THOUGHTS ABOUT IRELAND.
IT is not yet too late to apply Conscription in Ireland. We confess that when one opportunity after another of applying it was allowed to slip by after Mr. Lloyd George had made his famous pledge in the House of Commons, we felt that no fresh opportunities could possibly occur. It seemed too good a thing to happen that Providence would go on playing into the hands of a Government who were always too timid to act. Action might have been taken immediately after the pledge was issued—within a few hours, by a stroke of surprise—but nothing was done. Another opportunity occurred when the rebel leaders were arrested. For the moment Ireland held her breath ; she was puzzled, and for several days at least the Higher Command of the rebels was in disorder. Now yet another favourable opportunity presents itself, less sharp in outline but still very real. There is no doubt that the Sinn Feiners till quite recently set great store on their hopes of active sympathy from the United States. It is not in the least to be wondered at that they did, for Home Rulers in this country provided them with plenty of arguments and evidence. It has at last, however, become as plain as daylight to the rebels and their friends that popular opinion in the United States, so far from sympathizing with them, has become openly, and even vehemently, hostile. The moment of disillusionment in Ireland is the moment for the Government to act. The attempt on the part of several British newspapers to show that Home Rule was necessary in order to satisfy American opinion was not a creditable episode. They called in aid an intervention which they would have resented in all other circumstances. In a matter of this kind it is not possible to produce chapter and verse to support one's suspicions, but when reading many of the messages sent by British correspondents in the United States we had an uncomfortable feeling that they were not perfectly sincere—that they were written to order. It is not necessary to suppose that any correspondent in reporting upon the facts in the country to which he is accredited wilfully misleads ; it may be merely that he has a too pliant mind, or is over-anxious to provide suitable ammunition for the writers of leading articles. " Tell me what you want to prove," said the election agent to the ParlianOntary candidate, " and I will find you the statistics." At all events, the pretence that American opinion required the creation of a Parliament in Ireland has collapsed. The chief source of financial assistance for Irish movements has dried up. This fact has been a hard blow for the Sinn Fein and Nationalist alliance, though it has been thoroughly deserved.
Of course Providence may be so kind as to supply the Government with yet another opportunity, but such a thing is not seriously to be looked for. If the Government do not act now, they will probably never find the conditions more favourable. The timidity with which the Government have behaved in Ireland finds no parallel in the manner with which the American Government treat Irish undesirables. We read that Jeremiah O'Leary, who has been wanted by the American police on a charge of treason, has been arrested. O'Leary had forfeited- bail on May 7th when he fled from New York. It was stated by the prosecutor in Court that O'Leary had dis- appeared owing to his fear that a German woman spy who is under arrest would inform against him. The American authorities have also arrested Cornelius Lehane, the " Am- bassador of the Irish Republic," and Martin Plunkett. There are no rights of extra-territoriality for Irish Ambassadors in America ! If our own Government were installed at Washing- ton, O'Leary would probably at this moment be living peace- fully on the chicken farm which he had bought and was ostensibly working at the time of his arrest. It is almost incredible that our Government should have refrained from applying a policy in Ireland which they believed to be both just and practicable owing to an entire misapprehension of what would be said and thought in the United States.
Compare with the real feeling in America about Ireland the spirit which inspires our authorities in any one of their daily acts in the administration of Irish affairs. The other day, for example, the Board of Trade, in spite of the fact that all the Irish railwaymen except those on the Great Northern Railway struck work on St. George's Day, raised the railway war bonus and wages. We do not know what the official excuse of the Board of Trade was, but apologists for the Government explained that it was necessary to make the Irish rate of wages correspond to English conditions. Why, in the name of wonder, should the Irish railwaymen get out of the pockets of the English taxpayer English conditions of wages while Ireland absolutely refuses to accept English conditions of service I Could such a thing happen in America If there is any economic pressure in Ireland owing to the war, there is of course nothing comparable with that in the rest of the United Kingdom. The porter at Ballvmuck Station with three or four trains in the course of the day to attend to gets the same wages as the porter at Crewe or Clapham Junction whose mates have gone out to the front and whose work has been perhaps doubled or trebled. The timidity of the Government is the more sur- prising because the Irish Nationalist leaders are not by any means ramping and roaring lions with ferocity blazing in their eyes. It may seem a paradox—since the Nationalists have joined themselves, for all practical purposes, to the truly violent Sinn Feiners—yet it is just to charge the Nationalist leaders with timidity. For a long time they have professed to be the champions of a Constitutional policy ; but when Sinn Fein looked like collaring the whole of Ireland, the Nationalists promptly surrendered their Constitutionalism and joined with the Sinn Feiners in open resistance to the law. Why ? Because they dared not do otherwise. Never had the Nat ionalists had such a glorious opportunity for commending their cause to Englishmen, Scotsmen, and Welshmen. They had only to say that they accepted to the full the obligations which lie upon us all in this war, and the rest of the United Kingdom would have found it extremely difficult ever afterwards to refuse anything they desired. The tendency would have been for every sort of political indulgence and money grants, of generous if not fabulous amount, to be dealt out by grateful and thoroughly placated Englishmen. The irrationality which caused this glorious opportunity to be missed is particularly distressing in a leader like Mr. Dillon, who has had a very long political experience and is widely read and travelled. But of course this irrationality is characteristic of Irish Celtic leaders, and it makes all dealings with Ireland notoriously baffling, tedious, and hopeless. Englishmen, whose political genius runs to coherent bargaining and compromise, feel in their relations with the Irish that they are conversing with people who move on an entirely different intellectual plane. They cannot appreciate people who are incapable of making practical and common-sense arrangements. But when all has been said, timidity rather than irrationality is the special explanation of Mr. Dillon's unfruitful, and indeed disastrous, leadership. The situation deprives the Government of all excuse for not meeting with strength the weakness of their opponents. Any one can point to instances of hesitating government resulting in failure in Ireland, but it is extremely difficult to find instances to the contrary—instances of firmness which have not succeeded.
Apart from the general feeling among Irish rebels that the British Government do not mean what they sav, there is, of course, an appalling amount of ignorance in Ireland. Upon this ignorance organizers of discontent, whether they be politicians or priests, are able to trade freely. We have never been able to discover why it should be thought impassible to remove some of this ignorance. We set up Departments for the express purpose of dissipating the heathenish ignorance about British aims which exists in some foreign countries. We supply them with free cinema shows. Why do we not have a Propaganda Department for Ireland, where ignorance is probably often worse, and is certainly more dangerous ? We heard lately of a characteristic conversation between an employer and a workman in Ireland. The workman had just returned from chapel, where his priest had advised the congregation if they were conscripted to shoot their officers. The workman, with that mixture of courtesy and violence which is the peculiar product of the Irish Celtic nature, was holding forth to his employer on the infamy of an " alien " Government conscripting a free, proud, and ancient race into a foreign Army. " That's all very well," said the employer, " but we must have men in the Army or we shall be beaten by the Germans. How would you like the Germans to come here and loot your house, seize your land, and make you work on it for a starvation wage ? " " But what wool I our Fleet be doing then ? " asked the workman. Here was a man who talked himself into a white-heat of passion about the " foreign " Army and the " foreign " Government calinly assuming that if the Germans really tried to seize Irelar.-1 Ireland would be protected by " our " Fleet ! Those who know Ireland could supply countless similar examples of ignorance. A rural labourer was heard recently to say, when an aeroplane flew overhead, that the English had " brought these things over " to catch conscripts. He had a vision of aeroplanes throwing out cables with grappling-irons attached to haul up labourers from the fields of Ireland. Another illustration of ignorance was provided by the priest who solemnly and with an air of magnanimity assured his congregation that Irish fishing vessels which were lost in the Irish Sea had not been torpedoed by an English submarine. Then there was the appearance of that phantom black pig, a portent of great events—probably another rebellion ?- which agitated the countryside. Apparently when great events are toward, a black pig may always be looked for. The strange thing, as one newspaper remarked, was that not everybody could see the pig. Strange indeed ! Cannot some at least of all this darkness be relieved ? There is great need for propagandists to do in Ireland what Lord Denbigh finds to be necessary even in England. There might no doubt be some risk to those who carry the torch of truth. They might expect to have stones thrown at them and shillelaghs brandished in their faces. But when volunteers are required for more or less dangerous work, it is often found that they come forward in direct proportion to the risk.
Previous page
