Deadened and inert though the barbarity of solitary confinement caused
one to become (and even as solitary confinement ours was particularly
severe and therefore particularly barbarous) there were times when the
whole being rose in revolt. Anything would have been preferable to it.
On one such occasion I demanded to see the Commandant of the jail. When
he came, I requested to know exactly why I was being punished, and for
what offence. I told him that I wished to have his answer in writing
and to be able to communicate with my solicitor with a view to taking
action. My thought was that a personal suit against him might prove
abortive, but that it might cause a publicity the effect of which would
be healthy.
He replied that I was not being punished; that I was simply being
“detained.” I said that this could not be. According to prison
regulations, solitary confinement of so severe a nature was punishment
at least equivalent to birching. Would he birch me without acquainting
me with the cause of such a punishment? No, he said, he would not.
Then why, I asked, was I receiving a punishment equivalent in severity
without a cause assigned. I wished to be provided with a cause, and to
be provided with it in writing.
The Commandant himself was gentlemanly and courteous. A few days
afterwards when I repeated my request he told me he was simply acting
under orders, and that he could not change matters without orders. I
asked him then if he would communicate my request to the War Office,
under whose instructions he proceeded; and he promised to do so.
Some time elapsed; and when he spoke to me further about the matter
he asked what it was that I demanded. He asked me if I would
particularise. I replied that the War Office had on their own
initiative defined us as Prisoners of War. It had been announced to us
that all our letters had to be so addressed; all the orders given to us
were made applicable under that heading. I said I did not quarrel with
the designation; both nationally and personally I hailed it. It was, I
agreed, a splendid designation; but such being our state, I demanded
on our behalf the application of the international agreement governing
the treatment of prisoners of war—an agreement that, I believed, had
been ratified between the belligerent powers during the first week
of the war. In other words, I wanted tobacco and pipe, I wished any
books that I might order or that might be sent in to me, daily papers,
free communication with my fellow-prisoners, and the opening of cell
doors by night and by day, the right to have food sent into us, and
the return of my money in order that I might be able to purchase food
in the town, and facilities to purchase it, by canteen or by order. I
added that what I demanded I demanded not for myself but for all of us,
and in all of the prisons.
After a few days he came to me to say that the War Office had
authorised him to grant these rights, but to grant them in stages,
and with one stipulation. That stipulation he would announce to the
men. Having put us all on parade he announced the rights that would be
granted, but said that it would first be necessary for us to choose a
commandant from among ourselves who would be responsible to him for
the good order of the prison, and who would have power to maintain
discipline. The men appointed me, and I created officers for each of
the landings.
So began our little republic, and so extended our educative influence.
When the rights were in full force the staff became supernumeraries.
We created our post office and handled our own parcels and letters
for distribution. Rules were laid down for the ordering of our life
together; and only once or twice was it necessary to take disciplinary
measures (solitary confinement in one case as a pathetic reminder!),
for the general spirit of loyalty and affection was sufficient—was, in
fact, remarkable with a body of men not accustomed to the strict rules
necessary to the ordering of such a community. The appointed officers
were responsible for their landings, made daily reports, and brought
up any cases with which they were unable to deal. And so from top to
bottom we maintained ourselves, quietly eliminating the staff, to the
no small dissatisfaction of some of them, though with the good will of
most. There was, in fact, no work for most of the staff to do.
At seven each morning, after breakfast, and at eight at night, the
bell was rung, and we all gathered for public prayers. Michael
MacRory Irish orator, and Padraic Pearse’s gardener, led the Rosary.
Englishmen speak much of our religious differences. It devolved upon
me as a Protestant to summon the prayers, and none thought otherwise
of it than as a natural thing, while every Protestant knelt with his
fellows in prayer to the one God. Whatever announcements or enquiries
Father Moore had to make were made through a Protestant, and had anyone
suggested that they should not have been so made, it would have fared
ill with him. They were made as a simple matter of authority by whoever
was in authority. The reason for this was that we were sufficient in
ourselves to guard over our own affairs without a stranger’s hand to
create trouble.
These daily prayers were a great astonishment to the staff. One
sergeant declared to a visitor: “I heard a lot about these Sinn Feiners
being a bad lot, but you should see them. They’re a religious lot. They
goes to prayers and church same as we goes to the theaytre.” And when,
some days after our public prayers had begun, the news came that the
“Hampshire” had sunk, there was not a man of the staff but was fully
assured that it was our prayers had sent Lord Kitchener to his death.
At ten each night every man was required to be off the corridor and
balconies, and any conversation in cells after that time had to be
conducted softly, in order not to interfere with those who wished to
sleep; and within five minutes of the ringing of the bell the prison
was clear and quiet. The staff became accustomed, if they had business
to execute with us, to resign it into our hands for prosecution. Those
who did not do so made a sad affair of their undertaking. Which is a
parable. In a phrase, our motto was: [Gaelic: Sinn Féin Aṁáin].
It was interesting to notice our influence on the staff. We never
troubled about them; they had their interests and we had ours; and only
occasionally the national opposition clashed sharply. Yet they confided
in us. With our extended rights the library was opened to us; and the
librarian-warder informed us that he was at first afraid to be left
alone in the library with any one of us. Apparently he thought we would
bite out his windpipe unexpectedly, or playfully split his skull. But
when his first visitor, a man from Belfast, contemptuously described
his collection of books as “piffle,” and asked that certain other
books should be procured from the officers’ library, as he himself
declared: “My word, I was surprised. I thought you Sinn Feiners were
a wild lot of savages from what I heard of you. But you are men of
culture, most of you. It’s a bit of a shock to a man to find out.”
The librarian-warder was quite pleased at the widening range of his
ethnographical knowledge.
Yet the most interesting member of the staff was the sergeant of the
R.A.M.C. He was a Doctor of Literature at Oxford, and also, I believe,
a _Docteur ès Lettres_ at the Sorbonne. He had been out at Gallipoli,
whence he had been invalided home. As he passed on his rounds he would
often come into my cell for a talk. We very seldom spoke on national
questions, for I assumed that our orbits of interest on such matters
would not cut each other at any point; our conversation was generally
on literary or philosophical matters. But once he came up to me with a
definite thing to say.
“You know,” he said, “the Government make a great mistake putting men
like you into prison. You will never forget it; you can never forget
it; no man could who canvasses experience with his intellect. They’re
simply a lot of grandfatherly old fools at the top of affairs, and
we always make a muddle of things. They should either give you a
clear run, and let you make what you can of your country and take the
chances; or they should wait their chance and shoot you out of hand and
laugh at the racket afterwards. But all this sentimental talk about
your country, followed up by all this muddle, simply makes a thinking
man sick. All this business,” and he indicated the hundreds of us
standing talking about the yard, “is clumsy, it’s idiocy, and it breeds
more clumsiness and idiocy for the future.”
“Which of your two alternatives would you adopt?” I asked him.
“Well, you know, one likes to meet a man to whom one can talk;
intellect, and all that sort of thing, and culture, and care for art,
they’re rare enough in this world, and one wouldn’t altogether care to
take the responsibility of destroying any part of it—”
“But you’d shoot me all the same.”
“Yes, I think I would.” He was quite serious. “Quite possibly that’s
because I’ve just been seeing a lot of blood; and I don’t think I would
have said that two years ago. But just now I’d shoot you. I wouldn’t of
course do it in a stupid way. I’d wait till you gave me a chance; and
sooner or later you would, for you have your convictions, and they’d
lead you into my hand; and then I’d shoot you instantly, and without
trial if need be, without waiting anyhow. Of course there’d be trouble
afterwards, but I’d wait quietly till that blew over, as it would.”
“That wouldn’t get you out of the wood, for you’d make a martyr of me
and exploit my ideals.”
“That’s so. There’s that side, of course. But still that’s what I
think I’d do. I certainly wouldn’t go muddling about trying to do two
mutually contradictory things at the same time. All you men here—the
whole thing’s simply offensive.”
“Does the hypocrisy offend you then? You ought to have become
accustomed to that by this time as a nation.”
“Well, yes, in a way it does, I suppose. But it’s not that mainly;
it’s the clumsy thinking; it’s not thinking the thing out from the
beginning. Do I horrify you?”
“Not at all. If you came over to Ireland you’d have a great audience.
We’d agree with you in every word, simply and utterly. We’d be
delighted to meet one of your nation who looked at things without any
silly sentiment. You’re a sentimental people, and at bottom very
cruel; we’re not sentimental. You are as sentimental as any yourself;
but you’ve at least got your mentality clear of it, and so for the
first time you can see things as they are. The worst of it is that,
dealing with a sentimental people, you are making us superficially
sentimental too, and that’s distracting us from our work. I only wish
that more of you would talk as you do, instead of slobbering. And shoot
away; as long as you say why, without using words that convey nothing
to us and that only mean sloppy thinking on your part.”
“But I thought you objected to the shootings in Dublin.”
“Certainly. Those men were my brothers. But they weren’t shot as you
said you’d shoot me, because you were out to smash an opposed thing
as the only logical alternative to giving it the run of its own life,
but, if you please, because they didn’t accept certain standards which
none of us can ever accept until we make and endorse them in terms of
ourselves—or, rather, which we now do and must for ever act upon in
that sense, because it’s the first principle of life so to do. And
then, when you have them shot, you turn round and praise their noble
ideals! In the name of heaven, what ideals?”
“I think I should certainly shoot you now.”
“To smash me. Good man! We’d understand that in Ireland, where your
Liberal sentiments bore us, and your Tory hectoring irritates us.
We’re a kindly people—human and hospitable; but you, because you can
escape into words and hide realities from yourselves, are cruel and
inhospitable.”
And I believe he would have shot me. Many were the conversations we
had; many were the kindly, thoughtful acts he did for us; and he was
courtesy itself to the ladies who spent their days at the prison gate
taking rebuffs from everyone in the prison, in the determination to see
that each man of us received what he had need of, food or clothing. But
he would have reasoned the thing out and shot me, without the least
ill-will or high-falutin. And I would have borne him no ill-will, for
the fight would have continued long past the two of us.