THE ENEMIES OF LIBERTY.
IT is notorious that a frequently repeated phrase has the power to sink into men's minds and to produce its effect even when it may be wholly unbacked by valid arguments. Thus no one would deny that the Irish talk about liberty has produced a considerable impression in the world. To-day, with the assistance of the White Paper containing " Documents Relative to the Sinn Fein Move- ment," we want to examine what Sinn Fein means by liberty and what it has done in the name of liberty. It may be said that it is necessary first of all to define what we ourselves mean by liberty. No doubt there are various forms of liberty ; there is the liberty to do evil as well as the liberty to do good. We mean by liberty—political liberty—justice and reason in an ordered State. To take the most appropriate concrete example, we mean the kind of thing which Great Britain and America stood for in the war and not the ideal—cynical, rapacious, and domineering for which Germany stood. Now let us see what Ireland did to help liberty. We have long been familiar with the fact that throughout the war Irish rebels actively tried to help Germany against the forces of liberty. We have never been able to understand why the Government did not publish the numerous documents in their possession. Publication would have knocked the bottom out of the arguments of those who pretended that in not giving the Irish freedom to do exactly what they pleased we were putting ourselves wrong with all those civilized countries, and especially with America, where liberty is practised and appreciated. Probably there were, and still are, gool reasons for withholding some of the documents. It would be quite wrong, for instance, to publish documents which would betray the identity of informants and place them in deadly peril. Again, it would be silly to publish docu- ments which would prove to our enemies exactly what knowledge we have of their present movements. But apart from these considerations there must still be a large number of papers in the possession of the Government which could be safely published, and in our opinion they certainly ought to be published. Nothing could possibly put us more right with the world—so far as that may be considered a necessity in framing our policy—than to tell the truth. It provides a complete justification of an attitude of suspicious carefulness in dealing with Ireland.
The White Paper shows generally that there was a triangular plot between the Sinn Fein leaders in Ireland, the German Government, and the extreme Irish-Americans who, of course, co-operated with the notorious German Ambassador at Washington, Count Bernstorff. It is proved that the Dublin rebellion of Easter, 1916, was based upon the promise of German help. The Irish leaders evidently had from the first very little hope of success unless the German help should be substantial. The White Paper proves further that there was another and still more considerable rising planned to take place in April, 1918. This, let us not forget, was at the most terrible crisis of .the war, when the great German offensive was still being pressed, when our Fifth Army had been broken, and when Lord Haig was adjuring his men to die if necessary with their backs to the wall. That was the occasion when the Irish lovers of liberty wished to deliver their heaviest stab in the back of Great Britain. The plot failed because our Intelligence work was good, and the Germans were quite incapable of sending help. But that does not affect the point. We are measuring the deeds of the Irish not by successes gained but by the- intention of those who profess to serve liberty.
The co-operation between Germany and Sinn Fein began as far back as 1911. The Germans then knew with, tolerable exactness when they intended to make war on. Europe, and Sir Roger Casement and other Irishmen began to publish in the United States articles to enlist Irish help for Germany. When war had actually been declared in 1914, Professor Kuno Meyer, who had been Professor of Celtic at Liverpool University, reproduced some of this literature in a pamphlet entitled Ireland, Germany, and the Freedom of the Seas : Free the Seas and Free Ireland. We cannot go into all the preparations for the risings in Ireland. We must call attention, however, to the extraordinary anxiety expressed by Casement in all his communications that Irish priests should aid in the preparations. On Novem- ber 6th, 1914, the German Government telegraphed to Count Bernstorff a message from Casement to be forwarded to Justice Cohalan, the well-known Irish-American judge. In this message Casement said : " Let him dispatch priest here vid Christiania. quickly." In another message, dated November 28th, 1914, Casement said :— "'Once our people, clergy, and volunteers• know that Germany if victorious will do her best to aid us in our efforts to achieve an independent Ireland, every man at home must stand for Germany and Irish freedom. . . . Send to me here in Berlin, by way of Christiania if possible, one or two thoroughly patriotic Irish priests—young men best. Men like Father Murphy of Vinegar Hill—and for the same purpose. . . . Rifles and ammunition eau bo found. . . . First send the priest or priests as I need them for a special purpose here. . . . Tell me all your needs at home, viz., rifles, officers, men. Send priests or priest at all costs—one not afraid to fight and die for Ireland."
As we already know, the Germans formed a poor opinion of Casement. Moreover, they recognized that our Intelli- gence Service was too good for them, and that in any case the seas were barred. They therefore discharged their obligations to liberty and to Ireland by shipping off the protesting and panic-stricken Casement in a German submarine to the Irish coast. When the Irish rebels recognized that no serious help was forthcoming, they were in two minds whether to go on with the rising or not. The sequel is well known. The rising, though ineffectual, did appalling damage to Dublin and sacrificed hundreds of innocent lives, all in the name of liberty. The ring- leaders of this rebellion, surely one of the most malignant in history when considered in its setting, were treated with leniency. Only fifteen were executed, and the others, after a short time in prison, were released in order, as it turned out, to try to bring about another rising. The avowed object in releasing such very dangerous persons from prison was that an " atmosphere of conciliation' might be created for the Irish Convention. What happened, of course, was only one more example of what must always happen when the affairs of Ireland are treated on a gigantic system of pretence. The Government pretended that the rebels meant no harm ; the rebels, for their part, pretended that they were working for peace, while all the time they were working for another and larger rising in 1918 ; and when the Convention almost looked like succeeding, owing to the goodwill—whether they were right or wrong does not now matter—of the Southern Unionists, the Roman Catholic Hierarchy—not really desiring any rival to its own power in Ireland—secretly upset the whole apple- cart at the last moment.
We pass over the attempt which began in the autumn of 1916 to make Ireland a regular submarine and Zeppelin base. In 1917 diplomatic relations between Germany and America ceased, and the Sinn Fein difficulty was to know how to communicate in future with Germany. The solution hit upon was to use Madrid as the intermediary and headquarters. A message from the German Foreign Office dated August 28th, 1917, explains that an agent is being sent to get into communication with Sinn Fein through foreign newspapers. " I am seeking," adds the writer, " through Spanish clerics for a suitable priest whom I could send." Always the priests ! It became more and more clear as time went on that the Germans could not send men to Ireland for a rising in 1918, and such a rising was ultimately made impossible by the re-imprisonment of the Sinn Fein leaders in May, 1918. But the com- munications on the subject of the proposed rising are remarkable for the disgustingly effusive messages sent to Marshal von Hindenburg in February, 1918, by the German- Irish Society. " We hope," said that society, " for a masterful German peace which alone can afford real guarantees for Germany and for Ireland." No careful student of Irish affairs will be surprised that Mr. De Valera on Tuesday denied that there were any negotiations between Sinn Fein and Germany for a rising in 1918. He said that the White Paper was untrustworthy and that it had been concocted merely to inflame opinion against the Irish people.
Side by side with the White Paper it is important to notice the evidence in the trial of Father Dominic. Father Dominic was constantly in attendance upon Mr. Mac- Swiney, the late Lord Mayor of Cork, when the latter was hunger-striking in Brixton Prison. In a letter which was seized in a house at Brixton, Father Dominic refers to the terrible Sunday when fourteen British officers were mur- dered in Dublin. " Sunday," says Father Dominic, " was a terrible but a wonderful day. The boys got the leaders of the .8. and T. reprisals." In the same letter Father Dominic says : " There were six officers in all taken and court-martialled and sent the Way of the Just. One of them was one of Tom Hales' torturers, and he squealed like a rat when he was caught." Language fails when one tries to say what one thinks about a minister of God who can write of murder in those terms. It is pitiable that one should have to turn from the priest to the soldier to find indignation and proper feeling in writing about murder. In the current number of the Nineteenth Century that stout Labour leader and good public servant, Colonel John Ward, pays his tribute to the memory of those officers in Dublin who were shot down like dogs. He knows that they were single-minded men who were doing their bare duty, and he is not afraid to say so. He adds —and he has now had some years' experience of what he is talking about—that there is no Army in the world which would have behaved with so much restraint as has been displayed by the British Army under cruel provocation in Ireland.
Another piece of evidence in the court-martial upon Father Dominic was Father Dominic's note-book in which he is alleged to have written what amounts to a defence of murder in Ireland. He declared that the entry was taken down from the dictation of Mr. MacSwiney and did not necessarily represent his own views. Father Dominio in any case wrote :- " till the inhabitants of every nation unjustly invaded are bound to resist the invader, and the nation is considered to he at war with the invader. The war is a just war, and there is no question of the hope of success at all. War must be waged in the best way available. At times it may not be possible to wage war In the open field or even guerrilla warfare may not be possible, but even then the invaded nation is making virtual war."
Those who have re 4d Mr. O'Rahilly's article in the October number of the Irish Theological Quarterly, a number which received the imprimatur of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, will notice the curious resemblance between Father Domiplo's argument and that of the Irish Theological Quarterly. For the purpose of comparison we will quote a few sentences from Mr. O'Rahilly's article :— " The ordinary procedure of war as of criminal jurisdiction must be regarded as dispensed with, so long as the nation is in the physical impossibility of organizing regular warfare. If such irregular methods—with their consequent danger of demoralization—are permitted or even enjoined, it is perfectly clear that when the nation is able to organize and equip a quasi- military force, acts of belligerency require no special justifica- tion. Nor is there any need of a formal declaration of war, for such a declaration is merely an ordinance of positive inter- national law which affects only the signatories of the Hague and Geneva regulations. It is the usurper who by his con- tinued occupation has declared war on the nation. It is the right and duty cf the nation to defend, by every effective means in its power, its liberty, its honour, and its independence."
Both arguments are a plea for " Killing No Murder," and are flatly opposed to the official teaching of the Roman Church.
But for the publication of the White Paper it might still be said—with some likelihood that foreigners would believe it—that there was no conspiracy between Germany and Sinn Fein ; and but for the trial of Father Dominic that virulent priest might still have been regarded simply as the spiritual consoler of Mr. MacSwiney, as the faithful and tender friend who deserved nothing but sympathy and admiration. We cannot help wondering what must be felt now by those who hurled threats at the head of the Government when Mr. MacSwiney was kept in prison and who—Unionist Members of Parliament among them— informed the world by means of a letter to the Times that other countries would be justified in thinking what they liked of a nation which could behave so brutally and with so little regard for liberty as Great Britain was behaving then.
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