IRELAND VERSUS INTERNATIONALISM

New Zealand Tablet, 13 February 1919, Page 10

IRELAND VERSUS INTERNATIONALISM

(By G. K. Chesterton, in the New Witness.)'

A famous Irish poet, talking about the effective diction of the Irish peasant, told me he had recently rejoiced in the society of a drunken Kerry farmer, whose conversation was a litany of questions about everything in heaven and earth, like the earthquake questions asked of Job, and each ending with a sort of chorus of “Will ye tell me that now?” Among other things he said abruptly, “Did ye know Tom Kettle?”' And on my friend the poet assenting, the farmer said, as if in triumph, “And why are so many people alive that ought to be dead, and so many dead that ought to be alive? Will ye tell me that now?” That is not unworthy of an old epic poem; and not unworthy, therefore of the poet and hero of whom it was said: “Patroclus, died, who was a better man than you.” To make a list of the people who are -alive and ought to be dead would be to make a fascinating survey of fashionable politics and high finance ; and would perhaps serve only to repeat the system of advertisement in the illustrated papers. But the list would certainly include certain statesmen whose survival adds a touch of irony to a noble tragedy like that of Kettle. Most of the regular Redmondite Nationalists supported the Asquith Government for the sake of Home Rule, and doubted the wisdom of attacks upon it in such a matter as that of Marconi. We in this paper always did justice to the devoted and disinterested nature of their motives, but we ventured to doubt whether in this case their methods were really calculated to serve their entirely honorable aims. We based, and we still base, the whole of our theory of political reform on the principle of fnlsus in unn, fnlsus in omnibus. The man who will cheat you about one thing will cheat you about another thing. The men who would lie to you about Marconi will lie to you about Home Rule. The political conventions that allow of dealing in Marconis at one price for the party and another price for oneself, are conventions that also allow of telling one story to Mr. John Redmond and another to Sir Edward Carson. The man who will imply one state of things when talking at large in Parliament and another state of things when forced into a witness box in Court is the same sort of man who will promise an Irish settlement in the hope that it will fail, and then withdraw it for fear it should succeed. Thanks to the condoning of cases like Marconi, there are dozens of such politicians now running our politics; and one of them will probably take the opportunity of the general election to say, with profound truth: “You cannot build a great State on dishonesty.” In this the last of these loose notes from Ireland, 1 find it natural to linger on the name of Kettle, whose life and death were themselves like a great poem of the power and the promise of the nation. In one of the last of his own poems, he asked half-bitterly whether such sacrifices were indeed in vain, and •whether he and his people were again being betrayed. I think none can deny he was betrayed but if we ask more specially what part of his sacrifices were indeed in vain, we shall realise something very relevant to what I have said about the great plutocratic origin of all such betrayals. I would never say his death in battle was in vain; not only because it could never be so in the highest sense, but because in fact it was not in the plainest or even in the lowest sense. He hated the icy insolence of Prussia ; and that ice is now actually broken, and already as weak as water. He was of those that fought to free the world, and from that evil at least the world is free. The point is that if any of his work was vain, it was precisely the plodding parliamentary part, and certainly not the reckless or romantic .part. It can never be said that the weary marching and counter-marching in France was a thing thrown away; not only in the sense which consecrates all footprints along such a via cruets or highway of the army of martyrs but also in the perfectly practical

sense that the army-was going somewhere, and that it got there. But it might possibly be said that the weary marching and counter-marching at Westminster, in and out of a division lobby, belonged to what the French ;■ called the salle des pas perdus. If anything was practical it was the visionary adventure; if anything was unpractical it was the practical compromise, And if one can regret anything in the lives of men who have lived almost wholly for their country, I confess that I still think it would have been better if the Nationalists, had helped to break the political ring that afterwards betrayed them. I think it would have been better if the whole Irish genius and energy had been able to assail plutocracy; while I fully realise the hopes and high ' purposes of the Redmondites; just as I think it would have been better if the whole Irish genius and energy had been able to assail Prussia, while. I have considerable sympathy with the impatient idealism of the Sinn Feiners. There is here a curious comparison between the only real mistake made by Redmond and the only real mistake made by the enemies of Redmond. The one party underrated its own importance to England; the other party underrated its own importance to Europe. Strangely enough, the real answer to both schools of Nationalists is that Ireland is a nation. It is not a tribe; it is not a settlement of nomads or a clan of barbarians. If it were, it really might be indifferent to whether men or money-lenders won in the conflicts of the neighboring cities it might even be indifferent to whether the French or English or German flag floated oyer a colony or a wild country. But a nation is a civilised and recognised thing; a creation of Christendom, and one having an inevitable concern in the quarrels of Christendom. If the Irish were what Cromwell thought them, they might well turn all their speculations towards Hell or Connaught, and therefore have none to spare for France. But if the Irish are what Wolfe Tone thought them, they cannot help being concerned, as he was, about France. Somewhat in the same way, though in a much lesser degree, if the Irish are hereditary bondsmen who must not say a word against their own masters, it would be absurd to ask for their sympathy in a struggle against ours. But exactly in proportion as they have anywhere a status in Christendom, they must have everywhere a campaign against cosmopolitan finance. It is not only that having defied and largely defeated it in their own country, they must be the natural models of any resistance to it in our country; it is also that, as the practical situation stands to-day, to defy it in our country is probably the best way of finally destroying it in their own. For everything, as I have said, comes back to the essential badness of bad faith. So long as the Irish, in trying to deal with the English, find they have only to do with a few hucksters, they will probably also find that they have to do with a few liars. And it seems to be too easily forgotten that it is just as easy to lie about one thing as about another. Certain temperance reformers used to complain that loafers abused the right of drinking on the pretence of having walked three miles, and proposed that the distance should be increased to six miles; as if it were any harder for a liar to say he had walked six miles than to say he had walked three. The shuffling type of plutocratic politician would be just as ready to promise to walk the six miles to an Irish Republic, as to promise to walk three miles to an Irish Parliament. Those who broke their word to a man like Redmond would not have the smalles delicacy about breaking it to a man like De Valera. • I should never dream of blaming any Irishman, who really thought he could save Ireland, for leaving England to the nemesis of political corruption and a trust in international finance. But so far as I can see, that international finance, until it is fought and defeated on its own central ground, will be strong enough to affect not only all the details of England, but all her dealings with Ireland. I still hold, therefore, as I did in the Marconi time, that Irish patriots would not be wasting their efforts in supporting any democratic

movements in British politics as a whole. The resurrection of Ireland .as,: a ; great agricultural nation has been the most striking defeat yet inflicted on that cosmopolitan power; and it is a sign at the turning of the road. : The things which Ireland has saved are not mere curiosities of Celtic ornament or Gaelic culture, things peculiar to that one western island. The land, the family, the faith of the populace, are things that should belong to all Christian nations and must be fought for in all. They are things that Ireland has had to fight for alone, but they belong to all society. They are things she had kept almost as eccentricities but they belong to the centre. To have preserved them at all has been an achievement of which we others should speak with humility; I should always have been only too proud to have in the smallest degree helped Ireland; but I will add that I would never be too proud to ask her for help. When I left Ireland behind, in the days just after the sinking of the Leinster, I had an optical illusion which many may have noticed before. The Wicklow hills, which seemed few and low as seen from the harbor, unfolded themselves line beyond line and height above height, like a long host deploying as it advanced ; a single sunbeam in a stormy sky hung like a banner on the hill, which I believe is called in Irish the Mountain of the Golden Spears. It was almost impossible not to believe that the land was advancing towards us, instead of receding from us. Instead of growing smaller, it seemed to be stretching out its arms to the whole world. And I thought that these are days in which the ancient things can* return; and I remembered the land of saints was once the island of missionaries.