BOOKS.
RED TERROR AND GREEN.* Mn. DAWSON'S little book on the evolution of the Simi Fein movement deserves to be widely read here and in America. It shows that the Nationalists of the tyre of Mr. T. P. O'Connor and Mr. Devlin no more represent Southern and Western Ireland to-day than Walpole and his Whigs, if they came to life again, would represent modern England. The old Home Rule agi- tation is dead. It has given place to a revolutionary conspiracy which aims first at securing complete independence and then at establishing a Communist State. We have all heard a great deal about Shm Fein, which arose out of a mild literary propa- ganda in favour of the ancient Irish language, and became actively seditious under the influence of Irish-American and German paymasters. But the Labour side of the movement has attracted less attention in England, and the chief value of Mr. Dawson's book lies in its account of this sinister aspect of Sinn Fein as a close ally of the Bolsheviks. James Connolly, who was executed after the Dublin Rebellion of 1916, had founded the Irish Socialist Republican Party in 1896. Ho was an unskilled labourer with natural gifts of oratory and no small literary power. Unhappily for himself, he was brought up in a Fenian atmo- sphere, and the horrors of the Dublin slums—the direct product of an incompetent and corrupt Nationalist administration—made Lim a violent Socialist. Ho read Irish history in the twilight of his own prejudices, and discovered that all the " patriots " like Sarsfield, Grattan, and O'Connell were " robbers " of the " Irish people." Mr. Dawson's summary of Connolly's Labour in Irish History shows that ho rejected the conventional Home Ruler's legends, though he 'substituted one of his own in alleging that the primitive Irish clans practised what:3 now called Communism. Connolly- went to America in 1903 and found sympathetic allies among the Industrial Workers of the World, a dangerous Anarchist society directed by Continental agitators of the same type as Lenin. In 1908 Connolly put forward a scheme for a Soviet Republic in Ireland, which anticipated the Terrorism of Moscow. But, unlike the Bolsheviks, he did not profess to be an inter- nationalist. His plan was to combine the narrowly selfish ideas of Sinn Fein with the wild Marxian fancies of Communism. He returned to Ireland in 1910, and with his assistant, James Larkin, proceeded to stir up industrial strife, culminating in the Dublin strike of 1913 and in the formation of a so-called "Citizen Army " of armed desperadoes from the Dublin slums.
The orthodox Sinn Feiners were in low water at the beginning of 1913, but they regained their spirits during that year under the influence of Casement, who was working hard in the interests of his German friends and apparently had unlimited funds to draw upon. The Irish Volunteers were organized at the end of the year, nominally as a retort to Ulster, but really, as the author shows, to further the aims of the Republican plotters. Sinn Fein now " bounded into affluence, and the money came from the Clan-na-Gael, which had long been watching its developments and was now assured that it was on the right lines." Casement's organ, Irish Freedom, hailed the New Year of 1914 with a prayer
-0 BeiTerror (tad Giret/I, By Richard Dawson. London Murray.: les. net.)
for " a great war for the liberty of the peoples," and in its March number contained an article, apparently by Casement, predicting the fall of the British Empire. " The Goths and Visigoths of modern Europe are upon the horizon. . . . London like Rome will have strange guests. They will not pay their hotel bills." As it turned out, the Tower had the writer of this rodo- montade among its "strange guests" who did not pay their bills. In the May number Casement warned the Irish to " arm quickly," as " stranger events than any that have come yet may come very soon and probably will come." He knew that Germany was preparing for war, and he went to America in the early summer to perfect the alliance between the Junkers and the Irish-American secret societies. As soon as war broke out, Simi Fein set itself to thwart Mr. Redmond's timid bid honest efforts to commit the Nationalists to the Allied cause. The Irish Volunteers split ; the minority, retaining the old name and following the Sinn Fein lead, came into touch with Connolly's " Citizen Army." Active preparations were begun for an insur- rection, which Germany was to assist by landing troops. The plot was directed from America, though after the sinking of the Lusitania ' the Irish-Americans found themselves as unpopular as Count Bernstorff and his gang of miscreants. By the spring of 1916 Connolly's Socialist society and Simi Fein were working together, and their united forces were responsible for the murderous outbreak at Easter in Dublin. If Casement had not been arrested on landing in Tralee Bay, and if the And' with a cargo of German arms had not been captured off the coast, the general rising arranged for Easter Sunday would have taken place, instead of being countermanded at the last moment.
Mr. Dawson justly points out that Sinn Fein, reinforced by the Socialist agitators after Connolly's death, has grown more and more bitter since the failure of the Dublin revolt. The extreme leniency accorded to the rebels only encouraged it. The Sinn Fein " ambassador," Dr. McCartan, who was sent to America in 1917, informed the President that " our Nationalism is not founded on grievances. We are opposed not to English misgovernment but to English government in Ireland." The credulous people hero who think that the Irish question involves no more than a removal of so many specific grievances wholly misconceive the temper of Sinn Fein. The revolutionaries wrecked the Convention of 1917-18, and paid scant regard to Cardinal Logue's letter of November 25th, 1917, denouncing the " Utopian and ill-conceived agitation " for an Irish Republic. Another insurrection was planned for the spring of 1918, to coincide with Ludendorff's offensive, but the ' U'-boats bringing arms " never reached their destination." The collapse of Germany destroyed the hopes of the old Sinn Feiners, but the extremists soon found consolation in Moscow. As early as January, 1918, New Ireland had hailed the success of the Terror- ists in Russia, who were putting Connolly's theories into practice. Before the General Election Shin Fein was in communication with the little Bolshevik coterie on the Clyde, and it gratefully welcomed Lenin's declaration on behalf of " self-determination " in Ireland. Mr. Walsh, the Sinn Fein Member for Cork, said at Blackpool that " if the devil himself and all the devils in hell were up against the British Government, the Irish people would be pro-devil and pro-hell "—a pretty sentiment for a faithful Romanist. Since then Sinn Fein, plentifully subsidized from Moscow, has put its trust in the labour troubles which Mr. Smillie and his friends have sought to inflame in Great Britain, as well as in the campaign of murder and robbery which it is still conducting in Ireland. Mr. Dawson points out that Sum Fein is forced to depend more and more on its revolutionary Socialist wing,. because the peasant proprietors, who with their families form the bulk of the population, are not in the least likely to accept Communism, which would mean the loss of their land. The author does not say much about the attitude of the Roman Church, which in the end always decides in National- ist Ireland. We cannot believe, however, in a permanent working alliance between the Roman Church and the Irish Bolshevik party, whose aims are fundamentally opposed. Probably each of these temporary partners thinks that it will be able to suppress the other whenever it pleases, but we are quite sure that the Bolsheviks will be disappointed. Nowhere is the belief in private property more deeply rooted than in Ireland. If the Irish peasant were quick-witted enough to see the abyss into which a Communist Sinn Fein is leading him, he would very soon repudiate Shin Fein and all its works.
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