THE CHARACTER OF THE IRISH TERROR

New Zealand Tablet, 7 April 1921, Page 9

THE CHARACTER OF THE IRISH TERROR

U% & A KJ> \ —f —♦ IE'A fAiJ %$ : Jc I - - There is (says the London Nation) a passage in Bolingbroke, if wfi remember rightly, in which he describes the true statesman as the man who can remember that the world in which he is administering affairs for the moment began before him and will continue after" he is dead. We wonder what Ministers'- who are responsible for the s state of things described in temperate language by the* Labor Party Commission imagine is the future of Ireland. The answer, no doubt, is that none of them look beyond . the next Session. But what do those Englishmen who can look' ahead think about the future? Roughly, our position in Ireland •is that of Germany in Belgium. ' Terrorism is, the force , on which we rely. Our position differs from that * of Germany in this respecV that our methods of frightfulness are rather less sensational, and that they have been carried out less under command. The German soldier burnt or shot under orders from his officers. The burnings and shootings , in Ireland have been carried out more by condottieii acting on their own initiative. Sir Hamar Greenwood s account of Balbriggan, for example, describes a body of one hundred men,-under no kind of authority, taking lorries and petrol, and burning and killing, and returning to their barracks, as if they were a perfectly independent bod} of freebooters. In this respect our frightful ness differs from the German. But it remains frightful ness, and it is by frightfulness that we are holding what authority we possess. The report of the Labor Commission speaks, for example, of the number of people who ate on the run” in Ireland. In one important town all but five of the town councillors are “on the run.” Now what does this expression mean It means that men who are interested in politics, some of them Irish Volunteers, and in that sense belligerents, but many of them Sinn Femers or trade unionists who have no connection with the Republican Army, live in a perpetual expectation of capture. They do not sleep in their own beds; they move from place to place; they are always on their guard against surprise. Sir Hamar Greenwood uses the phrase, amid the answering cheers of the House of Commons, to describe the steady progress he is making 1 in reducing Ireland to order. The innocent might suppose that these men are in danger of arrest and trial before a court of law. No such thing. They are in danger, of murder. When at last they are surprised in bed, they are carried off, not for trial, but to the nearest backyard or the nearest river, to be shot or drowned. “Attempting to escape” is now becoming one of the commonest forms of death in Ireland. When all the ordinary processes of law, are suspended, and a country-side is put under the authority of a force raised in another country for the purposes of terrorism, this sort of thing is inevitable. You get the terrorism by which order was maintained in the Balkans. The report gives a picture of Tralee: “The whole population seemed to be Sunk in the depths of morbid fear and contagious depression. .There is no curfew in Tralee, but the streets become bare soon after the hour of darkness sets in. We were told that the Town Council Was compelled to meet in secret in some hidden ravine. Petty tyranny, beatings, intimidations, raids, threats of violence against husbands uttered to wives, brutal asaults to make boys forswear Sinn Fein, to denounce the Pope, to spit on photographs of the late Lord Mayor of Cork, to chant the battle-cry of the R. 1.0. . . . had left their mark upon the inhabitants. . . Names painted above shops in Irish characters have had to be obliterated under penalty of vengeance. . . The Black-and-Taris used to drive about in lorries, trailing a Sinn Fein flag through the mud.” It is not surprising to learn that the disease of St. Vitus’s dance is rapidly increasing. . , .' . v- : . Now the German terrorism in Belgium had a definite object. It was the German way of deterring the Belgian civilians from attacking soldiers or otherwise giving trouble during the occupation of Belgium. The Germans wanted to hold Belgium during the war, perhaps to hold Belgium after the war, by military power. But even the Government does not pretend that we mean to hold Ireland by military power for an indefinite time. We are not going to annihilate the Irish population; we cannot remove Ireland to some other part of the globe. Ireland is there at our door, and th§re she will remain. What, then, do our politicians expect next year, five years hence, ten years hence, as the result of this terrorism ? They jinswer that they kill break the spirit of Ireland and intimidate her into a docile acquiescence in any system we may seek to : impose. Do they seriously think this q The Labor Com-r missioners were immensely impressed by the romantic- passion with which the youth, and even the childhood of Ireland are throwing Themselves into the Sinn Fein movement. The ; execution of Kevin Barry was followed by

great accessions to the Republican Army from the Dublin /University. In the slums of Dublin and Cork little children form fours, march, and drill for. the day when they will rid their country of the filthy visitation of the "Black)andTTans." Intimidation might produce a temporary success of a kind, arid the Government try to make the nation believe that such a success is within their reach. But for Englishmen who are thinking of the future; the question is not whether an abominable system of terror can divide the ranks of Nationalist Ireland or bring about a modifi" cation of her immediate demand, but what sort of Ireland we are to have in the future. At present we are creating an Ireland in which the first instinct of every self-respect-ing man is to hate England. Sir John Moore after seeing something of English rule in Ireland, said more than a century ago, that if he were an Irishman he would be a rebel. Six years ago, Irishmen, thinking England was going to give them their freedom, were so well disposed to us that they were ready to help us in the war. Can anybody imagine that an Ireland brought up on memories of the outrages committed by English irregulars, and the insolence with which these men bear themselves before the Irish people, will cherish anything but profound hatred for the very name of England? The Government's policy leads nowhere. It would be intelligible, though abominable, if this people meant to devote its energies to holding down the Irish people by force, and to prepare for all the military and diplomatic dangers that are inseparable, for a generation to come, from a permanent quarrel with the Irish race. On any other assumption it is madness. ' The alternative policy is to make peace, and that is the policy which the Labor Party is about to urge on the country in an active campaign. The obstacle to peace is racial pride; the arrogance of men who think, as the Germans thought, that it is the mark of superior worth to give orders and not to discuss terms. Our politicians are so far gone in their contempt for all liberal ideas that they think the present reign of terror in Ireland is less disgraceful to us than a frank recognition of the view that Irish Government is a matter for the decision of Irishmen and not for Englishmen. Six years ago Germans thought that the atrocities in Belgium were less damaging to German honor than the admission .that Germany could not give orders to her neighbors. Englishmen appreciated her mistake, but they fire now copying it. We have to make, peace with Ireland in order to bring to an end a state of things that, disgraces us, and in order to secure a tolerable life in the future for both peoples. Lord Grey reminded the House of Lords in October that we were only just in time in giving self-government to the Transvaal. How much time ,is left to us in Ireland ?