THE EASTER WEEK REBELLION AND AFTERWARDS
A world preoccupied with the tremendous movements of mighty armies
woke up one morning and rubbed its eyes in amazement to read that a
rebellion had broken out in the capital of Ireland. How did it happen?
What did it mean? What was the cause of it? These and similar
questions were being asked, and those who were ready with an answer
were very few indeed. The marvellous thing, a matter almost incredible
of belief, is that it caught the Irish Government absolutely unawares.
Their Secret Service Department might as well not have been in
existence. For the first time probably in Irish history an Irish
movement had come into being which had not a single "informer" in its
ranks. This in itself was a remarkable thing and to be noted. The
leaders and their officers had accomplished the remarkable achievement
of discriminating against the Secret Service agent.
Although everything was clouded in a mist of conjecture and obscurity
at the time, the causes of the Rebellion of Easter Week are now fairly
clear, and may be shortly summarised. From the moment that the
Redmondite Party had imposed their conditions on the Committee of the
Irish Volunteers the vast bulk of the Volunteers who were not also
"Mollies" were thoroughly dissatisfied with the arrangement. This
discontent increased when the recruiting campaign in Ireland was
conducted with calculated offence to Nationalist sentiment and
self-respect, and eventually developed into a split. The members of
the original Committee as a result summoned a Volunteer Convention for
25th November 1914, at which it was decided to declare: "That Ireland
cannot with honour or safety take part in foreign quarrels otherwise
than through the free action of a National Government of her own; and
to repudiate the claim of any man to offer up the blood and lives of
the sons of Irishmen and Irishwomen to the service of the British
Empire while no National Government which could act and speak for the
people of Ireland is allowed to exist."
The new body, or rather the old, resumed the original title of the
Irish Volunteers. There were also a number of other bodies entirely
out of harmony with the policy of the Parliamentary Party, such as
Sinn Feiners, the Republicans, and the Citizen Army of Dublin's
workers organised in connection with Liberty Hall. These were all
opposed to recruiting, and the extremists amongst them advocated total
separation from England as the cardinal article of their faith. A new
Separatist daily newspaper was published in Dublin under the title
_Eire--Ireland_. Its attitude towards the war was that Ireland
had no cause of quarrel with the German people, or just cause of
offence against them; and it was not long before the Irish Volunteers
came to be regarded by the British authorities as a "disaffected"
organisation. Its organs in the Press were promptly suppressed, only
for others as promptly to take their place. Its officers began to be
deported without charge preferred or investigation of any sort. Fenian
teachings became popular once more and "the Old Guard" of Ireland, who
had remained ever loyal to their early Fenian faith, must have felt a
pulsing of their veins when they saw the doctrines of their hot youth
take shape again. The eyes of a small but resolute minority of Irish
Nationalists began to see in red revolution the only hope of Irish
freedom. Physical force may appear a hopeless policy but it was at
least worth preparing for, and it may be also it would be worth the
trial. This was their creed and this the purpose that animated them.
There can be no doubt that through the medium of the old Irish
Republican Brotherhood, which had never quite died out in Ireland,
communications were kept up with the Clan-na-Gael and other extreme
organisations in the United States, and through these avenues also
probably with Germany. Indeed the German Foreign Office, quite early
in the war, at the instigation of Sir Roger Casement had declared
formally "that Germany would not invade Ireland with any intentions of
conquest or of the destruction of any institutions." If they did land
in the course of the war, they would come "inspired by good will
towards a land and a people for whom Germany only wishes national
prosperity and freedom."
The avowedly revolutionary party gained a great accession of strength
when Mr P.H. Pearse and Mr James Connolly composed certain differences
and united the workers in the Citizen Army with the Irish Volunteers.
Mr Pearse was now the leader of the latter organisation--a man of high
intellectual attainments, single-minded purpose, and austere
character. "For many years," writes Mr Henry, "his life seems to have
been passed in the grave shadow of the sacrifice he felt that he was
called upon to make for Ireland. He believed that he was appointed to
tread the path that Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone had trodden before
him, and his life was shaped so that it might be worthy of its end."
Separation as the only road to independence was the burden of Pearse's
teaching. It was his definite purpose to do something which, by the
splendour of the sacrifice involved, would rouse Ireland out of its
national apathy and national stupor. He and his associates believed,
as a writer in _Nationality_ declared: "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." It was in
this faith they went forth to their sacrifice. "On Palm Sunday 1916,"
writes Mr Henry, "the Union of Irish Labour and Irish Nationality was
proclaimed in a striking fashion. In the evening of that day Connolly
hoisted over Liberty Hall, the headquarters of the Citizen Army, the
Irish tricolour of orange, white, and green, the flag designed by the
Young Irelanders in 1848 to symbolise the union of the Orange and
Green by the white bond of a common brotherhood. On Easter Monday the
Irish Republic was proclaimed in Arms in Dublin."
Now there are many considerations that could be usefully discussed in
relation to the Easter Week Rebellion, but this is not the time or
place for them. Let it be made clear, however, that the Rising was not
the work of Sinn Fein, but of the leaders of the Irish Volunteers and
the Citizen Army. It would be a pretty subject of inquiry to know how
Sinn Fein got the credit for the Rising and why the title was given to
the new movement that came into being afterwards. My own view is that
the British journalists who swarmed into Ireland are chiefly
responsible for the designation. _Sinn Fein_ was a fine mouthful
for their British readers to swallow, and so they gave it to them. Be
this as it may, the Rebellion came to be referred to as the Sinn Fein
Rebellion, and the movement to which it gave birth has ever since
assumed the same name. It is not my intention to dwell on the grave
incidents that followed, the prolonged agony of "the shootings of the
Rebel leaders," the assassination of Mr Sheehy-Skeffington, the
indecent scenes in the House of Commons when the Nationalist members
behaved themselves with sad lack of restraint--cheering Mr Birrell's
prediction that "the Irish people would never regard the Dublin
Rebellion with the same feelings with which they regarded previous
rebellions," cheering still more loudly when, in response to Sir
Edward Carson's invitation to Mr Redmond to join him in "denouncing
and putting down those Rebels for evermore," Mr Redmond expressed, to
the amazement of all Nationalist Ireland, his "horror and detestation"
of Irishmen who, however mistaken they may be--and history has yet to
decide this--at least "poured out their blood like heroes--as they
believed and as millions of their countrymen now believe for Ireland"
(Mr William O'Brien). Mr Dillon, needless to say, flung his leader
overboard on this occasion without the slightest truth. He declared he
had never stood on a recruiting platform (which was not true!) and
that he never would do so, and accused the Government and the soldiers
of washing out the life-work of the Nationalists in "a sea of blood."
The Government were at their wits' end what to do. Mr Birrell, the
amiable and inefficient Chief Secretary, had to go. Mr Asquith went
over to Ireland on a tour of investigation and returned to Westminster
with two dominant impressions: (1) the breakdown of the existing
machinery of Irish Government; (2) the strength and depth, almost the
universality, of the feeling in Ireland that there was a unique
opportunity for the settlement of outstanding problems and for a
combined effort to obtain an agreement as to the way in which the
government of Ireland was to be carried on for the future. He
announced that Mr Lloyd George had undertaken, at the request of his
colleagues, to devote his time and energy to the promotion of an Irish
settlement.
Undoubtedly "the machinery of Government had broken down." But the
Government of England had taken no account of what was happening in
Ireland--of the veritable wave of passion that swept the country
after, the "executions" of the Rebel leaders, of the manner in which
this passion was fanned and flamed by the arrest and deportation of
thousands of young men all over the country, who were believed to be
prominently identified with the Volunteer Movement, of the unrest that
was caused by the reports that a number of the peaceable citizens of
Dublin were deliberately shot without cause by the troops during the
military occupation of the city. What wonder that there was a strong
and even fierce revulsion of feeling! And this was not reserved
altogether for the Government. The Irish Parliamentarians had their
own fair share of it. The process of disillusionment now rapidly set
in. That portion of the country that had not already completely lost
faith in the Party and in Parliamentary methods was fast losing it. It
only required that the Party should once again give its unqualified
assent, as it did, to Mr Lloyd George's "Headings of Agreement," which
provided for the partition of Ireland and the definite exclusion of
the six counties of Down, Antrim, Londonderry, Armagh, Monaghan and
Tyrone, to send it down into the nethermost depths of popular favour
and the whole-hearted contempt of every self-respecting man of the
Irish race. The collapse of Parliamentarianism was now complete. There
was no Nationalist of independent spirit left in Ireland who would
even yield it lip service. Irish public bodies which a year or two
previously were the obedient vehicles of Party manipulation were now
unanimous in denouncing any form of partition. The proposals for
settlement definitely failed, and the machinery of Irish Government
which had "broken down" was set up afresh and the discredited
administration of Dublin Castle fully restored by the appointment of
Mr Duke, a Unionist, as Chief Secretary for Ireland.
The war was not going at all well for the Allies. America was still
hesitating on the brink as to whether she would come in or remain
steadfastly aloof. The Asquithian Ministry had been manoeuvred out of
office under circumstances which it will be the joy of the historian
to deal with when all the documents and facts are available. That
interesting and candid diarist, Colonel Repington, under date 3rd
December 1916, writes:
"Last Friday began a great internal crisis, when L.G. [Lloyd George]
wrote to the P.M. [Asquith] that he could not go on unless our methods
of waging war were speeded up. He proposed a War Council of three,
including himself, Bonar Law and Carson. The two latter are with him,
which means the Unionists too."
Asquith resigned, the Coalition Ministry was formed, and it is
probably more than a surmise that the part played by Sir Edward Carson
in bringing about this result and in elevating Mr Lloyd George into
the Premiership explains much of the power he has exercised over him
ever since. Mr Redmond and Sir Edward Carson were both invited to join
the Coalition. The former declined, the latter accepted, and from his
position of power within the Cabinet was able to torpedo Home Rule at
will.
And thus came to an end in Ireland as gross a tyranny perpetrated in
the sacred name of Nationality as ever disgraced our annals. The Party
which had so long held power had destroyed themselves by years of
selfish blundering. The country was growing weary of the men who
killed land purchase, constituted themselves the mere dependents of an
English Party in exchange for boundless jobbery, intensified the alarm
of Ulster by transferring all power and patronage to a pseudo-Catholic
secret organisation, and crowned their incompetence by accepting a
miserably inadequate Home Rule Bill (with Partition twice over thrown
in). The country which had been shackled into silence by the terrorist
methods of the Board of Erin (which made the right of free meeting
impossible by the use of their batons, bludgeons and revolvers) was
emancipated by the Dublin Rising. And in the scale of things it must
be counted, for the young men who risked their lives in Easter Week,
not the least of their performances that they gave back to the people
of Ireland the right of thinking and acting for themselves. How well
they used this right to exact a full measure of retribution from the
Party that had betrayed them the General Election of 1918 abundantly
shows.