Now that an armistice had been signed, and Dublin was again the
centre of affairs, my wife and I packed up at the end of the Orange
celebrations and returned home. We arrived in the middle of another
blazing hot day, and as we rattled from the station on a jaunting-car,
Crossley tenders full of unarmed Auxiliaries with towels about
their necks passed us, going in the direction of the sea. It was an
astonishing sight, and more eloquent than all the newspaper accounts.
There had been no public rejoicings to speak of at the turn of affairs.
For a night or two fires had been lighted in the streets, and small
boys had danced round them, and the public had shown a reluctance
to go indoors and to bed; but the late hours were little more than
an expression of the people’s satisfaction at the liberty which had
followed the lifting of the Curfew. Irishmen and the British troops
in Ireland took the cessation of hostilities in a sober spirit, as if
every man carried a hidden sorrow. The gods had humbled all alike and
given victory to none.
But though soldier and civilian both felt something of the melancholy
that follows the cessation of all protracted trials, public
satisfaction at the new conditions was undeniable, and as the truce
continued opinions were expressed with a freedom unknown during the
reign of terror. It was evident the man in the street had longed for
stable conditions, and was eager to accept the compromise which had
been effected.
Republican leaders who had managed to elude capture to the end had come
down from the Olympian heights. They had magically materialised, and
might be seen in the streets rubbing shoulders with common men, dining
in restaurants off forks that previously had gone into common mouths,
wiping their lips with napkins that before had known less glorious
patrons. They were joined soon by such deputies of Dail Eireann as
had been in prison and in internment camps, and were unconditionally
released for the furtherance of the negotiations.
Young men, romantic men, high-spirited men had gone up to the Olympian
heights two years, three years, four years before; there came down
sober men, weary men, nervy men, and men with blood upon their hands.
Rumour had long had it that many of the Olympians were on the verge of
collapse, and rumour had been true. Chastened demigods came down to
walk among common men again.
The Sunday after our return we went out to Mrs. Fitzgerald’s cottage.
Her husband, the Minister of Propaganda, was out of prison, and came
wandering in from the dining-room. Under his eyes were marks of wear
and tear. He was one of the least provincial of the Dail deputies, had
the easy manner of a travelled man, and gave glimpses of an educated
mind. The Minister of Commerce turned up during the afternoon. He had
been much hunted before the armistice; but he had not been taken. He
looked very strung up, and admitted he had nerves. “I shall dye my hair
if it starts again,” he announced. “There’s nothing to beat that.”
Later two uniformed Republican officers dropped in from a camp on the
hill at the back. It was astonishing to sit among these people who had
been shadows a few days before.
The camp at the back of the cottage was a military centre for the
district, and now and then the local volunteers were reviewed there.
They came from all points on bicycles and on foot, the new generation,
the young men, the people who were most affected by this national
birth, this Irish renaissance. Some leader of the Republican Army would
be there to review, a man who a few weeks before had a price on his
head, and who could not have been seen by common men without permits,
passwords, and all the paraphernalia of the Sinn Fein underworld.
The astonishing thing about these materialised Irish Volunteers was
their youth. The country had been given into the keeping of boys, and
even the leaders of the movement were nearly all young men. Elderly
people shook their heads; but I believe the omen a good one, for
Ireland suffers under the burden of her antiquity, and only young men
can bring her a new life. One looks forward fearfully, but with hope,
to the new Ireland that is being hammered into shape. Ploughboys and
shop assistants wield the hammers.
The days passed, and the long hot summer drew to an end.
Auxiliaries and Black-and-Tans continued to drive in state to their
daily dips in the sea, and one never again saw them with anything
more formidable than a bath-towel round their necks. In course of
time the British Government came to the conclusion that idleness in
the erstwhile enemy land of Dublin was not well, and rumour said the
bathers were to be sent away on leave. It is a fact that after a while
the strange spectacle of these people come out of their wire cages and
sitting unarmed and unharmed in open Crossley tenders with towels round
their necks took place no more, and the sounds of lorry wheels were
not heard again in the noble squares of Dublin city. But the memory
of these people stays behind with Cromwell’s memory, and Strongbow’s
memory.
I believe that the secret service also took its departure at this time,
for that part of it which I knew, that is to say 47, made its exit.
We had a note one afternoon asking us to see him off by the evening
boat train. We went down in plenty of time. She was there beside him.
He seemed the same as usual, neither greatly elated nor greatly set
down at his departure, while she was unfeignedly glad to be away and
said so.
“I’m glad you didn’t make your bow without letting us know,” I said.
“How many more years are you staying?” he asked.
“We came here to see it fixed up.”
“It’s going to be fixed up,” he answered. “Temporarily, at any rate.”
“Are you quite sure?”
He nodded, gloomily, I thought. “You’ll find it fixed up at any price.
But the Government won’t have to pay a very big price. The extreme
people won’t want to take this; but the nation as a whole want it, and
they’ll help to see it through.”
“Some time ago, one night it was,” I said, “I met an old man waving
about on two sticks and baying at the stars. He asked me if I’d like
to know how the Irish question would be settled. I said certainly. He
stopped waving on his two sticks, stopped baying at the stars, and
cried out, ‘The extremists will meet the extreme extremists in the
Rotunda at Rutland Square, and there will be a final battle to the
death. If nobody is left, then it will be settled.’”
“But,” put in 47’s wife, thankfully, “we shall not be there.”
“We’re jolly glad we came over,” I said. “We’ve got some first-hand
tips for running a revolution, and if the same sort of thing starts in
another country one will know how much of the papers to believe. I hope
things are going to hurry up and finish now, for we’re off, too, before
long. I wish Ireland every good luck and a speedy growth to greatness,
but I’m ready to transfer my attentions elsewhere.”
We had cut ourselves off from the others and were side by side. “You’ve
no departing pangs?” I asked.
47 shrugged his shoulders. “Not really. One feels the usual regret at
leaving places associated with pretty tumultuous hours in one’s life.”
He turned and said with feeling, “I have only to stop at any street
corner and those dark Christmas days come back. By gad, they wore one
out while they lasted; but everything is over in the end. I’m glad to
be off, though one makes acquaintances, friends even, that a fellow is
sorry to lose, even on a job of this sort.”
“You can do your job and make friends?” I asked.
“Why not?” A moment after he said, “You get used to keeping your work
entirely apart, a sort of falcon sitting on your wrist. You make
friends like anybody else; but this hooded bird is waiting ready for
the game when you start it. Or there’s some presence behind your chair,
like the slave at a Roman general’s triumph, telling you you are a
servant, and greater than you is the Empire you serve.”
I nodded.
“No,” he exclaimed, “I wouldn’t stay another day. My job here is done.
I want to get to something ahead. I’m like that now. The wandering
fever has got me for keeps. We’ll have a spell when we get over, we’re
looking forward to it, and it’ll be damn fine for a few weeks. We’ll
go and watch summer turn into autumn somewhere, and we’ll be content
enough until the old thing happens again. It’s happened too often not
to expect it once more. One will begin by getting restless and talking
about a change of scene, then one will want to know exactly what is
going on, the truth, not the stuff the newspapers dish you out. Then I
shall begin wondering when I shall hear from headquarters.”
“And about Christmas time,” I interrupted, “when there’s nothing
but wind and rain, you will be working again, homeless, friendless,
the whole catalogue of lesses. I sailed round Cape Horn once in a
four-masted barque for the fun of the thing. It’s the last thing I ever
mean to do again. All the men were like me, thanking God when they saw
land. But most of them had only been a few days ashore after six months
at sea when they had had their fill of land. I left them disappearing
into the wind and the dark.”
A few minutes later the train had taken them away from us and we were
on the way home.
Weeks passed with affairs still in the balance, and we began to talk
of going. Public interest in the negotiations never abated. Most days
of the week a patient crowd waited outside the Dublin Mansion House to
see the Republican leaders come and go. Summer was drawing to an end,
and the days were often wet; but the crowd never lost patience, and
stood in lines marshalled by Republican police, who seemed as numerous
as crows. There were constant rumours of a break in the Downing Street
negotiations; but the longer the truce continued the more unready
people were to return to old conditions.
The delegates came back from the preliminary London conference, and the
first of the public meetings of the Dail was held in the Dublin Mansion
House. Fitzgerald, the Minister of Propaganda, gave us tickets.
Long before the hour all Dublin was outside. All Dublin wanted to be
inside; but there was not room for a tenth part of Dublin. The morning
was wet; but the crowd kept its spirits and cheered at every excuse.
A multitude of Republican police kept order. These people wore no
uniform, and were very young; but arrangements inside and outside the
Mansion House were admirable. The Republican police were still amateur
policemen, and if a question was asked half a dozen of them sprang
forward to answer it. One was overwhelmed with information.
The great round room was choked with people, except for a roped-off
space, full of easy seats, waiting the coming of the Dail deputies. The
Speaker’s chair stood beyond and above, and to one side was the Press
gallery, and to the other places for distinguished visitors. An Indian
in a pugaree was among those people.
A gallery, packed with more people, circled the room; higher than
this, against the walls, were coats of arms of all past Lord Mayors.
In Ireland, that land of imagination, all Lord Mayors have armorial
bearings. A man with a flashlight camera was getting his apparatus
ready.
There was a burst of cheering, and we rose to our feet. The applause
lasted for a couple of minutes, and then died down like a wind
subsiding, and behold all the empty seats were filled. All over the
place people were digging and tapping one another, and pointing and
whispering, and staring and asking. Many of the Dail deputies had
been nobodies before they went on the run; but after the day of their
disappearance from among common men, their names had flowered like
plants in a forcing house.
Eamonn De Valera, the President of the Republic, sat at the end of the
front bench. A tall man with a good figure, and a speed of movement
that told of his foreign blood. After years of storm had he brought his
ship safely into harbour? Never had he been placed higher in popular
affection than then, and perhaps never would be placed so high again.
On his right, so close that their elbows touched, was a greater than
he, Arthur Griffith, the father of Sinn Fein. They had asked him in
the beginning to be the first President of the Republic; but he had
refused the laurel wreath, seeing greater freedom in a secondary
position, for the man placed in the higher seat must dance at the
bidding of the crowd. A man nearly as broad as he was high, a cold man,
a man with a great head, he sat motionless all that morning, never
speaking, twisting his moustache now and then, oblivious of the public
eye, seeming content to be overlooked, satisfied to see about him this
meeting, which his eloquent pen and his devotion had done so much to
bring about.
On his right, touching elbows again, was the man whom public
imagination had lifted highest of all. The man was Michael Collins,
on whose head had been a reward of four thousand pounds, the Minister
of Finance, as he was now called, “a certain minister” as he had
been referred to in conversation during the terror; Mike, as he was
affectionately known to his followers, Michael the Mild as the Ulster
Press bitterly described him.
He was a young man on the way to corpulence. His skin had a deadly
pallor. His face was large and handsome, and yet one fell into a muse,
wondering was it a cruel face, or was it a sensual face, or was it a
feminine face in spite of its strength, for something was wrong with
it. Now and again he tossed his head back with all the charm of a boy.
There were legends that he had gone about as a woman, that he had
passed into officers’ clubs disguised as an officer, worming secrets
out of people. He would have made a giant woman. I think these tales
were legends and no more.
There may have been men present who had worked as hard and suffered
as much as those three; but those names meant most to the public. The
remainder of the deputies looked what they were, several score of men,
mostly young, mostly from the lower middle class, some few elected for
their ability, the majority chosen because they were in prison or on
the run at the time of the elections, and their election was a gesture
of defiance to the British authority. When presently they spoke, some
of them were inarticulate, and, no doubt, in good time the same popular
feeling that raised them up will set them down from their seats, and
put others more fitted in their places.
But whether they stay there or go back to private life, responsibility
has put an early mark on them, and they have learnt lessons while they
are young which most men do not learn until middle age.
Above them all, filling the Speaker’s chair, lanky, folded like an
idol, sat Professor MacNeil. He rested a hand on either arm of the
chair and never stirred, even when he growled out a few words in Irish
that seemed to come from a subterranean passage.
Leave them there. Those men have brought Ireland to the point on the
road where she now stands. They have made her dream dreams and have
shown her splendid visions. They took on a great responsibility. Can
they guide her the rest of the way to peace and greatness? They must be
trusted. But the glass is troubled.
Ireland has become self-conscious. Youth, for a while at least, has
taken the place of age. The glass is troubled and wants clearing; but
youth can do most things.