THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS
It would be idle to attempt to forecast the details of a struggle
between Great Britain and Germany. That is a task that belongs to the
War Department of the two States. I have assigned myself merely to
point out that such a struggle is inevitable, and to indicate what
I believe to be the supreme factors in the conflict, and how one of
these, Ireland, and that undoubtedly the most important factor, has
been overlooked by practically every predecessor of Germany in the
effort to make good at sea. The Spaniards in Elizabeth's reign,
the French of Louis XIV and of the Directory took some steps, it
is true, to challenge England's control of Ireland, but instead of
concentrating their strength upon that line of attack they were
content to dissipate it upon isolated expeditions and never once to
push home the assault on the one point that was obviously the key
to the enemy's whole position. At any period during that last three
centuries, with Ireland gone, England was, if not actually at the
mercy of her assailants, certainly reduced to impotency beyond her own
shores. But while England knew the value to herself of Ireland, she
appreciated to the full the fact that this profitable juxtaposition
lay on her right side hidden from the eyes of Europe.
"Will anyone assert," said Gladstone, "that we would have dared to
treat Ireland as we have done had she lain, not between us and the
ocean, but between us and the continent?" And while the bulk of
England, swollen to enormous dimensions by the gains she drew from
Ireland interposed between her victim and Europe, her continental
adversaries were themselves the victims of that strange mental disease
psychologists term the collective illusion. All the world saw that
which in fact did not exist. The greatness of England as they beheld
it, imposing, powerful, and triumphant, existed not on the rocky base
they believed they saw, but on the object, sacked, impoverished, and
bled, they never saw. And so it is to-day. The British Empire is the
great illusion. Resembling in much the Holy Roman Empire it is not
British, it is not an Empire, and assuredly it is not holy. It lives
on the life-blood and sufferings of some, on the suffrance and mutual
jealousy of others, and on the fixed illusion of all. Rather is it a
great Mendicity Institute. England now, instead of "robbing from Pole
to Pole," as John Mitchel once defined her activities, goes begging
from Pole to Pole that all and every one shall give her a helping hand
to keep the plunder. Chins, Goorkhas, Sikhs, Malays, Irish, Chinese,
South African Dutch, Australasians, Maoris, Canadians, Japanese, and
finally "Uncle Sam"--these are the main components that when skilfully
mixed from London, furnish the colouring material for the world-wide
canvas. If we take away India, Egypt and the other coloured races the
white population that remains is greatly inferior to the population of
Germany, and instead of being a compact, indivisible whole, consists
of a number of widely scattered and separated communities, each with
separate and absorbing problems of its own, and more than one of them
British neither in race, speech, nor affection. Moreover if we turn
to the coloured races we find that the great mass of the subjects of
this Empire have less rights within it than they possess outside its
boundaries, and occupy there a lower status than that accorded to most
foreigners.
The people of India far out number all other citizens of the British
Empire put together, and yet we find the British Indians resident in
Canada, to take but one instance, petitioning the Imperial Government
in 1910 for as favourable terms of entry into that British possession
as the Japanese enjoyed.
They pointed out that a Japanese could enter Canada on showing that he
held from six pounds to ten pounds, but that no British Indian could
land unless he had forty pounds and had come direct from India,--a
physical impossibility, since no direct communication exists. But they
went further, for they showed that their "citizenship" of the British
Empire entailed penalties that no foreign state anywhere imposed upon
them.
"We appeal," they said, "and most forcibly bring to your notice
that no such discriminating laws are existing against us in foreign
countries like the United States of America, Germany, Japan, and
Africa, to whom we do not owe any allegiance whatsoever."
So that outside its white or European races it is clear the Empire has
no general or equal citizenship, and that, far from being one, it is
more divided racially against itself than are even opposing Asiatic
and European nations which have the good fortune not to be united in a
common, imperial bond.
The total white population of this incongruous mass in 1911 consisted
of some 59,000,000 human beings made up of various national and racial
strains, as against 66,000,000 of white men in the German Empire the
vast majority of them of German blood. And while the latter form a
disciplined, self-contained, and self-supporting and self-defending
whole, the former are swelled by Irish, French-Canadians, and Dutch
South Africans who, according to Sir R. Edgcumbe, must be reckoned as
"coloured."
It is one thing to paint the map red, but you must be sure that your
colours are fast and that the stock of paints wont run out. England,
apart from her own perplexities is now faced with this prospect. Great
Britain can no longer count on Ireland, that most prolific source
of supply of her army, navy, and industrial efforts during the last
century, while she is faced with a declining birth-rate, due largely,
be it noted, to the diminished influx of the Irish, a more prolific
and virile race. While her internal powers of reproduction are
failing, her ability to keep those already born is diminishing still
more rapidly. Emigration threatens to remove the surplus of births
over deaths.
As long as it was only the population of Ireland that fell (8,500,000
in 1846 to 4,370,000 in 1911), Great Britain was not merely untroubled
but actually rejoiced at a decrease in numbers that made the Irish
more manageable, and yet just sufficiently starvable to supply her
with a goodly surplus for army, navy, and industrial expansion in
Great Britain. Now that the Irish are gone with a vengeance it is
being perceived that they did not take their vengeance with them and
that the very industrial expansion they built up from their starving
bodies and naked limbs contains within itself the seeds of a great
retribution.
"Since Free Trade has ruined our agriculture, our army has become
composed of starving slum dwellers who, according to the German notion
are better at shouting than at fighting. German generals have pointed
out that in the South African war our regular and auxiliary troops
often raised the white flag and surrendered, without necessity,
sometimes to a few Boers, and they may do the same to a German
invading force. Free Trade which "benefits the consumer" and the
capitalist has, unfortunately, through the destruction of our
agriculture and through forcing practically the whole population of
Great Britain into the towns, destroyed the manhood of the nation."
(Modern Germany page 251, by J. Ellis Barker, 1907). An army of slum
dwellers is a poor base on which to build the structure of a perpetual
world dominion.
While the navy shows an imposing output of new battleships
and cruisers for 1913, the record, we are told, of all warship
construction in the world, it takes blood as well as iron to cement
empires. Battleships may become so much floating scrap iron (like the
Russian fleet at Tsushima), if the men behind the guns lack the right
stamina and education.
We learn, too, that it is not only the slum dwellers who are failing,
but that to meet the shortage of officers a large number of transfers
from the merchant marine to the Royal Navy are being sanctioned.
To this must be added the call of the Great Dominions for men and
officers to man their local fleets. As the vital resources of England
become more and more inadequate to meet the menace of German naval and
moral strength, she turns her eyes to Ireland, and we learn from the
London _Daily Telegraph_ that Mr. Churchill's scheme of recruiting at
Queenstown may furnish "matter for congratulation, as Irish boys make
excellent bluejackets happy of disposition, amenable to discipline,
and extremely quick and handy."
As I can recall an article in this same journal, written during the
course of the Boer War, in which Ireland was likened to a "serpent
whose head must be crushed beneath the heel," the _Daily Telegraph's_
praise to-day of the Irish disposition should leave Irish boys
profoundly unmoved--and still ashore.
There is yet another aspect of the growing stream of British
emigration. "Death removes the feeble, emigration removes the strong.
Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, have no use for the
sick and palsied, or of those incapable of work through age or youth.
They want the workers and they get them. Those who have left the
United Kingdom during 1912 are not the scum of our islands, but the
very pick. And they leave behind, for our politicians to grapple with,
a greater proportion of females, of children and of disabled than ever
before." (_London Magazine_!)
The excess of females over males, already so noteworthy a feature
of England's decay, becomes each year more accentuated and doubtless
accounts for the strenuous efforts now being made to entrap Irish boys
into the British army and navy.
If we compare the figures of Germany and Great Britain, and then
contrast them with those of Ireland, we shall see, at a glance, how
low England is sinking, and how vitally necessary it is for her to
redress the balance of her own excess of "militants" over males by
kidnapping Irish youths into her emasculated services and by fomenting
French and Russian enmities against the fruitful German people.
Germany 1910, males, 32,031,967; females, 32,871,456; total,
64,925,993. Excess of females, 739,489.
Great Britain, 1911:
England and Wales--Males, 17,448,476; females, 18,626,793; total,
36,075,269. Excess of females, 1,178,317.
Scotland--Males, 2,307,603; females, 2,251,842; total, 4,759,445.
Excess of females, 144,239.
Total for Great Britain, 40,834,714. Excess of females, 1,322,556.
Thus on a population much less than two thirds that of Germany Great
Britain has almost twice as many females in excess over males as
Germany has, and this disproportion of sexes tends yearly to increase.
We read in every fresh return of emigration that it is men and not
women who are leaving England and Scotland. That Irish emigration,
appalling as its ravages have been since 1846, is still maintained on
a naturally healthier basis the sex returns for 1911 make clear. The
figures for Ireland at the census were as follows:
Ireland--Males, 2,186,802; females, 2,195,147; total, 4,381,949.
Excess of females, 8,346.
Ireland, it is seen, can still spare 100,000 or 150,000 males for the
British armed forces and be in no unhealthier sex plight than Scotland
or England is in. It is to get this surplus of stout Irish brawn and
muscle that Mr. Churchill and the British War Office are now touting
in Ireland.
I take the following Government advertisement from the Cork _Evening
Echo_ (of March, 1913), in illustration:
"Notice--Any person that brings a recruit for the Regular or Special
Reserve Branches of the Army to the Recruiting Officer at Victoria
Barracks, Cork, will be paid the money reward allowed for each recruit
which ranges from 1/6 to 5/- each."
From whatever point of view we survey it we shall find that England's
Empire at bottom rests upon Ireland to make good British deficiencies.
The Dominions are far off, and while they may give battleships they
take men. Ireland is close at hand--she gives all and takes nothing.
Men, mind, food and money--all these she has offered through the
centuries, and it is upon these and the unrestricted drain of these
four things from that rich mine of human fertility and wealth that
the British Empire has been founded and maintained. To secure to-day
the goodwill and active co-operation of the Irish race abroad as well
as in Ireland, and through that goodwill to secure the alliance and
support of the United States has become the guiding purpose of British
statesmanship.
The Home Rule Bill of the present Liberal Government is merely the
petty party expression of what all English statesmen recognize as
a national need. Were the present Liberal Government thrown out
to-morrow their Unionist successors would hasten to bind Ireland
(and America) to them by a measure that, if necessary, would go much
further. Every Unionist knows this. Ireland is always the key to the
situation.
I will quote two pronouncements, one English and one American, to show
that Home Rule has now become an imperial necessity for England.
Speaking in the House of Lords on the Home Rule Bill, Earl Grey, the
late Governor-General of Canada, said on January 27th, 1913:
"In the interests of the Empire I feel very strongly that it is
imperative that the Irish question should be settled on lines which
will satisfy the sentiment of the over-sea democracies, both in our
self-governing colonies and in the United States. Everyone, I think
will agree that it is most important and in the highest interests of
the empire that there should be the friendliest feelings of generous
affection and goodwill, not only between the self-governing Dominions
and the Motherland, but also between America and England.... I need
not elaborate this point. We are all agreed upon it. A heavy shadow
at present exists, and it arises from our treatment of Ireland....
If this be so is it not our duty to remove the obstacle that prevents
that relationship with America from being that which we all desire?"
The American utterance came from one equally representative of
American Imperial interests. It is that of Mr. Roosevelt, published in
the _Irish World_ of New York, Feb. 8th, 1913.
"I feel that the enactment into law of this measure ... bids fair to
establish goodwill among the English-speaking peoples. This has been
prevented more than by any other one thing by this unhappy feud that
has raged for centuries, and the settlement of which, I most earnestly
hope, and believe, will be a powerful contribution to the peace of the
world, based on international justice and goodwill. I earnestly feel
that the measure is as much in the interests of Great Britain as of
Ireland."
Did we judge of Ireland only by many of the public utterances made
in her name, then, indeed might we despair of a people who having
suffered so much and so valiantly resisted for so many centuries
were now to be won to their oppressor's side, by, perhaps, the most
barefaced act of bribery ever attempted by a Government against a
people.
"Injured nations cannot so entirely forgive their enemies without
losing something of their virility, and it grates upon me to hear
leader after leader of the Parliamentary Party declaring without shame
that Home Rule when it is won for Ireland is to be used for a new
weapon of offence in England's hands against the freedom of the world
elsewhere."
Did the Irish Parliamentary Party indeed represent Ireland in this,
Mr. Wilfred Blunt's noble protest in his recent work, _The Land War
in Ireland_, would stand for the contemptuous impeachment, not of a
political party but of a nation.
Mr. Redmond in his latest speech shows how truly Mr. Blunt has
depicted his party's aim; but to the credit of Ireland it is to be
recorded that Mr. Redmond had to choose not Ireland, but England for
its delivery. Speaking at St. Patrick's Day dinner in London on March
17th, 1913, Mr. Redmond, to a non-Irish audience, thus hailed the
future part his country is to play under the restoration of what he
describes as a "National Parliament."
"We will, under Home Rule, devote our attention to education, reform
of the Poor Law, and questions of that kind which are purely domestic,
which are, if you like, hum-drum Irish questions, and the only way
in which we will attempt to interfere in any Imperial question will
be by our representatives on the floor of the Imperial Parliament in
Westminster doing everything in our power to increase the strength and
the glory of what will then be our empire at long last; and by sending
in support of the empire the strong arms and brave hearts of Irish
soldiers and Irish sailors, to maintain the traditions of Irish valour
in every part of the world. That is our ambition."
Were this indeed the ambition of Ireland, did this represent the true
feeling of Irishmen towards England, and the Empire of England, then
Home Rule, on such terms, would be a curse and a crime. Thierry, the
French historian, is a truer exponent of the passionate aspirations of
the Irish heart than anyone who to-day would seek to represent Ireland
as willing to sell her soul no less than the strong arms and brave
hearts of her sons in an unholy cause.
"... For notwithstanding the mixture of races, the intercommunion of
every kind brought about by the course of centuries, hatred of the
English Government still subsists as a native passion in the mass of
the Irish nation. Ever since the hour of invasion this race of men
has invariably desired that which their conquerors did not desire,
detested that which they liked, and liked that which they detested
... This indomitable persistency, this faculty of preserving through
centuries of misery the remembrance of lost liberty, and of never
despairing of a cause always defeated, always fatal to those who dared
to defend it, is perhaps the strangest and noblest example ever given
by any nation." (_Histoire De La Conquete De L'Angleterre Par Les
Normands_, Paris edition, 1846. London, 1891.)
The French writer here saw deeper and spoke truer than many who seek
to-day not to reveal the Irish heart, whose deep purpose they have
forgotten, but barter its life-blood for a concession that could be
won to-morrow by half that blood if shed at home, thus offered without
warrant "as a new weapon of offence to England's hands against the
freedom of the world elsewhere."
The Irishman, who in the belief that Home Rule has come or that
any measure of Home Rule the London Parliament will offer can be a
substitute for his country's freedom, joins the British army or navy
is a voluntary traitor to his country. Almost everything that Ireland
produces, or consumes, must all go out or come solely through England
and on payment of a transit and shipping tax to English trade.
The London press has lately waxed indignant over Servia denied by
Austria a port on the Adriatic, and we have been told a Servia
without a port is a Servia held in "economic slavery," and that her
independence is illusory unless she have free outlet to the sea. But
what of Ireland? With not one, but forty ports, the finest in all
Western Europe, they lie idle and empty. With over 1,000 miles of
seaboard, facing the West and holding the seaway between Europe and
America, Ireland, in the grip of England, has been reduced to an
economic slavery that has no parallel in civilization.
And it is to this island, to this people that the appeal is now made
that we should distrust the Germans and aid our enslavers. Better far,
were that the only outcome, the fate of Alsace-Lorraine (who got their
Home Rule Parliament years ago) than the "friendship" of England. We
have survived the open hate, the prolonged enslavement, the secular
robbery of England and now the England smiles and offers us with one
hand Home Rule to take it away with the other, are we going to forget
the experience of our forefathers? A Connacht proverb of the Middle
Ages should come back to us--"Three things for a man to avoid;
the heels of a horse, the horns of a bull; and the smile of an
Englishman."
That Ireland must be involved in any war that Great Britain undertakes
goes without saying; but that we should willingly throw ourselves into
the fray on the wrong side to avert a British defeat, is the counsel
of traitors offered to fools.
We must see to it that what Thierry wrote of our fathers is not
shamefully belied by their sons. Our "indomitable persistency"
has up to this excelled and subdued the unvarying will applied to
one unvarying purpose of those who, by dint of that quality, have
elsewhere subjugated the universe. We who have preserved through
centuries of misery, the remembrance of lost liberty, are not
now going to merge our unconquered souls in the base body of our
oppressor.
One of the few Liberal statesmen England has produced, certainly the
only Liberal politician she has ever produced, the late Mr. Gladstone,
compared the union between Great Britain and Ireland to "the union
between the mangled corpse of Hector and the headlong chariot of
Achilles." (1890.)
But, while I cannot admit that England is an Achilles, save, perhaps,
that she may be wounded like him in the heel, I will not admit, I
will not own that Ireland, however mangled, however "the plowers have
ploughed upon her back and made long furrows," is in truth dead, is
indeed a corpse. No; there is a juster analogy, and one given us by
the only Englishman who was in every clime, and in every circumstance
a Liberal; one who died fighting in the cause of liberty, even as in
life he sang it. Byron denounced the union between England and Ireland
as "the union of the shark with its prey."