(JULY 1913)
Symbols are very important. The symbol of a true thing, of a beneficent
thing, is worthy of all homage; the symbol of a false thing, of a cruel
thing, is worthy of all reprobation. A gibbet has come to be the noblest
symbol in the world, because it symbolises the noblest thing that has
ever been done among men. The red coat of a soldier, a gallant thing in
itself, has come to be a symbol of unspeakably evil import, because such
unspeakable things have been done by the empire for which the red-coated
soldiers fight, such murders perpetrated, such tyrannies upheld for
centuries. Thus, a shameful thing may come to have a glorious
significance, a ridiculous thing may achieve venerability, while a
goodly thing may become so degraded that the stomach of a strong man
heaves when he looks upon it. Consider this: if a man were to walk down
O’Connell Street wearing a double-pointed conical hat a full foot high
and of a glaring yellow colour, we should laugh; yet when a man mounts
the steps of an altar with a hat of that precise pattern on his head we
are dumb and reverent, for we see in the preposterous headgear the awful
symbol of apostolic succession. This matter of symbols came into my mind
to-day as I watched a Bishop administer Confirmation. The Church to
which I belong, the wise Church that has called into her service all the
arts, knows better than any other institution, human or divine, the
immense potency of symbols: with symbols she exorcises evil spirits,
with symbols she calls into play for beneficent purposes the infinite
powers of omnipotence. And those of her children who honour not her
symbols she pronounces anathema.
* * * * *
A nation should exact similar respect for its symbols. Free nations do.
They salute their flags with bared heads; they hail with thundering
cannon the nincompoops that happen to be their kings. A man with whom
you would not sit at meat if he were a private individual, whom you
would cut every time you saw him approaching you in the street, receives
your homage, and justly receives your homage, when he symbolises the
majesty of your nation. A man whom, as an individual, you would consider
too insignificant to be an object of your dislike, becomes an object of
holy hatred when he symbolises some evil thing that oppresses you or
yours. No one in Ireland either likes or dislikes George Wettin; yet
every true man of Ireland hates, or should hate, to see his not very
intellectual features on a coin or on a stamp, for they symbolise there
the foreign tyranny that holds us. A good Irishman should blush every
time he sees a penny. A good Irishman should tingle with shame every
time he sees a red coat.
* * * * *
I know an old woman who never passes a soldier without railing at him.
As a girl she made bullets for the Fenians, moulding them out of the
leaden lining of tea cases. During the half century that has gone by,
while our fathers and we have been parleying with the English, she has
cherished in her heart an enduring hate. I saw her a few weeks ago as
she went by the Wellington Barracks on her way to the Wolfe Tone
Aeridheacht, and as she passed the sentry at the gate she paused and
said something bitter to him. I would not have done that. I could not
even if I would. Neither could you. A strong man would regard it as
futile; a man with a sense of humour would regard it as ridiculous, just
as most men regard the demonstrations of the Suffragettes. Yet I think
the women are right and not we. At the root of that old woman’s
demonstration against the stolid sentry was an instinct profoundly true.
She is in revolt against the evil thing that holds her country, and of
that evil thing the sentry is the symbol. She is an unconquered soul,
one of the few unconquered souls in Ireland. She has not made peace, and
will never make peace. She has never even parleyed. It were wrong to
laugh at her little feeble demonstration against the soldier. I do not
call for demonstrations against soldiers until we are able to do more
than demonstrate; but the fact that we pass them by every day, every
hour, without grinding our teeth is symptomatic of our loss of manhood.
We no longer feel their presence here a reproach.
* * * * *
Of the nation’s symbols the most august is her language, and it is a
measure of Ireland’s degradation that she can endure to see her language
derided by a Mr. Justice Boyd and that she can discuss the propriety of
selling it for £10,000 a year to a Mr. Secretary Birrell. Ireland has
lost the sense of shame. Her inner sanctities are no longer sacred to
her. Keating (whom I take to be the greatest of Irish Nationalist poets)
used a terrific phrase of the Ireland of his day: he called her “the
harlot of England.” Yet Keating’s Ireland was the magnificent Ireland in
which Rory O’More planned and Owen Roe battled. What would he say of
this Ireland? His phrase if used to-day would no longer be a terrible
metaphor, but would be a more terrible truth; a truth literal and exact.
For is not Ireland’s body given up to the pleasure of another, and is
not Ireland’s honour for sale in the market-places?
* * * * *
As long as Ireland is unfree the only honourable attitude for Irishmen
and Irishwomen is an attitude of revolt. It is base of us to be
quiescent. It is base not only for the nation, but for each individual
in the nation: each of us is guilty of a personal baseness, each of us
suffers a personal stigma, as long as this thing endures. When we go to
Wolfe Tone’s grave next Sunday we should remember with bitterness that
we suffer the ignominy which he died rather than endure. If we mean to
go on suffering it, we have no business going in pilgrimage to that dead
man’s grave. If we do not really mean to carry on his work, why disturb
the quiet of Bodenstown with protestations?
* * * * *
I said last month that this generation of Irishmen will be called upon
in the near future to make a very passionate assertion of nationality,
and that the form which that assertion shall take must depend largely
upon the passage or non-passage of the present Home Rule Bill. If the
Home Rule Bill passes I imagine that the assertion I speak of will be
made by the creation of what we may call a Gaelic party within the Home
Rule Parliament, with a strong following behind it in the country; a
party which shall determinedly set about the rehabilitation of this
nation, resting not until it has eliminated every vestige of foreign
interference with its concerns. If the Home Rule Bill does not pass (and
those who are offering an instalment of liberty to Ireland are proving
such bad guardians of liberty in their own country that it is doubtful
whether their own countrymen will retain them in office sufficiently
long to allow them to pass Home Rule), the assertion must be made in
other ways: I believe that if we who hold the full national faith have
but the courage to step forward we shall succeed more easily than most
people suppose in gaining the people’s adhesion to our ideals and our
methods--lesser ideals having proved unattainable and wiser methods more
foolish.