Chapter THE EIGHTH: Remoter Causes of the Rebellion

Those who think they can explain away the Sinn Fein rising of 1916 by the factor of German gold make much the same mistake as those who were so anxious to explain away the Home Rule movement by American dollars. The fact of the matter is, great movements and national uprisings should not be explained away: they should be, on the contrary, amplified, emphasized, and deeply studied.

I remember on one occasion the late W. T. Stead, when he was helping me with the biography of my uncle, Mr. John Redmond, emphasizing upon me the tremendous importance of the study of Irish problems to an Empire like ours, where nearly every one of its component nations is a repetition of Ireland.

"We have made every mistake we could possibly make as a ruling race in our government of you Irish," he said to me, "and we cannot, as we love and wish to keep our Empire, continue to perpetuate them.

"We can keep Ireland down if we like by force of arms, but we shall never be able to keep our Empire by the same means, and that is why it is so important that with such an object-lesson at our very doors we should be ever prepared to study how conquered or incorporated nations look upon our rule.

"That rule may be a protection, and it should be, but our stupidity can make it a yoke; yet of this we can be certain, that what fails to win friendship and respect in Ireland will fail to win security for our Empire when we employ those methods on nations who have it in their power to say us nay."

In other words, as long as the suppression has only been a military suppression it has been no suppression at all; any more than a delirious patient who is drugged or held down by force by a couple of hospital porters is cured by that expedient.

Moreover, all such expedients are necessarily merely temporary, and what we want to get at are the root causes of the complaint.

We must therefore fully diagnose those grievances of which the rebellion was only the outward symptom, and against which the Republic was more, after all, a symbolic protest than anything else; it was no more really intended to establish a Celtic Commonwealth than Sir Edward Carson's army was to change a Province into a Kingdom. Both were _façons de parler_, and the word "provisional" saved them from ridicule they would otherwise have deserved.

I remember speaking to a prominent Sinn Feiner only a couple of days before the revolt with a view to writing an article on the Volunteers, and this is what he said:--

"It would be very difficult for anyone to write anything just at present, for things are trembling in the balance. There is a most tremendous battle going on at the present moment at the Castle, we understand, between General Friend and Augustine Birrell--in other words, between the military and the civil authorities--and everything depends upon that issue.

"They want to take away our arms, for example, and not those of Redmond or Carson, and the latter will stand by and see it done without a word; but we know that's only the thin end of the wedge of the complete subjugation of Ireland to the soldier, as in the days of Cromwell, and even if we stand alone we will stop that.

"They don't half of them know a tenth of our power; even people in Ireland don't realize it. We are completely organized and perfectly equipped, far better even than the Ulster Volunteers are, and they will find out their mistake when they try.

"They've made two attempts already, in a hole-and-corner sort of way, at the Gaelic Press and at Liberty Hall, and the police found themselves looking into the barrels of revolvers each time. Well, all I can say is, when the day comes and they determine to strike--and we'll get wind of it--you may depend upon it the whole world will get a surprise; it will be like nothing else in Irish history for seven hundred years.

"We have our supplies at regular intervals, and our local commanders, with each province fully organized under them, and a complete system of code messages which never go through the post, but are distributed by means of secret dispatch-riders, and if the signal went forth to-night, to-morrow morning the whole of Ireland would be up in arms."

All of which, I need hardly say, I took--as everyone in my place would have taken it--_cum grano salis_, but it all came back to me the moment I heard the first shot. Especially did it flash across my mind when, bringing back to Dun's Hospital a dead Sinn Feiner, the famous document fell out of his pocket, which is strikingly similar in thought to my friend's prognostications.

According to Alderman Kelly, speaking on the Thursday before the outbreak in the Dublin Corporation, some such order had been "recently addressed to and was on the files of Dublin Castle," according to which the arrest of all the leaders of the Irish Volunteers, together with the members of the Sinn Fein Council, the Executive Committee of the National (Redmondite) Volunteers, and the Executive Committee of the Gaelic League, had been sanctioned.

Probably, however, the best diagnosis of the situation immediately preceding the outbreak was the letter published by the _New Statesman_ of May 6th, that had been written as early as April 7th, and which, coming from the most eminent victim of the danger so clearly foreseen by him, must have special force at the present moment.

It was from no less than F. Sheehy Skeffington.

"SIR,--The situation in Ireland is extremely grave. Thanks to the silence of the daily Press, the military authorities are pursuing their Prussian plans in Ireland unobserved by the British public; and, when the explosion which they have provoked occurs, they will endeavour to delude the British public as to where the responsibility lies. I write in the hope that, despite war-fever, there may be enough sanity and common sense left to restrain the militarists while there is yet time.

"I will not take up your space by recounting the events that have led up to the present situation--the two years' immunity accorded to Sir Edward Carson's Volunteers in their defiant illegalities, the systematic persecution of the Irish Volunteers _from the moment of their formation_ (_nine months before the war_), the militarist provocations, raids on printing offices, arbitrary deportations, and savage sentences which have punctuated Mr. Redmond's recruiting appeals for the past eighteen months. As a result of this recent series of events, Irish Nationalist and Labour opinion is now in a state of extreme exasperation. Recruiting for the British Army is dead; recruiting for the Irish Volunteers has, for the moment, almost reached the mark of one thousand per week--which is Lord Wimborne's demand for the British Army. A special stimulus has been given to the Irish Volunteer movement by the arrest and threatened forcible deportation (at the moment of writing it is still uncertain whether the threat will be carried out) of two of its most active organizers.

"There are two distinct danger-points in the position. In the first place, the Irish Volunteers are prepared, if any attempt is made forcibly to disarm them, to resist, and to defend their rifles with their lives. In the second place, the Irish Citizen Army (the Labour Volunteers) are prepared to offer similar resistance, not only to disarmament, but to any attack upon the Press which turns out the _Workers' Republic_--successor to the suppressed _Irish Worker_--which is printed in Liberty Hall.

"There is no bluff in either case. That was shown (1) in Tullamore on March 20th, when an attempt at disarming the small local corps of Irish Volunteers was met with revolver shots and a policeman was wounded--fortunately not seriously; (2) in Dublin, on March 24th and following days, when, at the rumour of an intended raid on the _Workers' Republic_, the Irish Citizen Army stood guard night and day in Liberty Hall--many of them having thrown up their jobs to answer promptly the mobilization order--armed and prepared to sell their lives dearly. The British military authorities in Ireland know perfectly well that the members of both these organizations are earnest, determined men. If, knowing this, General Friend and his subordinate militarists proceed either to disarm the Volunteers or to raid the Labour Press, it can only be because they _want_ bloodshed--because they want to provoke another '98, and to get an excuse for a machine-gun massacre.

"Irish pacifists who have watched the situation closely are convinced that this is precisely what the militarists do want. The younger English officers in Dublin make no secret of their eagerness 'to have a whack at the Sinn Feiners'; they would much rather fight them than the Germans.[3] They are spurred on by the Carson-Northcliffe conscriptionist gang in London. On April 5th the _Morning Post_ vehemently demanded the suppression of the _Workers' Republic_; on April 6th a question was put down in the House of Commons urging Mr. Birrell to disarm the Irish Volunteers. These gentry know well the precise points where a pogrom can most easily be started.

"Twice already General Friend has been on the point of setting Ireland in a blaze--once last November, when he had a warrant made out for the arrest of Bishop O'Dwyer, of Limerick; once on March 25th, when he had a detachment of soldiers with machine guns in readiness to raid Liberty Hall. In both cases Mr. Birrell intervened in the nick of time, and decisively vetoed the militarist plans. But some day Mr. Birrell may be overborne or may intervene too late. Then, once bloodshed is started in Ireland, who can say where or how it will end?

"In the midst of world-wide carnage, bloodshed in our little island may seem a trivial thing. The wiping out of all the Irish Nationalist and Labour Volunteers would hardly involve as much slaughter as the single battle of Loos. Doubtless that is the military calculation--that their crime may be overlooked in a world of criminals. Accordingly, the nearer peace comes, the more eager will they be to force a conflict before their chance vanishes. Is there in Great Britain enough real sympathy with Small Nationalities, enough real hatred of militarism, to frustrate this Pogrom Plot of British Militarist Junkerdom?

"Yours, etc.,
"F. SHEEHY SKEFFINGTON."

Personally, I think I can diagnose the rebellion into ten perfectly distinct factors, but by far the least of them all is Germany. Germany was the personal note which Sir Roger Casement brought in, and which left it with his failure. It was accidental and extraneous both to the Sinn Fein Volunteers and the Citizen Army, though both were willing to make use of it.

Anyone who has taken the trouble to peruse the literature which fed the movement will recognize these diverse elements under various forms which appear in different places, but they are perfectly distinct.

The most immediate cause was the undoubted intention of the authorities to disarm them--a threat which had been overhanging them for some time, and which, in view of the well-known leniency of the Government with regard both to Sir Edward Carson and John Redmond in the same matter, struck them as particularly unjust, the more so perhaps because both Sinn Feiners and Larkinites thought that the Nationalists and the Orangemen would be only too glad to combine with the Government against them if need be.

Thus, if we take the issue of the _Workers' Republic_ of April 22, 1916, we find an account, quoted from the _Liverpool Courier_, of how Connolly, the Commandant of the Citizens' Army, stopped the police raid, in search of papers, on the shop of the Workers' Co-operative Society at 31, Eden Quay, having been informed of their intention.

"Connolly," says the account, "arrived on the scene just as one of the police got in behind the counter. Inquiring if the police had any search warrant, they answered that they had not. On hearing this, Mr. Connolly, turning to the policeman behind the counter as he had lifted up a bundle of papers, covered him with an automatic pistol, and quietly said: 'Then drop those papers, or I'll drop you.' He dropped the papers. Then he was ordered out from behind the counter, and he cleared. His fellow-burglar tried to be insolent, and was quickly told that as they had no search warrant they were doing an illegal act, and the first one who ventured to touch a paper would be shot like a dog. After some parley, they slunk away, vowing vengeance."

The story runs on for a column or more, and ends with further discomfiture for the police. Then one reads:--

"In an hour from the first issue of the summons Liberty Hall was garrisoned by a hundred and fifty determined armed men, and more were trooping in every few minutes. It was splendid to see the enthusiasm of the men, and when in the course of the evening all the Women's Ambulance Corps trooped in, closely followed by the Boy Scouts, excitement and longing for battle was running high in all our veins. The Irish Volunteers were also on the alert, and stood, we are informed, until after 2 a.m. on Saturday morning. Since then the hall has been guarded day and night."

The paper then goes on to speak of how "the heroic fighting at Suvla Bay, and even the valorous defence of Verdun, fades into insignificance side by side in Dublin by the Citizen Army, and describes how Liberty Hall is being guarded by day and by night," and then goes on to point out the danger which such open disregard of authority may lead to eventually.

Then follow two significant quotations, one from the _Irish Volunteer_ and the other from _The Spark_. The latter is an open boast of the efficacy of arms, and runs:--

"A few thousand Irishmen, who took the precaution or providing themselves with lethal weapons of one kind or another, have, without contesting a constituency and without sending a man to Westminster, compelled the Westminster Parliament to admit publicly that it dared not pass any legislation which they, the armed men, did not choose to permit."

Eoin MacNeill's threat is hardly less significant:--

"If our arms are demanded from us, we shall refuse to surrender them. If force is used to take them from us, we shall make the most effective resistance in our power. Let there be no mistake or misunderstanding on that point.... We shall defend our arms with our lives."

Now, whatever may be thought of such sentiments, there can be no doubt whence they originated, for they are sheer Carsonism through and through; and it was, as I have repeatedly pointed out, a pure stroke of luck that it was not Belfast's City Hall instead of Dublin's Post Office that was burnt to the ground.

This physical force element, therefore, the Sinn Feiners and Larkinites had in common with the Redmondites and Ulstermen: the fact that they actually were the first to put the principle into operation is no difference at all.

In other words, we have to go deeper for a specific distinction, and that distinction is to be found in the very nature of the parties themselves who combined to form the provisional Republic.

They were two movements which had grown up outside the two Parliamentary parties and which refused to believe in Parliamentarianism as much for the simple reason that their respective watchwords had become more or less worn-out tags, out of touch with the realities of modern Irish problems, as because their leaders had, unable to assimilate them, taken up an attitude of almost personal antipathy to them and their ideals.

It is certainly a most remarkable thing how John Redmond has lost the old Parnellite grip upon the younger life of the country, and it seems hardly credible that such an attitude should be due entirely to the perversity of youth and in no way to the natural consequence of tradition-loving age; but in any case the broad fact remains, and a tone of persistent criticism seems to have taken the place of the meek obedience of other days; and newspapers, dramas, novels, criticism, and movements on all sides bear witness to it. The same, too, applies to Sir Edward Carson, whose party has to recruit in England, witness Sir F. E. Smith.

According to Mr. T. M. Healy, the whole movement was due almost entirely to the "bankruptcy of Redmondism." No doubt the justice of the accusation may be questioned, though I hold no brief for any relative, but there can be no doubt that it was the Sinn Fein attitude, and we want to see the Sinn Feiners as they saw themselves and as they saw Redmond.

The Government trusted to Redmond almost entirely, but, as Mr. Healy continues, they forgot that--

"New crystallizations were taking place. The jobbery of the official party disgusted all earnest and unselfish minds amongst the youth of Ireland. The forces of Larkinism were embittered; and the acceptance of salaries by Irish members, after their formal declaration that they would not accept them, sank deeply into the hearts of extremists.

"The Insurance Act, the killing of land purchase, and the founding of the A.O.H., sapped the foundations of belief, and it became known that 'a high official achieved his ambitions on the judicial bench only by becoming a professing Catholic and accepting initiation under the rites of Mr. Devlin's brotherhood. The staff of the _Freeman's Journal_, the official patriot organ, got endless jobs. At the same time Mr. Redmond excluded from his party, without trial or grounds, a dozen leading members opposed to this policy.'

"All that was sober, unselfish, self-respecting, and self-reliant quitted his ranks and joined the Sinn Fein movement without thought of rebellion or pro-Germanism.

"The courage of the Sinn Feiners atoned for much of their folly in the mind of those who realized that their spirit was not pro-German, but, in the main, a revolt against the conversion of Dublin Castle into a Redmondite Tammany Hall. Their uprising was the answer to the corruption, jobbery, and judge-mongering of the Molly Maguires masquerading in the vestments of religion. Hence the wholesale arrests of men not in rebellion have evoked no protest from Mr. Redmond, 'who watches calmly the dispersal of his critics,' hoping to find a new lease of life under a new jobbing nominee."

The Larkinists were, if anything, still more out of sympathy with the official party because, in the words of Connolly, they looked upon them as no better than the English conqueror, since they took the side of the social conqueror in the economic struggles of life in the city.

This seems certainly to have a touch of truth, for if ever any body of men resembled the unfortunate victims of rural landlords it was these wretched victims of the tenement slums, the denunciation of which seemed to have no part in the official Parliamentary programme, so much so as to compel Labour to create its own party and evolve its own leader, which it had accordingly done in the person of Jim Larkin.

Now, if anyone wishes to judge James Connolly they should not look at the soldier for a week; they must examine the life-long student of economics and read his "History of Labour in Irish History" and his "Reconquest of Ireland," for it is here we have the revolution in its cause, which was just as much economic as political.

It is the custom to speak of the Larkinites with scant respect, as if they were the mad, blind multitude of the "have nots" in perpetual prey upon the "haves"; but it is quite a false idea, for they have in their movement some of those who count socially and intellectually.

Thus, for example, the training of the Citizens' Army was almost entirely carried out by Captain J. R. White, D.S.O., son of the late Field-Marshal Sir George White, whose "Labour" ideas got him three months' imprisonment only a few weeks ago.

As to the attitude of the average Dublin merchant towards the new labour party that is arising, I know of no finer apology for Larkin than the brilliant letter of "Æ." to the _Irish Times_ in the days of the great strike, when he addressed the "masters of the city."

In it he warned them--the aristocracy of industry--because like all aristocracies they tended to grow blind in long authority, and to be unaware that they and their class and their every action were being considered and judged day by day by those who had the power to shake or overturn the whole social order, and whose restlessness in poverty was making our industrial civilization stir like a quaking bog. He reminded them that their assumption that they were answerable to themselves alone for their actions in the industries they controlled was becoming less and less tolerable, in a world so crowded with necessitous life; but what he chiefly held them responsible for was their incompetence as commercial men, because, with the cheapest market in the world at their command, they could never invite the confidence of investors.

What was even worse than their business incompetence, however, was, according to "Æ.," their bad citizenship, for had they not allowed the poor to be herded together so that one could only think of certain places in Dublin as of a pestilence?

"There are twenty thousand rooms in Dublin," continued the terrible indictment, "in each of which live entire families and sometimes more, where no functions of the body can be concealed, and delicacy and modesty are creatures that are stifled ere they are born." In fact, "nothing that had ever been done against them cried so much to heaven for vengeance as their own actions, such as the terrible lock-out, which threw nearly a third of the whole city on to the verge of starvation"; and he concluded:--

"You are sounding the death-knell of autocracy in industry. There was autocracy in political life, and it was superseded by democracy. So surely will democratic power wrest from you the control of industry. The fate of the aristocracy of industry will be as the fate of the aristocracy of land, if you do not show that you have some humanity still among you."

It was from such roots that the spirit of the Citizens' Army drew its inspiration (and possibly not a few of the looters as well), and it is impossible to understand the rage of these men without fully comprehending the condition in which they were compelled to live and move.

True, the revolt was not with any concrete economic end in view; but, none the less, it was coloured throughout with economic grievances.

It was the very torture of the ordinary conditions of peace that made them resent the fear of any additional burdens and sacrifices such as were demanded of their patriotism.

Yet what did patriotism and Empire mean to them, save only the doubling of their burdens and their masters' profits?

If the Scotch workman in London and the Scotch worker on the Clyde and the Welsh miner in the coalfields round Cardiff felt it, much more must the Irish docker; and it must never be forgotten that there is a triple link of blood, interest, and common sympathy between the workers of the two islands; and one has only to glance at the way the respective labour Presses of the two countries kept in touch with each other for the past year to realize how much an English labour problem the Irish political problem really was.

This brings me to some further factors which can be discerned in the rising--firstly, the fear of conscription; secondly, the hatred of militarism; and, thirdly, the chronic loathing of Castle government.

With regard to conscription, there has always been a dread of it. They had seen it come in England, and had watched anxiously the way it had been introduced and applied, and the farce of the Tribunals, whose action, in the words of the _Freeman's Journal_, would have been sufficient to cause a revolution had they behaved in Ireland as they behaved in England.

All during the summer months they had seen the cloud gathering, and Irishmen caught by a legal technicality and forced into the system; but all this came to a climax when the cry of cowardice was raised at Liverpool, as five hundred young emigrants, who would never have been helped to live for Ireland in their own country, were suddenly held up by order of the Cunard Company--which, as a matter of fact, owed nearly its whole prosperity to its coffin boats of the Famine days, and whose glaringly seductive posters had emptied Ireland, neither for America nor Ireland's sake, but purely to get the passage-money of the emigrants who were now asked to go instead and "help England to give Constantinople to Russia, even if it cost them their lives."

For they had a way of blunt speaking, these men whose everyday life was an heroic fight for the home against "Hun" poverty.

When the cry of "cowardice" was raised, however, it was high time to protest, and none voiced that protest so well as Dr. O'Dwyer, the Bishop of Limerick, who wrote the following letter to the _Munster News_:--

"SIR,--The treatment which the poor Irish emigrant lads have received at Liverpool is enough to make any Irishman's blood boil with anger and indignation. What wrong have they done to deserve insults and outrage at the hands of a brutal English mob? They do not want to be forced into the English Army, and sent to fight English battles in some part of the world. Is not that within their right? They are supposed to be free men, but they are made to feel that they are prisoners, who may be compelled to lay down their lives for a cause that is not worth 'three rows of pins' to them.

"It is very probable that these poor Connaught peasants know little or nothing of the meaning of the war. Their blood is not stirred by the memories of Kossovo, and they have no burning desire to die for Serbia. They would much prefer to be allowed to till their own potato gardens in peace in Connemara. Small nationalities, and the wrongs of Belgium and Rheims Cathedral, and all the other cosmopolitan considerations that rouse the enthusiasm of the Irish Party, but do not get enough of recruits in England, are far too high-flying for uneducated peasants, and it seems a cruel wrong to attack them because they cannot rise to the level of the disinterested Imperialism of Mr. T. P. O'Connor and the rest of the New Brigade.

"But in all the shame and humiliation of this disgraceful episode, what angers one most is that there is no one, not even one of their own countrymen, to stand up and defend them. Their crime is that they are not ready to die for England. Why should they? What have they or their forbears ever got from England that they should die for her? Mr. Redmond will say a Home Rule Act on the Statute Book. But any intelligent Irishman will say a simulacrum of Home Rule, with an express notice that it is never to come into operation.

"This war may be just or unjust, but any fair-minded man will admit that it is England's war, not Ireland's. When it is over, if England wins, she will hold a dominant power in this world, and her manufactures and her commerce will increase by leaps and bounds. Win or lose, Ireland will go on, in our old round of misgovernment, intensified by a grinding poverty which will make life intolerable. Yet the poor fellows who do not see the advantage of dying for such a Cause are to be insulted as 'shirkers' and 'cowards,' and the men whom they have raised to power and influence have not one word to say on their behalf.

"If there is to be conscription, let it be enforced all round, but it seems to be the very intensity of injustice to leave English shirkers by the million to go free, and coerce the small remnant of the Irish race into a war which they do not understand, and which, whether it is right or wrong, has but a secondary and indirect interest for them.

"I am, dear sir,
"Your obedient servant,
"-|- EDWARD THOMAS,
"Bishop of Limerick.
"_November 10, 1915._"

The seditious Press took up the cry: "Conscription had not even been applied to her own sons, yet England was applying it to Irishmen," said Gilbert Galbraith in _Honesty_; adding: "for all she wants of Irishmen is their lives that she might live," and he warned Irishmen that "she (England) who took everything they had and stripped them naked and left them like Christ to the ribald jest and sneer of the rabble in the world's back-streets, would, like every bully, try to have revenge when she got them by themselves."

Had this been mere verbal sword-play, however, I should not quote it; it was more: it was the taking up of the challenge of cowardice.

"Will you in God's name get ready to answer her?" concluded the famous article in which he appealed to these would-be exiles repatriated by force; "because, if you want to, all you have to do is to get into touch with the nearest corps of Irish Volunteers." They would give them instructions, he added pointedly, how to act, and what they did they had better do quickly, for it might be too late on the morrow.

Could one be surprised, I ask, if some of these would-be emigrants answered the taunt gun in hand?--especially when men like Captain White, who was afterwards to try to rouse the South Wales miners to endeavour to save Connolly, was telling them plainly:--

"You are fast being led into industrial slavery. You know it, and I am apprehensive and angry, but too bewildered to move. To rob you of your right over your own poor bodies is the workers' tyrant. To rob you of your sovereign power over your own will is the workers' devil.

"Awake, brothers, before your liberty is dead. Arm yourselves against your real enemies. Say to the tyrants and their agents, 'The first man who lays hands on me against my will dies.'"

All this, I say, jumps to the eyes of anyone perusing the literature that produced the rising.

It is beside the point whether such argumentation be true or false, patriotic or seditious. The only point, as far as we are concerned in this quasi-medical diagnosis of diseased mentality, is whether or not these thoughts were present in the psychology of the combatants, and I maintain that the evidence is undeniable.

The attitude of "conscientious objectors" to militarism in England is England's own affair. Yet I cannot, in my own mind, separate the personality of Sir John Simon from that of John Hampden. No doubt ship-money was necessary, and it was the patriotic thing to give it up, and no doubt the same applies to men for the Army: but when it came to the principle of the King taking money without the consent of Parliament, John Hampden thought it his duty to the traditions of his country to resist, just as Sir John Simon thought it his duty to the traditions of the British conscience to passively protest--but that again, I say, is a matter for Englishmen.

The attitude of the Irish conscientious objector, however, has always been of a more militant form, and this began to assert itself among the labour leaders in Ireland through the medium of the more outspoken of the English labour leaders. Whereas in England the masses of workers are naturally loyal, in Ireland loyalty is a sustained effort against the grain of tradition. Hence, while in England the right to rebel fell on unsympathetic soil, in Ireland it merely relit the smouldering embers of past grievances into flame.

For there had been a growing epidemic of the phrase "Shoot them," applied almost indiscriminately, like a quack panacea, by political orators to every opponent on every conceivable subject since the war, and this was producing the most evil results.

Two quotations may suffice from the work by J. Bruce Glasier on "Militarism," which was freely circulated in Dublin by means of Liberty Hall, to illustrate the strength of the feeling on this subject:--

"Although Great Britain is suffering neither from invasion from without nor insurrection from within, the military authorities are not only in command of the defences of our shores but of the civil authorities, and the whole population of the realm. The birthrights of British citizenship embodied in the Magna Charta, Habeas Corpus, and Bill of Rights are no longer inviolable. Martial Law--that is to say, military despotism--may be put in operation at will by the military commanders. Civilians may be seized and tried by Army officers, and even sentenced to any penalty short of death without appeal to trial by jury. Our War Lord is made virtual dictator. A military censorship has been established over the Press and public meetings. Military officers may enter our houses, quarter troops upon us, take possession of our horses, motor-cars, cows, pigs, and pigeons. They may commandeer schools, factories, warehouses, farms, or any other kinds of public or private property. Strikes may be declared acts of treason, Trade Union officials arrested and tried by courts martial, and soldiers used as blacklegs--and no knowledge whatever of these happenings, not even of the existence of strikes or trade disputes, may reach the general public at all if the authorities so determine...."

A phrase that seems to have done great harm, and was specially singled out by the men of Liberty Hall, was "Shoot him!"--as a form of argument employed by every Tom, Dick, and Harry orator, on every conceivable subject without the slightest constitutional authority; but it must be said it was one used by all parties.

During the Home Rule controversy, for example, the Nationalists were just as fond of employing the phrase towards Carson as during the Welsh coal strikes Conservatives were of using it towards the miners.

The danger of such doctrines in Ireland is this, that whereas in England it is the upper class principally that is militarist, in Ireland it is principally the lower class, and whereas it is the Castle authorities who are always preaching the iniquity of physical force, it is the lower classes who mainly admire it.

Realizing this, as any student of Irish history would, there should not have been the slightest doubt about the danger of employing force to men who not only had the principle of active resistance but the arms necessary to make it effective, and it has always appeared to me as the most marvellous thing the Liberals ever did that they were able to allow Ulster the full possession of arms without once provoking an occasion on which to actually put them to use.

The result of this fatal misuse of the words "Shoot him!" as a form of argument--which unauthoritative should be made a penal offence--was that the workers really feared that such irresponsible individuals if given the power would really carry out the threat, and determined to anticipate the danger by a protest in arms.

Another contributory cause was undoubtedly Castle rule, and the fear that with the holding up of Home Rule it might continue for ever, unless some effective protest were made.

The Chief Secretary was himself the foremost in admitting this to be one of the contributory causes of the rebellion.

"There are a number of contributory causes, which lately have created antipathy to constitutional methods and tended to increase in numbers. First--growing doubts about the actual advent of Home Rule. If the Home Rule Bill had not been placed on the Statute Book there must have been in Ireland and the United States a great and dangerous explosion of rage and disappointment, which when the war broke out would have assumed the most alarming proportions in Ireland. All (outside parts of Ulster) would have joined hands, whilst our reports from Washington tell us what the effect in America would have been. Still, even with Home Rule on the Statute Book, the chance of its ever becoming a fact was so uncertain, the outstanding difficulty about Ulster was so obvious, and the details of the measure itself were so unattractive and difficult to transmute into telling platform phrases, that Home Rule as an emotional flag fell out of daily use in current Irish life. People left off talking about it or waving it in the air.

"Second, in Ireland, whenever Constitutional and Parliamentary procedure cease to be of absorbing influence, other men, other methods, other thoughts, before somewhat harshly snubbed, come rapidly to the surface, and secure attention, sympathy, and support. The sneers of the O'Brienites, the daily naggings in the Dublin _Irish Independent_, also contributed to the partial eclipse of Home Rule, and this eclipse foretold danger."

Another point is worth noting in this connection, and that was the growing power, first of the Coalition and then of the Unionist clique who were capturing it. Thus says Mr. Birrell:--

"The Coalition Government, with Sir Edward Carson in it--it is impossible to describe or overestimate the effect of this in Ireland. The fact that Mr. Redmond could, had he chosen to do so, have sat in the same Cabinet with Sir Edward Carson had no mollifying influence. If Mr. Redmond had consented, he would, on the instant, have ceased to be an Irish leader. This step seemed to make an end of Home Rule, and strengthened the Sinn Feiners enormously all over the country."

A general desire for peace and a sort of Socialistic feeling of brotherhood, I should say, were two further contributory causes.

"The prolongation of the war and its dubious end," as Mr. Birrell observed, "turned many heads. Criticism was not of the optimistic type prevalent in Britain, and consequently, when every event had been thoroughly weighed, there was always a chance of Germany lending a hand."

As to the general attitude of Sinn Fein and Larkinite Ireland, it might be described as one of benevolent neutrality where, as in many cases, it was not one of actual hostility.

True, recruiting figures had reached a total quite unprecedented in Irish history (150,000), and loyalty had received an official stimulus when the Irish leader and the Lord-Lieutenant toured the provinces together; but this was discounted in the country districts by the deliberate plans of the Sinn Feiners, and in the towns, or rather in Dublin, by a sense of the futility of all war, and in particular this war, whose aims were vague enough to the statesmen, and appeared almost illusory to the worker. Hence anyone reading the _Workers Republic_ could have noticed whole passages that might have been taken direct from the German Socialist Liebknecht.

One very significant leader (Saturday, February 5, 1916) on "The Ties that Bind" is well worth quoting in parts as an example of this feeling:--

"Recently we have been pondering deeply over the ties that bind this country to England. It is not a new theme for our thoughts; for long years we have carried on propaganda in Ireland, pointing out how the strings of self-interest bound the capitalist and landlord classes to the Empire, and how it thus became a waste of time to appeal to those classes in the name of Irish patriotism.

"We have said that the working class was the only class to whom the word 'Empire,' and the things of which it was the symbol, did not appeal; that to the propertied classes 'Empire' meant high dividends and financial security, whereas to the working class that meant only the things it was in rebellion against.

"Therefore from the intelligent working class could alone come the revolutionary impulse.

"Recently we have seen the spread of those ties of self-interest binding certain classes and individuals to the Empire--we have seen it spread to a most astonishing degree until its ramifications cover the island, like the spread of a foul disease.

"It would be almost impossible to name a single class or section of the population not evilly affected by this social, political, and moral leprosy....

"For the sake of £400 a year our parliamentary representatives become Imperialists; for the sake of large travelling expenses and luxurious living they become lying recruiters....

"There is nobody in a representative position so mean that the British Government will not pay some price for his Irish soul. Newspaper men sell their Irish souls for Government advertisements paid for at a lavish rate. Professors sell their souls for salaries and expenses, clergymen sell theirs for jobs for their relatives, business men sell their souls and become recruiters lest they lose the custom of Government officials. In all the grades of Irish society the only section that has not furnished even one apostate to the cause it had worked for in times of peace is that of the much hated and traduced militant labour leaders.

"But if the militant labour leaders of Ireland have not apostatized, the same cannot be said of the working class as a whole....

"Perhaps some day the same evil passions the enemy has stirred up in so many of our Irish people will play havoc with his own hopes, and make more bitter and deadly the cup of his degradation and defeat.

"But deep in the heart of Ireland has sunk the sense of the degradation wrought upon its people--our lost brothers and sisters--so deep and humiliating that no agency less potent than the red tide of war on Irish soil will ever be able to enable the Irish race to recover its self-respect, or establish its national dignity in the face of a world horrified and scandalized by what must seem to them our national apostasy."

Now the strange thing about Ireland is her definition of "loyalty." It is not with her a species of sentimental altruism but a plain, business-like, common-sense view of her own interests, and nothing can make her change that view, for she has through centuries of disillusionment become chronically suspicious.

"I dare say I don't take the same view as you would were you in my place," wrote Mr. Birrell to the Prime Minister on January 25th. "Loyalty in Ireland is of slow growth, and the soil is uncongenial. The plant grows slowly. Landlords, grand juries, loyalist magistrates, have all gone; yet the plant grows, though slowly."

Her patriotism, on the other hand, is almost necessarily a matter of internal administration; and for this she fights with all the spirit that animated her in the past against Dane and Saxon. Hence it is quite easy for an economic grievance at once to assume the proportions of a national movement, and once it becomes resisted as such, the spirit of nationality becomes rekindled again, and it was this latter that prompted the final efforts in the evolution of the Republic.

America and Germany both contributed to intensify the spirit of nationality and gave material assistance that made the attempt at "Separatism" a practicable ideal, but it was only made possible because of the internal troubles in Ireland herself.

So long as a constitutional outlet is not afforded for such grievances, so long must unconstitutional means be appealed to; but the question which the breakdown of the old regime suggests seriously to all thinkers is whether there are not ample means within the Constitution, and I think it is the universal opinion of the more moderate that there is; and it is just these moderates whose views will be the more welcome because of the failure not merely of the Sinn Feiners to establish a Republic, but of Sir Edward Carson and John Redmond to come to an understanding that would have placed them in a position to have controlled it in time, and, which is more important still, to be able to deal with any repetition of a similar character in the future.

Probably no analysis of the remoter causes of the rebellion, however, is more accurate than the psychological origin given by George Bernard Shaw in a letter to the _Daily News_ on May 10th.

"The relation of Ireland to Dublin Castle is in this respect precisely that of the Balkan States to Turkey, of Belgium or the city of Lille to the Kaiser, and of the United States to Great Britain.

"Until Dublin Castle is superseded by a National Parliament and Ireland voluntarily incorporated with the British Empire, as Canada, Australasia, and South Africa have been incorporated, an Irishman resorting to arms to achieve the independence of his country is doing only what Englishmen will do if it be their misfortune to be invaded and conquered by the Germans in the course of the present war. Further, such an Irishman is as much in order morally in accepting assistance from the Germans in this struggle with England as England is in accepting the assistance of Russia in her struggle with Germany. The fact that he knows that his enemies will not respect his rights if they catch him, and that he must, therefore, fight with a rope round his neck, increases his risk, but adds in the same measure to his glory in the eyes of his compatriots and of the disinterested admirers of patriotism throughout the world. It is absolutely impossible to slaughter a man in this position without making him a martyr and a hero, even though the day before the rising he may have been only a minor poet. The shot Irishmen will now take their places beside Emmet and the Manchester Martyrs in Ireland, and beside the heroes or Poland and Serbia and Belgium in Europe; and nothing in heaven or on earth can prevent it."

FOOTNOTE:

[3] I give the well-known letter in its entirety, but I cannot vouch for such passages, and I know that in many cases officers were particularly distressed at having to fight Irishmen instead of Germans.