THE MISTAKE OF IRELAND
There is one phrase which certain Irishmen sometimes use in
conversation, which indicates the real mistake that they sometimes
make in controversy. When the more bitter sort of Irishman is at last
convinced of the existence of the less bitter sort of Englishman,
who does realise that he ought not to rule a Christian people by
alternations of broken heads and broken promises, the Irishman has
sometimes a way of saying, ‘I am sure you must have Irish blood in your
veins.’ Several people told me so when I denounced Irish conscription,
a thing ruinous to the whole cause of the Alliance. Some told me so
even when I recalled the vile story of ’98; a thing damned by the
whole opinion of the world. I assured them in vain that I did not need
to have Irish blood in my veins, in order to object to having Irish
blood on my hands. So far as I know, I have not one single drop of
Irish blood in my veins. I have some Scottish blood; and some which,
judging merely by a name in the family, must once have been French
blood. But the determining part of it is purely English, and I believe
East Anglian, at the flattest and farthest extreme from the Celtic
fringe. But I am here concerned, not with whether it is true, but with
why they should want to prove it is true. One would think they would
want to prove precisely the opposite. Even if they were exaggerative
and unscrupulous, they should surely seek to show that an Englishman
was forced to condemn England, rather than that an Irishman was
inclined to support Ireland. As it is, they are labouring to destroy
the impartiality and even the independence of their own witness. It
does not support, but rather surrender Irish rights, to say that only
the Irish can see that there are Irish wrongs. It is confessing that
Ireland is a Celtic dream and delusion, a cloud of sunset mistaken for
an island. It is admitting that such a nation is only a notion, and a
nonsensical notion; but in reality it is this notion about Irish blood
that is nonsensical. Ireland is not an illusion; and her wrongs are
not the subjective fancies of the Irish. Irishmen did not dream that
they were evicted out of house and home by the ruthless application
of a land law no man now dares to defend. It was not a nightmare that
dragged them from their beds; nor were they sleepwalkers when they
wandered as far as America. Skeffington did not have a delusion that
he was being shot for keeping the peace; the shooting was objective,
as the Prussian professors would say; as objective as the Prussian
militarists could desire. The delusions were admittedly peculiar to
the British official whom the British Government selected to direct
operations on so important an occasion. I could understand it if the
Imperialists took refuge in the Celtic cloud, conceived Colthurst
as full of a mystic frenzy like the chieftain who fought with the
sea, pleaded that Piggott was a poet whose pen ran away with him, or
that Sergeant Sheridan romanced like a real stage Irishman. I could
understand it if they declared that it was merely in the elvish ecstasy
described by Mr Yeats that Sir Edward Carson, that famous First Lord of
the Admiralty, rode on the top of the dishevelled wave; and Mr Walter
Long, that great Agricultural Minister, danced upon the mountains like
a flame. It is far more absurd to suggest that no man can see the green
flag unless he has some green in his eye. In truth this association
between an Irish sympathy and an Irish ancestry is just as insulting
as the old jibe of Buckingham, about an Irish interest or an Irish
understanding.
It may seem fanciful to say of the Irish nationalists that they are
sometimes too Irish to be national. Yet this is really the case in
those who would turn nationality from a sanctity to a secret. That
is, they are turning it from something which every one else ought to
respect, to something which no one else can understand. Nationalism is
a nobler thing even than patriotism; for nationalism appeals to a law
of nations; it implies that a nation is a normal thing, and therefore
one of a number of normal things. It is impossible to have a nation
without Christendom; as it is impossible to have a citizen without a
city. Now normally speaking this is better understood in Ireland than
in England; but the Irish have an opposite exaggeration and error, and
tend in some cases to the cult of real insularity. In this sense it is
true to say that the error is indicated in the very name of Sinn Fein.
But I think it is even more encouraged, in a cloudier and therefore
more perilous fashion, by much that is otherwise valuable in the cult
of the Celts and the study of the old Irish language. It is a great
mistake for a man to defend himself as a Celt when he might defend
himself as an Irishman. For the former defence will turn on some tricky
question of temperament, while the latter will turn on the central
pivot of morals. Celticism, by itself, might lead to all the racial
extravagances which have lately led more barbaric races a dance. Celts
also might come to claim, not that their nation is a normal thing, but
that their race is a unique thing. Celts also might end by arguing
not for an equality founded on the respect for boundaries, but for an
aristocracy founded on the ramification of blood. Celts also might come
to pitting the prehistoric against the historic, the heathen against
the Christian, and in that sense the barbaric against the civilised.
In that sense I confess I do not care about Celts; they are too like
Teutons.
Now of course every one knows that there is practically no such danger
of Celtic Imperialism. Mr Lloyd George will not attempt to annex
Brittany as a natural part of Britain. No Tories, however antiquated,
will extend their empire in the name of the True Blue of the Ancient
Britons. Nor is there the least likelihood that the Irish will overrun
Scotland on the plea of an Irish origin for the old name of the
Scots; or that they will set up an Irish capital at Stratford-on-Avon
merely because _avon_ is the Celtic word for water. That is the sort
of thing that Teutonic ethnologists do; but Celts are not quite so
stupid as that, even when they are ethnologists. It may be suggested
that this is because even prehistoric Celts seem to have been rather
more civilised than historic Teutons. And indeed I have seen ornaments
and utensils in the admirable Dublin museum, suggestive of a society
of immense antiquity, and much more advanced in the arts of life
than the Prussians were, only a few centuries ago. For instance,
there was something that looked like a sort of safety razor. I doubt
if the godlike Goths had much use for a razor; or if they had, if
it was altogether safe. Nor am I so dull as not to be stirred to an
imaginative sympathy with the instinct of modern Irish poetry to
praise this primordial and mysterious order, even as a sort of pagan
paradise; and that not as regarding a legend as a sort of lie, but a
tradition as a sort of truth. It is but another hint of a suggestion,
huge yet hidden, that civilisation is older than barbarism; and that
the farther we go back into pagan origins, the nearer we come to the
great Christian origin of the Fall. But whatever credit or sympathy
be due to the cult of Celtic origins in its proper place, it is none
of these things that really prevents Celticism from being a barbarous
imperialism like Teutonism. The thing that prevents imperialism is
nationalism. It was exactly because Germany was not a nation that it
desired more and more to be an empire. For a patriot is a sort of
lover, and a lover is a sort of artist; and the artist will always love
a shape too much to wish it to grow shapeless, even in order to grow
large. A group of Teutonic tribes will not care how many other tribes
they destroy or absorb; and Celtic tribes when they were heathen may
have acted, for all I know, in the same way. But the civilised Irish
nation, a part and product of Christendom, has certainly no desire to
be entangled with other tribes, or to have its outlines blurred with
great blots like Liverpool and Glasgow, as well as Belfast. In that
sense it is far too self-conscious to be selfish. Its individuality
may, as I shall suggest, make it too insular; it will not make it too
imperial. This is a merit in nationalism too little noted; that even
what is called its narrowness is not merely a barrier to invasion, but
a barrier to expansion. Therefore, with all respect to the prehistoric
Celts, I feel more at home with the good if sometimes mad Christian
gentlemen of the Young Ireland movement, or even the Easter Rebellion.
I should feel more safe with Meagher of the Sword than with the
primitive Celt of the safety razor. The microscopic meanness of the
Mid-Victorian English writers, when they wrote about Irish patriots,
could see nothing but a very small joke in modern rebels thinking
themselves worthy to take the titles of antique kings. But the only
doubt I should have, if I had any, is whether the heathen kings were
worthy of the Christian rebels. I am much more sure of the heroism of
the modern Fenians than of the ancient ones.
Of the artistic side of the cult of the Celts I do not especially speak
here. And indeed its importance, especially to the Irish, may easily be
exaggerated. Mr W. B. Yeats long ago dissociated himself from a merely
racial theory of Irish poetry; and Mr W. B. Yeats thinks as hard as
he talks. I often entirely disagree with him; but I disagree far more
with the people who find him a poetical opiate, where I always find
him a logical stimulant. For the rest, Celticism in some aspects is
largely a conspiracy for leading the Englishman a dance, if it be a
fairy dance. I suspect that many names and announcements are printed
in Gaelic, not because Irishmen can read them, but because Englishmen
can’t. The other great modern mystic in Dublin, entertained us first by
telling an English lady present that she would never resist the Celtic
atmosphere, struggle how she might, but would soon be wandering in the
mountain mists with a fillet round her head; which fate had apparently
overtaken the son or nephew of an Anglican bishop who had strayed into
those parts. The English lady, whom I happen to know rather well, made
the characteristic announcement that she would go to Paris when she
felt it coming on. But it seemed to me that such drastic action was
hardly necessary, and that there was comparatively little cause for
alarm; seeing that the mountain mists certainly had not had that effect
on the people who happen to live in the mountains. I knew that the
poet knew, even better than I did, that Irish peasants do not wander
about in fillets, or indeed wander about at all, having plenty of much
better work to do. And since the Celtic atmosphere had no perceptible
effect on the Celts, I felt no alarm about its effect on the Saxons.
But the only thing involved, by way of an effect on the Saxons, was a
practical joke on the Saxons; which may, however, have lasted longer in
the case of the bishop’s son than it did in mine. Anyhow, I continued
to move about (like Atalanta in Calydon) with unchapleted hair, with
unfilleted cheek; and found a sufficient number of Irish people in the
same condition to prevent me from feeling shy. In a word, all that sort
of thing is simply the poet’s humour, especially his good humour, which
is of a golden and godlike sort. And a man would be very much misled by
the practical joke if he does not realise that the joker is a practical
man. On the desk in front of him as he spoke were business papers of
reports and statistics, much more concerned with fillets of veal than
fillets of vision. That is the essential fact about all this side of
such men in Ireland. We may think the Celtic ghost a turnip ghost; but
we can only doubt the reality of the ghost; there is no doubt of the
reality of the turnip.
But if the Celtic pose be a piece of the Celtic ornament, the spirit
that produced it does also produce some more serious tendencies to the
segregation of Ireland, one might almost say the secretion of Ireland.
In this sense it is true that there is too much separatism in Ireland.
I do not speak of separation from England, which, as I have said,
happened long ago in the only serious sense, and is a condition to
be assumed, not a conclusion to be avoided. Nor do I mean separation
from some federation of free states including England; for that is a
conclusion that could still be avoided with a little common sense and
common honesty in our own politics. I mean separation from Europe,
from the common Christian civilisation by whose law the nations live.
I would be understood as speaking here of exceptions rather than the
rule; for the rule is rather the other way. The Catholic religion, the
most fundamental fact in Ireland, is itself a permanent communication
with the Continent. So, as I have said, is the free peasantry which is
so often the economic expression of the same faith. Mr James Stephens,
himself a spiritually detached man of genius, told me with great
humour a story which is also at least a symbol. A Catholic priest,
after a convivial conversation and plenty of good wine, said to him
confidentially: “You ought to be a Catholic. You can be saved without
being a Catholic; but you can’t be Irish without being a Catholic.”
Nevertheless, the exceptions are large enough to be dangers; and
twice lately, I think, they have brought Ireland into danger. This
is the age of minorities; of groups that rule rather than represent.
And the two largest parties in Ireland, though more representative
than most parties in England, were too much affected, I fancy, by the
modern fashion, expressed in the world of fads by being Celtic rather
than Catholic. They were just a little too insular to accept the old
unconscious wave of Christendom; the Crusade. But the case was more
extraordinary than that. They were even too insular to appreciate,
not so much their own international needs, as their own international
importance. It may seem a strange paradox to say that both nationalist
parties underrated Ireland as a nation. It may seem a more startling
paradox to say that in this the most nationalist was the least
national. Yet I think I can explain, however roughly, what I mean by
saying that this is so.
It is primarily Sinn Fein, or the extreme national party, which thus
relatively failed to realise that Ireland is a nation. At least it
failed in nationalism exactly so far as it failed to intervene in the
war of the nations against Prussian imperialism. For its argument
involved, unconsciously, the proposition that Ireland is not a nation;
that Ireland is a tribe or a settlement, or a chance sprinkling of
aborigines. If the Irish were savages oppressed by the British Empire,
they might well be indifferent to the fate of the British Empire; but
as they were civilised men, they could not be indifferent to the fate
of civilisation. The Kaffirs might conceivably be better off if the
whole system of white colonisation, Boer and British, broke down and
disappeared altogether. The Irish might sympathise with the Kaffirs,
but they would not like to be classed with the Kaffirs. Hottentots
might have a sort of Hottentot happiness if the last European city had
fallen in ruins, or the last European had died in torments. But the
Irish would never be Hottentots, even if they were pro-Hottentots.
In other words, if the Irish were what Cromwell thought they were,
they might well confine their attention to Hell and Connaught, and
have no sympathy to spare for France. But if the Irish are what Wolfe
Tone thought they were, they must be interested in France, as he was
interested in France. In short, if the Irish are barbarians, they need
not trouble about other barbarians sacking the cities of the world;
but if they are citizens, they must trouble about the cities that
are sacked. This is the deep and real reason why their alienation
from the Allied cause was a disaster for their own national cause. It
was not because it gave fools a chance of complaining that they were
anti-English, it was because it gave much cleverer people the chance
of complaining that they were anti-European. I entirely agree that
the alienation was chiefly the fault of the English Government; I even
agree that it required an abnormal imaginative magnanimity for an
Irishman to do his duty to Ireland, in spite of being so insolently
told to do it. But it is none the less true that Ireland to-day would
be ten thousand miles nearer her deliverance if the Irishman could have
made that effort; if he had realised that the thing ought to be done,
not because such rulers wanted it, but rather although they wanted it.
But the much more curious fact is this. There were any number of
Irishmen, and those among the most Irish, who did realise this; who
realised it with so sublime a sincerity as to fight for their own
enemies against the world’s enemies, and consent at once to be insulted
by the English and killed by the Germans. The Redmonds and the old
Nationalist party, if they have indeed failed, have the right to be
reckoned among the most heroic of all the heroic failures of Ireland.
If theirs is a lost cause, it is wholly worthy of a land where lost
causes are never lost. But the old guard of Redmond did also in its
time, I fancy, fall into the same particular and curious error, but
in a more subtle way and on a seemingly remote subject. They also,
whose motives like those of the Sinn Feiners were entirely noble, did
in one sense fail to be national, in the sense of appreciating the
international importance of a nation. In their case it was a matter
of English and not European politics; and as their case was much more
complicated, I speak with much less confidence about it. But I think
there was a highly determining time in politics when certain Irishmen
got on to the wrong side in English politics, as other Irishmen
afterwards got on to the wrong side in European politics. And by the
wrong side, in both cases, I not only mean the side that was not
consistent with the truth, but the side that was not really congenial
to the Irish. A man may act against the body, even the main body, of
his nation; but if he acts against the soul of his nation, even to save
it, he and his nation suffer.
I can best explain what I mean by reaffirming the reality which an
English visitor really found in Irish politics, towards the end of
the war. It may seem odd to say that the most hopeful fact I found,
for Anglo-Irish relations, was the fury with which the Irish were all
accusing the English of perjury and treason. Yet this was my solid
and sincere impression; the happiest omen was the hatred aroused by
the disappointment over Home Rule. For men are not furious unless
they are disappointed of something they really want; and men are not
disappointed except about something they were really ready to accept.
If Ireland had been entirely in favour of entire separation, the loss
of Home Rule would not be felt as a loss, but if anything as an escape.
But it is felt bitterly and savagely as a loss; to that at least I can
testify with entire certainty. I may or may not be right in the belief
I build on it; but I believe it would still be felt as a gain; that
Dominion Home Rule would in the long run satisfy Ireland. But it would
satisfy her if it were given to her, not if it were promised to her.
As it is, the Irish regard our Government simply as a liar who has
broken his word; I cannot express how big and black that simple idea
bulks in the landscape and blocks up the road. And without professing
to regard it as quite so simple, I regard it as substantially true.
It is, upon any argument, an astounding thing the King, Lords, and
Commons of a great nation should record on its statute-book that a law
exists, and then illegally reverse it in answer to the pressure of
private persons. It is, and must be, for the people benefited by the
law, an act of treason. The Irish were not wrong in thinking it an act
of treason, even in the sense of treachery and trickery. Where they
were wrong, I regret to say, was in talking of it as if it were the
one supreme solitary example of such trickery; when the whole of our
politics were full of such tricks. In short, the loss of justice for
Ireland was simply a part of the loss of justice in England; the loss
of all moral authority in government, the loss of the popularity of
Parliament, the secret plutocracy which makes it easy to take a bribe
or break a pledge, the corruption that can pass unpopular laws or
promote discredited men. The law-giver cannot enforce his law because,
whether or no the law be popular, the law-giver is wholly unpopular,
and is perpetually passing wholly unpopular laws. Intrigue has been
substituted for government; and the public man cannot appeal to the
public because all the most important part of his policy is conducted
in private. The modern politician conducts his public life in private.
He sometimes condescends to make up for it by affecting to conduct his
private life in public. He will put his baby or his birthday book into
the illustrated papers; it is his dealings with the colossal millions
of the cosmopolitan millionaires that he puts in his pocket or his
private safe. We are allowed to know all about his dogs and cats; but
not about those larger and more dangerous animals, his bulls and bears.
Now there was a moment when England had an opportunity of breaking
down this parliamentary evil, as Europe afterwards had an opportunity
(which it fortunately took) of breaking down the Prussian evil. The
corruption was common to both parties; but the chance of exposing
it happened to occur under the rule of a Home Rule party; which the
Nationalists supported solely for the sake of Home Rule. In the
Marconi Case they consented to whitewash the tricks of Jew jobbers
whom they must have despised, just as some of the Sinn Feiners
afterwards consented to whitewash the wickedness of Prussian bullies
whom they also must have despised. In both cases the motive was wholly
disinterested and even idealistic. It was the practicality that was
unpractical. I was one of a small group which protested against the
hushing up of the Marconi affair, but we always did justice to the
patriotic intentions of the Irish who allowed it. But we based our
criticism of their strategy on the principle of _falsus in uno, falsus
in omnibus_. The man who will cheat you about one thing will cheat you
about another. The men who will lie to you about Marconi, will lie to
you about Home Rule. The political conventions that allow of dealing
in Marconis at one price for the party, and another price for oneself,
are conventions that also allow of telling one story to Mr John Redmond
and another to Sir Edward Carson. The man who will imply one state of
things when talking at large in Parliament, and another state of things
when put into a witness-box in court, is the same sort of man who will
promise an Irish settlement in the hope that it may fail; and then
withdraw it for fear it should succeed. Among the many muddle-headed
modern attempts to coerce the Christian poor to the Moslem dogma about
wine and beer, one was concerned with abuse by loafers or tipplers
of the privilege of the Sunday traveller. It was suggested that the
travellers’ claims were in every sense travellers’ tales. It was
therefore proposed that the limit of three miles should be extended
to six; as if it were any harder for a liar to say he had walked six
miles than three. The politicians might be as ready to promise to walk
the six miles to an Irish Republic as the three miles to an Irish
Parliament. But Sinn Fein is mistaken in supposing that any change of
theoretic claim meets the problem of corruption. Those who would break
their word to Redmond would certainly break it to De Valera. We urged
all these things on the Nationalists whose national cause we supported;
we asked them to follow their larger popular instincts, break down a
corrupt oligarchy, and let a real popular parliament in England give a
real popular parliament to Ireland. With entirely honourable motives,
they adhered to the narrower conception of their national duty. They
sacrificed everything for Home Rule, even their own profoundly national
emotion of contempt. For the sake of Home Rule, or the solemn promise
of Home Rule, they kept such men in power; and for their reward they
found that such men were still in power; and Home Rule was gone.
What I mean about the Nationalist Party, and what may be called its
prophetic shadow of the Sinn Fein mistake, may well be symbolised in
one of the noblest figures of that party or any party. An Irish poet,
talking to me about the pointed diction of the Irish peasant, said he
had recently rejoiced in the society of a drunken Kerry farmer, whose
conversation was a litany of questions about everything in heaven and
earth, each ending with a sort of chorus of ‘Will ye tell me that now?’
And at the end of all he said abruptly, ‘Did ye know Tom Kettle?’ and
on my friend the poet assenting, the farmer said, as if in triumph,
‘And why are so many people alive that ought to be dead, and so many
people dead that ought to be alive? Will ye tell me that now?’ That is
not unworthy of an old heroic poem, and therefore not unworthy of the
hero and poet of whom it was spoken. ‘Patroclus died, who was a better
man than you.’ Thomas Michael Kettle was perhaps the greatest example
of that greatness of spirit which was so ill rewarded on both sides of
the channel and of the quarrel, which marked Redmond’s brother and so
many of Redmond’s followers. He was a wit, a scholar, an orator, a man
ambitious in all the arts of peace; and he fell fighting the barbarians
because he was too good a European to use the barbarians against
England, as England a hundred years before had used the barbarians
against Ireland. There is nothing to be said of such things except what
the drunken farmer said, unless it be a verse from a familiar ballad
on a very remote topic, which happens to express my own most immediate
feelings about politics and reconstruction after the decimation of the
great war.
The many men so beautiful
And they all dead did lie:
And a thousand thousand slimy things
Lived on, and so did I.
It is not a reflection that adds any inordinate self-satisfaction to
the fact of one’s own survival.
In turning over a collection of Kettle’s extraordinary varied and
vigorous writings, which contain some of the most pointed and piercing
criticisms of materialism, of modern capitalism and mental and moral
anarchism generally, I came on a very interesting criticism of myself
and my friends in our Marconi agitation; a suggestion, on a note of
genial cynicism, that we were asking for an impossible political
purity; a suggestion which, knowing it to be patriotic, I will venture
to call pathetic. I will not now return on such disagreements with a
man with whom I so universally agree; but it will not be unfair to find
here an exact illustration of what I mean by saying that the national
leaders, so far from merely failing as wild Irishmen, only failed
when they were not instinctive enough, that is, not Irish enough.
Kettle was a patriot whose impulse was practical, and whose policy
was impolitic. Here also the Nationalist underrated the importance of
the intervention of his own nationality. Kettle left a fine and even
terrible poem, asking if his sacrifices were in vain, and whether he
and his people were again being betrayed. I think nobody can deny
that he was betrayed; but it was not by the English soldiers with whom
he marched to war, but by those very English politicians with whom he
sacrificed so much to remain at peace. No man will ever dare to say
his death in battle was in vain, not only because in the highest sense
it could never be, but because even in the lowest sense it was not.
He hated the icy insolence of Prussia; and that ice is broken, and
already as weak as water. As Carlyle said of a far lesser thing, that
at least will never through unending ages insult the face of the sun
any more. The point is here that if any part of his fine work was in
vain, it was certainly not the reckless romantic part; it was precisely
the plodding parliamentary part. None can say that the weary marching
and counter-marching in France was a thing thrown away; not only in
the sense which consecrates all footprints along such a _via crucis_,
or highway of the army of martyrs; but also in the perfectly practical
sense, that the army was going somewhere, and that it got there. But
it might possibly be said that the weary marching and counter-marching
at Westminster, in and out of a division lobby, belonged to what the
French call the _salle des pas perdus_. If anything was practical it
was the visionary adventure; if anything was unpractical it was the
practical compromise. He and his friends were betrayed by the men whose
corruptions they had contemptuously condoned, far more than by the men
whose bigotries they had indignantly denounced. There darkened about
them treason and disappointment, and he that was the happiest died in
battle; and one who knew and loved him spoke to me for a million others
in saying: ‘And now we will not give you a dead dog until you keep your
word.’