BROTHERS AND ENEMIES
I
Our enemies are brothers from whom we are estranged. Here is the
fundamental truth that explains and justifies our hope of
re-establishing a real patriotism among all parties in Ireland, and a
final peace with our ancient enemy of England. It is the view of
prejudice that makes of the various sections of our people hopelessly
hostile divisions, and raises up a barrier of hate between Ireland and
England that can never be surmounted. If Ireland is to be regenerated,
we must have internal unity; if the world is to be regenerated, we must
have world-wide unity--not of government, but of brotherhood. To this
great end every individual, every nation has a duty; and that the end
may not be missed we must continually turn for the correction of our
philosophy to reflecting on the common origin of the human race, on the
beauty of the world that is the heritage of all, our common hopes and
fears, and in the greatest sense the mutual interests of the peoples of
the earth. If, unheeding this, any people make their part of the earth
ugly with acts of tyranny and baseness, they threaten the security of
all; if unconscious of it, a people always high-spirited are plunged
into war with a neighbour, now a foe, and yet fight, as their nature
compels them, bravely and magnanimously, they but drive their enemy back
to the field of a purer life, and, perhaps, to the realisation of a more
beautiful existence, a dream to which his stagnant soul steeped in
ugliness could never rise.
II
On the road to freedom every alliance will be sternly tried. Internal
friendship will not be made in a day, nor external friendship for many a
day, and there will be how many temptations to hold it all a delusion
and scatter the few still standing loyally to the flag. We must
understand, then, the bond that holds us together on the line of march,
and in the teeth of every opposition. Nothing but a genuine bond of
brotherhood can so unite men, but we hardly seem to realise its truth.
When a deep and ardent patriotism requires men of different creeds to
come together frankly and in a spirit of comradeship, and when the most
earnest of all the creeds do so, others who are colder and less earnest
regard this union as a somewhat suspicious alliance; and, if they join
in, do so reluctantly. Others come not at all; these think our friends
labour in a delusion, that it needs but an occasion to start an old fear
and drive them apart, to attack one another with ancient bitterness
fired with fresh venom. We must combat that idea. Let us consider the
attitude to one another of three units of the band, who represent the
best of the company and should be typical of the whole; one who is a
Catholic, one who is a Protestant, and one who may happen to be neither.
The complete philosophy of any one of the three may not be accepted by
the other two; the horizon of his hopes may be more or less distant, but
that complete philosophy stretches beyond the limit of the sphere,
within which they are drawn together to mutual understanding and
comradeship, moved by a common hope, a brave purpose and a beautiful
dream. The significance of their work may be deeper for one than for
another, the origin of the dream and its ultimate aim may be points not
held in common; but the beautiful tangible thing that they all now fight
for, the purer public and private life, the more honourable dealings
between men, the higher ideals for the community and the nation, the
grander forbearance, courage and freedom, in all these they are at one.
The instinctive recognition of an attack on the ideal is alive and
vigilant in all three. The sympathy that binds them is ardent, deep and
enduring. Observe them come together. Note the warm hand grasp, the
drawn face of one, a hard-worker; of another, the eye anxious for a
brother hard pressed; of the third, the eye glistening for the ideal
triumphant; of all the intimate confidence, the mutual encouragement and
self-sacrifice, never a note of despair, but always the exultation of
the Great Fight, and the promise of a great victory. This is a finer
company than a mere casual alliance; yet it makes the uninspired pause,
wondering and questioning. These men are earnest men of different
creeds; still they are as intimately bound to one another as if they
knelt at the one altar. In the narrow view the creeds should be at one
another's throats; here they are marching shoulder to shoulder. How is
this? And the one whose creed is the most exacting could, perhaps, give
the best reply. He would reply that within the sphere in which they work
together the true thing that unites them can be done only the one right
way; that instinctively seizing this right way they come together; that
this is the line of advance to wider and deeper things that are his
inspiration and his life; that if a comrade is roused to action by the
nearer task, and labours bravely and rightly for it, he is on the road
to widening vistas in his dream that now he may not see. That is what he
would say whose vision of life is the widest. All objectors he may not
satisfy. That what is life to him may leave his comrade cold is a
difficulty; but against the difficulty stand the depth and reality of
their comradeship, proven by mutual sacrifice, endurance, and faith, and
he never doubts that their bond union will sometime prove to have a
wise and beautiful meaning in the Annals of God.
III
But the men of different creeds who stand firmly and loyally together
are a minority. We are faced with the great difficulty of uniting as a
whole North and South; and we are faced with the grim fact that many
whom we desire to unite are angrily repudiating a like desire, that many
are sarcastically noting this, that many are coldly refusing to believe;
while through it all the most bitter are emphasising enmity and
glorifying it. All these unbelievers keep insisting North and South are
natural enemies and must so remain. The situation is further embittered
by acts of enmity being practised by both sides to the extreme
provocation of the faithful few. Their forbearance will be sorely tried,
and this is the final test of men. By those who cling to prejudice and
abandon self-restraint, extol enmity, and always proceed to the further
step--the plea to wipe the enemy out: the counter plea for forbearance
is always scorned as the enervating gospel of weakness and despair.
Though we like to call ourselves Christian, we have no desire for--nay
even make a jest of--that outstanding Christian virtue; yet men not held
by Christian dogma have joyously surrendered to the sublimity of that
divine idea. Hear Shelley speak: "What nation has the example of the
desolation of Attica by Mardonius and Xerxes, or the extinction of the
Persian Empire by Alexander of Macedon restrained from outrage? Was not
the pretext for this latter system of spoliation derived immediately
from the former? Had revenge in this instance any other effect than to
increase, instead of diminishing, the mass of malice and evil already
existing in the world? The emptiness and folly of retaliation are
apparent from every example which can be brought forward." Shelley
writes much further on retaliation, which he denounces as "futile
superstition." Simple violence repels every high and generous thinker.
Hear one other, Mazzini: "What we have to do is not to establish a new
order of things by violence. An order of things so established is always
tyrannical even when it is better than the old." Let us bear this in
mind when there is an act of aggression on either side of the Boyne.
There will not be wanting on the other side a cry for retaliation and
"a lesson." We shall receive every provocation to give up and
acknowledge ancient bitterness, but then is the time to stand firm, then
we shall need to practise the divine forbearance that is the secret of
strength.
IV
But with only a minority standing to the flag we cry out for some hope
of final success. Men will not fight without result for ever; they ask
for some sign of progress, some gleam of the light of victory. Happily,
searching the skies, our eyes can have their reward. We shall, no doubt,
see, outstanding, dark evidence of old animosity; we shall hear fierce
war-cries and see raging crowds, but the crowds are less numerous, and
the wrath has lost its sting. Men who raged twenty years ago rage now,
but their fury is less real; and young men growing up around them, quite
indifferent to the ideal, are also indifferent to the counter cries:
they are passive, unimpressed by either side. Rightly approached, they
may understand and feel the glow of a fine enthusiasm; they are numbered
by prejudice, they will become warm, active and daring under an
inspiring appeal. Remember, and have done with despair. Think how you
and I found our path step by step of the way: political life was full of
conventions that suited our fathers' time, but have faded in the light
of our day. We found these conventions unreal and put them by. This was
no reflection on our fathers; what they fought for truly is our
heritage, and we pay them a tribute in offering it in turn our loyalty
inspired by their devotion. But their errors we must rectify; what they
left undone we must take up and fulfil. That is the task of every
generation, to take up the uncompleted work of the former one, and hand
on to their successors an achievement and a heritage. Youth recognises
this instinctively, and every generation will take a step in advance of
its predecessor, putting by its prejudices and developing its truth.
Every individual may know this from his own experience, and from it he
knows that those who are now voicing old bitter cries are ageing, and
will soon pass and leave no successors. Not that prejudice will die for
ever. Each new day will have its own, but that which is now dividing and
hampering us will pass. Let the memory of its bitterness be an
incentive to checking new animosities and keeping the future safe; but
in the present let us grasp and keep in our mind that the barrier that
sundered our nation must crumble, if only we have faith and persist,
undeterred by old bitter cries, for they are dying cries, undepressed by
millions apathetic, for it is the great recurring sign of the ideal,
that one hour its light will flash through quivering multitudes, and
millions will have vision and rouse to regenerate the land.
V
Happily, it is nothing new to plead for brotherhood among Irishmen now;
unhappily, it is not so generally admitted, nor even recognised, that
the same reason that exists for restoring friendly relations among
Irishmen, exists for the re-establishing of friendship with any
outsider--England or another--with whom now or in the future we may be
at war. Friendliness between neighbours is one of the natural things of
life. In the case of individuals how beautifully it shows between two
dwellers in the same street or townland. They rejoice together in
prosperity; give mutual aid in adversity; in the ordinary daily round
work together in a spirit of comradeship; at all times they find a bond
of unity in their mutual interests. Consider, then, the sundering of
their friendship by some act of evil on either side. The old friendship
is turned to hate. Now the proximity that gave intimate pleasure to
their comradeship gives as keen an edge to their enmity; they meet one
another, cross one another, harass one another at every point. The
bitterness that is such a poison to life must be revolting to their best
instincts; deep in their hearts must be a yearning for the casting out
of hate and the return of old comradeship. Still the estranged brothers
are at daggers drawn. Sometimes the evil done is so great and the
bitterness so keen that the old spirit can apparently never be restored;
but while there is any hope whatever the true heart will keep it alive
deep down, for it must be cherished and kept in mind if the whole beauty
of life is to be renewed and preserved for ever. It is so with nations
as with individuals. Once this is recognised we must be on guard against
a new error, which is an old error in new form, the taking of means for
end. The end of general peace is to give all nations freedom in
essentials, to realise the deeper purpose, possibilities, fulness and
beauty of life; it is not to have a peace at any price, peace with a
certain surrender, the meaner peace that is akin to slavery. No, its
message is to guard one nation from excess that has plunged another into
evil, to leave the way open to a final peace, not base but honourable;
it is to preserve the divine balance of the soul. It may be further
urged that we are engaged in a great fight; that to try to rouse in men
the more generous instincts will but weaken their hands by removing a
certain driving bitterness that gives strength to their fight. Whatever
it removes it will not be their strength. In a war admittedly between
brothers, a civil war, where different conceptions of duty force men
asunder, father is up against son, and brother against brother; yet they
are not weakened in their contest by ties of blood and the deeper-lying
harmony of things that in happier times prevail to the exclusion of
bitterness and hate. When, therefore, you teach a man his enemy is in a
deep sense his brother, you do not draw him from the fight, but you give
him a new conception of the goal to win and with a great dream inspire
him to persevere and reach the goal.
VI
If, then, beyond individual and national freedom there is this great
dream still to be striven for, let us not decry it as something too
sublime for earth. It must be our guiding star to lead us rightly as far
as we may go. We can travel rightly that part of the road we now tread
on only by shaping it true to the great end that ought to inspire us
all. We shall have many temptations to swerve aside, but the power of
mind that keeps our position clear and firm will react against every
destroying influence. In the first stage of the fight for internal
unity, when blind bigotry is furiously insisting that we but plan an
insidious scheme for the oppression of a minority, our firmness will
save us till our conception of the end grow on that minority and
convince all of our earnestness. Then the dream will inspire them, the
flag will claim them, and the first stage in the fight will be won. When
internal unity is accomplished, we are within reach of freedom. Yes, but
cries an objector, "Why plead for friendship with England, who will have
peace only on condition of her supremacy?" And an answer is needed. If
it takes two to make a fight, it also most certainly takes two to make a
peace, unless one accepts the position of serf and surrenders. But this
we do not fear; we can compel our freedom and we are confident of
victory. There is still the step to friendship. Many will be baffled by
the difficulty, that while we must keep alive our generous instincts, we
must be stern and resolute in the fight; while we desire peace we must
prosecute war; while we long for comradeship we must be breaking up
dangerous alliances: literary, political, trades and social unions
formed with England while she is asserting her supremacy must be broken
up till they can be reformed on a basis of independence, equality and
universal freedom. While we are prosecuting these vigorous measures it
may not seem the way to final friendship; but we must persist;
independence is first indispensable. Here again, however, while
insisting among our own ranks on our conception of the end, it will grow
on the mind of the enemy. They may put it by at first as a delusion or a
snare, but one intimate moment will come when it will light up for them,
and a new era is begun. In such a moment is evil abandoned, hate buried
and friendship reborn. There is one honest fear that our independence
would threaten their security: it will yet be replaced by the conviction
that there is a surer safeguard in our freedom than in our suppression;
the light will break through the clouds of suspicion and a star of stars
will glorify the earth. For this end our enemy must have an ideal as
high as our own; if thus an objector, he is right. But if in the gross
materialism and greed of empire that is now the ruling passion with the
enemy there is apparently little hope of a transformation that will make
them spiritual, high-minded and generous, we must not abandon our ideal:
while the meanness and tyranny of contemporary England stand forward
against our argument and leave our reasoning cold, we can find a more
subtle appeal in spirit, such an appeal as comes to us in a play of
Shakespeare's, a song of Shelley's, or a picture of Turner's. From the
heart of the enemy Genius cries, bearing witness to our common humanity,
and the yearning for such high comradeship is alive, and the dream
survives to light us on the forward path. We must travel that path
rightly. We can so travel whatever the enemy's mind. More difficult it
will be, but it can be done. That is the great significance and
justification of Nationalism: it is the unanswerable argument to
cosmopolitanism. If the greatness and beauty of life that ought to be
the dream of all nations is denied by all but one, that one may keep
alive the dream within her own frontier till its fascination will arrest
and inspire the world. If this ultimate dream is still floating far off,
in its pursuit there is for us achievement on achievement, and each
brave thing done is in itself a beauty and a joy for ever. For the good
fighter there is always fine recompense; a clear mind, warm blood, quick
imagination, grasp of life and joy in action, and at the end of day
always an eminence won. Yes, and from the height of that eminence will
come ringing down to the last doubter a last word: we may reach the
mountaintops in aspiring to the stars.