WOES OF IRELAND

Evening Post, Volume XCIII, Issue 106, 4 May 1917, Page 2

WOES OF IRELAND

BUREAUCRACY IN

DUBLIN

HOW FEELING HAS CHANGED

In the Springfield Republican, Norman Hapgood writes from Dublin under date Sth March :— ■ •

The last time I was in Ireland was just after the Lusitania went down in 1915. The feeling of the Irish was then running more strongly towards the Empire than it had been for a long- time. Sergeant O'Leary was the national hero. The boys were coming back from the trenches, where they had fought side by side with the British.' There was still some disaffection, but it amounted to almost nothing. We heard stories in America about submarine bases in Ireland and other absurdities. For submarines to have replenished themselves with oil in Ireland would have been made impossible by the simple fact that so little oil is sold in Ireland that any large sale of it anywhere would immedi-ntely-have attracted the attention of the police. Ireland was friendly, and growing all the time more friendly In addition to. the sentiment of fighting on the same side, there was the encouragement of prosperity, a prosperity stimulated mainly by the English demand for food and partly also by the large war allowances to the families of soldiers. The tide began to set the other way with tho failure to put the Home Rule plan into operation, and it began. to run. its strongest after Hie executions that followed the a-ebellion.

On sth February there was an election in Roscommon. There were a Nationalist candidate and an "Independent Nationalist candidate. Together they polled 2395 vote's. Against them ran. a Sinn Fein'candidate, three of whose sons had been ringleaders in the Dublin rebellion. Not for fifty yckrs before this election had any representative of constitutional action been beaten at the polls by a candidate opposing those methods. The Sinn Fein candidate polled 3022 votes.

The big reasons why the Irish problem is a hard one are fairly simple. In the first place it is no longer primarily a question between Ireland and England. The English members of the House of Commons would probably vote five or six to- one in favour of any Home Ilulo arrangement on which t-h'p. Irish would unite. 'The difficulty is between the different elements in Ireland itself.

Next in importance to tho division among the Irish themselves should be put the nature of the British bureaucracy iu\ Ireland. Dublin Castle has ■been almost wholly 'without imagination. It- has not been filled with men who were capable of;doing what Britons Wave dona in South Africa. It has not tried to understand the Irish and to act according to their nature, but merely to impose upon them the most rigid British, point of view. Most of the difficulties we see in Ireland are such as will disappear with time, but nevertheless will require a- considerable amount of time. This particular matter of personnel, however, one would, think, could be rapidly changed if it were realised in England how much of the difficulty of working out the Irish situation has been due to administrative density.

E\jfen on the largest lines, what the Irish desire is not an imitation of British institutions. There are not a large number of Irishmen who do careful, constructive, 'patient thinking ' after the ' manner- of Sir Horace Plunkett and George Russell. That class, like the genera] public, is, convinced that what Ireland wants is something widely dif- : ferent from what England has. It is customary, of course, to put a great deal of stress on the alleged inability of the Irishman to be satisfied with anything. We have in the TJnited States the story of an Irishman who entered a saloon and saw a fight going on in one corner. He went up to the barkeeper, and demanded, "Is that a private fight?' Or can anybody go in?" One hears constantly the. statement • that the Irish would not be satisfied without a grievance. There is no doubt a certain amount of truth in this charge, but it is a superficial truth; it does not carry us anywhere. People who have felt for a long time that they were wronged, may ba a little too slow to give up their sense of wrong, and the Irish to-day may not give England sufficient credit for being really eager to put Home Rule into effect. Nevertheless, England is the dominant power, and it is up to her-.not only to find a way out, but to find it in spite of all,the temperamental difficulties that have been created. In the United States, in talking with big business men, I have often noticed that they wished to consider only whether a certain method in business or politics was right in itself, and not at all to consider whether it was agreeable to the community. In whatever part of the world one may be, this particular error is discernible. NO IMITATION OF BRITISH PARLIAMENT. Those who are doing most for Ireland to-day do not desire a Parliament on the British lines. They see tho reasonableness and necessity of one Legislative Assembly that is elected by districts and that deals with subjects' as general as education and taxation, but they would limit its functions to such topics. Subjects of equal importance they would have treated by bodies selected in a wholly different way. Ireland is standing "undeveloped," as we put it in our contemporary jargon, meaning, not only that she lacks certain industrial and agricultural methods of undoubted value to her people, but also meaning that she has not entered upon the whole modern industrial system, with its -'farstretching evils as well as its farstretching benefits. Some of the wisest Irish would rather start right than start quickly. A political system which should bo the basis for the growth of undiluted modern industrialism is not what they want. They have a dream, _ like many , nations, many classes, many individuals. They dream" of an industrialism that shall be without oppression, without unfairness, without wage slavery. The one successful business system that has so far been put into effect in Ireland pertains to what is now the chief business of Ireland, namely, agricultureAgricultural Ireland found , herself suffering from nearly everything. She had no knowledge of soils, of the relation of the.crops to the soils, of foreign markets, above all of distribution. Any little Irish village had, and still has, many times the number of little stores it can properly use, all selling the same things in the same way. Men start new stores because they do not know how to carry on any other enterprise. Men continue to patronise tho same store because they are in debt to it. Everywhere in tho world almost, a, large part ] of the possible advantage of the people i is-used up in cumbersome nnd wasteful distribution, but nowhere is this more true than in agricultural Ireland, , The co-operative movement which has done so much in Denmark, Germany, Italy, and is beginning to make its first timid advances in the United States, has been the most valuable work ever done for the reconstruction of Ireland It combines a total economic increase with, unquestionable improvement in;the lot o£ every individual worker . The best tho light in Ireland desires that the same thing shall happen when manufacturing spreads through the land. They know how much harder it is to euro evila than to prevent them. They do not wish in-

dustries to grow into what .we are familiar with" in some of our modern industrial countries, but to grow from the beginning into - what modern thinkers, agree must be for the. actual benefit of all. They wish no industries that destroy, health, that put Hundreds of thousands of people into slavery, v that widen inequality. They wish la,ws, therefore, .which will bring it about that industi'ies are built up on something- like a cooperative plan; on a, plan, at least, that willjinjake it impossible Hr a few men to control the destinies of all. That department of the Legislature which should deal with particular business, in this vision, would not be selected by neighbourhoods, but by occupations, and the endeavour" would be to have as representatives of any occupation those men .who in the broadest sense knew most about it. THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY. In any survey of Ireland and her possibilities the religious difficulty cannot be avoided. Personally, however, I believe it- will be one of the first to vanish. The Catholics and Protestants have worked • together pleasantly and successfully in the co-opera-tive agricultural movement, merely because that movement has been conceived and led in a broad, tolerant spirit. A new Catholic movement, sympathetic with modern thought, has its centre _in Cork University. It is not what is called modernism in religious controversy, having nothing to do with creed. It merely combines Catholic faith with a modern standpoint in public affairs. Soon, I believe, all over Ireland the attitude of the Protestants towards the Catholics will rapidly become less timorous and. condescending, and the attitude of the Catholics towards education will become broader. . SUPPOSED HE WAS A BALLY ASS. An acquaintance of mine, an officer .in _ the regular British Army, rejoicing in an Irish name, has lived in Ireland and' is a Roman Catholic, therefore, he is in the position of few Englishmen, since his understanding of the Irish is instinctive. Recently he had several months' sick leave. A friend of his who had a house 'in Ireland wrote and offered him the house during his leaver "I simply cannot live here," he' said; "they won't have me." • So my acquaintance went over to Ireland. --fWhat is the trouble between you and ' the Irish?" he said to his friend. "How did you treat them, were you a bally ass?" \ "I don't knuw," was the honest reply. "I suppose I was." "What did you do?"' "I don't know, but they wouldn't have me." Immediately after the new occupant; took possession the neighbouring farmer shot his dog. The newcomer thereupon shot the dog of tho farmer.. The farmer turned up to protest. "But you shot my dog first," "Yes,' but your dog Trilled my sheep." "Oh, no, he didn't, he never killed a sheep in\ his life. • Come now, wasn't it, because you hated Uriggs (the. former occupant) ?" The farmer' admitted, a little sheepishly, that perhaps that did have something to do with it. "Welt," said the newcomer, "I am willing to replace your dog, but I can't have you shooting any dog of mine." ■ ■ . The Irishman looked to see if .he were serious. "You mean that about the new dog?" he said, and the two men parted on the best of terms. The new I occupant was aware that with an Irishman the human equation is all. What the Englishman calls justice is sufficient for the Englishman himself, but it leaves out what matters most to the Irishman. My acquaintance, being named O'Hara, started with a big advantage in . senti- | ment, increased by his religion, and confirmed byl his half-intuitive and halfexperienced knowledge of the Irish heart; \ Why has England not been able to act as successfully as O'Hara? This is a subject in which Americans haye such a special, such a close and such a sympathetic interest that I am going into it further. . . The Irish situation is difficult to handle, not only j in the mid6t of this terrific struggle, but at any time. , With its difficulty goes an. immense fascination. Here is a people full of ardour, kindliness, poetry; not stereotyped, not reduced to familiar moulds, but standing, like a nation of children, on the threshold of an exciting and unknown future. Than this little nation, with its cnarming Celtic soul, there is no more interesting possibility in the world. . —■!