The Dean and his men did actually march to Belfast. I saw them there
two days later. I also saw them start, ranged in very fair order with
the Dean at their head. The most surprising thing about their march
was that they had no band. There are at least two bands in the town. I
subscribe to both of them regularly and have occasionally given a
donation to a third which enjoys an intermittent existence, springing
into sudden activity for a week or two and then disappearing for
months. I asked the police sergeant, who is a South of Ireland man and
very acute of mind, why none of the bands accompanied the army. The
explanation he gave me was interesting and suggestive.
"There isn't as much as a boy in the district," he said, "who'd
content himself with a drum when he might have the handling of a
rifle."
And yet an excessive fondness for drums has been reckoned--by English
politicians--one of the failings of the Ulster man.
I went to Belfast next morning quite unexpectedly. No peal of bells
heartened me for my start, partly because all the bell-ringers and
nearly all the able-bodied members of the church in the parish had
marched forth with the Dean. Partly also, I suppose, because I did not
travel in a heroic way. I am much too old to undertake a two-days'
walking tour, so I went by train. Godfrey saw me off. I owed this
attention, I am sure, to the fact that Marion was with me. She told
Godfrey that she was going to marry Bob Power, but Godfrey did not on
that account cease to regard her as his property. He had hopes, I
fancy, that Bob Power would be killed in some fight with a Custom
House officer. Marion, on the other hand, was vaguely afraid that
either Bob or I would get injured while rioting in Belfast. That was
her reason for going with me.
I went because I received on Friday evening a very urgent letter from
Lady Moyne. She and Lord Moyne had just arrived in Belfast, and her
letter was sent to me by a special messenger on a motor bicycle. She
wished me to attend an extraordinary meeting of the "Ulster Defence
Committee" which, in defiance of our strong sabbatarian feeling, was
to be held on Sunday afternoon.
"We elected you a member of the committee at a meeting held yesterday
in London," she wrote, "so you have a perfect right to be present and
to vote."
That meeting must have been held after McNeice, Malcolmson and Cahoon
returned to Ireland. They regard me as a Laodicean in the matter of
Home Rule, and would never have consented to my sitting on a committee
which controlled, or at all events was supposed to control, the
actions of the Ulster leaders.
"It's most important, dear Lord Kilmore," the letter went on, "that
you should be present on Sunday. Your well-known moderation will have
a most steadying influence, and if it should come to a matter of
voting, your vote may be absolutely necessary."
After getting a letter of that kind I could not well refuse to go to
Belfast. Even without the letter I should, I think, have gone. I was
naturally anxious to see what was going to happen.
I spent my time in the train reading several different accounts of an
important Nationalist meeting held the day before in a village in
County Clare, the name of which I have unfortunately forgotten. Three
of the chief Nationalist orators were there, men quite equal to
Babberly in their mastery of the art of public speaking. I read all
their speeches; but that was not really necessary. None of them said
anything which the other two did not say, and none of them left out
anything which the other two had said.
They all began by declaring that under Home Rule all Irishmen should
receive equal consideration and be treated with equal respect. They
all looked forward to the day when they would be walking about the
premises at present occupied by the Bank of Ireland in Dublin with
their arms round Babberly's neck. The dearest wish of their hearts--so
they all said, and the people of County Clare cheered heartily--was to
unite with Lord Moyne, Babberly, Malcolmson and even the Dean in the
work of regenerating holy Ireland. Any little differences of religious
creed which might exist would be entirely forgotten as soon as the
Home Rule Bill was safely passed. They then went on to say that the
Belfast people, and the people of County Antrim and County Down
generally, were enthusiastically in favour of Home Rule. The fact that
they elected Unionist members of Parliament and held Unionist
demonstrations was accounted for by the existence of a handful of
rack-renting landlords, a few sweating capitalists and some clergymen
whose churches were empty because the people were tired of hearing
them curse the Pope.
Poor Moyne has sold every acre of his property and the Dean's only
difficulty with the majority of his large congregation is that he does
not curse the Pope often enough to please them. Cahoon, I am told,
only sweats in the old-fashioned intransitive sense of the word. He is
frequently bathed in perspiration himself. I never heard of his
insisting on his workmen getting any hotter than was natural and
necessary. But these criticisms are beside the mark. No one supposes
that a political orator means to tell the truth when he is making a
speech. Politics could not be carried on if he did. What the public
expects and generally insists on is that the inevitable lies should
have their loins girt about with a specious appearance of
truthfulness. Every speaker must offer distinct and convincing proofs
that his statements are strictly accurate reflections of fact. The
best and simplest way of doing this is by means of bold challenge. The
speaker offers to deposit a large sum of money with the local mayor to
be paid over to a deserving charity, if any opponent of the speaker
can, to the satisfaction of twelve honourable men, generally named,
disprove some quite irrelevant truism, or can prove to the
satisfaction of the same twelve men the falsity of some universally
accepted platitude. This method is very popular with orators, and
invariably carries conviction to their audiences.
The Nationalist members in County Clare broke away into a variant of
the familiar plan. They challenged the Government.
"Let the Government," they said, all three of them, "proclaim the
meeting to be held in Belfast on Monday next, and allow the public to
watch with contempt the deflation of the wind-distended bladder of
Ulster opposition to Home Rule. We venture to say that the little
group of selfish wire-pullers at whose bidding the meeting has been
summoned, will sneak away before the batons of half a dozen policemen,
and their followers will be found to be non-existent."
The Government, apparently, believed the Nationalist orators, or half
believed them. Sir Samuel Clithering was sent over to Belfast, to
report, confidentially, on the temper of the people. He must have sent
off his despatch before the Dean's army marched in, before any of the
armies then converging on the city arrived, before the Belfast people
had got out their rifles. The Government in the most solemn and
impressive manner, proclaimed the meeting. That was the news with
which we were greeted when our train drew up at the platform in
Belfast.
The proclamation of meeting is one of the regular resources of
governments when Irish affairs get into a particularly annoying
tangle. There have been during my time hundreds of meetings proclaimed
in different parts of the country. The Lord Lieutenant and the Chief
Secretary never get any thanks for their action. The people who want
to hold the meeting always accuse the Government of violating the
right of free speech and substituting a military tyranny for the Magna
Charta. The other people who do not want the meeting to be held always
say that the Government ought to have proclaimed it much sooner than
it did, and ought to have imprisoned, perhaps beheaded, the men who
intended to speak at the meeting.
Bob Power met us on the platform, which was horribly crowded, and
immediately conducted Marion to a motor car which he had in waiting
outside the station. Then he came back to me and we went together in
search of Marion's luggage. It was while we were pushing our way
through the crowd that he told me the great news. I said that the
failure of the demonstration would be a disappointment to the Dean and
his riflemen who would have to walk all the way home again without
hearing Babberly's speech.
"I'm not so sure about that," said Bob. "We may have the meeting in
spite of their teeth."
"You can't possibly," I said, "hold a meeting when--dear me! Who are
those?"
There was a crowd round the luggage van where we were trying to
discover Marion's trunk. An unmannerly porter shoved me back, and I
bumped into a man who had something hard and knobby in his hand. I
looked round. He was a soldier in the regular khaki uniform with a
rifle in his hand. The bayonet was fixed. I felt deeply thankful that
it was pointing upwards and not in a horizontal direction when the
porter charged me. It might quite easily have gone through my back.
This man appeared to be a kind of outpost sentry. Behind him, all
similarly armed, were twenty or thirty more men drawn up with their
backs to the wall of the station. A youth, who looked bored and
disgusted, was in command of them and stood at the end of the line.
His sword struck me as being far too big for him.
"Who on earth are those?" I said.
"Those," said Bob, "are the troops who are overawing us. Some of them.
There are lots more. You'll see them at every street corner as we go
along. By jove! I believe that's Nosey Henderson in command of this
detachment. Excuse me one moment, Lord Kilmore. Henderson was with me
at Harrow. I'll just shake hands with him."
He turned to the young officer as he spoke.
"Hullo Nosey," he said, "I didn't know you were in these parts."
"Ordered up from the Curragh," said Henderson. "Damned nuisance this
sort of police duty. We oughtn't to be asked to do it."
"Your particular job," said Bob, "is to overawe the railway porters, I
suppose."
"Been here since nine o'clock this morning," said Henderson, "and
haven't had a blessed thing to eat except two water biscuits. What's
the row all about? That's what I can't make out."
"Oh! It's quite simple," said Bob. "Our side wants to hold a
meeting--"
"You are on a side then, are you?"
"Of course I am," said Bob. "I'm in command of a company of
volunteers. We don't run to khaki uniforms and brass buttons, but
we've got guns all right."
"I say," said Henderson, "tell me this now. Any chance of a scrap?
Real fighting, you know? I've been asking all sorts of fellows, and
nobody seems to be able to say for certain."
"We shan't begin it," said Bob; "but, of course, if you get prodding
at us with those spikes you have at the end of your guns--"
"There are a lot of fellows in this town that would be all the better
of being prodded. Every porter that walks along the platform spits
when he passes us in a damned offensive way. You would think they
were looking for trouble."
The crowd round the luggage van cleared away a little and we found
Marion's trunk. Bob handed it over to a porter and we joined Marion in
the motor car.
The scene outside the station was striking. A considerable body of
dragoons, some mounted, some on foot beside their horses, were grouped
together near the great gate which led into the railway company's
yard. Their accoutrements and the bridles of their horses jangled at
every movement in a way very suggestive of military ardour. The
trappings of horse soldiers are evidently made as noisy as possible.
Perhaps with the idea of keeping up the spirits of the men. Some
Highlanders, complete in their kilts, stood opposite the dragoons at
the other end of the yard. A sergeant was shouting explosive
monosyllables at them in order to make them turn to the left or to the
right as he thought desirable. Behind them were some other soldiers,
Englishmen I presume, who wore ordinary trousers. They were sitting on
a flight of stone steps eating chunks of dry bread. Their rifles were
neatly stacked behind them. Round the motor car were about thirty men
whom I hesitate to call civilians, because they had rifles in their
hands; but who were certainly not real soldiers, for they had no
uniforms. They looked to me like young farmers.
"My fellows," said Bob, pointing to these men. "Pretty tidy looking
lot, aren't they? I brought them along as a sort of guard of honour
for Marion. They're not really the least necessary; but I thought you
and she might be pleased to see them."
Here and there, scattered among the military and Bob's irregular
troops, were black uniformed policemen, rosy-faced young men, fresh
from a healthy life among the cattle ranches of Roscommon, drafted to
their own immense bewilderment into this strange city of Belfast,
where no one regarded them with any reverence, or treated them with
the smallest respect. The motor car started, creeping at a walking
pace through the mingled crowd of armed men who thronged the entrance
to the station. Our guard of honour, some of them smoking, some
stopping for a moment to exchange greetings with acquaintance, kept up
with us pretty well. Then, as we got clear of the station and went
faster, we left our guard behind. One man indeed, with a singular
devotion to duty, poked his rifle into the car and then ran alongside
of us with his hand on the mudguard. He carried Marion's trunk into
the hotel when we got there.
Our drive was an exciting one. At every street corner there were
parties of soldiers. Along every street stalwart policemen strolled in
pairs. There were certainly hundreds of armed irregulars. For the most
part these men seemed to be under no control; but occasionally we met
a party marching in something like military formation, led by an
officer, grave with responsibility. One company, I remember, got in
our way and for a long time could not get out of it. Their officer had
been drilling them carefully and they were all most anxious to obey
his orders. The difficulty was that he could not recollect at the
moment what orders he ought to give to get them out of our way. He
halted them to begin with. Then in firm tones, he commanded a
half-right turn and a quick march. We had to back our car to avoid
collision with the middle part of the column. Their officer halted
them again. We offered to go back and take another route to our hotel;
but the officer would not hear of this. He told his men to stand at
ease while he consulted a handbook on military evolutions. In the end
he gave the problem up.
"Get out of the way, will you," he said, "and form up again when the
car is past."
This was unconventional, but quite effective. The men--and it is to
their credit that not one of them smiled--broke their formation,
scattered to right and left and reformed after we had passed. This
took place in a narrow side street in which there was very little
traffic. I recognized the wisdom of the officer in choosing such a
place for his manoeuvres.
In the main streets the business of the town seemed to be going on
very much as usual. It was Saturday afternoon. Shops and offices were
closing. Young men and girls passed out of them and thronged the trams
which were leaving the centre of the city. They took very little
notice of the soldiers or the police. In the poorer streets women with
baskets on their arms were doing their weekly shopping at the stalls
of small butchers and greengrocers. Groups of factory girls marched
along with linked arms, enjoying their outing, unaffected apparently
by the unusual condition of their streets. The newspaper boys did a
roaring trade, shrieking promises of sensational news to be found in
the pages of the _Telegraph_ and _Echo_.
Marion became intensely excited.
"Doesn't it look just as if the town had been captured by an enemy,"
she said, "after a long siege?"
"It hasn't been captured yet," said Bob.
I have often tried to understand how it was that Bob Power came to
take the active part he did in the fighting which followed, and how he
came to be in command of a body of volunteers. He had not, so far as I
know, any actual hatred of the idea of Home Rule. He was too
light-hearted to be in full sympathy with fanatical Puritans like
Crossan and McNeice. He certainly had no hatred of the British Empire
or the English army. He was, up to the last moment, on friendly terms
with those of the army officers whom he happened to know. He chatted
with them and with detached inspectors of police in the same friendly
way as he did with Henderson at the railway station.
I can only suppose that he regarded the whole business--to begin with
at all events--as a large adventure of a novel and delightful kind. He
went into it very much as many volunteers went into the Boer War,
without any very strong convictions about the righteousness of the
cause in which he fought, certainly without any realization of the
horror of actual bloodshed.
There are men of this temperament, fortunately a good many of them. If
they did not exist in large numbers the world's fighting would be very
badly done. The mere mercenary--uninspired by the passion for
adventure--will at the best do as little fighting as possible, and do
it with the smallest amount of ardour. Fanatics cannot be had to
order. Some kind of idea--in most cases a religious idea--is necessary
to turn the ordinary church-going business man or farmer into an
efficient fighting unit. The kind of patriotism which is prepared to
make sacrifices, to endure bodily pain and risk death, is very rare.
It is on the men who enjoy risk, who love struggle, who face death
with a laugh, the men of Bob Power's reckless temperament, that the
world must rely when it wants fighting done. Hitherto men of this kind
have been plentiful. Whether our advancing civilization is going to
destroy the breed is a question which, I am pleased to say, need not
be answered by my generation. There are enough Bob Powers alive to
last my time.