_Eire-Ireland_, which appeared as a weekly on October 26th and was changed
to a daily after the second number. It is significant of the change in
Irish feeling that it was now possible to run a Separatist daily paper in
Dublin, and of the gradual rapprochement between Irish parties that this
paper, intended as the organ of the Irish Volunteers, was edited by Mr.
Arthur Griffith, the founder of the Sinn Fein movement. Its attitude
towards the war was defined in an article by Roger Casement in the first
number: "Ireland has no quarrel with the German people or just cause of
offence against them.... Ireland has suffered at the hands of British
administrators a more prolonged series of evils deliberately inflicted
than any other community of civilized men." It emphasized the view of the
Volunteers that Mr. Redmond's advice to take their place in the firing
line was out of harmony with their principles. "The Irish Volunteers had
from the beginning and still have but a single duty--to secure and
safeguard the rights and liberties of Ireland." The new daily contained a
column "The War Day by Day" in which a critical analysis of the military
situation was attempted. While most of the other Irish papers merely
reproduced the amateur war criticisms of Fleet Street, the editor of
_Eire_, assuming that English newspapers were giving only one side of the
case, attempted an independent study of the situation, which was made to
appear much less favourable to the Allies than was asserted by other Irish
papers. Stories of German atrocities were analyzed and ridiculed. The
fortunes of the Irish regiments were followed with a jealous eye: it was
asserted that they were being sacrificed unnecessarily while English
regiments were spared, and the Government was challenged to prepare and
publish complete casualty lists for the Irish regiments of the line. The
protest of the German professors against the alleged Allied calumnies was
printed in full and annotated with sympathy. The assurance given to Roger
Casement by the German Acting-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs as to
the contemplated action of German troops if they should land in Ireland
was printed as a document of first-rate international importance. It was
assumed that the Ballot Act would be enforced in Ireland and passive
resistance to its enforcement was urged from the first number of the
paper. _Eire_ did not run for much more than six weeks. Its last number
(December 4) was a broad sheet announcing that the printer, whose premises
had been entered by a military force which had confiscated his property,
felt unable to continue the printing of the paper.
_Eire_ did not so much make, as voice, the opinions of a considerable
section of Irish Nationalist opinion. The newspapers were scanned eagerly
every morning all over Ireland for tidings of the Irish regiments. It was
known that they were engaged, that they were outnumbered, that they would
fight like lions ("the Gaels went out to battle but they always fell"): a
disquieting and ominous silence reigned as to their fate. It was assumed
that the news was bad and that it was being kept back: it began to be
asserted that they were being put upon forlorn hopes to spare the more
valued English regiments: and even those who did not credit the suspicion
felt uneasy when it was expressed. It may have been necessary to refrain
from telling the whole truth in official reports, but every course has its
disadvantages and, so far as Ireland was concerned, this had the result of
arousing suspicion and distrust. And to the question "Why, if these men
can fight and die for the freedom of others, are they not considered
worthy of the freedom they desire for themselves?" the answers did not
carry conviction.
The official "War News" printed in the Irish papers was read with
detachment and reserve; stories of German atrocities were received with
unimpressionable scepticism. This was not due to any pro-German bias, or
to any Sinn Fein propaganda. Peasants in remote villages who never saw
any paper but an odd copy of the _Freeman's Journal_ or the _Irish Daily
Independent_, and who were Redmondites to a man, discussed these matters
with a completely open mind, and with (to those who did not know them)
surprising acumen. People accustomed for years to read that their county
or their province, in which some unpopular grazier had been boycotted, was
"seething with outrage and disorder," to be told that a district in which
there was known not to be as much crime in a year as there was in an
English district of the same size every month was "in a state bordering on
almost complete lawlessness," were not moved when the Germans were charged
on the same authority with crimes against civilization. The word of "our
English correspondent" was simply "not evidence" against anybody. This
invincible scepticism, born of experience, was quite wrongly interpreted
as being the result of "pro-German" sympathies when it proved an
unexpected obstacle to the recruiting campaign.
The gradual growth of Sinn Fein and anti-English (which was only
accidentally and not on principle pro-German) sentiment during the war,
and the increasing difficulties found in the way of the recruiting
campaign, were due mainly to a growing disbelief in the sincerity of
English statesmen in their dealings with Ireland. The Government had gone
too far in the direction of Home Rule to make Unionists sure that the
promised Amending Bill would secure that they should not be "coerced": it
had not gone far enough to make Nationalists sure that it really meant to
do what it had promised. The result was the conviction upon all hands that
their rights must be secured by their own efforts not by reliance upon the
lukewarm sympathy of others. This conviction was not a matter of a sudden
growth nor did it always find expression in the same way: it acted at once
in favour of, and to the detriment of, recruiting: it was professed both
by Nationalists and by Unionists. At first recruits joined because the war
was just, because the Empire was in danger, because England had granted
Ireland a "charter of liberty," because the civilization of Europe was
threatened, because there was fighting afoot. Probably the majority
enlisted for one or other of these reasons. But the theory of "a free gift
of a free people" expounded by Mr. Asquith in Dublin fell more and more
into the background. It began to be represented on both sides that the
more recruits either party sent to the war the stronger would be the lien
of that party upon the sympathy of the English Government. Unionists whose
blood had flowed for England in Flanders could not be abandoned after such
a sacrifice: Nationalists who had given their best and bravest to the
cause of freedom could not be denied the freedom for which such a price
had been paid. The official recruiting campaign wavered in its appeal
between the two points. Its minor ineptitudes need hardly be taken into
account. It was hardly politic to cover the walls of police barracks in
Protestant villages in Ulster with green placards drawing attention to a
few weighty words of Cardinal Logue: these follies did neither harm nor
good. But it was different when appeals to the chivalry and bravery of
Irishmen alternated with deductions from the famous phrase about "the
rights of small nations." When Irish Nationalists were implored to rally
to the defence of the Friend of Little Nations the size of Ireland was not
likely to be forgotten. The inference that in fighting for the liberties
of small nations Irishmen would be helping their own nation to secure the
same liberty was the inference intended: but it was not always the
inference actually drawn. The person who first conceived the idea of
making use of that phrase for recruiting purposes in Ireland did the cause
of recruiting an unforeseen but serious disservice. Was it, after all,
really true (it was asked) that England could not recognize the freedom of
Ireland until Ireland had first helped England to force Germany to
recognize the freedom of Belgium? Was the freedom of Ireland then not a
matter of right but the result of a bargain--the equivalent of how many
fighting men? Had England been the friend of small nations before the war,
was she to be their friend during the war, or was Ireland only to help her
to be their friend after the war was over? The right of Ireland to more
freedom than she had enjoyed had seemed to be recognized before the war
had been spoken of; what had become of the recognition of it? And even
bargaining, however distasteful, has its usages: it was no bargain when
one side was called upon to pay up and the other carefully refrained from
promising anything definite in return.
The bulk of the recruits enlisted during the first year of the war, and
enlisted for worthy and honourable motives: when recruiting became, as it
did become later, a question of party tactics the results were less
favourable. But quite early in the war it became plain that there was
going to be a contest between the two Irish parties as to which should
have most to show for itself at the end, and there was no burning desire
to assist political opponents to obtain recruits. Sir Edward Carson
refused absolutely to stand on the same recruiting platform as Mr.
Redmond; the Belfast Unionist papers found it a grave lapse from principle
in the present Lord Chancellor of England that he addressed a recruiting
meeting in Liverpool in the company of Home Rulers. The Ulster Volunteer
Force was informed practically that it had a two-fold duty, to fight for
the Empire abroad, and to keep up the organization at home. It was plain
from the first that in Ireland there was to be no "party truce," and it
was recognized on all hands before long that when the war was over the old
fight was to be renewed. The position of the Home Rule Act, penned in the
Statute Book, with an Amending Bill waiting to tear it to pieces when the
time came for it to be allowed out, made this inevitable. And the
Government did not find it in its heart to hold an even balance between
the parties: and when the balance began to dip the end was in sight for
those who had eyes to see.
The only party really able to turn to account the situation thus created
was the Sinn Fein party. It had preached for years that the English
governing classes, indeed the English nation, were not, in spite of their
apparent readiness to listen to the Parliamentary Party, the friends of
Irish Nationalism in any real sense: that they had no intention (and never
had) of satisfying the just claims of Ireland: that the Parliamentarians
were mere pawns in a party game, to be sacrificed when it suited both or
either of the English parties: that the word of English statesmen could
not be trusted, and that Ireland had nothing to gain from them: that
self-reliance, vigilance and distrust of England were "the sinews of good
sense" in Irish politics. It had hinted, not obscurely, that the
opportunity of Ireland would come when England should be involved in a
European war, and that Ireland must be prepared when the day came to use
the opportunity. It now pointed a triumphant finger to what was going on
in Ireland and asked which had been the truer prophet, itself or the
Parliamentary Party. It quoted the returns of recruiting in Ulster in
support of its thesis: "The fact that out of 200,000 Unionists of military
age in Ireland--men who talked Empire, sang Empire and protested they
would die for the British Empire--four out of every five are still at
home, declaring they will not have Home Rule, is proof that the Irish
Unionist knows his present business." That Irish soldiers were to be used
to further English interests, and not the cause of Ireland, was (it held)
proved by extracts from English newspapers, where in unguarded moments the
naked truth peeped out: it gave prominence to a quotation from the
_Liverpool Post_ of September 12, 1914: "His Majesty could make a
triumphal tour of Ireland, North, South, East and West, and in reply to
his personal appeal, there would be 300,000 Irishmen of all creeds and
classes for the Front in less than a week. In England the question becomes
more and more important in the interests of the efficiency of our trade,
whether we can spare any more skilled mechanics for the ranks of battle.
The capture of the German trade is almost as vital to the existence of the
Empire as the destruction of Prussian militarism."
By the end of 1914 all avowedly Sinn Fein papers had been suppressed, and
the two American papers, the _Gaelic American_ and the _Irish World_, had
been prohibited in Ireland. The latter had been a supporter of Mr.
Redmond's policy but had parted company with him on the question of
recruiting in Ireland. The editor of _Sinn Fein_ countered the suppression
of his paper by an ingenious device. He began to publish a bi-weekly
called _Scissors and Paste_, which contained nothing but extracts from
other English, Irish, Colonial and American papers. It was introduced to
the reader in the only editorial it contained, entitled "Ourselves": "It
is high treason," it ran, "for an Irishman to argue with the sword the
right of his small nationality to equal political freedom with Belgium or
Servia or Hungary. It is destruction to the property of his printer now
when he argues it with the pen. Hence while England is fighting the battle
of the Small Nationalities, _Ireland_ is reduced to _Scissors and Paste_.
Up to the present the sale and use of these instruments have not been
prohibited by the British Government in Ireland." The columns of the
_Times_, the _Daily Mail_, and the _Morning Post_ supplied the German
Wireless messages: the _New York Times_ was drawn upon for James O'Donnell
Bennett's articles protesting against the reports of German atrocities. In
addition it printed suitable extracts from _The Reliques of Father Prout_,
from Barry's _Songs of Ireland_, Thomas Davis's _Essays_ and Sir Samuel
Ferguson: it reprinted Curran's speech in defence of the printer of _The
Press_ in 1797. It ransacked the _Daily Mail_ for that journal's vigorous
denunciations of the French in 1899: "If they cannot cease their insults
their colonies will be taken from them and given to Germany and Italy--we
ourselves want nothing more.... France will be rolled in the blood and mud
in which her Press daily wallows." The paper ran for a little over a
month. Its undoing was an extract from the _Irish Times_, a copy of a
notice posted on a Sunday morning in January, 1915, in places near a
number of Roman Catholic churches in Wexford: "People of Wexford, take no
notice of the police order to destroy your own property and leave your
own homes if a German army lands in Ireland. When the Germans come they
will come as friends and to put an end to English rule in Ireland.
Therefore stay in your homes and assist as far as possible the German
troops. Any stores, hay, corn or forage taken by the Germans will be paid
for by them."
Just before the disappearance of _Scissors and Paste_, the _Irish Worker_,
three weeks after its suppression, appeared again in Glasgow, where it was
printed by the Socialist Labour Party, and began to circulate once more in
Ireland.
After five months Mr. Arthur Griffith was again able to start a paper. The
Dublin printers could not be induced to take the risk of printing for him
again: but Belfast supplied one with the necessary enterprise. On June 19,
1915, _Nationality_ appeared as a penny weekly paper and continued to
appear until the Easter Rising in 1916. In tone _Nationality_ was a
reproduction of its predecessors and as the main characteristic of Sinn
Fein propaganda was its directness and simplicity two extracts from its
columns will suffice. An editorial (signed C.) on "The Fenian Faith"
written towards the end of 1915 contains the following: "The Fenians and
the Fenian faith incarnated in Allen, Larkin and O'Brien were of a
fighting and revolutionary epoch. They can only be commemorated by men of
another fighting and revolutionary generation. That generation we have
with us to-day. For we have the material, the men and stuff of war, the
faith and purpose and cause for revolution.... We shall have Ireland
illumined with a light before which even the Martyrs' will pale: the light
of Freedom, of a deed done and action taken and a blow struck for the Old
Land"; and a month or so later: "The things that count in Ireland against
English Conscription are national determination, serviceable weapons and
the knowledge of how to use them." Under the stress of circumstances Sinn
Fein seemed to have abandoned the policy of the days of peace and to have
come round in time of war to the policy which, even two years before the
war, had been enunciated in _Irish Freedom_: "Ireland can be freed by
force of arms; _that_ is the fact which ever must be borne in mind. The
responsibility rests with the men of this generation. They can strike with
infinitely greater hopes of success than could their fathers and their
grandsires: but if they let this chance slip ... if they strike no blow
for their country, whilst England herself is in handgrips with the most
powerful nation in Europe, then the opportunity will have passed and
Ireland will be more utterly under the heel of England than ever she was
since the Union." This was written in September, 1912. But the task of
putting the policy into practice, of welding the (at times) discordant
elements of anti-Parliamentarian Nationalism together and making possible
a united effort was reserved for other hands and another mind than those
of the founder of Sinn Fein.
During the vigorous years of its youth Sinn Fein had not confined its
propagandist activities to public meetings, the foundation of branches
and the publication of a paper. The National Council of Sinn Fein had
issued a series of "National Council Pamphlets" dealing with those aspects
of Sinn Fein policy upon which the public seemed to require instruction.
The first of these was a general exposition of the Sinn Fein policy by Mr.
Griffith. Others were "The Purchase of the Railways," "England's Colossal
Robbery of Ireland," a study of the financial relations between the two
countries since the Act of Union, "Ireland and the British Armed Forces,"
"Constitutionalism and Sinn Fein" and "How Ireland is Taxed," an
exposition of the fact (often ignored) that under the Union Ireland is the
most heavily taxed country in Europe. Finally, in 1912, a pamphlet by Mr.
Griffith, "The Home Rule Bill Examined," was a general review of the
powers conferred and withheld by the Home Rule Bill and an examination of
the real bearing of that measure upon the political and economic situation
of Ireland. The increasing difficulties which attended the publication of
a newspaper during the war, the increased demand for information upon the
situation created by it, the increasing number of those who felt that they
had something to say which required more space than could be afforded in a
newspaper, led to a revival of the publication of pamphlets. Early in 1915
a series of "Tracts for the Times" was projected by the Irish Publicity
League. The first of these was a tract "What Emmet means in 1915,"
significant of the direction in which minds were turning at the time. It
was followed by "Shall Ireland be Divided?" an impassioned protest against
the policy of partition and by "The Secret History of the Irish
Volunteers" (which ran through several editions), an account by The
O'Rahilly of the formation of the Volunteers, their policy, their attempts
to secure arms and their relations with the Parliamentary Party. The
traditional Sinn Fein view was enforced in "When the Government Publishes
Sedition," an analysis of the official census returns, showing that under
the Union the population of Ireland had been reduced by one-half, and in
two pamphlets on "Daniel O'Connell and Sinn Fein" an attempt was made to
commend the policy by an argument that O'Connell both in his methods and
his aims was really a Sinn Feiner, and by an exposition ("How Ireland is
Plundered") of the question of the Financial Relations in O'Connell's day
and since. Other pamphlets were "What it Feels Like" on the prison
experiences of the writer who had been imprisoned under the Defence of the
Realm Act for his political activities, "Ascendancy While You Wait" and
"Why the Martyrs of Manchester Died." During the same time the Cumann na
mBan, the women's branch of the Irish Volunteers, added to their
activities the publication of a "National Series" of pamphlets "Why
Ireland is Poor--English Laws and Irish Industries," "Dean Swift on the
Situation" and "The Spanish War," a reprint of a pamphlet published in
1790 by Wolfe Tone, urging the Irish Parliament to take into account in
the consideration of the threatened war with Spain solely and simply the
interests of Ireland, the only interests which it should allow itself to
consider. The Committee of Public Safety also in 1915 published a pamphlet
on "The Defence of the Realm Act in Ireland" showing how the Act was
administered for the suppression of Nationalist propaganda. The speech
which Mr. F. Sheehy-Skeffington delivered in the dock when charged under
the same Act with interfering with recruiting was published as a pamphlet
about the same time. The articles contributed to _Irish Freedom_ by P. H.
Pearse were reprinted under the title of "From a Hermitage" in the autumn
of 1915 as one of the "Bodenstown Series" of pamphlets, the first of which
had been Mr. Pearse's "How Does She Stand?" a reprint of two speeches
delivered in America in 1914 at Emmet Commemorations in New York and
Brooklyn and of the eloquent speech delivered at the grave of Wolfe Tone
in Bodenstown Churchyard in 1913. The funeral of O'Donovan Rossa in
August, 1915, also produced some pamphlets on Rossa's life and his
significance as a Fenian leader and a protagonist of the Irish Republican
cause. These pamphlets, and others, had a wide circulation; they were
eagerly discussed, especially among young Nationalists; they widened the
rift between the Parliamentary Party and their opponents, and had much to
do with the shaping of Irish Nationalist opinion.