THE SINN FEIN REVOLT

New Zealand Tablet, 29 June 1916, Page 13

THE SINN FEIN REVOLT

VIEWS OF A CATHOLIC JOURNAL. Our Irish exchanges contain little that is new with regard to the Sinn Fein revolt beyond what the cable informed us at the time of the regrettable rising. The Catholic Times of May 6, in a comprehensive review, says : —We can express nothing but regret and horror at the folly of the handful of misguided men who have brought sorrow to the hearts of all right-minded Irish patriots. Anything -more foolish and futile than the attempt to injure Great Britain by an attack on organised social institutions in Dublin it would be impossible to imagine. That any body of armed men could have dreamt . of dealing a blow ate* the British Empire by the seizure of the capital of Ireland shows such a misapprehension of modern conditions that we are forced to that motives were present to their minds which drove them out of the possession of their common sense. No madder enterprise has ever been entered on during the long and chequered history of Ireland's struggle for justice and freedom. When the madmen began their outbreak in Dublin (continues our contemporary) they did not foresee that the hatred they had for Mr. Redmond and his policy would establish both, in the regard of the people of Great Britain. Yet that is what has happened. Our public opinion sees that these Sinn Feiners are opposing the Nationalists and that the Nationalist Volunteers are defending the cause of law and order in Ireland. Mr. Redmond's Volunteers have been fighting side by side with the King's troops for the maintenance of the authority of the British Crown in Ireland! As the Nation says, the main instrument of tht Sinn Feiners' defeat is 'Mr. Redmond's perfect loyalty to the bond under which Ireland will soon be a self-governing country.' The British people fully recognise, the services of. Ireland to the Empire during this war, and will not be led to confuse Home Rule with this mad act of the Sinn Feiners, who are Mr. Redmond's enemies first of all, and England's only in the second place. '* Carson's Children. Yet there was a risk for some time that the issue would have been confused in the mind of the British public, which knows little of Irish domestic differences. And had the English press been inclined to grant Sir Edward Carson the act of oblivion which he shrewdly asked for, the result would have been a peril to the

cause of Home Rule. But the British press could not be deceived. It recognised that the true origin of the Dublin outbreak was in Belfast. ' Hear the Nation : 'lt is the long-dreaded rebound from the Carson rebellion, the fatal crop that has grown from that sowing of dragons' teeth in a soil always fertile to such a growth. We warned the Government, when Sir Edward Capson and his friends proceeded to organise rebellion in the King's realm, that, unless they were firmly dealt with, the evil example of a resort to force would again corrode Ireland. The ideal of physical force was fast disappearing; the drillings of Ulster revived it. So, when the war came, it instantly brought the Nemesis, not merely of the Carsonite movement, but of the Government's weakness in delaying the grant of full responsibility to Nationalist Ireland.' And the treatment of Carsonites when they ran guns and of Nationalists was the difference of Larne Bay and Bachelor's Walk: for the first impunity, for the second shooting ! ■» That enraged the Sinn Feiners. Their ideas of physical force grew. They burst out in arms at last against the Crown. They are Carson's children, his legitimate offspring, though he disowns them. * The Irish Volunteers and the Rising. Though some of the Irish or Sinn Fein Volunteers were drawn into the vortex when the revolt in Dublin commenced, it is but just to bear in mind that the revolutionary movement was engineered from Liberty Hall and was not included in their programme. They were the offspring of Sir Edward Carson's Ulster campaign. He paraded Ulster as a rebel chief. He and his supporters took authority into their own hands. They bade defiance to the Government from a hundred platforms. The rebel chief progressed through, parts of Ulster in quasi-royal state, to the sounds of riflefiring and revolver shots. The Government, they said, dare not interfere with them, for it knew they would break out into rebellion in that event. They set up a ' Provisional Government' and boasted that there were numbers of army officers who were ready to take the field with them as rebels. Many leading British politicians loudly applauded them. Mr. Bonar Law, the Conservative leader, and others openly expressed their sympathy with them. A movement in support of their attitude, to which, it was stated, the Duke of Norfolk and other prominent Unionists contributed, was set on foot. Peers vied with one another in proclaiming their approval of the rebellious movement. A revolt of military officers at the Curragh gave concrete expression to all this patronage and encouragement of rebellion. It was about this time that the Irish Volunteer organisation was founded and its object was to safeguard the Government's Constitutional policy of Home Rule which was thus "threatened. The Aims of the Irish Volunteers. Some time after the Irish Volunteers had been started, Mr. John Redmond and the Irish Party, who were not at first disposed to countenance any movement of the kind, deemed it advisable to claim a voice in the control of the organisation. A dispute took place, with the result that the Volunteers separated into two distinct bodies— National Volunteers under the leadership of Mr. Redmond, and the Irish or Sinn Fein Volunteers under the guidance of Mr. John McNeill, Professor of Irish at the National University. Both professed constitutional principles. Their declared aim was to make Home Rule secure, but whilst Mr. Redmond strongly recommended the National Volunteers to enlist for service abroad in aid of the Allies' cause, and a considerable number of them did so, the leaders of the Irish or Sinn Fein Volunteers insisted not less strongly that the object of the organisation was merely Home Defence. The large Nationalist daily journals advocated the interests of the National Volunteers. The Irish Volunteers appealed to the teachings of Irish leaders in the past, dwelt on the importance of keeping Irish ideals before the people, and received support from little weekly journals, some of which were suppressed by the Government and reappeared under new names. They also won the sympathy of a large number of mem-

hers of the Gaelic League. There was nothing' of a revolutionary character in their utterances, and the impression their words and work produced amongst the Irish public was that the only object they had in view was.the peaceful maintenance of Irish national sentir ment. Whether any other aim beyond this was ever definitely avowed or intended is not clear, and it would appear that it was at Liberty Hall the project of a revolution found sympathy and acceptance. The Irish Transport Workers' Union. The evidence so far to hand seems to suggest.that as soon as the crisis became imminent, Mr. John McNeill, the head of the Irish Volunteers, did what he could to discourage and restrain the members. from joining in the outbreak. He issued an order on the evening of Holy Saturday countermanding their Easter Monday manoeuvres, and he is reported to have telegraphed to Cardinal Logue asking him to get the priests to make the announcement in the churches. How the revolt originated has not yet been made clear. But there can scarcely be a doubt that the wild scheme for setting on foot a revolution and\ establishing an Irish Republic was hatched at Liberty Hall. James Larkin, the leader of the Irish Transport Workers' Union, who is now in America, is a Socialist and a Republican, and James Connolly, who succeeded -him on his departure for the United States, held the same creed. The author of Labor in Irish History and The Reconquest of Ireland, cheap works which have had a large circulation, he gave expression to views which were adversely criticised by the clergy. It is not easy to understand how a man who seemed to be intelligent, well-read, and cool-headed could have entertained the idea that a rising against the British Government, with its immense power in men and munitions, could be at the present day other than a tragic failure. The Facts of the Case. An Irish Protestant Archbishop, the Right Rev. Dr. Crozier, addressing the Orangemen of Portadown, was not able to refrain from an effort to make political capital out of the Larkinite rising. He is so accustomed to indulge in political partisanship that he forgot, when raising his voice at Portadown against Home Rule by referring to the proceedings at Liberty Hall, that the insurrectionists, of the Irish Transport Workers' Union only imitated the rebels whom his words encouraged during Sir Edward Carson's Ulster campaign. James Larkin and his lieutenants followed in the footsteps of the Ulster Volunteers, who received Archbishop Crozier's blessing. The Archbishop is one of the men who, at witnessing the fruits of the Ulster doctrine to which they gave their support, ought to feel and publicly express a sense of regret and remorse. There could hardly be anything more certain than that the Carsonite threats of civil war in Ulster and the championship given them by Unionists of the highest prominence did .infinite mischief at home and abroad. The light cast upon them reveals facts that are more and more startling. The information contained in Mr. Walter Sichel's article in the Nineteenth Century leaves scarcely any room for doubt that they powerfully influenced the Kaiser in deciding to go to war. Professor Schiemann, the author of a pamphlet on Ireland, the Achilles-Heel of England, combined for many years, we are told, the functions of a writer and teacher of. history with those of a political journalist and private spy for the German Emperor. He visited England in April, 1914, when the Ulster controversy was at its height,' and returned to Germany to report to the Emperor. It is possible,' writes Mr. Sichel, ' that Schiemann's information upon the imminence of civil war in Ireland may have helped to determine the German Emperor's decision to drive Austria into war with Serbia. In any case, there is good authority for stating that before the German Emperor despatched, towards the middle of July, 1914, the letter which " encouraged the Emperor Francis Joseph to sanction the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia, he showed the letter to : Schiemann.' Schiemann\ no doubt, had assured the Kaiser that England, face to • face with the prospect :of •; civil war in Ulster, could not possibly take part in a European war, even though her own interests were imperiled by the invasion of Belgium, ,W\: ■'. WSfM MtPltiSP^ift

'•: The End of the Rising. / '"'[-■ '■ ,\" The news .that- all the Dublin commandoes had surrendered and that the leaders of the revolt had ordered the surrender of their followers everywhere reached the public just a week after the beginning of the outbreak. No report could have been more welcome to the Irish and the British public as a whole. There are in connection with the revolt considerations which must receive the earnest attention of all thoughtful men in these islands. Everyone who has the welfare of Ireland and the Empire at heart must ask what are the causes to which the rising is to be attributed and what are the means by which they can be removed. But we feel sure the first thought of all must have been that it was inexpressibly painful that people who ought to feel towards one another as brothers were engaged in the awful work of shooting one another down. It is bad enough to read descriptions of fierce battles against the enemy in foreign fields, but it is heartrending to find incidents such as the shooting of policemen and soldiers and the use of heavy artillery and of gas bombs figuring in the newspapers when the combatants are British subjects and even Irishmen against Irishmen. Where are the bonds of brotherly love which ought to have made such a conflict impossible? Who is to blame for the absence of such tiesi Is it not possible to establish relations which shall absolutely preclude mutual hatred, and if it is possible why should they not be established? The Damage to Dublin. The appearance of Dublin at the present moment will revive recollections of Paris after the war of 1870. The struggle between the revolutionists and the soldiers has left many of its buildings in the condition to which the frenzy of the Communists had reduced a large number of the finest structures in the French capital. Only the walls, or portions of the walls, discolored and bearing traces of flames, remain standing. Like Paris, Dublin was a beautiful city., O'Connell street, where so much havoc has been wrought, was one finest streets in Europe. Now ruins meet the eye at every turn in some of the more important and most interesting quarters. Buildings which were erected at a great cost and which constituted splendid adornments of the neighborhoods in which they stood have been destroyed, and in not a few cases years must pass before they can be replaced. The revolt has indeed been a costly affair for the citizens, and apart from the casualties, the sufferings they have had to bear are such as could not be witnessed without the deepest pity. Suddenly they were plunged from prosperity into a state of extreme want. The scarcity of food was a severe trial in thousands of households. Not within living memory have experiences so unsettling as they have had since Easter Monday fallen to the lot of the people of Dublin. The Treatment of the Insurgents. Many of the papers are putting forward demands for very severe measures against those who have defied and outraged the law in Ireland. We are glad to observe, however, that a- number of leading journals recognise that in regard to defiance of and contempt for the law there is no substantial difference between the so-called loyalists of Ulster who were taught ' to break every law' and the Larkinites of Liberty Hall. The so-called loyalists attacked minorities, and when they were in made the lives of the Catholic minority insupportable. The Dublin revolutionists fought against superior numbers. They certainly may plead that others were praised and petted for having professed the doctrine upon which they have acted. There is another strong reason why in the present instance justice should be largely tempered with mercy,' and that is self-interest. The, Daily Chronicle fittingly points to the advantages which this country has derived from pursuing a.mild policy in South Africa. In that way the good will of the people of South Africa has been won, and folk whose sympathies would certainly have been y alienated by harshness have been converted by moderation and leniency into firm upholders of the interests of the Empire. Irishmen will look for the adoption of a similar policy under the circumstance* that haye now arisen, " j V,