The result was to increase the growing popularity of Sinn Fein. It was seen that it had another than the purely political aspect, that its principles of self-reliance were capable of being applied with a success limited only by the amount of popular support which they could command. It was, at any rate, plain that if the people who controlled the food supplies were all believers in Sinn Fein principles there need be no prospect of famine in Ireland, and the action of Sinn Fein (inadequate though it may have been) at any rate contrasted favourably with the indifference and inefficiency of the official bodies appointed by the Government and with the helplessness of other political parties.
The popularity of Sinn Fein was further increased by the continued activities of the Irish police authorities against its more prominent or active adherents. If the Cabinet had decided to create an “atmosphere” for the Convention by the release of the prisoners sentenced to penal servitude for their share in the Rising, anopposite “atmosphere” was being systematically generated by the Irish Executive. People were being arrested all over the country for offences incomparably less serious from every point of view than those committed by the people who had been released. The conclusion was drawn that the Government, while anxious to make a display to the world of impartiality and good will by a spectacular act of clemency, was in reality determined to regard the active support of Sinn Fein as a serious offence in the case of men too little before the eyes of the world for their arrest to lead to widespread comment or indignation. Their action was held to be an indication of their resolve to prevent the spread of Sinn Fein principles until the Convention should have presented a report palatable to the Cabinet: and Sinn Fein instead of suffering by this action simply grew in its own esteem and in the eyes of others.
The result of the South Armagh Election early in 1918, in which its candidate was defeated, only spurred Sinn Fein to further exertions. The election indicated more a desire “to give the Convention a chance” than a deliberate judgment of the electorate in favour of the Parliamentary as against the Sinn Fein policy. But a “chance given” to the Convention was in reality an opportunity denied to Sinn Fein. The Convention was to produce a scheme for the government of Ireland “within the Empire.” A tolerable and workable scheme produced unanimously (or nearly so) by the Convention would undoubtedly (or so it wasthought) have to be accepted by the Cabinet; if such a scheme were accepted and put into operation, the feeling of relief in Ireland would have been so deep and so general as to deal to Sinn Fein, just when it was beginning to gain the ear of the country, a blow from which it might take long to recover, if it should recover it for a generation. It was felt that a Sinn Fein victory in South Armagh would mean that the Convention might for all practical purposes adjourn indefinitely, while a victory for the Parliamentary Party meant that it was given the opportunity, so far as Nationalist Ireland represented by this constituency was concerned, of producing a scheme of self-government wide enough to win the support of all Irishmen really desirous of a reasonable step in advance.
Sinn Fein decided in the circumstances to put the real opinion of Ireland on the question of independence to a definite test before the Convention should have time to report in favour of something attractive to moderate men, if offered, but falling short of independence. On St. Patrick’s Day “monster meetings” were held all over Ireland, attended by the Volunteers who mustered in force and by crowds which were certainly enthusiastic. At all of these meetings the following resolution was put in Irish and in English and, according to the reports, passed everywhere with practical unanimity: “Here on St. Patrick’s Day we join with our fellow-countrymen at home and in foreign lands in proclaiming once more thatIreland is a distinct nation whose just right is sovereign independence. This right has been asserted in every generation, has never been surrendered and never allowed to lapse. We call the nations to witness that to-day as in the past it is by force alone that England holds Ireland for her Empire and not by the consent of the Irish; and that England’s claim to have given the Irish people ‘self-determination’ is a lie: her true attitude being shown by the recent ministerial statement that ‘under no circumstances could any English Government contemplate the ultimate independence of Ireland’.” In Dublin, Belfast and Clare these meetings were proclaimed and could not be held—at least on the appointed day. In Belfast Mr. de Valera addressed the meeting at 11 o’clock on the night preceding, but when midnight struck the gathering was dispersed by the police. But a “monster meeting” is a thing of varying dimensions: even “monster meetings” held simultaneously all over Ireland may not be attended by more than a fraction of the population. To put the matter beyond doubt it was decided to institute a plebiscite in favour of independence and to publish the numbers who in each townland declared themselves in favour of it. While the plebiscite was being taken Sinn Fein had again an opportunity of “testing the feeling of the country” at a parliamentary election. Mr. John Redmond had died on the 6th of March. He had fought for his policy to the last with tenacity and dignity: through a long life he had displayed the courage which onceled the small and faithful band who refused to betray Parnell: he had come to accept the limitations imposed upon his policy by English feeling with a pride which preferred to regard them as the dictates of statesmanship: he never lost his courtesy, his confidence or his belief in human sincerity. To Sinn Fein he had opposed an unbending hostility, and the temptation to replace him in the representation of Waterford by a Sinn Feiner was too great to be resisted. Sinn Fein sustained a heavy defeat at the poll, and this second reverse within a few months was taken to indicate the turning of the tide in favour of Mr. Redmond’s policy. It really meant no more than that the electors of Waterford thought, what many other people thought with them, that the attempt to oust Mr. Redmond’s son from sitting for his father’s constituency was a breach of the decencies of public life. Certainly the language which some of the party used in speaking of Mr. Redmond was inexcusable and deserved the rebuff which it received.
But the report of the Convention, laid upon the table of the House of Commons early in April, overshadowed plebiscites and the results of contested elections. Upon its reception by the Government the whole future of Ireland seemed to turn. But the report was difficult to master. The Chairman of the Convention claimed that it had “laid a foundation of Irish agreement unprecedented in history,” but the actual record of the proceedings seemed at first blush open to a somewhat different interpretation. The Nationalistshad, it is true, offered large concessions to the Unionists, but they were themselves divided upon questions of principle of the very first importance; and while some of the Unionists were content to accept what was offered, provided the Nationalists met the concession of this acceptance by a concession infinitely greater, the Ulster Unionists appeared to have succeeded in committing themselves to nothing. If the Government were to attempt to legislate for Ireland on the basis of the report the Ulster Unionists were certain to produce the “pledges” that they would not be “coerced” and too many responsible people had given these pledges to make the prospect of legislation for Ireland a comfortable outlook for anybody. But not only was the report difficult to interpret, not only did its publication put Ministers in an awkward position: it came at a most unfortunate time. The military prospects of the Allies were clouded, and the Government had decided to make a fresh call upon the man-power of the country. It was known that in their perplexity they had considered the possibility of extending Conscription to Ireland, and to do so, equally with refraining from doing so, seemed to be a step of doubtful expediency.
The situation was complicated; but the handling of it by the Prime Minister was more complicated still. He elected to treat the question of Home Rule and the question of Irish Conscription concurrently while he declared that they were not interdependent. He justified the application ofConscription to Ireland on the merits: men were needed in France and there were men to be had in Ireland: the Home Rule Act, accepted by the Parliamentary Party and placed on the Statute Book, had given to Parliament the right to legislate for Ireland upon matters of Imperial concern. As for the Convention, he refused to regard the report as disclosing that there had been “substantial agreement,” nevertheless he announced that the Government would bring forward immediately such proposals for the future government of Ireland as seemed to be just. It was common belief that so far as the Convention was concerned a failure to arrive at “substantial agreement” absolved the Government from all obligation to legislate upon its proposals; an intention of legislating all the same appeared to be prompted by the desire to offer something in the way of compensation for the unpalatable proposal of Conscription. But the Premier insisted that any such interpretation of his proposal was erroneous: the two measures had nothing whatever to do with one another: each stood upon its own merits and each must be passed regardless of the other. But, having elected to take Conscription first, and having announced his intention of forcing it through Parliament in spite of criticism and of putting it into operation in Ireland in spite of opposition, he indulged himself in a glimpse at the prospects of a conscribed Ireland: “when the young men of Ireland,” he said, “have been brought in large numbers into the fighting line, it is important that they shouldfeel that they are not fighting for the purpose of establishing a principle abroad which is denied to them at home.” But as if in fear that this might imply some remote connection between Ireland’s duty to fight and Ireland’s right to be given the benefit of the principle it was asked to fight for, the Premier gave the most convincing proof of his sincerity in saying that Conscription for Ireland and Home Rule for Ireland did not “stand together”—Conscription was passed into law and Home Rule was dropped.
It is difficult to conceive a course of action more nicely calculated to demonstrate on a large scale the principal theses which Sinn Fein had been preaching for years. The demonstration was carried into every household in Ireland in a form in which it could no longer be ignored. Conscription had not been a palatable measure in England, and it had not been put into force until the English people had agreed with practical unanimity that they must submit to it: but the choice had been their own and no Government would have ventured even to propose it until the English people had made up their minds beforehand to accept it when it should be proposed. In Australia it had been discussed and rejected; and no one either in England or anywhere else had questioned the right of the people of Australia to decline to conscribe themselves, though the interests of Australia were as vitally involved in the issue of the war as the interests of England. Ireland, on the other hand, while it was opposedto Conscription, had no choice offered to it in the matter. It was decided upon by a Cabinet of which no Irishman was a member and it was to be enforced in spite not merely of the protests of Ireland but of the grave warnings of a large number of Englishmen. To the argument that Ireland, being an integral part of the United Kingdom, must submit to the legislation of Parliament whether it liked it or no, it was pointed out that this argument had not been enforced against Ulster four years before; that when Conscription had first been enforced in England it had been admitted by Parliament that Ireland was a special case; that to assert that Ireland was an integral part of the United Kingdom was to beg the very question in dispute, since the national claim of Ireland had always been a claim for independence. Again, if the Home Rule Act was relied upon (as the Premier relied upon it) to prove that Ireland had accepted the authority of Parliament in Imperial matters and acknowledged its supreme jurisdiction in all matters pertaining to war and peace, it was pointed out that the Government which now invoked it had persistently refused to put it into operation. Yet the Premier, who, more than any other single man, had shown himself hostile in deed, while friendly in word, to Irish claims, himself admitted that Irishmen serving in the army in the then condition of Irish affairs would be fighting abroad to enforce a principle denied in the government of their own country. The conclusion which Sinn Fein drew was thatthe English Government was prepared in defiance of public feeling, justice and constitutional practice to enforce Conscription upon Ireland by naked force: that it had no intention of granting Ireland any form of self-government, and that it was the duty of Irishmen to organize “an effective and protracted resistance.” But, though prepared to resist, it continued to argue. It pointed out that the Irish Parliament, whose powers had been transferred by the Act of Union to the Parliament of England, had possessed no power of Conscription and could not transfer a power which it did not possess; any power of Conscription, therefore, possessed by Parliament over Ireland must rest upon some other basis, if it existed at all: that there was no legal process by which a man could be deprived of life or liberty except on conviction for a crime: and that this was why, even in the case of Conscription in England, Mr. Asquith, a good constitutional lawyer, “was careful to declare that he based the conscription of Englishmen on the basis, not of State duty or compulsion, but of the universal assent of the English people.” If this assent was lacking, as it undoubtedly was, in the case of Ireland, it followed that to enforce Conscription was an act of naked injustice.
But no elaborate argument was needed to rouse a people convinced at last that they were in the vortex of Charybdis. They resented what now appeared as the duplicity with which for months their attention had been deliberately and elaborately focussed upon the alluring mysteries of theConvention while they drifted quietly and securely towards the edge of the whirlpool. They saw the cloudy structure of the Convention melt and float away, disclosing what it had covered; and they prepared for a desperate struggle.
The feeling was not confined to Sinn Fein. The Parliamentary Party left Westminster in a body and crossed to Ireland to help in the national resistance. The Labour Party joined hands with them and with Sinn Fein in the universal crisis. It involved for the Parliamentary Party a tragic and fatal break with the past. It was the end of all their hopes, of all their influence, of their very existence; and as they joined the Sinn Fein and Labour representatives round the table of the Mansion House Conference, summoned by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, they must have felt that they were invited by virtue of what they had once been rather than by virtue of what they were; they were there as the men who had relied on the broken reed, “whereon if a man lean it will go into his hand and pierce him.”
After its first meeting on April 18th, the Mansion House Conference issued the following declaration:—“Taking our stand on Ireland’s separate and distinct nationhood and affirming the principle of liberty that the Governments of nations derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, we deny the right of the British Government or any external authority to impose compulsory military service in Ireland against the clearly expressed will of the Irish people. The passingof the Conscription Bill by the British House of Commons must be regarded as a declaration of war on the Irish nation. The alternative to accepting it as such is to surrender our liberties and to acknowledge ourselves slaves. It is in direct violation of the rights of small nationalities to self-determination, which even the Prime Minister of England—now preparing to employ naked militarism and force his Act upon Ireland—himself officially announced as an essential condition for peace at the Peace Congress. The attempt to enforce it will be an unwarrantable aggression, which we call upon all Irishmen to resist by the most effective means at their disposal.” On the same day the Conference decided to ask the co-operation of the Irish Catholic Bishops who had been summoned by Cardinal Logue to meet at Maynooth. The Bishops, after hearing a deputation from the Mansion House Conference, issued at once the following manifesto: “An attempt is being made to force Conscription on Ireland against the will of the Irish nation and in defiance of the protests of its leaders. In view especially of the historic relations between the two countries from the very beginning up to this moment, we consider that Conscription forced in this way upon Ireland is an oppressive and inhuman law, which the Irish people have a right to resist by every means that are consonant with the law of God. We wish to remind our people that there is a higher Power which controls the affairs of men. They have in their hands the means of conciliating that Power by strict adherence to the Divine law,by more earnest attention to their religious duties, and by fervent and persevering prayer. In order to secure the aid of the Holy Mother of God, who shielded our people in the days of their greatest trials, we have already sanctioned a National Novena in honour of Our Lady of Lourdes, commencing on the 3rd May, to secure general and domestic peace. We also exhort the heads of families to have the Rosary recited every evening with the intention of protecting the spiritual and temporal welfare of our beloved country and bringing us safe through this crisis of unparalleled gravity.”
Many Sinn Feiners sincerely deplored the step which the Conference had taken in calling upon the Bishops for an official manifesto. Its wording seemed to rule out of existence the section of Irish Nationalists who belonged to the Protestant faith and to identify a national question with a particular creed. Certainly as a mere question of tactics the manifesto was of doubtful wisdom. It was certain to raise, and it did raise, the cry of the “priest in politics.” From the mouths of the Ulster Party the criticism might be disregarded, for they had themselves four years before induced the Protestant churches in Ulster to pass official resolutions against Home Rule. But it was different when the English newspapers began to raise the “No Popery” cry and to write as if Sinn Fein were a purely Catholic party which it had never ceased to protest it was not. But in fact the vexed question of the relation of the Church to the civil power, a question not to be disposed of in a sentence, didnot fairly arise from the Bishops’ pronouncement. The main gist of it was contained in two propositions neither of which was theological: the proposition that Conscription was an oppressive and inhuman law was (whether right or wrong) an ordinary statement of opinion upon a purely mundane matter: the proposition that such a law might be resisted by any means consonant with the law of God was the statement not of theology, whether Catholic or Protestant, but of ordinary ethics, accidentally theistic. But the concluding sentences of the manifesto threw their light backwards upon the essential statements, and the resistance to Conscription was represented as one more incident in the long struggle between free institutions and the power of the Roman Church.
Nationalist Ireland, however, needed no incentive from the Bishops to resist. It was presented with a clear cut issue which could not be evaded, which the Cabinet by its decision had raised in its most acute form. If Ireland submitted quietly to Conscription then it acknowledged that it stood to the British Parliament in exactly the same relation as did Yorkshire or Middlesex: if, on the other hand, Ireland were a nation, even if it were a nation within the British Empire, it had the right to decide for itself on a question involving issues so vital to its future. This was the alternative which Sinn Fein put in vehement and passionate language before the country and the reply of Nationalist Ireland was practically unanimous. Nearly every Nationalist in Ireland took the anti-Conscription pledge “Denying the rightof the British Government to enforce compulsory service in this country, we pledge ourselves solemnly to one another to resist Conscription by the most effective means at our disposal.”
But not only was the intention of the Government to enforce Conscription regarded as a challenge to Ireland, as a denial of its nationality; a deeper purpose was supposed to lie behind it. The record of the Government during the war in its dealings with Ireland had not been such as to persuade Nationalists of any section that it was either friendly or sincere. It was believed that, coupled with the desire to obtain recruits, and the intention of treating the Irish claim to a national existence as a thing of no consequence in order to secure them, there was the desire further to deplete Ireland of its Nationalist population and render its government by England easier in consequence. This belief did not always find public expression, but it existed and had much to do with the vehemence of the resistance. Apart from this consideration, the motives of the opposition and the feelings with which it was connected were succinctly given byNew Ireland. “At the basis of the opposition to Conscription stand the moral rights of Ireland, the very rock as it were of Irish nationality, the rights to choose her own future and to protect her people from the horrors of the European War. If there were any statesmanship left in England to-day it would look to creating harmony between Ireland and England, knowing that the real interest of nations is built thereon. Real statesmanship would grant Ireland the fullestliberty, knowing that the friendship of Ireland is essential, and that it can only be based on the fundamentals of national honour, namely, liberty and justice. Instead English politicians vainly imagine that coercion, the press gang, and the train of consequent tragedy will somehow win the allegiance and support of Ireland.”
The most spectacular demonstration of protest was made by the Irish Labour Party. A conference of fifteen hundred delegates convened in Dublin by the Irish Trades Union Congress, in adopting a resolution to resist Conscription “in every way that to us seems feasible,” asserting “our claims for independent status as a nation in the international movement and the right of self-determination as a nation as to what action or actions our people should take on questions of political or economic issues,” called upon Irish workers to abstain from all work on April 23rd as “a demonstration of fealty to the cause of Labour and Ireland.” This was the first occasion in Western Europe on which it had been decided to call a general national strike: and the strike in Ireland was general except in North-east Ulster. The Labour Party however had a point of view somewhat different from that of Sinn Fein. Labour was opposed to Conscription on principle, and would have, unlike Sinn Fein, opposed it even if agreed to by an Irish Parliament. Their view had been clearly expressed more than a year before when, after two years of silence, Irish Labour began again to publish a weekly paper.Irish Opinionin its first number, published on December1st, 1917, had said, “We shall resolutely oppose the conscription of Irish people, whether for military or industrial purposes. The very idea of compulsory service is abhorrent to us and we shall assist in every way every effort of our people to resist the imposition of such an iniquitous system upon us.”
However neither minor differences on the subject of Conscription nor, indeed, major differences upon other points, prevented all sections of Nationalist opinion from assisting each other heartily in the crisis. A common statement of Ireland’s case against Conscription was drawn up for publication and the Lord Mayor of Dublin was deputed to proceed to America to lay the protest of Ireland before the President of the United States. The Government showed no signs of yielding to the opposition. The Lord Lieutenant known to be opposed to the policy of the Cabinet was recalled, and his place was taken by Field Marshal Lord French with whom Mr. Shortt was appointed Chief Secretary, one of a considerable number of “English Home Rulers” who have at various times been appointed to the post of Chief Secretary for Ireland by virtue of their profession of the belief that no such post should be permitted to exist, and whose conduct in it has been such as might be expected from such persons. It was announced with official emphasis that no opposition would deflect the Government from its purpose. The Lord Mayor of Dublin was refused permission to leave Ireland until he should first have submitted for the approval of Lord French the memorial which he was charged toconvey to the President of the United States. But nothing altered the opposition to Conscription, and the Government had to be content with the suspension of the sword.
When the formidable nature of the task they had undertaken dawned upon the Lord Lieutenant and his Chief Secretary, it was decided by the Irish Government to cut the sinews of the opposition by the arrest of those who were chiefly responsible for fomenting it. But it was clearly impossible to clap the Catholic Bishops and the Mansion House Conference into gaol in a body. It was plain that Sinn Fein was the chief centre of the trouble, being the only political party whose principles furnished a logical ground for opposition to the conscription of Ireland by Act of Parliament. The two Sinn Fein members of the Mansion House Conference, Messrs. de Valera and Griffith, with a number of less prominent Sinn Feiners, were deported and imprisoned. But this was a course which required some explanation. They were not the only people prominent in the Anti-Conscription campaign; and in any case English public opinion while, on the whole, indignant with the attitude of Ireland towards compulsory service, was becoming somewhat uneasy as to happenings in Ireland and inclined to question the entire wisdom of the Irish Executive. Accordingly, it was asserted that the arrested Sinn Feiners had been guilty of complicity in a German plot. The ex-Lord Lieutenant, Lord Wimborne, during whose tenure of office the discovery of the plot (it was said) began to be made, publicly and flatly denied all knowledge ofit, and expressed disbelief in its existence. The Premier announced that he had seen the evidence (which nothing, however, would induce him to divulge) and that it was even as the Irish Government had said. Public opinion however was still unsatisfied, and the Irish office issued a statement on the subject in which the Chief Secretary argued (“for even though vanquished he could argue still”) from the history of Sinn Fein for the previous three or four years, and from certain financial transactions between Count Bernstorff and some Irish-Americans before America entered the war, that some person or persons in Ireland had been in communication with Germany for a treasonable purpose. However that may have been, there was no direct evidence connecting any of the prisoners with any of these transactions, and in fact nearly all of them had been in gaol in England at the time when the transactions took place. The official statement was pitilessly analysed in a pamphlet published byNew Irelandentitled “The Plot: German or English?” the only result of the whole affair being that official credit in Ireland received its last shock. No further attempts were made to provide non-political reasons for political arrests: it was judged better that the Executive should rely upon the extraordinary powers conferred upon it by the Defence of the Realm Act (though the machinery provided by what was known as “the ordinary law” in Ireland seemed sufficiently complete without it) to arrest, without the necessity of charge or trial, any persons who made themselves prominent for the advocacy of Sinn Fein orRepublican politics. In July Sinn Fein, the Gaelic League, Cumann na mBan and the Irish Volunteers were declared to be “dangerous associations” to which Irish men and women would in future belong at their own risk. Concerts, hurling matches, literary competitions, were prohibited all over Ireland by military force when they were held under the auspices of persons politically obnoxious to the Government. Government became a matter of having enough troops in the country to ensure that the Executive was able to do precisely what it pleased. Ireland was treated frankly as hostile and occupied territory, and the last pretence of constitutional government was finally abandoned.
The reply of Sinn Fein to the arrest of Mr. Griffith for complicity in the “German Plot” had been his triumphant election for East Cavan. This was almost the last seat which the once powerful Parliamentary Party ventured to contest. Its co-operation with Sinn Fein in the question of Conscription had been, not an alliance but an operation conducted in common, and on other points each was at perfect liberty to pursue its own path. But the junction of forces had only succeeded in bringing into clear relief the essential incompatibility of the Sinn Fein and the Parliamentary policies, and it became evident that the Irish public would have to choose definitely which it should finally adopt. Sinn Fein, which refused to compromise on the essential principle of Ireland’s distinct and independent nationhood, could argue with considerable force that on this assumption alone couldIreland object to Conscription with confidence and moral justification—that if Ireland were not a nation, but a province or a dependency, then the resistance to Conscription was legally and morally without a sound basis. It was extremely difficult for the Parliamentary Party to counter this argument: and in point of fact some of them did not try to counter it but frankly dissociated themselves from the Anti-Conscription policy. It was perfectly clear that the Home Rule Act reserved such powers to Parliament as to make the conscription of Ireland, as part of a general measure of Conscription for the United Kingdom, a step which Parliament would legally be entitled to take and which, once the Home Rule Act was accepted by Ireland as satisfactory (and the Parliamentary Party had declared that it was) Ireland would have no moral right to resist. The Party began to shift its ground: it could no longer, in view of Irish feeling, remain advocates of a settlement which made Conscription possible: it would not go the whole way with Sinn Fein and declare that no settlement would be satisfactory which did not acknowledge the right of Ireland to independent nationhood, to self-determination and the right to choose its own form of government. The Party settled down unofficially to the advocacy of a form of Home Rule which should ensure to Ireland piecemeal and in detail, by enactment of Parliament, as large an independence as was possessed by the self-governing Dominions, without the formal and definite renunciation of the right of Parliament to decide the extent to which Ireland should beindependent. This of course left the question of principle precisely where it was. But on the question of principle Sinn Fein was adamant, and Nationalist Ireland supported Sinn Fein by an overwhelming majority.
The relationship between Sinn Fein and the Hierarchy was more enigmatic and gave rise to much speculation. One view was that Sinn Fein had ‘captured’ the Hierarchy, another was that the Hierarchy had ‘captured’ Sinn Fein. Neither view was, of course, correct. Individual bishops may have sympathized (individual priests certainly sympathized in large numbers) with Sinn Fein: but it is certain that quite a large number of priests and bishops did not. While it is true that resistance to Conscription could not logically be justified except upon the principles of Sinn Fein, bishops had the same right to be illogical as members of the Parliamentary Party. Under the stress of the moment, in the desire to save their flocks from the danger that threatened them, they had joined forces with a party which before that they had not approved of and which they were not bound to approve of afterwards. Sinn Fein, at any rate, was under no illusion as to the feelings of some of the Bishops. The curate of Crossna, Father O’Flanagan, had taken a very active part on the side of Sinn Fein in the East Cavan election. Shortly afterwards he was deprived by his bishop, the Most Rev. Dr. Coyne, of all his faculties as a priest, including the right to say Mass. The technical offence for which he was punished in this way was that of having addressed meetings withinthe boundaries of three parishes in Cavan without first obtaining the permission of the local parish priests. Everybody knew that the real reason for his punishment was not the technical offence but the fact that his speeches had been strongly (and even violently) Sinn Fein. The people of Crossna retorted by shutting up the parish church and refusing to allow Mass to be said in it by anyone else.Nationality, in reporting the facts, said of Father O’Flanagan: “He has been condemned to the most harsh judgment that can be meted out to a priest by his bishop and until that wrong has been set right Sinn Fein will stand by Father O’Flanagan”; and practically every Sinn Feiner in Ireland agreed with these words. When bishops seemed (as many of them did) to go out of their way to criticise in pastorals and public letters the policy or the tactics of Sinn Fein, their action was resented and openly, even stringently, criticised in the Sinn Fein papers: but all this was done not only without any trace of anti-clericalism (in the proper sense of the word) but with what sometimes seemed an almost exaggerated deference to the office and sacred functions of the bishop as such. As a matter of fact the Catholic Church in Ireland during the nineteenth century has always been on the side of law and order. It has had a strong bias towards constituted authority, as was to be expected from a branch of the most conservative institution in the world. It excommunicated the Fenians, it opposed the Land League, it condemned the Rising. It is hardly too much to say that Ireland would have beenungovernable but for the influence of the Church. It raised its voice against outrage and murder in language beside which the denunciations of politicians sound tame and flaccid. If it has meddled in politics (as it has) it has done no more than the Protestant Churches in Ireland, every one of which is “in politics” up to the neck.
And the co-operation of Labour and Sinn Fein in the opposition to Conscription by no means meant either that Labour had become Sinn Fein or that Sinn Fein had adopted the Labour programme. In fact its relation to Labour is a problem which Sinn Fein has been very long in solving. The alliance between Republican Volunteers and the Citizen Army in the Rising effected no more than a temporary and partial union. The very first number ofIrish Opinionhad some very open criticism of the attitude of Sinn Fein to Irish Labour. The Sinn Fein Convention of November 1st, 1917, had passed two Labour resolutions, one of which affirmed the right of Labour to a “fair and reasonable” wage: the other was in favour of Irish Labour severing its connection with British Trades Unions. On the first of theseIrish Opinionremarked: “The resolution of the Sinn Fein Convention conceding to Irish Labour the right to fair and reasonable wages was not by any means encouraging. It was a resolution to which the assent of even Mr. W. M. Murphy might have been secured. It did not go far enough, and it bore upon the face of it timidity and trepidation. The Labour demand to-day goes rather beyond fair and reasonablewages: the British Government is prepared to offer, in fact has actually offered, some share in direction to British Labour. This being so, there is not much to be gained from Mr. de Valera’s statement in his Mansion House speech ‘that in a free Ireland, with the social conditions that obtained in Ireland, Labour had a far better chance than it would have in capitalist England.’ ‘Our Labour policy,’ continued Mr. de Valera, ‘is a policy of a free country, and we ask Labour to join with us to free the country. We recognize that we can never free it without Labour. And we say, when Labour frees this country—helps to free it—Labour can look for its own share of its patrimony.’ We agree that ‘to free the country’ is an object worthy of all the devotion that men can give to it, but at the same time we would urge that, pending this devoutly-to-be-wished-for consummation, men and women must live and rear the families upon which the future Ireland depends. What Mr. de Valera asks in effect is that Labour should wait till freedom is achieved before it claims ‘its share of its patrimony.’ There are free countries, even Republics, where Labour claims ‘its share in its patrimony’ in vain. We can work for freedom, and we will, but at the same time we’ll claim our share of our patrimony when and where opportunity offers.” This is to put the issue squarely. Labour was not going to commit itself blindfold to any policy of “ignoring” indiscriminately all “English law,” when by recognizing it any practical advantage was to be gained. Labour had too keen an eye to therealities of life to refuse a gift from the left hand because the right hand had smitten it or picked its pocket. It was prepared to settle its account with the owner of both hands when opportunity offered, but, for the present, “a man must live.” “Fleshpots or Freedom” might form an attractive motto for the front page ofNew Ireland, but Labour saw no virtue (since Freedom’s back was turned anyhow) in leaving the pots untasted on a point of honour. The resolution calling upon Irish Labour to withdraw from association with English Labour was flatly ignored. Irish Labour was, and intended to remain, international: it was not going to refuse co-operation with Labour in France or Belgium—it appointed delegates to the Stockholm Conference—and it saw no reason to refuse co-operation with Labour in England. Besides, without the help of English Labour it felt unable to stand alone. And Labour, while it sympathized with the demand for Irish independence, did not wish to commit itself to any step which would make it more difficult than it need be to win the co-operation of the Unionist workingmen of Belfast and the North. Curiously enough, while Sinn Fein was calling upon Irish Labour to withdraw from membership of English Trades Unions, the Unionist leaders in Ulster were trying to induce Belfast Labour to do the same thing: but while Sinn Fein objected to the English Labour Party because it was English, the Ulster politicians objected to it because it was in favour of Home Rule. Among the Sinn Fein papers,New Ireland, while faithful to the resolution of the Convention, saw mostclearly the reasons which explained the Labour attitude and, while expressing the hope that a severance from the English Unions would eventually occur, pleaded for toleration and for, in the meantime, a free hand for Labour.
But the Sinn Fein difficulty in regard to Labour lay deeper than any mere question of tactics. The leaders of Irish Labour might be Republicans, but they were also largely Socialists, and where Socialism is suspected the Church has to be reckoned with. James Connolly, the revered leader of Irish Labour, had been (though he died a sincere Catholic) supposed to have come into conflict with the Church for his opinions on social questions. His associate, James Larkin, had more than once furnished a text for some very plain speaking in pastorals and from the altar for the alleged subversive and immoral tendency of his teaching on Labour questions. During the General Election of 1918 a sentence from James Connolly’s writings, which had been quoted on a Sinn Fein election poster, was the subject of a bitter and prolonged controversy, during which Sinn Fein was challenged by a militant Churchman either to repudiate Connolly’s political philosophy or to declare itself opposed to the authoritative teaching of the Church. Sinn Fein, very wisely, did neither: but it was felt very generally that while this might be wisdom for the moment, it was not wisdom for all time: and Sinn Fein has still to formulate its social philosophy.
The conclusion of the war made no difference in the government of Ireland except that more troopsmight be expected to be available for the maintenance of law and order. Martial law was not relaxed or revoked: the Competent Military Authority retained unimpaired over large areas of Ireland the power to arrest and imprison (often for long periods) persons charged with every variety of offence which could be interpreted as dangerous to the prestige and efficiency of that form of government which is best administered under the sanction of a courtmartial. Men, women and children were arrested upon charges not specified and committed to prison for periods impossible to ascertain either from the authorities who sent them, or the authorities who kept them, there. It was under such circumstances that Ireland was asked to take part in the Victory Election of 1918. The electors of Great Britain were asked to give a “mandate” to the British representatives at the Peace Conference, and “to strengthen their hands” in exacting from the Central Empires and their Allies the full measure of punishment. Ireland decided to give a “mandate” which was neither asked for nor desired and to “strengthen the hands” of the Peace Plenipotentiaries in demanding that for which the war had ostensibly been fought—the freedom of small nations. It was known that the Parliamentary Party would retain only a fraction of the seats it once held and that Sinn Fein would be in a majority. For a time it seemed as if the verdict of the majority might be weakened by the intrusion of Labour candidates who, though most of them were Sinn Feiners in point of fact and all of them were bound by theLabour Party not to attend Parliament except when ordered by the Labour Congress, would give no pledge of absolute and rigid abstention from the English Parliament and were Labour candidates first and Sinn Feiners afterwards. At one time it seemed as if an acute conflict between Sinn Fein and Labour might occur. But the Labour Party, recognizing the extreme importance of Ireland having an opportunity of delivering an unequivocal verdict in the most important election that had been held for a generation, finally agreed to withdraw its candidates and to allow the electorate to decide on the political question only. The decision was conclusive on the question. Out of 106 members returned for Irish constituencies, 73 were Sinn Fein candidates, pledged to abstention from the English Parliament and to the claim of Irish independence.
The months before the European War broke out saw Nationalist Ireland practically unanimous in its support of the Home Rule legislation of the Liberal Government, ready to be reckoned as a part of the British Empire, prepared to acknowledge the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, content with an Irish Parliament charged only with the control of a number of matters of domestic concern. Though the policy of the Home Rule Act had been definitely and deliberately adopted by the English electorate, it was defeated by threats of armed resistance on the part of a minority of Irishmen, backed by promises of support from a minority of Englishmen, and by the refusal of the Liberal Government either to vindicate its own constitutional authority or to appeal to the country to do so for it. The Government put itself in the position of seeming to prefer in England the conciliation of its enemies to the satisfaction of its friends, and in Ireland to acknowledge the claim of a minority to veto the legitimate expectations of the majority. Occupying this position at home, it plunged into a war in Europe to vindicate “international morality” and “the rights of small nations,” as a protest against the doctrine that the force of arms is superior to the force of justice and law. The month after the war ended sawNationalist Ireland still claiming and still denied (in obedience to the same obstructing forces) the right of self-determination: but the self-determination sought was no longer that in which before the war it had been content to acquiesce. It held that the war, which it had done something to win, had secured to the weaker nationalities (if the public and reiterated professions of the victors were not meant deliberately to deceive the world as to their intentions) the right to their own national existence, independent of the claims and the interests of the stronger nations by whom they had been subjugated. It held that during the war the rights, the interests, the feelings and the liberty of Ireland had been treated by the English Government with so much indifference and disdain as to make the future subordination of Ireland to English domination a prospect distasteful to Irishmen and a position injurious to Irish interests. It revived the claim of Ireland to independence, declaring that it was justified alike by history and by the common consent of Europe and America, and as a first step in the assertion of that claim refused for the first time since the Act of Union to send representatives to sit in the English Parliament. The forces which produced so serious an alteration in the attitude of Ireland have been described in the foregoing pages.
At the end of the war the only part of Ireland whose political outlook remained unaltered was the Unionist North-east. Upon the indurated surface of its political conscience nothing that had happened either in Ireland or out of it had producedthe least effect. Alone in Europe the Ulster Unionist seemed to regard the war as a detachable episode with (so far as he was concerned) no political implications. He adopted the same standpoint, used the same language and expected it to meet with the same approving response from the same people. The changed attitude of other people was attributed by him to treachery, to disloyalty, to lack of fixed principle. By an adroit use of his opportunities during the war he managed to secure his position: he could point to the loyalty alike of those of his political faith who had enlisted and of those who had not enlisted: the former had done their duty to the Empire—the latter had performed their duty to the Government by providing it with a perpetual incentive to the conscription of Ireland. He had collected “pledges” from all who cared to give them that his position would be respected. To rely upon the “pledge” of a politician as a bulwark against the advance of political ideas may seem a somewhat imbecile proceeding: but it was not in his case so imbecile as it looked. He was shrewd enough to see that what European statesmen were doing was not by any means in accordance with what they were saying, and he decided (distrusting “ideas” of all kinds) to stake his future upon the relative permanence of things as they were rather than upon the doubtful advent of things as they ought to be.
Sinn Fein was the opposite of all this. It appealed alike from force and from fact to an ideal justice. Unable to win independence from a power both strong enough to coerce it andinterested for economic and military reasons in retaining its hold upon Ireland, it refused to ask for “pledges” which it felt sure would be broken, even if given, it refused to plead its case before a court whose interests were engaged against it in advance. It preferred to appeal to its rights, though there was no tribunal before which its plea could come. It hoped that at the Peace Conference the principle of self-determination could not be insisted upon as against Germany, without Germany claiming that it should be acknowledged in the case of Ireland. To its dismay and (it would seem) to its surprise Germany was not represented at the discussions: the Peace was dictated by a body in which none but the victors were represented and of which the object was not so much to establish a principle as to enforce a settlement, even at the risk of establishing a precedent. The claim of Sinn Fein that Ireland should be represented at the Conference as an interested party was brushed aside, contemptuously by the representatives of England and France, shamefacedly by the representative of America. The League of Nations which the Peace Conference set up was expressly constructed to prevent interference with the sovereign rights of its chief members as they existed at the time it was constructed: the right of England to retain whatever dominion it pleases over Ireland is guaranteed by the League of Nations in advance. Disappointed of the hopes placed in the Peace Conference and the League of Nations, Sinn Fein has to rely either on the interference in its favour of some Power whose friendshipEngland cannot disregard (an interference rendered less easy than it was by the very League of Nations which was expected to make it easier) or on the gradual and silent force of European opinion, or on the result of some future war.
Sinn Fein takes its stand upon the proposition that Ireland is a nation and upon the assertion that all nations have a just claim to independence. The proposition cannot be controverted except by arguments which go to prove that no such thing as a nation exists, and the assertion that all nations have a just claim to independence is like the assertion that all men have a right to be free: each is admitted in principle, but the principle is subject in practice to so many modifications that to say that a nation is free is to say what may mean as many different things as there are nations called free. A nation may be politically free and economically dependent, or vice versa: each of these conditions may be of various degrees on each side: and each of these again may be combined with varying degrees of moral, social and intellectual dependence.
Sinn Fein aims at the complete political, the complete economical and the complete moral and intellectual independence of Ireland. It has first to secure independence of England, and, having secured that, to avoid falling into dependence on any other Power. Its immediate problem is the means of securing independence of England. To induce England to acknowledge the independence of Ireland (to force her being out of the question, unless allies are to appear in the future) is nosolution, as is abundantly proved by the history of their relations: the independence acknowledged in 1783 was recalled in 1800 and has been denied ever since. To induce the League of Nations, as at present constituted, to acknowledge the independence of Ireland is out of the question: if it were reconstituted so as to make it possible for it to do so, mere recognition of independence would be useless, unless the League were in a position to guarantee that it would continue to be recognized.
The means at the disposal of Sinn Fein at present hardly seem adequate to accomplish its object. It may bring about the moral and intellectual independence of Ireland: it may secure a certain measure of economic independence: but to secure political independence, in face of the forces ranged against it, seems impossible. But what it cannot do for itself may in the future be done for it by the moral forces of which it is a manifestation. It may in the future be recognized by the conscience of mankind that no nation ought to exercise political domination over another nation. But that future may still be as remote as it seemed in the days of the Roman Empire.
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