It may surprise some people to learn that in 1915 this little play was
a recruiting poster in disguise. The British officer seldom likes Irish
soldiers; but he always tries to have a certain proportion of them in
his battalion, because, partly from a want of common sense which leads
them to value their lives less than Englishmen do [lives are really
less worth living in a poor country], and partly because even the most
cowardly Irishman feels obliged to outdo an Englishman in bravery if
possible, and at least to set a perilous pace for him, Irish soldiers
give impetus to those military operations which require for their
spirited execution more devilment than prudence.
Unfortunately, Irish recruiting was badly bungled in 1915. The Irish
were for the most part Roman Catholics and loyal Irishmen, which means
that from the English point of view they were heretics and rebels. But
they were willing enough to go soldiering on the side of France and
see the world outside Ireland, which is a dull place to live in. It was
quite easy to enlist them by approaching them from their own point of
view. But the War Office insisted on approaching them from the point of
view of Dublin Castle. They were discouraged and repulsed by refusals to
give commissions to Roman Catholic officers, or to allow distinct
Irish units to be formed. To attract them, the walls were covered with
placards headed REMEMBER BELGIUM. The folly of asking an Irishman to
remember anything when you want him to fight for England was apparent to
everyone outside the Castle: FORGET AND FORGIVE would have been more
to the point. Remembering Belgium and its broken treaty led Irishmen to
remember Limerick and its broken treaty; and the recruiting ended in
a rebellion, in suppressing which the British artillery quite
unnecessarily reduced the centre of Dublin to ruins, and the British
commanders killed their leading prisoners of war in cold blood morning
after morning with an effect of long-drawn-out ferocity. Really it was
only the usual childish petulance in which John Bull does things in a
week that disgrace him for a century, though he soon recovers his good
humor, and cannot understand why the survivors of his wrath do not feel
as jolly with him as he does with them. On the smouldering ruins of
Dublin the appeals to remember Louvain were presently supplemented by a
fresh appeal. IRISHMEN, DO YOU WISH TO HAVE THE HORRORS OF WAR BROUGHT
TO YOUR OWN HEARTHS AND HOMES? Dublin laughed sourly.
As for me I addressed myself quite simply to the business of obtaining
recruits. I knew by personal experience and observation what anyone
might have inferred from the records of Irish emigration, that all an
Irishman's hopes and ambitions turn on his opportunities of getting out
of Ireland. Stimulate his loyalty, and he will stay in Ireland and
die for her; for, incomprehensible as it seems to an Englishman, Irish
patriotism does not take the form of devotion to England and England's
king. Appeal to his discontent, his deadly boredom, his thwarted
curiosity and desire for change and adventure, and, to escape from
Ireland, he will go abroad to risk his life for France, for the Papal
States, for secession in America, and even, if no better may be, for
England. Knowing that the ignorance and insularity of the Irishman is a
danger to himself and to his neighbors, I had no scruple in making that
appeal when there was something for him to fight which the whole world
had to fight unless it meant to come under the jack boot of the German
version of Dublin Castle.
There was another consideration, unmentionable by the recruiting
sergeants and war orators, which must nevertheless have helped them
powerfully in procuring soldiers by voluntary enlistment. The happy home
of the idealist may become common under millennial conditions. It is not
common at present. No one will ever know how many men joined the army
in 1914 and 1915 to escape from tyrants and taskmasters, termagants
and shrews, none of whom are any the less irksome when they happen
by ill-luck to be also our fathers, our mothers, our wives and our
children. Even at their amiablest, a holiday from them may be a tempting
change for all parties. That is why I did not endow O'Flaherty V.C. with
an ideal Irish colleen for his sweetheart, and gave him for his mother a
Volumnia of the potato patch rather than a affectionate parent from whom
he could not so easily have torn himself away.
I need hardly say that a play thus carefully adapted to its purpose was
voted utterly inadmissible; and in due course the British Government,
frightened out of its wits for the moment by the rout of the Fifth Army,
ordained Irish Conscription, and then did not dare to go through with
it. I still think my own line was the more businesslike. But during the
war everyone except the soldiers at the front imagined that nothing
but an extreme assertion of our most passionate prejudices, without the
smallest regard to their effect on others, could win the war. Finally
the British blockade won the war; but the wonder is that the British
blockhead did not lose it. I suppose the enemy was no wiser. War is not
a sharpener of wits; and I am afraid I gave great offence by keeping my
head in this matter of Irish recruiting. What can I do but apologize,
and publish the play now that it can no longer do any good?