Part 16

The resentment at the execution of the leaders of the Rising had not confined itself to the indulgence of feelings of rage and sorrow. It had led to an eager inquiry into what it was that had caused these men to do what they did. People who had hardly heard of Sinn Fein before wanted to know precisely what it was and what it taught: people who had not known Pearse and Connolly when they were alive were full of curiosity about them, their principles and their writings. Much of this curiosity was morbid and led nowhere: but a great deal of it led large numbers of people very far indeed. Sinn Fein pamphlets began to be in demand: a month after the Rising it was hardly possible to procure a single one of them. But if they could not be bought, thumbed and tattered copies were passed from hand to hand: their teachings and the doctrines of Sinn Fein were discussed all over Ireland. The (to many) surprising fact became known that the Rising was not an attempt to help Germany or to put Ireland into German possession, but to free Ireland from all foreign influence: that the leaders proclaimed themselves followers of Tone and Mitchel and Davis and Parnell, that they claimed that Irish Nationalism meant according to these exponents (and no man in Ireland ventured to question their authority) Irish independence, nothing less and nothing more. The instinct for freedom, the feeling that the existing Government of Ireland had not for a hundred years fulfilled the primary functions of government, became a reasoned and rooted conviction that something more was needed to mend it than mere Home Rule. The price that Ireland had been asked to pay for Home Rule, that it was still pertinaciously pressed to agree to, the partition of Ireland, seemed an unforgivable treachery beside the fair prospect of an Ireland one and indivisible, in which Orange and Green, Protestant and Catholic were united in the love and service of a common country. The policies of the past, barren as they now seemed of content and substance, were abandoned for the new promise of a commonwealth in which all Irishmen should be equal, in which the worker saw a prospect of a better and a fuller life than without it he could hope to have. This had been the ideal of the Rising; but it was the bitter truth that the Rising had not brought it any nearer, and that no Rising seemed likely to be any more successful. Sinn Fein with its policy of self-reliance, of refusing to recognize what it hoped by so doing to bring to nothing, of distrust of all policies of reaching freedom by an acknowledgment of subjection offered the means of realizing what the Rising had failed to bring nearer. But Sinn Fein could not be accepted as it stood: offering the Constitution of 1782 it had failed to carry with it more than a few doctrinaire enthusiasts: agreeing to the constitution which the leaders of the Rising died for it might (and did) carry the country with it.

All this was going on under the operation of martial law. Members of Parliament did not know it: the Competent Military Authority had no suspicion of it. It was believed that all that was required to "appease" the country, to restore confidence in the Government, to bring back the happy days when Ireland was "the one bright spot" was to release the prisoners and resume negotiations for a "settlement." In December, 1916, the Asquith Ministry fell. According to its successors it had carried the art of doing nothing to its highest perfection: they were going to do everything at once. The new Prime Minister made vague promises of an attempt to settle the Irish question in the immediate future, and finally on Christmas Eve all the interned prisoners except those undergoing penal servitude, were sent back to Ireland. They were received with an enthusiasm which must have proved disquieting to the believers in compromise and negotiation.

Everything began again precisely where it had left off. The prisoners had been requested to give a pledge that, if released, they would cease to engage in political propaganda objectionable to the Government. This they had stoutly refused to do, and they had been released at last without conditions. Apparently it was supposed that the operation of martial law and the promises of the new Government would exercise a moderating influence: but martial law was only a standing challenge, and the sincerity of the Government was no longer believed in. If it had been even moderately sincere it might have rallied to the side of compromise those large numbers of men who in every country have an instinctive dread of new and untried policies and leaders. But it was soon plain that a Prime Minister pledged to everybody was pledged to nobody.

By the middle of February, 1917, the Sinn Fein leaders were at work again. _Nationality_ reappeared as a weekly paper. It appealed no longer to a few enthusiasts but to a wide public eager to learn more of the only movement which promised anything definite. Before the Rising Sinn Fein had seemed to aim at the impossible by means beyond the powers of average human nature: it did not seem possible that any large body of Irishmen should try to secure independence by the hard path of Sinn Fein, when there was a prospect of something (to all outward appearance) nearly as good to be gained by recording a vote for the right man at elections. It was now plain to the average Nationalist that the parliamentary prospect held no promise: that the Irish Parliamentary Party were no longer listened to, and that the sworn enemies of Irish nationality were in the seats of power both in Ireland and in England. Mr. Redmond, confronted alternately in England by the iron insolence of the Tories and the smiling sinuosities of the Prime Minister, manned his guns to the last: but he had no longer the support of the country. The country was beginning to rally to the party which alone seemed to be the party of fixed principles: which had another standard by which to measure national rights than the temporary possibilities, varying from month to month, offered by the difficulties confronting English Ministers: the party which did not entreat but demanded. Sinn Fein did not promise now any more than in the days of its obscurity that national freedom could be won by the anaemic struggles of the division lobbies in the House: it warned its followers that the way would be long and steep, that to shun the steep places was to miss the track, and that the path did not cross the water. It had said this before, but it said it now to ears ready to receive it. If men had died for Ireland (men asked) facing the old enemy, what lesser sacrifice could be called too great? A wave of enthusiasm which no appeal to policy or prudence could withstand swept over the country when the new campaign began.

_Nationality_ with a tenacity of purpose that nothing seemed able to disturb began its new series with the old lesson, the decay of Ireland under the Union. As if there had been no Rising, no imprisonments, no threats of summary repression, the doctrine was again proclaimed with deadly deliberation that the Union had destroyed and was destroying the prosperity of Ireland even in those districts which clung to it with most affection. The population of Antrim, Armagh, Derry and Down was steadily declining under a system which the inhabitants declared essential to their continued existence. It asserted the right of Ireland to prevent food being exported from the country to feed strangers while the country that supplied it was left to starve, and proposed the formation of a Watch Committee for every seaport in the country. The very first number contained a statement of the policy of an appeal no longer to a Government pledged to disregard it, but to the Peace Conference which must be summoned on the conclusion of the war. The advertisement of the Irish Nation League, a body independent of Sinn Fein, already showed how far Sinn Fein principles had spread in Ireland. "The Irish Nation League claims the right of Ireland to recognition as a Sovereign State. It asserts too and claims Ireland's right to representation at any International Peace Conference. It offers determined and resolute resistance to any attempt to enforce Conscription.... It calls on the Irish people to rely on themselves alone.... Members elected under the auspices of the Irish Nation League will remain under the control of its Supreme Council and will only act at Westminster when the Council so decides. Never again must power be placed in the hands of a parliamentary party to mislead the country or to sacrifice opportunities." In March _Nationality_ announced the formation of a National Council to support the admission of Ireland to the Peace Conference and "to safeguard the general interests of the nation." But though admission to the Peace Conference was the political objective of Ireland for the moment it was not regarded as its ultimate or only aim. The Peace Conference was an opportunity to be made use of when circumstances brought it about, a precious and unique opportunity, but Ireland's main and serious work was to develop her own resources and her own powers of resistance. Accordingly, though Sinn Fein declared repeatedly its intention of carrying the Irish case before the Peace Conference, its main work was still to organize and consolidate opposition to the two chief measures now openly proclaimed as in contemplation, the partition of Ireland and the enforcement of Conscription. Both these measures were in contradiction to the claim that "the only satisfactory settlement of the Irish Question now is the independence of Ireland." And it was not hard to show that the professed objects of the war were incompatible with the policy of refusing self-government to Ireland. "When England declared," wrote _Nationality_, "that she entered this war with the object of asserting the freedom of Small Nations the Lord delivered her into our hands."

There were not wanting signs that the Sinn Fein policy was rapidly becoming the policy of a Nationalist Ireland. By the summer of 1917 at least a dozen Irish newspapers were declared exponents of the Sinn Fein policy. An election for North Roscommon in February had resulted in the return of the Sinn Fein candidate by an overwhelming majority. The next contested election was in May and was by common consent regarded as a test election. It was a straight fight between the Parliamentary Party and Sinn Fein. Each party put its full strength into the contest and Sinn Fein won; the majority, it is true, was a small one but it was more useful than a large one, for it was both an endorsement and an incentive. The _Manchester Guardian_ frankly declared that the Sinn Fein victory under the circumstances was equivalent to a serious defeat of the British Army in the field.

The reply of the Government to the result of the North Roscommon election had been the re-arrest and deportation of some of the released prisoners, to whom a number of others, some of them prominent Gaelic Leaguers, were added; the Chief Secretary defended this action by saying that he had decided "although there can be no charge and although there can be no trial" that it was better for these men to be out of Ireland than to be in it. The Parliamentary Party, opposed upon principle to Sinn Fein, saw that measures such as these meant its ultimate and complete triumph, but no arguments could move the determination of the Government to rely upon force. They seemed to feel that force was the only weapon that was left them and that they might as well use it at once; while Sinn Fein could point to the employment of it as evidence of its own reiterated but constantly challenged contention as to the real attitude of all English Governments towards Ireland. And had the Prime Minister and his advisers, whoever they may have been, deliberately set themselves to prove to Ireland that they were not the wise representatives of an enlightened and friendly democracy (which the Parliamentary Party had up to this represented them to be) but the jealous and implacable guardians of a subject and hated race (which Sinn Fein had always asserted that they were) it is very doubtful whether they could have bettered their record in a single detail. The Parliamentary Party, fighting for its life, with the ground in Ireland slipping from under its feet, appealed pathetically to its old services and old friendship, to the memory of the Irishmen who had fallen in the war, to the opinion of moderate men, to prudence and justice; it could not deflect by one hair's breadth the course chosen by the Cabinet. The fact seems to be that the Tory members who had always hated the Parliamentary Party saw the chance of paying back old scores and embraced it regardless of the consequences; while the Liberals, real and so-called, thought the Parliamentary Party's influence was waning in Ireland, and threw them over without remorse: they had got as much out of them as was to be got, and for the rest they might shift for themselves. It was very difficult to believe that (as the Prime Minister said) the "dominant consideration was the war" and that preoccupation with it was the reason for his refusal to attend to the Irish problem. Everybody knew that Ministers, when they were interested, found time for many other things than the prosecution of the war. What was done and what was not done, and the reasons given both for action and for inaction, only served to deepen the impression of the insincerity of the Cabinet.

Almost simultaneously the Parliamentary Party and Sinn Fein resolved upon an appeal from the English Ministry and the English Parliament to bodies that might be presumed to be less partial. The Irish Party withdrew from Parliament and sent a Manifesto to the United States (now on the verge of its declaration of war) and the self-governing Dominions. Sinn Fein summoned a Convention to meet in Dublin to assert the independence of Ireland, its status as a nation, and its right to representation at the Peace Conference. This was the first, but it was not to be the only, occasion upon, which the policy of the Parliamentary Party was moulded, against its will, by the pressure of facts, into a tacit acknowledgment of the justice of the Sinn Fein contention, that parliamentary action was useless. The only difference was that while Sinn Fein held that it always was and always would be useless, English policy being what it always had been, the Parliamentary Party held that the Cabinet had by its action since the Rising destroyed the efficacy of the normally useful and legitimate means of reform.

The effect of this joint appeal from the Cabinet to the impartial opinion of English-speaking countries and belligerent nations was to induce the Prime Minister to bring forward "proposals" for the settlement of the question. He proposed the exclusion of six counties of Ulster from the Home Rule Act, if and when it became operative, the exclusion to be subject to reconsideration after five years; the immediate establishment of an Irish Council (in which the excluded counties were to have the same number of delegates as all the rest of Ireland put together) to legislate for Ireland during the war; and a reconsideration of the financial clauses of the Act. Failing the acceptance of this solution, the Prime Minister saw nothing for it but to summon a representative body of Irishmen to suggest the best means of governing their own country.

The Prime Minister's proposals, whether the product of his own or of some equally ingenious but equally uninformed brain, were promptly rejected by everybody: his concluding suggestion was, after some delay, judged worthy of a trial, the Ulster party stipulating expressly for freedom to refuse to submit to any findings of the Convention with which it did not choose to agree. They were practically informed by the Leader of the House of Commons that their dissent was incompatible with "the substantial agreement" which alone would justify the Government in giving effect to the findings of the Convention.

To claim that the setting up of the Convention was a sincere attempt to solve the problem of Irish Government is to make a demand upon faith which it might be noble, but would certainly be extremely difficult, to grant. The incorporation in the letter by which the Prime Minister suggested it of an official proposal of heads of a settlement could serve no other purpose than to indicate that a particular solution had found favour with the proposer in advance: and to allow the Ulster Party the right of veto was to perpetuate and sanction the attitude which everybody in the Three Kingdoms knew to be the very obstacle which the Convention was blandly invited to surmount. It says much for the general desire of Ireland for peace and settlement that the outcome of the Convention (compassed by secrecy which it was declared a criminal offence to violate while it sat) was awaited generally with an anxious and almost pathetic expectation.

Sinn Fein promptly refused to take any part in the proceedings. It had been formally invited to do so, but as five places only were assigned to it, a number far below that to which its actual strength in the country was known to entitle it, it was not intended that it should have very much weight in the conclusions. Besides, the only solution which it was known to favour, the independence of Ireland, was the only solution which it was not possible for the Convention by the terms of its reference to suggest. In a leader, declining on behalf of the Sinn Fein Party to participate in the proceedings, _Nationality_ said, "Ignoring the Convention which is called into being only to distract Ireland from the objective now before her, to confuse her thought, and to permit England to misrepresent her character and her claims to Europe, Sinn Fein summons Ireland to concentrate her mind and energy on preparation for the Peace Conference, where, citing the pledges given to the world by Russia, the United States, and England's Allies, it will invoke that tribunal to judge between our country and her oppressor and claim that the verdict which has restored Poland to independent nationhood shall also be registered for Ireland." The Executive of Sinn Fein also formally and unanimously declined to enter the Convention unless (1) the terms of reference left it free to decree the complete independence of Ireland; (2) the English Government publicly pledged itself to the United States and the Powers of Europe to ratify the decision of the majority of the Convention; (3) the Convention consisted of none but persons freely elected by adult suffrage in Ireland; (4) the treatment of prisoners of war was accorded to Irish political prisoners in English prisons.

Of these proposals the first would have been rejected by the Government, the second by the Ulster Party, and the third by the Parliamentary Party, which by this time was aware that such a method of choosing representatives would leave it almost without representation. The Government to "create an atmosphere" not merely accepted but improved on the fourth condition: the political prisoners were released unconditionally. It is significant of the way in which "atmospheres" are created in Ireland that though the prisoners were released unconditionally on June 17th, a meeting held in Dublin to demand their release, on June 10th, was prohibited by Proclamation, and an attempt to hold it ended in a riot in which a policeman was killed.

While the Convention was preparing to perform the duties which were to end in nothing, Sinn Fein was engaged in the task of rallying the country to its side. The death of Major Willie Redmond had created a vacancy in East Clare: the Parliamentary Party had selected its candidate to succeed him: but in little over a month after the release of the prisoners Mr. de Valera, who had been sentenced to penal servitude for his share in the Rising, was elected by an overwhelming majority. The leader "To the Men of Clare" in which, the week before the election, _Nationality_ recommended him to the electors, was suppressed by the Censor. During the same month another vacancy occurred by the death of the member for Kilkenny City, and as a preliminary to the election the authorities suppressed the _Kilkenny People_, the editor of which was chairman of the convention called to select a Sinn Fein candidate, who was promptly returned. Some idea of the appeals which Sinn Fein was making to the electors may be gathered from the leader "To the Electors, Traders and Taxpayers of Kilkenny," in which _Nationality_ urged the return of its candidate. It began with a quotation from a memorandum addressed in 1799 to Mr. Pitt by Under-Secretary Cooke, "The Union is the only means of preventing Ireland from becoming too great and too powerful," and by a quotation from another memorandum to the same statesman, "By giving the Irish a hundred members in an assembly of six hundred and fifty they will be impotent to operate upon that assembly, but it will be invested with Irish assent to its authority." Figures were given of the value of the trade between Great Britain and a number of countries in 1914, the trade with Ireland being nearly as valuable as that with the United States, twice that with France and nearly twice that with Germany. It went on: "It will be seen that with the exception of the United States, England has no customer nearly as big as Ireland.... England has had the market to herself for generations; Sinn Fein proposes that England should not continue to monopolise that market longer. Ireland has L150,000,000 worth of trade to do with the world each year, L135,000,000 of which is restricted to England. In return for part of that trade the other countries of Europe would gladly give Ireland facilities in their markets and Ireland would compel England to pay competitive prices.... So long as Ireland sends members to the English Parliament and relies upon that institution, England will plunder Ireland's revenues and monopolise Ireland's trade at her own price."