THE INSURRECTION IS OVER.
The Insurrection is over, and it is worth asking what has happened, how
it has happened, and why it happened?
The first question is easily answered. The finest part of our city has
been blown to smithereens, and burned into ashes. Soldiers amongst us
who have served abroad say that the ruin of this quarter is more
complete than any thing they have seen at Ypres, than anything they have
seen anywhere in France or Flanders. A great number of our men and women
and children, Volunteers and civilians confounded alike, are dead, and
some fifty thousand men who have been moved with military equipment to
our land are now being removed therefrom. The English nation has been
disorganised no more than as they were affected by the transport of
these men and material. That is what happened, and it is all that
happened.
How it happened is another matter, and one which, perhaps, will not be
made clear for years. All we know in Dublin is that our city burst into
a kind of spontaneous war; that we lived through it during one singular
week, and that it faded away and disappeared almost as swiftly as it had
come. The men who knew about it are, with two exceptions, dead, and
these two exceptions are in gaol, and likely to remain there long
enough. (Since writing one of these men has been shot.)
Why it happened is a question that may be answered more particularly. It
happened because the leader of the Irish Party misrepresented his people
in the English House of Parliament. On the day of the declaration of war
between England and Germany he took the Irish case, weighty with eight
centuries of history and tradition, and he threw it out of the window.
He pledged Ireland to a particular course of action, and he had no
authority to give this pledge and he had no guarantee that it would be
met. The ramshackle intelligence of his party and his own emotional
nature betrayed him and us and England. He swore Ireland to loyalty as
if he had Ireland in his pocket, and could answer for her. Ireland has
never been disloyal to England, not even at this epoch, because she has
never been loyal to England, and the profession of her National faith
has been unwavering, has been known to every English person alive, and
has been clamant to all the world beside.
Is it that he wanted to be cheered? He could very easily have stated
Ireland's case truthfully, and have proclaimed a benevolent neutrality
(if he cared to use the grandiloquent words) on the part of this
country. He would have gotten his cheers, he would in a few months have
gotten Home Rule in return for Irish soldiers. He would have received
politically whatever England could have safely given him. But, alas,
these carefulnesses did not chime with his emotional moment. They were
not magnificent enough for one who felt that he was talking not to
Ireland or to England, but to the whole gaping and eager earth, and so
he pledged his country's credit so deeply that he did not leave her even
one National rag to cover herself with.
After a lie truth bursts out, and it is no longer the radiant and
serene goddess knew or hoped for--it is a disease, it is a moral
syphilis and will ravage until the body in which it can dwell has been
purged. Mr. Redmond told the lie and he is answerable to England for the
violence she had to be guilty of, and to Ireland for the desolation to
which we have had to submit. Without his lie there had been no
Insurrection; without it there had been at this moment, and for a year
past, an end to the "Irish question." Ireland must in ages gone have
been guilty of abominable crimes or she could not at this juncture have
been afflicted with a John Redmond.
He is the immediate cause of this our latest Insurrection--the word is
big, much too big for the deed, and we should call it row, or riot, or
squabble, in order to draw the fact down to its dimensions, but the
ultimate blame for the trouble between the two countries does not fall
against Ireland.
The fault lies with England, and in these days while an effort is being
made (interrupted, it is true, by cannon) to found a better
understanding between the two nations it is well that England should
recognize what she has done to Ireland, and should try at least to
atone for it. The situation can be explained almost in a phrase. We are
a little country and you, a huge country, have persistently beaten us.
We are a poor country and you, the richest country in the world, have
persistently robbed us. That is the historical fact, and whatever
national or political necessities are opposed in reply, it is true that
you have never given Ireland any reason to love you, and you cannot
claim her affection without hypocrisy or stupidity.
You think our people can only be tenacious in hate--it is a lie. Our
historical memory is truly tenacious, but during the long and miserable
tale of our relations you have never given us one generosity to remember
you by, and you must not claim our affection or our devotion until you
are worthy of them. We are a good people; almost we are the only
Christian people left in the world, nor has any nation shown such
forbearance towards their persecutor as we have always shown to you. No
nation has forgiven its enemies as we have forgiven you, time after time
down the miserable generations, the continuity of forgiveness only
equalled by the continuity of your ill-treatment. Between our two
countries you have kept and protected a screen of traders and
politicians who are just as truly your enemies as they are ours. In the
end they will do most harm to you for we are by this vaccinated against
misery but you are not, and the "loyalists" who sell their own country
for a shilling will sell another country for a penny when the
opportunity comes and safety with it.
Meanwhile do not always hasten your presents to us out of a gun. You
have done it so often that your guns begin to bore us, and you have now
an opportunity which may never occur again to make us your friends.
There is no bitterness in Ireland against you on account of this war,
and the lack of ill-feeling amongst us is entirely due to the more than
admirable behaviour of the soldiers whom you sent over here. A peace
that will last for ever can be made with Ireland if you wish to make it,
but you must take her hand at once, for in a few months' time she will
not open it to you; the old, bad relations will re-commence, the rancor
will be born and grow, and another memory will be stored away in
Ireland's capacious and retentive brain.