Eamon de Valera BOOKS OF THE DAY
By FRANK PAKENHAM
MR. DESMOND RYAN is a literary artist capable at all times of verbal pyrotechnics and not infrequently of moving narra- tive. He conveys without effort an atmosphere and an enchantment which will make the present book widely read and hard to put down. He has claims to speak of many phases of the Irish National movement with authority ; he has been at evident pains to render this life of Mr. de Valera factually and psychologically complete.
And yet with all these advantages he is under no illusions about the way in which Unique Dictator is likely to be received. "This book," he says, "is more a defence than a condemnation of Eamon de Valera, but it will not please the admirers or the enemies of de Valera, and it is certain that it will please him even less." Mr. de Valera's reaction is incalculable, but I should not imagine that he would be sufficiently interested in any life of himself to be actively displeased by it. His admirers and enemies, however, will not disappoint Mr. Ryan. They will devour the book to the end, cursing its author while they read.
One glance at the book will show why it is unpalatable to Mr. de Valera's enemies. Phrases like the following are far from compatible with the parody that hostile propagandists have disseminated for so long. "This man of principle, unselfish and enduring, stands out as one of the great figures in Irish history. . . . The man is austere, dignified and courteous. . . . He has been ruled by a principle tempered by a profound humanity. . . . He will sacrifice himself readily, but he hesitates to sacrifice others. , . . He will pass sleepless nights rather than injustice should be done to the most obscure individual in the country." Mr. Ryan leaves us in no doubt but that Mr. de Valera is a character of exceptional mobility and that detraction of him, whether Irish or English, has sprung from meanness as much as ignorance. Referring to his apotheosis at Geneva he writes, "Neither Irish spleen nor English venom ean obscure his greatness there." This should be enough to satisfy the faithful ; and yet not only personal adherents but cool outside observers of Mr. de Valera's record will stubbornly refuse to admit that Mr:Ryan has done justice to Mr. de Valera's political philosophy. It is worth while reflecting why.
We can epitomise our answer by concentrating on the title, Unique Dictator. It is true that more than three years ago I myself_ wrote an article describing Mr. de Valera's methods as those of democratic dictatorship. But at least I can exonerate myself of ever intending, stating or implying what Mr. Ryan seems to have in mind. "Like Mussolini and Hitler," he says, Mr. de Valera "has in his time given lip-service to democracy and used the ballot to seize power and transform a machinery he distrusted to further his original programme. . . . If individual freedom interferes with his sacred formulas so much the worse for individual freedom." Mr. Ryan hastens to add that Mr. de Valera's principles, unlike those of the Fascists mentioned, are "clear, consistent, unselfish, honest." But the mischief is done, and we must identify and harp on it.
Mr. de Valera's statesmanship has many aspects, and a few of them he shares with all large-scale national leaders, Mussolini and Hitler not least. This is true of his profound sense of personal responsibility for the welfare of the Irish people, present and future ; true also of his resulting deter- mination to use his personal influence to the limit to achieve his cherished ideals. It is true, too, of his passionate patriotism and the accompanying assertion of the full claim to national independence. But when we come (and Mr. Ryan is an admirable guide) to Mr. de Valera's international Unique Dictator : A Study of Eamon,de Valera. By Desmond - Ryan. (Arthur Barker. 10s. 6d.) vision and fidelity in all matters to constitutional rectitude we pass beyond Fascist mentality. And even so we have not yet approached his supreme claim on our admiration —his emergence, in an age surrendering itself to restriction and tyranny, as the ever more successful exponent of private liberty and (our immediate interests) of democracy.
History does not unfold itself in such a way as to facilitate consistency for men of complex idealism, and the principles just attributed to Mr. de Valera have presented him with many dilemmas. But posterity, I believe, will marvel at the skill with which in the ease of each conflict of loyalties he has ended by attaining harmony without surrender. His actions in 1922 provide the best material for those who wish him ill, but in that case, confronted with his hardest problem, he found it taken from his hands and solved for him by fate. Had the minority (supposing that they were only the minority) the right to fight rather than accept the Treaty ? This was the question that must have tortured him for six months before the Civil War. But in the end he was not asked to decide. In the end he could reasonably feel (though others could sincerely feel the opposite) that the Four Courts were bombarded and the Civil War entered on before the Irish people had ever given a straight vote on the disestablishment versus the preservation of the Republic. When it came to the crisis there were no arguments from democracy either way, to counterbalance those from national tradition and constitutional formality which threw him into the battle-ranks of the militant Republicans. Heart-broken at what was happening to Ireland, he never doubted that, morally, he had done the only possible thing. It is Ireland's triumph to have passed in the last fifteen years through experiences very similar to those of Germany and yet to have retained the democratic system and, flowing from it, the Peace Mind. German democracy gave way to overheated nationalism because German democrats could not carry through a policy of effective patriotism. To Mr. de Valera goes the major credit (though Mr. Cosgrave's achievement will never be forgotten) of seeing to it that in Ireland a democratic spirit and a controlled nationalism go hand in hand. He is a democrat in two senses. He believes that at any particular moment the people must be allowed to express their opinion and that their voice must be accepted as decisive. He believes further that in the long run there is a real or underlying national will which it is a leader's business to detect and assist the people to find. What one quarrels with in Mr. Ryan's book is the impression he leaves that Mr. de Valera, while an heroic character, is engaged on imposing some philosophy sprung from his own brain or from some small Irish section on the Irish people as a whole.
That I feel to be profoundly untrue. Incidentally it provides no key to the " amazing " persistence of Mr. de Valera's success. But all is simple once we recognise that he leads, and will go on leading, because he is leading the people to the fulfilment of their own highest purposes and to the realisation of themselves.
Is it legitimate to call such a man a dictator ? The phrase is permissible if you can subsume under it the,leader of the most democratically governed people in Europe ; one who is prepared to submit his plans at every stage not to some fake plebiscite but to a free vote of the people ; one who is concerned above all to assist the people to find the true road of their chosen destiny, but who is ready in the last resort to stand aside for the moment rather than force on them an un- congenial route ; one who on the occasions where he has differed from the multitude has been subsequently vindicated in his prophetic comprehension of Ireland ; one whose principles are of universal application for all that their author is unique.
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