IRELAND UNDER THE TERROR

New Zealand Tablet, 9 June 1921, Page 9

IRELAND UNDER THE TERROR

(By J. L, Hammond, in the Nation and the Athenaeum.) As I walked down the street in a Hertfordshire village yesterday, little English children were whipping their tops as if there-was nothing else in the world that mattered. As 1 walked down the streets of Cork last week, little Irish children were whipping their tops as if there was nothing else in the world that mattered. From such simple common elements of happiness has man created the hell in which South Ireland is making a fight for her life. Is it the law oft some implacable God that drives us? Is it that we have learnt every art in the world except the art of living with our neighbors in freedom and peace? Or is it true of the spirit of Prussianism, as some melancholy economists used to say of poverty, that man cannot change its volume, but can only change its incidence? For this Cork, in which little boys whip their tops, is the most complete and violent expression to be found in Europe of that spirit. You could put it anywhere on the map of Belgium in the War. I suppose little Belgian boys whipped their tops in Brussels. In the heart of this city, designed by nature as one of her superb spectacles, lie the ruins of her principal buildings. All the world knows who burnt them. Sir Hamar Greenwood, so contemptuously a stranger to , the third city of the people he governs, no longer tries to pass off the clumsy falsehood that the City Hall caught fire from Patrick Street, which was much as to say that the India Office had caught fire from St. Thomas’s Hospital. To-day, no prevarications can servo. Ministers take refuge in a brazen and sullen silence. The burning of Cork was a more deliberate and wilful '' act than the burning of the Palace of the Kings at Pcrsepolis, hut whereas Alexander had the grace to repent, no single word of contrition or apology has come from the British Government to the Irish people. And since, by one of the beneficent laws we have passed for Ireland, the rate-payers are responsible for damage done by servants of the Crown, the ratepayers of Cork are confronted with the prospect of a rate of four hundred shillings in the pound. Above, on a. crest of the hills that give Cork its splendid dignity, sits General Strickland. He could not save Cork from the torches of his servants: he cannot make a single Irishman or Irishwoman secure from the “Black-and-Tans.” But he sits there a Rhadamanthus, whose judgments come down to the people of Cork—such and such ,rebels to be executed, such and such houses to be burnt —just as the judgments of Radetsky descended on Milan 60 years ago, or the judgments of Bissing on Ghent the day before yesterday. Those are the symbols of British rule; the cinders of the City Hall below, the machine-gun above. . Of justice, as Englishmen understand it, there is __ no semblance : of order as Englishmen understand it there is no semblance : General Strickland above, the “Black-and-Tans” busy with torch and revolver below, stand for one thing only: they stand for frightfulness. That is why I do not advise Englishmen who want to be happy to go to Cork, for it is a place where any Englishman who is not proud to be a Prussian would be thankful to be a Hottentot. Meanwhile the public life of Cork struggles on, A few men, meeting at strange times in strange places, carry on the work of administration. Every public man is a marked man, and from time to time the police or the soldiers pounce, and another batch is swept into prison. But in Ireland, as in the old Russia, men cease to think of this danger: they think only of serving Ireland. From the brooding horror which haunts every Englishman who peeps into their life, they are free. I Life on the Run. ' Sir Hamar Greenwood, in one of his speeches, delighted the House of Commons by telling them that he had got the rebels ‘‘on the run.” How many of his audience have any idea what that phrase means? It means, in a great proportion of cases, that a man knows that he is obnoxious to the “Black-and-Tans,” and that if he falls into their hands he will be murdered. The proceedings at military inquiries are not often published, but the newspapers gave a report of a case last November in which

two “Black-and-Tans” left barracks at night, went to a private house, shot a man - dead, returned, and went to bed without saying a word to their superior officer. They were acquitted because the Court held that the man was shot attempting to escape. Thus any rank and file member of this force can enter any man’s house and shoot him. I had a talk with one of the men over whom that fate hangs. He is obnoxious to the authorities because he is a Trade Union secretary, and militarist Governments have no love for Trade Unions, and though he has no connection with the Volunteer movement, he is a Sinn Feiner. This man has been on the run since March of last year, when the police killed a friend and neighbor of his, and let it be known that his turn was to corned At first he alone slept away from home. But after his wife and children had been threatened in their beds three times with revolvers, they decided'to desert their home. His wife sleeps in one place, his children in another, and he in a third. I happened to catch them when they had met, as they do every day, and as dusk was coming on they were preparing to separate. The strain of this life had drawn lines on the faces of the man,' his wife, and his eldest child, but he pointed to his little boy with pride as he told me how the boy had stood, in the small hours of the night, with a revolver held against his temple, refusing to say where his father was. The boy was just leaving on his bicycle,- and by way of keeping up our spirits, he rode round an Irish statue which stood at no distance from us, waving his little cap over his head. Ireland is not going down in this struggle. English in Irish Eyes. What is that struggle? To judge from speeches ip Parliament one might suppose it was a struggle between order and crime. That is not the struggle that you see going on in Ireland. You see a Government engaged in the effort to beat a small people into submission to its will, and its hope of success lies in .making life intolerable to that people. The soldiers hate their task, for they recognise that it means the use of frightfulness, and though the Government has found agents to whom frightfulness is not uncongenial, the British soldier has no natural taste for it; The Irish people see this force pitted against their dignity and their hope as a nation. To ask them to spend their time confessing their sins is like asking the Russians in 1918 to wear sackcloth for the murder of Count Mirbach, or like asking Garibaldi and Mazzini to make perpetual penance for the murder of Rossi. Let any Englishman live in Cork for a week, and ask himself what he would feel, or what other Englishmen would feel if they lived under this harrow. Let Englishmen note that down to yesterday an unarmed British soldier was as safe in the streets of Cork as he is in the streets of This struggle, like all such struggles, is marked by murder and outrage on both sides. But all discussion of the ethics of violence reveals a fundamental difference between the'English and the Irish view. The British House of*Commons has accepted and endorsed the view that an Irishman’s life matters less than an Englishman’s. That view is not commonly held in Ireland. Naturally Englishmen are revolted by the assassination of 14 British intelligence officers, some of them in the presence" of their wives. But more than 14 Irishmen have been murdered in the presence of their wives. Sir Hamar Greenwood tells the House of Commons that the Lord Mayor McCurtain and many other Irishmen were murdered by persons unknown? But he does not expect the Irish people to believe that they were not murdered by the men he employs. When Sir Hamar Greenwood tells the House of Commons that 45 , men have been killed “for attempting to escape,” the House of Commons displays little interest, ( but the Irish people do not doubt the meaning of that phrase. An Irishman whom I know, taken up on suspicion, was released after curfew. He was offered an escort, but he told the officer.to his face that he would rather take his chance in the street than accept that dangerous attention. In three hours he crawled home in safety. The English people at home do not realise what life is like under a Government ' that is chiefly concerned for its credit as a system of terrorism. Take the, allegations, to be heard all. over Ireland, and supported by evidence which* be/it strong or weak, has convinced some Irish lawyers of standing, themselves opponents of Sinn Fein, that prisoners are flogged in Ireland

in order to produce/ evidence. To Englishmen here such a suspicion is revolting, and it leaves most of them incredulous, In the Irish atmosphere it seems natural enough. Every Irishman who takes part in the I.R.A. expects to have to endure this torment if he is captured, and the refusal of the Government to allow an inquiry into'Kevin Barry’s case is taken in Ireland to mean that they are willing for Irishmen to believe that such torture is common, while wishing the British people to believe that it is unknown. For Government is terrorism, pure and simple, applied by every method; applied to mien and to communities, it sets up a world in which law and justice are unknown. As for the sufferings of women and children under that terrorism, who can describe them ? It is impossible for English - people at home to realise what a night raid means to its victims: the lorry dashes up, men with loaded revolvers dash into the house, turn everything upside down, cross-examine the women and children in the house; seize any man they find, and put a bullet through him if he .shows the slightest sign of disobedience. All the time the, women know that these men can do what they please, and that their mere word is a sufficient answer to any charge of violence or plunder. I have talked to women in the towns who have suffered, and it is not surprising to learn that in lonely places where women brood over this terror from morning to s night with few neighbors, women and children have been driven mad. • What right has any Government to throw the life of a people into this chaos? The Government uses chaos as part of its system of terrorism. Mr. Lloyd George boasts that he has driven the Sinn Fein Courts into the cellars. A Protestant Bishop was speaking last week of the admirable work done by those Courts; their success in keeping order, and in treating all classes and religions with justice. They have, in point of fact, carried Ireland through what might have -been a dangerous agrarian crisis, and they have effected a land settlement which is much more considerable than anything Mr. Lloyd George’s Government has been able to effect, or is likely to effect, here.. One would think that the test of the usefulness of these Courts was their-power to serve .the Irish people and to win the confidence of Irishmen, According to this Protestant Bishop, they succeeded. They have been broken up, and crime of all kinds has increased in consequence. What has the Government put in their place? The rule of the revolver. Why? Because, as the Lord Chancellor says, his Government prefers to be odious than to be a sham ; prefers, that is, to make life a hell for the Irish people rather than feel that any-part of the life of Ireland escapes its mailed fist. ' u The Spirit of the Irish.. I asked a Bishop, who is well known here and in Ireland as a man of very moderate views, whether the spirit of Ireland was breaking. He told me this story as his answer. In the war it was the custom to give a condemned man 12 hours’ notice, and to give the same notice to his chaplain. When X was shot the other day for possessing a revolver, the authorities only gave two hours’ notice. The chaplain hurried to him and • was with him till his fie at h. He then went to break the new to X’s brother, who is in prison—having been found guilty by court-mar-tial of the crime of refusing to turn informer against his brother. “Your brother has been shot this morning.” “How did he die?” “He died bravely for the sake of Ireland.” “Then I am happy.” “That,” said the Bishop to me, “is the spirit of Ireland. I have comforted many an Irishwoman whose son is dead or in prison or in mortal danger, and they all ,give the same answer.” Nobody can move about, in Ireland without becoming conscious of this spirit. It is to be seen, amid all the strain and sorrow of this wearing life of conflict, in the eyes of people, in the way they walk, in their whole bearing and temper. They live day by day by Seneca’s maxim, “Non quid sed quemadmodum ferns, interest.” There is a common saying in Ireland, “we are not going to leave this struggle to our children.” . IrKthat spirit they face the prospect of death, torture,! and imprisonment. This is no adventure to them; no beat or quiver of freedom: it is the solemn consecration of their lives. They are confident because they know, that they have infinite resources of courage and youth on which to draw. The story of the death of Kevin Barry brought Irishmen to the Republican army as the

Belgian atrocities drew Englishmen six years ago to our army. The proclamation that Irishwomen would shelter their sons at peril of their lives threw hundreds of doors open to the rebels where they had never been made welcome before. Men and women dread only one thing, for themselves and their friends; one hour of weakness. The flames that ravaged Cork spared the monument to Ireland’s martyrs. To appreciate this spirit we must remember that in Ireland, religion is a far greater power both for help and for solace in the imagination of the race than it is in England. While the shots are ringing out on the barracksquare, half of Ireland is on its knees. Men die, women suffer, with a look of dawn on their faces, because they are sustained by a mystical faith which blends all their devotion to Ireland with a sublime vision of spiritual comfort. Two typical scenes will go down to history in illustration of this aspect of Ireland’s struggle. In the first, a British officer enters a church and interrupts the solemn rites of the funeral with a megaphone, fearing that the mourners might forget for their few moments of meditation the power that holds them in its grasp. In the second, men and women in the streets and shops kneel in passionate prayer while a rebel steps with radiant spirit to his doom. —_____ f