THE DISTRESSFUL COUNTRY
Late one evening I was returning home from a Fabian lecture when a
tall, middle-aged man, with slightly wavy hair and a pair of merry blue
eyes, accosted me. He carried under his arm a large and rather untidy
brown-paper parcel, which looked as though it might contain groceries
and gave him the appearance of the middle-class father of a family. His
voice was soft and pleasant, his accent unmistakably Irish.
“Pardon me, madam, but are you an Irishwoman?” he asked interestedly.
“No,” I replied. “I was born in Yorkshire. But why do you ask?”
“Forgive me, but your voice carries a long way, and I could not help
hearing a part of your conversation with the lady who left you at
Hampstead. You were talking about Ireland. Your voice and the kind
things you said about Ireland made me think you might be an Irishwoman.”
“No,” I said again; “I am not Irish, but I am going to Ireland
to-morrow.”
“Ah!” he said, drawing a deep breath. “And why are you going to Ireland
at a time like this? Surely not for pleasure?”
“No, indeed; there can be no pleasure in Ireland for anybody with a
spark of human feeling. I am going to Ireland to try to discover the
truth, if that is possible.”
“You are a newspaper woman, then?” was the next query. I made no
further answer, feeling that the conversation with a perfect stranger,
albeit a courteous and sympathetic one, had gone on long enough, when
he began to speak with added warmth both of speech and manner.
“Ah! you English people, you do not understand, you never will
understand Ireland. In your imagination you have peopled our island
with devils and conceive it to be your duty to exterminate the plague.
‘The dirty Irish’ is the way you think about us. Hunting down Irishmen
is by some Englishmen regarded as legitimate sport. I am a native of
Cork. I am not a Sinn Feiner. I do not want to see Ireland cut loose
from the Empire. And I deplore as much as anybody the murders on both
sides. But I understand my countrymen. I doubt if you do. I very much
doubt if you can. The differences are too great. But whosoever goes to
Ireland without clearly realizing that the English and the Irish are
two distinct and separate nations will fail to understand the things
he sees and hears when he gets there. I am constantly hearing talk on
this side about the possibility of Ireland making terms with Germany,
becoming even a German province if she secures self-government.” Here
his voice became louder and his manner more excited than ever; the
newspaper he was holding dropped from his hand and fluttered away in
the wind. “Surely if such people understood the racial differences
between English and Irish they would realize that the same applies,
though in a much greater degree, to the German and Irish?”
“Believe me,” I said, holding out my hand, “there are many people in
this country who do understand and who labour continuously to create
understanding in others. They yearn to bring about peace between the
two countries. Between peoples who speak the same language war is a
crime. I am going to Ireland to get more knowledge about her, to talk
to her people directly. And when I return I shall join the band of
workers for peace and reconciliation.”
He raised his hat, renewed his apologies for detaining me, and
disappeared. Under the gas lamp I caught a glimpse of tears on his
lashes--tears of a strong man for Ireland, his native land, a suffering
thing he cannot help.
The Labour Party’s delegation to Ireland had not included a woman.
Several members of the Women’s International League, and a few Quaker
women on errands of mercy, had visited the country. This was some
time before the Labour Party had decided upon an official visit.
The secretary of the party had received from an Irishwoman a letter
imploring him to include a woman amongst his investigators, but it was
not thought wise to do this by the men on account of the danger and
inconvenience. When one of the executive proposed my name as one of the
delegates Mr. Henderson, with the most paternal solicitude, suggested
that the Executive Committee ought not to take upon itself the
responsibility of running any woman into such real danger as existed
for travellers in general and investigators in particular in Ireland at
that time. So the proposal fell to the ground.
No such objection was raised when the delegation to Russia was
appointed. On the contrary, Mr. Henderson strongly pressed me to
go to Russia. I cannot imagine that the concern of this genuinely
kind-hearted man for the safety for his women colleagues was in
abeyance on that occasion. Mr. Henderson had been to Russia and
suffered considerable danger himself. I can only conclude that this
serious-minded colleague of mine believed the danger to be greater
in Ireland under British rule than in Russia under the rule of the
Bolsheviks! I agreed to go to Russia with some reluctance on my own
account. Not because of any fear of going. Atrocity stories and wild
tales of epidemics had no terrors for me. But the time of the proposed
Russian visit was inopportune. I had received invitations to go to
Poland, Spain, and Hungary. Preparations for the journey to Madrid had
already been made and had to be cancelled.
But there were no obstacles to the Irish visit. I wanted to go.
Irishwomen wanted me to go. I received one pressing letter after
another. The Labour Party’s objection was laughed to scorn. I must
say the idea that women who have lived more summers than they care
to confess cannot be allowed to take the responsibility for their
own lives, but must be a burden and a charge, whether they like it
or not, on the consciences of their men comrades is in these days
vastly amusing; particularly to the women of the Labour Movement,
whose conception of progress is of equality of effort, of danger, of
suffering, and of reward for men and women.
None the less, I understood and valued at its very real worth the
altogether gracious and kindly thought which lay at the root of the
action of the Labour Executive.
It was impossible to resist the pleading of Irishwomen that as many
women as could do so should go over there and see with their own eyes
what the women and children of Ireland are called upon to endure.
On Saturday, January 15, 1921, I left Euston for Holyhead, alone,
and without having in any way advertised my intention. I landed in
Dublin in the evening and proceeded to friends in one of the suburbs.
We drove from the station in a jaunting-car. In such a fashion did I
get my first glimpse of Dublin under what the majority of Irishmen
consider to be foreign occupation. Westland Row Station, as well as
Kingstown Harbour, was full of soldiers and police. Passengers coming
off the boat were heavily scrutinized. We were closely examined in
the train. In the streets and public places of all sorts in every
town I visited during the ten days of my visit, even in country
villages and lanes, the atmosphere was tense with the expectation of
the sudden assault, the quick firing of rifles, the rough arrest, the
climbing of military lorries on to the footpaths, the humiliating
search, the heart-breaking insult. Women and men alike feared these
things. Here was an equality of treatment which nobody objected to so
far as Irishwomen were concerned, least of all the Republican women
themselves, who would think shame of themselves if they were unwilling
to suffer what their men are called upon to endure. But the pity of it!
Little children are often victims. Boys and girls have been shot dead.
On this night the streets of Dublin were lively with the clatter of
armoured cars and lorry loads of singing soldiers not too sober.
Occasionally a distant shot was heard. Now and then a side-car packed
with merry little dare-devils flaunting their green flag provocatively
for the sheer fun of the thing would rattle past. One trembled for the
ignorant folly of madcap youth.
My host, who is one of the best-known and most highly respected
citizens of Dublin, did everything in his power to bring me into touch
with every shade of Irish opinion, so that I might judge of things
for myself without bias or pressure from outside. I never was in any
country where there were fewer attempts to make proselytes. He himself
is a Quaker, and has a long record of devoted service to his country
and to the less fortunate of his fellow-citizens to his credit, which
inspired confidence and respect. His beautiful wife and lovely children
gave me a warm Irish welcome, and, although an Englishwoman and,
therefore, a justifiable object of suspicion, I was never permitted for
a moment to feel myself an intruder.
From Saturday night till Tuesday morning the hours were packed with
incident. I think it would have been difficult for anybody to see more
people and hear more tales of woe than it was my lot to see and hear
during these ten days in Ireland. Amongst my new acquaintances were
Republicans of all sorts, Nationalist Home Rulers, Unionists, Labour
Party officials, Trade Unionists, Quakers, humble citizens with no
particular political affiliations, Catholic priests and Protestant
ministers boys and girls from the country “on the run” in the city,
newspaper men, writers of books and pamphlets, British officers,
lawyers by the dozen, ex-soldiers, high-born ladies, the widows of
men executed in the rebellion of 1916, suffragettes, women doctors,
temperance folk, members of the Irish Republican Army, commercial
travellers, and men and women suspected of being British agents and
spies. I should like to disclose the names of all these interesting
persons. In most cases I have full authority to do so. But when that
permission is coupled with a declaration that they do not care two pins
about the consequences to themselves, I am involved in too great a
responsibility to be reckless in a matter where human life and liberty
are so manifestly involved.
But because I believe even the present British Government, more
profligate of its power than any Government of modern times in this
country, would scarcely dare to mishandle a man so great in the esteem,
not only of Ireland but of the whole world of culture, I feel I may
write freely of that towering personality, Mr. G. W. Russell (“Æ”),
whom I met several times in Dublin, always to my great spiritual profit.
Picture a face and figure not unlike those of William Morris in the
prime of his life, with a tenderness joined to his strength which I
imagine was less conspicuous in the English poet. Masses of wavy hair
tossed back but occasionally falling over a fine square forehead, a
full mouth, glorious eyes full of humour and gentleness, a soft musical
voice; the frame of a Viking, the heart of a saint, the imagination
of a poet, the vision of a prophet; a man to whom children would run
with their troubles, whom women would trust unflinchingly, whom men
would serve with utter loyalty; the embodiment of the real Ireland, the
Ireland that is not known in England--this is the man whose devoted,
lifelong work for the salvation of Ireland is being wantonly and
savagely annihilated by British troops.
Mr. Russell spoke without a trace of bitterness, though I know he
suffers keenly, when he told me of the destruction of Irish creameries
and of the difficulties which co-operative enterprise is meeting with
in every part of Ireland. He edits the _Irish Homestead_, and there
he has voiced the complaints of Irish co-operators in language of the
greatest beauty; but to hear him tell the story himself was a pleasure
fraught with pain to his English auditor.
“It cannot be that the system of reprisals has become an integral part
of the British nation’s scheme of justice?” he asked, as we sat talking
by the fire in the house of a friend. “It would be too terrible to
think that that were true.”
“The British people do not know all that is happening here,” I replied.
“Oh, I know they ought to. Enough has been said and written about
it. The ignorance of affairs outside the little circle of their own
interests of the average man and woman makes me almost despair of
democracy at times. But there is this explanation of the inactivity
of the British public about Irish matters. In the first place, very
many people know nothing. Those who do read that part of their daily
paper which is not devoted to the sporting news or the Divorce Court
proceedings read a partial tale. The news is generally coloured in
favour of Dublin Castle and the Black and Tans. I cannot believe that
British co-operators would be content to tolerate the things which are
being done to Irish co-operative enterprises if they knew the facts.”
I was given a tiny yellow book containing the facts which I promised
to help circulate in England. It is an amazing story. The statements
would have appeared incredible to me had I not seen with my own eyes
the blackened walls and twisted machinery of the gutted creameries in
several parts of Ireland. Forty-two attacks by the Crown forces on
these village and country town institutions had been made up to the
time of my conversation with “Æ.” In these attacks the factories were
burned down, the machinery destroyed, the stores looted, the employés
beaten and sometimes wounded and killed.
Questioned in Parliament, the Government has excused itself by
declaring that the creameries were centres of propaganda and of Sinn
Fein activity. They alleged that in two cases shots were fired at the
troops from the buildings. The most searching inquiries by responsible
people, including Sir Horace Plunkett, failed to produce any evidence
in support of the charges of the Government. But Mr. Russell is not
concerned about the result of these inquiries. He wants a Government
inquiry into the whole of the circumstances connected with this
particularly lamentable form of reprisal, and this inquiry is steadily
denied. Why?
Travellers in Ireland to-day see all over the country these new ruins,
centres of village industry and culture utterly wrecked, and the
peasant farmers and their families driven back to their lonely farms to
live in poverty and isolation; driven back to feed not only upon their
own scant produce but upon the black passions of hate and individualism
from which the co-operative idea had begun so successfully to rescue
them.
“Surely the English workmen begin to realize the connexion between
our problem and theirs,” said another distinguished co-operator. “If
our economic life continues to be so seriously disturbed, or if it
be destroyed, we cannot buy from England as we have been doing. Do
you know that, with the single exception of India, Ireland is the
best customer that England possesses within the British Empire?”
The political views of this cultured gentleman are distinctly
non-Republican, yet his house is not safe from the official intruder,
and he is tormented hourly with the sense of outrage and injustice
which the destruction of his life’s labours must necessarily produce.
“To us it would be simply unbelievable but for the other follies we
have seen perpetrated by your statesmen, that any Government with
the least knowledge of the world-situation could willingly add to its
dangers and difficulties. Yet I cannot believe that the members of the
British Government are all ignorant and stupid.” This third speaker
was a man who had served with distinction in the British Army during
the war. But the droop of his figure, the gloom in his eye, the bitter
curl of his lips--everything about him spoke of a confidence lost and a
faith killed.
“Two millions of adult people in Great Britain either wholly or
partially unemployed; wives and children beginning to hunger;
industrial strife on a scale hitherto unimagined clouding the horizon;
men by the million trained to kill, ready to be used by one side or
the other in a class war; hate and violence the fruit of it all, and
appalling suffering for all classes before one side recognizes the
right of the workers to an assured and abundant life and the other
side realizes that Russia’s way is not the way even for Russia. All
this and more--and yet the British Government actually or tacitly
encourages the troops to add Irish tens of thousands to the British
millions of workless, starving, hating men and women, and is slowly but
surely converting the only revolution in history which makes a point of
preserving the rights of private property into something which will be
akin to a class war for a Communist republic--an issue which I should
deeply deplore.”
I am bound to confess that I discovered no substantial evidence that
the civil war in Ireland has either a Communist basis or a Communist
ideal. The utter conservatism of the Irish is the most striking thing
about them. Their determination to win self-government is based almost
entirely upon that conservatism, the love of the Ireland of history,
the passion for the Irish tongue, the devotion to the ancient faith,
their love of the soil--these things and the memory of a thousand
wrongs put upon them by the alien conqueror have much more to do with
Irish discontent than any desire to hold the land in common and
convert the industries from private to public ownership and control;
which ideas would, indeed, be repugnant to the last degree to the
peasant owners of the South and West of Ireland.
Speaking on this point with some of the workingmen leaders I asked how
far, in their opinion, the Communist propaganda had captured the Irish
workers. “Scarcely at all,” was the quick reply. “There was fearful
anger over the cruel death of Connolly. His execution did a great deal
to unite the Labour Movement in Ireland with the Republican Party.
It was the sheer brutality of it. The poor fellow hadn’t more than
forty-eight hours to live. He had been shot in the scrimmage in Dublin,
and gangrene had set in. Yet they dragged him out of his bed groaning
with pain, put him on a chair and shot him--the brutes! They think it’s
all in the day’s work to shoot a ‘dirty Irishman.’ But our people will
never forget Connolly and the way he died. No; the Irish workers are
not Communists. They just hate England and want to be quit of her.
“Ay, and there’s the case of Kevin Barry while you’re on about the
killing. Do you know they tortured that poor lad to get him to tell the
names of his comrades? We have his affidavit. They bruised his flesh
and twisted his limbs and then they hanged him--hanged him, mind you,
when the poor lad begged that he might be shot as a prisoner of war!
Your Prime Minister calls it war when he wants to excuse the murders
of his own hired assassins. But if so, our men are prisoners of war
when they are captured. Who ever heard of a civilized nation hanging
prisoners of war? But praise be to God, every time you hang a boy like
Kevin Barry you make hundreds of soldiers for the Republican Army.
Eighteen hundred men in Dublin joined up the day Kevin was hanged.”
The little man who thus broke in began to fill with tobacco the bowl of
his small black pipe, and when he had lit it he turned on me, fiercely
demanding: “Why have you come to Ireland now? Why didn’t you come
before? Why don’t more of you come? How many thousands of our brave
boys have got to be killed before you folks find out what your bloody
troops are doing to Irish men, women, and children?” And he flung
himself out of the room.
I felt sorry to have appeared indifferent for so long, and said so to
the rest of the assembled company. “But to tell you the truth, I have
lived all these years under the impression that Irish men and women
preferred to win their own battles in their own way; that they regarded
rather as an intrusion any effort of English people to help and advise
them. From the first hour of my political life I have been a supporter
of self-government for Ireland; but I never dreamt that you wanted me,
or any of the rest of us, to come to Ireland to say so. I believed that
you wanted to work out your own salvation.”
“So far as _advice_ is concerned you were right,” said a young fellow
with a large freckled face and fine eyes. “I reckon the English can’t
teach us much about politics.”
“I’m not so sure,” I said very softly. “After all, you have not got
what you have been fighting for during more than a hundred years, and
you have not got rid of the oppression that has tormented you for
several hundreds of years. Perhaps it is possible that co-operation
might have done it. We can all teach each other something. Ireland has
glorious lessons for us English. Perhaps you could have learnt a little
of something from us.”
There was a long pause, and I continued: “It is of the first importance
to carry the plain matter-of-fact people of England with you. Ordinary
men and women in England have a strong sense of justice, but their
imagination is weak. They find it difficult to understand what they
do not endure themselves. They find it hard to believe in the wounds
unless they can lay their fingers on the prints. You must admit
that some of the things which are happening in Ireland are almost
incredible. One thing which makes it difficult to open and keep open
the minds of English people on the subject of Ireland’s wrongs is
what they regard as Ireland’s wrongdoing, the killing of soldiers and
police. Of course, a certain section of the newspaper press exploits
this to the last degree. Why do you do it? Why use the methods so
hateful in the others? Why put an argument in the mouths of the enemy?
Why soil and stain a good cause?”
“Because we are at war,” was the prompt reply. “You have just heard
that your Prime Minister says so. He justifies the methods of the
Government because it is war. We do not like killing people; but can we
be expected to sit quietly whilst our own men and women are killed and
their property looted? It isn’t in human nature. Would Englishmen sit
quiet under such provocation? We don’t like it. And, remember, we don’t
kill innocent people like the other side. Every person executed by the
Irish--executed, mark you, not murdered--is tried by the Republican
Courts and found guilty on substantial evidence of traitorous conduct
or brutal murder.” He folded up the copy of the _Irish Bulletin_ he
had been reading, and then proceeded: “I’m glad you came over. I wish
others would come. I’m sure you’ll help Ireland. Tell your people
that if it’s war they want, war they will get till every young man
in Ireland is dead. Then they can begin with the old men and the
women--they’ve begun with the women--and after that they’ll have to
wait till the children grow up. But they’ll find them every bit as keen
as their fathers. It’s in the blood of us. There are only two ways to
peace, and God knows we want peace. You can either give Ireland her
freedom, or you can sink the whole country in the sea. It’s the peace
of the dead you’ll get if you won’t have that of the living.”
It is only fair to say that nine out of every ten of the Republicans to
whom I spoke expressed sorrow and regret that the policy of violence
had been adopted instead of that of passive resistance.
“But now that the fighting has been begun it is very difficult to stop
it without laying ourselves open to the charge that we are weakening,
or without giving the British Government the opportunity of saying that
its policy of reprisals has succeeded. The very thought of these things
is hateful to the sons and daughters of a brave fighting race.” The
distinguished old lady who said this drew herself up as she spoke with
the dignity of a queen and flashed swords and daggers from her fine
proud eyes.
Her house had been searched twice by Crown forces. They did some small
damage to doors and windows, nothing serious, for she is a woman of
property and social position, an outstanding example of the thing I
found to be true, that the severity of the reprisals, the ruthlessness
of the visitations, the length and discomforts of the imprisonments
were generally in proportion to the means or in accordance with the
religious beliefs of the suspects. Age and sex did not count.
During an official reprisal which I witnessed in Cork, the blowing-up
of two excellent shops in one of the main thoroughfares, when armed
troops kept the crowd moving, and armoured cars, fully manned, kept
the roads, I heard an old woman tremblingly ask a good-natured Tommy
carelessly swinging his rifle as he moved people along the pavement,
what the matter was. “We’re only going to send all you bloody Catholics
to hell,” was the cheerful reply.
To refer once more to the searchings of private houses and shops: I
investigated three cases, the one to which I have referred, the house
of the old lady and her secretary, and two others, both shops. The
usual practice is to knock loudly and demand admittance, but to give
no time for anyone to run to the door, which is frequently burst
open. Sometimes shots are fired into the passage as a precaution,
killing or wounding perchance the man who is descending the stairs to
answer the summons, which often comes in the middle of the night. A
soldier stands guard over each member of the family. If the house be
big enough each is placed in a separate room. If it be small they are
turned into the streets and guarded there. A rigorous search is made,
beds stripped, mattresses sometimes bayoneted, drawers opened and their
contents tossed out, pictures pulled off the walls, letters opened and
read, cupboards emptied--the whole house turned topsy-turvy. A shop
is usually looted of half its contents. Recently, in the attempt to
restore discipline, the householder has been requested to sign a paper
stating that the soldiers left all in order and stole nothing. But no
opportunity of checking is allowed, and the dazed and frightened woman
(it is generally a woman, for the men are “on the run”) signs quickly,
and would sign anything to get the soldiers and police out of the house
and her terrified children into their beds.
In the case of the little sweet and tobacco shop the whole family,
including two young children and an old woman, were turned into the
street at midnight and made to stand there in the pouring rain for two
hours. The gentle young Irish mother with the soft voice and seductive
Irish drawl told me the story.
“It was me brother they wanted. He’s in the arrmy. But it’s weeks since
Oi saw the face av him. Oi couldn’t tell thim where he was, but they
wouldn’t belave me. It nearly broke me heart to see thim poke thurr
bayonets thru the pickshure av the Blessed Virgin. An’ all the swates
was trampled on the flure. The bits av tobaccy wint into the pockets av
the crathurs. An’ the pore children was gittin’ thurr deaths av cold in
the rain outside. An’ now the pore lambs will nut slape widout a light
over thurr beds in the noight furr the fear av the cruel men that is on
them. An’ what have Oi done but keep moi house an’ pay moi way like an
honest woman? Shure,” she said, with a droll look and a twinkle, “if Oi
knew whurr moi brother was, would Oi be tellin’ the soldiers? Oi would
not, indade. Wolfe Tone is the name av him. An’ wouldn’t they be afther
shootin’ at sight a man wid a name loike that?”
The Irish sense of humour never forsakes them even in their deepest
distress. Mrs. A. Stopford Green, the widow of the great historian and
herself an historian of merit, told me of a Catholic priest who had his
home invaded and sacked. Standing amongst the wreckage of his little
home, he exclaimed, between tears and smiles: “Glory be to God! They’ve
taken everything they could lay their hands on. But there’s one thing
they haven’t taken, because they can’t take it, and that is--the laugh!”
I came to one house in order to have an interview with a young Irish
patriot who is “on the run.” He came secretly and at great risk to
himself. He was cheerful and jolly; but, like everybody else in
Ireland, he showed clear signs of strain and of an imminent breakdown.
Eight times his premises had been searched, and each time valuable
things had been stolen. Even whilst we talked a telegram from a friend
arrived to say that the night before they had raided him again and
taken away a pair of much-prized army boots.
A splendid type of cultivated and idealistic young manhood, he was
hunted hourly from pillar to post on suspicion of ill-doing; but his
life’s work had been humanitarian, designed by the slow but sure
methods of education and co-operation to win the suspicious and
illiterate peasant from his bondage to ignorance and intolerance.
He had been tried once and acquitted. He and his friend had been lodged
in the guard-room. There was a struggle, and bombs, and the dead and
mutilated body of his friend was carried out. The story was set about
that the two of them had thrown the bombs at the troops. The bombs
were lying loose in the guard-room. Nobody believed a story so thin.
The pacific reputation of the two men was well known. Everybody asked
why live bombs were left lying about in such a place. Were they put
there to furnish an excuse for premeditated crime? Some believed this.
Nothing is clear. In the subsequent inquiry before a Military Court
composed of young and ignorant officers with a natural prepossession
in favour of their profession and caste, it was denied that Clun’s
body was mutilated. But a reliable witness told me that he had counted
thirteen bayonet wounds.
The first thing which impressed me about the Sinn Feiners I met was
their culture, then their courage, finally their spirituality. I speak
now of those I met in the city--probably two hundred. Many of them
would have been shot at sight if they had been seen coming out of their
hiding-places to meet me. At the moment of writing more than one of
those with whom I talked lies in a dark and dismal prison cell, notably
Desmond Fitzgerald, head of the Republican Propaganda Department.
What amazed me continually was the entire absence of bitterness in the
speech of most of these people. Bitterness they must have felt, and yet
so sure are they of the goodness of their cause and of its ultimate
triumph, that they can talk with calmness and even humour of the tragic
events of which so many of them are the central figures.
“They say in England that this is first and foremost and all the time a
religious quarrel; that the domination of Irish politics by the Pope is
to be greatly feared if Ireland gets self-government. What have you to
say to that?” I asked the handsome youth whose effective propaganda has
filtered through to every country in Europe. It is one of the important
facts of the present situation that the conduct of England towards
Ireland is breeding a cynical contempt for England throughout the world.
“I have to say of the first statement that it is not true, and of the
question that the fear is groundless. The Irish priests have tried in
vain to stop the ambush. They have denounced it from their pulpits.
But they have protested in vain. This defiance is the symbol of a
conviction that the place of the priest is at the altar. When he leaves
that to meddle with matters which are not his concern, he is thrust
aside. I am myself a devout Catholic. But I would not tolerate for a
moment the interference of the priest with my politics. Young Ireland
will not. Our movement is spiritual, deeply spiritual. But with the
methods by which we shall, under God, win this battle with our foes
neither priest nor pacifist must interfere.”
Subsequent experience confirmed the impression that this is true; that
the power of the priest in politics, if it ever seriously existed in
Ireland, is rapidly on the wane. True also I found was the loathing of
the priests for murder. I talked with several in different parts of the
country. “Murder is murder by whomsoever committed,” was the invariable
comment on the killing by both sides.