THE SOUL OF IRELAND

New Zealand Tablet, 21 July 1921, Page 9

THE SOUL OF IRELAND

[By Frank Harris and George W. Russell (“A.E.”)]

That very able writer, Frank Harris, is now in New York, editing Pearson's Magazine. He was formerly the editor of London Vanity Fair, of the Fortnightly Review and of the Saturday Review. He has written several works on Shakspere ( The Man Shakspere and the Women of Shakspere). His latest journalistic work, prior to his leaving England for America, was the editorship of the Candid Friend, a periodical which he founded. In Pearson's Magazine for May, there is an article by the notable Irish literateur, George W. Russell, who is perhaps better known as “A.E.,” Harris says of this article: “This is the best, the most original and truth-telling article I have received in my forty years as editor.” It is a decidedly fine and brilliant literary essay, and throws a flood of necessary light on the great and persistent struggle of the Irish people for legislative independence. It is here reproduced:

The genius of a Dostoevsky or a Balzac may make the character and action of individuals intelligible to us, but who can truly illuminate the myriad being of a nation so that it may be seen in as clear a light. Most thoughtful men approach the soul of the individual with awe, but millions light-heartedly attempt to explain the character of a nation. If between myself and Heaven I had to confess about Ireland I would admit I know nothing truly of its people, though I am of them. I cannot explain to myself how thought quickens in my brain and.if thought or vision ceased I would not know how to kindle them, so far beyond our 'conscious life are the real springs of imagination and thought. We know little about ourselves or

our race because half the story of life has not yet been told and only the fool is dogmatic. But, though we may not have understanding or certainty, we must act, and that necessity is also laid upon nations and it is in this mood of humility I write about the actions of my countrymen among whom I have lived for the fifty-four years of my life observant of them as my nature allows.

What is the root of the Irish trouble? The Irish people want to be free. Why do they desire freedom ? I think it is because they feel in themselves a genius which has not yet been manifested in a civilisationas Greek, Roman, and Egyptian have in the past externalised their genius in a society with a culture, arts and sciences peculiar to themselves. It is the same impulse which leads an imaginative boy to escape all the traps a conventional family set for him. They wish him to be a doctor, to enter one of the money-making professions. All reason is with them. But the boy hears “music in his soul” and it calls him out of the beaten track. He will say: “I believe the healer’s profession is a noble one. Ido not despise it. But I wish to be a musician.” What is it makes the boy cling to music whether his talent be great or little? We surmise biological or spiritual necessity and his disease is beyond our healing. Force him to attend the wards and he will be a sulky student, a bad doctor, and he will hate with a bitter hatred those who forced on him a profession alien to his nature. If we understand the passion of the boy to be himself we can understand the passion of the Irish nation for freedom. It will not listen to reasonable people who assure it, perhaps truly, that British culture and civilisation are on the whole as good as any. It is not a civilisation Irish people desire for themselves. The theory and practice of empire are hateful to them. The mingling of Norman and Saxon with the Gael which came with the invasions and plantations has not brought about a change of feeling. The new race made out of the union of Saxon, Dane, Norman, and Gael is still dominated by the last, and it looks back to pure Gael as to an ancestral self. The more complex mentallity brought about by the commingling of natures is at the service of Ireland and not of its conquerors. The Irish have shown by three hopeless rebellions in every century how loathsome to them is the character in which British statesmen would mould them. I believe that antagonism springs from biological and spiritual necessity. Is it good or evil? I cannot say. The moralist in me will hear of nothing but a brotherhood of humanity, and race hatreds are abhorrent to it. The artist in me delights in varieties of culture and civilisation, and it tells me it is well worth some bloodshed to save the world from being “engirdled with Brixton,” the “dreadful outcome of Imperialism” which George Moore foresaw in one of his Irish and more lucid intervals. Ido not believe it is possible to make contented Britons out of Irishmen. The military efforts to effect this are vain as the effort of a madman to change a shamrock into an oak tree by pricking it with a needle. In spite of all the proddings of British bayonets the people born in Ireland will still bo Irish.

Their nationality is a real thing, They are one of the oldest races in the world, so old that their legends go back to the beginning of time and they have their own myths of creation. There is in Gaelic a , literature with epic and heroic tales as imaginative as any in the world. The fact that for the past eighty years the majority of Irish people speak English has but superficially modified Irsh character. A nation is a long enduring being, and the thin veneer of another culture spread over it for a couple of generations affects it as little as the Americanism of a young man would be affected who lived in Florence for a year and learned to speak Italian. The Gaelic culture still inspires all that is best in Irish literature and Irish life. There are writers like Yeats, Synge, Hyde, and Stephens who might have won but little repute had they not turned back and bathed in the Gaelic tradition and their souls been made shining and many-colored by the contact. The last great champion of the Gaelic tradition was Padraic Pearse, who led “the astonishing enterprise” of Easter Week, 1916. Pearse had made his soul out of the heroic literature of the Gael, and when I think of what he did and how Ireland reeled after him, I recall the words of Standish O’Grady, an earlier prophet of the Gaelic tradition, who wrote of its heroes and demigods:

“Not yet lost is their power to quicken, to exalt, to purify. Still they live and reign and shall reign,”

That national tradition which moved , Pearse and his associates animates the Sinn Feiners who succeeded him. The average man may not guess the thoughts which move the mightier of his kind, but the same elements are in his being and he obeys the call when it is made. The first thing to realise, then, if you would understand Ireland to-day, is that the Irish people are truly a nation with a peculiar cultural or spiritual ancestry that its genius for hundreds of years has been denied free national expression, and the passion for freedom is more intense to-day than it has been. We do not expect from Italy, France, Germany, or England anything different in character from what they have already given to the world. They are like artists who have accustomed the public to a certain character in their work. They have done perhaps the best it was in them to do. But people like the Irish, the Russians and the new nations in the new world have yet to give to the world the best which is in them. They are like the Greeks before Pericles, Phidias, Sdphocles, Plato and all that famous life whose aftercoming justified “a small city state” in resisting the domination of a great empire. Ireland through Sinn Fein is fighting for freedom to manifest the Irish genius. I feel this is the root of the matter. If there was not an incorruptible spiritual atom of nationality in the Irishman he would never' have suffered and sacrificed for so many centuries. When I stress the spiritual it is not because I am unmindful of material grievances or do not know the economic case which can be made against the continuance of British rule. The economic case can be better understood by most, though I do not think Ireland would have been troubled by rebellions at all if the people had not a distinct national character, if they did not see a different eternity from the Englishman, yet the majority of Irishmen will stress economic grievances most in conversation.

It is ludicrous of British advocates to speak of Ireland as a country grown prosperous under British rule when it is the only country in Europe whose population has been halved in living memory. Poland or Alsace under their alien rulers increased in population as in wealth. The population of Ireland has dwindled from eight millions to a little over four million people. Even the province so dear to British imagination, even Ulster,, has lost as high a percentage of its people by emigration as any other province in the last eighty years.

Why Was This? Because year by year the surplus revenues of Ireland and Mie wealth created were sucked up by its vampire neighbor and expended on Great Britain. At the present time the revenues of Ireland, over and above expenditure on Irish services, which are retained by the British Government and spent in England, helping to keep Englishmen alive, would suffice, without the imposition of an extra penny taxation, to maintain a population of one million' more people in Ireland. -The British Government, according to the last Treasury return, taxes Ireland up to £50,615,000. Of this £29,221,000 on its showing was spent on liish services which were largely oppressive and unnecessary, and £21,394,000 was retained for British use. Truly they find Ireland a profitable possession. I ask Americans to think what would be their economic plight if Germany had conquered the United States and exported half the American revenues yearly to Germany to be spent there. Would not your economic system decay? If in any country the revenues are exported the population must also be exported. Workmen must go where wages can be paid. The Home Rule which the British Government offers, nay which it thrusts upon Ireland, for not one single Irish representative, Unionist or Nationalist, has cast a vote in favor of it, is worse for Ireand than the Act of Union, It reduces Ireland to complete economic powerlessness. Instead of one hundred and two members at Westminster to safeguard Irish interests, the number is reduced to fortytwo, yet Great Britain retains control over trade policy, the imposition and collection of taxation, and a tribute to Great Britain of £18,000,000 a year is a first charge upon Irish revenues.. It also takes power to increase this tribute m the future if it finds Ireland has any. further surplus of wealth to be appropriated. The British Government is determined that the Irish export of revenue and population

shall continue. The present Viceroy and the last Chief, Secretary said all the trouble in Ireland was caused by young men remaining in Ireland who ought to have emigrated. Failing their duty to Great Britain to clear out of Ireland, the Government last year gathered together some thousands of the more dissolute heroes of the Great War and sent them to Ireland to wreak any unexpended heroism on that country. City after city has been shot up, burned, raided, and looted. The excesses committed by these men, who seem to have, been given a free hand to kill, burn, wreck, or loot, have been unfavorably compared, even by British publicists of repute, with the worst which has been done under the Czardom or the old Turks.

The great movement promoted by Sir Horace Plunkett for the organisation of the farmers has suffered by this orgy of militarism. About fifty of the dairy and agricultural societies have had their premises wrecked or . burned, and the Government refuses any public inquiry into the acts done by its servants.

Has this terrorism affected its ostensible purpose, which was to make Ireland contentedly accept British ruleI believe it has

Only Hardened Irish Opinion. If such a policy is to succeed at all it must succeed

at once before human nature grows insensitive through over-sensation. Irish people to-day regard the raids, wreckings, burnings, shootings, and imprisonment without trial as part of their normal life, and the only effect I can see is a deeper nausea at the thought of union with Great Britain.

The Irish character anciently was fuy of charm. The people were lively, imaginative, and sympathetic, the best talkers possible, but their power of sympathy and understanding, their capacity of seeing both sides of a case, made them politically weak. The oppression of the last six years has made a deep and I believe an enduring change in that character. It has strengthened the will. The political rebels I meet to-day are the highest of Irishmen I have met in my life of fifty-four years. *1 think of these young men, so cheerful, so determined, so self-sacri-ficing, and I grow more and more confident that something great must come out of a race which produces such men in multitude. I think the rank and file are even finer than their leaders. But perhaps I should not say that. The real leaders are unknown almost. It is not a time when orators can make their voices heard. The press publishes a daring utterance only at the risk of suppression, . and many papers have been suppressed. It is impossible to hold political meetings. Those who lead and inspire are nameless.

They Work in Secret.

They can only “convince by their presence.” v But I divine ardent and selfless leadership because of the spirit of the rank and file, just as when I see the clouds warm at dawn I know the glow comes from a yet hidden sun. The Paddy of British caricature, based on the Handy Andys, Micky Trees, and Charley O’Malleys of old novels, if there ever were originals of this type, have certainly left no successors. I find only a quiet, determined, much enduring people, so little given to speech that it is almost impossible to find among Sinn Feiners an orator who would attract a crowd or speak of Irish wrongs as the Redmonds, Sextons, O’Briens, and Dillons of the last generation did. Ireland has become for the present all will. I have no doubt when a settlement conies that the ancient charms of imagination and sympathy will be renewed, but they will spring out of a deeper life, and literature, art, and society will gain.

I am trying to explain the mood of my countrymen to-day. I think highly of them, but Ido not think Ireland is by any means an Island of Saints, and things have been done by Irishmen which I at least will not attempt to defend. That may be because I am a pacifist by nature and prefer to use intellectual and spiritual forces rather than physical force. But it is only fair to say that two years of raids, arrests, and imprisonments, of which there were many thousands, *

Preceded the Adoption of their present methods by the Volunteers. If it ever is right to use physical force, which I doubt, because I feel there are other ways by which right can find its appropriate might, then, when considering the tragic happenings

during the past year in Ireland, praise or condemnation can only rightly be awarded when we have decided who have a right to govern Ireland, the Irish people or the English people. But where does the right of England to govern Ireland come from? On what is it based? Not on the will of the Irish 'people certainly. On ancient possession? But it is not generally conceded that the burglar who has long had stolen property is the more entitled to it the longer he possesses it.

“Oh,” it will be said, “there is Ulster!” Ulster is Unionist. Even in that province the balance of opinion is so even that the whole province could not be included in an Ulster Parliament, lest it might at once vote itself in with a Southern Parliament. It is certain that if the Ulster counties were allowed to vote freely whether they would unite with Nationalist Ireland not more than four would remain out, and I think it highly probable that only three would so vote. This would make the partition of Ireland so ludicrous that free voting was not allowed, and counties predominantly Sinn Fein were included against their wish with the Ulster Unionist counties. The British Government which partitioned Ireland ostensibly because the Ulster people desired it, did not dare to allow a vote to be taken by the people in the counties included.

I think the British Government desired to retain A Garrison in Ireland.

The aristocracy were first its garrison. With the downfall of feudalism the aristocracy lost its power and a new garrison had to be found, so Ulster was informed that Nationalst Ireland would tyrannise over it and rob it, and the “two-nation” theory was started in Great Britain and given effect to in the last Home Rule Bill. I think the Government has over-reached itself, and in three years Ulster, even the now Unionist Ulster, will be as strongly antiBritish as the rest of Ireland. If a contented Ulster garrison was wanted, the financial provisions of the Act should have been such as recommended themselves to Ulster business men. But the six counties, after providing for their own services, have to pay a tribute of £7,920,000 to Great Britain yearly. This sum was fixed in a time of inflated prices and profits, when shipbuilding and the manufacture of linen for aeroplanes during the War gave Ulster a fictitious and temporary prosperity. Now its textile industry is in a very bad way and there are thousands of unemployed. The Belfast Chamber of Commerce declared that the whole of Ireland could not rightly pay a larger tribute than £5,000,000. The fact that six Ulster counties have to find that and more than half as much again will, if I know my Ulster countrymen, work

Like Atadness in the Brain.

They will see the wealth they create drained away every year to be spent in England to pay English workingmen while their own are unemployed. No, the Ulster problem is not really serious. If it was the British Government would have let Ulster counties vote according to their desires.

Is there any possibility of a settlement? I think Ireland truly desires to be at peace with its neighbor, and once it achieved the freedom it desired it would forget the past. Great Britain is the natural market for Irish products. All Irishmen recognise that. Irishmen can get along quite well with individual Englishmen who are good fellows as a rule. But England as represented by its Government they mistrust and will have nothing to do with. I was going to say it was Prussian in its methods with Ireland, but that would be unfair to the Prussians, for, as far as I know, in their treatment of Poles or Alsatians there was nothing comparable in ferocity to the present British oppression of Ireland. Indeed, the Prussian oppression of Poles or Alsatians appears in comparison mere ordinary good-natured government. What is to be the end of the Anglo-Irish conflict? I do not know. I am inclined to think that as between Ireland and Great Britain there never will be any settlement. The last is too greedy for Irish money and trade to let them slip out of its control and too terrified of a powerful Irish nation alongside it to allow. Ireland freedom to develop and increase its - population to the ten or twelve millions who might naturally inhabit it.. Ireland, as its history shows, will be content with nothing less than complete freedom over its own affairs. - ’ ~ ' •

Only Some Third Factor.

arising out of world circumstance can make that freedom possible. It is not that British statesmen could not in the past have made Ireland friendly and contented inside the British Commonwealth, but they would not. When they dealt with Ireland they could not rise to the noble conception of their Empire as a commonwealth of free nations developing freely endless varieties of culture and civilisation. They allowed this in respect of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, countries they could not hope to hold long by physical force in subjection to Westminster politics. But, where the race was alien, as in Ireland, Egypt, or India, the ideal was not upheld, and hence it is that these three countries are in a blaze against their oppressors. I do not think the democracy of one country can rightly rule the democracy of another country. An autocrat conceivably might rule subject nations with success because the individual, can be appealed to, moved, or educated. But who could attempt the task of educating forty million people about the needs of another race. It would be easier to get the mythical camel through the eye of a needle than to get into the brain of one of those forty millions the needs of the four hundred millions in their Empire. The drop cannot contain the ocean. No democracy, American, French, German, or Italian, could govern Ireland against its will with more success than the English. They would all be forced to adopt the same methods if they insisted on

Their Right as Overlords.

I believe the British Government is prepared to wreck every city in Ireland rather- than allow Ireland the freedom it desires. No other nation is going to intervene. A man will prevent a bully kicking a child in the street, but all nations are licensed by other nations to deal with their subject nationalities as they will. The phrase, “A domestic problem,” was invented to express, this license, and is a recognition of the truth Neitzche proclaimed when he said, "The State is the coldest of all cold monsters.” In ancient Greece a slave who was ill-treated had the right to be sold to another master, but the subject nation has no world tribunal to appeal to, nothing but the Master of Life, that indefinable something we surmise in the government of the Cosmos. So here in Ireland people endure grimly, without hope of any other nation’s intervention, waiting for world circumstance to enable them to escape from their conquerors, or for the mills of God to come at last in their grinding to the British Empire as they came to the Roman Empire, the Chaldean, and -other empires whose sins and magnificence have sunk far behind time.

T am trying to interpret the mood of my countrymen rather than to express my own feelings. For myself I do not care whether I am governed from Moscow or Pekin if my countrymen are happy. I am by profession an artist and man of letters, and I find the consolations of life in things with which Governments cannot interfere, in the light and beauty the earth puts forth for her children. The words “republic” or “empire” are opaque words to me. I cannot see through them to any beauty or majesty to which they inevitably lead. But

I Do Believe in Freedom.

If the universe has any meaning at all it exists for the purposes of soul, and men or nations denied essential .freedom cannot fulfil their destiny.

I do not write, wishing Americans to pick a quarrel with Great Britain over Ireland. But the more understanding there is, the more will the good which is latent in life become the unconquerable force in human affairs it must become if the golden years are ever to return. We can go on enduring oppression. Personally I believe the complete freedom of Ireland will come surely, and some who are now living will see it. It will come through world circumstance, not because Ireland will have grown powerful enough by itself to win its independence, or because Great .Britain will have become generous enough to • allow freedom to the people who loathe its dominion over them'. Perhaps when Irish people have -suffered enough and paid the price in sacrifice they -will win the truly good things which come from sacrifice. .There may,be a Justice which weighs the offering and has power to enforce its decrees.