The Irish Revolution and How It Came About

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LI, Issue 43, 29 October 1924, Page 7

The Irish Revolution and How It Came About

(By William O'Beibn.) CHAPTER XVl.—(Continued). He admitted that no real concessions had ever been made to Ulster. "No," I said, "strict justice perhaps, but justice raw and unboiled. When I proposed some real concessions, I was set upon with the cry that I was handing Ireland over to the veto of twelve Orangemen, and when on behalf of my friends, I made the only protest ever heard in this House against the bargain for the Partition of Ireland, our people were told in their lying newspapers that wo had voted against Home Rule, and it was upon that villainous cry our candidates were 'beaten at the County Council and District Council elections." I noticed that L.G. at once pricked up his ears and looked thoughtful. Quite clearly, the opportunist politician had jumped to the conclusion that the Partition ,of Ireland could not be such an unpopular measure, since we had suffered at the polls for protesting against it. I soon disabused him of the illusion. "That," I said, "was how the corruptionists blinded the unfortunate people to the truth. Now that honest Irishmen are beginning to realise what really happened they would tear the fellows limb from limb that would attempt to play the game of Partition in their name." L. G. changed the subject and pressed me whether something might not still be done, .even provisionally "until the war was over'' (a phrase that struck harshly on my ear) and for the first time made any direct reference to the Provisional Government scheme. The suggestion was a purely tentative one. He did not go into particulars as to how it was to be formed, but I inferred we were to be a sort of connecting link. I was amazed and told him so .in pretty candid terms, for he seemed immediately to draw back. I told him bluntly any such thing was at this moment impracticable; no genuine Nationalist could touch it as a nominee of England and while the country was under the heel of martial law. "Well," he said, "there must be good Irishmen whom it might be well to take into consultation," and questioned me as to names. He seemed to regard R. as fini and no longer of much account. I agreed, but with regret. R's judgment was all right, but circumstances were too strong for him and he ended generally by doing the wrong thing. He mentioned Sir Horace Plunkett. I said I had never entertained any unfriendly feeling for P. He was a highminded and devoted Irishman only; that he got it into his head that the history of Ireland began with " "With his creameries—Yes," broke in L.G. I remarked that with the more go-ahead farmers he had a good deal of influence, but was detested by the town shopkeepers. "Including Dillon," he " interjected with, a grin. Various names were canvassed, nearly all of whom I spoke favorably of, but doubted whether there was any personality "that could bring them together in the present aulbuie, generale.' Stephen Gwynn's name cropped up. L. G. remarked that Gwynn did not speak bitterly of any one. I agreed. L. G. was surprised to hear G. was a Protestant. I added that he was a grandson of William Smith O'Brien, who was a Protestant, too. L. G. looked a bit bewildered

as if it were the first time he heard speak of Smith O'Brien. I recalled that Gwynn, McMurrough, Kavanagh and a number of other clever young Protestants had begun by joining Lord Dunraven, but were intimidated by the abuse of all who came over to us in the Molly Press and allowed themselves to be seduced by seats in Parliament which the Mollies alone could give. Two of the most valued Protestant members of the Land Conference were silenced with baronetcies by the Aberdeens, and T. W. Russell, who might have been an immense power among the Ulster Dissenters allowed himself to be bullied into "toeing the line" .and got his job. "His influence now docs not count" was L." G.'s comment. I said that was how the elements that might have brought about as easy a settlement on Home Rule as upon the far more envenomed Agrarian problem had been debauched, or frightened. He questioned me as to who would be an acceptable Lord Lieutenant, adding to my amazement: "You know I am not going to be Chief Secretary" (shrugging his shoulders). "I could not think of pinning myself to an office like that." I said that would be a very, grievous disappointment to begin with. "I might go over to see for myself how things stand." I inferred from his reference to Wimborne that he had thrown over Wimborne. I told him he must quite, understand that I wanted nothing for anybody, and I only ventured opinions about individuals very reluctantly and solely because he knew so little of the country. Dunraven, was of all the Irish Unionists the man of most capacity and tolerance as a statesman, but I took it for granted would be of all men the least welcome to R.'s friends or masters, although in their present plight they might 'grasp at anything. He was curiously enough abused for the two very things that would secure his fame by and —his success in reconciling the landlords to give up landlordism, and in breaking the hostility of the Southern Unionists to Home Rule. But I presumed his time had not yet come. L. G. shook his head, but said nothing. I mentioned a few other names—Lord Carnarvon, whose father was the first great Englishman to embrace Home Rule and had suffered for doing so; Lord Shaftesbury who had been three times Lord Mayor of Belfast, was Chancellor of the Belfast University, and was known to be at heart reconciled to Home Rule by consent; and the Duke of Devonshire, of whom I only knew that his children lived at Lismore and loved Ireland better than England. He asked what of Lord Derby? I said I knew nothing pro or con, except that his name would he identified in Ireland with recruiting and possibly conscription. Had I any objection to talking things over with Sir E. Carson and Col. Craig? I told him I had no objection to meeting anybody of any section, with the possible exception of Devlin (for reasons I must decline to discuss); at which he made a gesture of annoyance which convinced me that Devlin and he have not yet broken off relations, and that he thinks D. may still find refuge in the Labor ranks. We then drifted away into general talk of the situation. He referred with great cordiality to my bro-ther-in-law, Arthur Raffalovich, whose familiarity with the laws of currency seemed to have made an enormous impression upon him, and whose geniality and mastery of English was most welcome to him in his communications with the Russian Minister of' Finance. He took an extremely gloomy view of the war, saying that the Italians were doubled up and France bleeding to death. He agreed with mo that what England wanted was not men, but a man, admitting that the new style of unwarl.ike English conscripts could not very much count. He was quite alive to the superiority of the French as soldiers, and spoke with enthusiasm of some of their generals— Oastelnau and a littlo Breton, Maud'huy, whom he had met, but referred with alarming irreverence to Joft're who, he said, owed his position to political reasons, there being a dread in Republican France of any too successful soldier—all of which, it must be owned, impressed me with the superficiality of his own judgments. We parted on the understanding that he was to arrange an interview with C. (May 30, 1916) Met Sir E. C. with L. G. at Metropole. 0. said he was afraid there was no prospect of a satisfactory settle-

ment "for the moment." "That," I observed, "was exactly what I had been advising L. G.," but I was glad to think his statement implied that later on, when the present bitterness abated, a settlement by consent was quite on the cards before the winter was over. C. concurred, adding that the difficulties of anything immediate had been greatly aggravated by the Rebellion. People in Ulster were constantly asking him how were they to hand over the country to the authors of the Pro-German rebellion and of certain speeches in the House. I burned to make a different answer and remind him of Catiline com- a plaining of sedition, but contented myself with recalling f| that we had never promised that Ireland was to be won '/j except by H. R., and yet the mere proffer of H. P.— •< miserable a fiasco as it was turning out to be —had revo- ]'. lutionised Irish resentment so far that there must be at least five hundred thousand Irish soldiers fighting in the . various Allied armies. L. G. nodded approvingly. C. said he was speaking of the difficulties in dealing with Ulster. Apart from the religious trouble, which he never liked to speak of, there was the dread of the commercial-' men for their trade, and the hostility of the Northern workmen who were constantly passing to and fro between Belfast and Glasgow and Liverpool. He had always thought separate Trade Union laws was one of the mistakes of those who framed the H. R. Bill. I intimated that it was a perfectly adjustable difficulty, as the Southern Trade Unionists were just as inextricably mixed up with the British Unions. C. said that lI.R. Government had proceeded all along on the assumption that Ulster did not count. I said that could never be charged against my friends and myself at all events. 0. said he had always felt that from the beginning I had realised the situation, but R. told them there was no longer an Ulster problem. L. G. (in amazement)—"Did he really say that?" C.—"He did, indeed, and said there would be no difficulty in putting down any resistance in Ulster with the strong hand." I said that kind of thing was bluffthere was bluff on all sides. The cards of my friends and myself were on the table all the time. If Ulster would only join us in Dublin, she could practically name her own terms. The Irish Unionists would become the biggest individual Party in an Irish Parliament, and might even be its rulers if they threw themselves into a patriotic and sensible programme. C. — "You cannot expect Ulster to come in just now." O'B. — "No, nor anybody else. That is why I urge there should ho nothing precipitate. Spend the next six months in mollifying the present bitternesstake your military precautions by all means, but don't be afraid to own there were faults on both sides. Trust to leniency rather than to force, and we will then be all in a better humor to come together in a United Ireland." L. G. (with sudden energy)—"ln six months the war will be lost." 0. throwing up his arms) —"If the war is lost we are all lost." L. G. — "The Irish-American vote will go over to the German side. They will break our blockade and force an ignominious peace on us, unless something is done, even provisionally, to satisfy America." O'B. —"That is to say, of course, that whatever is to be done shall be done for war purposes. Take care I beg of you, in the interests of the war as well as of Ireland, that you will not infuriate Irish-American feeling rather than appease it. I most solemnly believe thai. will be the result if you attempt anything.on the basis of splitting up Ireland. Make no mistake about it we are at a point at which all our labors for a better feeling for the last thirteen years may be lost. All honest Irish feeling will be so fiercely against you, you will have to send an army corps to open, your mutilated Dublin Parliament, and in spite of them the people will bundle the whole crew of them into the Liffey. And" (turning to C.) "don't think I say it in any way as a. taunt, but what happened in Dublin the other day would be. child's play compared with the horrors in Belfast. - Your men are dogged fighters, no doubt, but so are ours, you will . admit. Even if you could outnumber them, and it would be a tougher job than you had, in Easter Week in Dublin, you would have to reckon with the rest of Ireland, and with hundreds of thousands of Irish soldiers when they get back : from the war." C. did not utter a word of dissent. L. G. clung obstinately to his view that, come what

might, something must be done before the American elections or Wilson would be returned and the war lost.* Ho announced positively that the Government had information that the Germans were planning a new descent upon Ireland. He spoke again with the utmost gloom of the military situation, and in such exaggerated terms that the object was plainly to frighten C. Not without success; for O. was visibly affected and said with a deep emphasis that Ulster would go very far indeed rather than see the war lost. That was all he could say. L. G.—"lt is saying a great deal. It is a very important statement.'' O'B.—"So important that if it means a United Ireland, we are all at one. But that is just the point, and there is no use trying to blink it. What ideal men have for ages been suffering for is Ireland a Nation. Go on with this Partition business, and you would make the very name of Ireland an impossible one. You would have to find two new names for it— suppose Orangia and Molly-Maguire-land-iand you would leave five-sixths of an honest Irish race without a country or an ideal." L. G.—"We are only speaking of a ' provisional' arrangement that is to last until Col. Craig and his men of their own free will walk into a bankrupt Dublin Parliament, for the pleasure of being ruled by Mr .Devlin and his Mollies." C. avowed that he had never liked Partition. The Ulster men had grasped at it as their only chance of preserving their British citizenship, and nothing else had been offered them. They had before them the fate of the Unionists of the South. In Cork itself they had been driven out of the County Council and the Corporation, and that, he believed, because they were supposed to be in favor of O'Brien's concessions to the North." O'B.—"Rather because these concessions had not been closed with by the Irish Unionists themselves. My own friends met the same fate and are very proud of it. Things of that kind are to be expected everywhere from an unscrupulous political machine. A genuine Irish Parliament would soon deal with the gang who run it, if the Irish Unionists would only look on Ireland as their own country, and give us a chance." L. G. pressed me again to make some alternative suggestions, saying: "I have failed to get a single suggestion of any kind from the other people. Whatever I propose they will find fault with, but they will not take the responsibility of making a single definite suggestion themselves." o'B.-"They are waiting until they see how the cat will jump in Ireland, no doubt. But you have had my alternative suggestions before you all the time—l have never criticised without offering some counter-proposal and you would never listen." L. G.—" Yes, but now?" O B.— have told you quite definitely what my view is—six months of conciliatory government to pave the way for a Conference of Irishmen on the basis of a United Ireland with whatever aid you can get from Overseas Prime Ministers like those of Canada, and Australia where Ulstermen and Nationalists live side by side in freedom without friction. ' L. G.—" But can you give us no suggestion of something to be done at once to save the war?" I said that was to me a new situation and it was not quite fair to expect me to be prepared with any considered proposal, but as far as I could judge on the spur of the moment, a tar more effective way of impressing American and Irish opinion than the experiment he had mentioned which was 'bound to fail badly and at once, for want of any basis of agreement, would be that Parliament should give Ireland some such guarantee of freedom after the war as the Tsar and the Duma had given with such striking effect to Poland It ought to be possible to arrange a debate which would he practically unanimous and would at once strike the imagination of Ireland and of America. C. and L G were afraid the difficulties would be almost insurmountable. L.G. (with bitterness)—"You would have somebody like Dillon starting up without even knowing the effect * This curious prediction is another instance of quantula sapientia regitur munchis. The candidate favored by England, I gathered, was Roosevelt, who was, in his own phrase, "beaten to a frazzle" in the Republican Convention. By another blunder, no less comical, of the Washington Embassy, the real Republican candidate, Mr. Hughes, Was reported to be an enemy of England.

of what he was saying and wrecking the whole business." O'B. —"If you refer to his performance of the other night he knew perfectly well what he was at. He was only trying to make Dublin habitable for him; But that only proves D. can bo easily enough brought to bow to the inevitable." (To be continued.)