demonstrate on a large scale the principal theses which Sinn Fein had been
preaching for years. The demonstration was carried into every household in
Ireland in a form in which it could no longer be ignored. Conscription had
not been a palatable measure in England, and it had not been put into
force until the English people had agreed with practical unanimity that
they must submit to it: but the choice had been their own and no
Government would have ventured even to propose it until the English people
had made up their minds beforehand to accept it when it should be
proposed. In Australia it had been discussed and rejected; and no one
either in England or anywhere else had questioned the right of the people
of Australia to decline to conscribe themselves, though the interests of
Australia were as vitally involved in the issue of the war as the
interests of England. Ireland, on the other hand, while it was opposed to
Conscription, had no choice offered to it in the matter. It was decided
upon by a Cabinet of which no Irishman was a member and it was to be
enforced in spite not merely of the protests of Ireland but of the grave
warnings of a large number of Englishmen. To the argument that Ireland,
being an integral part of the United Kingdom, must submit to the
legislation of Parliament whether it liked it or no, it was pointed out
that this argument had not been enforced against Ulster four years before;
that when Conscription had first been enforced in England it had been
admitted by Parliament that Ireland was a special case; that to assert
that Ireland was an integral part of the United Kingdom was to beg the
very question in dispute, since the national claim of Ireland had always
been a claim for independence. Again, if the Home Rule Act was relied upon
(as the Premier relied upon it) to prove that Ireland had accepted the
authority of Parliament in Imperial matters and acknowledged its supreme
jurisdiction in all matters pertaining to war and peace, it was pointed
out that the Government which now invoked it had persistently refused to
put it into operation. Yet the Premier, who, more than any other single
man, had shown himself hostile in deed, while friendly in word, to Irish
claims, himself admitted that Irishmen serving in the army in the then
condition of Irish affairs would be fighting abroad to enforce a principle
denied in the government of their own country. The conclusion which Sinn
Fein drew was that the English Government was prepared in defiance of
public feeling, justice and constitutional practice to enforce
Conscription upon Ireland by naked force: that it had no intention of
granting Ireland any form of self-government, and that it was the duty of
Irishmen to organize "an effective and protracted resistance." But, though
prepared to resist, it continued to argue. It pointed out that the Irish
Parliament, whose powers had been transferred by the Act of Union to the
Parliament of England, had possessed no power of Conscription and could
not transfer a power which it did not possess; any power of Conscription,
therefore, possessed by Parliament over Ireland must rest upon some other
basis, if it existed at all: that there was no legal process by which a
man could be deprived of life or liberty except on conviction for a crime:
and that this was why, even in the case of Conscription in England, Mr.
Asquith, a good constitutional lawyer, "was careful to declare that he
based the conscription of Englishmen on the basis, not of State duty or
compulsion, but of the universal assent of the English people." If this
assent was lacking, as it undoubtedly was, in the case of Ireland, it
followed that to enforce Conscription was an act of naked injustice.
But no elaborate argument was needed to rouse a people convinced at last
that they were in the vortex of Charybdis. They resented what now appeared
as the duplicity with which for months their attention had been
deliberately and elaborately focussed upon the alluring mysteries of the
Convention while they drifted quietly and securely towards the edge of the
whirlpool. They saw the cloudy structure of the Convention melt and float
away, disclosing what it had covered; and they prepared for a desperate
struggle.
The feeling was not confined to Sinn Fein. The Parliamentary Party left
Westminster in a body and crossed to Ireland to help in the national
resistance. The Labour Party joined hands with them and with Sinn Fein in
the universal crisis. It involved for the Parliamentary Party a tragic and
fatal break with the past. It was the end of all their hopes, of all their
influence, of their very existence; and as they joined the Sinn Fein and
Labour representatives round the table of the Mansion House Conference,
summoned by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, they must have felt that they were
invited by virtue of what they had once been rather than by virtue of what
they were; they were there as the men who had relied on the broken reed,
"whereon if a man lean it will go into his hand and pierce him."
After its first meeting on April 18th, the Mansion House Conference issued
the following declaration:--"Taking our stand on Ireland's separate and
distinct nationhood and affirming the principle of liberty that the
Governments of nations derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed, we deny the right of the British Government or any external
authority to impose compulsory military service in Ireland against the
clearly expressed will of the Irish people. The passing of the
Conscription Bill by the British House of Commons must be regarded as a
declaration of war on the Irish nation. The alternative to accepting it as
such is to surrender our liberties and to acknowledge ourselves slaves. It
is in direct violation of the rights of small nationalities to
self-determination, which even the Prime Minister of England--now
preparing to employ naked militarism and force his Act upon
Ireland--himself officially announced as an essential condition for peace
at the Peace Congress. The attempt to enforce it will be an unwarrantable
aggression, which we call upon all Irishmen to resist by the most
effective means at their disposal." On the same day the Conference decided
to ask the co-operation of the Irish Catholic Bishops who had been
summoned by Cardinal Logue to meet at Maynooth. The Bishops, after hearing
a deputation from the Mansion House Conference, issued at once the
following manifesto: "An attempt is being made to force Conscription on
Ireland against the will of the Irish nation and in defiance of the
protests of its leaders. In view especially of the historic relations
between the two countries from the very beginning up to this moment, we
consider that Conscription forced in this way upon Ireland is an
oppressive and inhuman law, which the Irish people have a right to resist
by every means that are consonant with the law of God. We wish to remind
our people that there is a higher Power which controls the affairs of men.
They have in their hands the means of conciliating that Power by strict
adherence to the Divine law, by more earnest attention to their religious
duties, and by fervent and persevering prayer. In order to secure the aid
of the Holy Mother of God, who shielded our people in the days of their
greatest trials, we have already sanctioned a National Novena in honour of
Our Lady of Lourdes, commencing on the 3rd May, to secure general and
domestic peace. We also exhort the heads of families to have the Rosary
recited every evening with the intention of protecting the spiritual and
temporal welfare of our beloved country and bringing us safe through this
crisis of unparalleled gravity."
Many Sinn Feiners sincerely deplored the step which the Conference had
taken in calling upon the Bishops for an official manifesto. Its wording
seemed to rule out of existence the section of Irish Nationalists who
belonged to the Protestant faith and to identify a national question with
a particular creed. Certainly as a mere question of tactics the manifesto
was of doubtful wisdom. It was certain to raise, and it did raise, the cry
of the "priest in politics." From the mouths of the Ulster Party the
criticism might be disregarded, for they had themselves four years before
induced the Protestant churches in Ulster to pass official resolutions
against Home Rule. But it was different when the English newspapers began
to raise the "No Popery" cry and to write as if Sinn Fein were a purely
Catholic party which it had never ceased to protest it was not. But in
fact the vexed question of the relation of the Church to the civil power,
a question not to be disposed of in a sentence, did not fairly arise from
the Bishops' pronouncement. The main gist of it was contained in two
propositions neither of which was theological: the proposition that
Conscription was an oppressive and inhuman law was (whether right or
wrong) an ordinary statement of opinion upon a purely mundane matter: the
proposition that such a law might be resisted by any means consonant with
the law of God was the statement not of theology, whether Catholic or
Protestant, but of ordinary ethics, accidentally theistic. But the
concluding sentences of the manifesto threw their light backwards upon the
essential statements, and the resistance to Conscription was represented
as one more incident in the long struggle between free institutions and
the power of the Roman Church.
Nationalist Ireland, however, needed no incentive from the Bishops to
resist. It was presented with a clear cut issue which could not be evaded,
which the Cabinet by its decision had raised in its most acute form. If
Ireland submitted quietly to Conscription then it acknowledged that it
stood to the British Parliament in exactly the same relation as did
Yorkshire or Middlesex: if, on the other hand, Ireland were a nation, even
if it were a nation within the British Empire, it had the right to decide
for itself on a question involving issues so vital to its future. This was
the alternative which Sinn Fein put in vehement and passionate language
before the country and the reply of Nationalist Ireland was practically
unanimous. Nearly every Nationalist in Ireland took the anti-Conscription
pledge "Denying the right of the British Government to enforce compulsory
service in this country, we pledge ourselves solemnly to one another to
resist Conscription by the most effective means at our disposal."
But not only was the intention of the Government to enforce Conscription
regarded as a challenge to Ireland, as a denial of its nationality; a
deeper purpose was supposed to lie behind it. The record of the Government
during the war in its dealings with Ireland had not been such as to
persuade Nationalists of any section that it was either friendly or
sincere. It was believed that, coupled with the desire to obtain recruits,
and the intention of treating the Irish claim to a national existence as a
thing of no consequence in order to secure them, there was the desire
further to deplete Ireland of its Nationalist population and render its
government by England easier in consequence. This belief did not always
find public expression, but it existed and had much to do with the
vehemence of the resistance. Apart from this consideration, the motives of
the opposition and the feelings with which it was connected were
succinctly given by _New Ireland_. "At the basis of the opposition to
Conscription stand the moral rights of Ireland, the very rock as it were
of Irish nationality, the rights to choose her own future and to protect
her people from the horrors of the European War. If there were any
statesmanship left in England to-day it would look to creating harmony
between Ireland and England, knowing that the real interest of nations is
built thereon. Real statesmanship would grant Ireland the fullest
liberty, knowing that the friendship of Ireland is essential, and that it
can only be based on the fundamentals of national honour, namely, liberty
and justice. Instead English politicians vainly imagine that coercion, the
press gang, and the train of consequent tragedy will somehow win the
allegiance and support of Ireland."
The most spectacular demonstration of protest was made by the Irish Labour
Party. A conference of fifteen hundred delegates convened in Dublin by the
Irish Trades Union Congress, in adopting a resolution to resist
Conscription "in every way that to us seems feasible," asserting "our
claims for independent status as a nation in the international movement
and the right of self-determination as a nation as to what action or
actions our people should take on questions of political or economic
issues," called upon Irish workers to abstain from all work on April 23rd
as "a demonstration of fealty to the cause of Labour and Ireland." This
was the first occasion in Western Europe on which it had been decided to
call a general national strike: and the strike in Ireland was general
except in North-east Ulster. The Labour Party however had a point of view
somewhat different from that of Sinn Fein. Labour was opposed to
Conscription on principle, and would have, unlike Sinn Fein, opposed it
even if agreed to by an Irish Parliament. Their view had been clearly
expressed more than a year before when, after two years of silence, Irish
Labour began again to publish a weekly paper. _Irish Opinion_ in its first
number, published on December 1st, 1917, had said, "We shall resolutely
oppose the conscription of Irish people, whether for military or
industrial purposes. The very idea of compulsory service is abhorrent to
us and we shall assist in every way every effort of our people to resist
the imposition of such an iniquitous system upon us."
However neither minor differences on the subject of Conscription nor,
indeed, major differences upon other points, prevented all sections of
Nationalist opinion from assisting each other heartily in the crisis. A
common statement of Ireland's case against Conscription was drawn up for
publication and the Lord Mayor of Dublin was deputed to proceed to America
to lay the protest of Ireland before the President of the United States.
The Government showed no signs of yielding to the opposition. The Lord
Lieutenant known to be opposed to the policy of the Cabinet was recalled,
and his place was taken by Field Marshal Lord French with whom Mr. Shortt
was appointed Chief Secretary, one of a considerable number of "English
Home Rulers" who have at various times been appointed to the post of Chief
Secretary for Ireland by virtue of their profession of the belief that no
such post should be permitted to exist, and whose conduct in it has been
such as might be expected from such persons. It was announced with
official emphasis that no opposition would deflect the Government from its
purpose. The Lord Mayor of Dublin was refused permission to leave Ireland
until he should first have submitted for the approval of Lord French the
memorial which he was charged to convey to the President of the United
States. But nothing altered the opposition to Conscription, and the
Government had to be content with the suspension of the sword.
When the formidable nature of the task they had undertaken dawned upon the
Lord Lieutenant and his Chief Secretary, it was decided by the Irish
Government to cut the sinews of the opposition by the arrest of those who
were chiefly responsible for fomenting it. But it was clearly impossible
to clap the Catholic Bishops and the Mansion House Conference into gaol in
a body. It was plain that Sinn Fein was the chief centre of the trouble,
being the only political party whose principles furnished a logical ground
for opposition to the conscription of Ireland by Act of Parliament. The
two Sinn Fein members of the Mansion House Conference, Messrs. de Valera
and Griffith, with a number of less prominent Sinn Feiners, were deported
and imprisoned. But this was a course which required some explanation.
They were not the only people prominent in the Anti-Conscription campaign;
and in any case English public opinion while, on the whole, indignant with
the attitude of Ireland towards compulsory service, was becoming somewhat
uneasy as to happenings in Ireland and inclined to question the entire
wisdom of the Irish Executive. Accordingly, it was asserted that the
arrested Sinn Feiners had been guilty of complicity in a German plot. The
ex-Lord Lieutenant, Lord Wimborne, during whose tenure of office the
discovery of the plot (it was said) began to be made, publicly and flatly
denied all knowledge of it, and expressed disbelief in its existence. The
Premier announced that he had seen the evidence (which nothing, however,
would induce him to divulge) and that it was even as the Irish Government
had said. Public opinion however was still unsatisfied, and the Irish
office issued a statement on the subject in which the Chief Secretary
argued ("for even though vanquished he could argue still") from the
history of Sinn Fein for the previous three or four years, and from
certain financial transactions between Count Bernstorff and some
Irish-Americans before America entered the war, that some person or
persons in Ireland had been in communication with Germany for a
treasonable purpose. However that may have been, there was no direct
evidence connecting any of the prisoners with any of these transactions,
and in fact nearly all of them had been in gaol in England at the time
when the transactions took place. The official statement was pitilessly
analysed in a pamphlet published by _New Ireland_ entitled "The Plot:
German or English?" the only result of the whole affair being that
official credit in Ireland received its last shock. No further attempts
were made to provide non-political reasons for political arrests: it was
judged better that the Executive should rely upon the extraordinary powers
conferred upon it by the Defence of the Realm Act (though the machinery
provided by what was known as "the ordinary law" in Ireland seemed
sufficiently complete without it) to arrest, without the necessity of
charge or trial, any persons who made themselves prominent for the
advocacy of Sinn Fein or Republican politics. In July Sinn Fein, the
Gaelic League, Cumann na mBan and the Irish Volunteers were declared to be
"dangerous associations" to which Irish men and women would in future
belong at their own risk. Concerts, hurling matches, literary
competitions, were prohibited all over Ireland by military force when they
were held under the auspices of persons politically obnoxious to the
Government. Government became a matter of having enough troops in the
country to ensure that the Executive was able to do precisely what it
pleased. Ireland was treated frankly as hostile and occupied territory,
and the last pretence of constitutional government was finally abandoned.
The reply of Sinn Fein to the arrest of Mr. Griffith for complicity in the
"German Plot" had been his triumphant election for East Cavan. This was
almost the last seat which the once powerful Parliamentary Party ventured
to contest. Its co-operation with Sinn Fein in the question of
Conscription had been, not an alliance but an operation conducted in
common, and on other points each was at perfect liberty to pursue its own
path. But the junction of forces had only succeeded in bringing into clear
relief the essential incompatibility of the Sinn Fein and the
Parliamentary policies, and it became evident that the Irish public would
have to choose definitely which it should finally adopt. Sinn Fein, which
refused to compromise on the essential principle of Ireland's distinct and
independent nationhood, could argue with considerable force that on this
assumption alone could Ireland object to Conscription with confidence and
moral justification--that if Ireland were not a nation, but a province or
a dependency, then the resistance to Conscription was legally and morally
without a sound basis. It was extremely difficult for the Parliamentary
Party to counter this argument: and in point of fact some of them did not
try to counter it but frankly dissociated themselves from the
Anti-Conscription policy. It was perfectly clear that the Home Rule Act
reserved such powers to Parliament as to make the conscription of Ireland,
as part of a general measure of Conscription for the United Kingdom, a
step which Parliament would legally be entitled to take and which, once
the Home Rule Act was accepted by Ireland as satisfactory (and the
Parliamentary Party had declared that it was) Ireland would have no moral
right to resist. The Party began to shift its ground: it could no longer,
in view of Irish feeling, remain advocates of a settlement which made
Conscription possible: it would not go the whole way with Sinn Fein and
declare that no settlement would be satisfactory which did not acknowledge
the right of Ireland to independent nationhood, to self-determination and
the right to choose its own form of government. The Party settled down
unofficially to the advocacy of a form of Home Rule which should ensure to
Ireland piecemeal and in detail, by enactment of Parliament, as large an
independence as was possessed by the self-governing Dominions, without the
formal and definite renunciation of the right of Parliament to decide the
extent to which Ireland should be independent. This of course left the
question of principle precisely where it was. But on the question of
principle Sinn Fein was adamant, and Nationalist Ireland supported Sinn
Fein by an overwhelming majority.
The relationship between Sinn Fein and the Hierarchy was more enigmatic
and gave rise to much speculation. One view was that Sinn Fein had
'captured' the Hierarchy, another was that the Hierarchy had 'captured'
Sinn Fein. Neither view was, of course, correct. Individual bishops may
have sympathized (individual priests certainly sympathized in large
numbers) with Sinn Fein: but it is certain that quite a large number of
priests and bishops did not. While it is true that resistance to
Conscription could not logically be justified except upon the principles
of Sinn Fein, bishops had the same right to be illogical as members of the
Parliamentary Party. Under the stress of the moment, in the desire to save
their flocks from the danger that threatened them, they had joined forces
with a party which before that they had not approved of and which they
were not bound to approve of afterwards. Sinn Fein, at any rate, was under
no illusion as to the feelings of some of the Bishops. The curate of
Crossna, Father O'Flanagan, had taken a very active part on the side of
Sinn Fein in the East Cavan election. Shortly afterwards he was deprived
by his bishop, the Most Rev. Dr. Coyne, of all his faculties as a priest,
including the right to say Mass. The technical offence for which he was
punished in this way was that of having addressed meetings within the
boundaries of three parishes in Cavan without first obtaining the
permission of the local parish priests. Everybody knew that the real
reason for his punishment was not the technical offence but the fact that
his speeches had been strongly (and even violently) Sinn Fein. The people
of Crossna retorted by shutting up the parish church and refusing to allow
Mass to be said in it by anyone else. _Nationality_, in reporting the
facts, said of Father O'Flanagan: "He has been condemned to the most harsh
judgment that can be meted out to a priest by his bishop and until that
wrong has been set right Sinn Fein will stand by Father O'Flanagan"; and
practically every Sinn Feiner in Ireland agreed with these words. When
bishops seemed (as many of them did) to go out of their way to criticise
in pastorals and public letters the policy or the tactics of Sinn Fein,
their action was resented and openly, even stringently, criticised in the
Sinn Fein papers: but all this was done not only without any trace of
anti-clericalism (in the proper sense of the word) but with what sometimes
seemed an almost exaggerated deference to the office and sacred functions
of the bishop as such. As a matter of fact the Catholic Church in Ireland
during the nineteenth century has always been on the side of law and
order. It has had a strong bias towards constituted authority, as was to
be expected from a branch of the most conservative institution in the
world. It excommunicated the Fenians, it opposed the Land League, it
condemned the Rising. It is hardly too much to say that Ireland would have
been ungovernable but for the influence of the Church. It raised its
voice against outrage and murder in language beside which the
denunciations of politicians sound tame and flaccid. If it has meddled in
politics (as it has) it has done no more than the Protestant Churches in
Ireland, every one of which is "in politics" up to the neck.