(DECEMBER 1915)
When we are old (those of us who live to be old) we shall tell our
grandchildren of the Christmas of 1915 as the second Christmas which saw
the nations at war for the freedom of the seas; as the last Christmas,
it may be, which saw Ireland, the gate of the seas, in the keeping of
the English. For that is the thing for which men are bleeding to-day in
France and Serbia, in Poland and Mesopotamia. The many fight to uphold a
tyranny three centuries old, the most arrogant tyranny that there has
ever been in the world; and the few fight to break that tyranny. Always
it is the many who fight for the evil thing, and the few who fight for
the good thing; and always it is the few who win. For God fights with
the small battalions. If sometimes it has seemed otherwise, it is
because the few who have fought for the good cause have been guilty of
some secret faltering, some infidelity to their best selves, some
shrinking back in the face of a tremendous duty.
The last sixteen months have been the most glorious in the history of
Europe. Heroism has come back to the earth. On whichever side the men
who rule the peoples have marshalled them, whether with England to
uphold her tyranny of the seas, or with Germany to break that tyranny,
the people themselves have gone into battle because to each the old
voice that speaks out of the soil of a nation has spoken anew. Each
fights for the fatherland. It is policy that moves the governments; it
is patriotism that stirs the peoples. Belgium defending her soil is
heroic, and so is Turkey fighting with her back to Constantinople.
It is good for the world that such things should be done. The old heart
of the earth needed to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefields.
Such august homage was never before offered to God as this, the homage
of millions of lives given gladly for love of country.
War is a terrible thing, and this is the most terrible of wars. But this
war is not more terrible than the evils which it will end or help to
end. It is not more terrible than the exploitation of the English masses
by cruel plutocrats; it is not more terrible than the infidelity of the
French masses to their old spiritual ideals; it is not more terrible
than the enslavement of the Poles by Russia, than the enslavement of the
Irish by England. What if the war kindles in the slow breasts of English
toilers a wrath like the wrath of the French in 1789? What if the war
brings France back to her altars, as sorrow brings back broken men and
women to God? What if the war sets Poland and Ireland free? If the war
does these things, will not the war have been worth while?
War is a terrible thing, but war is not an evil thing. It is the things
that make war necessary that are evil. The tyrannies that wars break,
the lying formulae that wars overthrow, the hypocrisies that wars strip
naked, are evil. Many people in Ireland dread war because they do not
know it. Ireland has not known the exhilaration of war for over a
hundred years. Yet who will say that she has known the blessings of
peace? When war comes to Ireland, she must welcome it as she would
welcome the Angel of God. And she will.
It is because peace is so precious a boon that war is so sacred a duty.
Ireland will not find Christ’s peace until she has taken Christ’s sword.
What peace she has known in these latter days has been the devil’s
peace, peace with sin, peace with dishonour. It is a foul thing, dear
only to men of foul breeds. Christ’s peace is lovely in its coming,
beautiful are its feet on the mountains. But it is heralded by terrific
messengers; seraphim and cherubim blow trumpets of war before it. We
must not flinch when we are passing through that uproar; we must not
faint at the sight of blood. Winning through it, we (or those of us who
survive) shall come unto great joy. We and our fathers have known the
Pax Britannica. To our sons we must bequeath the Peace of the Gael.
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