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Title: The Sacred Egoism of Sinn Fein
Author: Gnathai Gan Iarraidh
Release Date: October 20, 2010 [EBook #34108]
Language: English
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THE SACRED EGOISM OF SINN FÉIN
BY GNATHAÍ GAN IARRAIDH
MAUNSEL & COMPANY, LIMITED
DUBLIN AND LONDON. 1918
_As passed by Censor_
Printed by George Roberts, Dublin
Irish Paper
THE SACRED EGOISM OF SINN FÉIN
I
THE CULT OF ALTRUISM
In this age of sacred egoisms and oppressed nationalities the drama--or
melodrama--of international politics has been enriched by a variety of
distressed heroines, in the shape of small nations, whose salvation has
inspired professions of altruism slightly incompatible with the previous
records of the rescuers as revealed to the impartial observer. The
shortage of paper and man-power notwithstanding, the printing presses of
the Latin and Anglo-Saxon worlds have poured forth an undiminished stream
of most enheartening and uplifting sentiment relating to the rights and
virtues of subject races. Prior to August 1914 small nations were happy if
they succeeded in escaping the attention of their powerful neighbours, but
they have now been raised from the relatively obscure fame conferred upon
the more unfortunate by those sympathetic or patronizing friends of
liberty who have flourished characteristically in the English-speaking
countries. What was once the hobby of select groups of forward-looking
Liberals has become the prerogative of their erstwhile opponents, the
orthodox imperialists and upholders of predatory patriotism. Indeed, in
many instances, the professional gladiators of freedom find themselves
deprived of their occupation, since their philosophy of domestic and
international politics conflicts seriously with the current official
dogmas. The rescuing of small nations has become a "controlled industry,"
and appropriate literature is issued in the shape of Blue Books and White
Papers, or in the less ostentatious, if equally suspicious, form of
inspired press propaganda.
Ireland had long been a subject of melancholy reflection in those quarters
devoted to international altruism of a not too personal kind. Even the
British Liberal found an occasional tremor in his voice as he contemplated
the state of Irish affairs, and remembered his own virtuous conduct of the
case for self-government in Ireland. That voice, however, broke into sobs
of indignation only when uttering judgments upon the iniquities of men
further from home, and his enthusiasm for so proximate a victim of
imperialism was checked by the tangible and daily proofs of his own
futility, less evident where his plea concerned a more remote
beneficiary. Distance lends enchantment to the Liberal view of
international politics. For that reason it is natural to find the
strongest expressions of commiseration for Ireland outside the precincts
of the Island Race, and, in fact, the Irish people have been accustomed to
derive considerable satisfaction from the manifestations of good-will
which they have received from Continental countries. The sympathetic
foreigner, when not an Englishman, is spared the suspicions which his
ignorance of the actual facts might have earned for him, for both parties
are likely to be at a mutual disadvantage in this respect. Moreover, the
claim of a Frenchman, for example, is overwhelmingly reinforced by the
knowledge of material assistance rendered, none being so introspective as
to question the motive of those historic replies of the French nation to
the call of Ireland. In return, did not Ireland alone distinguish herself
in 1870 by a far-sighted rejection of Prussianism, at a time when the Hun
fought for the recovery of Alsace amidst the plaudits of the politicians,
statesmen, and, above all, the moralists of Anglo-Saxondom? When the Irish
organized a brigade to assist France against Prussia, the obstructionist
and condemnatory attitude of the British Government seemed only further
proof that Ireland's real friends must not be sought in England. These
reciprocal manifestations of international appreciation are the definite
crystallization of a sentiment confirmed in Ireland by the fact that
British and West British scholars have singularized themselves by an
indifference and hostility respectively towards the language and
civilization of the Irish nation. Continental scholars, on the other hand,
have displayed an interest in Gaelic studies which cannot but induce in
the Irish people a comforting sense of their own dignity and importance.
Everything, therefore, has combined to give Ireland a belief in her own
international identity, and, recollecting her ancient grandeur, she has
felt entitled to the sympathy which her subsequent misfortunes have earned
amongst all disinterested students of a history by no means negligible in
the evolution of European civilization. When the great Allied crusade for
the liberation of small nationalities began, and the world resounded to
the cries of protest against the tyrants of subject races, the Irish
people were touched by this dramatic vindication of their age-long
contention. For a brief period the scepticism of centuries made way for a
degree of faith sufficient to bring a number of distinguished Nationalists
into the ranks of England, and under their impulse Ireland--as distinct
from the West Britons--contributed what has remained her military share in
the conflict. The "loyalists," of course, were relieved at the opportunity
of exchanging the dubious pleasures of mutiny and gun-running for the more
sonorous activities of a war for freedom. Having scotched political
self-determination at home, they became seized of a praiseworthy ambition
to confer that denied benefit upon the unenlightened foreigner. As for the
mere Irish, they gradually realized the symbolism of this loyal gesture,
the Ulsterior motive became apparent: the war was on behalf of the small
nations, but one had been forgotten. What is one amongst so many, it may
be asked? But the Irish could not rise to that level of almost divine
impartiality which is the natural sphere of the Britisher when he has
decided to right a wrong. The relative importance of Ireland could not be
as apparent to an Irishman as to his benevolent conqueror.
It was difficult for Ireland to reconcile herself to the thought that she,
who had engaged so much sympathetic attention, was now being overlooked.
Rather than risk the danger of a loyalist rebellion in the midst of
England's great war, the British Government decided to put the strain on
nationalist Ireland, rather than test the insistent love of the
professional patriots. No doubt it would have been disconcerting to the
imperialist illusion, had Ulster proceeded to stab its "mother country" in
the back, when asked to accept the measure of autonomy constitutionally
and democratically conferred upon the Irish people. England preferred to
rely upon the good-will of her political adversaries, mistrusting the
capacity for sacrifice of her vociferous friends. Even then, Ireland might
have been disposed to fight for those "larger aspects" of freedom so dear
to the progressive philosophers of English politics, who have never yet
been thus commanded: that the charity of political democracy begins
abroad. Omniscient bureaucracy, in rapid process of becoming omnipotent,
so met the efforts of those Irish who would have the national character of
the military alliance preserved, that the alliance did not take place.
Rebuffed in her natural demand for some tokens of national recognition as
a fighting unit amongst the Allies, Ireland began to realize the
importance of establishing an identity which was ignored, and was in
danger of being forgotten.
Naturally resentment fixed upon the authors and mediators of the "sacred
union" which had failed to fulfil itself, and its weapon was that
originally forged for the defence of the conquest of a measure of autonomy
abandoned under the terms of the political truce. The armed forces which
had been brought into existence by the threat of a loyalist rebellion were
turned to the task of asserting the existence of a forgotten small
nationality. In due course the Easter Rising took place, and by a
blood-sacrifice Ireland once more claimed the rights which, she had been
assured, were being enforced on the battlefields of Europe. Death having
become more valuable than life, as a result of the new belligerent
philosophy of a world at arms, Irishmen determined to demonstrate that
there are more ways than one of dying for freedom. The hopelessness of the
enterprise proved its ultimate strength, for desperate courage has a
peculiar influence upon the pacific civilian, to which category the vast
majority of the Sinn Féin public belonged. Just as the militarist is
enraged by the spectacle of defiant courage over which he has no control,
so the non-combatant patriot is effected by what impresses him as mystic
valour. Even official testimony now records the triumph of that
insurrectionary failure, in so far as the stiffening of the national
purpose is concerned.
Unfortunately for Ireland, sentimentalism has become so fashionable in
international politics, that realism, whether in thought or action, is
abhorrent to minds soothed with sonorous phrases, and but dimly conscious
of the facts behind the words. The mirage of glory not only obscures the
material horror of war, but it conduces to a certain impatience of ideas
which are not coloured by the prevalent megalomania of idealism. The
Irishman who dares to bring forward the case of his own country in
discussion with belligerents is regarded as an inferior egotist, whose
vision is so warped and limited that he cannot realize the great issues at
stake. Otherwise intelligent men talk to him of the German hegemony of
Europe and, by extension, of the world, with a seriousness differing from
that of the Pan-German League only in its abhorrence of that incredible
ambition. The rhetorical exuberances of Teutonic chauvinists are accepted
as plain statements of policy by those who would not listen to their own
Jingoes. The actual, or contemplated, depredations of one imperialism are
not contrasted with those of another, but are used as a foil to the
liberal and progressive aspirations of outraged political virtue. An
inability to take either party at their own estimate is nevertheless
comprehensible in a people whose scepticism of Liberalism is equalled by a
corresponding doubt as to the possible differentiation of two
imperialisms.
Acute and not wholly orthodox exponents of the British international point
of view have expended much ingenuity in finding a formula expressing the
conscious or sub-conscious sense of rectitude which pervades the
Englishman in this debate with Ireland. Britain is depicted by these
critical friends as a well-meaning, if blundering, commercialist, whose
imperial adventures, like the amorous adventures of races unblessed by
puritan _Kultur_, must be regarded as venial sins. British imperialism,
they say, is not deliberate and systematic; it aims at no hegemony, and is
thereby innocent of those evils which the "free peoples of the world" are
invited to destroy. As we have the testimony of several hundred years of
Anglo-Irish history in refutation of this comfortable illusion, it is
enough to say, for the present, that the matter presents itself with no
such simplification to the Irish mind. Consequently, viewed in the light
of this _Herrenmoral_, so natural in an imperial race, international
events take on a significance wholly incomprehensible to the unfortunate
victims of a transfigured and transcendental commercialism. Ireland,
therefore, can neither understand nor make herself understood, so long as
discussion is confined to the unrealities of international politics. She
is obliged to grasp with pathetic gratitude at the straws of comfort blown
in her direction by the winds of the European debate, wherein she serves
the purposes of _tu quoque_ repartee.
In politics, as in literature and art, realism is abhorrent to the
Anglo-Saxon temperament. Wherever the English language is spoken there is
implanted the tradition of moral and intellectual compromise. Revolutions
are blanketed with reforms, unless, as happened in 1641, they can assume
the dignity of a religious crusade. Social problems are discreetly shelved
by Acts of Parliament, and the facts of life delicately obscured by a
literature unique in its emasculation. Thus America condemns as
unpleasantly improper the only honest record of actual warfare in the
trivial mass of Bairnsfatherly war books, _Le Feu_, by Henri Barbusse, a
Frenchman unspoiled by the cult of anæmia. Sanctimonious reflections upon
the superiority of Anglo-Saxon morals are the response to the urgent
question of venereal diseases as a by-product of war. The sexual problems
arising out of militarism are the commonplaces of all literature dealing
with the subject, but when the English-speaking world becomes for the
first time conscripted, and is faced with the military system on a broad
scale, the characteristic stampede to fact-proof shelters takes place. The
half-world is not to be made safe for democracy, but must be declared
taboo. So man becomes chaste by prohibition.
That the present war is at bottom a struggle between two cultures, the
Anglo-Saxon and the German, is indicated by the remarkable way in which
the ideals of the former have permeated the Allied world, strengthening
the natural preponderance, linguistic and material, of the element
represented by the United States and the British Empire. The hands that
are fighting may be the hands of France, Belgium, Italy, Roumania, Serbia,
Japan, China, America, and San Marino, but the voice is the voice of
Britain, whose most admirable mouthpiece is Dr. Woodrow Wilson. The result
is the reaction of the world to the stimuli of recent history in the
perfect British manner. When the Russian Revolution occurred there was but
little response to the revolutionary contagion, which had, nevertheless,
affected Europe on the previous occasions of similar social upheavals.
England, of course, was the great buttress of reaction against the French
Revolution, which could not recommend itself on religious and moral
grounds to the great Empire of respectability. Yet, France did succeed in
infecting Europe with revolutionary ideas. Russia, on the other hand, has
evoked only the response of the strikes in Germany and Austria. Elsewhere
the reception of this dramatic transition from official words of freedom
to popular action has been mixed and lukewarm. Nobody who understood the
fundamental abhorrence of real liberty in the English-speaking countries
could have been surprised at England's unconcealed chagrin, and the
subsequent hostility of all but a handful of the people to the progress of
revolutionary government and diplomacy. What a relief when Germany finally
imposed silence--and her terms--on Russia!
The prevailing tone of sentimental idealism in international affairs is,
therefore, unpropitious to those who, like the Russians and the Irish,
insist upon interpreting _au pied de la lettre_, the pious phrases which
adorn the discourses of altruistic statesmen. Be the victims of oppression
only far enough away from immediate Allied control, then their wrongs
bedim the eyes of the professors of Liberty, whose vision becomes too
blurred to distinguish the close presence of political phenomena which
demand attention. In consequence, Ireland's movement of self-assertion
did not receive the good press which the occasion might normally have
warranted. America, though neutral at the time, denounced the "disloyalty"
of Sinn Féin in the best Colonial style, leaving to the American-Irish the
hyphenated distinction, shared with their American-German fellow-citizens,
of displaying a very natural sympathy with their kin in "the old country."
The racial ties of these two sections of Americans were, until
intervention replaced benevolent neutrality, the only evidence of
resistance to that anglicization of Allied opinion which has already been
noted. Once, however, Dr. Wilson had declared his intention of making the
world safe for democracy, repressive measures soon eliminated those
manifestations of opinion. They had been denounced, but tolerated, only so
long as it was legally impossible to suppress freedom of speech without
injuring the interests of the highly articulate Allies and their friends.
The unsophisticated Irishman in the United States had to reconcile himself
to the paradox of the American denunciation of the Easter Week Rising, as
if the analogous revolt of the founders of that great plutocratic Republic
had not differed only in so far as it was successful. The American
separatists were alike untroubled by the representations of the
unionistic minority, and the preoccupation of England with the war against
her commercial rival of the period. But the Irish separatists made not
even a romantic appeal to a people whose appetite for uplifting sentiment
may be gauged by their profound conviction that the "moral leadership of
the world" had been thrust upon them, after the outbreak of war, by an
appreciative Destiny. It is true that, during the two years when this
particular megalomania possessed the soul of America, her energies were
exclusively concentrated upon the supply of munitions of war, with
occasional humanitarian homilies, addressed to the Hun, and emphatic
protests against the Allied blockade, which was denounced as illegal and
unjust, but has become much more stringent under Wilsonian auspices. It is
hard to decide which of these two not wholly unrelated phenomena is the
greater tribute to the triumph of Anglo-Saxon culture; America's
condemnation of the Irish Republicans as "traitors," or her reinforcement,
when a belligerent, of blockade measures previously described as
indefensible.
II
REALISM IN IRISH POLITICS
In this most intellectually belligerent of neutral countries the political
mind has become realistic and critical, just when the combatant nations
have taken refuge in an uncritical and remote idealism from the sordid and
dreadful realities of war. Amongst the belligerents, it is true, there is
talk of imposing ideals which, if ill-defined, have nevertheless called
forth generous sacrifices from the inarticulate, plain people, who accept
the formulæ officially or officiously provided for their guidance. But the
mere fact of mobilization tends to emphasize the abstract quality of the
formulæ in which the combatants have summed up, in almost identical words,
their allegedly conflicting purposes. The individual is obscured by the
anonymity of the device emblazoned upon the banner under which he is
engaged. The mind is mobilized no less than the body, so that it is
difficult to discern the personal emotion which must lie behind the
self-immolation of so much bravery. Indeed, when collectively expressed
in official utterances, the motives seem so abstract that President Wilson
once confessed his inability to distinguish between them. It was not until
he ceased to be a spectator of the conflict that he himself coined a
phrase almost cynical in its bland inhumanity, coming from a country where
the rudiments of real democracy are scarcely perceptible.
In so far, however, as it is possible to read any intelligible meaning
into the word "democracy," as currently employed, it must be prefixed by
"political." The world must be made safe for the political democracies,
that is to say, those countries which have provided themselves with the
"democratic institution" of parliamentary government. A couple of
centuries ago the blessings of political freedom preoccupied the minds of
those countries which have ever since accepted the attainment of that end
as a substitute for the liberty of which it seemed the simulacrum. Those
were the happy days when the discovery had not yet been made that
political power is determined and conditioned by economic power, the
former being useless without the latter. The gradual realization of this
has been accompanied by a widespread disillusionment with party politics,
popularly summed up by Mr. Belloc in his book, _The Party System_, which
put before the general reader criticisms heretofore confined to Socialist
literature. The domination of politics by capitalism became an accepted
truism, and it was no longer possible for intelligent men to consider
their "representative assemblies" with that seriousness so necessary to
the dignity and comfort of the political mountebanks. In short, without
prejudice to the theoretical virtues of parliamentary government, the
conviction was established that, under the régime of profiteering
industrialism, political democracy is an impolite fiction, and that the
politics of capitalism must be party politics, with all its inherent
corruption and dishonesty.
This process of disillusionment was not without its counterpart in
Ireland, since Irish politicians were part of precisely that political
machinery whose workings were being exposed in England. Moreover, within
the past quarter of a century Irishmen had begun to perceive that, by
relying upon themselves rather than upon their representatives at
Westminster, they could get things done instead of being talked about.
They also observed that the most flourishing industrial and intellectual
movement in the country advanced amidst the indifference, when so
fortunate as not to arouse the active hostility, of the politicians. It
required very little, then, to arouse the suspicion that nothing more
could be obtained for Ireland by political action in England, and the
ignominious fate of the Home Rule Bill came as the final confirmation of a
slowly accumulated scepticism. There was, of course, much of the
inevitable ingratitude of the mob in this revulsion of feeling against a
system which had been accepted by the Irish people, and had, within its
limits, procured them undeniable advantages. Ireland, being eighteenth
century in its retarded political mentality, believed, and still believes,
in the marvels of political liberty, so that the Parliamentary Party was
naturally outraged by the ficklessness of the anti-parliamentarian
campaign. Electors and elected equally believed in party politics, and the
Irish Party could show, with reasonable pride, a record of definite
parliamentary achievement, unequalled by any other minority party in the
British House of Commons.
The truth is, the Nationalist Party was accused of the vices inseparable
from the parliamentary system by those who very humanly imagined that such
vices were not inherent in the system itself, but were peculiar to
British parliamentarianism. In all criticism there was lacking any
suggestion of the possibility of similar defects in a purely Irish
parliament. That is natural for two reasons. First, because the political
development of Ireland makes it as premature for her to doubt the wisdom
of her own elected assemblies, as it would have been for revolutionary
France to question the practical value of the Declaration of the Rights of
Man. Second, because the immediate cause of dissatisfaction with
constitutional nationalism was the evident impossibility of its ever
realizing the true aims of nationalism. Consequently, it is in vain that
the Nationalist Party appeals for recognition of its actual services. A
generation has arisen which accepts as a matter of course the fruits of a
hard struggle, and insists upon the one vital and essential fact, namely,
that the Irish members at Westminster have not brought Ireland a step
nearer independence, and in the very nature of things, they cannot do so.
Meanwhile, the burdens of over-taxation and misgovernment press every year
more heavily on the country. Party achievements are dismissed as of slight
importance by impatient and perhaps ungenerous critics, who assert--and
rightly--that the Nationalist Party did not represent merely a section of
public opinion in the House of Commons, but represented the Irish nation.
Therefore, the test of party politics cannot be allowed. To which it is
open to the apologist of constitutionalism to reply: you cannot
participate in the game of party politics and then refuse to recognize the
rules of that game. It is no more reasonable to believe that the Irish
nation can be represented in the British Parliament, than to believe that
the British nation is represented there. In both cases the elected persons
vaguely correspond to actual phases of popular opinion, elicited, as a
rule, under conditions which would make it difficult for a crowd of
philosophers to express their judgment, not to mention a semi-educated,
newspaper-fed mob.
We can observe over the same period a gradual disintegration of confidence
in elected representatives both in England and Ireland, though the
operative causes have not been the same, to the superficial glance.
Intelligent Englishmen have been driven to doubt the efficacy of
parliamentary government by the exposure of party corruption, and by the
realization of the fact that political power is the shadow of which
economic power is the substance. Irishmen, on the other hand, having being
baulked of the opportunity of arriving at the same conclusion as a result
of actual political experience in Ireland, found themselves, by force of
national circumstances, confronted with evidence of the futility of
Westminster politics. They have reached the stage of disillusion, but are
unable to see clearly the intervening stages, owing to the thwarted and
abnormal political evolution of the country. If it seems a paradox to
claim that a country which has demanded a parliament of its own is
dissatisfied with the parliamentary system, it should be recalled that
there is no necessary obligation upon the Irish people to set up in Dublin
a legislature upon the English model. The national political institutions
of Ireland, as competent authorities have pointed out, are susceptible of
meeting the needs of a community, whose social and intellectual conditions
are quite unlike those of England. Moreover, as our national economists,
Molyneux, Berkeley, Swift, Lalor, and Connolly have shown, the Irish case
against government from Westminster has been based, from the beginning of
modern history, upon this fundamental necessity for a combination of
political and economic power, without which there can be no freedom. If
one aspect of the question has been over-emphasized, the fault is common
to more countries than Ireland, and is peculiarly comprehensible in a
people whose political development has been interrupted and delayed.
The perversity of the fate which governs the relations of England and
Ireland obtrudes itself once more in this connection. It might be thought
that the simultaneous movement of revolt against the sham of politics
would lead to sympathetic understanding of the Sinn Féin point of view. It
is true, to some extent, that during the pre-war years of constant Sinn
Féin activity, friendly references were made in certain English quarters
to the regenerate nationalism which was manifesting itself in literature
and industry. Under less ominous names the Sinn Féin spirit had developed
and spread until, at the outbreak of the war, the country was apparently
absorbed in various enterprises which had received the benediction of
benevolent commentators, relieved to find Ireland at last in a practical
mood. But the war has changed all that. Not only have these innocent
undertakings been revealed as part of the malign machinations of Sinn
Féin, but the term itself has become associated with an event undreamt of
in the essential pacific and economic philosophy of those who expressed
some twelve years ago the growing tendencies in the direction of national
self-help. Sinn Féin did not repudiate the task which destiny thrust upon
it in Easter 1916, but accepted the hitherto rejected theory of physical
force, at the cost of the platonic affection of many who had previously
smiled approvingly at the programme of social reconstruction contemplated
by the founders of the Sinn Féin movement.
It is doubtful, however, if the Sinn Féin policy could have continued,
after the war had broken out, to escape the hostile attention of England.
Political realists ceased to recommend themselves to the favourable notice
of a people embarking upon a crusade for the Good, the True, and the
Beautiful, and whose minds were glamoured by the idealisms so prodigally
proclaimed since August 1914. In a burst of enthusiasm the "free peoples
of the world" undertook to restore the right of small nations, and since
they knew of only one transgressor, they could not wait to consider their
own possible sins against the spirit of nationality. At the same time, the
discredit and futility of the parliamentary system became more and more
obvious as it failed to meet the exigencies of the crisis which had come
in the history of the political democracies. From the moment when the
latter undertook to vindicate their superiority they were obliged to
compromise hastily, when not to abandon entirely, the principles upon
which they rested. Normally one might have thought that this would give
the final blow to a fiction previously weakened, but the seriousness of
national peril, coupled with the mobilization of thought, has helped to
obscure that conclusion. Once the system had become a gage of battle, and
a challenge to the enemy, it was endeared to its defenders, who clung to
it all the more desperately, the more elusive and illusory it appeared.
So it happened that Irishmen were invited to share the enthusiasm for an
ideal about which they entertained no more illusions, except the one which
experience had not had a chance to confirm or dispel. Pseudo-democracy
they knew and rejected, as revealed in the light of a spurious political
liberty under the control of English Capitalism, but they had not yet been
allowed to make the experiment of politico-economic freedom on their own
account. Meanwhile, by an amazing inconsequence, the imposition of these
pseudo-democratic conditions became the ambition of precisely the most
restive and acute critics of the political system upon which those
conditions repose. The complete demoralization of the intellectuals by the
present war will supply some future critic material for sceptical
reflection. In the past, both remote and immediate, the educated have
succeeded in differentiating themselves from the mob by refusing, in times
of crisis, to be stampeded by appeals to ignorance. But gradually the
_Intelligentsia_ had been learning the expediency of attaching themselves
to some social or political propaganda until, when the war broke out, they
found themselves everywhere imprisoned by the new status they had assumed.
They were no longer free to serve their real master, but had sold their
intellectual birthright for a mess of official pottage. Their conscripted
minds have definitely lowered their prestige, since they have set
themselves to bluster and shout across their respective frontiers, in a
manner indistinguishable from that of the plain people, without
pretensions to mental discipline and rational speech. Though financially
strengthened the intellectuals have been bankrupted, as a class, by the
war for liberty.
Without postulating the incompatibility of reason and mob patriotism,
although the divergence of the two has been recorded in prominent
examples, one may legitimately ask: Why this religious enthusiasm for an
ideal whose discredit and disintegration were the chief preoccupation of
intelligent men during the years leading up to the war? The greatest
iconoclasts, so far as the idols of political democracy are concerned,
have become the most fervent advocates of such "democratization," seized
with a malign altruism which would share its ills with those untroubled by
them. Benefits, which would be extravagant if claimed for a Utopia, are
promised on behalf of a social organization whose human imperfections were
never more indecently exposed than during the crisis when it was exalted
as the panacea of civilization. But, in inverse ratio to their own hasty
abandonment of the fictions tenable only in the uncritical times of peace,
the pseudo-democrats urge the adoption of methods which even they find
useless in the stress of national crisis. The foxes having lost the
ornament of intellectual and economic freedom in the trap of capitalist
politics are convinced that the whole world should be handicapped in like
manner. The new gospel of equality of sacrifice, internationally
interpreted, means the equality of weakness.
It is natural that the great resources of the English-speaking world
should be pledged to the defence of the form of democracy which is the
special creation of Anglo-Saxon culture, and that Britishers and
Americans, rather than Frenchmen and Italians, should be most insistent
upon the blessings of "democratization." That peculiar conception of
liberty which has fostered the ignoble individualism of mediocrity, at
the expense of intellectual independence and social strength, has evolved,
under the ægis of England to her own satisfaction and advantage, until, at
last, she came to be admired by foreigners unblessed by so unique a
possession. Hence the fiction of British freedom, hymned by harassed
outlaws or academic critics, concerned only for the more obvious
advantages of a system which offered a refuge to the one and a guarantee
of respectable stability to the other. When England was the safe haven for
continental refugees, the admiring gratitude of the latter was untroubled
by the reflection that it is one thing to harbour persons likely to cause
trouble with an immediate neighbour, whose frontier is invitingly near,
and quite another to give them the shelter of insular isolation. Moreover,
the governments of more inflammable peoples, susceptible to the contagion
of revolutionary ideas, cannot afford to take risks, which have no reality
in the case of a people protected from that contagion by semi-education
and an innate servility. Perhaps the greatest illusion of the last century
has been the innocent admiration of other nations for the security of a
system which postulates a race inhibited by ignorance, snobbishness, and
mal-nutrition, from all revolutionary desires. They envy the impunity
with which scandals, whose publication would elsewhere inspire
assassination, if not revolution, may be revealed in the reports of Royal
Commissions, without provoking more than a few columns of newspaper
summary and comment. But these benighted foreigners know the temper of
their own populations too well not to pay them at least the compliment of
being afraid to provoke popular fury. Blue Books and parliamentary
questions are not yet universally accepted substitutes for democratic
control.
The Irish people have more wisely adopted the ancient device, _oderint,
dum metuant_, as the more intelligent attitude of a people towards its
rulers, who have essayed in vain the process of demoralization so
effective elsewhere. In Ireland alone the familiar ostentatious displays
of Blue Book liberty fail in their purpose of disarming criticism, and
consigning vital questions to an oblivion of official words. The capacious
and retentive Irish memory actually feeds on those indigestible slices of
British freedom, whose price and mode of distribution render them
inaccessible to the vast majority of taxpayers at whose expense these
sepulchres of truth are constructed. The effect of such serious attention
to utterances designed as soporifics is a profound contempt for precisely
that democratic virtue which has excited the admiration of certain
foreigners, so consoling to the Anglo-Saxon sense of superiority. When the
Irish-Irelander learns of England's claim to be the leader of democratic
progress in Europe, and finds that claim endorsed by apparently
disinterested critics, his instinctive movement is one of revulsion from
all implied in the laudation. If English rule involves the acceptance of
the democratic ideal, then he rejects the ideal, for he knows that its
irradiations have not lightened his political darkness, and its practical
workings have effected the ruin of his country. If democratization be
synonymous with anglicization, Ireland begs to be excused. She is,
therefore, thrown back upon herself, brooding and indifferent to the
issues which convulse the peoples for whom the problems of the war have a
definite meaning. This scepticism, however, does not bring Ireland into
contact with any current of internationalism, based upon a conviction of
economic evil existing in all capitalistic countries alike. The egoism of
Sinn Féin determines the Irish attitude towards the war. "Ourselves
alone," not German gold, determines Ireland's foreign policy.
III
THE SPLENDID ISOLATION OF SINN FÉIN
The prevalence of the illusion of British liberty has been an obstacle to
the understanding of Ireland's problem for many years, and correspondingly
the Sinn Féin foreign policy is not a recent phenomenon, since its
objective has been the same for centuries as it is to-day. The French
critic, Emile Montégut, writing in 1855 of Mitchel's _Jail Journal_,
admitted the difficulty when he said: "If the oppressor of Ireland were
Austria or Russia, no invective, no anger, would suffice to denounce the
injustice and cruelty of the tyrant. Unhappily, the oppressor of Ireland
is England, Protestant England, constitutional, liberal, industrial, and
trading England, the most accomplished type of the modern nation, the
model of nineteenth century civilization." In recent times circumstances
have tended to correct and modify the enthusiasm of an opinion which has
been fortified, nevertheless, by the current identification of British
commercial democracy with an ideal condition of society which must be
protected at all costs. The neutral world is blandly assured of the
necessity for accepting every humiliation, in view of the precious
heritage at stake. The tacit, and often avowed, assumption is that the
human race is deeply indebted to the noble altruism of the belligerents,
who have brought devastation and famine upon the world for the greater
glory of civilization.
As a consequence of this Sinn Féin view of foreign affairs, the Irish
themselves are at a disadvantage in presenting their case, for again, it
is a question of an unauthorized egoism, an egoism not upon the official
schedule of edifying war-aims. Montégut became aware of this when he tried
to diagnose John Mitchel as a revolutionary, who might expect the sympathy
of Europe. "The most anarchical Irishman," he wrote, "the most fiery
partisan of physical force is, in fact, less versed in liberal ideas than
the most obstinate monarchist on the Continent." As for John Mitchel, his
French critic estimated him in terms which are as true of his disciples
to-day as of the Young Ireland Movement and its predecessors. "He is
revolutionary on the surface, in his accent and expression, but not in
spirit or in principle"; such was the judgment of the first impartial
admirer who was attracted to Mitchel by the purely literary qualities of
that masterpiece of passion and irony, _The Jail Journal_. The most
learned of the leaders of Sinn Féin, with a carelessness incredible in a
professional historian, has tried to dismiss Emile Montégut as a hack
journalist of the _Entente_! This sixty year old essay on John Mitchel
contains, nevertheless, a classic description of the Irish rebel, as he
exists, and has always existed, to the discomfiture of those who do not
appreciate the "splendid isolation" of the Sinn Féin idea. Summing up the
Young Ireland leader's attitude in foreign affairs, Montégut says:
"Do not ask the author if he is Catholic, Liberal, or Republican, do
not ask what government he would give to Ireland. He hardly knows. He
does know that he hates England with all the forces of his soul, and
that he is ready to rebel against her on every occasion, and that
there is no party of which he is not prepared to declare himself the
defender, provided that England perish: French _sans-culottes_,
Austrian aristocrats, Russian despotism please him in turn. The
revolution of February drove him to revolt; but do not think that he
was consistent with himself, and that he was much afflicted by the
death of the Republic! Of all succeeding events he asks but one
thing; will they or will they not hurt England? Do they contain an
occasion for the humiliation of Carthage? He applauds Mazzini, the
enemy of Catholicism; likewise he would applaud an Ultramontane
Bishop of Ireland blessing the standards of a Celtic insurrection.
He salutes the French Republic with hope; but when on the pontoons of
Bermuda he learns of Louis Napoleon's election to the Presidency, he
gives a great shout of joy; on his arrival in America he learns the
news from the east, and he echoes the warlike trumpets of the Tsar
which resound on the Danube. In each of these events he hears the
good news: England's agony!"
European history moves on, but Ireland's hymn of hate is still unaltered,
and to its accompaniment Sinn Féin adapts the incidents, great and
trivial, which mark the progress of a conflict that is changing the world.
Cut off from the war by intellectual and geographical barriers, Ireland
is, therefore, not exactly the most fruitful ground in which to sow the
ideas which have aroused to a frenzy all but a few disillusioned neutrals.
The pathetic dreams of Liberal forward-lookers, the pious platitudes of
Dr. Woodrow Wilson, and the prize-fighting rhetoric of embattled
bureaucrats and newspapermen fall alike upon deaf Irish ears, which listen
only for the rending and cracking of an abhorred political system. To
speak of the sufferings of Belgians, Poles, and Serbians is merely to
suggest analogies from Irish history; the reaction to the stimulus of
atrocity-mongering is unexpected. Even the Russian revolution aroused only
a passive, almost academic interest, until Lenin and Trotsky referred
specifically to the question of Irish freedom. Then messages of
congratulation to the Bolsheviki were sent from those who had been openly
supporting Count Czernin in his amazing debate with the representatives of
the first Social Democracy to engage in diplomatic _pourparlers_ with a
foreign power. But the capitalist press had scarcely published its
execration of Irish "Bolshevism," when the Ukrainian peace was joyously
greeted by Sinn Féin spokesmen, who were unperturbed in their unholy
innocence of international capitalism, by the discreditable circumstances
of that event, and its subsequently disintegrating effect upon Russia.
These patriots, as Montégut said of their forerunner, Mitchel, "would
unhesitatingly sacrifice modern civilization if there were no other means
of striking England to the dust." Unfortunately, on this occasion, their
ignorance of the solidarity of the capitalist Internationalism betrayed
them into an easy acceptance of a situation by no means repugnant to the
aims of their adversaries. The defeat of Bolshevism was the first great
Allied victory of the war, tempered only by the melancholy reflection that
Germany would be the immediate beneficiary of this restoration of "Law and
Order"--that marvellous euphemism which covers a multitude of sins.
If the isolation of Ireland from European politics has stultified her
erratic excursions into foreign affairs, it has even more seriously
affected the political relations of England and Ireland during the past
four years. The Britisher, sympathetic or otherwise, is apparently quite
incapable of realizing the fathomless indifference of the vast majority of
the Irish nation towards the issues of the present conflict in Europe.
Naive Liberals have been heard inquiring with plaintive optimism: "But
surely you Irish can appreciate the seriousness of a German victory, even
if you are not willing to fight for England"? And a look of incredulous
despair follows, when the composure of the Irishman is evidently
undisturbed by the lurid tableau of the victorious super-Hun, composed for
sceptics on such occasions. He usually is polite enough to convey to his
interlocutor his belief that no such triumph is possible for any of the
belligerents. This perfectly intelligible and essentially neutral attitude
has never failed to exasperate even more profoundly than pro-Germanism,
the legendary malady of all neutrals who fail to accept the Allies and
their policies unreservedly. As it is those who themselves denounce the
Treaties in which the real aims of the Allied "democracies" were secretly
formulated who also insist with the greatest unction upon the moral
superiority of the Allies, the embarrassment of the impartial is not
diminished by this demand upon their credulity.
While one may expect the average man to put faith in his country "right or
wrong," he has exceeded the bounds of patriotic gregariousness when he
asks foreigners to display an identical devotion. The imposition is all
the more intolerable when made, not by the plain man in the street, but by
intellectuals, professing the use of reason. It is positively revolting to
the Irishman who, not being a citizen of those small nations happily
outside the dominion of the belligerents, is prohibited from detailed
neutral argument in defence of his own position. Denmark can speak through
a Georg Brandes, but Ireland may not even quote the Allied press in
support of her contentions. The Irish case for neutrality is expurgated of
necessity--of military necessity! The possibilities of arriving at any
understanding with the Allied countries have, therefore, been seriously
hampered, apart altogether from the inherent obstacles to an admission on
the part of Anglo-Saxondom that its statecraft is not an admirable
combination of the choicest maxims of Holy Writ. Naturally, such
conditions have in no wise modified the splendid isolation of Sinn Féin,
since they have rendered free intercommunication between Ireland and the
outside world impossible.
The ultimate issue of this unequal debate, between a gagged nation and one
in free possession of innumerable voices, was reached when those who
transcended mere discussion interposed with their policy of "shoot: don't
argue." The conscription of Irishmen is the logical conclusion to the
secular denial by England of the claims of Irish nationality, a denial
which has ceased even to be expressed in specific words, so comfortably
has it sunk into the English sub-consciousness. This is the negation which
underlies all political discussion between English and Irish, and has not
a little to say in that futile debate already described. Since the
Irishman's premises are not accepted, all his conclusions seem
unreasonable to his opponent. Similarly the arguments of the latter; for
they rest upon a denial, or, at best, an academic recognition of the fact
that Ireland is a nation, with religious, social and cultural traditions
as unlike those of England as the economic conditions of the two
countries are dissimilar. No agreement is likely when discussion is
vitiated by so vital a misunderstanding. Hence the logic of the
Imperialists who shoot but don't argue. They know that Ireland is not a
colony, and thinking imperially, they are unwilling to concede rights
which they grant to their colonial fellow-citizens.
This differentiation between colonials, who are Britishers, and Irishmen
who are not, does not lead to its corollary that Ireland is a nation, for
it is not the Anglo-Saxon habit to admit unpleasant truths, unpleasant
here, because the admission would weaken the "moral" case for
conscription, so dear to the British heart. The brutal Hun may dispense
with moral sanctions, he may admit his wrong-doing, when military
necessity involves the invasion of neutral territory. The German
sheep--for we are assured of his docility--may masquerade in the wolf's
clothing of intellectual honesty, his adversaries must have some law (of
"angary"), or preferably, some text of Scripture, enjoining them to act as
they have decided. Their wisdom is justified by the universal execration
of Prussianism which, under other names, smells quite sweet.
Unfortunately, Ireland, like other small neutrals, has failed to be
impressed by the ingenious variety of the Imperialist technique, whose
results are monotonously the same. In the particular instance of the
proposal to apply conscription to Ireland, it is hard to say which
attitude in the Englishman is the more preposterous from the Irish point
of view: that of the virtuosi of Imperialism, who insist upon their moral
"right" to conscript, or that of the soothsayers of liberalism, who think
it "inexpedient" to impose upon the Irish colony a claim which they dared
not impose on Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada. Both are
obnoxious in so far as they rest upon the "great refusal," the negation of
Irish nationality.
It happens, however, that a corresponding divergence of opinion has
expressed itself in Ireland to meet the conditions of British politics.
Constitutional Nationalists and not wholly degraded Unionists have met the
argument of inexpediency by adopting it, obeying the law of their
parliamentary being, which demands cohesion with political friends in
England. This section protests, therefore, against the attempt to enforce
a theoretical right which was not exercised in the case of the British
colonies. If logic were any part of a politician's equipment this position
would be untenable, since only the Unionists profess to regard themselves
as Colonials. The Nationalists assert that Ireland is a nation, but they
act as if she were a colony, thereby adding to the incongruity of their
revolt against participation in a war which they have supported and
declared to be just. But happily only their illogical opponents insist
upon the logical weakness of the position, as is the practice in politics,
where the beam in the eye of one party never interferes with its
perception of the mote in the eye of the other. Their respective
constituents are quite satisfied.
Sinn Féin, on the other hand, rejects contemptuously the theory of
inexpediency (while admitting the fact), and prefers to deal with the
Britisher _in excelsis_, whose proposal is felt to be a declaration of war
by one nation against another. The failure of England to regard the
Republican army of 1916 as military prisoners of war is not felt to be a
weak link in the logic of this reasoning--a very human exhibition of that
political blindness to which reference has been made. The Sinn Féin
contention is that Ireland is under no obligation to take part in the
European conflict, and that even a measure of Colonial Home Rule should
not involve a departure from this attitude of neutrality. It is argued,
simultaneously, that the war is no concern of the Irish people, and that
Ireland is one of the most important strategic factors of the
Anglo-German struggle, owing to her geographical position. In short, the
destiny of Ireland is to be largely determined by the outcome of the
present hostilities, but the country itself is to remain outside and above
the battle--a sort of ideal war aim, suspended _in vacuo_, and knowing
none of the evils which normally befall small countries when they lie
across the path of great empires. The ingenuous egoism of this viewpoint
is, of course, obvious, and perhaps irritating, to the unsympathetic
outsider, but it is neither better nor worse than the logic of the various
Powers, great and small, whose national egoisms have been touched by the
war. Every country affected is convinced that its particular existence and
ambitions must be assured, if the true purpose of the war is to be
achieved. All see in the satisfaction of their respective aspirations a
guarantee of the millenium, and the triumph of Freedom, Justice and
Humanity.
The absurdity of appeals to reason, addressed to nations unbalanced by
fear and desire, has never been more apparent than to-day. With the tissue
of patriotic idealism worn threadbare, exposing ugly national greeds,
self-complacent incompetence, and shameless commercialism, it would seem
incredible that even the mob mind should not revolt. Yet, it is just at
this supreme moment of disillusion, when the showing up of all
belligerents is complete, that voices are heard clamouring for more
soldiers to fight for Liberty, and the more incurable professors of
Democracy--that blessed word--actually suggest that the true significance
of the war should be explained to an ignorant Ireland. Once our darkness
was lightened by the lords of propaganda we would take our places, not in
the rear as become late-comers, but in the forefront of the great crusade,
which is to restore to France her frontier of 1814, to allocate the Balkan
States to various masters, to partition Turkey, and rearrange the economic
and geographical map, to the greater glory of the Allied God. To say the
least, the moment is not quite propitious to the cultivation of the
necessary faith in people living, politically, _in partibus infidelium_.
It is no wonder that the Irish nation, without introspection of motive,
has united in opposition to the application of a law which could never
have established itself, if it had been born into a world as sceptical as
that of to-day. Illusion or panic must urge the duty of compulsory
military service.
The ruthless Sinn Féin policy of the English in Ireland called forth an
equivalent Irish retort. Sinn Féin with its programme of national
economics, has its roots in the history of the commercial relations
between the two countries. From 1663, when the Cattle and Navigation Acts
laid the first avowed restrictions on Irish industry and commerce, down to
the present, the destruction of the economic, in addition to the national,
freedom of Ireland, has been the deliberate policy of Britain. The
programme of industrial revival, the plea for industrial autonomy, which
was the point of departure for Sinn Féin many years ago, what is it, after
all, but the crystallization of ideas common to three centuries of Irish
economic literature? From the beginning of the seventeenth century a vast
library of protest against English commercial jealousy has grown up, and
is still growing. Obscure pamphleteers and writers of the highest fame
stand side by side in this indictment of a country which dares now to
assert that its crimes have not been deliberate. Swift's _Proposal for the
Universal Use of Irish Manufactures_, his _Short View of the State of
Ireland_, his _Modest Proposal_; the _Querist_ of Bishop Berkeley; Hely
Hutchinson's _Commercial Restraints of Ireland_;--these are only some of
the most prominent documents in the history of the economic revolt,
subsequently known as the Sinn Féin movement. A sharp corrective of the
lazy ignorance of the fiction which describes the Irish case against
England as one of retrospective sentimentality is provided by the economic
writings of Irishmen for the past three hundred years.
Sinn Féin succeeds Sinn Féin; one egoism has aroused another, and England
now faces in Ireland the projection of her own spirit. Just as British
policy has served only England's interests, so Ireland has learnt to think
first of herself, having never seen her enemy give one thought even to
fair play, as between country and country. Whatever claims the British
Empire may have upon the gratitude or self-interest of other peoples, it
has none on Ireland, which has not yet been allowed, as the phrase goes,
to be just before she is generous. The sacred egoism of nations, so
commendable when urging them to fight for their national existence--and
even aggrandisement--against the Hun, is unfavourably regarded in all
other circumstances. Neither Russia nor Greece has been pardoned a natural
impulse towards self-preservation. Only great Powers are allowed to think
of their own welfare; small nations are denied the luxury, except on
specified conditions. Yet, in spite of brute force, and perhaps because of
it, the smaller nationalities persist in a tenacious selfishness, without
which they must abandon the struggle for life. Editors of military age,
who are too proud of their verbiage to fight, may lament the shame of a
people incapable of the noble altruism which fights for the Sacred
Treaties. Even if a miracle of democracy in the Allied ranks had not come
to give us those shreds of the truth behind the war, Ireland would still
remain unconscious of her shameless soullessness. Strong in the sacred
egoism of Sinn Féin, the Irish nation is convinced that only in his own
country can an Irishman usefully engage in the struggle for freedom.
Flanders, Gallipoli, and Mesopotamia are not milestones on the road which
leads to the liberation of at least one forgotten small nationality.
If the anti-conscription movement had not asserted itself pious Liberal
phrase-makers would never have believed--British fashion--that any
community could actually stand by principles whose statement in England
has invariably been a preliminary to their ignominious abandonment. Once
again our political realism impinged unpleasantly upon the Anglo-Saxon
consciousness, confronting the impotent mourners of theories they were too
feeble to defend with the spectacle of a people aroused to fight against
the supreme sacrifice demanded by the State of its citizens. The sacred
egoism of the individual and of the nation was challenged, and a sacred
union was the result, in which Ireland asserted, with uncompromising
unanimity, her separate national identity. Characteristically, the
professional Protestants kept aloof from this manifestation of liberty, to
the bewilderment and shame of certain continental observers, proud of
their Calvinistic origins, and surprised to find that, in Ireland,
Protestantism is, by definition, antagonistic to the libertarian impulses
with which it is associated on the continent of Europe. An aftermath of
tragi-comedy followed the religious tension of the anti-conscription
demonstrations, when a number of Protestant Irishwomen were contemptuously
excluded from the church in which they had intended to associate their
prayers with those of their Catholic countrywomen. They discovered that
the Church of "Ireland" denied them the elementary right of every
Protestant to direct communication with God. The Dean who interposed
between heaven and the prayers of the faithful was not, strange to say,
invited to enter the communion which teaches the necessity for priestly
intercession between man and his Maker. On the contrary, some of the
victims of his ecclesiastical and political insolence were more concerned
to absolve him from the blame of such an insult than to assert the
principle for which Irish Protestants were alleged to be fighting. Such is
the dilemma, and such is the quality, of the religion implanted by England
in this country, and fostered, like the weakling that it is, in all the
peevish selfishness of the spoilt child, eternally exerting the petty
tyrannies it imputes to others.
The reaction of Anglo-Saxondom to this Irish experiment in the teaching of
the Allies has been somewhat similar to that described in the case of
Russia, on the analogous occasion of the revolutionary realization of
theories reserved for the academic leisure of the English upper classes.
Mr. Lloyd George, that distinguished Liberal, was most insistent upon the
"moral right" to impose military service upon subject races, his
contention was echoed by all "responsible" statesmen, and the lofty
example of Austria was cited as a model. This was a daring instance of
associating with enemy ideas, only permissible to the chemically pure in
heart.
If only the Hun had served the Bible as he served Bernhardi, the Lord
would not have deserted him in his hour of need. In Ireland, however, the
devil of imperialism quoted the Scriptures to no purpose, for this is an
island, not only of Saints and Scholars, but also of theologians and
politicians, who proved equal to this ingenious conflict of moralities.
This alliance was particularly obnoxious to those who had engineered the
politico-religious Carsonade of North-East Ulster. Just as the Allied
governments have standardized the business of rescuing small
nationalities, so the dominant British statesmen have the exclusive right
to combine religion and politics. A Covenant of "loyalists," in full
Protestant regalia, organizing treason to the King and Parliament
recognized by them, is but an incident on the path to political preferment
and the honours of public life. A national pledge to resist the greatest
infamy one nation can inflict upon another becomes a Papist plot. An Irish
bishop is a sinister intruder only when he does not wear the shovel-hat
and apron of the Episcopalian minority.
In the greater Anglo-Saxondom across the seas, particularly in the
Wilsonian Republic, the spectacle of Irish freedom was most offensive. An
American critic once summed up the different characteristics of North and
South in the Civil War by saying: "The Southerner was an imitation of an
English gentleman, the Northerner was an imitation of an English cad." In
other words, society in the South was a shadowy reflection of the British
landed aristocracy, in the North, it followed the example of the
capitalist class. In terms of present day America this definition must be
modified to meet the change effected by the triumph of the North, and the
general disappearance of the old South. An American to-day is an English
Liberal ... only more so. He combines the anti-social commercialism of the
industrial early nineteenth century with the empty, verbal radicalism of
the Cocoa Press tear-squeezers. Needless to say he has shown, on the
whole, a more ferocious intolerance of minorities and individuals than any
other belligerent in the present war. His hatred is more bestial; his
patriotic zeal more inquisitorial. The slowly mounting tide of perverted
Puritan legislation has broken over America, swollen by the tributaries of
war lust, until the country is a vast wilderness of freak prohibitions
aimed at the destruction of freedom. In these circumstances it is not
surprising to find American journals occasionally protesting against the
excessive zeal of the Administration in suppressing opinions and harassing
individuals, because of pro-Irish sympathies which have been granted
expression even in England. The New York _Nation_, a respectable and
orthodox journal, written by and for intellectually anæmic college
professors, sighs in vain for such toleration in Irish affairs as that of
the _Manchester Guardian_. A striking tribute to the decadent
anglicization of the Benighted States!
At no time remarkable for the suppression of the national ego, America has
now abandoned all pretence of respecting the egoism of other nations which
have dared to display the instinct of self-preservation, in opposition to
the ukases of absolutists of international virtue. Thus, we find the great
minds of the Anglo-Saxon world with but a single thought, although
forward-lookers in England still comfort their depressed followers with
gallant attempts to extract hope from the rhetorical felicities of
President Wilson, whose verbal harmonies are contrasted with the
discordant defiance of ministerial utterances at home. Just as in America,
progressive Radicals compare the autocracy of Washington with the
democracy of London, and complain that Americans are deprived of the
blessings of liberty and efficiency which the English enjoy. The great
advantage of a numerous Alliance may be appreciated by all who observe the
reciprocal illusions of the Allied peoples, of whom each believes that all
is well with the others. An idea, or a reputation, exploded in London,
will linger peacefully in more distant regions, until the circuit of
disillusionment has been completed. By that time it may start afresh in
some new guise, on the principle that you can pass as a statesman of
genius with all the Allies some of the time, if not with some of them all
the time, as certain idols of the market place would seem to indicate.
When the collapsible German "plot" was landed in Ireland, and a number of
arrests was made in the better-organized ranks of the
anti-conscriptionists, it was doubtless the intention to prove Irish
Nationalism synonymous with pro-Germanism, but the result has been to make
it so, rather than to prove that it was so. This unexpected achievement
has been pointed out--the Censor permitting--in various journals, and
there has been a consequent recrudescence of activity to persuade Ireland
that she is isolating herself from the world by turning towards Germany.
With a tranquility in accepting the possibility as strange as the
disinclination to remove its motives, Englishmen have set themselves to
argue against the desirability of an Irish-German alliance. That being a
highly conjectural and theoretical matter, it at once appeals to the
Liberal British mind as a more suitable theme for discussion than the
actual question at issue between England and Ireland. The Celt, whose
preference for the dream over the reality is proverbial in non-Celtic
circles, has been superseded by the theorists of freedom, who would much
sooner argue academic points than face real political problems. They enjoy
the task of setting forth the dire consequences of a Central European
combination, with Ireland annexed, and contrasting this with the
federation of free peoples, in which everyone is happy.
Unfortunately, the future does not present itself to the Irish mind in any
such simplified terms, and some Irishmen, too, offer the will for the deed
of participation, but their reception is the most unfavourable. They are
accused of supporting a war in which they refuse to fight. There is to be
no reciprocity in this exchange. The pro-Ally Irishman is to give his life
at once, but no instalment is forthcoming of the common ideal he has been
invited to achieve. The democratic millenium to which the Milners,
Curzons, and Carsons are leading, under the special patronage of Lord
Northcliffe, is apparently so certain, that only the rudeness of parochial
and provincial minds could prompt a demand for the commonplace
realizations of here and now. So it comes, as the war progresses, that
the number of Ireland's grievances is increased simultaneously with the
demands upon her honour, her credulity and her patience. Consequently, as
is the way of human nature, her egoism is exasperated, and becomes more
firmly concentrated upon her own welfare. Precisely at that moment of
exasperation an appeal is made for the voluntary surrender of that which
was witheld even under threat of force. Since it is only the tactless Hun
who is lacking in psychological subtlety, this strange phenomenon must be
otherwise explicable.
The truth is that our sacred egoism, strong and exacerbated as it is, has
not yet touched the sublime heights of British selfishness and
self-complacency. England refuses absolutely to be convinced, by the
painful and reiterated facts of our history, that this country is not
merely a turbulent province! Therefore, it ought to be possible to break
our resistance, or to cajole us, as was done in England when the various
Military Service Acts were passed. The men of the country were split up
into antagonistic groups; the married against the single, the middle-aged
against the young, trade against trade. Each wanted to escape at the cost
of the other. In Ireland, of course, no such division can be created, for
the simple reason that we have never refused to fight for our own
country. Our detestation of pacifists equals even that of the English
gutter-press, and our incredible indifference to personal, as distinct
from national, convictions makes Ireland a paradise for militarists. But
they must be militarists of our own creation. Sinn Féin fosters the
development of native industries, and supports home products, often with
an embarrassing disregard for the consequences. The Irish anti-militarist
is, therefore, rarely a pacifist, and his objections are of a very
different order from those which are surmounted or crushed by the
advocates of military service in Great Britain. But it does not seem as if
this elementary fact will be recognized, for to recognize it would be for
England to admit that Ireland is a nation. To the denial and obscuration
of that enduring truth centuries of English policy have gone, and in
Ireland everything has been sacrificed to its assertion and reiteration.
It lies at the back of the whole Anglo-Irish controversy, and sums up the
essence of innumerable volumes which have attempted to state the case for
Irish freedom. Until the fact of Irish Nationality is accepted by England,
and acted upon, it will be the task of Sinn Féin to proclaim the sacred
egoism of a nation that will not die.
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Gnathai Gan Iarraidh
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