"It may be a good thing to forget and forgive; but it is
altogether too easy a trick to forget and be forgiven."
---- G. K. Chesterton in _The Crimes of England_, 1916.
When a rebellion has failed men say it was wicked or foolish. It is, on
the contrary, wickedness and folly to judge in these terms. If men rise
against authority the measure of their act cannot be loyalty or
prudence. It is the character of the authority against which men revolt
that must shape one's mind. No free man sets an ultimate value on his
life. No free man sets an ultimate sanction on authority. Is it just
authority, representative, tolerable? The only revolt that is wicked or
foolish is the revolt against reasonable or tolerable authority. If
authority is not livable, revolt is a thousand times justified.
The Irish rebellion was not prudent. Its imprudence did not weigh with
the men who took to arms. Had hope inspired them, they would have been
utterly insane. But hope did not inspire them. They longed for success;
they risked and expected death. The only consequence to us, wrote
Padraic Pearse before action, is that some of us may be launched into
eternity. "But who are we, that we should hesitate to die for Ireland?
Are not the claims of Ireland greater on us than any personal ones? Is
it fear that deters us from such an enterprise? Away with such fears.
Cowards die many times, the brave only die once." To strike a decisive
blow was the aspiration of the Irish rebels. But decisive or not, they
made up their minds to take action before the government succeeded in
attaching all their arms.
In this rebellion there was no chance of material victory. Pearse,
MacDonagh, Connolly, Clark, Plunkett, O'Rahilly, O'Hanrahan, Daly,
Hobson, Casement, could only hope against hope. But their essential
objective was not a soldiery. It was an idea, the idea of unprotested
English authority in Ireland. It was to protest against the Irish
nation's remaining a Crown Colony of the British Empire that these men
raised their republican standard and under it shed their blood. In the
first process of that revolt few of them were immediately sacrificed.
Their fight was well planned. They made the most of their brief hour.
But when they were captured the authority they had opposed fulfilled
their expectations to the utmost. Before three army officers, without a
legal defender, each of the leaders was condemned by court-martial.
Their rebellion had been open. Their guilt was known and granted. They
met, as they expected to meet, death.
The insurrection in Ireland is ended. A cold tribunal has finished by
piecework the task that the soldiers began. The British Empire is still
dominant in Dublin. But ruthless and remorseless behavior sharpens the
issue between authority and rebellion. Even men who naturally condemn
disorder feel impelled to scrutinize the authority which could
deliberately dispense such doom. If that authority deserved respect in
Ireland, if it stood for justice and the maintenance of right, its
exaction of the pound of flesh cannot be questioned. It does not
represent "frightfulness." It represents stern justice. Its hand should
be universally upheld. But if, on the other hand, English authority did
not deserve respect in Ireland, if it had forfeited its claims on these
Irishmen, then there is something to be made known and said about the
way in which this Empire can abuse its power.
Between the Irish people and English authority, as every one knows,
there has been an interminable struggle. A tolerable solution of this
contest has only recently seemed in sight. The military necessity of
England has of itself precluded one solution, the complete independence
of Ireland. The desire for self-government in Ireland has opposed
another solution, complete acquiescence in the union. Between these two
goals the struggle has raged bitterly. But human beings cannot live
forever in profitless conflict. After many years the majority of the
English people took up and ratified the Irish claims to self-government.
In spite of the conservative element in England and the British element
in Ireland, the _modus vivendi_ of home rule was arranged. It is the
fate of this _modus vivendi_, accepted by the majority of Irishmen as a
reasonable commutation of their claims, that explains the recent
insurrection. These men who are dead were once for the most part Home
Rulers. Their rebellion came about as a sequel to the unjust and
dishonest handling of home rule.
For thirty-five years home rule has been an issue in Great Britain. The
majority of the British people supported Gladstone during many home rule
sessions. The lower house of Parliament repeatedly passed the measure.
The House of Lords, however, turned a face of stone to Ireland. It icily
rejected Ireland's offer to compound her claims. This irreconcilable
attitude proved in the end so monstrous that English Liberalism
revolted. It threw its weight against the rigid body that denied it. It
compelled the House of Lords to accept the Parliament act, its scheme
for circumventing the peers' veto. Then, three times in succession, it
passed the home rule bill.
Every one knows what happened. During the probation of the bill the
forces that could no longer avoid it constitutionally made up their
minds that they would defeat it unconstitutionally. Men left the House
of Lords and the House of Commons to raise troops in eastern Ulster.
These, not the Irish, were Germany's primary allies in the British
Isles. Cannon, machine guns, and rifles were shipped to Ireland. Every
possible descendant of the implanted settlers of Ireland was rallied.
Large numbers were openly recruited and armed. The Ulster leaders
pleaded they were loyal, but they insisted that the Liberals of England
did not and could not speak for the Empire. The only English authority
they recognized was an authority like-minded to themselves. Lord
Northcliffe joined with Lord Londonderry and Lord Abercorn and Lord
Willoughby de Broke and Lord Roberts and Sir Edward Carson and Bonar Law
to advise and stimulate rebellion. Some of the best British generals in
the army, to the delight of Germany, were definitely available as
leaders. A provisional government, with Carson as its premier, was
arranged for in 1911. The Unionist and Orange organizations pledged
themselves that under no conditions would they acknowledge a home rule
government or obey its decrees. In 1912 the Solemn Covenanters pledged
themselves "to refuse to recognize its authority." During this period
the government negotiated, but took no action. There were no
Nationalists under arms.
If free men have a right to rebel, how can any one gainsay Ulster? It
was the Ulster contention that home rule would be unreasonable,
intolerable, and unjust. This was a prophecy, perhaps a natural and
credible prophecy. But it is not necessary to debate the Ulster
rebellion. It was a hard heritage of England's crime against Ireland. It
is enough to say that English authority refused to abandon the home rule
measure and in April, 1914, Mr. Asquith promised to vindicate the law.
The British League for the support of Ulster had sent out "war calls."
The Ulster Unionist Council had appropriated $5,000,000 for volunteer
widows and orphans. Arms had been landed from America and, it was said,
from Germany. Carson had refused to "negotiate" any further. His
mobilization in 1914 became ominous. The government started in moving
troops to Ulster. The King intervened. Mr. Balfour inveighed against the
proposal to use troops. The army consulted with Carson. Generals French
and Ewart resigned.
About this period, with Asquith and Birrell failing to put England's
pledges to the proof, the National Volunteers at last were being
organized. Mr. Asquith temporized further. At his behest John Redmond
peremptorily assumed control of the Volunteers. Their selected leader
was Professor MacNeill, a foremost spirit in the non-political Gaelic
revival. There was formal harmony until the European war was declared,
when Mr. Redmond sought to utilize the National Volunteers for
recruiting. This move made definite the purely national dedication of
the Irish Volunteers.
Four events occurred in rapid succession to destroy the Irish
Volunteers' confidence in English authority. These were decisive events,
and yet events over which the Irish Volunteers could have no control.
On July 10th, 1914, armed Ulster Volunteers marched through Belfast, and
Sir Edward Carson held the first meeting of his provisional government.
On July 26th, 1914, the British troops killed three persons and wounded
thirty-two persons because rowdies had thrown stones at them in Dublin,
subsequent to their futile attempt to intercept Irish Volunteer arms.
On Sept. 19th, 1914, the home rule bill was signed, but its operation
indefinitely suspended.
In May, 1915, Sir Edward Carson became a member of the British Cabinet.
These events were endured by John Redmond. He had early accepted a
Fabian policy and put his trust in Englishmen who shirked paying the
price of maintaining the law they decreed. The more radical men in
Dublin were not so trusting. They had heard Asquith promise that no
permanent division of Ireland would be permitted, and they learned he
had bargained for it. They had heard him promise he would vindicate the
law, and they saw him sanction the defiant military leader as
commander-in-chief and the defiant civil leader as a minister of the
crown. With the vivid memory of British troops killing Irish citizens on
the streets of Dublin, they drew their conclusions as to English honor.
They had no impulse to recruit for the defense on the Continent of an
Empire thus honorable. They looked back on the evil history they had
been ready to forget. They prepared to strike and to die.
Irishmen like myself who believed in home rule and disbelieved in
revolution did not agree with this spirit. We thought southern Ireland
might persuade Ulster. We thought English authority was possibly weak
and shifty, but benign. We did not wish to see Ireland, in the words of
Professor MacNeill, go fornicating with Germany. When our brothers went
to the European war we took England's gratitude as heartfelt and her
repentance as deep. Our history was one of forcible conquest, torture,
rape, enforced subservience, ignorance, poverty, famine. But we listened
to G. K. Chesterton about Englishmen in relation to magnanimous Ireland:
"It was to doubt whether we were worthy to kiss the hem of her garment."
All the deeper, then, the shock we received from the execution of our
men of finest mettle. They were guilty of rebellion in wartime, but so
was De Wet in South Africa. There seems to have been a calculation based
on the greater military strength of the Dutch. A government which had
negotiated with rebels in the North, which had allowed the retention of
arms in Ulster, which had put Carson in the Cabinet, could not mark an
eternal bias in its judgment of brave men whose legitimate
constitutional prospects it had raised high and then intolerably
suspended. But this English government, often cringing and supine, was
brave enough to slay one imprisoned rebel after another. It did so in
the name of "justice," the judges in this rebellion being officers of an
army that had refused to stand against rebellion in Ulster.
It is not in vain, however, that these poets and Gaelic scholars and
Republicans have stood blindfolded to be shot by English soldiers. Their
verdict on English authority was scarcely in fault. They estimated with
just contemptuousness the temper of a ruling class whose yoke Ireland
has long been compelled to endure. Until that yoke is gone from Ireland,
by the fulfillment of England's bond, the memory of this rebellion must
flourish. It testifies sadly but heroically that there are still
Irishmen who cannot be sold over the counter, Irishmen who set no
ultimate sanction on a dishonest authority, Irishmen who set no ultimate
value on their merely mortal lives.