ARTHUR GRIFFITH

Evening Post, Volume CIII, Issue 53, 4 March 1922, Page 16

ARTHUR GRIFFITH

IRELAND'S MAN OF THE HOUR

CALM AND TACITURN WAYS

AN AMERICAN'S STUDY.

Probably the most remarkable thing about Arthur Griffith, the new President of the Dail Eireann and the man of the hour in these stirring times in Ireland, is that he. has few if any typical Irish characteristics., says a writer in the New York Times. All of which may very likely be due to the fact, as Countess Markievicz angrily emphasised in one of the week's bitter debates over ratification of the Free State agreement, that he is a Welshman. •

Yet in spite of the lack, of traits so marked in Irishmen the world over, Griffith stands forth to-day as the foremost of the Irish in that lie is for the moment the leader of the majority ,in Ireland. ,' And if his power and i prestige; continue to increase at the rate maintained in the past, he bids fair to retain this leadership "beyond the present transition period- and well into the era of the Irish Free State. . . It Would be hard to find, in modern political history a more determined, difficult, and at times dramatic, fight for an idea than the life-long struggle of Griffith, against great odds, for his conception of. a self-ruled Ireland. Irish political creeds and cries have risen and waned, and plans arid even laws for Iri3h government reform have come and gone in the last decade or more of AngloIrish bickering, yet throughout it all the "Father, of Sinn Fein" has stuck to his elemental theories, and now has not only lived to see them almost literally accepted, but has himself been chosen to direct' their application. Yet the day was not so long ago when Griffith was ridiculed in the Irish press and howled down on the Irish political platform for his advocacy of what to-day is regarded by the Irish people as the worthy goal of their fight for autonomous self-gov-ernment. '..■.'■

SOURCE OF HIS STRENGTH.

Persorial? contact, .with Griffith only deepens, tlie mystery' of his success at directing rebellion' and of his now-real-ised power over the Irish people. Griffith is a man much maligned by interviewers, in the sense that virtually all of them -report him an unmagnetic enigma—a "perambulating contradiction," as a correspondent of the Paris Matin "once wrote. He is indeed all of that, yet I should say his plainness is the source of his great strength. I saw him several times in Dublin during the days of British "proclamation" against the various disturbed areas of Ireland — a time when the Sinn Fein was really ■hard put to keep going—and »to me his immobility, his calmness in time oi stress, and his lack ot that vehemence so marked in. an aroused Irishman, appeared as perhaps the explanation, of his power. The first time I saw him was on sth July, 1919,: the day after the British had, as he put it, "celebrated the .American Independence Day by a further trampling of Irish rights," in that they had '-raided the Dublin offices of •' the Dail Eireann and confiscated the records of the ftuly-elected „, Government of the Irish people." The office in which I saw him was as barren as an almshouse except for a warped table and a few rickety chairs; all the papers and files and such governmental paraphernalia had been carted off in British lorries the previous afternoon. Griffith's office was reached through hallways, stairways, and other rooms in which, there was ample evidence of the same visitation and many earlier ones. .; :'':,

Yet amid this scene of what to the 1 Irish was one of desolation and spoliation, Griffith was calm, in his anger. Unruffled, and yet doubtless raging within, he described the events of the ; previous day and of other similar days, and just as evenly and in seeming good (temper he said the work would still go on—that the will ofj the Irish people could not be Broken.' Asa matter of fact; he saw then and always had seen that the cumulation of such attempts on the part of Dublin Castle would eventually be the undoing of that arm of the British Government. He calculated the effect and capitalised it in his own- efficient and quiet way, where some other leaders more typically Irish . proßably would have resisted the raiders, relieved themselves of some warm comment, and either gone to gaol or set out "on.thevrun',"'. to be! prevented by the Republican Army and relentlessly pursued by the'police., A 'THE-BALANCE WHEEL; ; i .Griffith remained calm and unexcited throughout the years of Sinn Fein crur sading, just as he has. remained unmoved s|nd Complacent through the con-vulsionss-in the Dail during, the free-for-all debatp' on ratification of the London ■agreement. His. ' self-possession md •lit?"al lack of fire as displayed in the pTro give promise of an even-going administration ..in the trying time aheid so long as he remains the balan :z wheel in the new Free State. • Short, stocky, ■ • with thick black hair and heavy brows, Griffith.is just a man ■ in the street, though his eyeglasses and 'his rather fulsome moustache give him; as he writes away at a desk, rather a i professorial 'air. His bearing is reminiscent of a military trainings and at 50 ■ on^ can see in him the champion weightlifter of Dublin of over twenty-five years ago.' . .. !

He is-an uninspiring talker, though his even, tones and .his matter-of-fact manner make him convincing iii a personal conversation. He has earnestness and industry stamped on everything he says and does.; But he loses all such advantages when he speaks in public, for his low voice' remains low, and his lack of animation belies the conviction. Some of his listeners think he is nervous in his public speaking, , and perhaps stage-shy in debate, yet in his utter indifference to or lack of comprehension of oratorical trickery will more likely be found the explanation of his colourless addresses.

But it has long been evident that as •between the spoken' an<3 written wordi, Griffith's bent is toward the latter. He has done nothing but write for twenty years—and all he has written has. been for the Sinn Fein, the instrument he devised and consistently recommended! to the Irish people.as a. weapon of deliverance. The actual beginnings of his advocacy of this creed are becloudted, but-it is known that about twenty years ago he returned to Dublin, where earlier he had woTked as a* printer's reader on a newspaper, after a trip to the Continent and to South Africa, during which, he had specialised on German ... metaphysics, Austro-Hungarian politics, and the Boer language; and 'he returned with a very definite idea as to the'form Irish national development and protest against British rule should take. The London Daily Mail said he returned from that trip "with. his head full of Hungary and Austria," and indeed he did, for his scheme for Ireland was an application of the form of resistance /in vogue among the Magyars. , ' " HOW. WE WON. SUPPORT. His verbal explanations, and, at; first, his written arguments failed miserably. A tew dreamer.!, perhaps, took ar .kca- | demic interost in his contribution to the

Irish political crusade, but with that part of his plan which the Irish people professed to be able to understand they expressed anything.(but sympathy. Abstention 4'rom Westminster by Irish members of Parliament seemed to the Irish people the height of. folly, yet, whether their first or rater judgment of the merit* ,oi the plan is the sounder, they eventually "cam© to his point of view, and participated with a vengeance in this tlia chief phase of Griffith's obstructionist policy: ■ The gradual winning of ihe Irish people to Griffith's idea, set in as a result of the prolific output of his pen. Pamphlets by the thousands, then a publication. The. United Irishman, to be followed in later days with three or four others, arid later the formation of literary societies, all fed by his writings, contributed to the Tapid spread of the new The Irish tongue, the Irish stage, Irish lore,' etc., all received a share of Griffith's attention, and in a. few years he had a formidable following of Irish intellectuals. '...':.

The Gaelic League played He part. Oertain of the clergy were found to be in sympathy with him. Then over-night, with the World War, and, to Irish minds, the deflection of Redmond; to the British, there < came a definite and rapidly-widening split in the Nationalist Party; v and immediately th« Sinn Fein exerted its latent strength, stepped in, ahdi took charge of what, soon became the majority party of the South and West. Of course.British opposition andi .repression aided the new party immensely, as it: thrived on struggle, yet Griffith knew how to make the most of the situation, and turn' it to propaganda, effect. ■■ ' ' > ■ -■ ■

"BRAINS' OF, THE ENTERPRISE."

Yet throughout the meteoric rise of the Griffith id«a, it is doubtful if the author of'it ever gained a correspondinglylarger number of intimate friends and close associates. Not that he was aloof, but that he was a part. As has been said, he is not magnetic, though he 13 in fact a dynamo. The expression, "the brains of the enterprise," never" fitted any one better than Griffith. He was not the talker, the hand-shaker, the "mixerj" nor even' the fighter; he was the thinker. What he thought he wrote; what ho wrote the people of Ireland read! But they did not know him; and while today his fame is such that he doubtless would be recognised anywhere in Ireland, this knowledge of what he look* like has only'come about since the London negoti- ' atioris. „. V . ■ \ ■ • ' One day during his\ incumbency as "Acting President of the . Republic," while Eamond de Valera was in America, I walked with Griffith a distance of about ten blocks from his Harcouft-street offices, through St. Stephen's Green, and . along.the crowded street '■ to the centre of the shopping district of Dublin, and I.:was watchful for -any signs .of recognition ,of the leader. If .any, of the hundreds of passers-by recognised him, none showed it. - ■ ', ;.' . ' -He/is as inconspicuous in person as he is tetiring in manner. It has been true for many years in troubled Ireland that an easily-recognised leader always stood in danger of not being long a leader, and in one sense an active .but I: unobj,nisiye leadei. was of more value to ,-tlie'Sinn. F.ein. than an equally capable but easily identified leader—in 1 jail. Of course, , Griffith was known. ,t» every British agent, and Irish police officer, yet his effacing ways were not without their worth. •■■,'■■ ".'■■'■■ , NOT A PACIFIST. • ' Griffith has been called a pacifist, and his failure to carry arms in the 1910 rebellion has often been cited ac one bit of proof. I don't believe the description is correct, though the ' least study of the man shows him v believer in the efficacy of non-violent methods. He is a Liberal of the Liberals, yet his titular leadership throughout the various campaigns of terror in Ireland would seem to disprove any pacifist tendencies. > He has , never 'been positively .linked with' what th.c House of Commons has heard termed the "murder.gang," and his two terms in prison seem to have been more on general principles than on any , specific grounds. ; . ' > As a directing.head of the.Sinn Fein he was, of course, culpable from the, British point of view in any transgression of the King's Writ, yet in their constant search for perpetrators of outrages and participants in the guerilla, war the British did not go to his offices or his lodgings. True, they'skept his filing cases fairly empty through seizures of papers that might yield clues to violent, as well as pacific obstruction of law, but throughout the turbulent years since the 'Easter week,rising he has gone his way unmolested, with two exceptions, about Dublin. . He was imprisoned with other leaders late in.the World War,' but never brought to trial on charges connected with the German submarine activity off the Irish coast, but, as he told me ' two years later, and as even the London Times editorially put it,, there never was much danger of the British Government's fulfilling ite 'hint of a threat to publish the "truth' about German submarine bases in Ireland to sink American transports. At all events, Griffith was never tried on the charge, and the charge itself was never officially made. Griffith and, nearly everyone else in Ireland professes to believe that these leaders were imprisoned, at most, merely on suspicion and more likely simply to keep them quiet while Britain was so deeply engaged in France in the closing days of the war. : \ ' Griffith was imprisoned not so long ago' in the big round-up that preceded the conference and, as in the instance of his earlier incarceration, he was not Drought to trial on any charge, nor was any charge made. .•■■■ V. GRIFFITH'S FORECAST. ,There were extended , periods during the Sinn Fein campaign when Dublin Castle felt it ■ was to the Government's interest not to seize Griffith, but to let his office and his publications function, as-officialdom believed that to give him ample rope would enable the Crown's agents to pull it taut elsewhere. This doubtless resulted in some instances, as each raid on Harcdurt-street, in which the occupants of the offices were generally ignored in the •; search for\ documents, held possibilities of yielding information concerning military operations or other intended Sinn Fein moves elsewhere in Ireland. - Yet the Irish, as well, recognised that fact and the Sinn Fein claim that nine out of ten such raids were futile probably was correct. ■ In an extended, interview I once had with Griffith he made some statements that were open to discount at the time, but which in the light of the situation as it exists to-day are little short of remarkable. Incidentally, they reveal the foresight,and seemingly sound intuition of the man who is now guiding. the v Irish ship through perhaps the most troubled waters it has , ever encountered. '„'■'

About a year and a-half ago, at the height of the conflict of Irish aggression /and British - repression—the values and the significance and the eventual results of all of which Griffith is credited with having properly weighed and judged—the then "Vice-President" predicted that the British policy of force in Ireland would fail; that the question of Irish independence would be settled within two years to the satisfaction of the Irish people ; that ratification of any Anglo-Irish peace settlement would have to be made by the Irish people or their representatives and not by Westminster alone; that the American nation would never enter the League of Nations until the rights of small nationalities were adjusted in such 1 a way as to reasonably preclude involve-

ment in foreign wars, and that no AngloAmerican agreement or treaty of any kind for the peace of the world would or could be entered into until America witnessed Ireland receiving her just due. If the coincidence of the Irian agreement and the Washington Armament Conference accord has any significance, the sura of Griffith's forecast is not so far wrong.