I
(JUNE 1913)
Not everyone that lives in a hermitage is a hermit. And not every hermit
is hermit-hearted. As for me, I have only two qualities in common with
the real (or imaginary) hermit who once lived (or did not live) in this
place: I am poor and I am merry. Now, all hermits are poor, and all
hermits, unless they are frauds, are merry. I am visibly poor, but am
merry only in an esoteric or secret sense, exhibiting to the outer world
an austerity of look and speech more befitting my habitation than my
heart. Understand that, however harshly I may express myself in the
comments and proposals I shall from time to time make here, I am in
reality a genial and large-hearted person, and that if I chasten my
fellows it is only because I love them.
* * * * *
I have, as I have suggested, some proposals to make. The first is that
we who are determined to rehabilitate this nation should commence
working towards that end instead of arguing. The Nationalist movement in
Ireland has degenerated into a debating society. In all our national or
quasi-national organs we argue as to what a nation is, what nationality,
what a Nationalist. As if definitions mattered! Our love of disputation
sometimes makes us indecent, as when we argue over a dead man’s coffin
as to whether he was a Nationalist or not, and sometimes makes us
ridiculous, as when we prove by a mathematical formula that the poet who
has most finely voiced Irish nationalism in our time is no Nationalist.
As if a man’s opinions were more important than his work! I propose that
we take _service_ as our touchstone, and reject all other touchstones;
and that, without bothering our heads about sorting out, segregating,
and labelling Irishmen and Irishwomen according to their opinions, we
agree to accept as fellow-Nationalists all who specifically or virtually
recognise this Irish nation as an entity and, being part of it, owe it
and give it their service. This will save endless discussion, and make
it wholly unnecessary to inquire, before giving a fellow-Irishman one’s
hand, what is his attitude towards bimetallism or what his opinion of
“The Playboy of the Western World.”
* * * * *
This thing of service merits to be dwelt upon. Ireland, in our day as in
the past, has excommunicated some of those who have served her best, and
has canonised some of those who have served her worst. We damn a man for
an unpopular phrase; we deify a man who does a mean thing gracefully.
The word to us is ever more significant than the deed. When a man like
Synge, a man in whose sad heart there glowed a true love of Ireland, one
of the two or three men who have in our time made Ireland considerable
in the eyes of the world, uses strange symbols which we do not
understand, we cry out that he has blasphemed and we proceed to crucify
him. When a sleek lawyer, rising step by step through the most ignoble
of all professions, attains to a Lord Chancellorship or to an
Attorney-Generalship, we confer upon him the freedom of our cities. This
is really a very terrible symptom in contemporary Ireland. It is not for
me to judge the Redmond Barrys and the Ignatius O’Briens and the Thomas
F. Moloneys, and I say no word in condemnation of them here: I merely
point out that they have not in any way served Ireland--they have served
themselves and they have served England; and when England rewards them
for their service there is absolutely no reason why Ireland should
rejoice. A bargain has been completed. Servants of England have done
their day’s work and been paid their price. It is a commercial
transaction, not a matter of public rejoicing. It is a business between
England and these men. Ireland has nothing to do with it.
* * * * *
When such commercial transactions are concluded I think the less said
about them the better. I would not pursue these men as traitors, for I
do not think they were ever with us. But I do think that an effort
should be made to prevent “rebel” cities like Cork from honouring their
mean success. Is it too late, even now, to expunge their names from the
roll of freemen? Let someone in Cork look to it.
* * * * *
This generation of Irishmen will be called upon in the near future to
make a very passionate assertion of nationality. The form in which that
assertion shall be made must depend upon many things, more especially
upon the passage or non-passage of the present Home Rule Bill. In the
meantime there is need to be vigilant. Yet, every day we allow insults
to the nation to pass, forgetting that every fresh stripe endured by a
slave makes him so much more a slave. There comes to a slave, as there
comes to a tortured child or to a tortured animal, a time when stripes
seem normal and it is easier to endure than to protest. Any underling of
British government can now lay hands on Ireland with impunity; only now
it is no longer necessary to deal heavy stripes--a delicate and
facetious slap in the face is a sufficient symbol of over-lordship. One
Mr. Justice Boyd sneered at the Irish language from the Bench in Belfast
a few weeks ago; one would have thought that there were enough Gaels in
Belfast to prevent the fellow from being heard in his own court the next
day until he had apologised. The National Council of Sinn Féin recently
sent an anti-enlisting car through the streets of Dublin. It was seized
by the police and the posters defaced. Afterwards the excuse was
tendered that the cart exceeded the size allowed by the Corporation for
advertisement vans. The National Council promptly sent another
anti-enlisting car, of regulation size, into the streets, and at present
it parades unmolested. But there should have been enough spirit in
Dublin to enable the National Council to send a whole procession of
anti-enlisting cars into the streets. And, had these been seized, a
hundred sandwich men should have appeared with anti-enlisting posters.
And, had these been interfered with, Nationalist citizens should have
set out for business the next morning with anti-enlisting badges in
their buttonholes. Should the police have disliked the aesthetic effect
of this decoration, neat anti-enlisting flags might have appeared in
citizens’ hat-bands. Should all sartorial eccentricities have been
objected to, Nationalist Dublin could have started whistling some tune
agreed upon and recognised to mean “anti-enlisting.” There are countless
ways in which such an agitation might be carried on, for the glory of
God and the honour of Ireland. Once for all, if there is to be an
anti-enlisting movement, let there be an anti-enlisting movement.
Opinions may differ as to the advisability of such a movement, but there
can be no two opinions as to the inadvisability of playing at such a
movement.
* * * * *
I am aware that some of the courses I recommend are open to the
objection that they would land some people in gaol. But gaol would do
some people good.