(JANUARY 1914)
It would appear that the impossible has happened (as, indeed, when one
comes to think of the matter, it nearly always does), and that the young
men of Ireland are learning again the noble trade of arms. They had
almost forgotten that it _was_ a noble trade; and when the young men of
a nation have reached so terrible a depth as to be unconscious of the
dignity of arms, one will naturally doubt their capacity for any virile
thought, let alone any virile action. Hence my scepticism of last month.
I who am as a babe, believing all things and hoping all things, felt it
difficult to believe this. One is disillusioned so often. Once when I
was a boy a ballad-singer came to the farmhouse in which I was living
for a time in a glen of the Dublin hills. He had ballads of “Bold Robert
Emmet” and “Here’s a Song for Young Wolfe Tone”; and he told me that in
secret places of the hills Fenians had drilled and, for all he knew,
were drilling still. So I fared forth in quest of them, trudging along
mountain roads at night, full of the faith that in some moonlit glen I
should come upon the Fenians drilling. But I never found them. Nowhere
beneath the moon were there armed men wheeling and marching. The
mountains were lonely. When I came home I said to my grandfather (who
had himself been a Fenian, albeit I knew it not), “The Fenians are all
dead.” “Oh, be the!” said he (his oaths never got further than “be
the”), “how do you know that?” “I have gone through all the glens,” I
answered, “and there were none drilling: they must be dead.”
* * * * *
And my naive deduction was very nearly right. If the Fenians were not
all dead, the Fenian spirit was dead, or almost dead. By the Fenian
spirit I mean not so much the spirit of a particular generation as that
virile fighting faith which has been the salt of all the generations in
Ireland unto this last. And is it here even in this last? Yea, its seeds
are here, and behold they are kindling: it is for you and me to fan them
into such a flame as shall consume everything that is mean and
compromising and insincere in Ireland and in each man of Ireland--for in
every one of us there is much that is mean and compromising and
insincere, much that were better burned out. When we stand armed as
Volunteers we shall at least be men, and so shall be able to come into
communion of thought and action with the virile generations of Ireland:
to our betterment, be sure.
* * * * *
The only question that need trouble us now is this: Will the young men
of Ireland rise to the opportunity that is given them? They have a year
before them: the momentous year of 1914. The fate of the Irish movement
in our time will very likely be determined during the coming twelve
months, and it will be determined largely by the way in which the
Volunteer movement develops. In other words, it will depend upon the
young men who have volunteered, for they have the making of the movement
in their hands. This is a problem in which the British Government is not
a factor; in which the Irish leaders--Parliamentarian, Sinn Féin,
Separatist, Gaelic League--are not factors; the young men of the towns
and countrysides are the only factors; they and whatever manly stuff is
in them. It is a great opportunity for the young men of a people to get.
A year is theirs in which to make history.
* * * * *
A former generation of Irishmen got such a year and used it well. An
army of 100,000 drilled and equipped men was its glorious fruit. Can we
of the twentieth century work to similar purpose and with similar result
during the year that has been given to us? I believe we can. There are
circumstances which seem to me to make our task easier than theirs.
* * * * *
In the first place, we are poorer than they were. Therefore we shall be
more generous. There were many men of money among the Volunteers of
1778-83: it was one of the weaknesses of the movement. Those who have
are always inclined to hold; always afraid to risk. No good cause in
Ireland appeals for help in vain, provided those to whom it appeals are
sufficiently poor. The young men who, I imagine, are volunteering to-day
are for the most part poor: being poor, they will know how to save and
pinch and scrape until each man of them has a rifle and a uniform. There
are those among them who will give up tobacco for a spell, or at any
rate reduce their consumption of tobacco; who will become total
abstainers for a while; who will renounce betting; who will go less
frequently to theatres, to music-halls, to picture-houses; who will
dispense with all their little luxuries and rise above all their little
follies, to the sole end that they may have, each man of them, before
the year is out, a Volunteer rifle on his shoulder and a Volunteer coat
on his back. Note well the companies: I prophesy that it is not the
companies which draw their recruits from the most prosperous quarters
that will be soonest equipped; not the sleekest-looking men that will
first shoulder rifles. When you are starting upon any noble enterprise,
it is a great thing to start poor. Wolfe Tone, reaching France with a
hundred guineas in his pocket, sent three fleets against England. James
Stephens with ninety pounds in hand embarked upon the organisation of
the Fenians.
* * * * *
In the second place, this is a movement of the people, not of the
“leaders.” The leaders in Ireland have nearly always left the people at
the critical moment; have sometimes sold them. The former Volunteer
movement was abandoned by its leaders; hence its ultimate failure.
Grattan “led the van” of the Volunteers, but he also led the retreat of
the leaders; O’Connell recoiled before the cannon at Clontarf; twice the
hour of the Irish Revolution struck during Young Ireland days, and twice
it struck in vain, for Meagher hesitated in Waterford, Duffy and McGee
hesitated in Dublin. Stephens refused to “give the word” in ’65; he
never came in ’66 or ’67. I do not blame these men: you or I might have
done the same. It is a terrible responsibility to be cast upon a man,
that of bidding the cannon speak and the grapeshot pour. But in this
Volunteer movement, as I understand it, the people are to be master; and
it will be for the people to say when and against whom the Volunteers
shall draw the sword and point the rifle. Now, my reading of Irish
history is that, however the leaders may have failed, _the instinct of
the people has always been unerring_. The Volunteers themselves, the
people themselves, must keep control of this movement. Any man or any
group of men that seeks to establish an ascendancy should be dealt with
summarily: such traitors to the Volunteer spirit would deserve to be
shot, but it will be sufficient if they be shot _out_.
* * * * *
In the third place, the young men of Ireland have been to school to the
Gaelic League. Herein it seems to me lies the fact which chiefly
distinguishes this generation from the other revolutionary generations
of the last century and a half: from the Volunteer generation of 1778,
from the United Irish generation of 1798, from the Young Ireland
generation of 1848, from the Fenian generation of 1867. We have known
the Gaelic League, and
“Lo, a clearness of vision has followed, lo, a purification of
sight.”
I do not think we shall be as liable to make blunders, to pursue side
issues, to mistake shadows for substance, to overlook essentials, to
neglect details on the one hand or to get lost in them on the other, as
were previous generations of perhaps better men. It is not merely (or at
all) that we have now a theory of nationality by which to correct our
instinct: indeed, I doubt if a theory of nationality be a very great
gain, and plainly the instinct of the Fenian artisan was a finer thing
than the soundest theory of the Gaelic League professor. It is rather
that we have got into a fuller communion with what is most racy in our
past: our ancestors have spoken to us anew. In a deeper sense than
before we realise that Ireland is ours and that we are Ireland’s. Our
country wears to us a new aspect, and yet she is her most ancient self.
We are as men who, having wandered long through the devious ways of a
forest, see again the familiar hills and fields bathed in the light of
heaven, ancient yet ever-new. And we rejoice in our hearts, and bless
the goodly sun.
------------------------------------------------------------------------