The Triumph of Ireland's Dead Leader

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XLIX, Issue 39, 5 October 1922, Page 19

The Triumph of Ireland's Dead Leader

(By Louiis J. McQuilland, in tlie New Witness.)

All Ireland’s leaders have been lost leaders, many of them dying in humiliation and defeat, deprived of even a glint of the coming of freedom to the dear and ungrateful land they gave their hearts’ blood for. O’Connell, the great Tribune, who carried Catholic Emancipation, passed away at Rome, a broken and desolate man. The Young Irelanders, with their bolder policy, had long ere that dethroned the people’s idol. Isaac Butt, gallant, gay, a great fighter, genial friend and chivalrous enemy, was thrown aside for Thomas Shaw, who in turn gave way to the cold, implacable genius of Parnell. On an. evening of darkness, Parnell passed away, the sword broken in his hand.' I saw his faithful lieutenant, John Redmond, that good, unselfish soldier for Ireland, mobbed in Dublin by young Republicans who had forgotten his unselfish services to the land whose enfranchisement they desired. None of these men, none of their predecessors during the seven hundred years’ struggle for a separate Irish nationhood had achieved their full purpose. They vanished with their v supreme objective unfulfilled. ' At first glance it would seem that Arthur Griffith has gone the way of O’Connell, Butt, Parnell, and Redmond, that he has been struck down with his great task undone and that his opponents of the irresponsible Republican movement may speak of his as an outworn tradition. In actual fact, Griffith has died in the arms of victory, whatever the guerilla warfare after bis death. Ho has achieved the emprise that Thomas Davis sighed for, that the legions of the young and brave died for. Ho has made Ireland a nation. There seems to be a general hesitation as to calling Arthur Griffith a great man. If wo are to judge him by the result of his life’s work, he must rank with the supermost of the men who gave all their genius for Ireland. The policy pursued and fulfilled by Griffith has not been universally accepted in Ireland. Some of the youth of the country is still in the field against it. But his work is accomplished for all time. This obscure, insignificantlooking man has raised Ireland from a province to a power. By his conception and realisation of it, the old, withered Cathleen ni Houlihan, is young again and walks .with the step of a queenalbeit still a sorrowing one. Griffith’s original scheme of Sinn Fein, which he adumbrated some 25 years ago, was founded on what* was called the Hungarian Policy, which was an ignoirng of Austrian rule. Hungary, however, had an Executive, an Army, and a national v position which Ireland did not possess. In the course of a. generation Griffith quietly, patiently, hopefully laid the foundations of Ireland’s modern independence. His propaganda by newspaper and , pamphlet was constant. At first it appealed to and convinced hundreds, and then thousands, and then tens of thousands. Advantage was taken of the Language Move- . ment founded by the Gaelic League to re-establish the Irish tongue. Then came those projects, for years regarded with ... ridicule, of appointing Irish consuls all over the world and , endeavoring to obtain diplomatic recognition by America; and the European Powers. Later , still Irish courts were constituted which ignored the existing justiciary. The county, rural, and district councils, were already manned by Sinn Fein members. Then a poll was taken of voters with power to return candidates for an Irish Parliament— Dail Eireann. All these projects originally emanated from the brain of one man, Arthur Griffith. Griffith was a doctrinaire, , but unlike Eamonn de Valera, he was a practical man out for practical results by any means which should not conflict ~ with the central principle of complete Irish self-govern-ment. His initial policy was one of passive resistance, but ■when the hour struck for an inevitable clash of arms he . , faced, the music with Collins as his generalissimo. In a quarter of a century ho worked out his own and his country’s salvation. Whatever happens in Irelandand • r God knows what may be happening at this very hour—the freedom established by Arthur Griffith will not be ab- • rogated. It is as certain as anything can well be that England will not attempt a second conquest of Ireland. It - is difficult to form any personal estimate of the

character of the dead leader. Ho had none of the gifts which arouse wide popular enthusiasm, and failed in every characteristic of oratory except the essential —that of convincing an audience. He had no rhetoric, no flamboyancy, no knack of arousing the immediate cheer. Most, of the world’s great revolutions have been precipitated by inspired demagogues. The real and lasting freedom of Ireland has been effected by a self-effacing man who was never at ease on a public platform. 'With Griffith the written word was more powerful than the spoken. He had none of the brilliant pamphliteering of Swift, but every sentence he wrote was for him the unexaggerated truth. He did nothing for his own glory, but all for the cause of his country. This unromantic little man persistently remained in the background even as President of the Free State — which is, in effect, the Republic. His statesmanship was undoubted. Even brilliant party politicians who knew every move in the game, like Lloyd George and Winston Churchill, admitted this. .But to Griffith it was not game: it was his life. He beat those eleven-men at many conferences because his brain was as good as theirs and because the truth was in him. Many of the most crucial difficulties he solved in solitude, but he never worked in the neither did the children of darkness prevail against him. Ireland’s good Grey Captain is gone, but, through a sea of trouble, his ship, Sinn Fein, is nearing harbor.