THE RISE OF IRISH NATIONALISM
The Irish Republic By Dorothy Macardle. (Gollancz. 25s.)
I KNOW of no book that deals with the recent history of any country quite so comprehensively as Miss Macardle deals in the book before us with the years 19x6-19.23 as they affected the history of Ireland. No present-day writers that I know of have accomplished for their countries precisely what Miss Macardle has just accomplished for hers. Her whole con- ception of her task, the underlying pattern she conforms to, provoke various criticisms, and I shall express regrets and complaints in a moment. But with a book 'of- this kind the first judgement is likely to be the clearest, and, while the impact is freshest, the contribution most fairly assessed. And-the broad verdict is patent : all future students of twentieth- -century Irish history will be deeply in Miss Macardle's debt, and few indeed of -her thousand odd pages will they, find it either permissible or congenial to skip. • The -book will certainly be supplemented, in some respects I hope revised, . but- it can never be superseded. A -drama in documents, a .. living lexicon, the republican record of the Republic, it stands for all time. - •
Criticisms will converge from diametrically opposite quarters. Some will say that the book is too non-committal to be artistic ; others that itis-too-propagindiit torbe-fair. In the first charge there is- a certain, amount of justice:.. Miss Macardle, as President de Valera puts it in a most distinguished and strikingly
• objective preface, "presents the events in order and lets them tell.their.own story"; but again and again her self-imposed asceticism is-the reader's loss.- Her-analysis of motive on the few occasions she lets herself go is so penetrating and con- vincing that it whets the appetite for mbre.. It is true that in her hands Collins is too much the secret conspirator : at times (page 6ro) the marionette of the I.R.B., and at other times (page 620) himself tweaking hidden strings. But besides some admirable sketches of anti-Treaty leaders,
• she has been at special pains to bring out the quality of Arthur Griffithj. and her interpretation of his reasons for signing the Treaty -goes very deep. Even here, however, she is far too summary and unpretentious, while frequently her self-efface- ment is• positively lamentable. I am thinking especially of her magnificently full account of the months between the Treaty and the Civil War, an account which falls short only through her refusal to give us the full benefits of her knowledge, to indicate to us what in her expert opinion were the fateful moments and the. crucial moves.
_ •.Alternatively, many will argue that if her primary concern was impartiality, she has been nothing like impartial enough. Miss Macardle writes as an avowed opponent of the Treaty,
• but she is fair enough to the pro-Treaty party in Ireland sa long as she is studying the general arguments for and against accepting the Treaty. Faced, however, with the more complex problem " Was there any justification for Irish signature of the Treaty- in London without reference back to Dublin ?" Miss Macardle denies by implication that the pro-Treaty party has a case at all. At any rate she does not mention it.
Miss Macardle ignores much representative writing ; to take recent instances, the denunciations of my own book on the Treaty by Mr. Desmond Fitzgerald in Studies, The .Spectator and The Observer. The case there put forward is that Griffith was given to understand by- de Valera before the negotiations began in October that in the last resort Dominion terms were to be accepted. Mr. Fitzgerald asserts that neither the Dublin Cabinet nor the Irish delegation in London ever took seriously the chances of external association. Per- sonally I am convinced that this theory, which is supported by nothing in writing, and is in violent conflict with the whole mass of documents, must be decisively rejected. But after all the theory imposed on the, majority of Irishmen for something like ten years; it is still the doctrine of the second largest Irish party ; nor have English students of Irish history entirely disentangled themselves from its influence. In an official history of the period the theory should have been stated, if only in order that it might be refuted.
As between England and Ireland Miss Macardle is harsh towards England.- But then is it possible to tell the story of this period at once realistically and in a way to enhance British self-respect-? No serious attempt to do so has yet been made, but the determined Imperialist concerned for the honour of England will find the materials here if anywhere accessible. The very valuable account of the Anglo-Irish war would be improved by a moie candid 'admission that even on the Irish side a certain number of atrocities occurred. Otherwise the English- man has no substantial complaint.
Perhaps the most useful of all the services Miss Macardle renders is her emphatic - exposure of what a hundred years hence Englishmen will no doubt unanimously recognise as the "fraud 'of the Boundary Commission." It can never again be doubted that the Irish delegates "could never, would never" (to quote a British signatory) have signed the Treaty
• unless they had expected to gain under it a large part of the Six-County area ; or that Lloyd George encouraged Irish expectation of such gains ; or that three months later the British delegates regarded this Irish expectation as a delusion. Whether at the tnoment The Treaty was signed Lloyd George knew that he was trading on a delusion, which he himself had fostered as indispensable to his handiwork, we shall probably never know for certain. And perhaps certainty on this last point is best withheld: The story on the British side is sordid enough without it.
"Political thought," concludes Miss Macardle, "is advancing in_ Britain' : the exploitation of the weak by the strong has been named by its just name, aggression ; the law of the jangle falls into disrepute ; a generation. of Englishmen with new ideals of statecraft is taking the reins of power." May it be so. And may the graceful expression of the wish help the thought to come true. But one is a little mystified as to the exact individuals Miss Macardle has in mind. It has not hitherto occurred to me, nor I imagine to foreign observers, the Emperor of Abyssinia, say, to credit the Neville Chamber- lains, Edens, &c., with ideals of statecraft denied to Liberals such as Gladstone and Campbell Bannerman.
That apart, when did the new, the higher, statesmanship begin to show itself? Not in 1921 assuredly, nor for that matter in 1922, when England plunged Ireland into civil war in order, briefly, that England's face should be saved, and that no foreigner should be able to say that Ireland had "fought her way out of the Empire." (If this seem unfair, let Englishmen ask themselves whether they now regard any vital. interest of the Empire, any interest worth sacrificing one British life for, as being involved in the distinction between an Irish Dominion and an Irish Republic.) Nor is it easy to see much advance between the British attitude of 1922 and that of 1932, with its economic war, calculated by Mr. Thomas to teach Ireland "within three weeks" the meaning of Financial Rectitude and the sanctity of Debt Settlements and Covenants. Mr. Thomas, however, is now admitted by English Conservatives to have been an indiscretion. Mr. MacDonald is understood to be enlightened. So let us put away recollections of 1795 'and 1885, of Lord Fitzwilliam with his Catholic Emancipation and Lord Camarvon with his Home Rule. Let us hope a new era has dawned.
FRANK PAKENliAM.
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