CHAPTER XVI
MORE ABOUT IRELAND
It is, of course, as difficult as most such things to measure, but in the course of my travels and talks, I received the impression that there is less of religious intolerance amongst the Catholics than amongst the Protestants; at any rate in the South. The faith of the minority there appears to be treated with greater respect than the faith of the minority in Ulster. I came across numerous instances in the country between Dublin and Cork of a violent distaste for the provocative behaviour of bigoted religionists.
I spoke with a Tipperary man about the cruel treatment in the Belfast shipyards of the Catholic workmen by the Protestants. It will be remembered that the decline in shipbuilding necessitated a reduction in the staff in the shipyards, and that Catholic workmen were selected to be the victims of the labour depression, and were driven with violence from the yards. It was told me that they were forced into the sea and stoned as they struggled to regain the land.
“Serves them roight,” said this Catholic workman of Tipperary unperturbed, “they be always trailin’ thurr coats.”
This good-natured fellow had had a brother killed in an ambush. He had lost his work through the firing of the shop where he worked. He had his own and his brother’s family to maintain—“orr Oi would be wid the bhoys on the mountains, I would.” He came to the hotel where I was staying to say that some unknown person had stopped him and asked him for the name of the lady to whom he was speaking.
“It’s wan av thurr dhirty sphies afther ye. I just told him ye was me half-cousin, Mary Ann Watson, av Manchester, and ye’d called to see the pore childer an yurr way to Dublin. So now ye’d better be afther takin’ yurr tickut for Corrk, forr Oi’m thinkin’ the crathur isn’t believin’ me at all.”
I had gone to Tipperary for a sentimental reason. Hundreds of thousands of gallant young Britons had marched out to meet the foreign foe, cheering one another and their own sad hearts with the refrain: “It’s a long, long way to Tipperary.” This song has become for all time associated with the British Army. On several social occasions in foreign lands I have asked the orchestra for an English song; or knowing my nationality the orchestra has volunteered the compliment. It was invariably “Tipperary.” The very sound of it calls up visions of healthy, sturdy young British manhood marching out in its millions to engage its lives and fortunes in what it believed to be the most righteous war that ever was waged. Surely, I thought, if any place in Ireland should be sacred to Englishmen and to the memory of the 250,000 Irishmen who enlisted in England’s battles, it should be Tipperary. But what did I see in Tipperary?
The whole of the principal street of this little market town was blackened and disfigured with burnt and burning buildings. A magnificent stone-fronted draper’s shop was completely gutted. Such shops as remained were shuttered, for a murdered policeman was to be brought through the town for burial later in the day, and the authorities were afraid of a demonstration. The streets were full of “Black and Tans,” the name derived from the nondescript clothing which these military police wear, black coats and khaki trousers, blue trousers and khaki coats, Scotch bonnets, and blue helmets—a mixture of garments as varied as their wearers’ breeding. Officers on horseback dashed about furiously. Numerous groups of idle men lolled against the walls, regarding the ruins of their town with philosophy and curious about the stranger within their gates. Was she an English spy? was the query in their glances. Is she a Republican agent? the eye of the soldier on duty at the street-corner questioned. It was an awkward situation. I had no papers with me, nothing to identify me with one party or the other. And it was a lawless time.
One hundred and twenty-seven buildings in Tipperary (whether town or county was not quite clear) had been deliberately destroyed by fire. The damage was estimated by a lawyer in the district at £300,000. A girl had been taken to the barracks the day before, and not allowed any female attendance. A young draper’s assistant had been bayoneted to death in the guard-room a little while previously. “Shot trying to escape,” was the report from the authorities on a Tipperary lad brought into the barracks dead. But the wound was in the forehead, and men trying to escape do not usually run backwards.
The young women of the town rarely undress when they go to bed, so fearful are they of a midnight entry and search. The Irish girl has a delicacy all her own in matters of this sort. The nerves of the children are fearfully affected, and many of them scream in the dark. Ruin, misery, desolation and death in Tipperary—“It’s a long, long way to Tipperary, but my heart’s right there.”
It was not very easy to go about Ireland’s more remote districts. One day I walked for several miles into the country alone. On the way back I passed a country school. Through the open window came the sound of singing. Sweet children’s voices sang of spring and the nightingale—an English nursery song. I stopped to listen. There followed two verses of “Men of Harlech,” “The Bluebells of Scotland,” was the next item on the programme. I waited for the Irish song. It never came. A face appeared at the window, a face with the strained look of every Irish eye. The first song was begun again. I walked away slowly, full of pity. The young voices shrilled forth:
“The awkward owl and the bashful jay
Wished each other a very good day,
Tra la la.”
Within a hundred yards of this school, full of bright young creatures and their sad-eyed teacher, the smoke was still rising from a burning homestead, and the smell of scorched timber spoilt the freshness of the air.
A curious adventure befell me on this occasion. I sat on a low wall covered with moss. There had been a heavy shower of rain, and the country was very green and lovely. The sombre hills in the distance were relieved by the intense blue of the sky and white of the clouds. The long white lane wound coaxingly to the west calling for new adventures. Nobody passed me for full twenty minutes. There was much to think about: the stupid blunders of politicians and the many injustices of life. I was content to sit alone and muse on things in that loveliest bit of countryside. Suddenly the roar of a motor engine broke upon the stillness, and there flashed past me a large military lorry full of troops with grim faces and poised rifles. Ten seconds and they were gone; and I too rose to go. At my elbow, as if sprung out of the ground, was an old man who had come silently up during my musings.
“You are a stranger here, lady, and not an Irishwoman, and if you will take advice from an old man you will never sit on a wall in an Irish country lane. Not now, at any rate. I know a man who did that. He was found dead in the lane. He was picked off by a crack British rifleman who shot at the target from a distance to win a bet. Oh, it was an accident,” he added hastily, noting my horrified expression. “It was not known that the chosen target was a human being. It might have been anything at a distance, a young tree, a large stone—anything. What happened once might happen again. And in that red cloak of yours what an excellent target you would be. You take great risks in Ireland during the foreign occupation. Good day to you, ma’am.”
One day, having succeeded in hiring a car, I drove to some of the more remote farms in the hills I had seen and admired from the side of the road where I talked with the old man. The youth who drove me was a member of the Republican Army, but a discreet and quiet boy, who would not be drawn into conversation. We sped for an hour and a half along a bad road in a high wind. It was bitterly cold, but fine and sunny. We stopped at the cottage of an old widow to ask for some information, but she lived in hourly terror of the barracks two miles away, and would tell us nothing. On we went till we came to a farm at the crest of the hill standing back a little from the high road.
It was a poor farm, one of the poorest in the district. The farmer was a strong, thick-set type, not very easy to persuade to tell his story. His wife was a pale, delicate woman without the words to express all she felt and knew. Her ordinary speech was Irish. We sat down in the kitchen, and the wife worked the bellows till a bright blaze burst from the soft coal piled up on the old-fashioned huge hearthstone. The water in the large potato cauldron began to steam, and the tiny potatoes cooking for the pigs to stir in the pot. Three dogs of different breeds invited the stranger to caress them. A couple of cats lay curled up on the kitchen table. A white hen roosted on the top of a sack of grain, and chickens walked up and down the floor. An immense sow peeped in at the door just for friendliness, and turned away when she had satisfied her curiosity.
“It was midnight,” began the farmer, “and the wife and Oi wurr in bed. All av a sudden a bullet flew through the window. Thin Oi knew that the Black and Tans was here. They broke in the door an’ asked furr moi lads. The bhoys was slapin’ in the barrn. They ran away, but they was caught, an’ the soldiers made them kneel in the yard wid thurr hands above thurr heads whoile they surrched the house. They found nothin’ at all. Thin they told the lads to run. They ran out av the gate an’ the dirty blackguards shot at thim. But they got away, all but wan. He was shot in the arrm and leg, an’ he’s lyin’ in the hospital now. We found him in the turnup field the next mornin’ bleeding bad; for it was foive hours he was lying thurr before we found him, the pore lad.” He spoke quietly and without emotion, but there was a gleam in his eye that spoke volumes of hate and fury. Later in the day I went to the hospital and saw the wounded son, a beautiful, modest boy with the sort of open face that invites perfect trust. He told me he neither smokes nor drinks, and passed the cigarettes I brought him to his comrades.
“It is the rule of the Republican Army,” added the gentle Catholic sister who was nursing these wounded boys, “that no alcohol must be taken. Would to heaven it were the rule of the British Army too. But they tell me that Dublin Castle gives drink freely to the men it sends out upon its black errands.” She stopped suddenly, and busied herself with one of her patients in some confusion for fear she had said too much. It reminded me of a pathetic school teacher in Petrograd who told me things about herself, thinking I was sympathetic, and then became overwhelmed with fear lest she had made a mistake and revealed her secrets to a Bolshevik spy. “You will not give me away, dear madame? I have said nothing wrong, have I? Only that we are all very hungry and very unhappy? Say you will not report what I have said. Swear it! Swear it!” And she pressed my hand in her fear of what might befall her till I could have shouted with pain.
The old peasant wife begged me to take tea, but there was much to do that day, so I begged to be excused, and drove away to a small farm still more remote from the broad highway. This farm was reached through two ploughed fields. In it lived an elderly farmer, his wife and daughter. I knocked loudly at the door, but there was no reply. I knocked again and again, but nobody appeared. A dog barked loudly, suggesting human habitation, so I persisted, and after a while the farmer appeared and roughly demanded my business. I told him who I was and what my errand—to hear his story and make it known.
“And what forr should Oi tell ye my sthory,” he demanded fiercely. “Don’t ye know, don’t the people av England know that it was the English Crown that killed my bhoy? Don’t the English people know widout my tellin’ thim what thurr soldiers are doin’ to Oireland? Av course they know; but they don’t care. Oi’ll not tell ye wan worrd av the tale.”
His daughter came in, a buxom dark-haired girl, whose face was black with the smoke from the peat fire, and we two listened for ten minutes to the most terrible outpouring of hate and rage against England that it has ever been my lot to hear. I sat perfectly still, but the torrent of passionate words brought from an inner room the farmer’s white-haired old wife, who greeted me with the grace of a queen and tried to stem the torrent of the old man’s rage. “I understand, dear friend,” I said to the old woman, “I understand. If I had lost a child in such a way I should probably have said much worse things than this, being a woman.”
The old man’s blue eyes softened a little at this, and after I had tried to make him understand that it was no idle curiosity that had brought me from England to his lonely farm, he said brokenly: “Well, ma’am, ye seem to have a koind heart, an’ if it’s really wantin’ to help sthop this koind av thing ye’re afther Oi’ll thry to tell ye.” And he tried. But he failed. He broke into awful weeping instead. And when she saw her old man broken down the old wife fell a-weeping too, and there was such a wailing and a sobbing in that little farm kitchen as almost drew the heart out of the body. I took the frail old woman in my arms and tried to soothe her. I begged her to cry on my shoulder. She said she couldn’t cry, hadn’t cried since they brought the boy home dead. Her eyes were wild and burning. Between dry sobs and moans I got the tale.
The men had come in the night, the same men who had shot the lad at the farm below, and the same night, and demanded the whereabouts of one of the sons. Neither man nor wife knew. They had not seen the boy for weeks. They pushed the old farmer against the wall and threatened to kill him if he didn’t tell. A young and delicate boy, never allowed out at nights because of his lungs, hearing the noise and the scuffle dressed quickly and rushed into the room crying: “Don’t shoot my old dad. Shoot me.”
“Ah,” said one of the intruders, “here’s our man. I knew they had him somewhere.”
“No,” said another. “He’s not the chap. It’s his brother we’re after.”
“Never mind,” was the retort. “This one will do.” And they dragged him across the field to the waiting lorry and there they shot him dead. “Trying to escape,” was the official story; but it was not true, and nobody believes it. If in Ireland you speak of this excuse in any company there are shouts of ironic laughter.
“And it was to save his father my poor bhoy went wid the murthering men,” said the poor mother; “an’ for that they shot him, the black-hearted scoundrels; an’ no priest wid him wan he died. But if there’s a God in ’ivin me pore bhoy will go straight to his arms, forr niver a word av wrong could be said against the lad. He was the best son Oi had, an’ a good bhoy to his father.”
A small black cross on the side of the road and the letters R.I.P. mark the spot where the young martyr was killed.
I left the farm sick with the sight of so much pain and sorrow. The old man accompanied me to the gate, choosing the path for me and offering his aid over the bad places with all the instinctive courtesy of his race. His eye lit up when he heard that “the Prisident” had arrived in Ireland. He idealized De Valera with all the power of his native imagination. He told how, for miles around, men, women and little children were afraid to sleep in their beds at night, but took to the fields and hills, and slept in blankets under the hedges. The wind whistled past me as he spoke, and the rain began to fall, and I pulled my cloak more tightly around me, for I heard with the mind’s ear small children in the night sobbing themselves to sleep under the dank hedgerows.
I had planned to visit other sufferers, but farther I could not go. The human spirit bruises itself to death in the perpetual contemplation at close quarters of misery and wrong, and relief in action becomes necessary for sanity. I would go to Cork and see the sacked city, and then return to England with the story of it all.
The train drew into Cork station an hour late, only twenty minutes before the hour of curfew. The jarvey who drove me to the hotel was determined that I should have a swift view of the ruins; or was it a laudable desire to earn more money made him take me by a circuitous route? It did not matter. I was glad of the view. And the ruins were softened by the moonlight into a poetry of aspect which the charred walls of daylight could never display. The whole of the town’s business centre appeared to have been destroyed. It stood out in my mind as comparable with some of the newspaper pictures of Ypres after the great battle. Of course, there was nothing like the same amount of devastation; but the ruin of the particular section which met the eye on entering the city’s centre was complete and very appalling.
The first thing I did at the hotel was to ask for the headquarters of the Society of Friends. My friend, Miss Edith Ellis, was doing relief work in the city, and I had mislaid her address. The Friends would know it. I also inquired for Mrs. Despard, for I had seen a picture of her in that day’s newspaper standing in the ruins with Madame McBride, the beautiful widow of Major McBride, who was executed in the 1916 rebellion. I was told Mrs. Despard had left for Mallow two days before. This was disappointing. A tall evil-looking man leaning up against the hotel bureau scrutinized everybody who came into the hotel, and gave the impression of being there for that purpose. I have seen so many “Intelligence” men that I know them as well as I know a Lancashire weaver, a Yorkshire miner, or a school teacher from anywhere.
I asked if it were possible to have something to eat at that hour, for there was an ominous emptiness in the dining-room. This was 8.45 p.m.
“I hope, ma’am, that ye’ll be comfortable here,” said a kindly waiter. “I heard ye asking after Mrs. Despard. I hope ye’ll have a better time than the pore lady herself had.”
“Why, whatever was the matter with her?” I asked, with interest and alarm.
“Nothing was the matter wid Mrs. Despard, lady; but the pore lady was niver foive minutes widout somebody followin’ her about, though she doesn’t know ut.”
“Mrs. Despard wouldn’t be troubled about that. She is a gallant soul, and her only concern is the care of the poor and the oppressed. She is an Irishwoman, you know, and a true friend of your country.”
“Indade an’ she is, ma’am, an’ if it’s her friend ye are, ye’ll be wishin’ nothin’ but good to the counthry too. But be vurry careful or wan side or the other’ll be shootin’ ye. The blood is up in Corrk.”
There was much laughing and screaming in the streets outside, and my side-car had wormed its way through vast crowds of saunterers in the splendid moonlit evening. The hour for curfew struck, and in an instant an uncanny silence fell upon the city. Indoors, affected by the quiet outside, men crept about softly, or sought their beds early, afraid almost of the sudden and general noiselessness. The only sounds that were heard till the dawn of day were those of the racing lorries full of armed men and the armoured cars patrolling the city. Round the bend of Patrick Street they came, noisy and aggressive, to arrest or shoot at sight the unfortunate individual caught walking the streets after the hour of nine. On the second night a new sound struck upon the ear, cutting the perfect silence with its shrillness, the loud laughing and screaming of coarse women’s voices, which suggested unspeakable things.
Apart from seeing the official reprisal to which reference has already been made and the awful ruins of the city, which included the Carnegie Library and the City Hall on the opposite side of the river, the short visit to Cork was fruitful of the conviction that the unhappy citizens of Cork are placed on the horns of a very terrible dilemma. General Strickland has made them responsible for the outrages on soldiers and police which are committed. He inflicts severe penalties on them for failing to stop them. This they would endeavour to do, but they do not know how and they are genuinely afraid to attempt. They believe that the shooting of police is done by people who do not live in Cork. As in all cities the citizens of Cork are for the most part not actively interested in politics. They vote when occasion comes, but this is the limit of their activity. And voting and not shooting is their chosen method of expressing their views. They do not know who shoots. If they did and informed they would be shot by the Republicans. As they don’t know and cannot inform they are made to suffer reprisals by the British authorities. Their position calls for the utmost sympathy and understanding.
I cannot help feeling that the citizens of Cork who are against violence would be greatly strengthened if the findings in the official inquiry on the Cork burnings could be published and adequate punishment administered to the evildoers. This has not been done. British justice in Ireland is not evenhanded. Somebody is being sheltered. The Black and Tans would mutiny. The authorities themselves organized the looting. All sorts of things are being said, all sorts of things believed. The belief in British fair play is gone. Can it really be after all that we are living on our tradition in this matter as are the French on their reputation for good manners?
Back to Dublin from Cork and a final meeting with my good friends there. It was a splendid company, representative of the brilliant wit and intellect for which Ireland is so justly famed. I was going home, so it was entirely proper that these last hours should be devoted to question and answer on both sides.
I spoke again of the difficulty of winning and maintaining sympathy for Ireland in England so long as the killing of British soldiers continued. All deplored the necessity, but those who believed that the method could now be changed were in a small minority.
“Ask Englishmen who complain two questions,” said a distinguished professor, whose name is known wherever scholarship is respected. “Who began it, and how they would behave in the same circumstances.”
“Forgive the question,” I said, “but who do you really think did begin it?”
“The Republicans certainly did not,” said a young lawyer rather hotly. “I am not a Republican, but one must face facts. For two years after the killing of Irish civilians by British Crown forces no member of the forces lost his life. In the meantime unspeakable humiliations were put upon the Irish people. The miscreants who killed two Irish civilians in 1917 and five in 1918 were never brought to trial. No steps were taken to bring them to trial. In the meantime innocent men on the Irish side were arrested and imprisoned without trial; private houses were raided and their contents stolen, meetings and newspapers were violently suppressed, and deportations were very frequent. In 1918 alone 1,117 Irish men and women were arrested for political reasons; 77 Sinn Feiners were deported in one month; 260 private houses were raided by night, and 81 meetings were broken up with bayonets.
“The bottom fact of the whole trouble lies in this: The British Government is uneven in its administration of justice, and it breaks its pledges. It hangs the Casements and puts the Carsons in the Cabinet. What essential difference was there in their offences? The death of a British soldier or policeman is bitterly avenged even upon the innocent and out of all proportion to the crime. The death of a Republican is applauded, and that of a non-partisan is rarely even inquired into. Have you seen the kind of thing which is published and circulated broadcast with the approval of the authorities?” Here he handed to me a paper, an extract from which I quote. It was delivered to the Cork newspaper offices:—
Anti-Sinn Fein Society,
Cork Headquarters,
Grand Parade, Cork.
“In the event of a member of His Majesty’s Forces being wounded or an attempt made to wound him, one member of the Sinn Fein Party will be killed; or if a member of the Sinn Fein Party is not available two sympathisers will be killed.
“(Signed) The Assistant Secretary.”
“And you must agree,” said a third speaker, “that Ireland has been very badly tricked by your Government. Witness the Convention and the use that was made of it to impose conscription upon Ireland; the conscription of a country which has been reviled by Englishmen for years, and which it was proposed even then to partition—conscription which was by very many disapproved of for England, accepted with extreme reluctance by Canada and rejected by Australia.”
I recalled at this stage of the proceedings the humorous hall-porter at one of the hotels who had put his head round the corner of the writing-room when I was alone there and whispered: “John Redmond’s the man who made all the trouble. He wasn’t clever enough for your Lloyd George. Why the divil didn’t he get the promise in writin’. There’s no wrigglin’ out av somethin’ that’s in black and white, wid a good strong name at the end av the paper. Shure,” he continued with a roguish smile broadening his honest red face, “isn’t it the Kingdom av ’Ivin Oi’d be afther promisin’ if Oi was the Proime Minister an thurr was throuble brewin’?”
I am sure this must have been the man who tried to persuade one of the Labour delegates not to go into the street when the Black and Tans were busy shooting. “But I’m an Englishman, friend. They’ll not shoot me.”
“Shure, sorr, an’ I wouldn’t be trustin’ thim divils. They’ll shoot ye first, and thin find out ye’re an Englishman aftherwards.”
“What about the rebellion of 1916? Talk to me a little about that,” I said to a young fellow whose keenness was very attractive.
“It was a very small rising of extremists, a piece of insanity repudiated by nearly everybody in Ireland. A group of idealists, who believed they could imitate the Ulster Unionists and enjoy the same immunity, thought they would make a similar demonstration. The hideous severity with which the rebels were treated and the long-continued persecution of perfectly innocent people suspected of sympathy with the rebels were the causes of the rise of political Sinn Fein.”
“And now?” I asked. “What is the exact situation now? What are the hopes for peace?”
“There is no hope unless the English people wake up, change this Government and Parliament for one more competent and humane, which will adopt a saner policy, the one for which they say they fought the war. Ireland must have the right to choose her own form of government.”
“The Irish have chosen their government, and it is working very well,” chimed in a determined-looking young woman wearing the uniform of the Irish Republican Army. “All we ask is to be let alone. We can keep order if the English will let us. They cannot do so.”
I thought as these stern criticisms of England’s Government stormed my ears, often expressed in stronger language than I have used here, that it is no use going into the enemy’s country if one cannot stand fire. The person who has no facility for getting into the skin of another had better stay at home by his own fireside. The rôle of political pilgrim is not for him.
“The fact is there are two Governments in Ireland: the Republican Government representing roughly 75 per cent. of the population, and the British Government representing the remaining 25 per cent. The will of the majority should prevail in these democratic days. England says not. Very well. If we must die to establish the rights of democracy in Ireland we are ready.”
“And we will fight and die with our men!” exclaimed a hitherto silent member of the company. She turned to me. “Do you know that the hate of England is so intense in my part of the country that a woman told me she scarcely knew how to bear the disgrace of having had a son who fought for England in the war? And the neighbours are so sorry for her they are breaking her heart with kindness and pity.”
“There is an old man lives near here,” said my hostess, “who is dying. He has eight children, and his wife is delicate. He is tortured with the fear of what will become of them when he goes. The priest came to administer the sacrament: ‘I will get the boy a place in the munitions,’ he said, speaking of the eldest son. ‘He will help his mother.’
“‘Thank you very kindly, Father. You mean it well, and you are very kind. But it cannot be. We are not of that way of thinking.’”
There was a long silence after this story. Memory took me back to the scene in London when the Irish Labour leaders came to explain their cause and solicit our co-operation. “You may remain indifferent or even refuse to help us,” said Mr. Johnson, their spokesman. “Your Government may torture our women and kill our men by the thousand, but you will never break our spirit.” It was a proud boast, but the reason was a revelation. “You will never defeat us, for we Irish have a living faith in God.”
I believe this to be profoundly true; and he will misread the Irish situation and misunderstand Irish men and women who fails to look beyond the picture drawn by partisan newspapers for their own ends to the vision in the souls of those to whom God and country are real and noble passions.
“But will you take nothing less than complete separation?” I pleaded.
“On grounds of economy, for reasons of efficiency, for our common safety, is not national self-government within the Commonwealth a happier issue for us all?”
“Ourselves alone,” was murmured round the room; but from the general smile I felt a lighter heart.
“Give us the right to choose, free and unfettered, and—wait and see.”
It is the least they can claim or that the British Government can give in its own interests as well as those of the Irish. It would be an act of faith such as few Governments in history have shown themselves capable of performing; but there are national and international situations where only a supreme act of faith will suffice.
And this is one of those.