(NOVEMBER 1913)
I have come to the conclusion that the Gaelic League, as the Gaelic
League, is a spent force; and I am glad of it. I do not mean that no
work remains for the Gaelic League, or that the Gaelic League is no
longer equal to work; I mean that the vital work to be done in the new
Ireland will be done not so much by the Gaelic League itself as by men
and movements that have sprung from the Gaelic League or have received
from the Gaelic League a new baptism and a new life of grace. The Gaelic
League was no reed shaken by the wind, no mere _vox clamantis_: it was a
prophet and more than a prophet. But it was not the Messiah. I do not
know if the Messiah has yet come, and I am not sure that there will be
any visible and personal Messiah in this redemption: the people itself
will perhaps be its own Messiah, the people labouring, scourged, crowned
with thorns, agonising and dying, to rise again immortal and impassible.
For peoples are divine and are the only things that can properly be
spoken of under figures drawn from the divine epos.
If we do not believe in the divinity of our people we have had no
business, or very little, all these years in the Gaelic League. In fact,
if we had not believed in the divinity of our people, we should in all
probability not have gone into the Gaelic League at all. We should have
made our peace with the devil, and perhaps might have found him a very
decent sort; for he liberally rewards with attorney-generalships, bank
balances, villa residences, and so forth, the great and the little who
serve him well. Now, we did not turn our backs upon all these desirable
things for the sake of _is_ and _tá_. We did it for the sake of Ireland.
In other words, we had one and all of us (at least, I had, and I hope
that all you had) an ulterior motive in joining the Gaelic League. We
never meant to be Gaelic Leaguers and nothing more than Gaelic Leaguers.
We meant to do something for Ireland, each in his own way. Our Gaelic
League time was to be our tutelage: we had first to learn to know
Ireland, to read the lineaments of her face, to understand the accents
of her voice; to re-possess ourselves, disinherited as we were, of her
spirit and mind, re-enter into our mystical birthright. For this we went
to school to the Gaelic League. It was a good school, and we love its
name and will champion its fame throughout all the days of our later
fighting and striving. But we do not propose to remain schoolboys for
ever.
I have often said (quoting, I think, Herbert Spencer) that education
should be a preparation for complete living; and I say now that our
Gaelic League education ought to have been a preparation for our
complete living as Irish Nationalists. In proportion as we have been
faithful and diligent Gaelic Leaguers, our work as Irish Nationalists
(by which term I mean people who accept the ideal of, and work for, the
realisation of an Irish Nation, by whatever means) will be earnest and
thorough, a valiant and worthy fighting, not the mere carrying out of a
ritual. As to what your work as an Irish Nationalist is to be, I cannot
conjecture; I know what mine is to be, and would have you know yours and
buckle yourself to it. And it may be (nay, it is) that yours and mine
will lead us to a common meeting-place, and that on a certain day we
shall stand together, with many more beside us, ready for a greater
adventure than any of us has yet had, a trial and a triumph to be
endured and achieved in common.
This is what I meant when I said that our work henceforward must be done
less and less through the Gaelic League and more and more through the
groups and the individuals that have arisen, or are arising, out of the
Gaelic League. There will be in the Ireland of the next few years a
multitudinous activity of Freedom Clubs, Young Republican Parties,
Labour Organisations, Socialist Groups, and what not; bewildering
enterprises undertaken by sane persons and insane persons, by good men
and bad men, many of them seemingly contradictory, some mutually
destructive, yet all tending towards a common objective, and that
objective: the Irish Revolution.
For if there is one thing that has become plainer than another it is
that when the seven men met in O’Connell Street to found the Gaelic
League, they were commencing, had there been a Liancourt there to make
the epigram, not a revolt, but a revolution. The work of the Gaelic
League, its appointed work, was that: and the work is done. To every
generation its deed. The deed of the generation that has now reached
middle life was the Gaelic League: the beginning of the Irish
Revolution. Let our generation not shirk _its_ deed, which is to
accomplish the revolution.
I believe that the national movement of which the Gaelic League has been
the soul has reached the point which O’Connell’s movement had reached at
the close of the series of monster meetings. Indeed, I believe that our
movement reached that point a few years ago--say, at the conclusion of
the fight for Essential Irish; and I said so at the time. The moment was
ripe then for a new Young Ireland Party, with a forward policy; and we
have lost much by our hesitation. I propose in all seriousness that we
hesitate no longer--that we push on. I propose that we leave
Conciliation Hall behind us and go into the Irish Confederation.
Whenever Dr. Hyde, at a meeting at which I have had a chance of speaking
after him, has produced his dove of peace, I have always been careful to
produce my sword; and to tantalise him by saying that the Gaelic League
has brought into Ireland “Not Peace, but a Sword.” But this does not
show any fundamental difference of outlook between my leader and me; for
while he is thinking of peace between brother-Irishmen, I am thinking of
the sword-point between banded Irishmen and the foreign force that
occupies Ireland: and his peace is necessary to my war. It is evident
that there can be no peace between the body politic and a foreign
substance that has intruded itself into its system: between them war
only until the foreign substance is expelled or assimilated.
Whether Home Rule means a loosening or a tightening of England’s grip
upon Ireland remains yet to be seen. But the coming of Home Rule, if
come it does, will make no material difference in the nature of the work
that lies before us: it will affect only the means we are to employ, our
plan of campaign. There remains, under Home Rule as in its absence, the
substantial task of achieving the Irish Nation. I do not think it is
going to be achieved without stress and trial, without suffering and
bloodshed; at any rate, it is not going to be achieved without _work_.
Our business here and now is to get ourselves into harness for such work
as has to be done.
I hold that before we can do any work, any _men’s_ work, we must first
realise ourselves as men. Whatever comes to Ireland she needs men. And
we of this generation are not in any real sense men, for we suffer
things that men do not suffer, and we seek to redress grievances by
means which men do not employ. We have, for instance, allowed ourselves
to be disarmed; and, now that we have the chance of re-arming, we are
not seizing it. Professor Eoin Mac Neill pointed out last week that we
have at this moment an opportunity of rectifying the capital error we
made when we allowed ourselves to be disarmed; and such opportunities,
he reminds us, do not always come back to nations.
A thing that stands demonstrable is that nationhood is not achieved
otherwise than in arms: in one or two instances there may have been no
actual bloodshed, but the arms were there and the ability to use them.
Ireland unarmed will attain just as much freedom as it is convenient for
England to give her; Ireland armed will attain ultimately just as much
freedom as she wants. These are matters which may not concern the Gaelic
League, as a body; but they concern every member of the Gaelic League,
and every man and woman of Ireland. I urged much of this five or six
years ago in addresses to the Ard-Chraobh: but the League was too busy
with resolutions to think of revolution, and the only resolution that a
member of the League could not come to was the resolution to be a man.
My fellow-Leaguers had not (and have not) apprehended that the thing
which cannot defend itself, even though it may wear trousers, is no man.
I am glad, then, that the North has “begun.” I am glad that the
Orangemen have armed, for it is a goodly thing to see arms in Irish
hands. I should like to see the A. O. H. armed. I should like to see the
Transport Workers armed. I should like to see any and every body of
Irish citizens armed. We must accustom ourselves to the thought of arms,
to the sight of arms, to the use of arms. We may make mistakes in the
beginning and shoot the wrong people; but bloodshed is a cleansing and a
sanctifying thing, and the nation which regards it as the final horror
has lost its manhood. There are many things more horrible than
bloodshed; and slavery is one of them.
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