mmmmm> :• ' : v WEM ,:r^ .,,- • : »j:/ ;/:; mm? B mum * I Ilfllil . ;; j y . % " /, * ^ » " ° ' rf Q TV - c\ ^0 p. O > l0. v -2* ' <0 v . ' ^ &+ 4 V > ^ r^ a° "^b "4 * J ^ \* -p- "V**o V- ** c* at: ^ / ev xP^t^^ceAy^Z^z^z^cn- IRELAND: VITAL HOUR ARTHUR LYNCH, M.P. AUTHOR OF ' ' " MODERN AUTHORS : A REVIEW AND A FORECAST ; APPROACHES : THE POOP. SCHOLAR'S '' " QUEST OK A MECCA"; "A KORAN OF LOVE: THE CALIPH, AND OTHER POEMS ; OUR " " " " " POETS!" RELIGIO ATHLETAE HUMAN DOCUMENTS ; UNE QUESTION DE REFRESEN J J " " " TATION GEOMETRIQUE" ; PRINCE AZREEL" \ PSYCHOLOGY : A NEW SYSTEM" ; PURPOSE AND EVOLUTION" ; "SONNETS OF THE BAJJNER AND THE STAR" ; " POPPY MEADOWS I ROMAN philosophique " (in French) In Press, Paris WITH A PHOTOGRAVURE FRONTISPIECE AND MAPS PUBLISHERS THE JOHN C. WINSTON GO. PHILADELPHIA N ft* PRINTED IN GREAT BEITAI ! PEEFACE Ireland ! —a thorny subject. Ireland ! How shall I begin ? Why not take up anew the old lamp of Truth and calmly look upon whatever that may light ? It requires more courage to carry that lamp than to bear a standard on the battlefield. Be it so, the truth is all that in this life is consistent with itself. Better be dead than afraid of the Truth. I have set out to write a masculine book on Ireland ; one which shall not hesitate to probe and test, yet shall be fraught with good purpose. I have resolved to direct my eyes to the future, taking from the past only what seems to me necessary to explain the present and to point the way of progress. Nearly all books on Ireland are of a partisan char- acter ; nearly all are drenched in the strife, the ran- cours, the miseries of epochs from which we would gladly escape. Oliver Cromwell oppressed Ireland Let us regard that fact only for its information and its lesson, not to grow haggard in rage. Energy is too precious to spend in wasteful emotion. Validly, sincerely, I refuse to lose a night's rest for Oliver Cromwell in Ireland, 1 and, were she not a lady, I would be tempted to say the same of Queen Eliza- 1 " " I had originally written : I do not care a twopenny damn for Oliver Cromwell ; the phrase is the Duke of Wellington's. This is, however, not only too trivial a fashion in dealing with Cromwell, but it does not represent my veritable opinion. It is mainly in regard to his conduct in Ireland that I formulate reserves as to his character. vi PREFACE beth. What is it to me that James II ran at the battle of the Boyne ? I only regret that a gallant people should have fought to keep that dolt upon his throne. Or again why sing dirges and weep over failures, deaths, and defeats ? Have we not realities enough to demand our tears, if indeed weeping be a helpful employment ? It is useless to deplore the past fate of Ireland. Conduct is Fate. Let us steep that into our souls. Let us look at the defeats and the downfalls not to rail at destiny, or lose our nerve in " keening/' but seriously to examine, to train our ideas, to fortify ourselves. For to bear all naked truths, And to envisage circumstance, all calm, That is the top of sovereignty. Let us even be cheerful, even in reading Irish history, or at any rate serene ; for anxiety, fear, depression, equally with rage, are bad counsellors. We want to see forces and prospects clearly, then to form our plans and to march forward with energy to win on those lines. It seems to me that we have reached a crisis which will try the Irish people in the crucible. 1 We have reached a crisis which will weigh the British nation in the scales. It is not well, however, to overbalance in heavy solemnity. I think that a candid spirit may treat even of deep things with a light touch. Above all it behoves to be sincere, to recognise that the problem is serious, that we want truth and illumi- nation, a brave cast to the future. In these terms possibly one may speak a few words helpful to Ireland, salutary to England also. 1 I had written these words before I had seen a similar saying of Paul Dubois in " l'liiande contemporaine." CONTENTS CHAPTER I Glances at Irish History CHAPTER II Autobiographical 46 CHAPTER III Actual Conditions 74 CHAPTER IV The Irish in America 105 CHAPTER V Priests in Politics 124 CHAPTER VI Irish Organisations . .170 viii CONTENTS CHAPTER VII PAOE Sinn Fein 19! CHAPTER VIII Parliament .... 209 CHAPTER IX Industrial Development . 232 CHAPTER X Education 261 CHAPTER XI Literature . 279 CHAPTER XII Science .... 319 CHAPTER XIII Ulster 335 CONTENTS IX CHAPTER XIV PAI..E Conclusions 341 CHAPTER XV Envoi 345 APPENDIX Agricultural Census 349 INDEX 373 ERRATUM Page 271, line 8, for " they do not pass," read "they do pass." LIST OF MAPS AT END OF BOOK Map i. Key Map of Ireland ir. , Centres of Manual Training (Woodwork), 1913-14 , in. Day Secondary Schools, 1913-14 iv. , Special Schools and Classes for Girls, 1913-14 , v. Technical Schools and Classes, 1913-14 vi. , Railway and Industrial Map vii. , Percentages of Catholics and Protestants in Ulster viii. , sdmmary of co-operative agricultural societies, 1910 ix. , Summary of Co-operative Poultry Societies, 1910 x. , Summary of Co-operative Creameries, 1910 xi. , Summary of Agricultural Banks, 1910 xii. , General Distribution of Manufactures in Ireland in 1914 I IRELAND: VITAL HOUR CHAPTEE I GLANCES AT HISTORY Irish history is terribly entangled. I do not know if many read it thoroughly, beginning at the begin- ning and continuing consecutively. If they do, I would ask, how many come through that process-— will not say wiser—but perfectly normal and sane ? I would especially fear for those who put their hearts into this work, and give free run to the passions of hope, joy, exaltation, indignation, and despair. Moreover in Irish history it is not easy to establish a sure basis for indignation. I remember once taking dejeuner at a cafe in Regent Street with the late Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, who after an eventful life, devoted in great part to Ireland, had retired somewhat disillusioned as a politician but rare as a story-teller. He told me that an old friend of his was an enthusiastic historian ; he was accustomed to wax eloquent over the wrongs done to the Milesians. One day Duffy, calling on him, found him more excited than usual. " Well/' he asked, " have you found new wrongs " done to the Milesians % " " Wrongs done to the Milesians ! cried the 1 2 IRELAND: VITAL HOUR " historian furiously. No ! But Fve just discovered how those accursed pirates destroyed and robbed my " own people ! It is ever thus. There have been many successive invasions of Ireland and upon the original stock there have been grafted the breeds of the Iberians, Phoenicians, Danes, Normans, to say nothing of colonies and infiltrations of Anglo-Saxons, Dutch, Scots, and Huguenot French. My own family has been in Ireland not over long,—not yet eight hundred years it seems—but, while unable to claim descent, like the vast majority of the natives, from Irish Kings, they assert on grounds equally putative their origin from Charlemagne himself. The names of famous leaders and heroes often fail to bring us the real Hibernian smack—Wolfe Tone, Robert Emmet, Thomas Davis, John Michel, Charles Stuart Parnell, were not Milesians nor Firbolgs. Not one of them was a Roman Catholic. These facts familiar to schoolboys in Ireland do not seem to be well known in England, for recently in the House of Commons I heard the point emphasised as interesting and significant. It must not be supposed, however, that these leaders were not all Irish. Ireland is one of the most assimilative countries of the world, and a short time is sufficient to convert a good stranger, whether he descend from Italian Princes or Lincolnshire Yeomen, into something more Irish than the Irish themselves. This is a fact ever to be borne in mind in dealing with Ulster. The men of Belfast may be as loyal as you please,—of a somewhat disconcerting loyalty sometimes,—but they are as Irish as Parnell or John Dillon. GLANCES AT HISTORY 3 This absorbing quality of Ireland does not affect merely manners, speech, or sympathies. It seems to bring the foreigner into a veritable affinity with the Irish people. And so it happens that though there is no Irish race in any strict sense, but rather a fusion of divers races of widely different sources, yet there is an Irish people, an Irish nation. As Napoleon said that there was a sort of secret bond between soldiers by which they knew each other, so there is amongst Irishmen. The Irishman from the North and the Irishman from the South may differ in appearance, in accent, in ideas ; they may be ready to fly at each others' throats on some chance allusion, or to the innocent strains of Boyne-Water, but at least they understand each other. I cannot but believe that the Unionist representatives of Ulster feel more at home with the Nationalists than either body with their respective English allies. Of late years in London we have had visits from the Abbey Theatre Company and from the Ulster Players, and these troupes gave us plays racy of the soil and admirably acted. I saw both and with equal enjoyment. But except for change of place, names, and accent, I would have been unable to say which play represented Connaught and which Ulster.