Until I came to America I had not the least idea of the depth of hatred
which has existed among Irish-Americans toward England. Nothing that I
ever encountered in Ireland itself is comparable with this transatlantic
fury of unforgiving hate.
An Irishman who had held very high office in America, a well-educated, a
kindly, and a judicious man, told me that when war with Germany was in
the air he could not prevent himself from hailing this opportunity for
declaring his hatred, his undying hatred, of England. His father had
suffered frightfully in the great famine; every story he ever heard at
his mother's knee was a story of English tyranny, English brutality,
English rapacity; England, for him, stood at the rack centre, the
lustful and bestial slave driver, the cruel and merciless extortioner.
This man's good judgment, however, would not suffer him to approve of
German militarism, and as events moved forward he gave his support more
and more to the cause of the Allies.
"But I want you to know," he told me, striking the table with his hand
and watching me carefully, "that I was dead against John Redmond for
saying that Ireland must go to the aid of England. Ireland's call was to
go to the aid of civilization. If Germany had stood for civilization, I
should have been on Germany's side and dead against England.
"I tell you, at the beginning of this business I longed to see England
defeated, humiliated, broken to the dust. But civilization is of such
enormous consequence that I put my natural hatred of England on one
side. The violation of Belgium made me an anti-German. And with the vast
majority of Irishmen in America it was the same thing. The menace of
German militarism forced us into your camp.
"I am perfectly certain that but for the violation of Belgium there
would have been in this country among Irish-Americans an open movement
publicly proclaimed in favor of Germany. That is my fixed opinion. And I
happen to know what I am talking about."
No Hatred of England.
I gathered in the course of his conversation that Irish friendliness
toward England is a final manifestation of a change in the feeling of
all America toward England. It was not very long ago that President
Cleveland wanted war with England. Hatred of England was at one time as
fiercely handed down from generation to generation by Americans as by
Irish-Americans. We have to thank our English stars that America has
outgrown this historic hate and that Irish-Americans now show the new
and happier feeling of their compatriots.
I asked this Irishman, no one better able throughout America to express
a just opinion on the subject, what difference had been made in the
feeling toward England by the passing of the Home Rule bill.
"It was the passing of that bill," he replied, "which finished the work
begun by German militarism. Home rule has softened our feelings toward
England, particularly among the thousands of Irish-Americans who are
born over here and whose fathers have become too Americanized to
remember the sufferings of their ancestors.
"There is still some hatred of England, but not very much. It is a
sentimental, a poetic hatred, not a political hatred. One finds it among
a few individuals. What agitation is now going on is secret and
underground, a sure proof that it is unrepresentative. We ignore it. It
means nothing. No; the passing of the Home Rule bill has given balance
to the Irish mind.
"It has helped Irish-Americans to realize that the dreadful sins of
England are sins of a dead and gone England, and it has helped them to
see that the present England, so far as its democracy is concerned,
sincerely desires to make reparation for the past. In fact, the war and
the Home Rule bill together have produced such a transformation in the
Irish-American nature as I, for one, never expected and never hoped to
see."
He then warned me that this great change might suffer a dangerous
reaction if England allows the religious bigotry of Ulster to split
Ireland into two camps. To the Irish-American Ireland is a country, a
home, and a shrine, one and indivisible.
"Such a surrender," said my friend, "would not only be fatal to Ireland
but fatal to something even greater than Ireland, and that is the cause
of religion in an age of increasing paganism. For the world can only be
saved from the ruin of paganism, as we are beginning to see very clearly
in America, by a union of religious forces.
"I am a Catholic, but I say that any man who says 'Only through my door
can you enter into heaven' is a bad Christian. There are many doors into
heaven. What we have all got to do, Catholics and non-Catholics, is to
insist together that there is a heaven, that there is a life after
death, that there is a God. The more doors the better. No one has a
monopoly of heaven.
"And to Ireland is offered the opportunity, greater than politicians
appear to perceive, of presenting to the world an example of tolerance
and compromise in the supreme interests of religion which may have
incalculable results for the whole world. But what will happen if
England bows before the worst and the stupidest bigotry the modern world
can show? Not only will you strike a blow at Ireland and a blow at
Irish-American sympathy, but a blow at the vitals of religion.
"For it is only by sinking religious differences and making a common
advance against this universal paganism that religion can save the soul
of civilization. If you do not see the truth of that fact in England I
think you must be blind. The fullness of civilization hangs upon
religious union; religious dissension is the enemy."
Change in Ulster.
Another Irish-American who was present on this occasion, an accomplished
man of letters and a traveler, asked me what England felt about Ulster's
share in the responsibility for the present war.
"I myself have seen two letters from Ulster," he said, "in which the
phrase occurs, 'Rather the Kaiser than the Pope.' These letters were
written before the war. Ulster, no doubt, has now changed her tune. But
it was that spirit, surely, and the reports sent to Berlin by German
officers who visited Ulster and inquired into the military character of
Carsonism which persuaded Germany that England would not fight."
Irish-Americans are persuaded that Sir Edward Carson is in very great
measure responsible for all the ruin and death and bitter suffering of
the enormous catastrophe. He boasted that he would make civil war, and
such were his preparations that in any other country in the world civil
war would have been inevitable.
Germany counted on that civil war. The British Army was said to be
completely under the influence of Carsonism. The real catastrophe for
the diplomacy of Berlin was not India's loyalty and the vigorous
uprising of the young dominions, but the dying down of Ulster mutiny.
These Irish-Americans have hated the ruling classes in England, not only
for sins of the past but for the unworthy and most cruel opposition
offered by those ruling classes, in the name of religious intolerance,
to the ideals of the Irish Nation.
When Unionist politicians sneer at the subscriptions sent by Irish
servant girls in America to help the cause of Ireland they should
reflect that not only do they fail to make a good joke, not only do they
exhibit a horribly bad taste, but they spread hatred of England through
the thousands and thousands of people. For it is the loyalty of the
poorest of these Irish-Americans, the sacrifices perpetually made by
the humblest of them, which should move us to see, as it has certainly
moved the American people to see, that the cause of Irish liberty is
noble and undying.
Religious Education.
With all my heart I would beg Unionists in England to reflect
conscientiously upon this very significant state of affairs in America:
A non-Catholic Bible used to be read in the public schools of America
down to the year 1888. A Catholic agitation against this Bible reading
was begun in 1885, and in 1888 the custom was finally abolished. From
that date to this there has been no religious instruction of any kind in
the public schools of America.
Bigotry and intolerance won that victory. The Catholic Church, in its
folly, destroyed religious teaching in the schools of the country.
Catholics themselves are now looking back on that agitation with
religious repentance and political regret.
The result of this abolition is that Catholics and non-Catholics who
believe in the importance of religious instruction, and who see the
pagan effect of purely secular instruction, do not send their children
to the public schools.
"These schools, for which Christians are heavily taxed, are in the
possession of the Hebrews. If nothing is done to alter the existing
state of things Americans themselves assure me that in five-and-twenty
years America will be a pagan country. But a fight is to be made to
avert this disaster at the Constitutional Convention to be held next
month.
"What we have to do," my Irish friend told me, "Catholics and
non-Catholics alike, is to appeal for schools representing Catholic and
non-Catholic teaching. Instead of the various churches fighting against
each other they must fight together, helping one another to get the
schools they demand. Only in this way can we save civilization."
This is how the Irishman, breathing the free air of America, and in
America rising to positions of extraordinary power and responsibility,
views the foundational question of religion; while England allows
herself to be dragged at the heels of the frothing fanatic who has
actually dared to raise the unholy battle cry of "Rather the Kaiser than
the Pope."
Let the Unionist Party hesitate before it seeks to revive this hideous,
utterly irrational and most unchristianlike spirit at the very heart of
the British Empire. The sower of hate is the reaper of death.