THE ENGLISHMAN IN IRELAND
With no desire to decorate my travels with too tall a traveller’s tale,
I must record the fact that I found one point upon which all Irishmen
were agreed. It was the fact that, for some reason or other, there had
been a very hopeful beginning of Irish volunteering at the beginning
of the war; and that, for some reason or other, this had failed in
the course of the war. The reasons alleged differed widely with the
moods of men; some had regarded the beginnings with hope and some with
suspicion; some had lived to regard the failure with a bitter pleasure,
and some with a generous pain. The different factions gave different
explanations of why the thing had stopped; but they all agreed that
it had begun. The Sinn Feiner said that the people soon found they
had been lured into a Saxon trap, set for them by smooth subservient
Saxons like Mr Devlin and Mr Tim Healy. The Belfast citizen suggested
that the Popish priest had terrorised the peasants when they tried to
enlist, producing a thumbscrew from his pocket and a portable rack
from his handbag. The Parliamentary Nationalist blamed both Sinn Fein
and the persecution of Sinn Fein. The British Government officials, if
they did not exactly blame themselves, at least blamed each other. The
ordinary Southern Unionist (who played many parts of a more or less
sensible sort, including that of a Home Ruler) generally agreed with
the ordinary Nationalist that the Government’s recruiting methods had
been as bad as its cause was good. But it is manifest that multitudes
at the beginning of the war thought it really had a very good cause;
and, moreover, a very good chance.
The extraordinary story of how that chance was lost may find mention
on a later page. I will begin by touching on the first incident that
befell me personally in connection with the same enterprise. I went to
Ireland at the request of Irish friends who were working warmly for
the Allied cause, and who conceived (I fear in far too flattering a
spirit) that I might at least be useful as an Englishman who had always
sympathised as warmly with the Irish cause. I am under no illusions
that I should ever be efficient at such work in any case; and under
the circumstances I had no great hopes of doing much, where men like
Sir Horace Plunkett and Captain Stephen Gwynne, far more competent,
more self-sacrificing, and more well-informed than I, could already
do comparatively little. It was too late. A hundredth part of the
brilliant constancy and tragic labours of these men might easily, at
the beginning of the war, have given us a great Irish army. I need not
explain the motives that made me do the little I could do; they were
the same that at that moment made millions of better men do masses of
better work. Physical accident prevented my being useful in France,
and a sort of psychological accident seemed to suggest that I might
possibly be useful in Ireland; but I did not see myself as a very
serious figure in either field. Nothing could be serious in such a case
except perhaps a conviction; and at least my conviction about the great
war has never wavered by a hair. _Delenda est_--and it is typical of
the power of Berlin that one must break off for want of a Latin name
for it. Being an Englishman, I hoped primarily to help England; but
not being a congenital idiot, I did not primarily ask an Irishman to
help England. There was obviously something much more reasonable to
ask him to do. I hope I should in any case have done my best for my
own country. But the cause was more than any country; in a sense it
was too good for any country. The Allies were more right than they
realised. Nay, they hardly had a right to be so right as they were.
The modern Babylon of capitalistic States was hardly worthy to go on
such a crusade against the heathen; as perhaps decadent Byzantium was
hardly worthy to defend the Cross against the Crescent. But we are glad
that it did defend the Cross against the Crescent. Nobody is sorry
that Sobieski relieved Vienna; nobody wishes that Alfred had not won
in Wessex. The cause that conquered is the only cause that survived.
We see now that its enemy was not a cause but a chaos; and that is
what history will say of the strange and recent boiling up of barbaric
imperialism, a whirlpool whose hollow centre was Berlin. This is where
the extreme Irish were really wrong; perhaps really wrong for the first
time, I entirely sympathise with their being in revolt against the
British Government. I am in revolt in most ways against the British
Government myself. But politics are a fugitive thing in the face of
history. Does anybody want to be fixed for ever on the wrong side at
the Battle of Marathon, through a quarrel with some Archon whose very
name is forgotten? Does anybody want to be remembered as a friend of
Attila, through a breach of friendship with Aëtius? In any case, it
was with a profound conviction that if Prussia won Europe must perish,
and that if Europe perished England and Ireland must perish together,
that I went to Dublin in those dark days of the last year of the war;
and it so happened that the first occasion when I was called upon for
any expression of opinion was at a very pleasant luncheon party given
to the representatives of the British Dominions, who were then on an
official tour in the country inspecting its conditions. What I said is
of no importance except as leading up to later events; but it may be
noted that though I was speaking perhaps indirectly to Irishmen, I was
speaking directly, if not to Englishmen, at least to men in the more
English tradition of the majority of the Colonies. I was speaking, if
not to Unionists, at least largely to Imperialists.
Now I have forgotten, I am happy to say, the particular speech that
I made, but I can repeat the upshot of it here, not only as part of
the argument, but as part of the story. The line I took generally in
Ireland was an appeal to the Irish principle, yet the reverse of a mere
approval of the Irish action, or inaction. It postulated that while the
English had missed a great opportunity of justifying themselves to the
Irish, the Irish had also missed a similar opportunity of justifying
themselves to the English. But it specially emphasised this; that what
had been lost was not primarily a justification against England, but
a joke against England. I pointed out that an Irishman missing a joke
against an Englishman was a tragedy, like a lost battle. And there was
one thing, and one thing only, which had stopped the Irishman from
laughing and saved the Englishman from being laughable. The one and
only thing that rescued England from ridicule was Sinn Fein. Or, at any
rate, that element in Sinn Fein which was pro-German, or refused to be
anti-German. Nothing imaginable under the stars _except_ a pro-German
Irishman could at that moment have saved the face of a (very recently)
pro-German Englishman.
The reason for this is obvious enough. England in 1914 encountered
or discovered a colossal crime of Prussianised Germany. But England
could not discover the German crime without discovering the English
blunder. The blunder was, of course, a perfectly plain historical fact;
that England made Prussia. England was the historic, highly civilised
western state, with Roman foundations and chivalric memories; Prussia
was originally a petty and boorish principality used by England and
Austria in the long struggle against the greatness of France. Now in
that long struggle Ireland had always been on the side of France.
She had only to go on being on the side of France, and the Latin
tradition generally, to behold her own truth triumph over her own
enemies. In a word, it was not a question of whether Ireland should
become anti-German, but merely of whether she should _continue_ to be
anti-German. It was a question of whether she should suddenly become
pro-German, at the moment when most other pro-Germans were discovering
that she had been justified all along. But England, at the beginning
of her last and most lamentable quarrel with Ireland, was by no means
in so strong a controversial position. England was right; but she
could only prove she was right by proving she was wrong. In one sense,
and with all respect to her right action in the matter, she had to be
ridiculous in order to be right.
But the joke against the English was even more obvious and topical.
And as mine was only meant for a light speech after a friendly lunch,
I took the joke in its lightest and most fanciful form, and touched
chiefly on the fantastic theory of the Teuton as the master of the
Celt. For the supreme joke was this: that the Englishman has not only
boasted of being an Englishman; he has actually boasted of being a
German. As the modern mind began to doubt the superiority of Calvinism
to Catholicism, all English books, papers, and speeches were filled
more and more with a Teutonism which substituted a racial for a
religious superiority. It was felt to be a more modern and even a more
progressive principle of distinction, to insist on ethnology rather
than theology; for ethnology was supposed to be a science. Unionism
was simply founded on Teutonism. Hence the ordinary honest patriotic
Unionist was in a highly humorous fix when he had suddenly to begin
denouncing Teutonism as mere terrorism. If all superiority belonged
to the Teuton, the supreme superiority must clearly belong to the
most Teutonic Teuton. If I claim the right to kick Mr Bernard Shaw on
the specific ground that I am fatter than he is, it is obvious that I
look rather a fool if I am suddenly kicked by somebody who is fatter
still. When the earth shakes under the advancing form of one coming
against me out of the east who is fatter than I (for I called upon
the Irish imagination to embrace so monstrous a vision), it is clear
that whatever my relations to the rest of the world, in my relations
to Mr Bernard Shaw I am rather at a disadvantage. Mr Shaw, at any
rate, is rather in a position to make game of me; of which it is not
inconceivable that he might avail himself. I might have accumulated a
vast mass of learned sophistries and journalistic catchwords, which
had always seemed to me to justify the connection between waxing fat
and kicking. I might have proved from history that the leaders had
always been fat men, like William the Conqueror, St Thomas Aquinas,
and Charles Fox. I might have proved from physiology that fatness is
a proof of the power of organic assimilation and digestion; or from
comparative zoology that the elephant is the wisest of the beasts.
In short, I might be able to adduce many arguments in favour of my
position. Only, unfortunately, they would now all become arguments
against my position. Everything I had ever urged against my old enemy
could be urged much more forcibly against me by my new enemy. And
my position touching the great adipose theory would be exactly like
England’s position touching the equally sensible Teutonic theory. If
Teutonism was creative culture, then on our own showing the German was
better than the Englishman. If Teutonism was barbarism, then on our own
showing the Englishman was more barbaric than the Irishman. The real
answer, of course, is that we were not Teutons but only the dupes of
Teutonism; but some were so wholly duped that they would do anything
rather than own themselves dupes. These unfortunates, while they are
already ashamed of being Teutons, are still proud of not being Celts.
There is only one thing that could save my dignity in such an
undignified fix as I have fancied here. It is that Mr Bernard Shaw
himself should come to my rescue. It is that Mr Bernard Shaw himself
should declare in favour of the corpulent conqueror from the east;
that _he_ should take seriously all the fads and fallacies of that
fat-headed superman. That, and that alone, would ensure all my own
fads and fallacies being not only forgotten but forgiven. There is
present to my imagination, I regret to say, a wild possibility that
this is what Mr Bernard Shaw might really do. Anyhow, this is what a
certain number of his countrymen really did. It will be apparent, I
think, from these pages that I do not believe in the stage Irishman. I
am under no delusion that the Irishman is soft-headed and sentimental,
or even illogical and inconsequent. Nine times out of ten the Irishman
is not only more clear-headed, but even more cool-headed than the
Englishman. But I think it is true, as Mr Max Beerbohm once suggested
to me in connection with Mr Shaw himself, that there is a residual
perversity in the Irishman, which comes after and not before the
analysis of a question. There is at the last moment a cold impatience
in the intellect, an irony which returns on itself and rends itself;
the subtlety of a suicide. However this may be, some of the lean men,
instead of making a fool of the fat man, did begin almost to make a
hero of the fatter man; to admire his vast curves as almost cosmic
lines of development. I have seen Irish-American pamphlets which
took quite seriously (or, I prefer to think, pretended to take quite
seriously) the ridiculous romance about the Teutonic tribes having
revived and refreshed civilisation after the fall of the Roman Empire.
They revived civilisation very much as they restored Louvain or
reconstructed the _Lusitania_. It was a romance which the English for
a short time adopted as a convenience, but from which the Irish have
continually suffered as from a curse. It was a suicidal perversity that
they themselves, in their turn, should perpetuate their permanent curse
as a temporary convenience. That was the worst error of the Irish, or
of some of the best of the Irish. That is why the Easter Rising was
really a black and insane blunder. It was not because it involved the
Irish in a military defeat; it was because it lost the Irish a great
controversial victory. The rebel deliberately let the tyrant out of a
trap; out of the grinning jaws of the gigantic trap of a joke.
Many of the most extreme Nationalists knew this well; it was what
Kettle probably meant when he suggested an Anglo-Irish history called
‘The Two Fools’; and of course I do not mean that I said all this in my
very casual and rambling speech. But it was based on this idea, that
men had missed the joke against England, and that now unfortunately the
joke was rather against Ireland. It was Ireland that was now missing
a great historical opportunity for lack of humour and imagination, as
England had missed it a moment before. If the Irish would laugh at
the English and help the English, they would win all along the line.
In the real history of the German problem, they would inherit all the
advantages of having been right from the first. It was now not so much
a question of Ireland consenting to follow England’s lead as of England
being obliged to follow Ireland’s lead. These are the principles which
I thought, and still think, the only possible principles to form
the basis of a recruiting appeal in Ireland. But on the particular
occasion in question I naturally took the matter much more lightly,
hoping that the two jokes might, as it were, cancel out and leave the
two countries quits and in a better humour. And I devoted nearly all
my remarks to testifying that the English had really, in the mass,
shed the cruder Teutonism that had excused the cruelties of the past.
I said that Englishmen were anything but proud of the past government
of Ireland; that the mass of men of all parties were far more modest
and humane in their view of Ireland than most Irishmen seem to suppose.
And I ended with words which I only quote here from memory, because
they happen to be the text of the curious incident which followed:
‘This is no place for us to boast. We stand here in the valley of our
humiliation, where the flag we love has done very little that was
not evil, and where its victories have been far more disastrous than
defeats.’ And I concluded with some general expression of the hope
(which I still entertain) that two lands so much loved, by those who
know them best, are not meant to hate each other for ever.
A day or two afterwards a distinguished historian who is a professor
at Trinity College, Mr Alison Phillips, wrote an indignant letter
to the _Irish Times_. He announced that he was not in the valley of
humiliation, and warmly contradicted the report that he was, as he
expressed it, ‘sitting in sackcloth and ashes.’ He remarked, if I
remember right, that I was middle-class, which is profoundly true;
and he generally resented my suggestions as a shameful attack upon my
fellow Englishmen. This both amused and puzzled me; for of course I had
not been attacking Englishmen, but defending them; I had merely been
assuring the Irish that the English were not so black, or so red, as
they were painted in the vision of ‘England’s cruel red.’ I had not
said there what I have said here, about the anomaly and absurdity of
England in Ireland; I had only said that Ireland had suffered rather
from the Teutonic theory than the English temper; and that the English
temper, experienced at close quarters, was really quite ready for a
reconciliation with Ireland. Nor indeed did Mr Alison Phillips really
complain especially of my denouncing the English, but rather of my
way of defending them. He did not so much mind being charged with the
vice of arrogance. What he could not bear was being charged with the
virtue of humility. What worried him was not so much the supposition
of our doing wrong, as that anybody should conceive it possible that
we were sorry for doing wrong. After all, he probably reasoned, it may
not be easy for an eminent historical scholar actually to deny that
certain tortures have taken place, or certain perjuries been proved;
but there is really no reason why he should admit that the memory of
using torture or perjury has so morbid an effect on the mind. Therefore
he naturally desired to correct any impression that might arise, to the
effect that he had been seen in the valley of humiliation, like a man
called Christian.
But there was one fancy that lingered in the mind over and above the
fun of the thing; and threw a sort of random ray of conjecture upon
all that long international misunderstanding which it is so hard to
understand. Was it possible, I thought, that this had happened before,
and that I was caught in the treadmill of recurrence? It may be that
whenever, throughout the centuries, a roughly representative and fairly
good-humoured Englishman has spoken to the Irish as thousands of such
Englishmen feel about them, some other Englishman on the spot has
hastened to explain that the English are not going in for sackcloth
and ashes, but only for phylacteries and the blowing of their own
trumpets before them. Perhaps whenever one Englishman said that the
English were not so black as they were painted in the past, another
Englishman always rushed forward to prove that the English were not
so white as they were painted on the present occasion. And after all
it was only Englishman against Englishman, one word against another;
and there were many superiorities on the side which refused to believe
in English sympathy or self-criticism. And very few of the Irish, I
fear, understood the simple fact of the matter, or the real spiritual
excuses of the party thus praising spiritual pride. Few understood
that I represented large numbers of amiable Englishmen in England,
while Mr Phillips necessarily represented a small number of naturally
irritable Englishmen in Ireland. Few, I fancy, sympathised with him so
much as I do; for I know very well that he was not merely feeling as an
Englishman, but as an exile.