THE IRISH ISSUE Tressed Nations Make the Same Appeal to His Sense of Chivalry That Distressed Ladies Used to Make to the European Knight

The I rish Is s u e

I n I t s Am eric an As pec t

' A C ont rib ut ion t o t he Set t lement o f Anglo-Americ an Relat ions D uring and Aft er t he Great Wa r

13V

Sha n e Les lie

N ew Yo rk ’ Cha rle s Sc rib n e r s So n s 1 9 1 7 CO PYRI GHT , 19 17 , B Y CHARLES SCRIBNER ’ S SO NS

Publis he v d No emb er , 1 9 1 7

NO V 27 1917

l .

CDmA4 7 9 2 3 9 HE RY N C .

GO V E R N O R P H IL IPPI N E S

AND

MI N IS TE R

CO NTENTS

PART O NE

’ AMER IC A S FAMILY GHO S T

TH E CENTENARY O F JO H N MITC HE L

TH E M E MO R Y O F PAR NE LL

THE TR E AS ON O F TH E RE DMONDS

ETHI C S O F S INN FE IN

TH E PR E S I D ENO Y O F PE AR S E

THE KILLI NG O F KE TTLE

CARS ON AND CAS EME NT

TWO

TH E WINNING O F TH E UNITE D S TATE S

IR IS H AME R ICA D URI NG TH E WAR

EPILOGUE

AMERICA ’ S FAMILY GHOST

Ireland is the spectre of the British Empire . Sometimes s he seems to ﬁll the position of ’ America s family ghost as well . Uncle Sam is far too good and young to be haunted as some of the European nations are haunted by the undying phantasms of those they oppressed . Only the picturesque wraith of the Red Indian broods upon the prairies of the West . If the American has pressed into other lands than his original colonies , it has always been to redeem and civilise , never to enslave persons or dese r c ate territory . N0 ghost came out of the Philippines to decry his record before the na tions . His Cuban conscience is clean . The t he Queen of Hawaii , pride of Spain , and the Pekin summer palace need never trouble his soul . The hazard of the world brought each hi s into way and he dealt with them severally , as a gentleman should under the circumstances . The American gentleman is so by national tradition rather than by individual birth . Dis 3 4 THE IRISH ISSUE tressed nations make the same appeal to his sense of chivalry that distressed ladies used to make to the European knight . He is largely descended from those who at different times have made good their release from the English J Tory , the German unker, and the Irish land lord . There is a gulf between the old families of America and the European aristocrats , whose past deeds cause phantoms to scream about the banners of their country , whenever unfurled even in the justest cause .

If America has a ghost , it is Ireland . But if

Ireland haunts America, it is with a haunting based on love and not on hate . Like the Janus

- of . the Atlantic , Ireland is two faced Towards England She ever looks with anguish and bit t e n es U r s , towards the nited States with tearful f hope and wistful a fection . For in the nine t eent h century America was to Ireland what la r a n e n a ' France was in the eighteenth , g d ti on The strongest and choicest Went into their service , military in the case of France , indus trial in that of America . The canals and then the railways of America were created by Irish i labour . The ndustrial connection found apotheosis in the names of Mc C ormick and Ford. Ireland has always believed that her freedom AMER ICA ’ S FAMILY GHOST 5

was due to her through American means . N0 European country was better represented in

the Revolutionary ranks . Deep in Irish hearts was laid the unwritten covenant that out of of America Ireland Should be reborn , out the

. fﬁ strong sweetness It was unwritten o cially, of save in the script Benjamin Franklin , who had attended the debates I II the old Dublin Parliament a nd inscribed Ireland i n the list of the revolting colonies to be united a ga l n s t i England . S nce then sympathy with Ireland has become a tradition in the United States , lisped by statesmen and even pronounced by

Presidents . More than once Americans have threatened to obtain by force what the Great War brought them a striking opportunity to procure by peaceful consent . It is curious indeed how Irish action and re action has run like an uncanny spirit through t he o of wo f American history . Before the n A Revolutio , Ireland and the merican colonies ’ f Mol n were plainti fs in the same suit . y eux s o Ca s e o I r ela nd S ta ted fam us f , the ﬁrst hand

- book of Irish nationalism , became a text book ’ O Ri hts o the Col to American thinkers . tis s g f oa tes was its adaptation . Rebels , whether in

Ireland or in America, were the same children of the stormy time - spirit loosed in t he last dec 6 THE IRISH ISSUE

ades of the eighteenth century . Lord Charle of V mont , the head the Irish olunteers , used “ to be toasted as the Irish Washington . When America exchanged her suit for an a p peal to arms , Ulstermen helped her as bravely ’ in America as they helped Wexfor d s appeal 1 t o arms in 798 . Ulstermen were always the most revolutionary members of the English speaking world and in n o town of the empire

‘ was the capture of the Bastille more ﬁercely celebrated than in Belfast . American independence had as great an effect on Ireland as the Russian revolution has had on the modern world at large . It left Ire i land dreamily amb tious , eternally unsettled , and enamoured of the sunset in the West . Only the perennial s afety-valve of emigration o ut of the political wilderness at home into the Promised Republic prevented explosions in Ire land . Relations between Ireland and the ‘

United States began immediately . Catholic n and Protesta t, Ulstermen and Irishmen , the ” of Ula dh old sons and of Erinn, as the writers divided Irishmen , were one in hailing American n independence . There is o doubt that Lord North ’ s ﬁrst conciliatory act towards the Irish Catholics was due t o the desire to foreclose sympathy with the Revolutionary States . AMERICA ’ S FAMILY GHOST 7

O ddly enough the same hired Hessians were

loosed on rebels in Ireland and America . It is a historical point whether the American

Revolution would have succeeded , had it not been for the feud of the exiled Ulstermen with ’ the English Tories . The original Bunker s Hill

is near Belfast . Both Scotch and Milesian n Irish rallied to Washingto . No fewer than thirteen of the Revolutionary generals were born in Ireland herself . It was historically poetic how memories of the different Irish r e ’ hellions found echoes in America s wars . Rob ert Francis Paine , who with eight others of

of Irish kindred , signed the Declaration Inde ’ en d en ce O Neill h p , was really an , sixt in de ’ O Neill scent from Shane , who had held Ulster J against Elizabeth . General ames Moore , who

‘ th e ﬁ eld took for the Insurgents , was descended ’ O More from Rory , the most romantic ﬁgure

in the Rising of 164 1 . General Clinton found “ t he emigrants from Ireland our most serious ” ’ n t on s a antagonists . g ides included a

Fitzgerald an hen Moylan , a brother of r f the then Bishop of Co k . It was a Barry o Wexford who took the new American ﬂag to n s ea . There is an entire traditio of the Irish

share in the Revolution . A Sullivan ﬁred the o ﬁrst Shot and captured F rt William and Mary , 8 THE IRISH ISSUE

avenging the battle of the Boyne thereby . “ The British General Fraser fell t o a sniper called Murphy . An Irishman ferried Wash ingt on across the Delaware and a Lynch kept the doors of the ﬁrst Congress . It is claimed that Molly Pitcher was an Irish girl of the f family o Hayes . Certain it is that the “ Friendly Sons of St . Patrick raised a Liberty

Loan for Washington . And when it came to on of peace , it was the farm an Irish Carroll that the White House was erected on the model of Leinster House in Dublin . The

Feast of St . Patrick had already pa ssed into l the American calendar . During the R evo u tion it had proved a lucky day for the United 177 States . On that day in 6 the English evacuated Boston and on that day in the following year a French ship arri ved with a stand of arms .

Ireland and America went their ways ,

‘ though , as Professor Dunning well states in

‘ “ his work on Anglo - American relations : There survived in the United States the tradition of ’ Gr a tt a n s w Parliament, hich received the breath of life through the success of the war ” that made America free from Great Britain . When war broke out afresh between England 18 12 n o and America in Ireland lifted voice . AMERICA ’ S FAMILY GHOST 9

H er revolutionary zeal had been quenched in of 1798 the Rising , and her adventurous youth ’ ” had gone with Charles O Ma lley into Wel ’ lin on s gt armies . But in America there were no less than six of the “ United Irishmen ” in for Congress to vote war against England , while hosts of exiles took their part in that amazing campaign which gave America her national

anthem . It was then that Commodore Stew of art , the grandfather Parnell , won his naval honours against the British fleet a n d that An J drew ackson , the son of an Ulsterman , slew and defeated Pakenham at the battle of New

I n Orleans . It was keeping with historical jus

tice , for Pakenham was one of the corrupt oli ga rch s who had sold the old Parliament in

Dublin . During the hostilities it required special ef forts to Obtain the treatment of prisoners of

- war for captured Irish Americans . Bad as was the measure meted out t o all American prison

t o ers , it is pleasant ﬁnd Congress recognising the humanity which befell some wh o were sent

to Ireland . After the war Irish matters tended

to be forgotten in America . It was only two

great and appalling events , which gave Ireland

a new footing in the New World , from which s he could bitterly and successfully oppose and 10 THE IRISH ISSUE

’ thwart some of England s dearest projects . They were the Irish Famine and the American

Civil War . Sydney Smith had pointed out that the disaffected state of Ireland is a standing pre mium for war with every cabinet which has the most distant intention of quarrelling with ” I f this country for any other cause . the f famine supplied the necessary disa fection , the Civil Wa r led to serious Anglo -American quar r elling . The Irish famine emptied the strongest and best survivors of the race in shoals upon the

American seaboard . At terrible cost and at an unrecorded loss the mighty transmigration was accomplished . Success and prosperity e for were by no means th irs the questing, then

For or previously . thousands who had per i s hed J as pioneers , history records the ohn Sul livan , a centenarian schoolmaster from Limer

of ick , who became the father governors both of New Hampshire and Massachusetts , and

of the grandfather a governor of Maine . It F was the same after the famine . or every one who left his mark or famous descendants , a thousand fell unknown in the struggle . Nev er t heles s numbers and morality told , and as ’ F . Hugh O D onnell pointed out : From Presi

12 THE IRISH ISSUE In the seventies and eighties the Irish cause Ala caught ﬁre in America . There was the ba ma and the Tr ent to commend it t o American of taste . Sumner was more a prophet than a “ politician when he said : Justice to Ireland is a British necessity There was even a s ug “ gestion in the House t o recognise the Irish ” Republic as a belligerent . Soldiers returning from Appomattox took up the refrain “ We ’ re ” marching next to Ireland . The Fenian move ment was cradled round the camp -ﬁ res of the

Union . During the eighties the Irish-Americans reached their zenith . Governor Curtis stated that there were no less than forty - two Irish

in w - men the House, hile one half claimed to have Irish blood in their veins . It became a l most necessary for an American President to claim Irish blood to be a successful candidate . ’ It was amusing how Cleveland s mother 'Neal' ’ was made to do duty against his rival Blaine s

Irish grandfather 'Gillespie' . American m i n I s t ers in London came to be acquainted intimately with the Irish question .

Mr . Adams vexed his last days trying to pro cure the release of Fenian prisoners . The Dub lin police were able to do what Confederate fire c ould not and arrest Colonel Denis Bourke , AMERICA ’ S FAMILY GHOST 13 who had been the first to Cross the bloody ’ l n i angle at Sp ot t s y va a . Lowell s ministry wa s perpetually troubled by Coercion Acts . He “ diagnosed Ireland not unskilfully as , the clot of blood in England ’ s veins always discomfort In able and liable always to lodge the brain . All the great thinkers s a w truly but were thwarted by the politicians . Goldwin Smith realised that nothing stands in the way of a reconciliation between the two branches of the Anglo - Saxon race except the influence of the

Irish . The war with Spain seemed to afford a pos ili s ib ty of general reconciliation . On the one hand friendship sprang up between the Anglo Saxon twain and on the other hand Irishmen were under arms for America . In the most brilliant exploit of the war Hobson ’ s choice of c ompanions included a Murphy and a Kelly. But the Boer War sent England and America their different ways and the Irish banshee set

-h e out to haunt bot , one with rem mbrance of ancient wrong and the other with pleading of benefit performed Two totally distinct views may naturally be taken as to the Irish infiltration into America . On the practical side we find Charles Norton “ writing : The Irish have become inmates of 14 THE IRISH ISSUE our houses to a degree of intimacy impossible if it had not been for their pecuniary honesty ” - and their chastity . From the old fashioned V iew of Saxon sentiment Professor Freeman “ : of d grieved Alas , alas , in the oldest the woo en houses when I went t o find New England Puri tans I found Ould Irish Papishes , Biddy instead of Hepzibah Socially and domestically the Irish have done for the United States what no other race could have achieved . Martially and

s er politically , also , they have rendered Celtic vice . But they have complicated the foreign relations of the country in o n e import ant as pect . They have kept and still keep England and America apart . By an overoptimistic estimate Lord Bryce wrote in September of “ m 19 14 of Irish hostility : I t is n ow conﬁned to a comparatively small section and is likely soon to disappear . But from the end of the Civil War till about the end of the century it was l ” an obstacle to perfectly good re ations . As events have shown , a better estimate was made “

J . . . P . 1867 by F Maguire , M , in It may s ub

s o s ea . side , may the But like the s ea the ﬁrst s et breath will it again in motion , while a storm would lash it into fury . It may subside , but it is difﬁcult to think h ow without some coun t er c in a t g cause it can die out . AMERICA ’ S FAMILY GHOST 15

Henceforth the ghost of Ireland s a t at the American hearth to rise and wail like a watch t of dog a any approach the hereditary enemy , whether friendly or hostile . In the uttermost parts of the sea Ireland has risen again and again to baffle and perplex England . She has stood not merely geographically but politically ’ between England and America . In the world s great changing time when alliances are shuffled like cards and the traditional emotions of peo e pl s are thrown into new shapes , has not a time come for the reconsideration of the rela f ' tions a fecting Ireland , England , and America “ As long ago as 1852 Seward declared : The people of Ireland are affiliated to us as we are f to the people o Great Britain . Surely there can be no offence given by a younger member in offering mediation between the elder breth ren of the same family upon a point of differ ” ence between them . Has not the time come for England to cry peace to her pursuing avenger ' Is it n ot good for all that the ‘ un forgiving ghost that haunts the common pur pose of England and America should be laid ' Does not the exorcism and the magical in flu ’ ence which can lead to Ireland s healing , Eng ’ ’ land s pardon , and America s comfort lie in the stupendous sentences by which America 16 THE IRISH ISSUE made known to the world the unfurling of her flag over Armageddon ' I s none great enough to banish the Banshee of the Atlantic THE CENTENARY OF JOHN MITCHEL

The centenary of John Mitchel has passed . Of all the surprises of the war the most curious piece of topsy - t ur vyd om was enacted when the British Commission was received by the mayor of J ‘ of New York , the grandson ohn Mitchel ,

Irish patriot and British felon . In political de scent Mr . Balfour was but two places from Dis r a eli wh o , the Tory leader , prevented the head of the Mitchel family of t wo generations back from entering the House of Commons on the f ground o his former conviction . J t ohn Mi chel was the most brilliant, the most

d r m s h ot downright , the most ea of the patriots “ - of forty eight . Some may live by the pathos ikehe a d of a p , but Mitchel lives by his pen , Of all the literary mirrors which were held up to the terrible decade preceding the Irish fam

J a l o r ine , his i J emains the most polished , the most reflee He wa s the literary fore f runner o modern Irish nationalism , and after his es cape from Australia he initiated those 17 18 THE IRISH ISSUE

Irish-American relations which have lasted down to our own times with but slight modi i ﬁca t on . “ b e Nations have no future state , was his

n o of imm or lief , and since they have hope tality in the next world he required them to “ seek rebirth in this . Hence the Young Ire ” I t land movement . has found its record in ’ J our n a l two books , in Mitchel s and in his col ’ league Gavan Duffy s You ng I r ela nd . Their centenaries have fallen within a few months of of b each other . By a playfulness fate one e came a prime minister in the country to which the other had been sent as a convict .

Mitchel wrote under grim circumstance . As a partisan he felt an unholy hatred for his op p on ent s and some sympathetic horror for his own plight, which was pitiable in all conscience . His writing is stuff that illumm a t es history as

o with gas ﬂares . N t unlike the quivering bit t er n es s of J our n a l i s Swift , his ﬁlled with the

e el living utteranc , the trampled spirit, the t a t ion of and deﬁance the dean , varied only f with bursts o ironical philosophy . The history o f Ireland in the forties has come down to u s in a blur of broken enthusiasm and disheartened battlement . The Young Ire land movement had dissipated itself with the

20 THE IRISH ISSUE

swelled with his audiences . He wa s one of those who had striven to add some real fuel to ’ the wind which O C onn ell thought was s uﬂi cient to keep the smoking embers of nation ff hood in a blaze . He di ered a good deal from ’ O C on n ell as t o how the liberation of Ireland should be achieved . Mitchel thought only of ’ O C onn ell liberty . not unnaturally thought t of the Libera or, as he was called . The youth of Ireland were swayed between repeal and revolution . It was the perennial Irish strife between the theorists of moral force and “ the abettors of physical force . Tell me not of ’ ’ ” O C onn ell s s on , thundered the author of the “ J a i l J our n a l ' his father begat him in moral force and in patience and perseverance his mother conceived him ' ” Mitchel possessed that gift of the terrible phrase which has always played havoc with Irish parties . When this ’ same s on of O C onnell visited Paris in 184 8 and made some mild depreciation of the blood shed at the barricades , out spake Mitchel in the Uni ted I ri s hma n

a a a W di l From midst the s cred gr ves , here the sol ers of iberty sleep gloriously in their bloody shrouds a nd the hymn s of vic a re a n a a n a n a a n a n n tory ch ted by liber ted tio , wh t cr ve c ti g ’ drivel is this born e to our ea rs ' It wa s not in Irela nd s na me ’ a S n n a n a a n a a an hat th t he e t rou d mo g the P risi s de d m s , a. posthumous beggin g box ' CENTENARY OF JOHN MITCHEL 21 From his prison cell he wrote a passage of t he unique strength on old man himself , that Irish writers dare not quote

D a n n a a n d an man Poor old wo derful , mighty , jovi l me old with silver ton gue a n d smi le of witchery a n d hea rt of melting ruth ' lyin g ton gue ' smile of trea chery ' hea rt of unfa thoma ble fra ud ' Wha t a roya l yet vulga r soul ' with the keen eye an d n a n a a n a a pote t swoop of ge erous e gle of C ir Tu l , with the b se servility of a houn d a nd the cold cruelty of a spider ' Thi n k hi s n a n of speech for Joh M gee , the most powerful fore sic a chievemen t sin ce before Demosthenes a n d then thi nk of the a n d a a a n d a a a n gorgeous goss mer theory of mor l pe ceful git tio . And a one ha s a ll a n d a n can fter thought of this more , wh t the a ma n s a y ' wha t but pra y tha t Irish ea rth m a y lie light on ’ ’ O C onn ell s brea st a n d tha t the good God who kn ew how to crea te so won drous a crea tur e may ha ve mercy on his soul

Mitchel was unafraid to write strong stuff . ’ “ He believed that O C onn ell led the Irish all ” for wrong forty years , that they had followed him into the wilderness of agitation after agi t a t i n o , mistaking in their simplicity every oasis

' for the Promised Land . Rich and sparkling oratory was their manna . And the govern ment watched , knowing that intoxication with words or with wine must be the prelude to a fall . Within a few years , indeed , there happed a fall such as few could have imagined , a fall in the population by two millions . After the happy hurrahing came the grea t famine , a I story that is beyond the function of words . t 22 THE IRISH ISSUE

changed Irish history and , more serious still , it changed Irish character . Mitchel made the gruesome discovery that it changed even the Irish soil :

a n n n a s a n ot Hum bo es co sidered merely phosph te of lime , n n n a s a n n cou ti g the bo es of f mi hed dogs , to the mou t of ﬁftee n a n n n ot hu dred thous d perfect skeleto s , most of them buried i a a n deep but jud ciously sc ttered, with slight coveri g of mould n a s n a n a a n d or eve top dressi g , must h ve co sider bly mellowed fa tten ed the soil of Irela nd withi n twelve months .

The plight of the people wa s pitiful . Their enemies told them it was their own fault for agitating and they must wait . Their friends told them it was the fault of the government and they must wait . They waited , but famine ff and fever waited not . O icial stupidity slew thousands , where the potato blight slew its hundreds . Relief in burlesque was introduced . Crowds were employed in uprooting hills and burying the d' bris in carefully p repared pits . Irish corn was exported and Indian meal fetched from the ends of the earth to take its

of s u place . The Archbishop Canterbury g gested as a remedy a day of national prayer and fasting, which was certainly practicable . “ The V iceroy at the time condemned intra ” ’ mural interments a s unsanitary . Mitchel s CENTENARY OF JOHN MITCHEL ' 28

“ sarcasm was instant . An d you starveling people of Ireland , where do you bury your dead ' For twelve months you have enjoyed the full beneﬁts of extra -mural interment and in the open air , too Of the famine he left a weird but realistic e description , which deserves lit rary remem brance :

in a n in Go where you would , the he rt of the tow or the on un a n on a n wa s suburb , the mo t i side , the level pl i , there

n s a n d a a - the still es he vy p ll like feel of the cha mber of dea th . Y u in n a l n o a a n . stood the prese ce of dre d , si e t, v st dissolutio

n n w n Y u w n w r An unsee rui a s creepi g a roun d you . o s a o a a n o n a n a wa r n n o a n of cl sses , ope j iss ry of foreig ers , hum

a n n . You n ge cy of destructio could weep , but the risi g curse n i n n di ed un spoke with your hea rt like a profa n ity . Huma n n n n n pa ssion there wa s o e but i huma a d un ea rthly quiet . Chi n n a on n a ldre met you toili g he vily sto e he ps, but their n n n a n d a a an d bur i g eyes were se seless , their f ces cr mped

a z n n m en . a n we e ed like stu ted old G gs worked , but without a a a a l a murmur or whistle or l ugh, ghostly ike voiceless sh d

n an ha d a a n . ows to the eye . Eve wom hood ce sed to be wom ly a ir a n o a n d a n d The birds of the c rolled more , the crow the

a n r a n n . ai r ve d opped de d upo the wi g The very dogs , h rless with the hea d down a n d the vertebrae of the ba ck protrudin g a s a w n a e on a like of bo e , gl r d you from the ditchside with

wolﬁs h a a n d n n a a n a n d a dl . vid eye , the slu k w y scowli g cow r y Na a n n a n a y , the sky of he ve , the blue mou t i s , the still l ke,

hi n fa r a a a n ot a s n . B e stretc g w y westw rd , looked their wo t n a n d a a n a n a f twee them you rose up ste mi g go y, ﬁlm of su fer

i n a n d . a s g , impervious dim It seemed though the soul of a n wa s a n a n d n a nd a a n n a n d the l d f i t dyi g , th t the f i t ess the n dea th ha d crept into a ll thin gs of hea ven a d ea rth . 24 THE IRISH ISSUE

This was a sombre V ignette of an event which Lord Brougham deplored as “ surpassing any

in of on thing the pages Thucydides , the canvas ”

of . of Poussin , in the dismal chant Dante During the short run of his paper he literally s et the currents and ideals of Irish nationalism as they were to move Irishmen until the rise of

Sinn Fein . His appreciation of the land ques tion was succinct :

in n Lan d in Irelan d is life . Just the proportio that our n a n on i n people co trive to keep or to g i some foothold the soil , n n n n tha t proportio exa ctly they will live a d ot die . Irela d for the Irish mea n s prima rily a n d ma inly n ot Irishmen for Irish f a n n x n n a nd o ﬁces , it me s Irishme ﬁ ed upo Irish grou d grow

in n an in a n . g there, occupyi g the isl d like trees livi g forest

While the phrases of his white - heat hate have passed into a coinage , which is current to this m day , it ust not be forgotten that he had a constructive programme and that he urged Na t ion a lis t o ut of unity with the Ulster , which his own soul had been digged , and even with the people as distinct from the government of

England . It is true he issued that terrible of saying that , if he could , he would pour coals

on ﬁre the heads of the enemies of his country , a saying that is recorded on a public monu ment in Cork . It was true he avenged himself CENTENARY OF JOHN MITCHEL 25 when carried from penal station to penal sta

tion , from Bermuda to the Cape , from the ’ V a n D iem en s Cape to Land , by saying that on British felony the sun never s et ' T rue that he ﬁercely prayed that whatever disgrace Eng lish law might inﬂict upon him it might remain upon his head and upon the head of his chil

dren , but his hatred of England was exceeded by his love of Ireland . Of that love of Ireland J a i l J ou n there are pathetic instances in the r a l, as when he wrote from Bermuda :

Well known to me by d a y a n d by n ight a r e the voices of n d a a an a n a n n n a n . Irel d ' wi ds w ters , the f ces of her cie t mou t i s a al l n a n a n I see it, I he r it , for by the wo drous power of im gi tio , n n n in an i formed by stro g love , I do i deed live more truly Irel d

tha n on these unblessed ro cks .

And no one wrote more pitifully of the Irish dispersion than Mitchel , as he found himself on one of the very convict ships

T n men a a n n hun hey were bor , these to herit ge of u que ched a n n n an n ger, mo gst the teemi g ple ty of their mother l d , hu ted n x a a ll on a like o ious be sts from shelter her hospit ble bosom, dr iven to sta y their gn a win g hun ger en emy with wha t certa in An d n respecta ble men call their property . so ow they a re a n n a n n tr versi g the deep u der b yo et poi ts , to be shot out like on a a n a n an d rubbish b re foreig str d , told to seek their for tun e there a mongst a people whose very la ngua ge they kn ow a n a s w not . They h rdly k ow wh t troops of fell foe , ith quivers of are n n n a nd s full a rrows , hu ti g for their you g souls bodie , 26 THE IRISH ISSUE they ha rdly know a nd so much the more pity for them they i n n n n hardly feel it . But poor fra il huts o ma y a Irish hill a a nd a n d a side , their f thers mothers dwell with poverty l bor a n d sorrow a n d mourn for their lost children with a mourn in g tha t will kn ow n o comfort till they a r e ga thered to their people n n n t in the cha pel ya rd . For i deed these co vict boys were o o n a a n b r of the rock or the o ktree , hum mothers bore them,

an a in a a n d a . s g them sleep lowly cr dles , wept pr yed for them

But they were not only peasants whom h e met in the felon ﬁeld . If Mitchel had been the ’ of O B rien Robespierre the movement , Smith had been reckoned an Irish Lafayette . He had been sentenced to death and then to penal s er vit u d e for f , the law made no di ference between

Gael and Gall , between republican and aristo cr a t . Mitchel met him in the Antipodes and made some amends for the ungenerous mirth of Thackeray in a pass age which will outlive ’ even the statue which Ireland gave O B ri en in Dublin

I t s a d n n n hr in is to look upo this oblest of Irishme , t ust ’ a r n n a n a here mong the offscou i gs of E gl d s j ils , with his home a a nd n an d hi s a a n desol ted , his hopes rui ed , defe ted life f lli g

n a n d a . a a e h a s i to the sere yellow le f He is fifty ye rs of g , yet a ll the high a nd in tense plea sure of youth in these ma jestic hil a n d n n a n d a n ls woods , softe ed i deed m de pe sive by sorrow n a a a d ha un ted by the ghosts of buried hopes . He is r re a n d n a ma n a nn oble sight to see , who c ot be crushed , bowed or n ca n an on own a a n a ll broke , who st d firm his feet g i st the and r uffia nl tumult tempest of this y world , with his bold brow

28 THE IRISH ISSUE allowed themselves to be sidetracked from their old ideals of liberty into religious a n t ipa thy :

n n a a ' How much of the li e do you , who we ve it, get to we r n a n d a How much of the cor do you , who sow re p it, get to ea t ' Where does it go ' Who ca t s a n d wea rs wha t you ma ke ' Ah ' perha ps it is the Pope of Rome who swin dl es you in this fa shi on ' The Pope we kn ow is the M a n of Sin a nd n a nd all a n no the Mystery of I iquity th t, but he bri gs ejectmen ts in Ireland '

Against the strong and the oppressor Mitch ’ el s fearless pen was wielded in the day of Ire land ’ s greatest need and when her voice was hi hushed s rose in crescendo on her behalf . Carlyle wrote few passages s o telling as this attack on the viceregal festivities

I n the light of tha t mock thron e on the hill over the Liffey V n ow ll z n mi there ibra te a the di e ed a to es of ha ppy Irela n d . li n a a n l n an a G tteri g C pt i s , si vered Lieute ts , ep uletted puppy in a a n d a a n d a n a n ism every gr de ph se f shio , wigged deb seme t - fresh from a public han gin g a nd gown ed Sim ony ﬂock a roun d “ ” n n n delighted a t the ﬂouris hi g co ditio of the sta te . No d a n o a a n a whisper of e th , sh dow of desol tio bre ks over the crowd a nd so begin s a thi rd yea r of uninterrupted n fa mi e .

Nevertheless he never allowed himself to lose sight of the proper relations which should sub sist between England and Ireland under proper CENTENARY OF JOHN MITCHEL 29

conditions . Crying o ff all hatred between the of t wo s u working people the countries , he g gested with profound political philosophy

Alrea dy the two lon g-slumberin g n a tion s ha ve recognis ed

ea ch other a n d seen where their help lies . Why ma y n ot a n ll a n n a n d ﬁn n n a i ce be the there struck , strictly de i g our commo purposes a n d poin tin g out where our road s diverge a n d a t wha t poin t the British a n d Irish n a tions a re to wen d their severa l a a n in a and ﬁ own ro ds , p rti g pe ce , if it be possible , ful l their n desti ies in the comin g a ges .

If it be possible has become not only a

- local but an international question to day . It was the testament Mitchel left with Ireland , for after his escape from pen a li s m he was hence forth to be absorbed in the wider problems of

the world . As he drew near to the coasts of free America , rumours of wars involving Eng

1 land with Russ a reached him , and he wrote “ th Czar , I bless thee , I kiss the hem of y

garment , I drink to thy health and longevity . ” u s 0 ' Give war in our time , Lord They were s trange words for a Republican preparing for

American citizenship to utter , but Mitchel was an Irish Republi can ' His petition for war was fulﬁlled and two of his sons fell in the cause of

the Confederacy . He could not help being on o the losing side . After the Civil War he to k up the cause of France as ﬁercely as he had 3 0 THE IRISH ISSUE upheld that of Ireland and who of his old ene mies would hold him wrong to - day ' From New York in the I r i s h Ci ti zen he sounded the top note of anger and warning in 1870

a a n a n a n a n d z a an We t ke p rt i st tly , fr kly e lously for Fr ce . n ha s a Fra n ce ha s here the just ca use . Everyo e who re d the i a n z n in h story of the f lse House of Hohe oller , whether the a a a n a a n w a p ges of their p rtis C rlyle or y here else , must h ve got a n idea of the in sa tia ble a mbition a n d utterly despera te 0 a l na b trea chery of tha t roya l house . N f mi y of professio l ur la rs a a a n n ur a s on ha s g , the burgl r f ther tr i i g up the b gl r , ever been so un relen tin gly ben t upon livin g on the plun der of the a n d n a n r a ll a nd others, comi g by th t plu der th ough possible n a a and n as n co ceiv ble lies, fr uds viole ce this brood of Hohe z n oller .

As far back as 18 66 he had foreseen and accurately deﬁned the idea of Pan - Germanism : The idea that the Teutonic nationality is to be uniﬁed and bound together in on e mighty mass s o as to become predominant and irres is ” tible in Europe . The statesmen of Anglo -Saxondom would have saved themselves a great deal of trouble if they had studied Mitchel ’ s writings in those

- ff n far o days . It was o t any Celtic seership s o much as downright Republican rage which led him to proclaim in 187O

The Prussia n policy is to prepa re very a ctively in secret n a a n a f n i for some u justiﬁ ble ggressio , to fect frie dsh p till the CENTENARY OF JOHN MITCHEL 8 1

a n mi a a n d n in n on a n l st mome t, to employ lit ry e g eeri g spies n a a f n n n a n d n n n imme se sc le, to fect i oce ce u co scious ess , if ta xed with these tricks a n d a t la st when the momen t ha s

a in i n . rrived , to burst with overwhelm g force

It was nearly ﬁfty years later before the rest of the English- speaking world began very s ol em n ly to discover and disinter the Prussian policy as a sudden and woful plot against man kind . How brilliant Mitchel could be in his political diagnosis i s shown in the most a c curate prediction perhaps ever made . In the

I r i s h i ti zen 1 1870 C for October , , he wrote

’ nn n n n a ha s o wn Prussia ca ot be E gla d s frie d . Prussi her n n O n e of a r a a a spira tion s a d a mbitio s . them is to be g e t m rif a a a a n d time power , or r ther the gre t m ritime power of Europe, n n in ca n a n a a othi g the future be more sure th th t Prussi , if successful ﬁn a lly in thi s struggle with Fra n ce will ta ke Bel n hr n n a gium a d t ea te from A twerp the mouth of the Th mes .

But neither in his own countr y or in a ny other country was John Mitchel reckoned a ' prophet . Patriot and visionary Yes . But how clear- sighted he was he could not have known himself . In America he planted the philosophy of

Fenianism , which sprang up to distort and occasionally convulse Anglo - American relations until the approach of home rule induced the dawn of constitutionalism and the dream of 3 2 THE IRISH ISSUE

reconciliation , both of which he had no less ’ foreseen . Having sowed the dragon s teeth for England in the New World he returned to take “ h of is rest in Ireland , under the globe silver that hangs between the branches of the laurels ” f in D r om ola n e . He could be indi ferent to his of exclusion from the House Commons , even though his wildest guess into the future would hardly have revealed to him the sight of his grandson accepting the a mend e honor a ble from a suppliant prime minister of England on the steps of the City Hall of New York ' THE MEMORY OF PARNELL

It is now a quarter of a century since Parnell died . During the nineteenth century he was the most meteoric ﬁgure in Irish life , though he had nothing meteoric in himself except a cer tain stoniness . But if there are men of des f o . tiny , Parnell was them Cold , purposeful ,

wa s unrelenting , distrustful , fatalistic , he born ’ at the time of the great famine , in Ireland s

’ h of fa t e own . our , and he perished in his Parnell for about ten years was the history

n r of Ireland . He was neither a Celt o an ora tor nor a Catholic . Like Dean Swift , he was an Anglo- Irishman driven by his savage in dig nation into revolt . He was brought up in the semi- feudal posit ion of the class to whom it was a duty rather to spend than defend the f resources o their country . At the University of Cambridge he imbibed an interest in higher mathematics and a certain ability for cricket . Unfortunately he was rusticated as the result of a street row . Tradition used to point out a 3 3 3 4 THE IRISH ISSUE

spot in Station Road , where the Saxon insulted him as he brooded over the wrongs of Ireland and was rolled in the dust . As a matter of of fact , he had not begun to think as yet any rights or wrongs in connection with Ireland . He was too proud t o return to residence and forfeited his chance of a degree . In virtue of his squiredom he entered the militia and b e f f came high sheri f o Wicklow . He only became a Nationalist quietly and deliberately . When three honest conspirators were hung in Manchester for the accidental

of death a policeman , the determination was precipitated in his mind . In an hour pregnant with issue he chose the up - hill task of marshal ling the broken forces of Irish democracy

n - against his ow all powerful class . He was

for unsuccessful when he stood Dublin , but was elected for Meath . His election followed a curious succession . John Mitchel had returned

t o home take his seat in Parliament , but was disqualiﬁed as a felon and died soon after . John Martin caught cold at his funeral and

t oo . . died , Parnell succeeded to his seat Parnell entered Parliament with no reputa f tion save for good looks and ine ﬁcient speech . The Parliament that he entered was still a

- little changed pillar of the Constitution , as far

3 6 THE IRISH ISSUE

respectable with the despicable . The type , which from all time has been intelligent enough

- to realise what was just , but small minded enough to prefer what was profitable . It was said with a bitter truth that Pilate was a Whig . But the Irish leader was a genuine and warm hearted man . Isaac Butt had sacrificed a great legal career in order to rally the country to a ’ O D n constitutional policy . Though he had o “ ” nell blood and possessed a Donegal temper, he was a curious compromise In many ways . He was a Protestant and yet he wore Catholic scapulars . He loved and reverenced the law, but he loved and defended the Fenians . He ’ ’ O C on nell s had been a Unionist orator in time, but he invented home rule . For some years he had marshalled a pacific party at West e minster, wher every proposed amelioration fell between the two dominant parties of tra dition . His complacent failure had disheart ened the Irish and made Parnell ’ s leadership the more necessary . Butt was the first to “ recognise that Parnell would prove an ugly ” f r customer o the Saxon . By a coincidence the night Parnell took his seat Mr . Biggar endeavoured to retard coercion for by speaking four consecutive hours . This was regarded a s against all the r ules of the THE MEMORY OF PARNELL 3 7

game , but it gave Parnell an idea of the policy , which is called Obstruction by those who are

wh o obstructed , and the active policy by those are primarily active . Biggar experimented , but Parnell took out its patent . The rules were Simple and four in number . To work in government time . To aid anybody to spend government time . Whenever a bill was sighted to block it . Whenever a raw was noticed to rub it . Parnell settled down to play the gentlemanly

- game of politics remorselessly . The well bred House stared and protested in vain as two men s et out to thwart and menace the business of s ix hundred . If the government was unwilling t to a tend to Irish business , the Irish members paid unwelcome attention to government bus i ness . n Parnell faced the English like a Englishman . He showed himself more of a tenacious British

ll - bu dog than a long winded Irish wolfhound . i n . He outdid them _ political cynicism He

outbowed them in frigid courtesy . He knew

exactly how far he could go . He could gauge the temper of the House to the clause and t o i t o the minute . His band ncrea s ed from ﬁve in thi rty . Their rough apprenticeship wa s

- spired by his master personality . 3 8 THE IRISH ISSUE

During bitter years they fought the ba ttle f of democracy against friend and oe . They

n o - had pity for the well meaning Butt , whom

- they turned down broken hearted t o his grave .

They spoke in season and out of season . They

n or n ot t o spoke neither in vanity in vain , elicit t applause but deliberately o rouse indignation . Parnell instructed them to learn the laws of the

House by breaking them . To the science of perpetual motion they added that of un ceasing speech . They learnt to resist equally of the dictates fear and bullying , the advances f o ﬂattery and blandishment . Day and night

on they relieved each other the political fence , where neither party could touch them . At last the House surrendered and the Irish question became a serious legacy from on e ministry to

I r another . Hitherto the ish attack had been innocuous and the Irish member went clad ’ “ with derision . Parnell s policy was n ot rec ” on cilia t i on an d but retaliation , Parnellism began to loom as a force requiring calculation

n in political arithmetic . In o e stormy decade he had faced the system of genteel fr aud and collusion as pr actised under the cloak of the Mother of Parliaments and reduced her to the pla in er f s pea kin g and more democratic creature of - h t o day . Through the breac which Parnell THE MEMORY OF PARNELL 3 9 hewed in her walls entered not only the Irish party but later the English Labour party as well . n Parnell did ot spare his followers or himself . Under the strife and strain his character began

t o of to harden a texture steel and marble , but ,

or like steel marble in their plastic shape , he had to pass through an ordeal as ﬁerce as ﬁre . Justin Mc Ca r thy describes one of his appear auces in later years

a a ﬁ n no a a n n o Appe red is tti g word to use, for pp ritio , ghost from the gra ve ever looked more sta rtlin g a mon g livin g men a a a a a , the gh stly f ce, the w sted form , the gl ssy eyes gle m in n - a n l s u ers ti g , looki g like the terrible corpse c dles of We sh p

n . n in n in tio If ever dea th sho e a fa ce it sho e tha t .

What were his means and ways ' His state craft consisted in ﬁtting the axe head of physi cal force to the handle of moral suasion after each policy had apparently failed separately .

Out of both he forged his weapon . In West

h e a minster was political reformer, but the eyes and sometimes the sympathy of the

— - American Clan na Gael were with him . Dav itt says the extremists in Ireland opposed him , while those in America secretly favoured him . How dangerous a game he played wa s shown in the fact that after the Phoenix Park mur 4 0 THE IRISH ISSUE

ders , which he denounced , he needed police protection from both English and Ir ish parti

n ot sans . His game was deep but desperate .

He played politics as he played chess . Queen ,

bishops , castle , pawns were all on his Irish

board .

The secret of his rule was never clear . His

of devoted followers spoke his iron hand , but

few of them had ever felt it . He avoided rather

than punished them . He ruled by mystery

more than by mastery . He fascinated rather than forced the Celtic people into regarding n him a s their indispensable leader . In o e army

he arrayed priest and peasant , dynamiter and

devotee . His rank and ﬁle contained both ’ n lli Fenian and O C on e t e . He knew exactly

o how far he could g . Between arms and sub n mission there seemed t o be o alternative . An unwise agitator would have appealed to vio

lence t o back his arguments . Parnell forbade violence but also any dealing with agent or

bailiff . He added the word boycotting to

- European dictionaries . By a master stroke he revived mediaeval excommunication to serve

“ ' H modern democracy . e deﬁed the law by keeping within the letter and outraging the

spirit . He soon found himself face to face with THE MEMORY OF PARNELL 4 1

’ Gladstone and Forster, Gladstone s chief sec r et a ry . Gladstone described Parnell as stand “ ing between the living and the dead , not like ” Aaron to stay but to spread the plague . Par

m a s uera d nell replied , calling Gladstone a q — Ing knight errant , ready to champion the rights ” of every nation but Ireland . Gladstone had no better repartee except to send Parnell to gaol . Forster received from Parnell the undy “ ” ing epithet of Buckshot, which he had or dered the troops to use instead of bullets when

ﬁring on the unarmed crowd . Forster was a

Quaker philanthropist let loose on Ireland , who — believed that to spare coercl on was t o spoil the nation . Coercion not unnaturally produced the very crimes it was expected to suppress . Parnell was placed in Kilmainham without h . d t e trial When his strong hand was remove , chariot of Ireland was dragged under the storm . The countryside hailed outrages and the land

of lords replied with a rain evictions . Out of the chaos Parnell managed t o wrest the Kil mainham Treaty . He was willing to slow down the agitation , but his price was the aban d n men o t Of Forster and of the rents in arrears . It was a compromise which the r eva lution is t s t regretted , but Parnell was always ready o t o accept a step constitutionalism . He told 42 THE IRISH ISSUE Davitt that prison solitude would drive him mad . He had felt strong enough to negotiate the treaty without consulting any others . He knew , much as he disliked prison , that it con

ﬁrmed power extraordinary upon him . In his pregnant way he remarked that his release lay with the people , and by this time they had learnt to take him at his word . They made the rule of the country impossible and the gov ern m en t had no choice . Had Parnell remained in prison , their surrender would have been

n ot even more complete , but Parnell did enjoy captivity as his followers did . He felt it as an affront to his dignity . He never forgave

Gladstone , whom he privately called the Grand d Old S pi er . He left Kilmainham with the Irish settle on e ment at hand , but in insane hour all was ’ undone . Forster s successor arrived as an emissary of peace and was murdered by the

Invincibles in the Phoenix Park . The killing of Cavendish was accidental t o the stabbing of

- the . Under Secretary Burke . In the political

n t sense Parnell was o less stabbed in the back . He made the offer t o Gladstone to abandon politics entirely rather than impede the com ing reforms .

The tragedy changed Irish history . Though

44 THE IRISH ISSUE venson has described in The Dyn a mi ter how “ Parnell Sits before posterity silent, Mr . For ’ ” s t er s appeal echoing down the centuries .

r r Poste ity , however , has lea nt the reason of that silence more eloquent than Forster ’ s phil f o . ippi c . It was the silence contempt When of later he did speak , with the Prince Wales and Cardinal Manning in the gallery , it was t o refuse t o consider himself amenable to E n g To lish opinion . the Irish only would he answer and by them he wa s prepared to stand o r fall . In Ireland he was justiﬁed enthusiastically and he began t o be known a s the uncrowned ” king , a title which he strangely shares with

s o Confucius . Never was a politician feared or m hated , or watched by ore vigilant enemies . V ested interests , cabinets , newspapers , all the powers of this world conspir ed to defeat this wh o his solitary man , continued way extorting the liberties of Ireland . Only one power there wa s In Ireland greater than his or able to crush him , but that was no power temporal .

Supporters and lieutenants he had in legion , but he had realised early that it is sometimes easier to meet one ’ s enemies than to escape ’ from one s friends . He had also discovered that a public man need n ot have enemies um THE MEMORY OF PARNELL 4 5

i ' h less he deigns t o n ot ce t em . Bosom friends he had none . His followers found themselves subject to an inﬂuence rather than to a disci He pline . treated them with such aloofness that at times the Irish whips ” had to dis cover from others when he intended to speak . He often failed to take part in divisions to which members had been fetched by telegram in his name . For the ﬁrst time the govern

‘ ment found thems elves dealing with a foreign power . He always bargained on the supposi tion that he had nothing t o give and everything

old to gain . Several ministers grew and grey

n - doing business on such o e sided terms . Friend a nd foe he confronted with a pliant impen ei

t ra b ilit . y In dealing with a crisis , he shared with all successful generals and ﬁremen the gift of instant realisation . He was fortunate n in being enrolled under o party tradition , least of all his own . He allowed his party to discuss a political matter , but he would sud d nl e y appe ar and make a decisive utterance . He used to say Washington would be a highly unpopular leader in Ireland . His style of speech in the House was terse and pointed . Gladstone said he was able to do h what all speakers are supposed to , but whic

d o t o few really , say what they mean say . 4 6 THE IRISH ISSUE

He also had the rarer power, which was not ’ of among Gladstone s gifts , saying as little as he started ou t to s a y . Concentration stood him in the place of oratory . He wasted no time on perorations . His campaign statements combined the brevity of cablegrams with some

f f . o the ﬁre o a minor prophet . His statement “ that no man has the right t o s e t the bounds ” of on e of a nation was these , and it is written in bronze across his granite statue in Dublin t - o day . As a free - lance he would have proved for mid a b le , but as the leader of eighty he was a deciding factor . The new franchise had given c him the entry into Ulster . With the balan e of power in his hand he tempted the i r r epr oa ch able Tories and they fell, but it was the Lib l era s who fell from Ofﬁce . If he put his ene

i for m es into power , it was the same reason that a poor man stuffs a br oken window with

n ot t o t o rags , so much let the light in as keep the cold out . The Tories being only human accepted the new Situation . There is a pro ’ phet ic passage in Swift s J our n a l concerning

Thomas Parnell , his poetic ancestor , which is “ worth quoting : Oxford passed through the cr owd of his suitor s t o welcome Parnell when h ” h e deserted the Whigs . Tory leaders did t e THE MEMORY OF PARNELL 4 7

same in the nineteenth century . Salisbury made an academic defence of boycotting . Churchill denounced the application of coer cion to a sensitive people . Lord Carnarvon hinted at home rule during an interview with

Parnell in an empty house .

On the other hand , the Liberals awaited the

t o ﬁrst chance make terms , but Parnell insisted on an unconditional surrender t o home rule .

There was a grim pause and Gladstone , after e due d liberation , announced himself a Home

Ruler . The two mightiest swordsmen in the parliamentary duel had met . Parnell did n ot

or of possess the eloquence learning the other , f n but he had weapons o his ow . His dogged will p ower had made the Tories set the pace for Gladstone . In relation to Gladstone he ’ had repeated St . Paul s achievement and con ’ verted his gaoler . It was Parnell s supreme success in politics . He had made home rule inevitable .

The ﬁrst Home R ule Bill was defeated . The Tories returned to ofﬁce and celebrated the ’ Queen s Jubilee with a Coercion Act in Ireland . e The Led away by the general exuberanc , Ti mes published letter s purporting to connect

Parnell with the Phoenix Park murders . Par d ot nell declined to prosecute , for he di n care 4 8 THE IRISH ISSUE

to trust his reputation to an English jury . He despised the press but the press did not despise him . With a forged letter they had stabbed the man they feared . A royal commission was appointed by his political enemies , who sifted the lives of the Irish members as well as the whole Irish move

of ment as though in the vice an Inquisition .

But the plot recoiled , for the letters proved forgeries and the forger committed suicide . Before the acquitting board of judges Parnell s a t as unmoved ind eed as though they had found him guilty ' To their verdict he wa s s o indifferent that it was with difﬁculty that his counsel could induce him always to attend . But the political and artistic world ﬂocked to witness the drama . Some sketches from Miss ’ l r W el o d s Memories a re worth quoting . Of Piggott the forger

S a a ' a a a h ll I ever forget his f ce Desp ir, grim, wful desp ir n n h d ha d settled dow upo it . A livid hue a oversprea d every a n on a n a fe ture , the vei s the forehe d were swolle lmost to

burstin g a nd the nostrils rose a n d fell with every respira tion . n f Whe he tried to spea k he could with di ﬁculty a rticula te .

. a n ha d a n a a a a na . Mr P r ell wo derful f ce , the f ce of f tic T wa s a a a a n n a n d here dre my be uty , p thos , mi gled stre gth wea kn es s in wa s a a n n i n a a n it , there lso u derly g persu sive mel ’

chol . And d . a a m y he looke ill His very t ll sp re for drooped , THE MEMORY OF PARNELL 4 9 while n ervous a gita tion wa s visible in a va riety of spa smodic n n wa s a wa s n moveme ts , i deed it so obvious th t he sufferi g physica lly a s well a s men ta lly tha t the presidi ng judge more “

a n n a n dl a r e a d . a n a th o ce s id ki y , If you f tigue , Mr P r ell , pr y ” ll ” a . a n not a t a l Par be se ted I th k your Lordship , , rep ied in n hi n ha d a a a . ell, but he to gr sp the r il fro t to ste dy mself

He took no favours .

- Another interested witness was Burne Jones . As the sunlight for a while fell on Parnell ’ s haggard and bearded face he could not help noting to Meredith that he had seen a wonder ful m odel for the judgment scene enacted once before Pontius Pilate . The summing of the commission was made mn as conde atory of the Irish party as possible , , but the main accusation against Parnell was is held false . It was as great a triumph as per mi t t ed to a statesman once in his lifetime . Vi va t Rex ' From Ireland arose but one cry ,

When he entered the House of Commons , all parties rose from their seats to atone for the t ha d terrible wrong tha been done to him , all

except Lord Hartington , the brother of the V ictim of the Phoenix Park . It was an amaz

a ckn owle d ing s cene , but Parnell made no g

ment of the ovation . Sardonically he told Mr . Harrington that he knew they would have pre

ferred to ﬁnd him guilty . 50 THE IRISH ISSUE

’ It was Parnell s apotheosis . Up to that time none had done battle with him and come

away unscathed . From behind his prison bars

he had broken Forster . He had converted

. The Gladstone He had pinned Carnarvon .

Ti mes lay in rags . The Tories could only

groan in impotence . Every political party a c

. s o u n s us knowledged him as a master Even ,

Who pect ed ruin lay in his path . could have foreseen the utter and blighting calamity which awaited him s o instantly ' ’ In a grey hour for Ireland C a pt a In O Shea i instituted a d vorce suit , naming Parnell . Why it wa s brought then has never been ex O ’ Sh plained , for Parnell and ea had had the t ’ h matter ou some years before . O S ea had

“ not been ignorant , but he had accepted the Galway seat from Parnell in the teeth of the

Irish party . Sir George Lewis pressed him t o

defend the suit, as he believed collusion could

easily be proved . Parnell assented , but re turned the next day to say that his ﬁrst duty

must be t o the lady . There was no legal de

fence , though there might have been . Of

moral defence there could be none . Balzac ’ says that love is the fool s on e chance t o rise

superior to himself . Unfortunately it is also ’ the great man s only loophole t o lower himself .

52 THE IRISH ISSUE

n o e of deposition and eventually of death . Parnell was offered good terms but he refused them . Word for his destruction was ﬁrst

his whispered from England , but it was fellow h countrymen w o carried it out . It is idle to pretend that Gladstone was un ’ willing to see Parnell s fall , as soon as he real ised that his own politics were liable to be compromised . What he never expected was that he would be overthrown by his own party . It must have soothed many an old sore of his ’ wi to ﬁnd he had dictated Parnell s doom . S n his burne had once sung , Parnell spurs Glad ” old stone well , and doubtless the man remem bered past galling . Parnell was girded with his foes . All but a handful of his party for sook him . The church swelled his disaster . Even the students in Maynooth turned his photographs to the wall . The parochial clergy followed Gladstone ’ s political lead better than ’ h . W en they had followed the Pope s A Rome had forbidden the tribute subscribed in favour “ of the chief by a brief Qua lecum que de Par ” nellio , the faithful to whom it was addressed turned Peter ’ s pence for that year into Par ’ nell s pounds .

The church has a long memory , and Par ’ nell s occasional trips into red radicalism had THE MEMORY OF PARNELL 53

been noted . With some of his followers he for B r a dla u h had voted the blasphemous g , and to please Dilke and Chamberlain he had used Irish votes to block the body ' of the

prince imperial from Westminster Abbey .

The p clergy refused to condone a private fault

in a public man . Criticism is unadjustable . The priests thought they were right and Par w

n ell did not think he was wrong . Had he had any knowledge of the old books of Ireland he might have remembered a destruction of roy

alty such as his , when the Celtic saints lay

Tara desolate . As they rang their bells and

chanted their curses , the unhappy King Der mot cried out bitterly

Woe to hi m t ha t to the Clergy of the Churches sheweth a n n v n ﬁght , woe to him th t would co te d with them , gi i g cut

for out .

But he had little knowledge of Irish books

or poets . Even Moore he had quoted but

n . once , and then wro g Only in the religious orders were any clerical t to suppor ers of Parnell be found , and they

gave their help by stealth . Ireland split into

warring factions , leaving enough Parnellites to r e put up a ﬁerce but losing ﬁght . Ulster

mained aloof and triumphant , privately sym 54 THE IRISH ISSUE

p a this mg with Parnell . When he saw that his star of destiny was sinking he became careless . Travelling to and fr o between England and

Ireland , he fought election after election . He endangered his health and ate away his heart . In bitterness he told his deserting followers to

t o sell him , if they must , but sell him for a price . But angry Celts cannot see clear enough to for drive bargains and they sold him nought . The Scotch at least had cleared a historical groat when they sold their Charles Stewart to f the ancestors o these same Puritans . In Octo 189 1 ber, , the month he always associated with his destiny , he returned to England and died in the arms of the woman he loved . To make her his wife he had laid down both life and

“ old kingdom . The late Lord Morris , a grim

Catholic Unionist , remarked that since Joan

Mr s . of Arc , Parnell was the only woman who had ever saved her country .

~ o h os 1s There followed a gloomy a p t e . A faithful few brought back his body acros s the

Irish Sea . There was a dramatic landing in

Ireland , as mournful angry men tore the outer fﬁ casing of his co n to pieces for relics . He lay in state in the City Hall of Dublin and wa s borne by an immense wailing crowd to the f Catholic Valhalla o Glasnevin . They had THE MEMORY OF PARNELL 55

killed him , but they gave him a wonderful

‘ funeral , did the Irish people . Parnell had

of ae perished , to use a phrase the Irish medi val “ v f ” i s s o . t , by the en enomed spittle men t o o When it was late , it was remembered that he was irreplaceable . His name became

his a symbol and a Shibboleth , and statue by m St . Gaudens was later added to the onuments of Dublin . One by one his scattered followers came together with the years and recommenced the ~ warfare in which he had ﬁrst instructed

a them , and by long weary roads came gain of within sight the promised land , to which his s ceptreless hand still pointed from the grave . Parnell ’ s character has remained something of a paradox . Though his heart was ﬁnally torn in twain its secrets were never read . His natural sensitiveness he crushed out in order to present a harder front to the fli es Friend no less complained of his iciness . He could be gracious to supporters and dependents , when he wished , but his uneasy leadership forbade 1885 u s him to be overkind or intimate . In J tin Mc C a r thy wrote of him “ ’ I don t know how it is , but he has in his manners as a host the sweetness of a woman as well as the strength of a curiously cold , self ” contained masculine nature . 56 THE IRISH ISSUE

And in the following year : One of our men complained to me of his manner ' said that he was growing terribly dictatorial . The fact is that Parnell is nervously afraid of anything being done just now which might give our enemies the slightest chance of handle against ” him , and he is quite right . He was not Irish enough t o be magnanimous like Butt on the one hand , or treacherous on ’ h O C on n ell the ot er like , but he allowed others to sacriﬁce themselves for him without a word . For some such reason it was that Davitt com plained he could be mean . Two critics have left severe criticisms of Parnell from very — f n di ferent points of view Davitt , an agraria ’ O D on n ll . e revolutionary , and F Hugh , an

- old fashioned Catholic home ruler . Both con d emn ed him in character and policy in the most massive books which have been written on the Irish movement . Yet Parnell lives un scathed in the memory of the race . His love for a woman is pardoned in his hate for Eng land . His love of animals was probably his most

Irish trait . He was once seen t o be more con cerned over the fate of a dog running under a

’ crowd than in the feelings of the said crowd .

Horses he generally preferred to men . He was THE MEMORY OF PARNELL 57

English enough to be without humour . He ’ read Ali ce s Adventur es i n Wond er la n d without

being amused . Occasionally he could chaff a

too serious follower . He used to joke about making Davitt inspector of Irish prisons under ’ O Kell home rule , and the Fenian y head of

the Irish police . During the agonies of the s plit in his party he could chaff Justin Mc H f Carthy on his chances of succession . e a fect ed mystery in all things , partly out of the necessities of his life and partly to retain the

wonder of the Irish people . He wore an oh vion s disguise in the London streets and was fond of disappearing from cabs . His knowl edge of the motives of others was on a par with their ignorance of his “ I wish I knew ’ what Parnell s politics are , said a close fol a lower . He was described as conservative in feeling and as a revolutionary in action .

, Cecil Rhodes called him the most reasonable and sensible man he ever met . He led the most Tory people in Europe and in the name of democracy destroyed the most feudal of

aristocracies . His distrust of the English was

total , but he did not always trust the Irish

either. A superstitious fringe lay under his

fatalism . He was much ups et by the fall of a picture of the Irish party just after the 58 THE IRISH ISSUE

Phoenix Park murders . He detested the colour

green , which he intended one day to change ’ from the national colour . He believed Ireland s

bad luck was due t o it . He could hardly be

God . said t o worship a He never swore , using m only the mildest expressions . Like ost men

h e b elieved of destiny , in Fate in the way that

of e most men thought believ in Providence . In the Middle Ages he would have been an

alchemist . He spent long hours and consider n able moneys O his laboratory . From time to time he extracted minute particles of Wicklow

gold on his estate . When human politics seethed about him he took consolation in his quarries or in sweeping the heavens with his

- telescope . He seems t o have had a vague

— t he imm or belief in star life , but only human f tality he could conceive o was in children . To a race of orators he delivered himself in early years by what sounded like controlled a nd hissings , but later in the shortest most

r f igid of speech . His longer speeches left the “ impression from a grey and sunless day in which everything shows clear but also hard ” and cold . But he had a softer voice which he used when addressing children or animals .

d b e = The i ol of an intensely religious race , he lie ved perhaps in their idol but in little else .

60 THE IRISH ISSUE

and s et a devoted following towards pastures

new . After a short conversation they broke , Parnell claiming that he had got more out of

Churchill than the latter out of him . In the day of his ruin Churchill regretted that he did not possess Parnell ’ s dogged and sinister ” resolution . In the end both were betrayed by their own colleagues and ﬁnally cut down mi in the house of their friends . Whatever s takes they made they paid the price before they died . Both had striven to lead their parties into new paths and both were cas t out to die a lone in madnes s and despair. IV

THE TREASON OF THE REDMONDS

John Redmond succeeded to Parnell ’ s chair

of and fate . The majority Irishmen in Amer ica believe or s a y that the Redmond brothers betrayed Ireland in the ﬁrst and vital stage of the war . That they gratuitously gave Ire land ’ s aid to England and that they got noth

ff for ing for it , not even a sta billet Willie

f r Redmond or an Order of Merit o John . It is felt that they made a political blunder of the ﬁrst magnitude and all but compromised the honour of their country . That Ireland only succeeded in recovering herself by a miracle and her honour by an insurrection , while the Redmonds went their downward way and were appropriately paid f or trusting England . That one of them lies dead in France and the other is politically dead in Ireland . John Redmond ’ s political work has turned to ash and his twenty years of leadership is accounted for nought . No doubt his brother found German steel softer to bear than he ha s 61 62 THE IRISH ISSUE

found Irish reproaches . Betrayed in all his

hopes for Ireland , but serene in conscience , he

awaits nevertheless the judgment of history . Once John was venerated of all men Irish and ’ of D Ar t n an Willie was the idol the race , the a g

of Irish politics . But nations as well as indi vid ua ls must ofttimes kill the thing they love . And for the time being Ireland seems to have

put them both out of mind and out of love . The root of the accusation is that John Red ’ mond made a colossal blunder in oﬂ ering the Irish sword to the allied cause without stop ping to take counsel of his people ﬁrst and without insisting on the immediate delivery of home rule upon its tip . As a nationalist poli t icia n his failure must seem lamentable to all

lovers of a close deal . He had a wonderful ’ chance to bargain . England s ﬁerce and s ud ’ den need was Ireland s miraculous opportunity . More than the word of any other single man ’ in the world , England needed Redmond s word of approval and allegiance to the principle un

rl in . d e y g the war Germany had declared war, implicitly trusting in the information that Ire land was divided from England and divided

against herself . There was only one man in a position to give the Uni ted Kingdom the a p

pea r a n ce of unity in face of war . It was John TREASON OF THE REDMONDS 63

Redmond , and from higher considerations than the mere political he spoke the word whi ch gave Germany the severest jolt that any un ofﬁcia l individual may be said to have given her during the war . He took his chances as every national leader who has come into this war has had to take chances . There was the chance of a long war and there was a chance that all his people would not follow him all the time .

Fate but not honour failed him . He did not betray Ireland in theory or in practice , but he may be said to have betrayed himself , for both English politicians and Irish critics took a d vantage of the side which he s o generously hi bared . It was apparent that he gave s pound of blood and . got nothing for it . He seemed to have failed to perform the ﬁrst duty of a politician in not seizing his advantage . The political opponents of a lifetime would have been at his mercy if he h a d privately bargained for home rule before he made his speech . n Ireland has come to regret and assail his actio .

Only the winds of history , which make havoc of subterfuge and policy , can make plain his position as a statesman and a European . The war has become a severely altruistic war . Nobody dares to ﬁght for sheer conquest

- riﬁc or revenge . Moral principle and self s a c e 64 THE IRISH ISSUE

are the only permissible pivots of action . From this point of view , the point of view from which the participants in the war will be ’ judged , it is better to forego one s rights than of to imperil those others , better to be cheated

t o . than cheat It is not so in politics , but it is so in a war waged for the moralities of the world . The higher that one appraises the of ethics the Allies , the higher one must rate

Redmond . He represents principle undone by facts . Facts have destroyed his political value , but if he no longer represents Irela nd in poli

t o tics , he comes near representing something in national relations , which since the blight of

Machiavelli had been lost to Christendom . And yet it is hard to s ee how he could have acted otherwise . He had always been insist ing that if England gave Ireland home rule, the Irish would help instead of embarrass the

of empire . He was accused saying one thing in Westminster and another thing in America .

a o Yet thirty years g in Chicago he was saying, “ We have given England the most convincing proof that on the concession of liberty we can ” be trusty friends . He and his whole party had been elected and r e - elected without r e pu dia t ion of this promise by their constituents . The Irish had implicitly accepted the saying TREASON OF THE REDMONDS 65 from Redmond ’ s lips and Carson had explicitly ’ ridiculed it to Ulster s huge assent . Whether Redmond was a weak man leaning to the line of least resistance or a strong man exercising that moderation which only strong

For men can , others may decide . the moment a he seemed to have united Irel nd , to have broken the feud between England and Ireland and to have played a successful game in the open . The hour of penetrating and unrelent ing test , which visits every individual and every t o nation in such a war , came Redmond as it

of came to the King the Belgians . It was equally a case of betraying the material a d va n tages of his position that a principle might live . On the moral issue in Europe Redmond r e f versed the domestic policy o Ireland . He a p pealed to the Ulster and National V olunteers I to unite in the defence of reland . He turned “ to the government with the cry : You may ” remove your troops from Ireland ' Out of a moment of epic he seemed t o have snatched h t o t eIrish millennium , but all three whom he V olun appealed were to fail him . The Ulster teers had no wish to make up a United Ireland .

They kept aloof . The government showed no desire to trust the honour of the Irish people or ’ the words of their leader . Redmond s sup 66 THE IRISH ISSUE porters discovered that they had not s ent him to Parliament to decide moral issues on the

Continent , but to extort home rule . It was probably a s much hi s duty as a politician to win home rule out of the crisis as it was his duty as a European statesman not t o make confusion in the one spot to which Ulster action had directed the eyes of the All Highest . As a result of his action Ireland became the one — bright spot momentarily .

- Home rule was put on the statute book , but with a proviso that it must await the end of the war to come into effect . To have made Redmond Irish premier would have hastened the end of the war . Supreme and enlightened policy would have led England to pay the poli ’ ’ t icia n s fee in return for the statesman s sacri ’ ﬁce . Had he used England s plight to play a ’ political game , Ireland s plight might have been worse in the end . He who acts in such

days as a mere politician shall perish as such . Redmond threw politics to the wind and politi cal death cannot harm his name . There is no doubt that Redmond s a w a gr eat opportunity to place Ireland on the proper level she should occupy in relation to neighbouring countries like France and Eng land . This was obvious to many of the Sinn

68 THE IRISH ISSUE

ﬁssures in the empire or insured the co-opera

- tion of the self governing colonies better than .

an Irish premier in their councils . It would also have encouraged America during the thirty h months s e required t o make up her mind .

n ot t o But it was be , and Redmond was strand un im a in a ed between two seas , between the g tive inanity of the government after the dec la ra ti on of war and the savagery of sorrow

' which swept through Ireland after the rising . Such was the tragedy which befell the Red

monds . Locally and through the blundering of

others they have fallen into disregard , but the day will come when Irish historians will be glad to take refuge amidst the after-war con t r over sies in the ﬁrst and solemn stand which the Irish leader made in t he name of his people

against the destruction of Belgium, though for d the time he was stran ed , a spectacle to Celtic

deities and to all political mankind . The death of Willie Redmond in the ﬁeld was one of the most dramatic and pathetic events

in the war . For a quarter of a century he had represented the stony hills of Clare in the

of stonier wastes Westminster . In the old days s o many of the men of Clare went to ﬁght in France that France was spoken of as the

of graveyard Clare . The ancient and honour TREASON OF THE REDMONDS 69

able doom of Clare befell Willie Redmond . By an irony of fate n ot unknown in Ireland he

a s W carried back to die by the men of Ulster,

s o whom he had long opposed in politics .

n o t Death in Ireland was granted to him , as it ’ n n ll was not granted either t o O C o e or Parnell . ’ O C on n ell died in Genoa , broken by the famine , overthrown by the revolutionists . Parnell also crept away from Ireland to die , because the people who were to weep over him dead rent him living . Far from Clare and apart from the men of Clare , Willie Redmond died , tast ing the doom which is the doom of the leaders of Ireland . Those who serve Ireland have found that her service leads to disappointment and even to death , but that if the service of Ireland is bitterer than death it is also sweeter than life . The Irish themselves will always be ’ a good excuse for God s goodness to their dead leaders .

So it fares with the Redmonds . One has died as a soldier and the other shall one day live as a statesman with V enizelos and Lieb t knecht, the pro otypes of a new era when lead ers shall have learnt to sacriﬁce themselves rather than pass over the infringement of the J higher law . Ireland has wished to forget ohn h Redmond . The day will come when the Iris 70 THE IRISH ISSUE will ﬁnd his name as great a slogan upon their ” lips as Remember Limerick , the city of the

broken treaty . It will be the English who will

wish to forget him then , for the historians to

come will remember him , whatever the poets

- may utter of malediction against him to day . V

THE ETHICS O F SINN FEIN

Few words have incurred such wide spread in t eres t as a result of the war as the hitherto oh scure pas sword Sinn Fein . A word which a few years ago was known to only a comparatively few thinkers and propagandists in Ireland has

Since been canvassed by the press of the world . Sinn Fein is still a stumbling - block to philolo gists as well as to politicians . Sinn Fein is “ ” simply the Gaelic for ourselves , which , after all , is the working motto of every government and corporation in the modern ring . Trusts and tariffs a re Sinn Fein applied t o the indus

n O f trial world . The worki gs empires and chosen peoples are pure Sinn Fein . But there is a Sinn Fein of the conquered as well as of f the conqueror . If Moses led a Sinn Fein o fen

wa s sive into Palestine , the Ghetto no less a hotbed of mediaeval Sinn Fein thrown back

upon itself . Applied to nationalism Sinn Fein e is the expr ssion of personality in a people , but whether as a means of defence or offence 7 1 72 THE IRISH ISSUE

there lies the rub of modern history . As Wash “ ingt on said : I want an American character that the Powers of Europe may be convinced ” we act for ourselves . The small nationality is a Sinn Fein propo

ol sitiou . It is curious t o think of d John Huss f as the grandfather o all Sinn Fein . Yet he told the Council of Constance that “ Bohemians should have by right the chief place in the ofﬁces of the Kingdom of Bohemia even as they that are French- born in the Kingdom of

France and the Germans in their own country, whereby the Bohemian might have the faculty to rule his people and the Germans bear rule over the Germans The importance of the Bohemians in Europe has always been that they form a Slavicwedge between two branches ’ of G the erman people , j ust as Ireland s strength or weakness as a world factor depends on her geographical position in the Atlantic between

f - the two great branches o the Anglo Saxon race .

Bohemia is an inland Ireland . It is interesting that both countries should have been strongly

- 1870 to pro French in the war of , when left their own instincts . The modern Czech asso cia tion s correspond largely to those of Gaelic

- Ireland . The Sokols , for instance , a Pan Slavic athletic society , is exactly what the Gaelic THE ETHICS OF SINN FEIN 73

Athletic Association is to Ireland . During the war Sinn Fein in Bohemia has been crushed with a ruthlessness that we can only be thank ful was not applied in Ireland . The Bohemians have refused to be conscripted for other than

Bohemian ends , and regiments have been deci mated to order . War likewise has been made on the literary men and the poets , for the poets have always been on the side of the small na t ion a lit ies . The muse of the Jingo has run ’ sterile during this war . Kipling s reputation V er ha eren has shared that of the generals , but Ma cd on a h of Belgium , g of Dublin , and Machar

of . Bohemia, their song shall endure Sinn Fein is deﬁnitely the policy of all small nationalities . It moves by laws which are in v ri common to different countries . It has a ably the poetry of the lost cause attached to it and the menace of a greater nation to secure it the sympathy of the rest of the world . Poland has practised Sinn Fein as well as it ha s been able ever since the partitions . Belgium is the

Sinn Fein in the German ointment . Greek Sinn Fein enlisted Byron and brought about f the battle o Navarino . Italian Sinn Fein was incarnate in Garibaldi and thrust Austria out of

V enice . The British have always fostered and applauded Continental varieties of Sinn Fein . 74 THE IRISH ISSUE

Pro - Ally propaganda describes the case for

- m Sinn Fein in Bohemia to day . The program e ’ of the Czechs is apparently not very diﬂ erent from that of the Irish Nationalists . Doctor

Kr a m a r z of , the leader the young Czechs , seems to have occupied a similar position to John M ill cNe . , the Sinn Fein leader in Ireland

Kr a m a r z n o had wish to be disloyal to Austria , provided Bohemia was recognised . He was willing t o be p r o - Austrian in an Austria which t o gave freedom the Slavic ideal , just as Irish Nationalists were always ready to make their peace with an empire that did not disparage

Kr m r of . a a z the ideal the Gael , a successor “ of Huss , realised sadly that a foreign policy focussed in Berlin leaves no room for the Aus K . us trian Slavs Curio ly enough , both ram arz and McNeill were condemned to penal servitude within a few days of each other for the crime of treason on perfectly general a McNeill grounds . In rele sing the British realised their mistake . The Austrians have not . In Ireland the Sinn Fein movement was in d s ri l f u t a . V , linguistic , and ethical aliant e forts were made t o grow Irish tobacco and to enjoy it with the aid of Irish matches . Every class and profession was touched by an almost r e

76 THE IRISH ISSUE

but impatient spirits as Hurrell Froude , Kings ley , and Morris had they been born in Ireland . Cardinal Newman confessed that he would have been a rebel had he been an Irishman . So with song and high hope the Gaelic move ment swung under way . At most it did not lead to more than a battle of the books in those days of boyish deﬁance and literary contro

in r ver s y . Only a few among the Sinn Fe e s brooded a warlike application of the ancient

dream . Yet this movement under normal con dition s should no more have led to bloodshed than the Oxford movement have terminated in a gunpowder plot . But Ireland is never nor mal . Before the rising the Sinn Fein were unable T to win an election . heir solitary appearance in a Leitrim constituency met with a signal AS defeat from the Nationalist machine . they were by their very programme destructive of the Irish party the attitude of the latter was perhaps excusable . The Irish party was then slowly satisfying that national ideal which only when i n extr emi s and desperation assumes the

revolutionary colour . But the estrangement

with the old leaders came . They broke away from Redmond ’ s constitutionalism and from Douglas Hyde, who resigned the presidency of THE ETHICS OF SINN FEIN 77 the Gaelic League when he refused to make it political . During a long quarter of a century Parliament had afforded a safety - valve to na t ion a lis m , but the defeats and delays of home rule proved an irritant of gathering force . Time is never on the side of sedative or solution in Ireland . Event must keep pace with emo “ tion , and result must feed demand Home rule at no distant date ” became a byword synonymous with the Greek or Celtic kalends . Only Redmond ’ s handling of the lightning con ductor in Parliament averted the bolt . But

in or time and destiny and bureaucracy , an ex a t o ble trio , tended neutralise his gallant efforts before and after the outbreak of the war . Meantime the Sinn Fein went under the im of pulse an overriding idea, leaderless . The men who had inspired them were constitution li i a s t s o . , but were incapable , adding direction What is not yet known for the purposes of his tory i s when the Irish Revolutionary Brother hood ros e like a ghost out of the past and as sumed control . Long after the cordiality of settled pea ce has been restored to Europe men may perhaps become agreed as to what were the real causes and incidents of the Irish r is ing . We only know that the Sinn Feiners rose s swiftly and blindly , but for the local ideal 78 THE IRISH ISSUE

which Germany is elsewhere trying to crus h. They died wantonly and s uperﬂ uou s ly on behalf

of . their liberty They met and slew men , who also after their manner had enlisted in the

cause of liberty . They went out and threw

Ireland into confusion for a generation to come , but with suicidal gesture and distorted phrase nevertheless they were pleading for the life and f right o a small nationality . Once again the Nameless One that presides over the mortal Side of Irish history had min

gled the woof with direst tragedy . Fortunately

indeed , there is an immortal side as well , which n o tragedy can touch , no politics embitter, and

no madness destroy . The original dreamers of the Sinn Fein who had remained aloof fr O m t he rising came out of

o the wilderness . They carried before them int battle the dead martyrs , and the electorate

was theirs for the taking . In Celtic Ireland ar mies carried the potent bodies of dead Kings in their battle - front and attributed victory to

them . In like manner the Sinn Fein can now sweep an emotional majority in any two seats

f For out o three in Ireland . the time even the historic feud with England waits while the

' Sinn Fein settle their long score with the Irish

party . Irishmen of the most different brand THE ETHICS OF SINN FEIN 79

can take pride but never pity in each other .

It is grim how Celt can fall upon Celt, and all to make a British holiday . One remembers

o Cars n dissecting his unhappy fellow Irishman , r Osca Wilde , in the witness box , and Russell of Killowen closing pitilessly on Piggott the forger of the Parnell letters . Yet they were Irishmen

is all . When there a great Irish triumph there

“ f is too often Irish su fering in the background . The slow agony of the Irish party began at the l in un a b s o v g hands of the Sinn Fein . Woe to the politician who did not discern the signs of the time ' for his place shall be made vacant and his bishopric given to another . Woe to the man of letters who at the time misjudged the rising of the Sinn Fein for he shall be cut out of the soul of his own people . As Rolland Romain by his neutrality above the clouds of battle lost the love which would have been added to the admiration which his fellow for countrymen feel his writings , so it is with the Irish writer whose pen did not beat to the f agony o Easter week . The Sinn Fein is not an abortion but is in symbolic relations to the whole labouring earth . V The time has come , as Henry III said on being told all Ireland could not govern the e “ Earl of Kildar , then let the Earl of Kildare 80 THE IRISH ISSUE

govern all Ireland , that the Sinn Fein prov ing ungovernable Should be placed in a posi

tion to govern themselves . Responsibility alone

can anchor idealists to earth . Sooner or later

they will come to terms with Ulster . Already they have destroyed the power of the Irish party , and in the future they promise to check

if not annul the political power of the priest . Just as the Ulster sedition was led by “ loyal is t s s o , the anticlerical movement in Ireland

is led by curates . it s But Sinn Fein has reached day , and for long there will be neither quarter or compro

mise . Sinn Fein is a fever , against which there

is no appeal , terrorising and exalting the emo tions of a whole generation with something b e tween the psychology of a race riot and of a

religious revival . Only the judicious and the middle- aged and the uninspired can afford to f f stand aside . The ri fra f and the rowdy of s o a re Ireland are of it , but also the radiant

and the righteous of soul , some of the best that

h W f a nation can contain . Time only can S O whether the sediment from the troubled waters will yield the base of a nation or of a faction ] s o - only . Even the faction of to day is the

’ - nation of to morrow . V I

THE PRESIDENCY or PEARSE

The presidency of Patrick Pearse in the Irish republic was one of the most sudden and sifting events of Irish history . There have been other bolts from the green , but in the s o memory of man none startling in origin , so

- s o . piteous in end , or far reaching in result The oe Ph nix Park murders and the Parnellite split, which in other countries would not have caused ' ’ s uﬂi cien t more than a nine days wonder , were to dash Irish hopes and to affect remote parts

of of the earth . The presidency Patrick Pearse during a blood -shot week in Dublin has changed t the course of Irish his ory , and in its far thrown ripple proved only second to the Rus sian revolution in the extraneous interest it roused . Pearse will be remembered for the last week and especially for the last minute of his life , n and less for the patient , faithful years whe he laboured as a journalist in what wa s to him a strange tongue , and later as a pioneer a mong 8 1 82 THE IRISH ISSUE

Irish schoolma sters . As many books will be written on the subject as there were hours in

f - the life o the short lived republic . Historians will collate the incidents and philosophers ex pound the ethics . Controversialists will con t ro ver t the facts and idealists conﬂict over the ideals . Few will open the Gaelic ﬁles in which ’ s o much of Pearse s writing was done or give themselves over to the study of the education alist . Yet his greatest work was done in the schools . Before he revolutionised the Iris h capital , Pearse had revolutionised the Irish school . In a moment of inspiration he left his desk Cleeve S holui s S word o as editor of the , or f ’ Li ht En d a s g , and founded Scoil Enna or St .

School , in which he proposed to carry on the education of Irish boys , as though the centuries of English occupation and . culture had never been , and Irish Ireland were a reality . The

Irish language , dress , customs , and traditions were made part of the school life . It came as a distinct Shock verging on astonishment to the other school curricula of Ireland . For the ’ boys were not taken to be s t uﬂ ed like birds for the examination market , but were fostered rather as children were in ancient Ireland , who were placed in the suites of well -known heroes

84 THE IRISH ISSUE

m urred at the sacriﬁce to be made to the a n

tique . There was a melancholy expectation that for a few months Pearse’ s talents would be spent with a few kilted boys translating a n n book of Euclid into C o a ct Irish . But the school continued in spite of every ﬁnancial d ifﬁ

culty , and even ﬂowered into larger premises . on e n Pearse made ﬂyi g visit to America , whose

r eco n i streets he trod , meeting with as little g

tion as Rupert Brooke , who soon after passed

unhailed through the same land , where each

- was to ﬁnd posthumous hero worship . With such funds a s his friends and lecturing produced he kept his school in the front line of Irish

' education . To politics and to home rule bills f he was indi ferent , believing that no act of ’ alien Parliament could re store a nation s soul . His school not only taught but it also made ’ En d s history . St . a began as a pastoral idyll in the suburbs of Rathmines and it ﬁnished as a ﬁery epic under the burning ruins of the

Dublin post oﬂi ce .

Pearse was a man of a single dream , of a

single life , of a single heart , of a single ideal . He became historical through a single decision

and famous in a single week . Simplicity and straightforwardness was his policy in the face of f l fact and the assaults o absurdity . He a THE PRESIDENCY OF PEARSE 85 ways made the extreme course the short cut to ’ n his s oul s desire . He did ot mind being singu

of lar, even to the extent making Irish theo r et ica lly his single speech . There was no turn ing or inﬂuencing him o nce he had chosen his path . He was as poetic , as revolutionary , and as wayward as Shelley , but with a sombre

of n touch that took the place passio in his life . ’ What atheism was to Shelley s youthful en h i m t u s a s . , Fenianism was to Pearse In a mind

s o otherwise gentle , it was the one terrible and besetting strain .

of ff The theme death , disaster, and su ering for Ireland never left his thought . Whether he

or worked as a barrister as a schoolmaster , while his vocation was religious or journalistic , he seemed to be haunted by an icy breath from wa s the coming years . He never in love ex

of cept with his abstract goal a free Ireland .

“ He enjoyed the sadness of meditation and was expectant of shame in the Irish cause . In his poems this was darkly shown to thos e wh o d coul interpret them . Death was his familiar, and he coquetted with the grave . Alan Sea ’ “ ” r end ez - vou s ger s with death , found its exact Gaelic parody in Pearse ’ s lines

a a nn a r I m de to my love , n n a n n a to the ki g of ki gs , cie t de th, 86 THE IRISH ISSUE

h Death was not is only devotion . He was

passionately fond of children , and he cared for

all small creeping things . His pupils were placed under stringent oath never to hurt bird

- or . butterﬂy Poetry , folk lore , and symbolism

possessed him . He that loved so many un

substantial things from the God , who in a

moment of fantasy created Ireland , to the songs that Gaelic beggar men sing at the cross

on e roads , needed to ﬁnd object of enmity .

’ i n And he found it history , out of which he

dug the Englishman of the penal days , and against whom he s et his heart with unrelenting “

c : . zeal . As he wrote on e I will take no pike

I will go into the battle with bare hands . I

will stand up before the Gall , as Christ hung ” t e naked before men on h tree . With such a prophet what was there to be done ' For he prophesied his own death and took the ﬁrst

opportunity to seek it s fulﬁlment . In St . ’ En d a s used to hang a mystical picture of a

mourning woman , under whose cloak clustered

thickly the little naked manikin souls of men . It looked like some very doleful V irgin salving

the sons of earth in purgatory . It was a rep

r es en a t ion t of the dead who died for Ireland ,

whom Pearse had vowed to join . Though the school lived in an atmosphere of THE PRESIDENCY OF PEARSE 87 past rebellions and Pearse sometimes spoke of the enthusiasm with which he felt he could lead out the boys , yet there was never the slight est attempt to drill the boys or to secrete arms .

Revolt was purely academical and , besides , the whole trend of the Gaelic movement was to save Ireland by books rather than by the blunderbuss . By ballad and not by bullet would Ma cD on a gh have preferred to train boys to free their land . So in those delightful early days there . was more trouble with the tradesmen than with the British Government . The school lived a happy-go - lucky life of its

i n s et own , becoming a few years one of the tle d institutions of Dublin . Archbishop Walsh gave it his sanction and wondering visitors never failed it . In the background Pearse was for ever conspiring with the phantoms of his own mind . With the Carson episode ' and the Ulster gun running , Fenian dreams began to take concrete Shape among the dreamers and poets of Dub

- lin . Thinkers were quick witted enough to see that Carson had played indirectly into the

- hands of the physical force men . While the Ulstermen stood within their undoubted rights and deﬁed Redmond or the government to a d u vance pon their homelands, unprotected save 88 THE IRISH ISSUE

by Bible and covenant, they were playing a m e winning ga e, which would hav won them s ympathy all over the world and turned the polls in England . It was essential for their policy to provoke the Nationalists to take the ’ offensive and strike the ﬁrst blow . Redmond s

statecraft counselled patience , and secure in their constitutional triumph the Nationalists bore every contumely that was hurled at them . n ot If or trouble occurred , the Ulstermen had everything to gain by them . But in their anger and pride they made the huge blunder of creating the trouble themselves and carry ing out a serious arming . It hurt them politi cally as much as it lost the Kaiser to take the offensive against France . Had Ulster and Ger many waited to be attacked in their own homes they would not have each lost the sympathy f o the American people . The state of the chess - board in Ireland is such that a really bold move by either side leads to consequences that can never be over taken . Destiny enters to play her gambit . The arming of Ulster led to the semi - arming of

Dublin . Carson sowed the wind in the hills of Ulster and the Fenians went out with bloody blades to reap the whirlwind . The signing of the covenant in Belfast led indirectly to the THE PRESIDENCY OF PEARSE 89

’ u mobilisation of St . B da s school . The head master became a soldier, a conspirator, and ﬁnally in the dark of night was elected a president . From that moment until he faced the ﬁring squad he stood on the edge of burning limelight .

Every order he gave made Irish history , and every word he wrote passed direct into the ’ dark scroll of Ireland s story . It is curious how schoolmasters and professors have played more striking and world- stirring parts than the professional earth and cloud compellers in this war . There is Professor Wilson . There is an a n old scholastic professor of Louvain , who s were d Bis s in g in deed as bravely as he had answered Kant in philosophy . And then we ’

En s . have the head master of St . d a When will ’ t he world be wise enough to follow Plato s a d vice to make philosophers king ' There is no need to canonise or excoriate

Pearse . He saw and took his chance . Living under the shadow of Dublin Castle , stung by the differential treatment awarded to Ulster and Irish rebels , he and his companions had little occasion to think out the international problem from their own premises . Their sense of thwarted nationality was s o intense that they could not see Europe . And Europe , it 90 THE IRISH ISSUE

seemed , had forgotten that Ireland was a na tion . Clinging to their broken tree , they could not s ee the wood . Had some miraculous change in British statesmanship assured Ireland f o national rights at the outbreak of war , it might have been otherwise , for Pearse was susc eptible to the miraculous . But it seemed that the mighty wings of the empire rushing to war were extinguishing the Irish lamp . And n a Natio alists , in their determin tion to keep alight the ﬂicker of Gaelic Ireland upon their own hearth could not trouble about the forest ﬁ r e outside .

So the revolt took place . It was inevitable .

It was not glorious but it was salutary . It was the only important event in Ireland since the death of Parnell . It seemed as though D ublin had risen like a hysterical woman and stabbed a man in armour with a broken bod -off n kin to avenge some far unhappy thi g , and h r was summarily suppressed . T ere we e things done on both sides which both would prefer to

on forget, but which the politicians either side

- will never allow to rest . It was a rough and tumble due] with as much honour and chivalry wa s involved as either side care to extract . It

' brief , unbrotherly , sudden , and spectacular . It — was not war but it made history . There were

92 THE IRISH ISSUE were unable to achieve alive they had succeeded i ' n doing dead . They had roused Ireland England might have done otherwise than exact her pound of ﬂesh , if she had been wise , but to individual ofﬁcials it must have seemed impossible . With their limited outlook they could not be expected t o understand what these

r men meant to Ireland o in the world at l arge .

or Like Pontius Pilate , the American authorities J who hung ohn Brown , they could but con d em n wh o idealists were also revolutionary . John Brown had hurled himself against Slavery as Pearse had hurled himself against British r rule in Ireland . The e is nothing in the Bible against either of those institutions , against slav

of ery or imperialism , but the consensus civili t sation has long decided hat they are obsolete , in spite of all arguments as t o the beneﬁts of

Slave or imperial power . Pearse can only have died in the best of hu mour with life , for it had given him the death he had lived for . Seldom , indeed , it comes to a dreamer to ﬁnd himself in the midst of his dream coming true . He cannot even have felt out of humo ur with the hereditary enemy , for s et it , too , had given him the tragedy and the ting of the tragedy he had so often imagined ’ i n hi s mind s eye , even unto artillery and a THE PRESIDENCY OF PEARSE 93

blazing capital . He may have felt a little out

for of humour with the Irish , they had not re s p on d ed to his appeal . Even Dublin was out of sympathy with his revolt , until it was all over . But for a century he will be the national hero of Ireland . In time his relics will be picked out of the quicklime , and his fellow townsmen will even give him a statue , though there is no doubt that he would be more grate ful for the quicklime than for a crumbling image: For the shroud of quicklime makes — immortal raiment in Ireland . V II

THE KILLING O F KETTLE

In the great ﬂood of literature which has car ried the names of the Sinn Fein ers out of the obscurity of their local ﬁght into written his

of tory , there has been slight mention Tom

of Kettle . Yet all the Young Irelanders he n his was perhaps the most brillia t , and end

' was certainly more tragic , for he passed from the scene of his beloved Dublin , lying with her

heart blown out, to his own grave , in the less dramatic but more terrible ﬁeld of France .

b o He was ever the brilliant y , the coming f n i o . man his generation in Irela d All his g fts ,

of impulses , and ambitions were the highest

- e order . In his short , well rounded lif he made good equally as a ballad writer , as a member of of Parliament , as a professor political econ

o m . y , and ﬁnally as a soldier He was the per fee t type of t he Dubliner i n the new century . He was a pessimist in philosophy and an opti

i n mist politics . Of the crowd of young men wh o were trying to sound the new channels or 94

96 THE IRISH ISSUE

packed with thought , and occasionally there rose a bitter sense of fun to play upon the sur

face . As a speaker in the debates he could

always claim Mr . Balfour as a ready listener . The bons mots that crept into all he said were f reminiscent of the age o wits . When the tariff reformers thrust the unwilling and un m witting Mr . Balfour to the front , he re arked “ ” o They have nailed their leader t the mast . As b rilliant was his distinction between the ‘ two great parties in English politics . When in ofﬁce the Liberals forget their principles and ” the Tories remember their friends . And his conversation was built up out of similar stuff . He possessed that pretty mordancy that ﬂicks

- conversation along like a tennis ball . England a n d could not understand even Ireland , alive

to genius , had not fully appreciated this por

tent in the unimaginative ranks of the party . The Irish party is t o o clever or is understood for s to be too clever the Engli h parties, but

r Kettle was too clever fo the Irish party . His cleverness was a little too much out of the

ordinary , and he was given a pedestal , but equally a dead weight to his winged feet in the professorship of economics at the new Univer “ ” s ity of Ireland . But the dismal science was

not dismal in his keeping . In intellectual Dub THE KILLING OF KETTLE 97

lin he came into hi s own . It was becoming more and more the resurgent capital of the country at that time . By right of intellect Dublin was asserting that position which in political fact she did not possess . Shortly b e fore the outbreak of the war it was possible to ’

. En s spend a morning at St . d a School and dis cuss the ideals oi Irish education with Pearse Ma cD on a h and g , to catch a vivid minute with

George Russell in Plunkett House , in the after noon to see Yeats and Lady Gregory moving down the quays to a rehearsal at the Abbey a n d Theatre , in the evening to hear a Synge play and pass a late hour with Kettle . An ambrosian night and day . Kettle soon formed a circle in which young men sharpened their wits or darkened their philosophies . For he was one of those terrible pessimists , who are always saying dark sayings in an illuminating way . He was most upset ting in his constructive moments and vice versa . On the whole he was the greatest loss in his time endured by the in t elligen tia of Ire land . He seemed destined to fulﬁl a vital but never quite attainable part in Irish life , to reconcile the old generation of Parliamentarians with the new Ireland which had arisen to demand bet 98 THE IRISH ISSUE

. w ter things His father , Andrew Kettle , a s

one of the veterans of the Parnellite movement ,

his and friends were the Young Irelanders , who were already breaking in sympathy with the

Irish party . He alone could have wrought a reconciliation and possibly averted the terrible revolt which buried so much promise i n the ruins of Dublin . He wa s early aware of the restiveness of the young men and of the n eces s ity of supplying them with a place in the National movement before they chose one for themselves . He became the ﬁrst president of the “ Young Ireland ” branch of the United im Irish League , a brave attempt to avert the pending destiny . Again he was chairman of the committee , which endeavoured to establish D peace during the great ublin strike , and once more found himself treading between the very meshes of Fate , for the unsettled strike proved to be the seed of the rising . He was trying to bring together threads that the Inexorable

Shears had already divided . Release from Parliament afforded him further leisure for literature , for which we may be thankful . We have only his words now , i n whether prose or verse , to remember him by . But his poems have a different ring to that we usually associate with the Green Muse .

100 THE IRISH ISSUE

tion of the wit of his hillside constituents . He could be sarcastic , ironic , amusing , and com plim en t a ry by turns . Once he was met by a poor populace who had improvised a mountain band and some home -made torches of turf and “ ” “

fﬁ . para n Friends , quoth Kettle , you have G ’ met us with od s two best gifts to man , ﬁre and music What more could be asked ' It was a s instantaneous as graceful .

In political balladry he could not be beaten . He replied to the Jingo effusions with which Kipling and Watson stepped into the Irish arena with an amusing sarcasm . He ridiculed Kipling for trying to put the sun rise out with “ in a bucketful of Boyne . But a savage dignation could tear his breast, and nothing equalled his outb ur s t ‘ when he compared Dub lin ’ s torchlight reception of Asquith with the last days of Parnell

As you ﬁlled your streets with your comic Pen tecost An d n n an d the little E glish we t by the lights grew dim, ” We in n ' dumb the shouti g crowd , we thought of Him

Only Kettle could have divined a comic Pen ” t ecos t in that orgy of tongues and torches . h T e war came , and Kettle took the point of o r view not of the Britisher the Sinn Feiner, but of the European . He immediately stated THE KILLING OF KETTLE 101

n n Fra nce is right now a s she wa s wron g in 1870. E gla d is i right now a s she wa s wrong n the Boer Wa r . Russia is right w n n n now a s she a s wro g o Bloody Su da y .

The interest of Kettle was that he was an international Nationalist , which is as rare in

Ireland as elsewhere . Much as he loved Ire land he also appreciated Europe , and he would not willingly allow western civilisation to be twisted from its hinges without some protest b e r ing made by Irishmen . Six years before the wa “ he had laid down : My only programme for Ireland consists in equal parts of Home Rule and the Ten Commandments . My only coun s el to Ireland is that to become deeply Irish s h e ” must become European . Young Ireland did not follow him into the trenches , but he never felt he had made a mis take . Yet his heart never left those who had followed other counsels than his . He appeared

‘ to give evidence in favour of John McNeill r at his court ma tial , and his last request from France before he fell was a plea to release the w prisoners of Easter week . Out of the shado of death he cried

I n n a a nd al n in a the me , by the se , of the blood give the l st a a s k n a a n a n two ye rs I for Colo i l Home Rule for Irel d , thi g e n a in a n d n a a s a n sse ti l itself, esse ti l prologue to the reco

n a . structio of the Empire . Ulster will gree 102 THE IRISH ISSUE

An d I a s k for the immedi a te withdr a wa l of ma rtial la w in d an a n ll S nn n a n a n a i n . hi Irel d , m esty for i Fei pr so ers If t s wa r h as ta ught us a nythi n g it is tha t grea t thi n gs ca n b e don e w only in a grea t a y .

s et He died and the prisoners were at liberty . Many of them had bitterly maligned him a s a platform soldier . He could always have had f an appointment on a sta f or at the base , but he insisted on his due and decent wage of

' death . Like Willie Redmond later, he must have felt that a time had come to die , when the angry and mocking cries of his own people reached them overseas . Bravely they both died and perhaps with a smile of bitterness at

e the end , as men encompass d by the treachery of their high doom , but whatever bitterness

for they felt they kept themselves , and their smile was for the Ireland out of whose earth they were to lie . Kettle must have suffered terribly between the Dublin rising and his death . The mur dered Sheehy Skeffington was his brother- in law . Others of the executed were his friends . To his sensitive nature death in France must have seemed sweeter than continuing to live in Dublin of haunted and unhappy memory for all his generation at least . From the atmos h ere p of intrigue , meanness , and misery he

104 THE IRISH ISSUE

his friends and his lovers , with back turned to

Ireland and his heart turned from England , he hr t ew himself over the mighty gulf, where at least he could be sure that all things good ‘ or evil were on the great scale that his soul r e ’ quired . With earth s littlenesses he was done . So amid the wreckage of a world and the carnage of a continent fell Tom Kettle . Many when they heard that tragic news all over that s un Irish world , on which the never sets , must have remembered the grief of Gavan Duffy when confronted by the death of Thomas Davis in his prime . Ireland has never ceased to be o haunted by the pr mise , the pathos , and the possibility of that life and death , and now men will look back on Kettle likewise . Irishmen his l -in - will think of him with gent e brother law ,

Skefli n t on Sheehy g , as two intellectuals , who after their manner and their light wrought and thought and died for Ireland . What boots it if one was murdered by a British officer and the other was slain in honourable warfare by Ger mans ' To Ireland they are both lovable a nd in Irish mind their memory shall not fail . What though Skeffin gt on sleeps nigh Parnell ’ ’ onn ell and O C in holy Glasnevin , while Kettle s ashes are left in the Shell-torn trenches of France ' Ireland knows that they were both THE KILLING OF KETTLE 105 men of peace and that they both offered their

lives for her . In death they were divided, but

in the heart of Ireland they are as one . There is a beautiful picture by Burne -Jones of the knight who met and yet forgave his worst enemy . As he turned aside he knelt before a wooden cruciﬁx of the wayside, and the ﬁgure on the cross bent to kiss him . Who can doubt that Kettle, who had forgiven the

English , who had murdered his brother, and went to France to defend the homes of English women from outrage and sudden death— that as he passed some village Calvary he was not suffered to pass comfortless upon his way V III

CARSON AND CASEMENT

No pair of Irish names have been more cir

ula t ed c , contrasted , and queried than those of

Carson and Casement . For months in the past and now probably for years in the future the politician will batten on their antithesis and the pamphleteer parade the iniquity of the one

a s or the righteousness of the other, he may happen to view them . The capital to be made out of their exploits is tempting to the partisan but of doubtful interest to their country . How long is Ireland to be forced to h a n dy their names as catchwords ' No more considerable omen of good-will and common sense could have been found in the Dublin convention than the omission of both na mes from the list of members . It was as ﬁ reb ra n d s well , for their names are as and their memories make men see red . For obvious reasons neither was invited to the gathering . Since their military escapades on Irish soil one has gone into the next world , while the other 106

108 THE IRISH ISSUE

exact type of adventurous and quixoti c oﬁ cia l fﬁ that turns up in English bureaucracy , s u ciently to persuade most foreigners that all

Englishmen are insane . Carson was also an

adventurer , but a Galway boy , who only took up the Orange cause as Casement took up

Fenianism late in life . Each had already made

his reputation and very good reputations, one

at the bar and the other in the consular service . But the Irish casino tempted them and both

s et out to play for exceedingly great stakes . Though h istory will probably decide that

- each lost, they acquired a world wide notoriety, composed for them equally by the execration

and adulation of the press . In America Carson

- is thought of as the cold , lantern jawed Junker, whose power and pull enabled him to import a rms into Ulster without incurring any more serious consequences than being caged in the

Cabinet , while Casement is arrayed as the fer

” wa s vid Celt who followed his example , but arrested and hung before he could get a single gun into Ireland . Cool students of Irish history will not s ee f much di ference between them as conspirators, except that one wa s wholly disastrous to him

‘ self , while the other came near to being disas o trous to his whole country . T Irishmen their CARSON AND CASEMENT 109

actions were not incomprehensible . Each of them was in his way playing the great game

that never ends on Irish soil . The game that

r . is never won , but fascinates its playe s They made themselves the pivots of ancestral pas

sions and immemorial hatreds , and as pivots they were responsible for automatically un loosening fatalities that proved beyond their

control . The civilised world was amazed and amused

when Carson armed his followers . The Na t ion a lis t s S were not hocked , for they knew he for was playing high stakes , and they rather admired the chances he had taken in such

- devil care fashion . If it had been for his coun try that he was acting and not for the sake of a broken - down English party he would have

become a national hero . Even so , the Fenians bless his name for having made it pos s ib le for them to acquire the munitions and induce the

conditions that made the Dublin revolt . 0 feli a' culpa ' Some of them it is believed even assis ted his

- n gun ru ning in the hope of trouble . They — knew that he was taking up two edged wea p

ons , and that he was sowing a wind that might just as easily whirl him away as Redmond or

' themselves . Time has shown that they were 110 THE IRISH ISSUE

correct . The interest taken in his exploit was

r not conﬁned t o Ireland o America . The Kaiser seems t o have thought it worth while at one time t o obtain a ﬁ r s t - hand account of

Ulster . A little ﬂattery doubtless drew as

t o much as he wanted know, unless Carson was

shrewder than the Kaiser . It would be inter

.esting to know th e secret diagnoses under which Carson and Cas ement were ticketed in t h e

German archives . No doubt each m a n was appraised at his exact value to the German

calcul ations . Each was watched and followed

for all those months , neither side can have been

of quite certain Casement until his execution , and each in his blindfold , impetuous way played the game Germany hoped of them . Which

' s erved Germany best o r worst the calculators of history will have to decide . Casement no doubt served Germany in bringing about direct r elations between the Irish-Americans and Ber

s n lin , but his failure to recruit Iri hme for the German army made them glad t o get rid of him . He was thwarted in his attempt to post pone the rising , but his direct arrival from Germany obscured the sympathy which would have met the Sinn Fein in a world becoming

’ mor e and more suspicious and intolerant of

German schemes .

1 12 THE IRISH ISSUE

he associated the British consular service , which is a dummy diplomacy , with genius . He dropped into it by accident , remained in it out of chivalrous purposes , and passed out of it not into retirement but into a frantic attempt to adjust the Irish problem by one fell deed .

His life , if it is ever told , will be no unin t eres t ing one . Some early trouble sent him to s ea and as a young man he served as a purser ' h on t he Sout African Line . In this capacity he was picked up by Sir Claude M a cD onn ell and made a roving commissioner in the Oil Rivers . Here he developed unusual capacities in deal ing with the natives , and made a number of treaties which are still in existence . He entered to an extraordinary degree into native thought and was always as much at pains to help and elevate the protected as t o establish the pres tige of the protector . At times he would dis appear from civilisation and be absorbed in the m Dark Continent . He received appoint ents at

Lorenzo Marques and in the Congo . There he threw himself into the work of inquiry and denunciation . In doing s o he had to forfeit the friendship of Leopold , King of the Belgians , the same monarch who had wished to employ

Gordon in his Congo scheme . Gordon and

Casement had many points in common . Each CARSON AND CASEMENT 1 13

wa s a religious mystic and far more interested s in religiou work than imperialism . At one time Casement seemed on the point of throwing o up his positi n for missionary endeavour . Like Gordon he acquired his ascendancy over the native by his detachment from wealth and

women . Like Gordon he was intractable to his superiors and believed in a vaguely inspired f mission . He had an itch for fomenting o ﬁcial troubles with the highest and noblest aims in

view . He was a perpetual crusader on behalf

of the under dog , wherever and of whatever

colour he found him . Had he died in Africa he would have left a legend that would be cher ” - i s hed by Englishmen to day . Congo Case ment would be mentioned in a breath with “ ” ’ in Af Chinese Gordon , England s martyrs

rica . It is very curious that each took up one very hoary and evil cause in utter blindness ’ of what it meant . Gordon s military reputa tion was gained in upholding the dead hand of C the Manchus , and asement by an even more

fantastic step passed over to the Germany , whose methods among the natives he had had

sufficient cause to detest . Cas ement only went on the Irish platform

in the year before the outbreak of war . Then it was to declare that “ There is only one Ire 114 THE IRISH ISSUE

a n d . . land , one indivisible And the more we love Ulster the more sur ely we should love ” that greater Ireland that owns us all . To his love of Ireland was added that fatal of sense thwarted achievement , which has em

bittered s o many Irish careers . When the

Cunard liners left Queenstown out of their call , Casement nego tiated for the Hamburg - Ameri

~ can Line to take their place , but he was under

cut by a move from the British Foreign Ofﬁce . Henceforth the path to German intrigue easy and he s et himself among those who were trying to wean the American sympathies occu pied by England to Germany . He claimed that England was doing j ust what it i s apparent “ that Germany wa s . Every tool of her di

lom a c p y , polished and unpolished , from the trained envoy to the min or poet has been tried ” in turn . In Germany he took the disastrous step of trying to enlist Irish prisoners in an Irish regi

ment for the Kaiser . This and the alleged

- ill treatment , which befell the Irish prisoners wh o f refused his pro fer , led to his execution .

Everything repeats itself in Irish history , and it is curious to read in the diary of Captain

Milman , who was taken prisoner in the Penin a s : sular War , follows

1 16 THE IRISH ISSUE

Casement cannot be called a lunatic . He was suffering from one overwhelming and a b sorbing idea , on which his mind was not only s et truly and terribly , but even racked . He felt that an injustice had been committed

o f against Ireland by political sleight hand . He felt that Ireland had been Side - tracked to her annihilation as a political entity , for he ’ was accurately informed of Germany s power t o resist and crush any small nations thrown in her track . He determined to forestall any possible invasion of Ireland by obtaining a declaration of German good behaviour should troops ever reach the country . It was as safe a declaration for the German Foreign Offi ce to make as one promising immunity to the public buildings in Nova Zemb la . What is not known is whether the German War Office made any illusionary promise to send troops to fight for an Irish republic . On the whole the Dublin r i s mg seems t o have been only vaguely con n ect ed with any direct German plan . It would

a n have taken place under the circumstances , yf how . If there was a bargain , which heaven forbid , it was a very unequal one . The Sinn F in er s e risked and gave everything . The Ger mans o nly jeopardised a tubful of old Russian riﬂes . Casement was literally marooned with CARSON AND CASEMENT 117

a handful of men . American friends , aware wa s that he sick , were anxious that he should be retained in Germany until the end of the

war . There is some reason to believe that he

intended to postpone the rising , but was de layed by premeditated repairs and delays to

the submarine in which he had embarked . Neither the German nor English authorities allowed him to communicate in time with the i in r . Sinn Fe e s . The rest s history It was not for the defence of the realm so much as to afford a Berlin holiday that the subsequent n executio s took place . ment had foreseen and welcomed his

death . He was given the opportunity of play

ing his part to the bitter end . In order to call world attention to the Irish question he had

pass ed out of his way , out of his peace , out of his retirement , out of his rank , out of his coun

try , and out of his life . Against such Quixotes

no bribery , no persuasion can avail . He had lived his ideal of Wolfe Tone as far as it could

be lived under modern conditions . With de liberate haste and wilful ecstasy he threw him self into the seething pot on the chance of stir

ring up an eddy , and he fell straight to the

bottom of the boiling broth . Leagued only e with his own desp ration , he attempted the 1 18 THE IRISH ISSUE impossible and bearded the great Power he had long contemplated in his dreams as a Gartha

ginian might have seen the Roman Empire . When he wrote the strange lines

Ea gle of Eryx ' when the E ga tia n shoa l a a ll a a nn d Rolled westw rd the hopes th t H o wrecke , mi n n a n With ghty wi g u we ryi g, didst thou ’ S fa r n eek beyo d the wolf s grim protocol , Within the Iberia n sun set fa in tly spec ked A rock where Pun ic fa ith should bide its vow

of was he thinking the rock above Cave Hill , where Tone made his vow to free Ireland ' Was the wolf ’ s grim protocol the British Em pire ' Was it a Hibernian sunset clothed with sanguine ruin against which he saw himself faintly specked ' It is a poem which lends it ' r of self to the mystic inte pretation Casement , which is only charitable when his political one is condemned .

THE WINNING OF THE UNITED STATES

To many , not excluding herself , America has

shown herself an unfathomable problem . Es ecia ll s o War p y has it been during the Great , when reliable guides were able to dispute

- - whether she was pro Ally or pro German , and the only destiny that the majority of her chil dren could agree upon was that she had no d es a t tiny , least no destiny that would make her l partner or decider in the European d eb ac e . s h un To herself e was the great unworried , un w rrior wearied , a country , desiring nothing better than that her hemisphere should remain

hermetical in the name O f Mr . Monroe . To

her enemies she seemed a comedy , but to her friends it was always America’ s tragedy that s he had no tragedy . But the Americanism which s o passionately

demanded that America should be passive , the neutral , and static was not Americanism of the people who in a century had decupled their

original acres , who drove the aborigines before 121 122 THE IRISH ISSUE

of them , penetrated the country others with f armies , and even gave a semblance o imperial “ ism to the American eagle . The same mani ” fest destiny of the United States led her to subjugate the northern and t o protect the of southern continent and , in spite. a cherished

of t o tradition isolation , dominate the Paciﬁc and gradually become a world power . No sooner had the revoltin g colonies s et adrift than they commenced to grow . Ripe fruit from the rotting trunk of Spain fell to them for the plucking . Until the Civil War America was a great imperial and conquering country . Pioneers and prophets did the work which traders and missionaries accomplished f r f o European Powers desirous o expansion . Republics broke o ut in her path before they merged in her federal system . For a while there was a Texan republic and California was preceded by the Bear Flag republic . The pos s ib ility of a Mormon republic effervesced into

the Great Salt Lake . All the while the Ameri

can was advancing and driving remorselessly .

the Indian and the bison , the Spaniard and the

elk before him . He pulled down equally the

Spanish and British ﬂags . Jackson hung Brit ’ ish subjects in Florida , Pike Of Pike s Peak fell

trying t o snatch Toronto from Canada . Mex

124 THE IRISH ISSUE

eV l hemisphere in advance . It was from a d e opment of the same doctrin e that America left her moorings at on e time to wage war with

Spain , and on another to become an ally of

England against Germany . Monroe had fore seen the time when England would have to take her place with the monarchs of Europe or with o r the American republic , with despotism with liberty . By a fortuitous inspiration England had approved the birth of the Monroe Doc n trine . Though German aggression was u dreamt of at the time , Monroe had started the train of events which was one day to confront

America, also , with the choice of Siding with despotism or liberty . During the Great War the United Kingdoms and the United . States became allies . Durin g the century of peace between the Treaty of Ghent and the out break oi war in 1914 they had never been — united . Whether the military co operation brought about by the high - handed conduct of Germany will form the basis of a permanent entente , one in many ways vital to the world of democracy , remains to be seen . For the present the Anglo - Saxon schism is healed and it is interesting to recall the historical trend by which with many deviations the two com

munities . , whom Mr Wilson has now joined WINNING THE UNITED STATES 125

s o together , have been long making their way . I n British eyes the United States represent the lost tribes , the political irredenti of the

- Anglo Saxon , but which , like the territory lost

to the French and Spanish in the New World , eschewed the idea of any union with the mother i n her country . England has several times history had to relinquish conquered country , f but only once her own colonised o fspring , earth of her earth , blood of her blood , in the

New England colonies . She lost them because her bonds were selﬁsh and commercial instead

O f being sentimental and maternal . Only the most colossal ideal could ever rebridge the chasm . Only an England equally remote from Georgian imperialism and greed and contemp tuous of V ictorian commercialism could a p proach the great statue of liberty at the gates

' in r of America the p oper spirit of reconciliation , for the statue is as much a symbol of t he na t ional religion as one of the deiﬁed abstractions O f the Roman world . Great is Liberty of the Americans ' The American Revolution taught England

to study the rights of her own settlements , but

the lesson was only learnt at a price , for the unity of the English -speaking world had passed 126 THE IRISH ISSUE d away . In vain the growing empire proceede t o gather the ends of the world into its lap and t o add the tropics t o the arctics . In vain seemingly were great imperial growths and ] r or fede ations forced fostered in India , Aus l r a lia . c o t , and South Africa The American on ies into which the adventurous heart- blood f o England , Scotland , and Ireland had been at

o es different times poured remained alo f, t r a n ged from what they denied had been a mother country and t o which they became s a r

s tic . ca , contemptuous , and bitterly hostile In his gigantic stride to possess himself of the

- earth the Anglo Saxon had fallen asunder . Ambitions good o r evil are liable t o overreach

themselves , and in taking Canada from France England laid the train which was to lose

her the New England colonies , whose loyalty would otherwise have been strengthened by

a jealous French neighbour , just as Asiatic

pressure strengthens that of New South Wales . But when Canada wa s conquered the necessity of defence in New England was replaced by a f o . possibility deﬁance The Revolution came , but after the Anglo - Saxon rather than French n t or pattern . It was o intellectual doctrinaire ,

r but practical , with a sober eligious motive t hrown in . The Quebec Act practically estab

128 THE IRISH ISSUE

s on younger in his blood , and both the traits

- may be traced in American psychology to day . Some kind of a super-Anglo - Saxon seemed to loom on the horizon of the virgin continent . But this dream of the ethnologist was cut short by the Civil War between North and South and by the unrestricted arrival of other types ﬂ of emigrant . It was a dream which is re ected “ ” in the kinder caricatures of Uncle Sam . The

- e wiry limbed awkward giant , with blue ey s and a light goatee , for whom bewildered visitors vainly search the New York streets , was once a predominant type . Hardy and magniﬁcently t uncultured , it was he who ore up colonial tyranny , broke the Hessian hirelings , won the naval war of 18 12 on points and largely suc cu mb ed during the ghastly epic of the Civil

War . m Cobbett , on his ridiculous ission to fetch ’ Tom : Paine s bones from America , remarked “ This country of the best and boldest of sea men and of the most moral and happy people in the world , is also the home of the tallest and

- ablest bodied men in the world . And during the Civil War Meredith was alert enough to “ comment on the Yankee generals They a re of a peculiarly ﬁne cast and show the qualities of energy and skill and also race They are WINNING THE UNITED STATES 129

by no means vulgar . Place our best men , headed by the 'German' Duke of Cambridge alongside them and start .

Though his stock in trade was a continent ,

Uncle Sam had to make his way in the world , for he was without friends . His assets were a republican idealism taken from France , a knowledge of seamanship and an aptitude for exploration inherited from England , and a visionary connection with Ireland , which made that admiring island an early and spontaneous his contributor to ﬁlling waste places . The American took to hard work and scant liveli hood , and nevertheless worked out a culture

' of his own . . In certain stages the straight American seems to have been pretty a ggr a va t ing to the European , but at his best he produced the type which merited the celebrated d es cr ip “ tion as one that could calculate an eclipse , r survey an estate , tie an a tery , plan an ediﬁce , try a cause , break a horse , dance a minuet , and play the violin . Though the United States started with a bitter family grudge against England , the forms of law , religion , and politics remained Anglo

Saxon under their republican husk . Talley rand used to say that , notwithstanding the aid wa s of France , England the natural ally of 13 0 THE IRISH I SSUE

i the United States . Distance and occupat on

r e a r fo som time kept any ntagonism apa t .

Each was deeply engaged , the English in a struggle with Napoleon , the Americans in a tussle W ith nature . In the end the Anglo

Saxon prevailed against both . 18 12 But in a clash occurred . England found herself at death—grips with the French and needed sailors Of the Old stock . Necessity had made the English adopt the closed sea of

Selden , while the Americans upheld the free m f of d d o o the seas Grotius . Englan claimed the right of search and impressed some two a out thousand American se men , some Of the best families , into her ships . It was true that deserters often concealed themselves under false papers , but more Often real Americans were ﬂagr antly kidnapped under false pre t en ces . The Americans were without redress until they ﬁtted ou t frigates capable of winning f some o the most famous duels in n aval history .

The English Orders in Council were revoked , but n o t in time t o avert war . It is a curious fact that had the electric cable been in existence 18 12 it would have prevented war in , as surely as it would have precipitated it between Eng 1862 land and America in .

As to the war , every American schoolboy

13 2 THE IRISH ISSUE

the Bladensburg victory to their name ' but at New Orleans the victory went t o the Americans

- also under Scotch Irish leadership . The Treaty of Ghent initiated the peace between the two

countries . It was interesting that an Adams

sat on each side of the table . English states men were t o learn respect for that shrewd but

- courteous family , Old fashioned heralds of the

wh o - future , faced them in each Anglo American

on crisis . England , with Waterloo the horizon , soon forgot the war ' but for two generations the ogre of American nurseries remained the “ ” hated Britisher . American nationalism de veloped a violent hue against the background

O f British rivalry . Madison was the last Presi

dent t o b e actually at war with England .

Monroe , his successor , devised a far subtler weapon against European interference, the

Monroe Doctrine . Originally shafted at a hint from Canning against Spain , it was in — coming time t o check England herself a n

arrow tipped with her own feathers . Though English statesmen would only consider it “ the ” of dictum its distinguished author , and Lord t o Salisbury was deny its international legality , the doctrine has proved stronger than the

sword . At the time Brougham declared that “ No event has dispersed greater joy , exulta WINNING THE UNITED STATES 13 3 tion and gratitude over all the freemen of

Europe . It saved South America from the “ ” f holy alliance of Romano f, Hapsburg , and

Hohenzollern . Henceforth there were to be bitternesses enough , disputes many , threatenings some ' but bloodshed never again . The Monroe Doctrine was the pledge . However popular and politi “ ’ it r e cal was to twist the lion s tail , there mained a subconscious reservation against war . “ Mill gave it expression , A war between Great Britain and the United States would give a new lease to tyranny and bigotry wherever they exist and would throw back the progress — of mankind for generations a corollary to the d ictum of Monroe ' If a common tongue

' was a constant adjuration against war , it was not the less provocative of quarrels . And quar rels there arose in plenty about boundaries and ships' about seals in the Behring Sea , about

Fenians in prison , about Oregon and Alaska and even about yacht races . Every now and again a treaty cleared O ff outstanding difﬁcul ties . The Maine boundary was settled by treaty between Daniel Webster and Lord Ash burton , but the joint occupation of Oregon “ raised a party cry of Fifty - four - forty 'lati ” tude' or ﬁght . Pakenham foolishly refused 13 4 THE IRISH ISSUE

’ President Polk s offer of the forty =n inth lati

tude . Secretary Buchanan entertained the original idea of making the Pope arbitrator as between two heretical governments . In the end Aberdeen compromised on the forty - ninth V latitude , which gave ancouver to England . Buchanan became a successful and the ﬁrst ’

. J popular minister at St ames s , though Palm er s t on foe of on e , the jealous America , at time

threatened his dismissal . It was Crampton , however , the minister in Washington , who was dismissed for recruiting during th e Crimean — “ ” f t o War o fered as a sacriﬁce the Irish vote,

Li L o says Lord Newton in his able fe of y ns . Though he had become a personal friend of V t o ictoria , Buchanan returned become Presi f dent . He invited the Prince o Wales to visit

of t s o . the land his ances ors , to speak By planting a tree at Washington ’ s grave the prince was believed to have buried “ the last ” faint trace O f discord between the two coun ’ s tries . But the Civil War , to which Buchanan

t o feeble policy the South largely led , destroyed the good feeling at its best and left behind t he resentment of a generation . America originally quarrelled with King and

Tory , not with Radical and people . Liberalism always remained a tie between the countries .

13 6 THE IRISH ISSUE and it remained indeﬁnitely guaranteed by Congress ' but it was for those with eyes to see to be sure that slavery and the Confederacy must perish together . Unfortunately , Russell preferred to think the North was ﬁghting for empire , and the South for independence ' and Gladstone by a serious mistake declared Jeff

Davis had created a nation . The result was that the friendly North became hostile , and the

r m South , which had disliked England as p es u ably Abolitionist , reversed her feelings . The English aristocracies of blood an d letters followed the politicians . Freeman began the Hi s tory of Feder a li s m until the disruption of ” the United States . Carlyle thought the war “ of liberation a smoky chimney which had ” of taken ﬁre . The surrender Lee was felt as L f O d . a tragic sorrow by Acton Nevertheless , the North had friends strong , s tern , and stanch — in England Argyll , Whewell , Leslie Stephen , J Milner Gibson , and chieﬂy ohn Bright , who smote “ the devilish delusion that slavery was ” a divine institution . Lincoln pardoned a “ British privateer as a mark of the esteem held by the United States for the high charac ” ter and steady friendship of John Bright . It was a pity that Bright could not afterwards a s have visited America envoy , where he was WINNING THE UNITED STATES 13 7

“ promised ﬂowers from Chicago to the sea . His is the only British bust to be placed in the

White House . The religious democrat is the type of Englishman who has always appealed most deeply to the real American people

Bright , Shaftesbury, Gordon , or Havelock, at whose death in India the ﬂags in Ne w York ’ harbour were lowered . Bright s name still does

orr i service in America . The c es p on d n g heroes of the North made no appeal to Englishmen

. J until after their death ohn Brown , whose soul the Northern armies invoked on the march , seemed a mixture of Pilgrim Father and mad dog , for whose ecstasy the noose made the best muzzle . General Grant was far from seeming the ideal of the Horse Guards . By ” descent a hard Scotch pebble , with a Kelly grandmother , he was inexorable without bra

- and patient without complacency ' but he looked seedy and scrubbybeside the cavalier f Lee . Lincoln was only seen in a haze O cari “ ca t ure . He came to the White House a J w backwoods upiter, and his own kne him Th n o . e t genius it took America four years , England may be pardoned for taking forty to ’ realise . She s a w him only in W . H . Russell s “ ” descriptions , the tall , lean , lank man , with pendulous arms and the “ strange quaint 13 8 THE IRISH ISSUE face and head covered with its thatch of wild ” P n republican hair . u ch caricatured him a s r Brutus , as a billiard sharp , as a ca d gambler, oe as a coon in the trees , as a Ph nix rising out ’ of war s horrid ﬂames . Uncouth and un ed u

a t e d c and unbred , Abraham Lincoln became the truest and the greatest of Americans . Walt Whitman observed that whereas “ Wash in gt on was modelled on the best Saxon and

Franklin was essentially a noble Englishman , ” in Lincoln was far less European . Europe

deed underestimated him , while America has been trying t o live up to him ever since . During his administration Lincoln learnt

with lonely pain the arts Of war and letters . The burden of the state rested on those shoul

- ders knotted by rail s plitting . The resources

of that mind untilled by pedantry , unfettered

' by precedent , served equally his people and

his generals . His daily anguish he concealed

under a mask . The quaint stories he told to hide his heart might be likened to the grotesques with which the mediaevals relieved their cathe

r l h d a s dedicated t o divine tragedy . When u

mour failed him , Lincoln fell back upon mys i i t c s m . Under his tortured strength of purpose grew that “ charity towards all with malice to

none , from which the American soul still

THE IRISH ISSUE

o borough, the greatest strategist the Angl T Saxon race has produced . o such men the Feudalists looked t o prick the great bubble of democracy with their swords . But the English working men realised that the failure of the

o wn North would postpone their franchise , and they believed in Lincoln . Idealists in Liver pool and Manchester preferred t o starve for lack Of cotton than allow the Nort hern cause t o be imperilled . Aristocrats all over the

r . wo ld favoured the South , Liberals the North “ Material reasons , even cotton , the Dagon of ” ’ e Dixie , and Davis s strongest pl nipotentiary ,

n did ot play s o grea t a part as class idealism . Lincoln sent ﬂour up the Mersey to relieve

t o distress , but his real gift the English came

Hi vi r 5 . s ct o 186 after his death _ y in made a _ reform bill practicable and even imperative two years later . The Civil War drew out its piteous length . The Southern chivalry and the Northern crusade agonised on bat tle -ﬁ eld s that few Englishmen have known well enough t o name with pride or grief . At Gettysburg V the and Chickamauga , at icksburg and in of Wilderness , the North carved out the future democracy . Had they not been fought and won America would n ot have been united to

- enter the war to day , But what has Freder WINNING THE UNITED STATES 14 1 icks b urg or Shiloh meant t o Englishmen ' What happened at Appomattox— ask ' Too late was Grant saluted as conqueror . During his struggle to conquer he had no Sympathy ’ from Pa lm er s t on s England or Napoleon the ’ Third s France . But he had Sherman , who said War is hell , and he had Sheridan , who ’ was Charles O Ma lley risen gloriﬁed . Too late was Lincoln recognised by England “ Is it ” nothing to you ' he might have asked visitors who came and s a w and idly passed by . In ’ spite of his guest s expressed Southern sympa thies, he received Lord Hartington at the White on a d House , but with some humour insisted “ ”

Mr . dressing him as Partington , serene in the rising tide of a democracy that no mop could push back . English and American s pit ﬁres threatened each other ' but real trouble was n ot slow in f c oming at s ea . The terror o the North and the hope of the South lay in intervention from

Europe . The Confederacy sent envoys . To the delirious enthusiasm of America they were taken off the British Tr ent by a Yankee cap

m . tain , after a preli inary shot across the bows Oddly enough he was claiming the r l ght of search against which his country had fought 1 s o passionately in 18 2 . Fortunately there 14 2 THE IRISH ISSUE were no Atlantic cables to precipitate an in

stant explosion . But England , no less moved , gave seven days fo r the return of the envoys ' and the Guar ds wer e sent to add a Canadian

t o D ela n e winter their Crimean experiences . “ of The Ti mes : m wrote The whole ar y , navy , ” r and volunteers are mad fo service in America . Mad indeed ' In the American Senate prayer “ ” was made , mentioning foreign arrogance to the Republican Jehovah . But behind the men of patriotic impulse wrought the men of inter f national character . The prince consort s o

of tened down the draft the English ministers , “ ” of Russell , the great little man , and of “ ” Palmerston , the little great man . Adams moved fearlessly and lonely in London . The

of pink democratic diplomacy , he never gave what would have been an aristocratic war a “ chance . Bright wrote , bidding Lincoln put ” - all the ﬁ re eaters in the wrong . Secretary or s Seward had the cunning , the Chri tianity , t o t urn the ofﬁcial ch eck by offering an Ameri “ can port for landing and transporting to wa r Canada troops , stores , and munitions of of every kind without exception or reserva ” tion . There will be no war unless England ”

on on e . is bent having , said Lincoln Brag ga rt ry at home or abroad Lincoln never a n

144 THE IRISH ISSUE

the English people were innocent , unaware even of the fell work of individuals . The Ala ’ ba ma t o had slipped sea , while the Queen s advocate wa s enjoying a fortuitous nervous l breakdown . The Laird Rams would have fo n ot lowed , had Adams mentioned with old “ fashioned correctness t o Palmerston : It would b eis uper ﬂu ou s in me t o point ou t t o your Lord ” ship that this means war . The Rams were quietly passed into the British navy . Mr . Adams had given another right turn to the ’ world s helm . The peril had passed , and an

- Anglo American tragedy had been averted . But the scars remained ' and Lyons reported “ the next year from Washington : Three - quar ters of the American people are eagerly longing for a safe opportunity of making war with

England But a safe opportunity , at least for r of safe the democratic futu e the world , old never came . After the war the reverence for England was replaced by suspicion and an n excusable elatio . The national outlines had

on been welded . The biggest army earth had taken the ﬁeld . The ironclad had been born . Enormous damages were assessed on the Ala ba ma ﬂi t d t e . , whose ghost long the seas Sum “ n er a s W , a reprisal , demanded the ithdrawal ” of the British from this hemisphere . There WINNING THE UNITED STATES 14 5

’ was a popular cry of Canada for the Ala ’ ba ma Lord Clarendon s treaty with Minis J ter ohnson was thrown out by the Senate . The Treaty of Washington brought apology Ala ba ma and arbitration . The cost England three million pounds , which was a very cheap way to discover that England and America had found , in arbitration , a permanent and better way than war . The new tendencies , however , involved in America m t en s e dislike for Engl ish

of statecraft , increased inﬂuence the Irish , who had paid their footing with their blood , and a movement towards domestic corruption as a

of reaction from the moral uplift the war . s o The war ended nobly , that Meredith said “ later : Since the benignant conclusion of the

of c greatest ivil wars , I have looked on the American people as leaders of our civilisa ” l tion .

But reaction had followed . The South was of u not plundered , but the sense pl nder found

- un s cru a channel in pension fraud , graft , and

ulou s . p ﬁnance The noblest had perished , and “ the carpetbagger took his place . Peace b e came no less furious than war . Never again could Thackeray call New York a cathedral “ ” - town , grave , decorous , and well read . Mili t a ri s m wa s applied to industrialism . Trade 14 6 THE IRISH ISSUE

only favoured the survival of the cheapest . ﬁ rm Firm fought , and trust was reared upon “ our trust until , in day , the malefactors of ” great wealth s a t in unseen power . Episodes like the impeachment of President Johnson and the Tweed Ring saddened the friends of the republic . But the country was far too young to become decadent . The national life ran sweet , noisy , and adventurous all the cos m o ol while . A new American sprang up , p itan , childlike , optimistic , a quick moneymaker

of but a cheerful spender, devoid all the big ot ries of , tolerant the past , greedy of the pres

of . ent , sure the future It was the type Eng li s hm n e inconsistently term irreverent , while smiling at it s eager reverences offered to Old World objects— the type that only a Haps burg or a Hohenzollern could drive into war . Good relations with such could be maintained b only y treating Americans as Americans , and

- n r o not a s ex Englishmen . Re d e t the Yankee the things that belong to the Yankee , and to God the things that are God ’ s— would have

been a wise social provision . The mistake of insular Englishmen has been to conceive both

after his own image . Not without reason Lowell protested against “ a conviction that W us hatever good there is in is wholly English ,

14 8 THE IRISH ISSUE

the heels , and revenged himself by entertain

Tom wh o ing Moore , wrote obscene squibs against Jefferson from the British embassy '

in Jackson , Pakenham , and Crampton were ult in n ot s g at Washington , apparently realising

they were in a foreign country . Jackson roundly accused the government of lying and

o was sent home . Bulwer was the ﬁrst t adapt

t o himself the situation , realising that English diplomacy had been made rather t o win over “ despots than t o conciliate democracies . Di ” lom a c p y here is electioneering , he wrote from Washington ' and he achieved the success of

- n m u the Clayton Bulwer Treaty . The co t e pt

ou s school was followed by the pompous . The of stately ﬁgures Lyons , Sackville , and Paunce fote dazzled the ofﬁcial scene without approach f ing the heart o the republic . Leslie Stephen described the embassy in the sixties of the last “ century as a small knot of British swells with no employment but that of cursing the coun

try from morning t o night . It was obvious at least that they felt at home ' but good rela

tions must have languished . A period of ofﬁ ci l a laudation and mutual admiration followed ,

variegated by tentative arbitrations , and by

quick exchanges on Irish points . The heyday of reconciliation was reached under the demo WINNING THE UNITED STATES 14 9

cratic school initiated by Bryce . Fifty years D ela n e before , had wished a popular speech ’ o maker to be sent t Washington . Bryce s lit era ry tribute t o the American Constitution marked him as more American than most f Americans . His acceptance o a peerage caused a little sadness , as though they had h lost one of themselves . America herself on ’ f oured St . James s with men o letters like

Bancroft , Motley , and Lowell . When their

Americanism was their chief charm , Anglicisa tion must be regarded as a besetting sin . An American minister is liable t o merge his na t iona lity in a manner impossible to a real foreigner . Better , however , he should remain aloof than n ot keep a clear idea of the Ameri can before English eyes . I f English diplomatists were crude and un e s conciliatorytoward Am ricans , the tourist and

travellers were worse . Writers like the Trol lopes and Dickens recorded their unforgiven

1m p res s 1on s . The mutual ridicule which a common tongue afforded reads as ridiculously as Matt Ward ’ s scoffing ‘ at English factory “ ” chimneys for kissing the clouds t o a genera tion which has found Am er1ca guilty of a little of skyscraping herself . The burden British

abuse was that the Americans spat , and in 150 THE IRISH ISSUE reply Scripture was seriously adduced to show that the Saviour had also done s o ' The history of English visiting in America does not afford a lesson in perfect tact or de portment . It is unjust to take liberties in the land of liberty . American manners are based ’ on on . good nature , not etiquette God s gen “ ’ ” lem n t e are frequent in God s own country . V The ictorian frankly disliked America , and ﬂ n said s o . The lionised Dickens o e d ed her mortally . Thackeray , also a success as a lec Ameri ca n turer, wisely p romised to write no

' Notes , reserving his satire for the Georges . “ He reached t h e wise conclusion that the great

of point to ding into the ears the great , stupid , virtue -proud English public is that there are folks as good as they in America . As lec t ur ers Matthew Arnold was inaudible and Free

t . man unin elligible The Stanleys , both the explorer and the dean , were a success . The ’ of dean s eulogium the Anglican divine , Hooker , “ was taken as a s hrewd compliment to ﬁghting ”

Jo e . Hooker , a popular general Froude was

' mischievous enough t o attack the Irish in a of series lectures , which were no less ﬁercely

answered by Father Tom Burke . Diplomacy

was , embarrassed before he could be in duced to

drop his tour . One of his taunts wa s never

152 THE IRISH ISSUE

present conﬂict . A matter of national honour is not likely to appeal except to the Celtic and

Teutonic stocks of Am erica . Of these the most of vivid Celtic and Teutonic strains , the Irish and the German , outnumber their fellow , the “ - Anglo Saxon . Two great families of men

are in the American ﬁeld , the Teutons and ” ’ ’ D Ar M G 18 c ee 51 . the Celts, wrote y in As

Froude sorrowfully recognised , seven years

- after the Civil War, “the Anglo Saxon power ” r is running to seed . The life of equal oppo t unit y , unhampered by privilege , has shown that there is no race superiority between

Aryan peoples in America . Inﬂuences and

riches go to the numerous and industrious .

While the law , language , and legislature can be c - h e a alled Anglo Saxon , t Celtic le ven and the huge foreign communities have undermined the

Anglophile instinct, except in social circles .

The Irish have become , at any rate , as Ameri ca n is ed as the original colonists and in another generation the Germans , who now retain their language , will follow suit . How far the original P r type is surviving is becoming doubtful . e haps Mr . Madison Grant concludes his volume a little pessimistically : If the melting-pot is allowed to boil without control , the type of native American of Colonial descent will b e WINNING THE UNITED STATES 153 come as extinct as the Athenian of the age of ” - Pericles . Yet no Irish American would wish to s ee the Anglo - Saxon as rare on the banks of

the Hudson as the Redskin on the Mississippi . The Celt and the Saxon in America have rec ogn is ed their kindred stock in the Aryan heri tage They have mixed in the professions and d in every social circle , and in bloo when reli gion would permit . It is in Ireland herself that the Irish have not received Aryan recog i i n n t o . The antagonism of the Celt and the Saxon passes beyond the dead hand of the antiquarian , and even out of the livelier grasp of the poli t icia n , when considered in its results to world n of politics . The Irish drive out Ireland have become s omethmg between a lever and a leaven in every single part of the empire . Never in the majority , they are always the strongest amongst min orities . The casting vote and the balance of political power comes to them by

1s chance or by right . This even more so in S of the United tates , where dwell a majority the whole race , estimated between ﬁfteen and twenty millions . The United States were origi

- nally an extension of the Anglo Saxon world . The English Colonials with strong Irish back ing 'chieﬂy from Ulster' laid down the great 154 THE IRISH ISSUE

republic on lines which have Since been strained ,

n ot though sapped , by the incoming hordes n from east Europe and west Asia . The A glo

Saxon , the Irish , and to a lesser extent the Ger

t o man , have proved the most ready assimilate

. t o Americanism But , the hordes of Slavs ,

Mediterranean and Levantine types , America

n i s little less than a golden caravanserai . Owi g t o of them , the tone national consciousness has chang ed since the Civil War . The American “ ” meltin g-p ot has n ot yet yielded a corporate

American nationality . The mistake of regarding the Irish as inferior at home has been extended into considering them negligible when scattered abroad . In

of of S l n s spite a generation g and warnings , England has never made any genuine political move or diplomatic advance toward s the Irish

Americans . This Irish inﬂuence runs stiller and deeper than any superﬁcial examination f . o would show Few governors States , few or or elected judges , representatives , senators , but have t o feel and consider at some time the

of or n weight the Irish vote , at least the late t

f r strength o I ish opinion . If they reckon the Irish press and the professional Irish politicians

k 1n 1 n 18 as negligible , they now that Irish op 0 n ot . It runs in the marrow of the United

1 56 THE IRISH ISSUE States has been one long struggle against Irish

inﬂuences in the dark . The important convention agreed upon by R ever dy Johnson and Lord Clarendon in Lon l n don was thrown out the Senate . Bancroft in his Life of S ewa r d clearly traces this to its “ source . The Fenian movement had increased the strong public sentiment in favour of wait t ing for an opportunity o retaliate . This was

such an opportunity . The play and counter play of Irish sentiment in American politics b e

came more and more marked . Each President had to deal with it . President Johnson was much at a loss what to d o with Fenian raiders

of Canada . The government could only let them down a s gently as possible without offend

ing England . President Grant was much em b a rr a s s ed by the Irish mission to the American centenary under Parnell , who refused to be

introduced by the British ambassador . We ﬁnd Alexander Sullivan interviewing President on Arthur Irish emigration , and causing diplo matic action thereby which Parnell character “ ised as the best slap England had from Amer ica since the War of

- Sackville West , whose every move was watched and foiled by an intensely active

Fenian party , actually took refuge , during the WINNING THE UNITED STATES 157 t irh oe e of the Ph nix Park executions , on the s pre idential yacht ' and indirectly he owed , in

n d of the e , his abrupt dismissal to the force ’

Irish opinion . An indiscreet letter from his pen at election time gave the Irish Democrats dis t in bt a breach of etiquette to work upon , and Cleveland handed Sackville - West his p a of n pers . It was an act unprecede ted rigour , but the Irish- Americans were strong enough to ’ ’ e i m s ill insist . Th T e laid it t o Boyle O R e y s credit , just as Mr . G . W . Smalley gave Senator Patrick Collins credit for keeping the Anglo phile minister Phelps from the Supreme bench .

The nineties brought the V enezuelan crisis . The British boundary was based on old Dutch

V . rights , and the enezuelan on Spanish Eng land refused to arbitrate and Cleveland de m a n d ed a commission as an alternative to war . Bryce says his motives have never been under f . o stood The truth is , America had come

of age , and a reassertion the Monroe Doctrine Th was in her mounting blood . e Democrats had returned t o power for the ﬁrst time since the Civil War ' and the Irish among them were nettled by the rejection of home rule the pre i v ous year . The Irish and Cleveland found their antagonist was the same . Salisbury , the postponer of Irish freedom , was an easier and 158 THE IRISH ISSUE

welcomer target than Gladstone , whose Civil War indiscretions had been forgotten in his

subsequent liberalism . Cleveland spoke ﬁrmly

f r in order to avert the possible occasions o wa . ” He refused all supine submission ' a n d the

boundary was adjudicated without , disturbing “ the rest of Mr Monroe or the peace of the

world . As the Bayard - Chamberlain Treaty had been 1888 s o rejected by the Senate in , the same levers Were used by Michael Davitt to work the defeat of the Anglo - American Treaty of 9 18 7 . A passage is worth quoting from the ’ Skefﬁ n t on s Li e o a . D vi tt late Mr Sheehy g f f , n ot s o much as a missile against England as a matter of rumination t o those who are most concerned with the safety of America or Eng

- land or Ireland t o day.

I n 1897 the oft-mooted project of a n Anglo-American Alli s mi n n wa a n ce wa pro e tly before the public . It s Da vitt who n l n m defea ted it . He felt tha t a spec ia l respo sibility a y o hi “ w s n n in this ma tter . It a la rgely owi g to the moveme t tha t he ha d in itia ted tha t the mi n ds of Irish- America n s were a ltered so a s to ma ke it possible for such a proposition a s a n a llia n ce n n n n I n a n with Grea t Brita i to be eve e terta i ed . the ch ged situa tion crea ted by the Gla dston e offer of pea ce a n d goodwill he ha d rejoiced to ﬁ n d in 1886 the temper of I r i s h ~Am eric a so n n n a n frie dl y towa rds this mea sure of con cilia tio . But E gl d ha d turn ed her ba ck on Gla dston e a n d h a d di sown ed his n oble H d efforts to hea l the breach between the two na tions . a it

THE IRISH ISSUE

and unsuspected by their blinded diplomatists of m during most the time , England and Ger any for had been competing the winning of America . The unforeseen history of the world was yet on h er a lli a n ce to turn ' , and there was often as good a chance of an understanding with one

a s with the other . Each in turn had contrib ut ed enormously to the population of the r e public , but each in turn incurred its most bit ’ wa ter hostility , which in Germany s case s to prove fatal . England had the American tra dition and the Irish immigration in the scales

a l n s t a g her , but She had in her favour what Bismarck truly called the greatest political fact “ of modern times , the inherited and permanent ” fact that North America speaks English . From the time of Frederick the Great Prus s ia manifested a traditional friendship for the

United States , which might have survived more n than o e European cataclysm . Germany had

no ambitions in America . German pr ofessor d om looked on the American republic as a kind

- cuckood om t o of cloud , which , however , they were very glad t o migrate after the revolution 1848 th e of , leaving the German people to

Junker . The German idealists fought well for

American idealism in the Civil War, as is h of The r s i s brought out in t e chapter C i , by WINNING THE UNITED STATES 161

’ Winston Churchill , entitled Richter s Scar . German public opinion and German ﬁnance t o were not hostile the North . In return New England feeling favoured the Germans ln the f 18 0 war o 7 . A great German wedge had penetrated the

Continent and had proven its worth and value . D u r m g the nineteenth century there were ﬁve

1m m 1 ra n t s 1 million German g , four mill on Irish and only three million from the rest of Great

’ Britain . They combined t o turn the scale of

- wh o rivalry against the Anglo Saxon , at the time of the Revolution had amounted t o a million and a half , while German and Irish were roughly half a million apiece . F . J . “ Turner says of the German settlers : With their Scotch - Irish neighbours they formed the ” f th f l r outer edge o etide o p on ee s . With the end of the century Anglo - Saxon stock was reck on e d twenty million , German as much as eighteen , and Celtic , including Scotch and

u . Irish , fo rteen The Irish and the German

n ot did come into contact , except under church A auspices . S a rule their settlements did n ot coincide . In his work on the Germans in Amer1ca Faust describes h ow in Pennsylvania “ the Germans are most numerous where the limestone appears , while the Irish are settled 162 THE IRISH ISSUE

th on the slate foundations , e Irish taking land well- watered near the big rivers and the Ger mans with a better eye for good land choosing ” that on which there grew the best trees . In parts the German overran the Irish . McAll is t er s t own , an Irish settlement , became Han

hi Hi s tor o Vi r i ni a over . In s y f g Kercheval gives a curious account of the German settlers ’ caricaturing St . Patrick s Day , while the Irish ’ retaliated with a burlesque of St . Michael s . But the Celt and the Teuton combined in their

Sa b b a t a rl a n l s m disregard of Puritanism and , from which they largely delivered the Ameri can continent . The German inﬂuences were strictly divided into a purely secular and an ecclesiastical line .

The former developed socialism in America, while intellectually it affected the centres of

American education . As Andrew D . White “ said : Although Great Britain is generally r e

of garded as the mother the United States , Ger many has from an intellectual standpoint b e come more and more the second mother of the ” American republic . The interchange of pro fes s or s with Germany and the planting of a Teutonic museum at Harvard marked the las t s tage of this tendency . Ecclesiastically the Germans threw out great

164 THE IRISH ISSUE

claimed that a third have a German name , but the great majority of the remainder carry a Celtic denominator The German - American would have been glad enough to merge himself into America , retain ing the same memory of the Germany which had no room for him as the French - Canadian

does of France . But an unkind destiny had turned both America and Germany at about the same time to a futur e on the water . At the same time that American ﬂeets were r eliev m of g Spain her colonies , German ﬂeets were waiting for the chance. to gather them up . From that moment a tragedy was in store for

- the German American . Prince Henry of Prus sia administered a friendly warning to Admiral

Dewey as he left Hong Kong for Manila , but Admiral D ied richs made himself as unpleasant to the American ﬂeet as possible . The war with Spain was a severe blow to German ex pa n s ion and German -Americans felt that the

' interests of t he Fa th erla n d had not been served . Carl Schurz wished America to decline the Phi lippines because it meant accepting British “ protection . British friendship is a good thing to have but perhaps not s o good a thing . to ” Pa un efot e need . Holleben induced c to Sign a general plea against the war , which was WINNING THE UNITED STATES 165

used afterwards against Anglo -American senti~ ment But the war with Spain was the occasion of restoring the long - lost relations with Eng of land . The delivery Cuba appealed to Eng is hm en of l , and the unpopularity the United States ln Europe drew Americans t o their glo rious ly isolated cousins . While Germany a n

ril g y fumbled with her uncompleted ﬂeet , Eng land held the ring in the Far East . The s ea

of battle of Manila seemed an echo the Armada , as the last of the “ Indies ” fell from the hand

of the Hapsburg . The good feeling engendered

might have brought about an agreement , had

there been some common cause or crusade . Chamberlain had already meditated the matter ' with Secretary Hay . Shoulder to shoulder

we could command peace the world over . I should rejoice in an occasion in which we could ” ﬁght side by Side . Had it not been for the

Boer War , England and America might have

scented a common foe on the horizon . Ger many was intriguing equally with Kruger in the Transvaal and Agum a ld o in the Philip

pines . But the unhappy Boer War raised a r e torrent of denunciation in America . To a

a . public , republic is always a republic Boer commandos seemed conspicuously kin to the 166 THE I RISH ISSUE

Revolutionary farmers . Hay wrote mournfully “ in 1900: If it were n ot for our domestic poli

' tics we could and should join with England , whose interests are identical with ours , and make our ideas prevail . But in the present morbid state of the public mind that i s not t o

of be thought , and we must look idly on and s ee her making terms with Germany instead ” wa s of us . There considerable insight in ’ for Hay s words , the great unspoken question in English diplomacy for a century was whether America or Germany was to be her eventual

ally . The shortsightedness of politicians and

dynasties favoured the latter . In 18 14 Prus

sia was an ally , and America a foe . A century later began the war which was to reverse the

situation . Chamberlain had wished to have

n ot . both as allies , but this was to be Prussian

m er1 n 1s m i s m and A ca cannot dwell together . As a result of the defeat of Spain Germany had discovered that America was a force in the

ofﬁng of the world to be reckoned with . In “ 1899 Secretary Hay wrote : The Emperor is

nervously anxious to be on good terms with us , ”

wn bi en entendn . on his o terms , The Boer War had dissipated the friendship for England h d which had sprung up in America . There a “ arisen what Hay called a mad- dog hatred of

168 THE IRISH ISSUE

‘ a a a a wa a an n to b e F ugh b ll gh , get out of the y , s ys he, me i g “ ” . Li eb va terla nd a a nd ha d a r nk . polite , s ys I, we d i together ” “ di a . th Glory be, me t ted Mr Dooley , who ever thought e ’ ’ ” I ris h d live to see the d a y when they d be freed by the Dutch '

It was quite possible for the Amer1ca n tradi tion to be hostile to England and her policy t o be otherwise . This has often been the case in

ext ra or di modern times , and accounts for the nary differences of opinion between Washington and the American people as a whole towards

England . The American Government and peo ple have been unitedly hostile against England V in occasions of stress , during the enezuela cri s l s , during the Civil War, and during the Na l nic O ther 1s po eo conﬂict . W e the government has not fostered the popular dislike . Napoleon had never levied taxes in the

States , and American feeling was with him 18 12 against England . By the War of America prolonged and intensiﬁed the struggle . Yet “ Hi s tor as Mr . Wilson wrote in his y Napoleon the en em was y of the civilised world , had been ’ America s own enemy in disguise a n d had ’ thrown off the disguise . England s policy had cut America to the quick and had become intolerable and it did not lessen America ’ s exasperation that that policy had been a measure of war against the Corsican , not against her . WINNING THE UNITED STATES 169 To substitute the Brandenburger for the Corsican g1ves the exact historical parallel with which the historian was himself called to deal as a maker as well as a writer of American his tory After the Civil War America felt little stom

ach for expansion , though the home demesne wa s completed by the purchase of Alaska . But the Senate would not a llow Seward to ob tain possession of St . Thomas or Grant of San

Domingo . Only gradually it was realised that

Cuba and Hawaii were vital strategic points, but American interference could only be sanc i of t oned at home in the guise humanitarianism .

The manifest destiny was not yet . With the passing of the world drama from the Mediterranean and the Atlantic , it seemed as though the supreme struggle in the future must be for the mastery of the Paciﬁc . Amer ica had touched the Japanese power to birth . Russia was hasting towards her faraway out let to the ocean . America and Germany found themselves picking up stations in the South

Seas . Under President Harrison Samoa was the scene of some high -souled administration s ub s e on the part of America , which made the quent German control particularly bit ter to n of the natives . U der Harrison the Queen Hawaii was overthrown and replaced by a pro 170 THE IRISH ISSUE

c visional government . The ethi s were those of a peaceful usurpation , and Cleveland coming f into o ﬁce repudiated the action . But the war with Spain forced Hawan into American con

- trol . It was seen to be the very door step t o the Paciﬁc . Cuba brought America into the realm of world politics . For half a century Cuba had ’ lain like Lazarus at America s gates , until her

overﬂ owed . sores , and America intervened As

' many Americans tried t o avert as t o p recipit a t e t he war , which was duly declared and sum marily ﬁnished . McKinley was able to claim that no nation was ever more fortunate in war or more honourable in negotiations for ” peace . America stood like a Lochinvar among nations . At the same time the negotiations taught Americans that they had few friends in u E rope , disclosing to those who had eyes a possible ally in England and an incipient a enemy in Germany . American imperi lism and pa ciﬁ cis m both took tremendous root as a r e “ sult of the war . Corresponding to the Little ” Englanders , the lesser Americans waxed of strong , convinced that the whole the Philip pine archipelago was n ot worth the life of an American b oy As a people American s were still nervous of

1 72 THE IRISH ISSUE

become a world Power . Her foreign r elations by the end of the century bore traces and streaks from the international mangle . Mr .

Dooley brilliantly described them at the time , and it is doubtful if the historian could better summarise them :

You will be gla d to kn ow tha t the friendshi p of this coun try with Germa n y pla n ted in S a moa a n d nourished a t Man il a ha s grown to such a poin t a s to sa tisfy the most critica l Germa n n n a r e on America n . With E gla d we such terms a s must plea se every C a n a dia n but n ot o n a n y such terms a s would ma ke a ny Irishma n thi nk we a re on such terms a s we ought n ot to be

The symbol of American imperialism was the

Panama Canal , which appealed to the Ameri can people as a mystic fulﬁlment of the or 1g1n a l dream of Columbus , desiring to sail west to the

East Indies . The overnight recognition of the republic of Panama in the teeth of dilatory Colombia and the organised dictatorship under which the work was completed Struck the note of a progressive and imperial Power . Later in the year of Prince Henry ’ s visit had come a joint challenge to the Monroe Doctrine

in South America , engineered by Germany , which the English Foreign O ﬂi ce must bear th e

discredit of adopting . The attempt of Ger

many , France , and England to bring pressure WINNING THE UNITED STATES 173

V in enezuela did , however, cause as much anger among the English as among the American people against the ofﬁcials of Balfour’ s govern ment . Before long England began to see the necessity of making renunciations and even of jettisoning interests to avoid a clash with 9 America in any part of the world . In 18 6 Roosevelt had said the Monroe Doctrine would be asserted if Germany sought to acquire

Cuba from Spain or St . Thomas from the ” V Danes . The threat to enezuela had been made to enable Germany to occupy the - Mar garita Islands , but though England was acting like a blind dupe America was awake in the ’ person of her President . Before Roosevelt s private ultimatum to Holleben , the German h ambassador , the t reatening warships were withdrawn . On the other side , the German foreign service defeated every effort of America to purchase the Danish West Indies in the

- Danish Parliament , while the Hamburg Ameri can Line began to pave the way towards a Ger man occupation . But American policy was

ﬁxed , and by taking over the administration of revenue in Nicaragua , Haiti , and San Domingo, American ofﬁcials cleverly prevented the in gress of German creditors .

Curiously enough , Germany could not har 174 THE IRISH ISSUE ass America without bringing her closer to ’ England and vice versa . Germany s gesticula tions in the open o r subterraneous diplomacies found England and America in unconscious ’ partnership . Germany s efforts to acquire a base or a colony in South America were equally checked by the Monroe Doctrine and the Brit f ish fleet . It wa s di ficult to distinguish the line of where the opposition each began or ended , 1911 s o imperceptibly did they coalesce . By “ Maximilian Harden ha d re alised that Great Britain and North America tend to form a community of interests . On the two oceans the An glo - Saxons of the two continents group f ” themselves together in unity o will . A life- and - death struggle n ow arose in which destiny played a stronger part than any diplo ’ macy in fixing or laying the train of America s undeveloped international policy , whether it should t ake a hostile or indifferent or co - opera tive attitude towards the British Empire . What the British Foreign Office had failed to achieve , German militarism brought about . “ Henry Adams could not help remarking : The grisly terror which in twenty years effected what Ad a m s es had tried for two hundred — ’ in vain frightened England into America s ” arms .

176 THE IRISH ISSUE

Europe implied European non - intervention in America ” was found as impracticable as all mathematical dicta in practice . American in t er ven t ion in Asia was a prelude to the same in

Europe . It was a long way from Nebraska to the summer palace of Pekin , but American arms had reached there . Under Hay America had begun to protest against the treatment of Jews m in Russia and Roumania . Every s all nation in distress tended to appeal to America and not to Caesar . The President of the United States and n ot the German Emperor began to be hailed as the universal referee . Roosevelt once expressed the very proper wish that “ our questions could be settled on their own merits and not complicated by quarrels between Eng ” ' land and Ireland or France and Germany . In the present crisis of the world America has taken a pa cifica t ory part in t heformer and the part of a belligerent in the latter of these his toric quarrels . Their final settlement Seems to depend more on American intervention than on any other element . The United States have finally entered the circle of the Powers not

co - a n d merely as a Power, but as the deciding

- world compelling one . The bolts of war and the branches of peace are equally in the grip of the American eagle . IRISH AMERICA DURING THE WAR

The sentiment of I rish America during the

world war , and in particular towards England ,

varied enormously . At moments it was pro n oun ced , and at others it was impossible to

deﬁne . During the ﬁrst year it was uncertain

“ - and , until the Dublin rising , pro Ally . After the executions i t was anti -British and with Amer ica’ s entry into the war it resolved itself into a

- - s et pro Americanism . But cross currents and

o of complications , both f history and psychol

ogy , made it as clouded and uncertain generally

n i rr l n as it was vivid and frank o s t g occasions . At the commencement of the war the Celt

- showed himself instinctively anti Teutonic . The bulk of the leading and assimilated Irish

Americans , though with violent exceptions from ’ the outset , were satisﬁed at England s entry into the war and gladly expectant that Irish regiments would share in a speedy redemption

of Belgium . As regards Ireland , Irish America

paused . It was realised that the destiny of 177 17 8 THE IRISH ISSUE

’ Ireland was in one man s hand . The near ap proach of home rule had left the extremists in

America in a minority . The apparent political triumph of Redmond had placed a huge con

s t it u ti on a l sentiment behind him , which only its actuality l n the form of an Irish Parliament was needed to make amenable to fair diplo macy and reasonable propaganda throughout

the American continent . But the question was whether he would succeed in wresting home rule from England or whether England would hi succeed in wresting s prize from him . One

of of the golden hours history was present , in r which the silve minutes slowly passed , never

to return . Subsequent hours were to be of

iron . As soon as it was seen in America that Red mond was recruiting Irishmen as a member of the British Commons and not a s an Irish pre of mier, the position the extremists became

clear and their propaganda made way . But the great Irish ﬁnanciers and industrial i s t s were p r o - Ally and with the bulk of Ameri

cans of Irish name remained s o . The hier

chieft a in ed oc archy , by three Irish cardinals , cupied a variety of positions within the largess

of neutrality . The great German element in their ﬂocks naturally proved a counterweight

THE IRISH ISSUE been to the Irish party what the London Ti mes

. J was to the Tories ohn Devoy , the editor of Ga eli c-Ameri ca n the , came out of the wilder ness after obscure but consistent years and undertook the championship of Germany .

Amiable to meet , vitriolic of pen , he came back from the past , the last of the real Fenians , but as an old soldier of France he must have felt a pang that he and Germany were become each ’ other s tools . But the iron of the British fet ter had gnawed into his strong soul and he made himself the most anti -British editor in

America . Though the Irish - German press became a reality , it was not a genuine growth of Irish

America . It was obviously an attempt to in n ﬂ ue ce rather than to express Irish feeling . A i The Ki n the na vely preposterous book called g, a i s er a nd I ri s h Fr eedom was K , typical of the

whole attempt to distort Irish sentiment . It

. McGuir e v u was written by Mr , a pre io s mayor

of Syracuse , and ﬁgured in the literature of the prison camp in Germany, though the statement “ that Prince von Bii low was a very devout ” Catholic must have considerably astonished w s any German who chanced to read it . It a followed by another volume of which the alle gorica l frontispiece seemed t o convey as Ger IRISH AMERICA 18 1

’ “ many s message to Ireland : All this efﬁciency I will give unto you if you will bow down and ” worship me . If the candid historian records such comfort and help as the Germans have gleaned from

some Irishmen in America , it is only fair to em pha s is e the great silent outburst of loyalty of the mass to America after the entry of their of country into the war , which the perennial testimony will be the impressive and heartening manifestoes of the three cardinals and the thousands and thousands of Irish - Americans in

the regular and drafted armies , amounting to 20 3 0 between and per cent of the whole , whose o nly international politics were the two words , “ ” Am er1ca ﬁrst ' It was their silent devotion and their trustfulness in the meaning of t he President ’ s message that made American opin r ion insistent that Ireland should be included i among the small nationalit es , whose place in

world democracy was to be made safe . The Irish-Am er 1ca n press must largely be dis carded as a n indicator of the opinion of the Irish in America before or after the entry of

America into the war . Amid this ﬂood only the New York Advocate can be said amongst Irish papers to have re new mained independent . With the year of 182 THE IRISH ISSUE

’ 1916 the sympathi sers with Mr . Redmond s

r c I r ela nd policy started a weekly o gan alled ,

J . . s which was brilliantly edited by C Wal h . It very soon attracted the intellectual and con i s er va t ve attention of the race . It was r e sponsible for a famous article by Cardinal

of Gibbons , who in giving his recollections Archbishop Ma cH a le stated

h d a n o a i n Y n He a bsolutely f ith a rmed rebellion . The ou g ’ n n 4 n hi Irela d moveme t of 8 ea rly broke s hea rt . He wa n ted an a a a n d the people to get the l d , to h ve C tholic schools to

a n d own a n a a a nd . preserve love their l gu ge , liter ture music w n a n n w He s a the ecessity of the Repe l of the U io . He a s a s l s a n ow a a we shou d y , Home Ruler, but he thought of it r ther a s somethi n g whi ch would a id the preserva tion of Irish n a t i on a lit a n d a a n y , he ever believed th t Irel d must help herself, a n d tha t she should n o t be a n d ought n ot to be depen den t

n a n n e . hi s a n a n upo y foreig pow r As to ttitude to E gl d , it

“ was a s wa s b e a ll n a t a of course , to expected of Irishme th t

l . n a a n time , hosti e But he ever thought sep r tio from the Em

a a a n d n d n . pire pr ctic ble , he ever dislike the E glish people He ever believed tha t the En glis h people were neither cognisan t of n or a ssen ted to the a cts of the En glish Govern men t n or the n a n in a n a n d h a d a a f n E glish G rriso Irel d , he the w rmest fectio n n n n a for ma y i dividua l E glishme . He would h ve rejoiced to see the d a y when Engla n d should a lly herself with Fra n ce n a d Irela n d . But the delays and indecisions at home gradually sapped the R edm on dit e position in

America . The president of the United Irish

J . League , Michael Ryan , drew aside , and ,

184 THE IRISH ISSUE declared themselves pro -Hell had they s uﬁ cient proof that the devil was anti -British ' At different times the greatest variety of cooks lent a hand to stirring the Irish -American

. in broth Kuno Meyer , professor of Irish the of University Liverpool , appeared in America as though by schedule , in order to proclaim

German scholarship in the Celtic ﬁeld . Shortly before the outbreak of war a more exciting

’ character turned up in New York in Sir Roger

Casement , who came over for the perfectly ex cus a b le and open purpose of buying arms to ’ - counteract Carson s gun running in Ulster . The war carried him off his feet and he could “ only murmur to his host for some days , Oh , the poor Kaiser, from which he settled down into an obsession that ‘ he was Wolfe Tone redi vivus . Finally he went into Germany as the

- ambassador of the Irish American extremists .

From Ireland he carried no commission . After M his exploit his lieutenant , Captain onteith , escaped to America in the most picturesque style of adventure . A more damaging person age to the British empire was Mrs . Sheehy Skeffin t on g , who arrived by the underground route from Ireland after the murder of her hus a n o band, incident which if atroci us was not o n e condoned . He was a pure intellectual and IRISH AMERICA 185 of the most advanced thinkers in modern Ire land . He was a man of critical and brilliant parts and one of the few convinced pa cifi s t s who have ever been born in Ireland . He was a Dublin Socrates , and like S ocrates he was unjustly put to death by the militarists , but that should hardly have made him an object of - veneration to the pro Prussian . Lord and Lady Aberdeen courageously toured America in Irish interests and were chiefly responsible for a translation of the Ford industry to Cork . The Sinn Fein were better represented in

America than the Irish party . In Seumas Ma M n us c a they had a caustic and lively pen , and in Padraic Colum one of the surviving poets of the Dublin pleiad . But Colum was a poet before a politician and he hymned the h dirge of Casement and Kettle equally . T e chief propagandist of the Redm on dit e pers ua ho sion was Patrick Egan , w in his remarkable career from an Irish cons pirator to a United States m 1n l s t er had won the conﬁdence of — three remarkable men Parnell , Blaine , and

Balmaceda . He issued a direct challenge to t he Irish- German entente to Which there could be no reply . The extremists received less encouragement from Ireland than in America herself . Apart 186 THE IRISH ISSUE

from the old relentless Fenians , there were powerful groups in America who for reasons often widely unconnected with Ireland were disposed to encourage a s trong anti- British

sentiment amongst the Irish . But the German propaganda amongst the Irish drew its strongest support from English T h politicians . e entry of Carson into the Cabi net was a climax t o many minds and took off the edge of any Irish desire to avenge the sink

ing of the Lus i ta ni a . Thanks to the press gib b et in s e g of several y ars , Carson had come to appear to the Irish -American in much the same light as the Kaiser appears t o the London cock

ney . It was taken as a sign that home rule

would be scotched if not nulliﬁed . During the next twelvemonth Irish opinion was wallowing as heavily in the trough of the f of waves as the o ﬁcial opinion America, equally r ir itated , irrational , and irresolute . Irish

‘ did not Americans , in spite of their press , know 191 what t o think or do . In the spring of 6 an Irish race convention was staged by huge and f galvanic effort in New York . Its e fect was

s o slight , except far as it may have ministered

to the smouldering embers in Dublin . The p resence of pro - Germans caused it to be avoided

and ridiculed by leading Irishmen , who a few

188 THE IRISH ISSUE

i tent sequence on beha lf of Armen a , Ireland , a nd Belgium . ff The e ect of the Dublin rising was , of course , to put the Clan -na- Gael into the saddle ' A

- great anti British outburst took place , followed by a grim suspicion that Germany had not

- - played quite fair . The Clan na Gael organised

m ee l n a famous t g ln Carnegie Hall , to which prominent and moderate Irishmen went on the understanding that the meeting was a memo

on e . rial and not a political However , the German anthem was played before they reached the platform . In the course of his speech Bourke Cockran was interrupted by cries of ” Down with England , to which he replied I say not down with England but up with mis r Ireland . The meeting was as much ep resented by the champions as by the enemies f o Ireland . There could be no doubt but that the shots of the ﬁ ring- squad in Dublin were heard all round the world . As Lord Acton once wrote “ oe of the Ph nix Park murders , the true moral of this catastrophe can never be made visible ” n e to the average Englishman . The bungled got ia tion s which followed did not assuage the bitterness . Then it became obvious why the cynical Bernstorff was the strongest anti IRISH AMERICA 189

- in home ruler the States , and why the generous wisdom of the British ambassador Shared the

- distress common to all Irishmen of good will . The episode of Dublin afforded an interlude V to the drama of erdun in the American press . The features of the Irish leaders swam into the

a a lo . r glass , blurred by h of blood The I ish section of America then was straitly and ﬁercely a n roused . Thousands d thousands made them o selves heard , to whom Dublin was still a l st

Z of ion and the fallen capital their race , and to whom Ireland acts as a magnet , a lodestar , a

- dream , an inspiration , a blood madness .

During the week of the Dublin revolt, when news was coming in uncertain scraps , the voice of Irish America was lifted not unlike the of a chorus a Greek tragedy , given over to p prehension , memories , and query , while some foredestined crime is occurring within . It was possible to know Irishmen in the streets of

New York b y their expression . Sorrow , anxi ety , exaltation , and a tangle of atavistic feel ings were struggling in their features . The his t orica l dislike of the Sass enach was struggling against a certain distrust of participation with f the German . The e fect of the rising was one ff a n thing . The e ect of the executions was other . Then the Irish remembered Robert 190 THE I RI SH ISSUE

Emmet and knew where theyfit ood . They were roused on a sensitive point and an out burst of lyrical anger swept through the con in n t h t e from New York t o t e Golden Gates . f It all hinged on the questiono the executions . It was felt that on ly Irishmen had the right to put down a rising in Ireland . That only a con stituted Irish government had the right to con m n d e Irishmen to death . And there was none except on paper . There would have been no fierce outburst of horror had the insurgent leaders been shot down in h ot blood behind their own barricades . A government in p os session is bound to meet arms with arms . Those who were slain in the fighting slew and were slain . They had taken up the sword and they perished by t he Sword . The event sur passed all hopes of the extremists who were watching from America what looked like a

ﬁasco . They had launched a rising of fr a nc ti r u e rs and they reaped a harvest of martyrs . What need n ot have been more than an ex tended riot wa s raised to the dignity of a revo n f luti o . The suicidal folly o the rising a s an appeal to arms was entirely forgotten in the f Fein er s dramatic deaths o the leaders . Sinn limited in numbers and ofﬁcials limited in imagination had combined t o play the German

192 THE IRISH ISSUE parliament to sit in the Bank of Ireland hailed

- fﬁ h the republic in the post o ce . T e nature of the connections between I rela n d / a n d America were seen to be more than sentimental . They were subtle , telepathic , and even hysterical . Ireland is liable t o act under certain circum

ﬁ er cel stances as bravely , as y , as illogically as li act a s a woman , and her exiles are able to immoderately as those who are in love with a woman . Celt and Saxon had long been grappling W 1th each other in the American arena . The prize was public opinion . In time of peace , English diplomatists could dally with the famous pass word that blood was thicker than water, but in the day of his supreme test the Anglo -Saxon needed American opinion and even American support behind him . The German was power less to affect American opinion without the in f “ valuable help o the Celt . Prussia fears the Celtic political will in America more than she ” fears the English of England , wrote Francis

Grierson . Bernstorff had realised the strength of Irish America and ma de a clumsy attempt to harness it t o his schemes through the Clan - na t o Gael leaders , whose messages he despatched “ Germany . The ultimate failure of the Bar ” wa s in bier de Sayville , as he known diplo IRISH AMERICA 193 m i ci at c rcles , was not displeasing to Irish opinion , which was much more appreciative of ’ - Spring Rice s undemonstrative sympathy . As “ an American cardinal remarked , while carry ing out his duty as a British ambassador he has ” n not forgotte he is an Irishman . “ ” If the Celt and the Saxon was t he oldest of feuds in British history it is also the last and latest . The Irish trouble has ceased to be merely a local sore or latent afﬂiction . It ha s become a world -wide and pronounced irrita tion , which the past year has seen intensiﬁed in every limb of empire . Gardiner once wrote of “ - i Anglo Irish relat ons , that whereas the Eng lish sovereigns had been confronted by a con ri ge es of Irish tribes , the English common ” wealth wa s confronted by a n Irish nation . To d ay the British Empire is met and queried by a great and international brotherhood of

Irish blood within and without her borders ,

upon whose undiminishing , devotion to Ireland

s et the sun never sets . Let none aside as an obscure domestic quarrel the crisis that came simultaneously in the relations between Eng land and Ireland as well as in the relations b e tween America and England . Diplomatists do not like to admit , and politicians for equally obvious reasons seek to conceal , the real heart 194 THE IRISH ISSUE

of controversy between England and America . “ By our methods in Ireland we have sown ’ ” dragon s teeth in every quarter of the world ,

. . a dmin is wrote T W Russell , member of an t r a t ion which has since sharpened rather than blunted them . The aftermath of the rising was the pro of tracted and painful trial Roger Casement , on which Irish attention in America was closely

ﬁxed until his execution . The most strenuous efforts were made by both his friends and critics in America to obtain a reprieve . Owing to conﬂicting accounts as to his motives , both extremists and moderates were for different reasons in favour of his pardon , except a few who gave the painful impre s s 1on of feeling that it would be best for his reputation as a patriot to suffer the extreme penalty . In this as in one or two other matters the British Govern ment showed themselves willing to oblige . A petition bearing. the very best names in Irish

America was forwarded in vain . After his ex ecu tion a judicial but striking article from John

Quinn appeared in the New York Ti mes . It was strongly written and it sm ote friend and

' c foe . After bearing witness to the Quixoti “ : His chivalry of Casement, he commented ex ecut ion was just what Germany then needed t o

196 THE IRISH ISSUE privately and an application for pardon made on his behalf by John Quinn and the present writer . The British Government were a p r oa ched p and found amenable , but their clem ency was negatived from Dublin unless Mc Neill should give a pledge to take no further part in politics during the war , which he was unwilling to do . After the entry of America into the war , suggestions were brought to bear by Lord Shaughnessy and Sir Charles Fitz Patrick from Canada and by the British embassy in Washington . The Cabinet then decided to release all the poli tical prisoners . The execution and imprisonment of Sinn Fein ers in Ireland proved the ruin of the Red n i mo d t e organisation in America . Soon after the rising Mr . Redmond had taken the groun d that the affair was an attack on home rule and had cabled to the editor of I rela nd :

The a ttempt to torpedo Home Rule and the Irish Party has ,

a . a a ha s en n ha s n f iled D m ge be do e, life bee lost, but the ship ha s not n hi n ha s n bee sunk . The whole t g bee organised b y those in Irela nd a n d in America who ha ve a lwa ys been the open a n d irreconcila ble en emies of Home Rule a nd of the n n w Irish Pa rty . Though the ha d of Germa y a s in the whole n wa s not a an as a thi g , it so much symp thy for Germ y h tred of Home Rule a n d of us whi ch wa s a t the bottom of the move men t . It wa s even more an a ttempt t o hit us than to hit n n E gla d . IRISH AMERICA 197

n Whether Germany had a ha d in it or not , there could be no doubt of his further words tha t the one security for good order a s well a s good gov ernmen t in Irela n d is a na tive executive a n d Pa rlia men t ba cked n n a nd a a n ha d n i n by Irish opi io , th t if such executive bee existence durin g the last s ix mon ths there would ha ve been no n Dubli riot .

Though individual friends stood by Mr .

Redmond , headed by Judge Keogh , Stephen McFa rla n d , Michael Jordan , and men of similar integrity , there was a clean sweep of R edm on dit e popularity , chieﬂy on the ques tion as to whether the Irish party were r es pon sible for the executions . The statement that they had cheered the news in the House of f Commons was disproved , but it is di ﬁcult to say who succeeded in averting the further executions which were contemplated by the authorities . Mr . Redmond did his full share . ’ Sir Fr a n cl s Vane s prompt action against or ders had its effect as well a s the cable message which Cardinal Gibbons sent through Sir Cecil ’ - Mr . Spring Rice to London . Roosevelt s frank opinion that the mishandling of Ireland was not a blunder but a crime became known to friends of the Allies . The Irish party failed to be represented in

America until an Irish commission , consisting 198 THE IRISH ISSUE

’

. . O Conn or . of T P and Richard Hazleton , M P it s made appearance , when Irish America was n o longer on speaking terms with the

Irish party . On the evening of their arrival

the friends of Mr . Redmond held a public meeting in memory of Major Willie Red

mond in New York , which though in the

nature of a funeral service , was interrupted by in r Sinn Fe e s . Mayor Mitchel delivered the F eulogy of the dead . To the Sinn ein er s he addressed himself in words which received loud nd - applause, a epitomised real Irish American feeling :

I want t o s ay to those who in sincerity a re so bli nd ed by a di hi n a nn a preju ce for w ch God k ows I c ot bl me them , for it is 700 a mi a n ha a nn the product of ye rs of stre tme t, t t they c ot n n n n d n n see i to the prese t situa tio a u dersta d it . I wan t to tell them tha t here is a n issue so vita l to the world tha t p r eju n nd ll n dice must be su k a a who love liberty must ba d together.

The bitterness felt towards Mr . Redmond was assuaged in a great degree by his brother ’ s i death . As an Irish wr ter wrote t o him from America

a ha s d a n and ff a n Th t he ied for Irel d e ectively for Irel d , there n o in n n a n a e n is doubt this cou try , eve mo g those who h ve b e a hi s a most opposed to the Irish Pa rty . Pr yers for soul h ve been frequen t i n the chur ches a n d hi s singula rly bea utiful will ha s touched the wa ywa rd hea rt of our whole ra ce . As

200 THE IRISH ISSUE

Mr . Balfour had it in his power to settle the Irish question raised little less than an agita d tion in Washington . A hundre representa tives in Congress cabled to Lloyd - George in ’ Ireland s behalf . Mr . Balfour received a depu t a t ion which may be described as representing f r i l the cream o the Irish con t b ut on to America . ’ of O Brien It consisted Justice Morgan , of the

~ New York Supreme Court , Colonel Robert Em ’ a of met, descendant Emmet s brother , a Prot es t a n t J and a West Pointer , former Mayor ohn of Fitzgerald Boston , Lawrence Godkin , of the s on New York bar , of the veteran Irish cham

J . pion yet friend of England , and ohn Quinn

Mr . Balfour stated that it was a mystery to him how Iris hmen whose sympathy with the

c - n Poles was traditional , ould be pro Germa in ’ this war , when they contrasted Germany s treatment of Poland during the last century with England ’ s actions in Ireland during the

same time . He added that while he had no authority to speak for the Cabinet on the ques

of im tion home rule , he had been profoundly pressed by the representative character of the delegation and the moderation of the views ex he r e re pressed , and that believed that they p sented n ot merely Irish - American opinion gen

e ra ll of y , but the desires the vast mass of the IRISH AMERICA 201

American people , that the Irish question should

to of be settled the satisfaction Ireland , and that he would cable to the Cabinet the opinion of the delegation that a prompt settlement of the home rule question , without excluding any i f part of Ireland , would be hailed with s a t s a c tion not merely by representative Irishmen but by Americans generally . A somewhat mysterious element had been the President ’ s attitude towards home rule in spite of his explicit sentiment in favour of the

f - small nations . Himself both o Scotch Irish and Celtic stocks , he cherished the normal

American view as to Irish freedom . In spite

old of the Irish alliance with the Democrats , he was bitterly attacked by the extremists before his second election and so violently even , that he administered a public rebuke by telegram to one of their number . The voting at the presidential election was f very confused . Many o the Irish fell away of on the Mexican question . A number the J old Democrats , like ohn Crimmins , supported the President and later found themselves in a position to do Ireland a conspicuous service . of Mr . Crimmins , as the doyen loyal Irish

Americans , addressed a private letter to the

President , in which he wrote 202 THE IRISH ISSUE

It would be most timely a nd would ha ve the hea rtfelt grati n in a nd an a tude of millio s of people this other l ds , who h ve n a n d an a a n a s a a na n lo g hoped , m y pr yed , for Irel d sm ll tio a a n a n a n a n to h ve uto omy, thereby est blishi g pe ce with E gl d n n - n n n a nd a mo g E glish spea ki g people . The if an emerge cy

a a ll one a n d on e a ll . . should rise there would be for , for Mr n a n a n i n a r c n in Preside t , you h ve go e lo g step th t di e tio de — cla rin g the rights of sma ll na tions a n other step ma y b e the a hi n mean s of re c g the goal for the Irish people .

The reply from the President ’ s secretary was “ ’ of to assure Mr . Crimmins the President s 1 of keen interest in th s matter , and the fact that in every way he properly can he is showing his sympathy with the claim of Ireland for home rule . The keen - sighted extremists seem to have calculated that Wilson b y carrying the solid South and the West would be in a position to enter the war with a united country in a way difﬁcult if n ot impossible to Hughes should he r be elected , with only the East and a pa t of the

West . That a Democrat President in his sec ond term was an approximation to war nu doubtedly induced the extremists among the Irish to approach Hughes and work for his election . On the other hand , it was clear that Bernstorff and his American friends desired ’ re - i Wilson s elect on , as usual reckoning with out their host .

204 THE IRISH ISSUE

n a n n a n . To a n is for E gl d to be co quered by Germ y be fr k , it ’ undenia ble tha t Engla n d s losses a nd di fﬁculties durin g the wa r a a a V h ve led her to t ke more serious iew of Irish claims . But her tota l defea t would preven t a ny V iew bein g ta ken a t a ll a a n a r a a n n f vour ble or u f vou ble, for Irel d would be e gulfed n n n in her collapse . The reductio of E gla d from the position ” of Premier Power to a n equa lity with Fra n ce a n d America ’ in the world s democra cy is good for both Irela n d an d En g n n n a n a la d herself . But a co quest of E gl d or the p ymen t of in demn ity to Germa n y would fa ll a s unplea sa n tly on Irela n d

lVI i er b le a s on the Un ited Sta tes . s a a s it is to think of a n n a a n in a n -d a a an a E glish rmy of occup tio Irel d to y , Germ rmy n n f r of i va sio would be a worse . I n a a a n min b a a n his rem rk ble rticle replyi g to e , Judge Co l , whose extreme devotion to Irela n d Dublin Ca stle ha s certa in ly n a hi s n n tried to justify , gives the impressio th t mi d te ds a a V n a ll a ni tow rds the Apoc lyptic iew, commo to the Messi c

n a n i n a a ll a . a s n tio s , reg rd to Power Imperi l Just the broke Jews a n d the persecuted Christia n s ever ha rped on the com i n a n a n d g overthrow of B bylo Rome , much of Irish my stico n n f n n politica l wr iti g foresha dows the destructio o E gla d . hi ha s n n a n n d However , t s bee postpo ed by the ctio of the U ite Sta tes a nd it is well to con sider the more pra ctica l n ecessities of the situa tion . Judge Cob a la n reca lls the in terestin g fa ct tha t the s ub marm e

ha s a ll n a n -d a wa s which but imperilled E gl d to y, reduced to

a a a o a n a n an . pr ctic l form by H ll d , Irishm Possibly its origi na l a im wa s a i ha s n a n d hink a th t wh ch it o ly just, I t h ppily,

a i a . a a n f led to ccomplish It is equ lly curious th t Lord Acto , n n a a was a whe occupyi g the history ch ir of C mbridge , sked ’ to na me the momen t of Engla n d s grea test peril a n d a n swered with one of those brillia n t impromptus of whi ch hi s lea rnin g wa s ca pa ble : The d a y tha t Fulton offered hi s stea mboa t to the

n n n . wa s a Fre ch Gover me t It refused by the l tter, but the ’ mora l lies in the fa ct tha t Fulton s fa ther wa s born in Kilkenn y . The mora l of to- d a y is tha t the submar in e jeopa rdis es Ire IRISH AMERICA 205

n s la d just a much a s Engla nd . The rightful solution of the

a s a n a n -d a a s n Irish problem is vit l to E gl d to y to Irela d .

In conclusion Ireland ’ s greatest international asset has been and always will be the feeling which Americans have for those who have b e come Americans without losing their Irish qual

. of t ities To make the most his , Irish opinion

in Ame rica Should be mobile . It should not be nailed to certain words a nd phrases contain ing the maximum of exasperation and the mini

mum of placability . It should be as capable of accepting the olive- branch a s of administer

ing criticism . It should be a force sensible of

results , open to justice , ﬂuid , amenable , inde — un pendent , generous , yet stern above all , swerving in the interest of the Irish cause as an international and n ot merely as a local ques

tion . To such a force statesmen and diploma — t is t s would listen if not with agreement, at

least with attention . ot Irish America is n the blinded , brainless stratum of society that her enemies would have B r a l n s us believe . Eyes she hath , and seeth . h . s e she hath , and thinketh But goeth her own way— which is a thousand ways— and her strength and inﬂuence as a legitimate force in

international questions are dissipated . Few Irish writers in America have perceived this 206 THE IRISH ISSUE

’ i Reill vis on as well as John Boyle O y , who “ wrote in the Pi lot : Irishmen exercising in America the power of their moral force a re a leaven to be heeded more by English statesmen than the armed rebellion of the same men or ” of their fathers in Ireland . From America Sir Horace Plunkett to Dublin to assume the chairmanship of the Irish convention .