O N the eve of the new year President Cosgrave issued
several messages addressed. to Ireland and the world at large, to one of which, published in the Times of January 1st, a passing reference was made in my last article. I cannot do better than conclude this account of the impressions gained during a visit of several weeks to Ireland than by submitting the President's statements to a critical examination, based upon the results of my own observation and inquiries. Incident- ally, I shall suggest what I believe to be the main problems to be faced before there can be any chance of the country settling down to peaceful habits.
To judge by the President's language, these problems are all but solved already. " The New Year," he says, " finds Ireland emerging in triumph through her agonizing ordeal, with a host of achievements, under the most difficult circumstances, to her credit." Now, on New Year's Eve it is doubtless the proper function of the head of a Government to be an optimist. But is there much reason, except the Reason of State, for being an optimist in the present case ? It is certainly gratifying to learn that "Dublin juries have shown a determination to assist in restoring the rule of law." To English ears the mere fact that such a phenomenon is considered worthy of note will convey, perhaps more clearly than would anything else, an impression of the utter collapse of the machinery of self-government. Juries in the capital, under the immediate protection of overwhelming Govern- ment forces, actually dare to return verdicts in accordance with the evidence. It is a new thing in Ireland, and to that extent it is a hopeful sign. But Dublin is not Ireland, and of the country at large no such good report can be given. " Die-hards," says the President, " have created a position of much trouble and difficulty—the difficulty of Bedlam out of bounds." " The difficulty," he adds, " can be, and is being, dealt with effectively."
This language is ominously reminiscent of that used by many former rulers of Ireland, who, whether they chanced to be employing the method of humouring or beating, were wont to speak hopefully of the prospect of curing this common type of native lunacy. Their optimism was always rapidly belied by events, probably because they never applied either form of cure consistently ; the optimism of Mr. Cosgrave has met the same swift fate. The ink was scarcely dry on his New Year's messages of hope when the presses were at work recording fresh activities of the lunatics at large. The Dublin papers of January 3rd contained an account of an indecisive battle with Irregulars on Dalkey Hill and an announcement by the Dublin and South-Eastern Railway that it refused any longer to guarantee the regularity of the train service or the safety of passengers and goods. Now, Dalkey is a residential suburb of Dublin, and the railway in question serves several other such suburbs. This means that the Irregulars, established in the fastnesses of the Wicklow Mountains, are playing against the Free State Govern- ment the same game as that played in the old days by the O'Byrnes and other " mountainy men " against the English of the Pale ; and they will be more difficult to deal with effectively, for they can melt away into the general mass of the population more easily than could the " wild Irish " of Tudor days, and they can emerge again more quickly and with deadlier effect.
In his message to the Irish people President Cosgrave denounces the methods employed by these Gaelic warriors. `` The war waged by the misnamed Republican Army," he says, " cannot now be dignified by the word guerrilla. Ambushes and other enterprises having an element of danger are now few and far between,. and the Irregulars are reduced to assassinations of unarmed soldiers and civilians, the murder of adherents of the Government, and the burning and mining of the houses of Senators, Civil Servants, and prominent supporters of the Treaty." But why " reduced " ? Is the Presidential memory so short ? The methods of the " misnamed Republican Army " are precisely the same as those pursued by the I.R.A. from 1918 onwards, methods which brought the English Government and people to their knees, and, incidentally, translated Mr. Cosgrave himself from presiding decently over a public-house to presiding decently over the destinies of the former Kingdom of Ireland. To denounce the acts of the Irregulars is, indeed, to cast a slur upon the only victories inscribed on the banners of the new National Army; for how is it possible to object to the assassination of unarmed soldiers and civilians and at the same time to regard, say, the " execution " of Mr. Alan Bell as a deed of exalted patriotism and the " Battle of Mount Street," of November 21st, 1920, as a glorious victory ?
President Cosgrave explains the persistence of Bedlam let loose by the fact that the old R.I.C.—whose members knew their countrymen intimately, and the right way to deal with them—was disbanded after the Truce, "having lost the confidence of the people by the part played in the recent hostilities." The characterization of this statement by the Times as " ungenerous " is too mild. Before the Sinn Fein terror held Ireland in its grip the men of the R.I.C. were the friends and protectors of the people, from whose ranks they were exclusively drawn. For two years they were assassinated wholesale at £60 to £100 a head (in 1920 alone 176 were killed and 251 wounded) and they bore this with exemplary courage and patience. It was not until a succession of particularly ghastly outrages (in Tralee two constables were thrown alive into the furnace of the gasworks) and the enforced boycott of themselves, their wives and their babies drove them to desperation that their discipline broke down and some of them resorted to that very policy of retaliation which Mr. Cosgrave's Government has recently adopted. Had these men been taken over in a body by the new Government, they would have served it as faithfully as they served the old. I understand, indeed, that some effort was made to embody them in the new force ; but most of them very naturally refused to serve under the men who had been engaged in murdering them or under those ex-members of the force who had earned promotion by betraying their trust. If, then, the " great democratic leaders " who laid the foundations of the new Irish State were " without any of those machines for the maintenance of law, order, and their own defence which all civilized Governments enjoy," the fault was wholly their own. They had made faithfulness to a solemn oath of fidelity a crime punishable with death.
Far more serious in its implications than any of these things is, however, what Lord Dufferin describes as the tveiled threat " directed by President Cosgrave against Ulster. With the general question of the " partition of Ireland " I dealt in my last article. I have had plenty of evidence of its inconveniences ; I have had innumerable warnings of its dangers. I have reason to believe that, so long as the relations between the Free State and Ulster are not amicably adjusted, there is danger of a civil war which will revive the horrors of 1641 and 1798 ; for Ireland and its people have not altered, and the ancient antipathies, never quite dead, have revived in their ancient force. I agree, too, with Mr. Lloyd George that, should such a civil war break out, it could not possibly be confined to Ireland ; for help would pour in from all quarters to either side. What, then, does President Cosgrave suggest as a path of escape from this appalling peril ? He tries to bring pressure on the North by threatening her with a Customs barrier ; for the Free State, he says, cannot abandon her " large fiscal inde- pendence " in order to meet the North. He suggests the probability of renewed Irish agitation in the British Commonwealth and in America ; and he. maintains that all these evils might be avoided if the recalcitrant Counties would but come into a united Ireland, offering them at the same time the same measure of autonomy as they enjoy under the Imperial Parliament.
What is particularly disconcerting about this language, from the point of view of a well-n isher of the Free State, is that it reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the attitude of the North. " Ulster " neither asked for nor desired autonomy ; it simply insisted on remaining an integral part of the United Kingdom ; and it did so for what seemed to itself unanswerable reasons. The vast industries of the North have been built up under, and largely because of, the Union ; they depend for their very life on the maintenance of the fiscal and economic ties with Great Britain ; they would be threatened, it not ruined, by the carrying out of the avowed policy of Sinn Fein, which aims at the artificial revival of the decayed industries of the South by surrounding all Ireland with a tariff wall. There are other reasons which hold the Protestants of the North firm in their non possumus attitude towards the claims of the South, but none more potent than this, since it is rooted in the deepest instincts of self-preservation. They maintain that they simply cannot afford to risk their vital interests by accepting the position of a permanent minority in a governing assembly practically committed to a policy which they regard as ruinous. The most instant danger, then, lies in the fact which I have already stated, namely, that the Free State Government cannot descend from its attitude in this matter, and that the Belfast Government also cannot yield. Popular sentiment, and what arc believed to be vital interests, arc equally engaged on both sides.
What chance, then, is there of a working arrangement between the North and South such as would secure the peace which is at the moment Ireland's supreme need ? To the outside observer it seems that the only sane thing for the Southern Irish to do would be to suspend the question of the ultimate relations with Ulster, whether political or economic, and to concentrate on the huge task of restoring order and prosperity within their own borders. For, after all, the most pressing problem before them is not that of the unity of Ireland, nor that even of Free State versus Republic ; it is the problem of what to do with the thousands of young people who for six years past have learned in no school but that of lawlessness and crime. This problem,. I am told by enthusiasts, will solve itself when the Government is firmly established. They say that there will be plenty of work for all in the wonderful industrial development that will follow the setting up of the new fiscal system ; that new roads and railways will be required ; that the decayed harbours only need to be restored and modernized to be filled with transatlantic shipping ; that the derelict factories of the South will once more hum with activity. I confess that I am unimpressed by these visions. For, quite apart from the question whether or no any such remarkable industrial expansion is likely to result from a protective tariff, it requires the Gaelic imagination to picture these boys, who for five years past have lived on the fat of the land at the point of the revolver, settling down con- tentedly to hard manual work at the wages of a day labourer. The immediate task on which the Free State Government should concentrate all its energies should be that of restoring discipline to the nation over which it rules. In the Six Counties, which not long ago were almost equally disturbed, the Belfast Government has succeeded in restoring order. If and when the Southern Government is equally successful it will be time enough to reopen the question of the relations between the severed parts of Ireland. That, at least, is the opinion of the North, and to me it seems very reasonable. It appears to be the only chance of a peaceful and ultimately satisfactory solution of the tangle left by the Bedlam out of bounds of the last few years. AN OBSERVER.
Previous page
