Chapter 2

The Irish wage can't buy the "good old diet." Milk and stirabout and potatoes once grew rosy-cheeked children. But bread and tea is the general diet now. War rations? Ireland was not put on war rations. To regulate the amount of butter and bacon per family would have been superfluous labor. Few families got even war rations.[7] Charitable organizations doubt if they should give relief to families who are able to have an occasional meal of potatoes in addition to their bread and tea. In a recent pamphlet[8] the St. Vincent de Paul Society said: "A widow ... who after paying the rent of her room, has a shilling a day to feed herself and two, three, four or even more children, is considered a doubtful case by the society. Yet a shilling a day will only give the family bread and tea for every meal, with an occasional dish of potatoes. By strict economy a little margarine may be purchased, but by no process of reasoning may it be said that the family has enough to eat, or suitable food." The Irish wage would have to be a high wage to buy the old diet. For that is not supplied by Ireland for Ireland any more. When Ireland became a cow lot, cereal and vegetable crops became few. But milk should be plentiful? The recent vice-regal milk commission noted the lack of milk for the poor in Ireland. Why? The town of Naas tells one reason. Naas is in the midst of a grazing country, but Naas babies have died for want of milk, because Naas cattle are raised for beef exportation. The town of Ennis tells another reason. Ennis is also in the center of a grazing country. Until the Woman's National Health Association established a depot, Ennis poor could not get retailed pitchersful of milk, for Ennis cows are raised to supply wholesale cansful to creameries which make the supply into dairy products for exportation.[9]

Bread-and-tea, and bread-and-tealess families get on the calling list of tuberculosis nurses. "The nurses often found," writes the Woman's National Health Association, "that a large number of cases committed to their care were in an advanced stage of the disease ... in a number of cases families have been found entirely without food. This chronic state of lack of nourishment ... accounts in part for the fact that there are two and sometimes three persons affected in the same family."[10]

Has mental as well as physical health been affected? Lunacy is extraordinarily prevalent in Ireland. In the lunacy inspectors' office in Dublin castle, I was given the last comparison they had published of the insanity rates in England and Wales, Scotland and Ireland. English and Welsh insanity per 10,000 people was 40.8; Scottish, 45.4; Irish, 56.2. The Irish rate for 1916 showed an increase to 57.1.[11]

Emigration, remark lunacy experts, fostered lunacy. Whole families withdrew from certain districts. Consanguineous marriages became more frequent. Weak-minded cousins wedded to bring forth weaker-minded children.

And Irish living conditions are a nemesis. They affect those who go as well as those who stay. Commenting on the fact that the Irish contribute the highest proportion of the white foreign-born population to the American hospitals for the insane, as well as filling their own asylums, the lunacy inspectors write: "As to why this should be, we can offer no reasoned explanation: but just as the Irish famine was, apart from its direct effects, responsible for so much physical and mental distress in the country, so it would seem not improbable that the innutritious dietary and other deprivations of the majority of the population of Ireland must, when acting over many generations, have led to impaired nutrition of the nervous system, and in this way have developed in the race those neuropathic and psychopathic tendencies which are precursors of insanity."[12]

Babies don't like mentally and physically worn-out parents. Babies used to be thought to have special predilection for Ireland. But as a matter of fact, they come to the island less and less. Ireland has for some time produced fewer babies to the thousand people than Scotland. During the decade 1907-1916 Scotland's annual average to every thousand people was 25.9;[13] Ireland's was 22.8. From 1907 to 1917 Ireland's total number of babies fell from 101,742 to 86,370.[14]

But as was said in the beginning, it is not to individual excess that most of the ill health in Ireland is due. It was not until recently that venereal disease as a factor in Irish ill health has been a factor worth mentioning. In 1906 a lunacy report read: "The statistics show that general paralysis of the insane--a disease now almost unknown in Ireland--is increasing in the more populous urban districts. At the same time the disease is still much less prevalent than in other countries, and in the rural districts it is practically non-existent. This is to a large extent due to the high standard of sexual morality that prevails all over Ireland."[15]

Nor do the Irish suffer from the violence that accompanies common crime--for there is little crime under the most crime-provoking conditions. As the Countess of Aberdeen said: "In the past annual report by Sir Charles Cameron, the medical officer of health for Dublin, there are again some figures that tell a strange tale of poverty so widespread, of destitution so complete, of housing so unsanitary, of unemployment so little heeded, that one is amazed by the fact that no combined effort on the part of more fortunate citizens has been made toward bringing about a wholesome change, and this amazement is only lessened by the extraordinary freedom we in Dublin enjoy from robberies, peculations, from crimes of violence and other misdeeds that would sharpen our perception of miseries now borne with a fortitude and a self-restraint that cannot but appeal strongly to any who, either from personal experience or philanthropic reading, know how crime and vice are associated elsewhere with conditions not more distressing and often less long-lived than ours."[16]

SCHOOL CLOSED

There's small chance for the Irish to better their condition through education. Many Irish children don't go to school. It is estimated that out of 500,000 school children, 150,000 do not attend school. Why not? Here are two reasons advanced by the Vice-Regal Committee on Primary Education, Ireland, in its report published by His Majesty's Stationers, Dublin, 1919:

Many families are too poor.

England does not encourage Irish education.

Irish poverty is recognized in the school laws; the Irish Education act passed by Parliament in 1892 is full of excuses for children who must go to work instead of to school. Thousands of Irish youngsters must avail themselves of these excuses. Ireland has 64,000 children under the age of 14 at work. But Scotland with virtually the same population has only 37,500.[17]

Eight-year-old Michael Mallin drags kelp out of a rush basket and packs it down for fertilizer between the brown ridges of the little hand-spaded field in Donegal.

"Is there no school to be going to, Michael?"

"There do be a school, but to help my da' there is no one home but me."

The act says that the following is a "reasonable excuse for the non-attendance of a child, namely, ... being engaged in necessary operations of husbandry."[18]

Ten-year-old Margaret Duncan can be found sitting hunched up on a doorstep in a back street in Belfast. Her skirt and the step are webbed with threads clipped from machine-embroidered linen, or pulled from handkerchiefs for hemstitching. A few doors away little Helen Keefe, all elbows, is scrubbing her front steps.

"But school's on."

"Aye," responds Margaret, "but our mothers need us."

The act plainly states that another reasonable excuse is "domestic necessity or other work requiring to be done at a particular time or season."[19]

William Brady has a twelve-hour day in Dublin. He's out in the morning at 5:30 to deliver papers. He's at school until three. He runs errands for the sweet shop till seven.

"You get too tired for school work. How does your teacher like that?"

"Ash! She can't do anything."

Intuitively he knows that he can protect himself behind the fortress of words in the school attendance act: "A person shall not be deemed to have taken a child into his employment in contravention of this act if it is proved that the employment by reason of being during the hours when school is not in session does not interfere with the efficient elementary instruction of the child."[20]

Nine-year-old Patrick Gallagher may go to the Letterkenny Hiring Fair and sell his baby services to a farmer. Some one may say to Paddy:

"Why aren't you at school?"

"Surely, I live over two miles away from school."

The law thinks two miles are too far for him to walk. So he may be hired to work instead. Reads the education act: "A person shall not be deemed to have taken a child into his employment in contravention of this act if it is proved to the satisfaction of the court that during the employment there is not within two miles ... from the residence of the child any ... school which the child can attend."[21]

Incidentally England does not encourage Irish education. England does not provide enough money to erect the best schools nor to attract the best teachers. But England agreed to an Irish education grant.[22] She established a central board of education in Ireland, and promised that through this board she would pay two-thirds of the school building bill and teachers' salaries to any one who was zealous enough to erect a school. Does England come through with the funds? Not, says the vice-regal committee, unless she feels like it. In 1900 she agreed with Ireland that Ireland's teachers should be paid higher salaries, but stipulated that the increase in salaries would not mean an immediate increase in grants.

New building grants were suspended altogether for a time. In 1902, an annual grant of £185,000 was diverted from Irish primary education and used for quite extraneous purposes. And when England does give money for Irish education, she pays no heed to the requirements stated by the Irish commissioners of education.[23] Instead she says: "This amount I happen to be giving to English education; I will grant a proportionate amount to Irish education."

"If English primary education happens to require financial aid from the Treasury, Irish primary education is to get some and in proportion thereto," writes the committee. "If England happens not to require any, then, of course, neither does Ireland. A starving man is to be fed only if some one else is hungry.... It seems to us extraordinary that Irish primary education should be financed on lines that have little relation to the needs of the case."[24]

So there are not enough schools to go to. Belfast teachers testified before the committee that in their city alone there were 15,000 children without school accommodations. Some of the number are on the streets. Others are packed into educational holes of Calcutta. New schools, said the teachers, are needed not only for these pupils but also for those incarcerated in unsuitable schools--unheated schools or schools in whose dark rooms gas must burn daily. On the point of unsuitability, the testimony of a special investigator named F.H. Dale was quoted. He said:

"I have no hesitation in reporting that both in point of convenience for teachers and in the requirements necessary for the health of teachers and scholars, the average school buildings in Dublin and Belfast are markedly inferior to the average school buildings now in use in English cities of corresponding size."

So if unsuitable schools were removed, Belfast would have to provide for some thousands of school children beyond the estimate of 15,000, and other localities according to their similar great need.[25]

Live, interesting primary teachers are few in Ireland. The low pay does not begin to compensate Irish school teachers for the great sacrifices they must make. Women teachers in Ireland begin at $405 a year; men at $500. If it were not for the fact that there are very few openings for educated young men and women in a grazing country there would probably be even greater scarcity.[26] Since three-fourths of the schools are rural those who determine to teach must resign themselves to social and professional hermitage. What is the result of these factors on the teaching morale? The 1918 report at the education office shows 13,258 teachers, and only 3,820 of these are marked highly efficient.[27]

Thus the committee of the lord lieutenant.

[Footnote 1: "Ireland's Crusade Against Tuberculosis." Edited by Countess of Aberdeen. Maunsel and Company. Dublin. 1908. P. 32.]

[Footnote 2: "Marriages, Births, and Deaths in Ireland, 1917." His Majesty's Stationery Office. Dublin. 1918. P. IX.]

[Footnote 3: "Ireland's Crusade Against Tuberculosis." P. 34-35.]

[Footnote 4: "Report of Chief Tuberculosis Officer of Belfast for the Three Years Ended 31 March, 1917." Hugh Adair. Belfast. 1917. P. 25.]

[Footnote 5: "Appendix Report Housing Conditions of Dublin." Alex Thorn. Dublin. 1914. P. 154.]

[Footnote 6: "First Annual Report P.F. Collier Memorial Dispensary." Dollard. Dublin. 1913. P. 24.]

[Footnote 7: "Starvation in Dublin." By Lionel Gordon-Smith and Cruise O'Brien. Wood Printing Works. Dublin. 1917. P. 14.]

[Footnote 8: "The Poor in Dublin." Pamphlet. St. Vincent de Paul Society.]

[Footnote 9: "How Local Milk Depots in Ireland Are Worked." Dollard. Dublin. 1915. P. 3-15.]

[Footnote 10: "Second Annual Report of the Woman's National Health Association." Waller and Company. Dublin. 1909. P. 143.]

[Footnote 11: "Supplement Fifty-fourth Report Inspectors of Lunacy." Alex Thorn. Dublin. 1906. P. VII.]

[Footnote 12: _Ibid_. P. XXVII.]

[Footnote 13: "Sixty-second Annual Report of the Registrar General for Scotland, 1916." His Majesty's Stationery Office. Edinburgh. 1918. P. LXVII.]

[Footnote 14: "Marriages, Births, and Deaths in Ireland, 1917." P. XII.]

[Footnote 15: "Supplement Fifty-fourth Report Inspectors of Lunacy." P. XXXII.]

[Footnote 16: "The Woman's National Health Association and Infant Welfare." The Child. June, 1911. P. 10.]

[Footnote 17: Figures supplied by H.C. Ferguson, Superintendent of Charity Organization Society, Belfast, 1919.]

[Footnote 18: "Irish Education Act, 1892." (55 & 56 Vict.) Chap. 42. P. 1.]

[Footnote 19: _Ibid_. P. 1.]

[Footnote 20: _Ibid_. P. 4.]

[Footnote 21: _Ibid_. P. 3.]

[Footnote 22: _Ibid_. P. 8 et al.]

[Footnote 23. "Vice-regal Committee of Enquiry into Primary Education, Ireland, 1918." His Majesty's Stationery Office. Dublin. 1919. P. 22.]

[Footnote 24: _Ibid_. P. 22.]

[Footnote 25: _Ibid_. Martin Reservation. P. 27-30.]

[Footnote 26: _Ibid_. P. 8.]

[Footnote 27: _Ibid_. P. 39.]

II

SINN FEIN AND REVOLUTION

WILL SOCIAL CONDITION LEAD TO IMMEDIATE REVOLUTION?

"Eamonn De Valera, the President of the Irish Republic, who has been in hiding since his escape from Lincoln jail, will be welcomed back to Dublin by a public reception. Tomorrow evening at seven o'clock he will be met at the Mount street bridge by Lawrence O'Neill, Lord Mayor of Dublin...."

The news note was in the morning papers. In small type it was hidden on the back pages--the Irish papers have a curious habit of six-pointing articles in which the people are vitally interested and putting three-column heads on such stuff as: "Do Dublin Girls Rouge?" That day the concern of the people was unquestionably not rouge but republics. For the question that sibilated in Grafton street cafes and at the tram change at Nelson pillar was: "Will Dublin Castle permit?"

Orders and gun enforcement. The empire did not deviate from the usual program of empires--action without discussion. In the crises that are always occurring between organized revolt and the empire, there is never any consideration of the physical agony that goads the people to revolt. There wasn't now. By early afternoon, the answer, on great, black-lettered posters, was swabbed to the sides of buildings all over town:

"DE VALERA RECEPTION FORBIDDEN!"

That was the headline, and after instructions warning the people not to take part in the ceremony, the government order ended:

"GOD SAVE THE KING!"

How would the revolutionaries reply? Rumors ran riot. The Sinn Fein volunteers would pit themselves against His Majesty's troops. The streets would be red again. The belief that the meeting would be held in spite of the proclamation was supported by a statement on green-lettered posters that appeared later next the British dictum:

"LORD MAYOR REQUESTS GOOD ORDER AT RECEPTION!"

This plea was followed by a paragraph asking that the people attending the reception would not allow themselves to be provoked into disorder by the British military. Then there was the concluding exclamation:

"GOD SAVE IRELAND!"

On my way to the Sinn Fein headquarters in Harcourt street, I passed the Mansion House of the Lord Mayor and found two long-coated Dublin Military Police stripping the new wet poster from the yellow walls. When I arrived at Number 6, Harcourt street, I saw black-clad Mrs. Sheehy-Sheffington, in somewhat agitated absorption of thought, coming down the worn steps of the old Georgian house. In the upper back room, earnest young secretaries worked in swift silence. One of them, a curly-haired girl with her mouth o-ed about a cigarette, puffed unceasingly. At last Harry Boland, secretary of Sinn Fein, entered.

"The council decides tonight," he admitted. His eyes were bright and faraway like one whose mind is on a coming crisis. When I told him I would drop in again to hear the decision, he protested that they would be at it till late. On my counter protest that time made no difference to me, he promised that if I would not come he would send me word at eleven that night. "But I think," he added, "we won't know till morning."

At ten that night, Boots knocked at my door. I concluded that there had been a stampeded decision. But on going out I discovered the Associated Press correspondent there. He told me that he heard that I was to receive the news and that he did not believe that there was any necessity of bothering the Sinn Feiners twice for the same decision.

"I think the reception is quite likely," he volunteered. "This afternoon a good many of the Sinn Fein army were at University chapel at confession. At the girls' hostels of National University--which is regarded as a sort of adolescent Sinn Fein headquarters--there have been strict orders that the girls are to remain indoors tomorrow night."

When the messenger arrived at eleven to say that no decision had been reached, I made an appointment for an interview on the following day with DeValera.

Electricity was in the air by morning. There were all sorts of sparks. Young men in civilian clothes ran for trams with their hands over their hip pockets. A delightful girl whom I had met, boarded my car with a heavy parcel in her hands. As the British officer next me rose to give her his seat, her cheeks became very pink. Sometime later she told me that, like the rest of the Sinn Fein volunteers, she had received her mobilization orders, and that the parcel the officer had relented for was--her rifle.

At that time, her division of the woman's section of the Sinn Fein volunteers was pressing a plan for the holding of the reception. In order, however, that no needed fighters would be killed, the girls had asked that they should be first to meet the president. Then, when the machine guns commenced, "only girls" would fall.

Into College Green a brute of a tank had cruised. The man in charge was inviting people to have a look. Inside there were red-lipped munition boxes, provender cases, and through the skewer-sized sight-holes next the jutting guns, there were glimpses of shoppers emerging from Grafton street into the Green. Over the city, against the silver-rimmed, Irish gray clouds, aeroplanes--there were sixteen in one formation--buzzed insistently. Between the little stone columns of the roof railing of Trinity College, machine guns poked out their cold snouts.

"Smoke bombs were dropped over Mount street bridge today," said Harry Boland with a shrug of his shoulders when I arrived at Sinn Fein headquarters to ask if the reception would still be held. "What can we do against a force like theirs?"

But there was a strained feeling at headquarters as if the decision had been made after a hard fight. Alderman Thomas Kelly, one of the oldest of the Sinn Feiners, told me that he had backed DeValera in his refusal to countenance a needless loss of life, and that it was only after a good struggle that their point had won.

"DeValera's just beyond the town," whispered Harry Boland to me when he decided that we would leave to see the president at seven--the hour the executive was due to appear at the bridge. "They're searching all the cars that cross the canal bridges. If there is any trouble as we pass just say that you are an American citizen--that'd get you through anywhere."

Knots of still expectant people were gathered at the Mount street bridge. Squads of long-coated military police patrolled the place. Children called at games. The starlight dripped into the canal. At Portobello bridge we made our crossing. Nothing happened. The constables did not even punch the cushions of our car as they did with others to see if munitions were concealed therein. We swooped down curving roads between white walls hung with masses of dark laurel. We stopped dead on a road arched with trees. We got out, clicked the car door softly shut, turned a corner, and walked some distance in the cool night. As we walked I made I forget what request in regard to the interview from young Mr. Boland, and with the reverent regard and complete obedience to DeValera's wishes that is characteristic in the young Sinn Feiners--a state of mind that does not, however, prevent calling the president "Dev"--he said simply: "But I must do what he tells me." At the door of a modestly comfortable home whose steps we mounted, a thick-set man blocked my way for a moment.

"You won't," he asked, "say where you came?"

"I'm sure," I returned, "I haven't an idea where I am."

DeValera was giving rapid, almost breathless, orders in Irish to some one as I entered his room. His thin frame towered above a dark plush-covered table. A fire behind him surrounded him with a soft yellow aura. His white, ascetic, young--he is thirty-seven--face was lined with determination. Doors and windows were hung with thick, dark-red portières, and the walls were almost as white as DeValera's face.

"Pardon us for speaking Irish," he apologized. "We forget. Now first of all, we will go over the questions you sent me. I have written the answers. They must appear as I have put them down. That is the condition on which the interview takes place."

Did Sinn Fein plan immediate revolution? The president ran a fountain pen under the small, finely written lines as he remarked in an aside that he was not a writer but a mathematician. No. The sudden set of the president's jaw indicated that this man who had fought in the 1916 rebellion till even his enemies had praised him, was the man who had decided there would be no reception at the bridge. No. There would be no armed revolt till all peaceable methods had failed.