THE ISSUES NOW AT STAKE
And now my appointed task draws to its close. In the pages I have
written I have set nothing down in malice nor have I sought otherwise
than to make a just presentment of facts as they are within my
knowledge. It may be that, being a protagonist of one Party in the
struggles and vicissitudes of these years, I may sometimes see things
too much from the standpoint of my own preconceived opinions and
notions. But on the whole it has been my endeavour to give an honest
and fair-minded narrative of the main events and movements of Irish
history over a period in which I believe I can claim I am the first
explorer. There are some subjects which would come properly within the
purview of my title, such as the power, province and influence of
clericalism in politics, but I have thought it best at this stage,
when so many matters are in process of readjustment in Ireland, and
when our people are adapting themselves to a new form of citizen duty
and responsibility, to leave certain aspects of our public life
untouched. It may be, however, if this book meets with the success I
hope for it, that my researches and labours in this field of
enterprise are not at an end.
All I have now to do in this my final chapter is to summarise some of
the issues that present themselves for our consideration. I do not
propose to deal with the activities of Sinn Fein since it won its
redoubtable victory over the forces of Parliamentarianism as
represented by the Irish Party at the General Election. The country
turned to it as its only avenue of salvation from a reign of
corruption, incompetence and helplessness unparalleled in history. Mr
O'Brien and his friends of the All-for-Ireland League, of their own
volition, effaced themselves at the General Election. They had striven
through fifteen long years, against overwhelming odds and most
unscrupulous and malignant forces, for a policy of reason and for the
principles of Conference, Conciliation and Consent, as between all
Irish-born men and a combination of all parties, Irish and British,
for the purpose of effecting a broad and generous National settlement.
Had they received that support which the events of the last two years
demonstrates could have been had--had the moderate Irish Unionists,
and especially the Southern Irish Unionists, the moral courage to
declare their views, temperately but unequivocally, as Lord Midleton
and others have recently declared them, the tide might easily have
been turned and wiser counsels and policies prevailed.
If the great peace pronouncement of Cork City merchants and professional
men, made a few months ago on the initiative of Alderman Beamish, had
only been arranged when the All-for-Ireland League was founded; if Lord
Bandon had then held the meeting of Deputy-Lieutenants he recently
convened to declare for Home Rule; if Lord Shaftesbury, three times Lord
Mayor of Belfast, had then made the speech he made at the Dublin Peace
Conference last year, nothing could have resisted the triumph of the
policy of Conciliation, and Ireland would be now in enjoyment of
responsible self-government instead of being ravaged as it is by the
savagery of a civil war, in which all the usages of modern warfare have
been ruthlessly abandoned. It is also to be deplored that Sir Horace
Plunkett, who is now the enthusiastic advocate of Dominion Home Rule
(and, indeed, believes himself to be the discoverer of it), did not,
during all the years when he could potently influence certain channels
of opinion in England, raise his voice either for the agrarian
settlement or for Home Rule and refused his support, when he was
Chairman of the Irish Convention, to Mr W.M. Murphy's well-meant efforts
to get Dominion Home Rule adopted or even discussed by the Convention.
Of course this much must be said for the Unionists who have pronounced
in favour of Home Rule within the past few years, that they could plead
fairly enough that every man like Lord Dunraven, Mr Moreton Frewen, Lord
Rossmore, Colonel Hutcheson-Poë, and Mr Lindsay Crawford, who came upon
the All-for-Ireland platform from the first, was foully assailed and
traduced and had his motives impugned by the Board of Erin bosses, and
other Unionists, more timid, naturally enough, shrank from incurring a
similar fate.
But these things are of the past, and we would turn our thoughts to
the present and the future.
The country, at the General Election of 1918, by a vote so
overwhelming as to be practically unanimous, gave the guardianship of
its national faith and honour into the keeping of Sinn Fein. This is
the dominant fact of the situation from the Irish standpoint. Other
considerations there are, but any which leave this out of account fail
to grip the vital factor which must influence our march towards a just
and durable Irish settlement. Another fact that cannot be lost sight
of is that there is a Home Rule Act on the Statute Book. With this
Southern Ireland will have nothing to do! Unionists and Nationalists
alike condemn it as a mockery of their national rights. But the
Orangeman of the Six Counties are first seriously going to work their
regional autonomy--they are going to set up their Parliament in
Belfast. And once set up it will be a new and vital complication of
the situation preceding a settlement which will embrace the whole of
Ireland.
So far as Ireland is concerned the public mind is occupied at the
moment of my writing with the question of "reprisals." Various efforts
have been made to bring about peace. They have failed because, in my
view, they have been reluctant to recognise and make allowance for
certain essential facts. The whole blame for the existing state of
civil war--for, repudiate it as the Government may, such it
undoubtedly is--is thrown on the shoulders of the Irish Republican
Army by those who take their ethical standard from Sir Hamar
Greenwood. It is forgotten that for two or three years before the
attacks on the Royal Irish Constabulary began there were no murders,
no assassinations and no civil war in Ireland. There was, however, a
campaign of gross provocation by Dublin Castle for two reasons: (1) by
way of vengeance for their defeat on the Conscription issue; (2) as a
retaliation on Sinn Fein, because it had succeeded in peacefully
supplanting English rule by a system of Volunteer Police, Sinn Fein
Courts, Sinn Fein Local Government, etc. The only pretext on which
this provocation was pursued was on account of a mythical "German
plot," which Lord Wimbourne never heard of, which Sir Bryan Mahon,
Commander-in-Chief, told Lord French he flatly disbelieved in, and
which, when, after more than two years, the documents are produced,
proves to be a stale rehash of negotiations before the Easter Week
Rising, with some sham "German Irish Society" in Berlin. On this
pretext the Sinn Fein leaders, Messrs de Valera and Griffith (whom
there is not a shadow of proof to connect with the German plot), were
arrested and deported, with many hundreds of the most responsible
leaders. Furthermore, an endless series of prosecutions were
instituted and savage sentences imposed for the most paltry
charges-such as drilling, wearing uniform, singing _The Soldiers'
Song_, having portraits of Rebel leaders, taking part in the
Arbitration Courts which had superseded the Petty Sessions Courts, and
such like. All this, with suppression of newspapers and of all public
meetings, went on for many months before Sinn Fein, deprived of its
leaders, was goaded at last into attacking the Royal Irish
Constabulary. Whatever the juridical status of the guerrilla warfare
thus entered upon (which it is not improbable England would have
applauded if employed against any other Empire than her own), it was
conducted on honourable lines by the Sinn Feiners. The policemen and
soldiers, including General Lewis, who surrendered, were treated with
courtesy, and not one of them wounded or insulted. Their wives and
children were also carefully preserved from danger until the police
"reprisals" in the Thurles neighbourhood--the wrecking of villages and
the savage murders of young men--ended by producing equally ruthless
"reprisals" on the other side. In Dublin, since the Dublin
Metropolitan Police declined to go about armed, not one of them has
been fired upon.
The real ferocity on both sides began when the "Black and Tans" were
imported to take the place of the R.I.C., who were resigning in
batches. It is indisputable--independent investigation by the
Committee of the British Labour Party and the daily messages of
fearless British journalists, such as Mr Hugh Martin, establish it
beyond possibility of contradiction--that when the "Black and Tans"
were let loose on the Irish people they began a villainous campaign of
cowardly murder, arson, robbery and drunken outrage, which should have
made all decent Englishmen and Englishwomen shudder for the deeds
committed in their name. Whenever the particulars are fully disclosed
they will, I venture to say, horrify every honest man in the Empire.
Not the least disgraceful feature of this black business was the
manner in which the Chief Secretary sought to brazen things out and
the audacious lies that he fathered, such as that Lord Mayor M'Curtain
was murdered by the Sinn Feiners, that it was Sinn Feiners who raided
the Bishop of Killaloe's house at midnight and searched for him
(unquestionably with intent to shoot him), that it was the Sinn
Feiners who burned down the City Hall, Public Library and the
principal streets of Cork, etc.
And then the utter failure of all this "frightfulness"! Several months
ago Sir Hamar Greenwood declared that Sinn Fein was on the run, and
the Prime Minister declared they had "murder by the throat," the fact
being that the young men they sought to terrorise were made more
resolute in their defiance of the Government. The only people at all
terrorised were the invalids, the nuns whose cloisters were violated
by night, the women and children whose homes were invaded at night by
miscreants masquerading in the British uniform, maddened with drink
and uttering the filthiest obscenities. And does England take account
of what all this is going to mean to her--that the young generation
will grow up with never-to-be-forgotten memories of these atrocities,
while the thousands of young men herded together in the internment
camps and convict prisons are being manufactured into life-long
enemies of the Empire? Might not Englishmen pause and ask themselves
whether it is worth it all, apart from other considerations, to
implant this legacy of bitter hatred in Irish breasts?
Let it be admitted that since the Government have been shamed into
dropping their denials of "reprisals" and taken them in hand
themselves the military destruction has at least been carried on with
some show of reluctance and humanity by the regular army, but it
cannot be too strongly emphasised that the disbandment and deportation
of "the Black and Tans" is the first condition of any return to
civilised warfare or to any respect for the good name of England or
her army.
If I were asked to state some of the essentials of peace I would say
it must depend first of all on the re-establishment of a belief in the
good faith of England. This belief, and for the reasons which I have
attempted to outline in the preceding chapters, has been shattered
into fragments. There is a strong feeling in Ireland that the Prime
Minister's recent peace "explorations" are not honestly meant--that
they are intended to rouse the "sane and moderate" elements in
opposition to Sinn Fein. Whilst this feeling exists no real headway
can be made by those who seek a genuine peace along rational and
reasoned lines. The Prime Minister must be aware that when he
professes his readiness to meet those who can "deliver the goods" he
is talking rhetorical rubbish. "Delivering the goods" is not a matter
for Irishmen, but for British politicians, who have spent the last
twenty years cheating Ireland of the "goods" of Home Rule, which they
had solemnly covenanted again and again to "deliver."
Mr Lloyd George's conditions for a meeting with "Dail Eireann" are so
impossible that one wonders he took the trouble to state them--viz.
(1) that "Dail Eireann" must give up to be tried (and we presume
hanged) a certain unspecified number of their own colleagues; (2) that
they must recant their Republicanism and proclaim their allegiance to
the Empire; (3) that negotiations must proceed on the basis of the
Partition Act and the surrender of one-fourth of their country to the
new Orange ascendancy.
No section of honest Irishmen will dream of negotiating on such a
basis, and any attempt to make use of "sane and moderate" elements to
divide and discredit the elected representatives of the people will be
met by the universal declaration that the "Dail Eireann" alone is
entitled to speak for Ireland. Until this primary fact is recognised
the fight in Ireland must go on, and many black chapters of its
history will have to be written before some British statesman comes
along who is prepared to treat with the Irish nation in a spirit of
justice and generosity.
Peace is still perfectly possible if right methods are employed to
ensure it. It is futile to ask Sinn Fein to lay down arms and to abjure
their opinions as a preliminary condition to negotiations. I doubt
whether the Sinn Fein leaders could impose such a condition upon their
followers, even if they were so inclined--which they are not and never
will be. Let there, then, to start with, be no preliminary tying of
hands. The initiative must come from the Government. They should
announce the largest measure of Home Rule they will pledge themselves to
pass. They should accompany this with a public promise to submit it to
an immediate plebiscite or referendum of the whole Irish people on the
plain issue "Yes" or "No." All they can ask of the Sinn Fein leaders is
that they will leave the Irish people absolutely free to record their
judgment. I can imagine that, in such circumstances, the attitude of the
Sinn Fein leaders would be: "We do not surrender our Republican
opinions, but if the Government offer full New Zealand Home Rule (let us
say) and pledge themselves to enforce it if Ireland accepts it, Sinn
Fein would be justified before all National Republicans in saying: 'This
is a prospect so magnificent for our country we shall do nothing in the
smallest degree to prejudice the opinion of the people against its
acceptance or to fetter the free and honest working of the new
institutions.'" Beyond this no person desiring a real peace ought to
expect Sinn Fein to go, and I am convinced that if this were the
attitude of Sinn Fein and if the offer were made by the Government as
suggested, the majority for acceptance, on a plebiscite being taken,
would be so great that there would be no further shadow of opposition
even in Ulster, where nobody would object that it should have local
autonomy in all necessary particulars.
I can conceive only one man standing in the way of a settlement on these
lines--a settlement which would be just to Ireland and honourable to
Britain. So long as Sir Edward Carson remains the powerful figure he
is--dictating and directing the policy of the Cabinet--it is improbable
that he will consent to have the opinion of "the six counties" taken by
a plebiscite. But if Sir Edward Carson were to quit politics, as one may
hope he can see a thousand good reasons for doing, I can well imagine
that Mr Lloyd George would be very glad to come to a satisfactory
arrangement.
Whatever happens this much is certain, there is only one road to peace
in Ireland--the recognition of her nationhood, one and indivisible,
and of the right of Irishmen to manage their own affairs in accordance
with Irish ideals.
THE END
POSTSCRIPT
Since this book went to press, the appointment of Sir Edward Carson as
Lord of Appeal and the interview between Mr de Valera and Sir James
Craig are developments of a more hopeful character which, it is devoutly
to be hoped, will bring about the longed-for _rapprochement_ between the
two countries.
End of Project Gutenberg's Ireland Since Parnell, by Daniel Desmond Sheehan