THE VOLUNTEERS.
There is much talk of the extraordinary organising powers displayed in the insurrection, but in truth there was nothing extraordinary in it.
The real essence and singularity of the rising exists in its simplicity, and, saving for the courage which carried it out, the word extraordinary is misplaced in this context.
The tactics of the Volunteers as they began to emerge were reduced to the very skeleton of "strategy." It was only that they seized certain central and stragetical districts, garrisoned those and held them until they were put out of them. Once in their forts there was no further egress by the doors, and for purpose of entry and sortie they used the skylights and the roofs. On the roofs they had plenty of cover, and this cover conferred on them a mobility which was their chief a.s.set, and which alone enabled them to protract the rebellion beyond the first day.
This was the entire of their home plan, and there is no doubt that they had studied Dublin roofs and means of inter-communication by roofs with the closest care. Further than that I do not think they had organised anything. But this was only the primary plan, and, unless they were entirely mad, there must have been a sequel to it which did not materialise, and which would have materialised but that the English Fleet blocked the way.
There is no doubt that they expected the country to rise with them, and they must have known what their own numbers were, and what chance they had of making a protracted resistance. The word "resistance" is the keyword of the rising, and the plan of holding out must have been rounded off with a date. At that date something else was to have happened which would relieve them.
There is not much else that could happen except the landing of German troops in Ireland or in England. It would have been, I think, immaterial to them where these were landed, but the reasoning seems to point to the fact that they expected and had arranged for such a landing, although on this point there is as yet no evidence.
The logic of this is so simple, so plausible, that it might be accepted without further examination, and yet further examination is necessary, for in a country like Ireland logic and plausibility are more often wrong than right. It may just as easily be that except for furnishing some arms and ammunition Germany was not in the rising at all, and this I prefer to believe. It had been current long before the rising that the Volunteers knew they could not seriously embara.s.s England, and that their sole aim was to make such a row in Ireland that the Irish question would take the status of an international one, and on the discussion of terms of peace in the European war the claims of Ireland would have to be considered by the whole Council of Europe and the world.
That is, in my opinion, the metaphysic behind the rising. It is quite likely that they hoped for German aid, possibly some thousands of men, who would enable them to prolong the row, but I do not believe they expected German armies, nor do I think they would have welcomed these with any cordiality.
In this insurrection there are two things which are singular in the history of Irish risings. One is that there were no informers, or there were no informers among the chiefs. I did hear people say in the streets that two days before the rising they knew it was to come; they invariably added that they had not believed the news, and had laughed at it. A priest said the same thing in my hearing, and it may be that the rumour was widely spread, and that everybody, including the authorities, looked upon it as a joke.
The other singularity of the rising is the amazing silence in which it was fought. Nothing spoke but the guns; and the Volunteers on the one side and the soldiers on the other potted each other and died in whispers; it might have been said that both sides feared the Germans would hear them and take advantage of their preoccupation.
There is a third reason given for the rebellion, and it also is divorced from foreign plots. It is said, and the belief in Dublin was widespread, that the Government intended to raid the Volunteers and seize their arms. One remembers to-day the paper which Alderman Kelly read to the Dublin Corporation, and which purported to be State Instructions that the Military and Police should raid the Volunteers, and seize their arms and leaders. The Volunteers had sworn they would not permit their arms to be taken from them. A list of the places to be raided was given, and the news created something of a sensation in Ireland when it was published that evening. The Press, by instruction apparently, repudiated this doc.u.ment, but the Volunteers, with most of the public, believed it to be true, and it is more than likely that the rebellion took place in order to forestall the Government.
This is also an explanation of the rebellion, and is just as good a one as any other. It is the explanation which I believe to be the true one.
All the talk of German invasion and the landing of German troops in Ireland is so much nonsense in view of the fact that England is master of the seas, and that from a week before the war down to this date she has been the undisputed monarch of those ridges. During this war there will be no landing of troops in either England or Ireland unless Germany in the meantime can solve the problem of submarine transport. It is a problem which will be solved some day, for every problem can be solved, but it will hardly be during the progress of this war. The men at the head of the Volunteers were not geniuses, neither were they fools, and the difficulty of acquiring military aid from Germany must have seemed as insurmountable to them as it does to the Germans themselves. They rose because they felt that they had to do so, or be driven like sheep into the nearest police barracks, and be laughed at by the whole of Ireland as cowards and braggarts.
It would be interesting to know why, on the eve of the insurrection, Professor MacNeill resigned the presidency of the Volunteers. The story of treachery which was heard in the streets is not the true one, for men of his type are not traitors, and this statement may be dismissed without further comment or notice. One is left to imagine what can have happened during the conference which is said to have preceded the rising, and which ended with the resignation of Professor MacNeill.
This is my view, or my imagining, of what occurred. The conference was called because the various leaders felt that a hostile movement was projected by the Government, and that the times were exceedingly black for them. Neither Mr. Birrell nor Sir Mathew Nathan had any desire that there should be a conflict in Ireland during the war. This cannot be doubted. From such a conflict there might follow all kinds of political repercussions; but although the Government favoured the policy of _laissez faire_, there was a powerful military and political party in Ireland whose whole effort was towards the disarming and punishment of the Volunteers--particularly I should say the punishment of the Volunteers. I believe, or rather I imagine, that Professor MacNeill was approached at the instance of Mr. Birrell or Sir Mathew Nathan and a.s.sured that the Government did not meditate any move against his men, and that so long as his Volunteers remained quiet they would not be molested by the authorities. I would say that Professor MacNeill gave and accepted the necessary a.s.surances, and that when he informed his conference of what had occurred, and found that they did not believe faith would be kept with them, he resigned in the dispairing hope that his action might turn them from a purpose which he considered lunatic, or, at least, by restraining a number of his followers from rising, he might limit the tale of men who would be uselessly killed.
He was not alone in his vote against a rising. The O"Rahilly and some others are reputed to have voted with him, but when insurrection was decided on, the O"Rahilly marched with his men, and surely a gallant man could not have done otherwise.
When the story of what occurred is authoritatively written (it may be written) I think that this will be found to be the truth of the matter, and that German intrigue and German money counted for so little in the insurrection as to be negligible.
CHAPTER X.
SOME OF THE LEADERS.
Meanwhile the insurrection, like all its historical forerunners, has been quelled in blood. It sounds rhetorical to say so, but it was not quelled in peasoup or tisane. While it lasted the fighting was very determined, and it is easily, I think, the most considerable of Irish rebellions.
The country was not with it, for be it remembered that a whole army of Irishmen, possibly three hundred thousand of our race, are fighting with England instead of against her. In Dublin alone there is scarcely a poor home in which a father, a brother, or a son is not serving in one of the many fronts which England is defending. Had the country risen, and fought as stubbornly as the Volunteers did, no troops could have beaten them--well that is a wild statement, the heavy guns could always beat them--but from whatever angle Irish people consider this affair it must appear to them tragic and lamentable beyond expression, but not mean and not unheroic.
It was hard enough that our men in the English armies should be slain for causes which no amount of explanation will ever render less foreign to us, or even intelligible; but that our men who were left should be killed in Ireland fighting against the same England that their brothers are fighting for ties the question into such knots of contradiction as we may give up trying to unravel. We can only think--this has happened--and let it unhappen itself as best it may.
We say that the time always finds the man, and by it we mean: that when a responsibility is toward there will be found some shoulder to bend for the yoke which all others shrink from. It is not always nor often the great ones of the earth who undertake these burdens--it is usually the good folk, that gentle hierarchy who swear allegiance to mournfulness and the under dog, as others dedicate themselves to mutton chops and the easy nymph. It is not my intention to idealise any of the men who were concerned in this rebellion. Their country will, some few years hence, do that as adequately as she has done it for those who went before them.
Those of the leaders whom I knew were not great men, nor brilliant--that is they were more scholars than thinkers, and more thinkers than men of action; and I believe that in no capacity could they have attained to what is called eminence, nor do I consider they coveted any such public distinction as is noted in that word.
But in my definition they were good men--men, that is, who willed no evil, and whose movements of body or brain were unselfish and healthy.
No person living is the worse off for having known Thomas MacDonagh, and I, at least, have never heard MacDonagh speak unkindly or even harshly of anything that lived. It has been said of him that his lyrics were epical; in a measure it is true, and it is true in the same measure that his death was epical. He was the first of the leaders who was tried and shot. It was not easy for him to die leaving behind two young children and a young wife, and the thought that his last moment must have been tormented by their memory is very painful. We are all fatalists when we strike against power, and I hope he put care from him as the soldiers marched him out.
The O"Rahilly also I knew, but not intimately, and I can only speak of a good humour, a courtesy, and an energy that never failed. He was a man of unceasing ideas and unceasing speech, and laughter accompanied every sound made by his lips.
Plunkett and Pea.r.s.e I knew also, but not intimately. Young Plunkett, as he was always called, would never strike one as a militant person. He, like Pea.r.s.e and MacDonagh, wrote verse, and it was no better nor worse than their"s were. He had an appet.i.te for quaint and difficult knowledge. He studied Egyptian and Sanscrit, and distant curious matter of that sort, and was interested in inventions and the theatre. He was tried and sentenced and shot.
As to Pea.r.s.e, I do not know how to place him, nor what to say of him. If there was an idealist among the men concerned in this insurrection it was he, and if there was any person in the world less fitted to head an insurrection it was he also. I never could "touch" or sense in him the qualities which other men spoke of, and which made him military commandant of the rising. None of these men were magnetic in the sense that Mr. Larkin is magnetic, and I would have said that Pea.r.s.e was less magnetic than any of the others. Yet it was to him and around him they clung.
Men must find some centre either of power or action or intellect about which they may group themselves, and I think that Pea.r.s.e became the leader because his temperament was more profoundly emotional than any of the others. He was emotional not in a flighty, but in a serious way, and one felt more that he suffered than that he enjoyed.
He had a power; men who came into intimate contact with him began to act differently to their own desires and interests. His schoolmasters did not always receive their salaries with regularity. The reason that he did not pay them was the simple one that he had no money. Given by another man this explanation would be uneconomic, but from him it was so logical that even a child could comprehend it. These masters did not always leave him. They remained, marvelling perhaps, and accepting, even with stupefaction, the theory that children must be taught, but that no such urgency is due towards the payment of wages. One of his boys said there was no fun in telling lies to Mr. Pea.r.s.e, for, however outrageous the lie, he always believed it. He built and renovated and improved his school because the results were good for his scholars, and somehow he found builders to undertake these forlorn hopes.
It was not, I think, that he "put his trust in G.o.d," but that when something had to be done he did it, and entirely disregarded logic or economics or force. He said--such a thing has to be done and so far as one man can do it I will do it, and he bowed straightaway to the task.
It is mournful to think of men like these having to take charge of b.l.o.o.d.y and desolate work, and one can imagine them say, "Oh! cursed spite," as they accepted responsibility.
CHAPTER XI
LABOUR AND THE INSURRECTION.
No person in Ireland seems to have exact information about the Volunteers, their aims, or their numbers. We know the names of the leaders now. They were recited to us with the tale of their execution; and with the declaration of a Republic we learned something of their aim, but the estimate of their number runs through the figures ten, thirty, and fifty thousand. The first figure is undoubtedly too slender, the last excessive, and something between fifteen and twenty thousand for all Ireland would be a reasonable guess.
Of these, the Citizen Army or Labour side of the Volunteers, would not number more than one thousand men, and it is with difficulty such a figure could be arrived at. Yet it is freely argued, and the theory will grow, that the causes of this latest insurrection should be sought among the labour problems of Dublin rather than in any national or patriotic sentiment, and this theory is b.u.t.tressed by all the agile facts which such a theory would be furnished with.
It is an interesting view, but in my opinion it is an erroneous one.
That Dublin labour was in the Volunteer movement to the strength of, perhaps, two hundred men, may be true--it is possible there were more, but it is unlikely that a greater number, or, as many, of the Citizen Army marched when the order came. The overwhelming bulk of Volunteers were actuated by the patriotic ideal which is the heritage and the burden of almost every Irishman born out of the Unionist circle, and their connection with labour was much more manual than mental.
This view of the importance of labour to the Volunteers is held by two distinct and opposed cla.s.ses.
Just as there are some who find the explanation of life in a s.e.xual formula, so there is a cla.s.s to whom the economic idea is very dear, and beneath every human activity they will discover the shock of wages and profit. It is truly there, but it pulls no more than its weight, and in Irish life the part played by labour has not yet been a weighty one; although on every view it is an important one. The labour idea in Ireland has not arrived. It is in process of "becoming," and when labour problems are mentioned in this country a party does not come to the mind, but two men only--they are Mr. Larkin and James Connolly, and they are each in their way exceptional and curious men.
There is another cla.s.s who implicate labour, and they do so because it enables them to urge that as well as being grasping and nihilistic, Irish labour is disloyal and treacherous.
The truth is that labour in Ireland has not yet succeeded in organising anything--not even discontent. It is not self-conscious to any extent, and, outside of Dublin, it scarcely appears to exist. The national imagination is not free to deal with any other subject than that of freedom, and part of the policy of our "masters" is to see that we be kept busy with politics instead of social ideas. From their standpoint the policy is admirable, and up to the present it has thoroughly succeeded.
One does not hear from the lips of the Irish workingman, even in Dublin, any of the affirmations and rejections which have long since become the commonplaces of his comrades in other lands. But on the subject of Irish freedom his views are instantly forthcoming, and his desires are explicit, and, to a degree, informed. This latter subject they understand and have fabricated an entire language to express it, but the other they do not understand nor cherish, and they are not prepared to die for it.
It is possibly true that before any movement can attain to really national proportions there must be, as well as the intellectual ideal which gives it utterance and a frame, a sense of economic misfortune to give it weight, and when these fuse the combination may well be irresistible. The organised labour discontent in Ireland, in Dublin, was not considerable enough to impose its aims or its colours on the Volunteers, and it is the labour ideal which merges and disappears in the national one. The reputation of all the leaders of the insurrection, not excepting Connolly, is that they were intensely patriotic Irishmen, and also, but this time with the exception of Connolly, that they were not particularly interested in the problems of labour.
The great strike of two years ago remained undoubtedly as a bitter and lasting memory with Dublin labour--perhaps, even, it was not so much a memory as a hatred. Still, it was not hatred of England which was evoked at that time, nor can the stress of their conflict be traced to an English source. It was hatred of local traders, and, particularly, hatred of the local police, and the local powers and tribunals, which were arrayed against them.