the Somme and of Jut- 
 land, BrussilofPs offensive, the martyrdom (gen- 
 uine in this case) of Miss Cavell and Captain 
 Fryatt and of all our tortured prisoners. 
 
 Those who visited Ireland in the autumn of 
 1916 were surprised to note a change of which 
 the London newspapers had spoken little; that 
 was the fact that Sinn Fein was winning sympa- 
 
 1 House of Commons, July 24th, 1916. 
 
216 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 thy on all sides, and that its propaganda had 
 made striking progress. Its flag flew every- 
 where, its rosette was in every button-hole, its 
 publications were all over the place, and its 
 songs were heard at every meeting, both in the 
 towns and in the villages. The portraits of the 
 Easter Monday rebels were in the shop windows, 
 and workingmen raised their hats as they 
 passed. The deed was done, the scheme of the 
 rebels had materialized, the rebellion had 
 brought the "moral victory" on which they had 
 reckoned; this is quite consonant with all the 
 past history of the distressful isle. 
 
 A Nationalist member, one of the party which 
 was by way of disapproving of Sinn Fein, stated 
 openly in an address that during Easter week 
 they had witnessed abominable executions: the 
 brutal murder of the best men whom Ireland had 
 ever produced (sic). 1 
 
 The English Government was even blamed for 
 having allowed Casement to be executed! A 
 petition asking for his reprieve had been signed 
 by Cardinal Logue and several Catholic prelates. 
 Moreover, in a long speech in the House of Com- 
 mons on October 18th, 1916, Mr. Redmond him- 
 self took up the thread of the national legend 
 which had hardly been interrupted. For the last 
 two years he could see nothing but English stu- 
 
 1 Kilkenny, October 14th, 1916. 
 
THE INSURRECTION 217 
 
 pidity; he forgot that nothing had been done 
 without his advice or his orders. According to 
 him, if the Irish regiments were short of men 
 it was the fault of the blind and obstinate War 
 Office which would not follow his recommenda- 
 tions, adopt such-and-such a flag, such-and-such 
 emblems, grant commissions to his good inof- 
 fensive Nationalists, keep up the troops in bar- 
 racks or let regiments parade at the places, days, 
 and hours which Mr. Redmond wished, etc. . . . 
 in a word, would not give in to the whims of 
 those fine fellows whom they did wrong to mis- 
 trust. The rebellion? pshaw! — a small matter 
 when all was said and done; was it not almost 
 justified by the horrors of its suppression? You 
 will often find these a posteriori arguments in 
 Irish polemic. This is how the history of this 
 martyred race is written; one could laugh at it 
 if one did not know that in twenty years' time 
 earnest men will take these fables, so solemnly 
 stated, as true facts. 
 
 By thus persistently demanding mercy for 
 traitors and indulgence for rebels, Mr. Redmond 
 and his satellites did not seem to realize that they 
 were compromising themselves. They would 
 soon have to realize it: contrary to their expec- 
 tations it was not they who were to recover their 
 lost prestige, it was the rebels whose audacity 
 increased and whose halo shone still more 
 
218 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 brightly, for their influence increased in an 
 amazing way in 1917. 
 
 Mr. Lloyd George having replaced Mr. As- 
 quith as head of the Cabinet, the Nationalist 
 leader saw fit to ask him another question: 
 "Would the Government without further delay 
 confer upon Ireland the free institutions long 
 promised to her and put Ulster under compul- 
 sion ?" 
 
 That is frank enough! at last we know what 
 they are aiming at. Mr. Redmond, in order to 
 allay anxiety, had allowed Mr. Asquith to sus- 
 pend the application of so keenly disputed a 
 measure until after the war: moreover, he had 
 promised Ulster divers delays in order to bring 
 her in of her own free will ; had guaranteed am- 
 ple safeguards, etc. All that no longer counted ; 
 since the sick man had declined an anaesthetic, 
 he was to be bound and cut up alive. Irish "in- 
 dependence" has made a decidedly bad begin- 
 ning. 
 
 The Prime Minister's reply was clear, and let 
 us hope final : 
 
 "There are two questions to be asked by all 
 of us. The first is this. Are the people of this 
 country prepared to confer self-government on 
 the parts of Ireland which unmistakably demand 
 it? The answer which I give on behalf of the 
 •Cabinet is that the Government are firmly of 
 
THE INSURRECTION 219 
 
 that opinion, and they are firmly of the opin- 
 ion that that represents the views of the vast ma- 
 jority of the people of this country. The next 
 point is this. Are the people of this country 
 prepared to force the population of the north- 
 eastern corner of Ireland to submit to be gov- 
 erned by a population with whom they are 
 completely out of sympathy? In my judgment, 
 and here I speak on behalf of the Government, 
 there is but one answer to that. They are not." 1 
 
 Mr. Redmond rose from his seat, followed by 
 the whole of his party, and left the House and 
 banged the doors. The following day he cabled 
 a proclamation to the President of the United 
 States and to the Premiers of the colonial Gov- 
 ernments, accusing the British Government of 
 treason and disloyalty. In Ireland itself there 
 was a great to-do, a chorus of protests, a fresh 
 manifesto from the Bishops against the "parti- 
 tion of the nation." The Times asked for the 
 views of eminent Americans, statesmen, profes- 
 sors, cardinals, Roosevelt, Taft, Monsignor Gib- 
 bons, Monsignor Ireland: all were opposed to 
 partition and decided light-heartedly that Ulster 
 had only to yield. It was easily said. Sinn 
 Fein continued to gain ground, carried off with 
 a high hand all the vacant seats in the by-elec- 
 tions; the official Nationalists who openly pro- 
 
 1 House of Commons, March 7th, 1917. 
 
220 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 fessed to espouse the cause of the Allies were 
 left stranded. 
 
 In a word, the question relapsed into the dead- 
 lock from which it is still far from freeing itself. 
 Home Rule is offered to Ireland — she will have 
 none of it, insists on having Ulster on the pre- 
 text of national unity. The demand is folly: 
 England really cannot be expected to use force 
 to make Ulster separate from her. The only 
 possible conclusion, one which foreign critics 
 still do not seem to understand, is that England 
 has not much to do with the matter. It is sim- 
 ply a quarrel between the Irish groups, and the 
 two conflicting proposals are irreconcilable. 
 Every solution conceived in London dissatisfies 
 one or the other party ; it rests with them to come 
 to an agreement. 
 
 There are precedents for this ; the most recent 
 and best known is that of the South African con- 
 stitution, drawn up on the spot by the interested 
 parties; let Ireland do likewise and submit her 
 scheme. Till now she has never wished to take 
 the initiative, and has been satisfied with criti- 
 cizing everything which Great Britain suggests 
 to her. In that she has a characteristic in com- 
 mon with many oppressed nationalities — so- 
 called; her policy is in its essence negative, ob- 
 structionist and destructive. 
 
THE INSURRECTION 221 
 
 Now Lloyd George is the antithesis of all this. 
 Though a Celt himself — and Heaven knows he 
 is proud enough of the fact — he belies Momm- 
 sen's celebrated dictum, he has the sense of 
 "constructive" politics. Moreover, with the 
 faults of his race and his dangerous impulsive- 
 ness, he also has its imagination and enthusiasm, 
 everything which the Irish deny to the "despic- 
 able Saxon." Seeing this unhappy nation going 
 adrift once more, more distracted than ever, he 
 repeats what the English have already said to 
 her hundreds of times: 
 
 "My good friends," he says to them in effect, 
 "your imprecations are very eloquent, your rep- 
 ertory of insults have a picturesqueness of their 
 own, your tragic history, your painful past, your 
 sentimental soul all combine to make you at- 
 tract our sympathy. But all that is very bar- 
 ren ; could you not agree to give a little thought 
 to other matters" — (interruptions and protest 
 from outraged patriotism) — "to imitate the 
 methods which have given elsewhere results of 
 which you are jealous ; in a word, could you not 
 complain less and work harder? 
 
 "For see, the opportunity has arisen. You ac- 
 cuse us of all your misfortunes, you say that you 
 are in bondage. Well, I will leave you masters 
 of your destinies. I will call together the chosen 
 spirits from among your people, a hundred of 
 your most eminent men by reason of their rank, 
 wisdom, and experience; we will include all the 
 
222 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 responsible bodies in the State, lawyers, admin- 
 istrators, financiers, bishops, politicians, theo- 
 retical and practical economists — Irishmen all. 
 But as your case is based upon the self-govern- 
 ment of minorities of distinct nationality, we 
 will give the latter a large share of representa- 
 tion, even those whom you dislike. I invite your 
 fiercest extremists, those Sinn Feiners who have 
 just attacked us with arms in their hands. They 
 refuse? I regret it; they would have been wel- 
 come, we were so anxious to know their argu- 
 ments. 
 
 "Apart from that this Senate can do as it' 
 pleases. I promise you not to interfere with it. 
 It shall be absolute master of the choice of its 
 methods of work, of the secrecy of its delibera- 
 tions. I hope that it will bring to its work all 
 the wisdom, all the dignity, conciliation, breadth 
 of view, and foresight expected from such an 
 august assembly. It will endeavor to draw up 
 your Constitution, to organize that much-longed- 
 for liberty which will at last allow you" (here 
 the speaker smiles), "I am sure, to recover your 
 former splendors" (here the speaker keeps his 
 countenance). 
 
 "And when it has accomplished this noble 
 task, I promise you once more to ratify its de- 
 cisions and to obtain the consent of my Parlia- 
 ment and my sovereign. On one condition, be 
 it understood: these schemes must be adopted 
 within the bosom of your commission by consid- 
 erable majorities, thus representing concessions 
 and compromises. If you persist in voting sol- 
 idly bj races, by religions, by factions, nothing 
 
THE INSURRECTION 223 
 
 can be done ; I will have none of these promises 
 of civil war. And now, to work." 
 
 The whole House applauded and all the party 
 leaders agreed to try the experiment. But — > 
 there is always a "but" to entangle matters in 
 the history of Ireland! — murmurs were already 
 heard; the abstention of Sinn Fein, the most 
 popular party, was significant, and pamphlets 
 abused the English Ministers who wanted to 
 evade their responsibilities. 
 
 Nevertheless there is no doubt that Lloyd 
 George by this very simple and very lucid in- 
 spiration had just won a far more decisive vic- 
 tory than the Irish believed; a moral victory of 
 which the result would be felt chiefly abroad, in 
 Europe, and farther afield: it was his turn to 
 put the plaintiffs in the dock and hand over to 
 them the burden of proof. 
 
 The Convention sat in secret, and in order to 
 avoid polemics and hostile criticisms the news- 
 papers were forbidden to publish anything about 
 the deliberations, except the official communi- 
 ques. At the opening meeting Sir Horace 
 Plunkett was unanimously elected President, 
 and all serious-minded men welcomed the choice 
 of such a man. 
 
 In order that the Convention should start its 
 work in an unimpeachable atmosphere, the Gov- 
 
224 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 ernment thought it advisable to grant a general 
 amnesty and to release the last rebels of 1916 
 who were interned in England. Their intention 
 was certainly excellent, but as usual the result 
 was disappointing; at the very moment when 
 the liberated prisoners were landing in Ireland 
 yery serious riots broke out in Cork; the mob 
 attacked the prison and the recruiting office, 
 threw the flags of the Allies into the river and 
 hoisted that of Sinn Fein. Everywhere the 
 prisoners had a triumphant return ; the town of 
 Kilkenny elected the Countess Markievicz to the 
 freedom of the city. 
 
 The seat of Major Redmond, who had just been 
 killed at Messines, was immediately won by an 
 immense majority by the Sinn Feiner de Valera, 1 
 who had been a section commander during the 
 rebellion, had been condemned to death and re- 
 prieved. The incident was very mortifying for 
 the Nationalists, who had already profited by 
 William Redmond's noble end to pose as a lot of 
 misunderstood heroes. 
 
 Young priests figured more and more fre- 
 quently in Sinn Fein meetings and processions. 
 On August 5th, the anniversary of Casement's 
 execution was feted, and thousands of peasants 
 
 *De Valera is of South. American origin. In all countries 
 one often finds foreign protagonists or men of mixed descent 
 at the head of nationalist movements. 
 
THE INSURRECTION 225' 
 
 made a pilgrimage to the shore at Ardfert where 
 the traitor was captured. j 
 
 Therefore everything was done from the Eng- 
 lish side to obtain the concurrence and goodwill 
 of the Irish ; it is the Irish alone who refuse to 
 give it, and as they repudiate beforehand in a 
 hundred different ways the Nationalist leaders 
 who claim to represent them at the Convention, 
 what good can be expected to come of it? Once 
 again promises will be worthless. All that is of 
 very bad omen. 
 
 For months on end we look on at a disconcert- 
 ing contrast. On the one hand there is a Con- 
 vention for settlement, which the initiated say 
 is on a fair way to success, working in secret — 
 all the members who are questioned on the sub- 
 ject between the meetings declare thajb every- 
 thing is going well, all the symptoms are encour- 
 aging, and there is every hope that it will come 
 to a satisfactory solution. On the other hand 
 there is the nation which persists in agitations, 
 compromising and damning itself at the very, 
 moment when efforts are being made for its sal- 
 vation. The Sinn Fein Volunteers now amount 
 to 200,000 according to Mr. Duke, 1 to 500,000 
 according to cle Valera, and the whole island 
 was given over to a fresh access of terrorism as 
 it was ten years previously; policemen were as- 
 
 1 House of Commons, October 24th, 1917. 
 
228 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 sassinated, boycotting in the villages, and cattle 
 driving, etc., were in full swing — in a word, all 
 those amenities which the Irish peasants, who 
 since the war started had been fully occupied 
 coining money, had almost forgotten to in- 
 dulge in. 
 
 Take this little incident. In November, 1917, 
 a humble village schoolmistress, Mrs. Ryan, was 
 expelled by a party of Sinn Feiners. Her crime? 
 "For having played the Dead March in Saul on 
 the school piano before her pupils on hearing of 
 the death of Lord Kitchener," in 1916! That 
 was definite enough. Sinn Feiners decreed that 
 the school should be closed, and posted sentries 
 until another teacher arrived. The spokesmen 
 of Sinn Fein confess quite openly that their 
 keenest wish is to see the Convention fail and to 
 make it fail. At the same time, within the said 
 Convention all the Unionist and Ulster dele- 
 gates, who are to be converted to the principle 
 of Irish unity, have a hundred more excellent 
 reasons for looking at it with suspicion. 
 
 We now come to 1918, and as the feeling 
 grows that the Convention is drawing to its end 
 excitement increases. Rumor has it that the 
 unity of views or the spirit of conciliation, so 
 miraculously preserved until then on subsidiary 
 questions, has been badly shattered since the 
 really essential problem has been under discus- 
 
THE INSURRECTION 227 
 
 sion, namely the national status and its exact re- 
 lations with Great Britain. At this moment Sir 
 Edward Carson left the Cabinet. 
 
 "It is, however, apparent that whatever the 
 result of the Convention may be, its proceedings 
 may lead to a situation demanding a decision by 
 the Government on grave matters of policy in 
 Ireland. 
 
 "After anxious consideration I feel certain 
 that it will be of advantage to the War Cabinet 
 to discuss this policy without my presence, hav- 
 ing regard to the very prominent part which I 
 have taken in the past in relation to the Home 
 Rule controversy and to the pledges by which I 
 am bound to my friends in Ulster." 
 
 Every one congratulated him for taking this 
 step. 
 
 On the following day, January 23rd, a bomb 
 fell, and all the bitterness which, thanks to com- 
 pulsory silence, had been dormant since the 
 opening of the Convention, revived again. The 
 Times correspondent at Washington 1 sent his 
 newspaper threatening warnings as to what the 
 United States and President Wilson expected, if 
 
 1 This same correspondent, during the interminable exchange 
 of Notes between Washington and our Allies on the subject of 
 the right of blockades, of search, etc., was always putting 
 us on our guard, with very remarkable prejudice, against the 
 arguments of our diplomacy and invariably advised us to give 
 in to the American point of view. 
 
228 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 he were to be believed, from the Convention and 
 the British Government. 
 
 He began by answering for the President's 
 private views on the subject of Irish claims, by 
 recalling the fact that he had recently accepted 
 a little statuette commemorating the rebel Em- 
 met (see Chapter II, p. 24), and had just given 
 an interview with much warmth to Sheehy Skef- 
 fington's widow. He stated that the President 
 had on several occasions brought considerable 
 pressure to bear on Lord Bryce, and on Mr. Bal- 
 four during his tour in the States, in favor of 
 the Nationalists. He warned us that if the Con- 
 vention resulted in a fresh disappointment the 
 interest and help of America in this war would 
 thereby be greatly reduced (sic) ; that numerous 
 Congressmen were to raise questions upon Eng- 
 lish bad feeling; and that, counting on that to 
 gain the Irish vote at the next election, this 
 competition of Republicans and Democrats 
 would give the next Congress a large anti-Eng- 
 lish majority. 
 
 Let us hope that the correspondent exagger- 
 ated, that both elected and rulers, in spite of 
 the impetuous enthusiasm of young countries, 
 have enough tact and foresight to know to what 
 point one can interfere with other people's busi- 
 ness. This slight danger seems to be farther off 
 to-day, and since January, 1918, many facts have 
 
THE INSURRECTION 229 
 
 already enlightened our oversea friends and their 
 President, who have been won over to our cause 
 so loyally. Mrs. Skeffington, when she left the 
 White House, set to work to denounce our Al- 
 liance throughout the country, by taking up the 
 calumnies of the late Bishop O'Dwyer, and by 
 beseeching the Americans not to come to our 
 help. The States learnt little by little all the 
 outrages to the Stars and Stripes perpetrated by 
 the mad Sinn Feiners, all the insults which Mr. 
 de Valera and his friends hurled at the President 
 and his Ministers. Finally the attitude of Ire- 
 land on the subject of conscription, and the re- 
 cent official revelations on the direct relations 
 between Sinn Fein and Berlin, changed the sym- 
 pathy of many. The conclusion which The 
 Times correspondent cabled was very simple: 
 Ulster must yield; a minority cannot stand out 
 against the wishes of the Irish majority. He 
 does not seem to realize that Ulster is not a mi- 
 nority of the Irish people, but a separate race. 
 
 At all events the effect of this brutal dictation 
 on the Old World was disastrous: polemics re- 
 vived, British pride was roused, Ulster shook 
 with rage, and the success of the Convention was 
 still further compromised! 
 
 The month of March, 1918, brought Ireland a 
 double calamity — the death of Mr. Redmond and 
 the deplorable choice of his successor. 
 
230 IRELAND—AN ENEMY? 
 
 John Redmond was behind his time ; he could 
 hardly make himself understood by his fellow- 
 countrymen. Attached to the grand Parliamen- 
 tary manner of the two most illustrious servants 
 of Nationalist Ireland, perhaps the only two gen- 
 uine statesmen whom she has ever produced, 
 Grattan and O'Connell ; careful, as they were, of 
 constitutional forms, of respect for order, know- 
 ing, as they did, when to bow before world-wide 
 necessities of a higher level than national ego- 
 ism, he had become almost an anachronism 
 among his people. He marked a reaction from 
 his immediate predecessor and from the vio- 
 lence of Parnell. He was able to hold the reins 
 for some time, thanks to great tactical skill and 
 to the substantial results which he knew so well 
 how to extract from the English Ministers. Rut 
 his methods never had the same attraction for 
 Ms race as those of Parnell: Ireland ended by 
 finding him too prudent, and sent his advice to 
 the winds. They wanted picrate, powder and 
 shot, and Redmond had none of those articles. 
 His was the painful end of deserted leaders and 
 repudiated saints. 
 
 We shall never be able to forget that he un- 
 dertook and embraced our great cause spontane- 
 ously, courageously, and with perseverance, and 
 that on the whole he risked and lost Ms popular- 
 ity in the service of our rights. 
 
THE INSURRECTION 231 
 
 On March 12th, 1918, the Nationalist party- 
 elected as his successor the man who was impris- 
 oned with Parnell in 1881, Mr. John Dillon. 
 Nothing could show better what are the pres- 
 ent tendencies in Ireland, how Redmond's policy- 
 has failed, and what concessions must be granted 
 in order to win popular favor once more. 
 
 Mr. John Dillon is a very outspoken man. He 
 glories in never having taken any part in a re- 
 cruiting meeting. On the morrow of the Dub- 
 lin rebellion he delivered in the House of Com- 
 mons, as we have seen, a panegyric on the rebels, 
 and declared loudly that he was proud of those 
 brave men. Redmond had at least given Ulster 
 promises of safeguards, temporary exclusion, 
 etc. ; with Dillon there is no longer any danger 
 that we shall suffer from illusions. I have 
 quoted above enough of his assertions; there is 
 no need to repeat all his speeches here, and give 
 him more importance than he deserves. 
 
 Since his election he is engaged, as one had to 
 expect, in trying more or less shamelessly to 
 draw nearer to Sinn Fein. We need only be pa- 
 tient a little longer, and we shall soon see him 
 throw aside the mask and cast off what little 
 shame he still possesses. 
 
 It did not need all this to consummate the 
 final failure of the Convention. Of what use is 
 it to promise political toleration and fiscal equity 
 
232 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 in the name of a people who has no other ideal 
 than terrorism? 
 
 In presenting the final report, Sir Horace 
 Plunkett stated in the letter with which he 
 prefaces it, "The difficulties of the Irish Conven- 
 tion may be summed up in two words — Ulster 
 and Customs." 
 
 We know how firmly Ulster was prepared to 
 oppose the Asquith scheme in 1914. In now 
 consenting to confer with the Nationalist party 
 in order to come to some arrangement which 
 might preserve Irish unity, she certainly reck- 
 oned on more reassuring proposals than those of 
 1914. She was disappointed again and again by 
 the following clauses by which, instead of con- 
 cessions, she was offered fresh ultimata. 
 
 The former text had excluded from the com- 
 petence of the Irish Parliament, among other 
 matters, the army and navy, treaties, land pur- 
 chase, the constabulary, and previous loans. 
 Now the spokesmen of Ireland demanded all 
 these. Conscription could no longer be applied 
 without their consent — that is equivalent to say- 
 ing never; they wish to raise a territorial army 
 in their pay and under their orders — that is very 
 subtle! In future they are to arbitrate without 
 appeal on the subject of land purchase between 
 the peasants — their constituents — and the land- 
 
THE INSURRECTION 233 
 
 lords — English for the most part; they would 
 have the management of all the millions lent by 
 the English who trusted in Imperial caution; 
 they would have all police powers — as well say 
 impunity for their turbulent friends. The first 
 suspicions, the first clouds have appeared on the 
 horizon. 
 
 But the Unionist delegates were to have other 
 shocks. Under the pretext that the island had 
 paid too many taxes in the past (the National- 
 ists assume that to be a self-evident truth), she 
 is to be exonerated from all share in the National 
 Debt, including the debt for the Great War, 
 which has, however, protected Ireland as well 
 as the rest of the Empire. Here we have finance 
 marvellously simplified; the Bolsheviks have 
 made disciples ! 
 
 Finally the touchstone of the whole Convention 
 was the claim, put forward categorically and 
 unanimously by the Nationalists, to raise Cus- 
 toms barriers and negotiate any commercial 
 treaties which they chose; "on that matter our 
 national dignity cannot yield!" Neither could 
 Ulster's imperialist patriotism. From the mo- 
 ment that this confession was made negotiations 
 were superfluous, and the blindest might read 
 the hidden motives, however well-disguised. 
 
 It would take too long to reproduce here all 
 the arguments of the two parties. Ireland main-. 
 
234 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 tains that her agricultural interests will never 
 be preserved by the Customs system of an indus- 
 trial Great Britain. Must we recall the fact 
 that at present England is still a Free Trade 
 country, and that Ireland is very prosperous 
 under the present regime? Her produce is at 
 a premium, and never have her farmers handled 
 so many banknotes. Ulster replies that she, for 
 her part, is industrial, and that the Customs ar- 
 ranged by Ireland, three-quarters of which are 
 agricultural, will not hesitate to sacrifice her 
 interests. The pseudo-separatists had never 
 dared in 1914 to make such a suspicious demand. 
 If, on the contrary, Protection is wanted to re- 
 constitute Irish industry, Ulster's example is 
 sufficient proof that it is quite unnecessary. 
 
 These poor creatures imagine innocently that 
 they need only make the laws in Dublin, in or- 
 der to see magnificent factories springing up 
 everywhere, and it appears that the Americans 
 have promised them dazzling combines. They 
 would do well to begin by inspiring confidence 
 in the indispensable capitalist, that bugbear of 
 "the friends of the people." Now capital needs 
 order and security, and it is a bad plan to start 
 by repudiating the National Debt for a historical 
 fad. 
 
 The Convention discussed the intrinsic merits 
 of scores of amendments. Was it necessary? It 
 
THE INSURRECTION 235 
 
 took as its theme colonial precedents, and de- 
 manded the status of Dominions with full fiscal 
 autonomy. Well, yes, that could be done else- 
 where. Why does the analogy not hold good? 
 Because, as the report of the Ulster delegates 
 has it, there is a preliminary question : 
 
 "We cannot overlook the strong probability 
 that the controlling force in such a Parliament 
 would to-day be the Republican or Sinn Fein 
 party, which is openly and aggressively hostile 
 to Great Britain and the Empire. During re- 
 cent months in many parts of Ireland outside 
 of Ulster there has been a great renewal of law- 
 lessness and crime bordering on anarchy." * 
 
 That has been said over and over again, at the 
 risk of fatiguing the reader in an effort to prove 
 the point; but at bottom that is the pith of the 
 matter. Theories are confounded by the facts. 
 Seeing the peril of the conflict of principles on 
 the fiscal question, Sir Horace wrote on Novem- 
 ber 6th, 1917, to the sub-committee of nine ap- 
 pointed to endeavor to find a basis of agreement : 
 "To this end we must also assume — and I am sure 
 our Ulster friends will agree to assume — that in 
 its economic policy the Irish Parliament will be 
 guided by common sense." The report of the 
 Nationalist delegates asks much the same thing : 
 
 1 Report of the Convention, p. 33. 
 
236 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 "Any settlement founded on distrust of Ireland 
 will fail in its effect." * 
 
 That is highly probable. But when you want 
 to win people's confidence, you should be care- 
 ful not to alarm them as clumsily as did the Na- 
 tionalists during the Convention. 
 
 First of all you try to have some consistency 
 and continuity in your undertakings. On April 
 17th, 1918, the Municipal Council of Cork de- 
 manded a measure of Home Eule which would 
 give satisfaction to the Irish race. There lies 
 the rub. The history of the nineteenth century 
 has proved that the Irish race is not easy to sat- 
 isfy. After having pretended to accept a Con- 
 stitution in 1914 and sworn to be satisfied with 
 it, you should not, three years later, assert that 
 it is ridiculous, insulting to national dignity, un- 
 acceptable by a free people, etc. . . . To-morrow, 
 Sinn Fein, which has not chosen to lend a hand 
 in the new structure of 1917, will hurriedly de- 
 molish it with similar arguments, and this is all 
 the more certain that it is already stating the 
 fact. 
 
 Then again, you do not in a deed of settlement 
 pile up threats of friction, and a hundred ways 
 of damaging your creditor as soon as he has re- 
 nounced his due. Finally you do not go surety 
 for the goodwill of a people which refuses to 
 
 1 Report of the Convention, p. 38. 
 
THE INSURRECTION 237 
 
 carry out its undertakings and which is engaged 
 in giving you the lie by flagrant acts. 
 
 What security is left? Hopes and wishes. 
 Ulster is besought to "assume" Irish good faith, 
 but can you ask a people to risk its fate on an 
 assumption? She has never been offered any- 
 thing more substantial than temporary guaran- 
 tees to be revised after five or ten years. So 
 much the worse for Irish unity, but she will have 
 none of it at that price ; she is perfectly content 
 to belong to the British Union, and she has no 
 wish to change masters. 
 
CHAPTEK IX 
 
 CONCLUSIONS AND FORECASTS 
 
 There is a curious contrast in this unfortu- 
 nate quarrel. The Irish, dogmatically minded, 
 do not wish sincerely for a conciliatory solution ; 
 the English never appear to realize this, and are 
 still under illusions which would be dangerous 
 if Ulster did not recall them to realities. 
 
 Talk about Ireland in any London drawing- 
 room, even at a moment when the Irish are in- 
 dulging in the most outrageous lawlessness and 
 treason, you will never hear a word of hatred, 
 but an indulgence is shown which amazes one. 
 John Bull even smites his breast and confesses 
 humbly that, to tell the truth, he has never been 
 able to govern this people. But the actual Irish 
 mentality is so foreign to him that he still 
 dreams of being able to arrange matters by logic 
 and common sense. He often says to you, and 
 believes it, that everything will settle itself, the 
 Irish cannot really be as unreasonable as they 
 
 Sometimes the English go the greatest lengths 
 238 
 
CONCLUSIONS AND FORECASTS 239 
 
 in making concessions in order to reach a com- 
 promise, but there must be two to make a bar- 
 gain. Read leading articles in the big news- 
 papers, speeches of party leaders, books by the 
 best critics, and you will see that the subject al- 
 ways closes on an optimistic note. This confi- 
 dence in the future, in spite of what has gone be- 
 fore, seems rather forced when one has just con- 
 sidered the long and troublesome history of Irish 
 obstinacy and paradox. Like Ulster, I for one 
 do not share it. 
 
 Sir Horace Plunkett, in presenting his report 
 to the Prime Minister, closes his letter with 
 these words: 
 
 "The Convention has therefore laid a founda- 
 tion of Irish agreement unprecedented in his- 
 tory. . . . Notwithstanding the difficulties with 
 which we were surrounded, a larger measure of 
 agreement has been reached upon the principles 
 and details of Irish self-government than has 
 ever yet been attained." 
 
 It is very misleading. One can understand 
 that Sir Horace should wish to feel that he had 
 not worked in vain; but in spite of all the re- 
 spect which his intentions and loyalty deserve, 
 one must admit that his own summary does not 
 justify such conclusions. The Convention had 
 not to obtain England's consent to Home Rule, 
 
240 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 for that had already been given subject to cer- 
 tain safeguards and the exclusion of Ulster. But 
 on the other hand it had to convert Ulster to the 
 new dogma of Irish Unity; instead of which it 
 made her more suspicious and more hostile than 
 ever by justifying all her suspicions. Can one 
 say under these circumstances that they were 
 any nearer coming to an understanding? 
 
 This is a brief analysis of the final vote of the 
 Convention. On April 5th, 1918, there were 
 ninety delegates ; forty-four voted for the Report 
 ^— that is, less than half. All the Catholic 
 Bishops present voted against it, as also did Mr. 
 Devlin, M.P., and Mr. W. Murphy, whose influ- 
 ence was considerable. Among the forty-four 
 there were eleven Southern Unionists; Lord 
 Midleton has since recanted in their name, assert- 
 ing that in view of the ill-feeling now paramount 
 in Ireland no Unionist would now venture to 
 attempt Home Rule. The forty-four also in- 
 cluded a certain number of Nationalist Chairmen 
 of County Councils ; their own press now treats 
 them as "defeatists" for having appeared to grant 
 concessions, and Sinn Fein has undertaken to 
 punish them by making them lose their seats. 
 Seven of them have already been removed by 
 these means in two months. An eighth was only 
 enabled to keep his place by a casting vote — his 
 own. Let us therefore subtract eleven Union- 
 
CONCLUSIONS AND FOEECASTS 241 
 
 ists and seven delegates who have been disowned 
 and reduced to silence: there remain twenty-six 
 signatories of the Keport as against twenty-nine 
 opponents. Can we call that a substantial agree- 
 ment and reckon upon it in future legislation? 
 Besides, of what consequence are these con- 
 sultations of legislators and theorists? what does 
 it matter if they are agreed if their supporters 
 never ratify their signature? These supporters 
 answer for no one, it will be said, they do not 
 represent Ireland. John Kedmond was "an- 
 swerable" for Ireland ; what notice was taken of 
 his leading principles? Who, then, represents 
 Ireland? That recalls to my mind a correspond- 
 ent in The Times who wished to show indulgence 
 to the nation and not judge it by this class or 
 that ; according to him no notice should be taken 
 of these mistaken people who did not represent 
 the true Ireland — pretentious, half-educated ar- 
 tisans, idle, quarrelsome young men, shop girls 
 led away to sedition by sentimentalism, sincere 
 enthusiasts. . . . But if you choose, sincere en- 
 thusiasts may mean a whole nation. Add to 
 these politicians of every calibre, from town and 
 country, priests, teachers, publicans, etc. . . . 
 What is there left? 
 
 What have we to do with all this, and does it 
 concern us Frenchmen and Belgians? 
 
242 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 Ireland was one of the first to bring forward 
 her claims as an international question ; she has 
 therefore given us the right to judge her. She 
 has made great capital out of, and reaped many 
 benefits from foreign sympathies, and she can 
 hardly complain if we ask to verify her title- 
 deeds and her references. 
 
 Above all, in this matter of foreign sympathies, 
 the Irish are very proud of the support of their 
 American and colonial cousins. At bottom, the 
 fact that the Irish in Australia or America es- 
 pouse the quarrel of their former home is too 
 natural and would not have any great moral im- 
 portance, if all that did not add fresh fuel to the 
 fire of legends and mystification. Thus when 
 American Cardinals appeal to our pity for "Irish 
 distress" which no longer exists, it is as well to 
 put our people on their guard. 
 
 On his return from a tour among his oversea 
 compatriots, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, the Nationalist 
 member, raised this cry of alarm: "Never was 
 feeling more bitter — I might almost say so fren- 
 zied and anti-English among my countrymen in 
 America as it is now." 
 
 That may be so; but nothing justifies it; it is 
 hallucination, pure and simple, or blind hatred; 
 and if that is to be perpetuated one would de- 
 spair not only of the famous League of Nations, 
 but of the common sense of humanity. 
 
CONCLUSIONS AND FORECASTS 243 
 
 But though they are numerous and influential, 
 there are other people besides Irishmen in the 
 United States. I might almost go so far as to 
 say that all the Irish there are not so mad. 
 
 But apart from sentiment one often hears over 
 there quite unfounded statements on Irish mat- 
 ters. The American whom Erin calls as a wit- 
 ness at every other moment genuinely believes, 
 or did believe, all the fables about Ireland be- 
 ing oppressed, exploited, enslaved, etc. He is 
 equally mistaken about the remedies to be ap- 
 plied, as The Times proved by its inquiry in 
 April, 1917. The replies of all the people inter- 
 viewed have the same refrain : the Irish question 
 must be settled! They do not say how, or else 
 — what is not worth much more — they think that 
 by some magic formula they can sweep away ob- 
 stacles which are centuries old and cannot be got 
 over. Some ignore Ulster completely, others as- 
 sert light-heartedly that she must submit. Many 
 of them borrow analogies from their own history 
 and their own American Constitution like the 
 following : 
 
 "Why does England object to give Ireland sat- 
 isfaction? Did our Union suffer by leaving each 
 State its own legislature?" 
 
 Then what about federalism? In England, 
 too, one hears a great deal about federalism in 
 
244 JKELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 a certain school which finds in it a panacea for 
 an overgrown body. The word is very fashion- 
 able, but the thing itself is ill-defined ; the news- 
 papers are filled with letters from zealous per- 
 sons pointing out the urgency of this reform 
 which is as vague as it is indispensable according 
 to them, which will settle every vexed question, 
 beginning with Ireland. Of what use is it to 
 indulge in this chimera? It shows complete mis- 
 understandings of the demands of Nationalist 
 Ireland. What Sinn Fein and even Dillon want 
 is not that, it is integral separation, the very se- 
 cession of which the United States has such a 
 poignant memory. 
 
 "We cannot admit the separation of Ulster 
 from Ireland any more than we could consent to 
 detach South Carolina from our Union." 
 
 Then, why wish to detach Ireland from her 
 present Union? There would be a much closer 
 analogy in the example of Virginia. When this 
 State decided on May 23rd, 1861, to secede from 
 the Union, the districts situated to the west of 
 the Alleghany Mountains refused to have any- 
 thing to do with this separation, and claimed the 
 right to form a new and distinct State, West 
 Virginia, which was officially admitted to the 
 Union in June, 1863. Has not Ulster got in 
 that a very formidable precedent? 
 
CONCLUSIONS AND FORECASTS 245 
 
 '^Ulster's fears are hysterical and ridiculous. 
 Our Southerners were afraid, too, that they 
 would be oppressed by the North, and see how 
 mistaken they were." 
 
 You might as well compare Dillon to Lincoln I 
 Lincoln, whose memory is now revered by all de- 
 mocracies. 
 
 Those who want conciliation at any price all 
 say precisely the same thing to Ulster : "You are 
 wrong to be alarmed, to look too much to the 
 past, to nurse your jealous hatred, etc. . . ." It 
 is word for word what we have been reproaching 
 Nationalist Ireland for doing, but with this dif- 
 ference : the wrongs of Ireland have disappeared, 
 the damage has been made good, the debts have 
 been paid; those of Ulster are unfortunately in 
 the present and yet to come — only too much so. 
 If the people of Belfast wished to forget past 
 history, they would have daily reminders in the 
 words and deeds of the Irish of 1914, 1916, and 
 1918. Can we blame them for seeing therein 
 more threats than promises? 
 
 Moreover, the Americans since they have be- 
 come our Allies, and have had to suffer with us 
 from the ill-timed jests of the Irish, begin to see 
 matters in a clearer light. For the last year 
 there have been various little ill-omened inci- 
 dents, insults to President Wilson, the Stars and 
 Stripes trampled in the mud, and so on. Uncle 
 
246 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 Sam was not expecting anything of that sort, 
 and he is beginning to ask himself at last if Eng- 
 land really is the guilty party or whether Ire- 
 land is simply cross-grained and ungovernable. 
 I believe that he is getting nearer to the truth 
 and that soon the Martyred Isle will have one 
 dupe the less. 
 
 When a few more Americans have passed 
 through Ireland, when there have been a few 
 troops in camp, when the boys from New Jersey 
 have seen this poor tragedy queen a little closer 
 at hand, we may be certain of one thing; they 
 will soon change their opinions of the tales told 
 by their cardinals or Tammany's electoral 
 agents. They will see Ireland petted and cos- 
 seted, rather foolishly exempted by England 
 from all the burdens of the war, even from the 
 small food and other restrictions which all the 
 Allies have had to impose upon themselves. The 
 little colleen with the red shawl and green skirt 
 has become the spoilt child of her stepmother; 
 no conscription, no increase in railway fares, 1 
 no stoppage of race meetings, no limit on petrol, 
 and so on. While their mothers in Boston and 
 Chicago are rationing themselves voluntarily in 
 order to help us to stand fast, they will see Sinn 
 Fein forbidding farmers to export pigs or but- 
 
 1 In Ireland these were increased by 50 per cent, in May, 
 1918, while in England this was done two years before. 
 
CONCLUSIONS AND FORECASTS 247 
 
 ter to England. In short, they will see that 
 when they were told that Ireland was to be pit- 
 ied they were told lies. 
 
 When the Irish try, in spite of all, to make 
 them believe it still, they will ask themselves as 
 we have : what can be done to satisfy people like 
 this? Neither England nor anybody else will 
 ever satisfy Ireland. Recrimination has become 
 second nature and she plays the martyr with 
 consummate art, without realizing that we have 
 already seen the performance and that her act- 
 ing impresses us less in consequence. "The best 
 way to overcome pain," said one of the Fathers 
 of the Church, "is not to love it." Go and say 
 that to Ireland, take away her halo and deprive 
 her of the profit she makes out of it! Ireland 
 is in distress out of habit. 
 
 The gentle poet Edmund Spenser said it to 
 her three hundred years ago in these prophetic 
 lines : "Marry, there have been divers good plots 
 devised and wise counsels cast already about the 
 reformation of that realm ; but they say it is the 
 fatal destiny of that land that no purposes what- 
 soever which are meant for her good, will pros- 
 per and take good effect." 
 
 The English, who are so fortunate and so skill- 
 ful in their other colonies, have often been re- 
 proached with their failure in this case. But 
 does not the very fact that they have succeeded 
 
248 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 everywhere else show that they are not primarily 
 responsible for the Irish muddle? Matthew Ar- 
 nold used to complain of this British habit, ac- 
 cording to him the most serious obstacle to the 
 good fellowship of the two islands — that of 
 adopting a conventional point of view, of being 
 satisfied with it and instantly expecting others 
 to be satisfied with it likewise. That may be: 
 but why not apply that to Ireland? Why sacri- 
 fice the principles and practices of Government 
 which have been proved satisfactory in an im- 
 mense empire with most diverse races, in the 
 greatest administrative experiment which has 
 ever been made? Why sacrifice the mature po- 
 litical experience of 40,000,000 Anglo-Saxons 
 and Scots to the paradoxes of 3,500,000 Irish? 
 As for knowing whether they are paradoxes, and 
 where common sense is to be found, I leave that 
 to the reader to judge after what he has just 
 read. 
 
 L. G. Eedmond-Howard is pleased to quote a 
 remark by W. T. Stead, the celebrated journal- 
 ist since drowned in the Titanic disaster: "We 
 have made every mistake possible as a ruling 
 race in Ireland. We shall never keep our Em- 
 pire by force like Ireland." True, the British 
 Empire does not depend upon its heavy artillery, 
 and that is the very reason why the Germans, 
 short-sighted psychologists that they are, never 
 
CONCLUSIONS AND FORECASTS 249 
 
 could understand its solidity. Stead might have 
 spared himself the trouble of giving England this 
 piece of advice, for she has wisely acted on this 
 principle for more than a century — since her 
 misfortune with America and the stern lessons 
 learnt from George Washington. Then why has 
 Ireland still to be periodically broken in? Be- 
 cause other methods — has not everything been 
 tried? — come to nothing, because madmen can- 
 not be tamed. 
 
 Let us take one case out of a thousand. Ten 
 years ago the Irish were moaning because they 
 had no recognized Catholic University. They 
 wanted one which should be both free as regards 
 its teaching and subsidized by that enemy whose 
 money alone is acceptable to them. They were 
 given what they asked. The consequences were 
 predicted by men who were at that time accused 
 of religious or political intolerance, but whose 
 forecasts were soon realized: the National Uni- 
 versity is the most dangerous hotbed of con- 
 spiracies, revolts, of the whole seditious propa- 
 ganda. Many of its professors are section lead- 
 ers of Sinn Fein ; Professor MacNeill divides his 
 time between lectures on the Gaelic language and 
 manuals of tactics, fortification, and so on for 
 the use of the rebels. The students who leave 
 the National University sow the seeds of re- 
 bellion, and, since the instruction of the whole 
 
250 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 nation is in their hands, the harvest will be rich ; 
 in the national schools of Ireland, small and 
 great, primary or secondary, nothing is tanght 
 but hatred, hatred, and yet more hatred. 
 
 Mr. Redmond had described eloquently the 
 benefits of a higher education which, while re- 
 specting religious scruples, would create more 
 enlightened and more law-abiding ruling classes. 
 Cassandra shrugged her shoulders and sneered 
 . . . and Cassandra was right. 
 
 Before accepting the Chief Secretaryship of 
 Ireland, Mr. Duke said to his electors at Exe- 
 ter: "Only two courses are open — coercion or 
 an amicable agreement." * 
 
 And in spite of the disaster of his immediate 
 predecessor, Mr. Birrell, he wanted to venture 
 upon showing more leniency, release the prison- 
 ers, moderate stringent police regulations, shut 
 his eyes to the agitation of the Irish. That 
 lasted for two years, a last respite to calm Na- 
 tionalist fever — and here we are in delirium, 
 worse than ever. Mr. Duke had to be replaced 
 by Field-Marshal Lord French and martial law 
 had to be rigidly enforced. 
 
 We are still far from Home Rule! First of 
 all, the state of feeling in which it would have 
 now to be applied would, with the best inten- 
 tly 15th, 1916. 
 
CONCLUSIONS AND FORECASTS 251 
 
 tions, make its failure certain. The Daily News 
 in June, 1918, wrote : "The election of a Home 
 Rule Parliament now is practically impossible 
 from the point of view of British statesmanship, 
 because it would create a Parliament with an 
 overwhelming separatist majority. Such a Par- 
 liament would have to be dissolved almost as 
 soon as it began to sit." 
 
 Then again, if British statesmen and public 
 opinion have been very indulgent and very gen- 
 erous towards Ireland for the last fifty years, 
 the way in which they have been rewarded will 
 bring us once more to the inevitable and recur- 
 rent reaction. The Irish have never tried to 
 conciliate England, but have exasperated her, 
 and in spite of that, her self-denial, raising her 
 above petty considerations, has led her to adopt 
 altruistic courses, and to sacrifice many of her 
 own interests in order to appease Celtic neu- 
 rosis. So little was needed to obtain from Eng- 
 land Home Rule in Ireland as elsewhere, since 
 she has granted it so sensibly to her young Do- 
 minions — not even gratitude, only a little tact 
 and common sense. She has never been given 
 anything but hatred in return for what she has 
 done. 
 
 Concessions are refused, victory is desired; 
 Irish hatred demands s victim and has had wild 
 schemes for undermining the columns of the 
 
252 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 magnificent Imperial structure. Now the best 
 and surest way to hurt England to-day is to join 
 hands with the hateful brood whose way she 
 bars, and whose foul debauchery she stamps un- 
 derfoot. Ireland did not hesitate; she threw 
 herself into those bloody arms with the same ar- 
 dor as the paralytic of Constantinople and the 
 loathsome Ferdinand of Bulgaria. She is at 
 liberty to find her ideal there, but it is for us to 
 guard our own, the ideal of Right and Justice, 
 written with capitals. It is for us to see what 
 that Irish victory would signify to-morrow if it 
 were helped by our sympathy: after the follow- 
 ing confessions we should be foolish indeed if 
 we were to err in the matter. 
 
 Since the war a Germano-Irish Society has 
 been founded at Berlin, under the august 
 patronage of the Chancellor von Bethmann- 
 Hollweg ; we can guess its aims and its disinter- 
 ested motives. It has three Presidents, includ- 
 ing von Schorlemer, the Prussian Minister of 
 Agriculture, and Dr. Kuno Meyer, former Pro- 
 fessor at Dublin University, who initiates it into 
 the mysteries of Celtic Kultur and into the 
 gloomy beauties of Gaelic folklore. It is all very 
 innocent. But as the secret funds of the Aus- 
 wartiges Amt are not frittered away in trifles, 
 the Society devotes itself to more fruitful ap- 
 plications of Weltpolitik. According to the 
 
CONCLUSIONS AND FOKECASTS 253 
 
 Kolnische Zeitung it dispatched in March, 1918, 
 some edifying telegrams. 
 
 To Hindenburg the superman: 
 
 "Filled with the conviction that a free Ireland, 
 independent of England, will guarantee the free- 
 dom of the seas, and thereby the liberation of 
 the world from English sea-tyranny, we hope for 
 a strong German peace, which can alone create 
 real guarantees for Germany and for Ireland." 
 
 To the pious Count Hertling : 
 
 "The independence of Ireland is the real guar- 
 antee for the freedom of the seas from the An- 
 glo-Saxon yoke — the freedom which is longed for 
 unanimously, not only by the whole German peo- 
 ple, but by all peoples." * 
 
 A few days later, on St. Patrick's day, the So- 
 ciety gave a banquet at the Hotel Adlon, and 
 the Wilhelmstrasse sent as its representative one 
 Herr von Stumm, who made a long speech on 
 the theme of the above telegrams. When Ad- 
 miral von Hintze took office after Kuhlmann's 
 hurried retirement, he promised the same "lib- 
 eration" in his famous confidence to the ex- 
 Khedive : chivalrous Germany is fighting only to 
 save those two oppressed sisters, Egypt and Ire- 
 land, from England's grasp! 
 
 1 The Times, March 15th, 1918, "Through German Eyes." 
 
254 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 After these official benedictions, we know 
 henceforth what to expect of what Germany 
 means by the independence of Ireland. It is 
 more than enough to justify the chief argument 
 of Anglo-Irish Unionists, the strategic argument. 
 It is no longer very fashionable, I know; men 
 prefer the idealism of the platform, Bolshevist 
 candor, or the angelic formula of the Reichstag, 
 "no annexations, no indemnities." It is no 
 longer admitted that any people should be al- 
 lowed to exist under a yoke of which it disap- 
 proves. Granted. But there is such a thing as 
 a right to legitimate self-defense for nations as 
 for individuals, and for great nations as well as 
 for small. 
 
 Let us suppose that England renounces her 
 historical rights, her prescriptive titles, and law- 
 ful sovereignty. Let us suppose the impossible, 
 that Ireland consents to the exclusion of Ulster. 
 She would not be content for long with self-gov- 
 ernment under Imperial supremacy; she would 
 at once demand absolute separation: we know 
 it, she has said so often enough and proved it by 
 repudiating those who brought her Home Rule at 
 last. 
 
 This absolute separation is inadmissible, and 
 why? Because Ireland would be an intolerable 
 menace to the neighboring island. An economic 
 menace; we have lately seen her Customs 
 
CONCLUSIONS AND FORECASTS 255 
 
 schemes. A military menace; Germany and 
 Sinn Fein will see to that. 
 
 At the close of the Congress of Friends of Irish 
 Liberty at New York, John Devoy, one of those 
 heroes or martyrs to whom the municipal coun- 
 cils of Ireland send moving addresses every year, 
 a former dynamiter and jail-bird, stated that 
 Ireland would continue to threaten the British 
 Empire as long as there was a British Empire 
 — and that would not be long. 
 
 That was said quite recently, May 19th, 1918. 
 When a people has such wild men as spokesmen 
 and refuses to contradict them — far from that, 
 loads them with honors — when an Empire hears 
 itself threatened in this manner, can you won- 
 der that stern measures are taken? So much 
 the worse for the principle of nationalities! If 
 you go to Dublin you will read at the foot of 
 ParnelFs monument: "No man has a right to 
 fix the boundary to the march of a nation. No 
 man has a right to say to his country : thus far 
 shalt thou go and no farther. We have never at- 
 tempted to &x the ne plus ultra to the progress 
 of Irish nationhood, and we never shall." 
 Treitschke, Bernhardi, William II, could not im- 
 prove upon that. 
 
 No right to fix a boundary? I beg your par- 
 don, my poor friend, the right of neighbors, the 
 right of Ulster, the security of Great Britain 
 
256 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 and that Empire which you stand on your honor 
 to threaten. Your formula is a lie — we our- 
 selves — you must change that, you are not the 
 only people in the world, and great empires have 
 the right occasionally to the same safeguards as 
 a small nation which is too infuriated and too 
 aggressive. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 All Irish Nationalism is vitiated by these two 
 emanations — a hateful spite which will never be 
 satisfied without England's humiliation, and a 
 ruthless egoism. 
 
 Ah! that egoism! in its very title Sinn Fein 
 glories in it. It has two corollaries: astonish- 
 ing vanity, and crass ignorance of all outside 
 matters. Just as in the fifth century she con- 
 ceived the monastic regime, so now Ireland still 
 delights to live in a moral seclusion. Roman 
 Catholic discipline, ever intent upon avoiding 
 the slightest contact with heresy in any of its 
 forms, men, ideas, or institutions, has given 
 hearty support to this isolation. When pro- 
 nouncing a panegyric upon the too famous 
 O'Dwyer, Monsignor Fogarty, Bishop of Killa- 
 loe, thinking that he was paying the highest 
 tribute to his vindictive colleague, said: "For 
 him there was only one country in the world, 
 and that was Ireland — no lakes, no mountains, 
 no people as grand as hers. He never took a va- 
 
CONCLUSIONS AND FORECAST? 257 
 
 cation outside her shores; he never wor/a suit 
 of clothes that was not made in Irelano and if 
 possible in Limerick." / 
 
 Truly, that explains somewhat narriv views 
 on world-events! This is the man fho pre- 
 sumed to criticize the diplomacy of powning 
 Street. Erin lives too much aloof, geograph- 
 ically and morally, "on the edge of beypl." She 
 battens too much on her bitter memorp and na- 
 tional hallucinations, on her history /alsified by 
 fanaticism and intolerance. She dqfs not con- 
 trol her auto-suggestions; points of (Comparison 
 are missing ; like the Bishop of Limeick she pre- 
 fers to ignore the other world, our^/orld. But 
 to add to her folly, and this is whe/e her vanity 
 comes in, she thinks that the eye? <tf the whole 
 world are on her, admiring her, pitying her, ap- 
 plauding her. What would you? All her ora- 
 tors tell her so. 
 
 Vanity ! We are told that towards the end of 
 the rebellion of 1916, in a village near Dublin, 
 Swords, two hundred Sinn Feiners, barricaded 
 in an old convent, wanted to surrender. Un- 
 fortunately so little notice had been taken of 
 their heroism until then that there was no one to 
 receive their submission except two local police- 
 men. Mortified at the idea of going through the 
 village under this escort, our warriors themselves 
 telephoned to the nearest barracks to demand a 
 
258 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 respetable force, and two hours later the two 
 hundrd were able to march between two dozen 
 genuin bayonets: national pride was saved. 
 
 Irelaid to-day is flattering her vanity by an- 
 other bight idea: she thinks she is the ulcer 
 which heating into the old British carcass. Ap- 
 parentlythat consoles her completely for the loss 
 of many friendships of which she was proud. 
 People taie their happiness where they can, but 
 the poor creature is mistaken once again. la 
 John Bullaot in good form, looking very healthy, 
 and more igorous than ever? Has he a malig- 
 nant tumtf? Nonsense — nothing more than a 
 wart. 
 
 What is go ig to happen now? Let us beware 
 of official oratons whose perorations are always 
 so sickly swee;. Here is a choice specimen — 
 Mr. Shortt is speaking, the new Chief Secretary 
 for Ireland : " n hese are all German plots. . . . 
 Ireland — I meai the great true heart of the 
 Irish people — is not responsible for what the 
 Germans do and is not responsible for what the 
 two or three hundred extremists in Ireland do. 
 Ireland I believe is sound at the core to-day." 
 
 You would hardly believe, as you read this, 
 that the most auti ioritative spokesmen and the 
 most effective representatives of the people, the 
 national clergy, led by their bishops, had, not a 
 
CONCLUSIONS AND FORECASTS 259 
 
 month before, forbidden conscription to the faith- 
 ful from the pulpits ; offering for this beautiful 
 "intention" a Mass as solemn as it was blas- 
 phemous in all churches on April 21st, 1918, a 
 Mass followed by a great collective oath in the 
 presence of the Holy Sacrament ; collecting every 
 Sunday funds for resistance, and advising their 
 terrorized flocks "under penalties of eternal 
 damnation to resist conscription to the utter- 
 most." 1 
 
 1 Official statement by Lord Curzon in the name of the Gov- 
 ernment, House of Lords, June 20th, 1918. Here are some 
 quotations in defense of his statement published in his letter 
 to The Times and Morning Pos$ of June 27th, 1918: 
 
 "On Sunday, April 21st, 1918, at a meeting after Mass at 
 Castletownbere, held to protest against conscription, the Rev. 
 Charles Brennan, C.C., said they should resist it, that they 
 should all approach the sacraments and be ready to die in their 
 resistance, and that dying in their resistance they would die 
 with the full blessing of God and the Church upon them. If 
 they (the police) enforced it the people should kill them the 
 same as they would kill any man who would attempt to take 
 away from them their lives, and that the police had no right 
 to their lives if they came to arrest any Irishman under the 
 Conscription Act. ... If the soldiers did attempt to enforce 
 conscription they should be treated in the same way as the 
 police. When the police and military would die in enforcing 
 the Act — as die they would should they attempt to enforce it — 
 they would die enemies of God, whilst the people would die at 
 peace with God and under His blessing and that of the Church. 
 
 "On April 21st, 1918, the Rev. Father Lynch, addressing 
 the congregation in Ryehill Roman Catholic Church, said 'Do 
 ye resist conscription by every means in your power; any 
 
260 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 For instance, the constable or policeman who 
 wanted to arrest a shirker, or who posted up a 
 
 minion of the English Government who shoots one of you, 
 especially if he is a Roman Catholic, is guilty of mortal sin, 
 and God will cry to Heaven for vengeance.' 
 
 "On April 21st, 1918, the Rev. Father Murphy, C.C., ad- 
 dressing the congregation in Kilgarvan Roman Catholic Chapel, 
 said that any Irishman who assisted the Government to enforce 
 conscription in Ireland, as well as being a traitor to his coun- 
 try, is morally committing a sin against the law of God. 
 
 "On April 21st, 1918, the Rev. James Mclnerney, at Mass, 
 Scarriff, said: 'No Roman Catholic Irishman, no matter what 
 position he held, could assist in the enforcement of conscrip- 
 tion iL this country without being a renegade to his faith.' 
 
 "On April 21st, 1918, the Rev. Father Donnelly Murrough 
 said: 'Those who were the means of enforcing it were guilty 
 of a mortal sin because they had no legal right to put such an 
 Act in force against the wishes of the Irish people.' 
 
 "On April 28th, 1918, Father O'Callaghan after Mass, Killy- 
 clogher, said: 'If any conscription is enforced, any policeman 
 who assists in any way in enforcing it is guilty of murder and 
 can never get absolution. 5 
 
 "On April 28th, 1918, Father Murphy, at Divine Service at 
 Killenent Roman Catholic Church, said: 'On last Sunday I 
 asked the police to throw off their jackets from a moral point 
 of view as they were Nationalists and Irishmen with the same 
 Irish blood through their veins, but to-day I ask them from a 
 spiritual point of view to do so, because all Irishmen are asked 
 by the Irish Hierarchy not to do anything to facilitate con- 
 scription, and that if any policeman went out to force Irish- 
 men to join the English army and was shot when doing so, 
 he would le damned in hell, even though he may be in the 
 state of gr&,ce that morning.' 
 
 "The Rev. Gerald Dennehy, C.C., of Eyries, County Cork, 
 told about three hundred men who received the sacrament in 
 his chapel that any Catholic policeman or agent of the Gov- 
 
CONCLUSIONS AND FORECASTS 261 
 
 recruiting list, would be damned. Do not smile ; 
 95 per cent of the Irish police are Roman Catho- 
 lics and have to respect these priests of theirs. 
 
 Sir Edward Carson replied to Mr. Shortt: 
 
 "My right honorable friend looks forward with 
 great hopes to the settlement of Ireland during 
 his regime. I earnestly hope that he may suc- 
 ceed. It has been the aspiration of innumerable 
 Chief Secretaries who have long since been for- 
 gotten." (Laughter!) 1 
 
 Optimism by order — chaff before the wind. 
 Do not let us be led away any more by minis- 
 terial rhetoric. 
 
 Now just hold your head and try to resolve 
 this conundrum, and tell me how you could dare 
 to reckon upon the settlement of Ireland? In 
 view of the physical impossibility of applying 
 conscription, the Government promised through 
 Lord French, the new Viceroy, that every Irish 
 volunteer would be given a holding of land on 
 his return home. Now the land of Ireland is al- 
 
 ernment who assisted in putting conscription in force would be 
 excommunicated and cursed by the Roman Catholic Church; 
 the curse of God would follow them in every land; and he 
 asked his hearers to kill them at sight; they would be blessed 
 by God, and this would be The most acceptable sacrifice that 
 could be offered." 
 
 Is it surprising that The Times asked if that was indeed the 
 mission of the Catholic clergy? 
 
 1 House of Commons, June 25th, 1918. 
 
262 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 ready claimed by farmers and tenants. We know 
 the ideas the countryfolk hold as to their right of 
 occupation, their bad feeling, etc. ; they would 
 not stand being supplanted and replaced by ri- 
 vals, the land belongs to them. In France we 
 have seen the most amenable peasant grow fierce 
 in similar cases. In Ireland, where men are 
 violent by nature, we must add to this conten- 
 tion, which is common to all countries, the ef- 
 fect of a whole century of agrarian agitation and 
 organized crimes, of which we have said quite 
 enough. elsewhere. If there is one matter which 
 the Irish do take seriously, that is the one. 
 
 The farmers' sons are the very people who will 
 not fight; the farmers will not have their sons 
 taken at any price, for they treasure them jeal- 
 ously as heirs presumptive to Irish soil, soon to 
 benefit by land purchase, with the alluring fruits 
 of the promised land almost within their grasp. 
 Are these fruits to be snatched from them to be 
 given away? And given to whom? To those 
 whom national opinion has sworn to execrate, 
 and to pay out; to those hateful renegades, 
 "traitors to Ireland," who have gone to serve 
 the cause of hell ; to those wretches in khaki who 
 were shot remorselessly, like rats, with contempt 
 and disgust, in the streets of Dublin on Easter 
 Monday, 1916. 
 
 Does it seem only fair to you, reader, that those 
 
CONCLUSIONS AND FOKECASTS 263 
 
 who volunteered for the war should be rewarded? 
 Ah, you do not understand Irish logic. . . . Are 
 you possibly as stupid as the Britons who never, 
 understand Ireland? 
 
 But have patience, you will soon learn to know 
 her. Let them but come to take their blood- 
 money, these unspeakable creatures, new land- 
 thieves, after the manner of Cromwell's soldiers, 
 and the Irish will soon let them know of what 
 stuff they are made. The thatched roofs will be 
 set alight as if by magic (for magic plays a large 
 part in Celtic superstition), the small-holder's 
 cow will stray mysteriously into a bog-hole on 
 some fine moonlight night. That will last for 
 fifty years if necessary, but it shall not be said 
 that one man disabled in the great war will have 
 stolen with impunity their rights from our hon- 
 est farmers' sons. 
 
 Peace in Ireland? Let us hope for it — but 
 do not let us be so fatuous as to count much on 
 it. Let us be prepared for fatal but natural 
 reaction. Will the mark be overstepped? Pos- 
 sibly, and after what we have just read the Eng- 
 lish must be somewhat excused if they lose their 
 calm. We know that they never do so unless 
 provocations are excessive, but how should we 
 like to hear chuckles of delight in our rear at 
 every reverse while we were weeping for our glo- 
 
264 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 rious dead? We should see red — and John Bull 
 has a heart the same as we have. 
 
 Will Ulster become more confirmed in her in- 
 tolerance towards her Eoman Catholic neigh- 
 bors? It is unfortunate, but has she not been 
 given the best of reasons for being so? She has 
 never seen around her the best side of the Ro- 
 man hierarchy; the priests and bishops whom 
 she knows and heai-k cw a ib&jti&s&mi inciters to 
 sedition, daily compromising their spiritual mis- 
 sion in order to serve blind passions or the in- 
 terests of the parish pump. 
 
 And as for political solutions properly so- 
 called, which innumerable Chief Secretaries pur- 
 sue with such touching constancy according to 
 the exigencies of their office, I reckon nothing 
 to them either. Do you call this a negative con- 
 clusion, obstructionist, sterile? I know it full 
 well, but one has sometimes to take a negative 
 view knowingly. I do not believe in a peaceable 
 solution of the Irish problem, and I have stated 
 my reasons over and over again. The Irish 
 want reparation for colonization carried out in 
 the distant past upon a race which was then 
 backward and brutish, but which has since devel- 
 oped ; reparation means abolition of the fruits of 
 colonization, and the expulsion of the colonists, 
 or, which would be worse, submission to the na- 
 tives. This raises the question of the legitimacy 
 
CONCLUSIONS AND FORECASTS 265 
 
 of colonization throughout the whole world. It 
 is impossible. Do not let us seek for the impos- 
 sible. 
 
 But for all that the Irish question will remain 
 an acute and ever-present problem. It will cer- 
 tainly continue to be one of the favorite trump 
 cards of English political parties, and a century 
 hence some one will probably repeat Lord Rose- 
 bery's aphorism, "The Irish question has never 
 passed into history because it has never passed 
 out of politics." * 
 
 English Governments will still try to content 
 Ireland with Home Rule in one form or another, 
 with which no one will be satisfied. The com- 
 bination will never last, especially if they try to 
 make an explosive mixture the danger of which 
 Ulster has already scented. Perhaps one day 
 at some moment when nerves are soothed and 
 passions slumbering, if the Almighty ever per- 
 mits such a thing to occur in Ireland, they will 
 manage to deceive each other, flout Ulster or 
 extract more serious safeguards from the Na- 
 tionalists. But how long would you expect that 
 to last? With such temperaments there can be 
 only one issue — civil war, inevitably. 
 
 Or perhaps they will contrive, as a result of 
 the events of the last ten years, to come to the 
 following modus vivendi: 
 
 1 Pitt, chapter xi. 
 
266 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 Give Home Rule to Roman Catholic Ireland. 
 Exclude the north-east of Ulster. Define clearly 
 military, economic, and political safeguards, 
 without which the Empire cannot exist, or she 
 will go to her doom. Ireland would be dissat- 
 isfied with this regime, that I need hardly say. 
 There will be nothing to be done but let her 
 howl. She will then attempt another rising — 
 and perhaps she will have to be brought to rea- 
 son more or less harshly, more or less brutally. 
 She will howl louder than ever. 
 
 Then we shall remember what we have just 
 read, we shall know where our sympathies should 
 go, we shall take care not to misplace or prosti- 
 tute them once again. 
 
 If it be true that the policy of Great Britain 
 in Ireland is incoherent it is partly our fault. 
 If English Governments hesitate so long before 
 showing the iron hand, or only make up their 
 minds to do so when it is too late, it is because 
 they have been looking too much our way, too 
 careful of what we might say, too anxious about 
 our criticisms. They have not all Pitt's power 
 and fine moral assurance; and then the English 
 Radicals, having interfered with other people's 
 business a great deal in the nineteenth century, 
 have nowadays to submit to this counterblast. 
 Their hands are no longer free; they are afraid 
 of upsetting our ill-informed public opinion, and 
 
CONCLUSIONS AND FORECASTS 267 
 
 of getting oversea Irishmen on their shoulders 
 —1,000,000 in Australia, 1,000,000 in Canada, 
 16,000,000 in the United States— -very influential 
 in those young republics whose susceptibilities 
 Old England is so anxious — and rightly so — not 
 to offend. As Wu Ting Fang, the former Chi- 
 nese ambassador at Washington, used to say, 
 "The only two countries in the world where I 
 should like to live are China and Ireland: they 
 are the only two countries where the Irish do not 
 rule." English Ministers have been obliged to 
 take it into account, and their Irish policy has 
 often been warped by it. 
 
 Let us then enlighten our public opinion, and 
 do not let us be taken in any more in the future. 
 England will one day have, very unwillingly, to 
 call for her lictors and restore order: Pax Bri- 
 tannica! Do not let us disturb it by encourag- 
 ing with our pity those fraudulent beggars who 
 do not deserve it. 
 
 Perhaps the opportunity will come very soon, 
 if it is decided to hear Ireland's cause at the 
 Peace Conference after the cries of distress of 
 other small nationalities. We will begin by re- 
 minding her of what Casement said to his coun- 
 trymen: "Irishmen . . . you have fought for 
 Belgium in England's interest, though it was no 
 more to you than the Fiji Islands." 
 
 That can be turned round. 
 
268 IRELAND— AN ENEMY? 
 
 On which side of the green table will Erin take 
 her place? Her new motto, translated into good 
 Gaelic by Kuno Meyer, would seem to give us 
 the clew: 
 
 "A Dhia saor Eirinn agus Almain ! God save 
 Ireland and Germany !" 
 
 Which God? William the Second's old God? 
 Much good may he do them. Let those cronies 
 disentangle their intrigue, and do not let us un- 
 dertake the job. The Irish reserve their right to 
 fight for their national ideal. But an ideal 
 which includes an alliance with Germany and 
 remains deaf to all the great altruisms of our 
 cause does not seem to us greatly to be recom- 
 mended. 
 
 That chatterbox Meyer, in a speech at Cologne, 
 last April, promised Germany's gratitude to Ire- 
 land for her hostility to England during the war, 
 thus immobilizing an army, partly in Ireland, 
 partly in England, in view of Irish risings. The 
 German professor spoke the truth, and we have 
 neither to rejoice over the matter nor to thank 
 Ireland: she tried to stab us in the back — John 
 Redmond's words — and it would be intolerable 
 if she were to profit thereby. 
 
 THE END 
 
 H 7V'89 
 

 
 
 
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