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Title: Principles of Freedom

Author: Terence J. MacSwiney

Release date: August 7, 2004 [eBook #13132]
                Most recently updated: December 18, 2020

Language: English

Credits: E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Martin Pettit, and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PRINCIPLES OF FREEDOM ***


E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Martin Pettit, and Project Gutenberg
Distributed Proofreaders



PRINCIPLES OF FREEDOM

by

TERENCE MACSWINEY
Late Lord Mayor of Cork

1921






[Illustration: TERENCE MACSWINEY
(Late Lord Mayor of Cork)]


[Illustration]



TO

THE SOLDIERS OF FREEDOM

IN EVERY LAND




PREFACE


It was my intention to publish these articles in book form as soon as
possible. I had them typed for the purpose. I had no time for revision
save to insert in the typed copy words or lines omitted from the
original printed matter. I also made an occasional verbal alteration in
the original. One article, however, that on "Intellectual Freedom,"
though written in the series in the place in which it now stands, was
not printed with them. It is now published for the first time.


RELIGION


I wish to make a note on the article under this heading to avoid a
possible misconception amongst people outside Ireland. In Ireland there
is no religious dissension, but there is religious insincerity. English
politicians, to serve the end of dividing Ireland, have worked on the
religious feelings of the North, suggesting the danger of Catholic
ascendancy. There is not now, and there never was, any such danger, but
our enemies, by raising the cry, sowed discord in the North, with the
aim of destroying Irish unity. It should be borne in mind that when the
Republican Standard was first raised in the field in Ireland, in the
Rising of 1798, Catholics and Protestants in the North were united in
the cause. Belfast was the first home of Republicanism in Ireland. This
is the truth of the matter. The present-day cleavage is an unnatural
thing created by Ireland's enemies to hold her in subjection and will
disappear entirely with political Freedom.

It has had, however, in our day, one unhappy effect, only for a time
fortunately, and this is disappearing. I refer to the rise of
Hibernianism. The English ruling faction having, for their own political
designs, corrupted the Orangemen with power and flattery, enabled them
to establish an ascendancy not only over Ulster, but indirectly by their
vote over the South. This becoming intolerable, some sincere but
misguided Catholics in the North joined the organisation known as THE
ANCIENT ORDER OF HIBERNIANS. This was, in effect, a sort of Catholic
Freemasonry to counter the Orange Freemasonry, but like Orangeism, it
was a political and not a religious weapon.

Further, as a political weapon, it extended all through Ireland during
the last years of the Irish Parliamentary Movement. In Cork, for
example, it completely controlled the city life for some years, but the
rapid rise of the Republican Movement brought about the equally rapid
fall of Hibernianism. At the present moment it has as little influence
in the public life of Cork as Sir Edward Carson himself. The great bulk
of its one-time members have joined the Republican Movement. This
demonstrates clearly that anything in the nature of a sectarian movement
is essentially repugnant to the Irish people. As I have pointed out, the
Hibernian Order, when created, became at once a political weapon, but
Ireland has discarded that, and other such weapons, for those with which
she is carving out the destinies of the Republic. For a time, however,
Hibernianism created an unnatural atmosphere of sectarian rivalry in
Ireland. That has now happily passed away. At the time, however, of the
writing of the article on Religion it was at its height, and this fact
coloured the writing of the article. On re-reading it and considering
the publication of the present work I was inclined to suppress it, but
decided that it ought to be included because it bears directly on the
evil of materialism in religious bodies, which is a matter of grave
concern to every religious community in the world.

T. MacS.



CONTENTS


CHAPTER

I.     THE BASIS OF FREEDOM

II.    SEPARATION

III.   MORAL FORCE

IV.    BROTHERS AND ENEMIES

V.     THE SECRET OF STRENGTH

VI.    PRINCIPLE IN ACTION

VII.   LOYALTY

VIII.  WOMANHOOD

IX.    THE FRONTIER

X.     LITERATURE AND FREEDOM--THE
       PROPAGANDIST PLAYWRIGHT

XI.    LITERATURE AND FREEDOM--ART FOR
       ART'S SAKE

XII.   RELIGION

XIII.  INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM

XIV.   MILITARISM

XV.    THE EMPIRE

XVI.   RESISTANCE IN ARMS--FOREWORD

XVII.  RESISTANCE IN ARMS--THE TRUE
       MEANING OF LAW

XVIII. RESISTANCE IN ARMS--OBJECTIONS

XIX.   THE BEARNA BAOGHAIL--CONCLUSION




+PRINCIPLES OF FREEDOM+




CHAPTER I

THE BASIS OF FREEDOM


I


Why should we fight for freedom? Is it not strange, that it has become
necessary to ask and answer this question? We have fought our fight for
centuries, and contending parties still continue the struggle, but the
real significance of the struggle and its true motive force are hardly
at all understood, and there is a curious but logical result. Men
technically on the same side are separated by differences wide and deep,
both of ideal and plan of action; while, conversely, men technically
opposed have perhaps more in common than we realise in a sense deeper
than we understand.


II


This is the question I would discuss. I find in practice everywhere in
Ireland--it is worse out of Ireland--the doctrine, "The end justifies
the means."

One party will denounce another for the use of discreditable tactics,
but it will have no hesitation in using such itself if it can thereby
snatch a discreditable victory. So, clear speaking is needed: a fight
that is not clean-handed will make victory more disgraceful than any
defeat. I make the point here because we stand for separation from the
British Empire, and because I have heard it argued that we ought, if we
could, make a foreign alliance to crush English power here, even if our
foreign allies were engaged in crushing freedom elsewhere. When such a
question can be proposed it should be answered, though the time is not
ripe to test it. If Ireland were to win freedom by helping directly or
indirectly to crush another people she would earn the execration she has
herself poured out on tyranny for ages. I have come to see it is
possible for Ireland to win her independence by base methods. It is
imperative, therefore, that we should declare ourselves and know where
we stand. And I stand by this principle: no physical victory can
compensate for spiritual surrender. Whatever side denies that is not my
side.

What, then, is the true basis to our claim to freedom? There are two
points of view. The first we have when fresh from school, still in our
teens, ready to tilt against everyone and everything, delighting in
saying smart things--and able sometimes to say them--talking much and
boldly of freedom, but satisfied if the thing sounds bravely. There is
the later point of view. We are no longer boys; we have come to review
the situation, and take a definite stand in life. We have had years of
experience, keen struggles, not a little bitterness, and we are
steadied. We feel a heart-beat for deeper things. It is no longer
sufficient that they sound bravely; they must ring true. The schoolboy's
dream is more of a Roman triumph--tramping armies, shouting multitudes,
waving banners--all good enough in their way. But the dream of men is
for something beyond all this show. If it were not, it could hardly
claim a sacrifice.


III


A spiritual necessity makes the true significance of our claim to
freedom: the material aspect is only a secondary consideration. A man
facing life is gifted with certain powers of soul and body. It is of
vital importance to himself and the community that he be given a full
opportunity to develop his powers, and to fill his place worthily. In a
free state he is in the natural environment for full self-development.
In an enslaved state it is the reverse. When one country holds another
in subjection that other suffers materially and morally. It suffers
materially, being a prey for plunder. It suffers morally because of the
corrupt influences the bigger nation sets at work to maintain its
ascendancy. Because of this moral corruption national subjection should
be resisted, as a state fostering vice; and as in the case of vice, when
we understand it we have no option but to fight. With it we can make no
terms. It is the duty of the rightful power to develop the best in its
subjects: it is the practice of the usurping power to develop the
basest. Our history affords many examples. When our rulers visit Ireland
they bestow favours and titles on the supporters of their regime--but it
is always seen that the greatest favours and highest titles are not for
the honest adherent of their power--but for him who has betrayed the
national cause that he entered public life to support. Observe the men
who might be respected are passed over for him who ought to be despised.
In the corrupt politician there was surely a better nature. A free state
would have encouraged and developed it. The usurping state titled him
for the use of his baser instincts. Such allurement must mean
demoralisation. We are none of us angels, and under the best of
circumstances find it hard to do worthy things; when all the temptation
is to do unworthy things we are demoralised. Most of us, happily, will
not give ourselves over to the evil influence, but we lose faith in the
ideal. We are apathetic. We have powers and let them lie fallow. Our
minds should be restless for noble and beautiful things; they are
hopeless in a land everywhere confined and wasted. In the destruction
of spirit entailed lies the deeper significance of our claim to
freedom.


IV


It is a spiritual appeal, then, that primarily moves us. We are urged to
action by a beautiful ideal. The motive force must be likewise true and
beautiful. It is love of country that inspires us; not hate of the enemy
and desire for full satisfaction for the past. Pause awhile. We are all
irritated now and then by some mawkish interpretation of our motive
force that makes it seem a weakly thing, invoked to help us in evading
difficulties instead of conquering them. Love in any genuine form is
strong, vital and warm-blooded. Let it not be confused with any flabby
substitute. Take a parallel case. Should we, because of the mawkishness
of a "Princess Novelette," deride the beautiful dream that keeps ages
wondering and joyous, that is occasionally caught up in the words of
genius, as when Shelley sings: "I arise from dreams of thee"? When
foolish people make a sacred thing seem silly, let us at least be sane.
The man who cries out for the sacred thing but voices a universal need.
To exist, the healthy mind must have beautiful things--the rapture of a
song, the music of running water, the glory of the sunset and its
dreams, and the deeper dreams of the dawn. It is nothing but love of
country that rouses us to make our land full-blooded and beautiful where
now she is pallid and wasted. This, too, has its deeper significance.


V


If we want full revenge for the past the best way to get it is to remain
as we are. As we are, Ireland is a menace to England. We need not debate
this--she herself admits it by her continued efforts to pacify us in her
own stupid way. Would she not ignore us if it were quite safe so to do?
On the other hand, if we succeed in our efforts to separate from her,
the benefit to England will be second only to our own. This might strike
us strangely, but 'tis true, not the less true because the English
people could hardly understand or appreciate it now. The military
defence of Ireland is almost farcical. A free Ireland could make it a
reality--could make it strong against invasion. This would secure
England from attack on our side. No one is, I take it, so foolish as to
suppose, being free, we would enter quarrels not our own. We should
remain neutral. Our common sense would so dictate, our sense of right
would so demand. The freedom of a nation carries with it the
responsibility that it be no menace to the freedom of another nation.
The freedom of all makes for the security of all. If there are tyrannies
on earth one nation cannot set things right, but it is still bound so to
order its own affairs as to be consistent with universal freedom and
friendship. And, again, strange as it may seem, separation from England
will alone make for final friendship with England. For no one is so
foolish as to wish to be for ever at war with England. It is
unthinkable. Now the most beautiful motive for freedom is vindicated.
Our liberty stands to benefit the enemy instead of injuring him. If we
want to injure him, we should remain as we are--a menace to him. The
opportunity will come, but it would hardly make us happy. This but makes
clear a need of the human race. Freedom rightly considered is not a
mere setting-up of a number of independent units. It makes for harmony
among nations and good fellowship on earth.


VI


I have written carefully that no one may escape the conclusion. It is
clear and exacting, but in the issue it is beautiful. We fight for
freedom--not for the vanity of the world, not to have a fine conceit of
ourselves, not to be as bad--or if we prefer to put it so, as big as our
neighbours. The inspiration is drawn from a deeper element of our being.
We stifle for self-development individually and as a nation. If we don't
go forward we must go down. It is a matter of life and death; it is out
soul's salvation. If the whole nation stand for it, we are happy; we
shall be grandly victorious. If only a few are faithful found they must
be the more steadfast for being but a few. They stand for an individual
right that is inalienable. A majority has no right to annul it, and no
power to destroy it. Tyrannies may persecute, slay, or banish those who
defend it; the thing is indestructible. It does not need legions to
protect it nor genius to proclaim it, though the poets have always
glorified it, and the legions will ultimately acknowledge it. One man
alone may vindicate it, and because that one man has never failed it has
never died. Not, indeed, that Ireland has ever been reduced to a single
loyal son. She never will be. We have not survived the centuries to be
conquered now. But the profound significance of the struggle, of its
deep spiritual appeal, of the imperative need for a motive force as
lofty and beautiful, of the consciousness that worthy winning of freedom
is a labour for human brotherhood; the significance of it all is seen in
the obligation it imposes on everyone to be true, the majority
notwithstanding. He is called to a grave charge who is called to resist
the majority. But he will resist, knowing his victory will lead them to
a dearer dream than they had ever known. He will fight for that ideal in
obscurity, little heeded--in the open, misunderstood; in humble places,
still undaunted; in high places, seizing every vantage point, never
crushed, never silent, never despairing, cheering a few comrades with
hope for the morrow. And should these few sink in the struggle the
greatness of the ideal is proven in the last hour; as they fall their
country awakens to their dream, and he who inspired and sustained them
is justified; justified against the whole race, he who once stood alone
against them. In the hour he falls he is the saviour of his race.




CHAPTER II

SEPARATION.


I


When we plead for separation from the British Empire as the only basis
on which our country can have full development, and on which we can have
final peace with England, we find in opponents a variety of attitudes,
but one attitude invariably absent--a readiness to discuss the question
fairly and refute it, if this can be done. One man will take it
superficially and heatedly, assuming it to be, according to his party, a
censure on Mr. Redmond or Mr. O'Brien. Another will take it
superficially, but, as he thinks, philosophically, and will dismiss it
with a smile. With the followers of Mr. Redmond or Mr. O'Brien we can
hardly argue at present, but we should not lose heart on their account,
for these men move _en masse_. One day the consciousness of the country
will be electrified with a great deed or a great sacrifice and the
multitude will break from lethargy or prejudice and march with a shout
for freedom in a true, a brave, and a beautiful sense. We must work and
prepare for that hour. Then there is our philosophical friend. I expect
him to hear my arguments. When I am done, he may not agree with me on
all points; he may not agree with me on any point; but if he come with
me, I promise him one thing: this question can no longer be dismissed
with a smile.


II


Our friend's attitude is explained in part by our never having attempted
to show that a separatist policy is great and wise. We have held it as a
right, have fought for it, have made sacrifices for it, and vowed to
have it at any cost; but we have not found for it a definite place in a
philosophy of life. Superficial though he be, our friend has indicated a
need: we must take the question philosophically--but in the great and
true sense. It is a truism of philosophy and science that the world is a
harmonious whole, and that with the increase of knowledge, laws can be
discovered to explain the order and the unity of the universe.
Accordingly, if we are to justify our own position as separatists, we
must show that it will harmonise, unify and develop our national life,
that it will restore us to a place among the nations, enable us to
fulfil a national destiny, a destiny which, through all our struggles,
we ever believe is great, and waiting for us. That must be accepted if
we are to get at the truth of the matter. A great doctrine that
dominates our lives, that lays down a rigid course of action, that
involves self-denial, hard struggles, endurance for years, and possibly
death before the goal is reached--any such doctrine must be capable of
having its truth demonstrated by the discovery of principles that govern
and justify it. Otherwise we cannot yield it our allegiance. Let us to
the examination, then; we shall find it soul-stirring and inspiring. We
must be prepared, however, to abandon many deeply-rooted prejudices; if
we are unwilling, we must abandon the truth. But we will find courage
in moving forward, and will triumph in the end, by keeping in mind at
all times that the end of freedom is to realise the salvation and
happiness of all peoples, to make the world, and not any selfish corner
of it, a more beautiful dwelling-place for men.

Treated in this light, the question becomes for all earnest men great
and arresting. Our friend, who may have smiled, will discuss it readily
now. Yet he may not be convinced; he may point his finger over the
wasted land and contrast its weakness with its opponents' strength, and
conclude: "Your philosophy is beautiful, but only a dream." He is at
least impressed; that is a point gained; and we may induce him to come
further and further till he adopts the great principle we defend.


III


His difficulty now is the common error that a man's work for his country
should be based on the assumption that it should bear full effect in his
own time. This is most certainly false; for a man's life is counted by
years, a nation's by centuries, and as work for the nation should be
directed to bringing her to full maturity in the coming time, a man must
be prepared to labour for an end that may be realised only in another
generation. Consider how he disposes his plans for his individual life.
His boyhood and youth are directed that his manhood and prime may be the
golden age of life, full-blooded and strong-minded, with clear vision
and great purpose and high hope, all justified by some definite
achievement. A man's prime is great as his earlier years have been well
directed and concentrated. In the early years the ground is prepared and
the seed sown for the splendid period of full development. So it is with
the nation: we must prepare the ground and sow the seed for the rich
ripeness of maturity; and bearing in mind that the maturity of the
nation will come, not in one generation but after many generations, we
must be prepared to work in the knowledge that we prepare for a future
that only other generations will enjoy. It does not mean that we shall
work in loneliness, cheered by no vision of the Promised Land; we may
even reach the Promised Land in our time, though we cannot explore all
its great wonders: that will be the delight of ages. But some will never
survive to celebrate the great victory that will establish our
independence; yet they shall not go without reward; for to them will
come a vision of soul of the future triumph, an exaltation of soul in
the consciousness of labouring for that future, an exultation of soul in
the knowledge that once its purpose is grasped, no tyranny can destroy
it, that the destiny of our country is assured, and her dominion will
endure for ever. Let any argument be raised against one such pioneer--he
knows this in his heart, and it makes him indomitable, and it is he who
is proven to be wise in the end. He judges the past clearly, and through
the crust of things he discerns the truth in his own time, and puts his
work in true relation to the great experience of life, and he is
justified; for ultimately his work opens out, matures, and bears fruit a
hundredfold. It may not be in a day, but when his hand falls dead, his
glory becomes quickly manifest. He has lived a beautiful life, and has
left a beautiful field; he has sacrificed the hour to give service for
all time; he has entered the company of the great, and with them he
will be remembered for ever. He is the practical man in the true sense.
But there is the other self-styled practical man, who thinks all this
proceeding foolish, and cries out for the expedient of the hour. Has he
ever realised the promise of his proposals? No, he is the most
inefficient person who has ever walked the earth. But for a saving
consideration let him go contemplate the wasted efforts of the
opportunist in every generation, and the broken projects scattered
through the desert-places of history.


IV


Still one will look out on the grim things of the hour, and hypnotised
by the hour will cry: "See the strength of the British Empire, see our
wasted state; your hope is vain." Let him consider this clear truth:
peoples endure; empires perish. Where are now the empires of antiquity?
And the empires of to-day have the seed of dissolution in them. But the
peoples that saw the old empires rise and hold sway are represented now
in their posterity; the tyrannies they knew are dead and done with. The
peoples endured; the empires perished; and the nations of the earth of
this day will survive in posterity when the empires that now contend for
mastery are gathered into the dust, with all dead, bad things. We shall
endure; and the measure of our faith will be the measure of our
achievement and of the greatness of our future place.


V


Is it not the dream of earnest men of all parties to have an end to our
long war, a peace final and honourable, wherein the soul of the country
can rest, revive and express itself; wherein poetry, music and art will
pour out in uninterrupted joy, the joy of deliverance, flashing in
splendour and superabundant in volume, evidence of long suppression?
This is the dream of us all. But who can hope for this final peace while
any part of our independence is denied? For, while we are connected in
any shape with the British Empire the connection implies some
dependence; this cannot be gainsaid; and who is so foolish as to expect
that there will be no collision with the British Parliament, while
there is this connection implying dependence on the British Empire? If
such a one exists he goes against all experience and all history. On
either side of the connection will be two interests--the English
interest and the Irish interest, and they will be always at variance.
Consider how parties within a single state are at variance,
Conservatives and Radicals, in any country in Europe. The proposals of
one are always insidious, dangerous or reactionary, as the case may be,
in the eyes of the other; and in no case will the parties agree; they
will at times even charge each other with treachery; there is never
peace. It is the rule of party war. Who, then, can hope for peace where
into the strife is imported a race difference, where the division is not
of party but of people? That is in truth the vain hope. And be it borne
in mind the race difference is not due to our predominating Gaelic
stock, but to the separate countries and to distinct households in the
human race. If we were all of English extraction the difference would
still exist. There is the historic case of the American States; it is
easy to understand. When a man's children come of age, they set up
establishments for themselves, and live independently; they are always
bound by affection to the parent-home; but if the father try to
interfere in the house of a son, and govern it in any detail, there will
be strife. It is hardly necessary to labour the point. If all the people
in this country were of English extraction and England were to claim on
that account that there should be a connection with her, and that it
should dominate the people here, there would be strife; and it could
have but one end--separation. We would, of whatever extraction, have
lived in natural neighbourliness with England, but she chose to trap and
harass us, and it will take long generations of goodwill to wipe out
some memories. Again, and yet again, let there be no confusion of
thought as to this final peace; it will never come while there is any
formal link of dependence. The spirit of our manhood will always flame
up to resent and resist that link. Separation and equality may restore
ties of friendship; nothing else can: for individual development and
general goodwill is the lesson of human life. We can be good neighbours,
but most dangerous enemies, and in the coming time our hereditary foe
cannot afford to have us on her flank. The present is promising; the
future is developing for us: we shall reach the goal. Let us see to it
that we shall be found worthy.


VI


That we be found worthy; let this be borne in mind. For it is true that
here only is our great danger. If with our freedom to win, our country
to open up, our future to develop, we learn no lesson from the mistakes
of nations and live no better life than the great Powers, we shall have
missed a golden opportunity, and shall be one of the failures of
history. So far, on superficial judgment, we have been accounted a
failure; though the simple maintenance of our fight for centuries has
been in itself a splendid triumph. But then only would we have failed in
the great sense, when we had got our field and wasted it, as the nations
around us waste theirs to-day. We led Europe once; let us lead again
with a beautiful realisation of freedom; and let us beware of the
delusion that is abroad, that we seek nothing more than to be free of
restraint, as England, France and Germany are to-day; let us beware of
the delusion that if we can scramble through anyhow to freedom we can
then begin to live worthily, but that in the interval we cannot be too
particular. That is the grim shadow that darkens our path, that falls
between us and a beautiful human life, and may drive us to that
tiger-like existence that makes havoc through the world to-day. Let us
beware. I do not say we must settle now all disputes, such as capital,
labour, and others, but that everyone should realise a duty to be
high-minded and honourable in action; to regard his fellow not as a man
to be circumvented, but as a brother to be sympathised with and
uplifted. Neither kingdom, republic, nor commune can regenerate us; it
is in the beautiful mind and a great ideal we shall find the charter of
our freedom; and this is the philosophy that it is most essential to
preach. We must not ignore it now, for how we work to-day will decide
how we shall live to-morrow; and if we are not scrupulous in our
struggle, we shall not be pure in our future state, I know there are
many who are not indifferent to high-minded action, but who live in
dread of an exacting code of life, fearing it will harass our movements
and make success impossible. Let us correct this mistake with the
reflection that the time is shaping for us. The power of our country is
strengthening; the grip of the enemy is slackening; every extension of
local government is a step nearer to independent government; the people
are not satisfied with an instalment; their capacity for further power
is developed, and they are equipped with weapons to win it. Even in our
time have we made great advance. Let one fact alone make this evident.
Less than twenty years ago the Irish language was despised; to-day the
movement to restore it is strong enough to have it made compulsory in
the National University. Can anyone doubt from this sign of the times
alone that the hour points to freedom, and we are on the road to
victory? That we shall win our freedom I have no doubt; that we shall
use it well I am not so certain, for see how sadly misused it is abroad
through the world to-day. That should be our final consideration, and we
should make this a resolution--our future history shall be more glorious
than that of any contemporary state. We shall look for prosperity, no
doubt, but let our enthusiasm be for beautiful living; we shall build up
our strength, yet not for conquest, but as a pledge of brotherhood and a
defence for the weaker ones of the earth; we shall take pride in our
institutions, not only as guaranteeing the stability of the state, but
as securing the happiness of the citizens, and we shall lead Europe
again as we led it of old. We shall rouse the world from a wicked dream
of material greed, of tyrannical power, of corrupt and callous politics
to the wonder of a regenerated spirit, a new and beautiful dream; and we
shall establish our state in a true freedom that will endure for ever.




CHAPTER III

MORAL FORCE


I


One of the great difficulties in discussing any question of importance
in Ireland is that words have been twisted from their original and true
significance, and if we are to have any effective discussion, we must
first make clear the meaning of our terms. Love of country is quoted to
tolerate every insidious error of weakness, but if it has any meaning it
should make men strong-souled and resolute in every crisis. Men working
for the extension of Local Government toast "Ireland a Nation," and
extol Home Rule as independence; but while there is any restraint on us
by a neighbouring Power, acknowledged superior, there is dependence to
that extent. Straightway, those who fight for independence shift their
ground and plead for absolute independence, but there is no such thing
as qualified independence; and when we abandon the simple name to men of
half-measures, we prejudice our cause and confuse the issue. Then there
is the irreconcilable--how is he regarded in the common cry? Always an
impossible, wild, foolish person, and we frequently resent the name and
try to explain his reasonableness instead of exulting in his strength,
for the true irreconcilable is the simple lover of the truth. Among men
fighting for freedom some start up in their plea for liberty, pointing
to the prosperity of England, France, and Germany, and when we debate
the means by which they won their power, we find our friends draw no
distinction between true freedom and licentious living; but it would be
better to be crushed under the wheels of great Powers than to prosper by
their example. And so, through every discussion we must make clear the
meaning of our terms. There is one I would treat particularly now. Of
all the terms glibly flung about in every debate not one has been so
confused as Moral Force.


II


Since the time of O'Connell the cry Moral Force has been used
persistently to cover up the weakness of every politician who was afraid
or unwilling to fight for the whole rights of his country, and confusion
has been the consequence. I am not going here to raise old debates over
O'Connell's memory, who, when all is said, was a great man and a
patriot. Let those of us who read with burning eyes of the shameless
fiasco of Clontarf recall for full judgment the O'Connell of earlier
years, when his unwearied heart was fighting the uphill fight of the
pioneer. But a great need now is to challenge his later influence, which
is overshadowing us to our undoing. For we find men of this time who
lack moral courage fighting in the name of moral force, while those who
are pre-eminent as men of moral fibre are dismissed with a
smile--physical-force men. To make clear the confusion we need only to
distinguish moral force from moral weakness. There is the distinction.
Call it what we will, moral courage, moral strength, moral force; we all
recognise that great virtue of mind and heart that keeps a man
unconquerable above every power of brute strength. I call it moral
force, which is a good name, and I make the definition: a man of moral
force is he who, seeing a thing to be right and essential and claiming
his allegiance, stands for it as for the truth, unheeding any
consequence. It is not that he is a wild person, utterly reckless of all
mad possibilities, filled with a madder hope, and indifferent to any
havoc that may ensue. No, but it is a first principle of his, that a
true thing is a good thing, and from a good thing rightly pursued can
follow no bad consequence. And he faces every possible development with
conscience at rest--it may be with trepidation for his own courage in
some great ordeal, but for the nobility of the cause and the beauty of
the result that must ensue, always with serene faith. And soon the
trepidation for himself passes, for a great cause always makes great
men, and many who set out in hesitation die heroes. This it is that
explains the strange and wonderful buoyancy of men, standing for great
ideals, so little understood of others of weaker mould. The soldier of
freedom knows he is forward in the battle of Truth, he knows his
victory will make for a world beautiful, that if he must inflict or
endure pain, it is for the regeneration of those who suffer, the
emancipation of those in chains, the exaltation of those who die, and
the security and happiness of generations yet unborn. For the strength
that will support a man through every phase of this struggle a strong
and courageous mind is the primary need--in a word, Moral Force. A man
who will be brave only if tramping with a legion will fail in courage if
called to stand in the breach alone. And it must be clear to all that
till Ireland can again summon her banded armies there will be abundant
need for men who will stand the single test. 'Tis the bravest test, the
noblest test, and 'tis the test that offers the surest and greatest
victory. For one armed man cannot resist a multitude, nor one army
conquer countless legions; but not all the armies of all the Empires of
earth can crush the spirit of one true man. And that one man will
prevail.


III


But so much have we felt the need of resisting every slavish tendency
that found refuge under the name of Moral Force, that those of us who
would vindicate our manhood cried wildly out again for the physical
test; and we cried it long and repeatedly the more we smarted under the
meanness of retrograde times. But the time is again inspiring, and the
air must now be cleared. We have set up for the final test of the man of
unconquerable spirit that test which is the first and last argument of
tyranny--recourse to brute strength. We have surrounded with fictitious
glory the carnage of the battlefields; we have shouted of wading through
our enemies' blood, as if bloody fields were beautiful; we have been
contemptuous of peace, as if every war were exhilarating; but, "War is
hell," said a famous general in the field. This, of course, is
exaggeration, but there is a grim element of truth in the warning that
must be kept in mind at all times. If one among us still would resent
being asked to forego what he thinks a rightful need of vengeance, let
him look into himself. Let him consider his feelings on the death of
some notorious traitor or criminal; not satisfaction, but awe, is the
uppermost feeling in his heart. Death sobers us all. But away from death
this may be unconvincing; and one may still shout of the glory of
floating the ship of freedom in the blood of the enemy. I give him
pause. He may still correct his philosophy in view of the horror of a
street accident or the brutality of a prize-fight.


IV


But war must be faced and blood must be shed, not gleefully, but as a
terrible necessity, because there are moral horrors worse than any
physical horror, because freedom is indispensable for a soul erect, and
freedom must be had at any cost of suffering; the soul is greater than
the body. This is the justification of war. If hesitating to undertake
it means the overthrow of liberty possessed, or the lying passive in
slavery already accomplished, then it is the duty of every man to fight
if he is standing, or revolt if he is down. And he must make no peace
till freedom is assured, for the moral plague that eats up a people
whose independence is lost is more calamitous than any physical rending
of limb from limb. The body is a passing phase; the spirit is immortal;
and the degradation of that immortal part of man is the great tragedy of
life. Consider all the mean things and debasing tendencies that wither
up a people in a state of slavery. There are the bribes of those in
power to maintain their ascendancy, the barter of every principle by
time-servers; the corruption of public life and the apathy of private
life; the hard struggle of those of high ideals, the conflict with all
ignoble practices, the wearing down of patience, and in the end the
quiet abandoning of the flag once bravely flourished; then the increased
numbers of the apathetic and the general gloom, depression, and
despair--everywhere a land decaying. Viciousness, meanness, cowardice,
intolerance, every bad thing arises like a weed in the night and blights
the land where freedom is dead; and the aspect of that land and the soul
of that people become spectacles of disgust, revolting and terrible,
terrible for the high things degraded and the great destinies
imperilled. It would be less terrible if an earthquake split the land in
two, and sank it into the ocean. To avert the moral plague of slavery
men fly to arms, notwithstanding the physical consequence, and those who
set more count by the physical consequences cannot by that avert them,
for the moral disease is followed by physical wreck--if delayed still
inevitable. So, physical force is justified, not _per se_, but as an
expression of moral force; where it is unsupported by the higher
principle it is evil incarnate. The true antithesis is not between moral
force and physical force, but between moral force and moral weakness.
That is the fundamental distinction being ignored on all sides. When the
time demands and the occasion offers, it is imperative to have recourse
to arms, but in that terrible crisis we must preserve our balance. If we
leap forward for our enemies' blood, glorifying brute force, we set up
the standard of the tyrant and heap up infamy for ourselves; on the
other hand, if we hesitate to take the stern action demanded, we fail in
strength of soul, and let slip the dogs of war to every extreme of
weakness and wildness, to create depravity and horror that will
ultimately destroy us. A true soldier of freedom will not hesitate to
strike vigorously and strike home, knowing that on his resolution will
depend the restoration and defence of liberty. But he will always
remember that restraint is the great attribute that separates man from
beast, that retaliation is the vicious resource of the tyrant and the
slave; that magnanimity is the splendour of manhood; and he will
remember that he strikes not at his enemy's life, but at his misdeed,
that in destroying the misdeed, he makes not only for his own freedom,
but even for his enemy's regeneration. This may be for most of us
perhaps too great a dream. But for him who reads into the heart of the
question and for the true shaping of his course it will stand; he will
never forget, even in the thickest fight, that the enemy of to-day and
yesterday may be the genuine comrade of to-morrow.


V


If it is imperative that we should fix unalterably our guiding
principles before we are plunged unprepared into the fight, it is even
more urgent we should clear the mind to the truth now, for we have
fallen into the dangerous habit of deferring important questions on the
plea that the time is not ripe. In a word, we lack moral strength; and
so, that virtue that is to safeguard us in time of war is the great
virtue that will redeem us in time of servility. It need not be further
laboured that in a state enslaved every mean thing flourishes. The
admission of it makes clear that in such a state it is more important
that every evil be resisted. In a normal condition of liberty many
temporary evils may arise; yet they are not dangerous--in the glow of a
people's freedom they waste and die as disease dies in the sunlight. But
where independence is suppressed and a people degenerate, a little evil
is in an atmosphere to grow, and it grows and expands; and evils
multiply and destroy. That is why men of high spirit working to
regenerate a fallen people must be more insistent to watch every little
defect and weak tendency that in a braver time would leave the soul
unruffled. That is why every difficulty, once it becomes evident, is
ripe for settlement. To evade the issue is to invite disaster.
Resolution alone will save us in our many dangers. But a plea for policy
will be raised to evade a particular and urgent question: "People won't
unite on it"; that's one cry. "Ignorant people will be led astray";
that's another cry. There is always some excuse ready for evasion. The
difficulty is, that every party likes some part of the truth; no party
likes it all; but we must have it all, every line of it. We want no
popular editions and no philosophic selections--the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth. This must be the rule for everything
concerning which a man has a public duty and ought to have a public
opinion. There is a dangerous tendency gaining ground of slurring over
vital things because the settlement of them involves great difficulty,
and may involve great danger; but whatever the issue is we must face it.
It is a step forward to bring men together on points of agreement, but
men come thus together not without a certain amount of suspicion. In a
fight for freedom that latent suspicion would become a mastering fear to
seize and destroy us. We must allay it now. We must lead men to discuss
points of difference with respect, forbearance, and courage, to find a
consistent way of life for all that will inspire confidence in all. At
present we inspire confidence in no one; it would be fatal to hide the
fact. This is a necessary step to bringing matters to a head. We cannot
hope to succeed all at once, but we must keep the great aim in view.
There will be objections on all sides; from the _blasé_ man of the
world, concerned only for his comfort, the mean man of business
concerned only for his profits, the man of policy always looking for a
middle way, a certain type of religious pessimist who always spies
danger in every proposal, and many others. We need not consider the
comfort of the first nor the selfishness of the second; but the third
and fourth require a word. The man of policy offers me his judgment
instead of a clear consideration of the truth. 'Tis he who says: "You
and I can discuss certain things privately. We are educated; we
understand. Ignorant people can't understand, and you only make mischief
in supposing it. It's not wise." To him I reply: "You are afraid to
speak the whole truth; I am afraid to hide it. You are filled with the
danger to ignorant people of having out everything; I am filled with the
danger to _you_ of suppressing anything. I do not propose to you that
you can with the whole truth make ignorant people profound, but I say
you must have the whole truth out for your own salvation." Here is the
danger: we see life within certain limitations, and cannot see the
possibly infinite significance of something we would put by. It is of
grave importance that we see it rightly, and in the difficulties of the
case our only safe course is to take the evidence life offers without
prejudice and without fear, and write it down. When the matter is grave,
let it be taken with all the mature deliberation and care its gravity
demands, but once the evidence is clearly seen, let us for our salvation
write it down. For any man to set his petty judgment above the need for
setting down the truth is madness; and I refuse to do it. There is our
religious pessimist to consider. To him I say I take religion more
seriously. I take it not to evade the problems of life, but to solve
them. When I tell him to have no fear, this is not my indifference to
the issue, but a tribute to the faith that is in me. Let us be careful
to do the right thing; then fear is inconsistent with faith. Nor can I
understand the other attitude. Two thousand years after the preaching of
the Sermon on the Mount we are to go about whispering to one another
what is wise.


VI


To conclude: Now, and in every phase of the coming struggle, the strong
mind is a greater need than the strong hand. We must be passionate, but
the mind must guide and govern our passion. In the aberrations of the
weak mind decrying resistance, let us not lose our balance and defy
brute strength. At a later stage we must consider the ethics of
resistance to the Civil Power; the significance of what is written now
will be more apparent then. Let the cultivation of a brave, high spirit
be our great task; it will make of each man's soul an unassailable
fortress. Armies may fail, but it resists for ever. The body it informs
may be crushed; the spirit in passing breathes on other souls, and other
hearts are fired to action, and the fight goes on to victory. To the man
whose mind is true and resolute ultimate victory is assured. No
sophistry can sap his resistance; no weakness can tempt him to savage
reprisals. He will neither abandon his heritage nor poison his nature.
And in every crisis he is steadfast, in every issue justified. Rejoice,
then good comrades; our souls are still our own. Through the coldness
and depression of the time there has lightened a flash of the old fire;
the old enthusiasm, warm and passionate, is again stirring us; we are
forward to uphold our country's right, to fight for her liberty, and to
justify our own generation. We shall conquer. Let the enemy count his
dreadnoughts and number off his legions--where are now the legions of
Rome and Carthage? And the Spirit of Freedom they challenged is alive
and animating the young nations to-day. Hold we our heads high, then,
and we shall bear our flag bravely through every fight. Persistent,
consistent, straightforward and fearless, so shall we discipline the
soul to great deeds, and make it indomitable. In the indomitable soul
lies the assurance of our ultimate victory.




CHAPTER IV

BROTHERS AND ENEMIES


I


Our enemies are brothers from whom we are estranged. Here is the
fundamental truth that explains and justifies our hope of
re-establishing a real patriotism among all parties in Ireland, and a
final peace with our ancient enemy of England. It is the view of
prejudice that makes of the various sections of our people hopelessly
hostile divisions, and raises up a barrier of hate between Ireland and
England that can never be surmounted. If Ireland is to be regenerated,
we must have internal unity; if the world is to be regenerated, we must
have world-wide unity--not of government, but of brotherhood. To this
great end every individual, every nation has a duty; and that the end
may not be missed we must continually turn for the correction of our
philosophy to reflecting on the common origin of the human race, on the
beauty of the world that is the heritage of all, our common hopes and
fears, and in the greatest sense the mutual interests of the peoples of
the earth. If, unheeding this, any people make their part of the earth
ugly with acts of tyranny and baseness, they threaten the security of
all; if unconscious of it, a people always high-spirited are plunged
into war with a neighbour, now a foe, and yet fight, as their nature
compels them, bravely and magnanimously, they but drive their enemy back
to the field of a purer life, and, perhaps, to the realisation of a more
beautiful existence, a dream to which his stagnant soul steeped in
ugliness could never rise.


II


On the road to freedom every alliance will be sternly tried. Internal
friendship will not be made in a day, nor external friendship for many a
day, and there will be how many temptations to hold it all a delusion
and scatter the few still standing loyally to the flag. We must
understand, then, the bond that holds us together on the line of march,
and in the teeth of every opposition. Nothing but a genuine bond of
brotherhood can so unite men, but we hardly seem to realise its truth.
When a deep and ardent patriotism requires men of different creeds to
come together frankly and in a spirit of comradeship, and when the most
earnest of all the creeds do so, others who are colder and less earnest
regard this union as a somewhat suspicious alliance; and, if they join
in, do so reluctantly. Others come not at all; these think our friends
labour in a delusion, that it needs but an occasion to start an old fear
and drive them apart, to attack one another with ancient bitterness
fired with fresh venom. We must combat that idea. Let us consider the
attitude to one another of three units of the band, who represent the
best of the company and should be typical of the whole; one who is a
Catholic, one who is a Protestant, and one who may happen to be neither.
The complete philosophy of any one of the three may not be accepted by
the other two; the horizon of his hopes may be more or less distant, but
that complete philosophy stretches beyond the limit of the sphere,
within which they are drawn together to mutual understanding and
comradeship, moved by a common hope, a brave purpose and a beautiful
dream. The significance of their work may be deeper for one than for
another, the origin of the dream and its ultimate aim may be points not
held in common; but the beautiful tangible thing that they all now fight
for, the purer public and private life, the more honourable dealings
between men, the higher ideals for the community and the nation, the
grander forbearance, courage and freedom, in all these they are at one.
The instinctive recognition of an attack on the ideal is alive and
vigilant in all three. The sympathy that binds them is ardent, deep and
enduring. Observe them come together. Note the warm hand grasp, the
drawn face of one, a hard-worker; of another, the eye anxious for a
brother hard pressed; of the third, the eye glistening for the ideal
triumphant; of all the intimate confidence, the mutual encouragement and
self-sacrifice, never a note of despair, but always the exultation of
the Great Fight, and the promise of a great victory. This is a finer
company than a mere casual alliance; yet it makes the uninspired pause,
wondering and questioning. These men are earnest men of different
creeds; still they are as intimately bound to one another as if they
knelt at the one altar. In the narrow view the creeds should be at one
another's throats; here they are marching shoulder to shoulder. How is
this? And the one whose creed is the most exacting could, perhaps, give
the best reply. He would reply that within the sphere in which they work
together the true thing that unites them can be done only the one right
way; that instinctively seizing this right way they come together; that
this is the line of advance to wider and deeper things that are his
inspiration and his life; that if a comrade is roused to action by the
nearer task, and labours bravely and rightly for it, he is on the road
to widening vistas in his dream that now he may not see. That is what he
would say whose vision of life is the widest. All objectors he may not
satisfy. That what is life to him may leave his comrade cold is a
difficulty; but against the difficulty stand the depth and reality of
their comradeship, proven by mutual sacrifice, endurance, and faith, and
he never doubts that their bond union will sometime prove to have a
wise and beautiful meaning in the Annals of God.


III


But the men of different creeds who stand firmly and loyally together
are a minority. We are faced with the great difficulty of uniting as a
whole North and South; and we are faced with the grim fact that many
whom we desire to unite are angrily repudiating a like desire, that many
are sarcastically noting this, that many are coldly refusing to believe;
while through it all the most bitter are emphasising enmity and
glorifying it. All these unbelievers keep insisting North and South are
natural enemies and must so remain. The situation is further embittered
by acts of enmity being practised by both sides to the extreme
provocation of the faithful few. Their forbearance will be sorely tried,
and this is the final test of men. By those who cling to prejudice and
abandon self-restraint, extol enmity, and always proceed to the further
step--the plea to wipe the enemy out: the counter plea for forbearance
is always scorned as the enervating gospel of weakness and despair.
Though we like to call ourselves Christian, we have no desire for--nay
even make a jest of--that outstanding Christian virtue; yet men not held
by Christian dogma have joyously surrendered to the sublimity of that
divine idea. Hear Shelley speak: "What nation has the example of the
desolation of Attica by Mardonius and Xerxes, or the extinction of the
Persian Empire by Alexander of Macedon restrained from outrage? Was not
the pretext for this latter system of spoliation derived immediately
from the former? Had revenge in this instance any other effect than to
increase, instead of diminishing, the mass of malice and evil already
existing in the world? The emptiness and folly of retaliation are
apparent from every example which can be brought forward." Shelley
writes much further on retaliation, which he denounces as "futile
superstition." Simple violence repels every high and generous thinker.
Hear one other, Mazzini: "What we have to do is not to establish a new
order of things by violence. An order of things so established is always
tyrannical even when it is better than the old." Let us bear this in
mind when there is an act of aggression on either side of the Boyne.
There will not be wanting on the other side a cry for retaliation and
"a lesson." We shall receive every provocation to give up and
acknowledge ancient bitterness, but then is the time to stand firm, then
we shall need to practise the divine forbearance that is the secret of
strength.


IV


But with only a minority standing to the flag we cry out for some hope
of final success. Men will not fight without result for ever; they ask
for some sign of progress, some gleam of the light of victory. Happily,
searching the skies, our eyes can have their reward. We shall, no doubt,
see, outstanding, dark evidence of old animosity; we shall hear fierce
war-cries and see raging crowds, but the crowds are less numerous, and
the wrath has lost its sting. Men who raged twenty years ago rage now,
but their fury is less real; and young men growing up around them, quite
indifferent to the ideal, are also indifferent to the counter cries:
they are passive, unimpressed by either side. Rightly approached, they
may understand and feel the glow of a fine enthusiasm; they are numbered
by prejudice, they will become warm, active and daring under an
inspiring appeal. Remember, and have done with despair. Think how you
and I found our path step by step of the way: political life was full of
conventions that suited our fathers' time, but have faded in the light
of our day. We found these conventions unreal and put them by. This was
no reflection on our fathers; what they fought for truly is our
heritage, and we pay them a tribute in offering it in turn our loyalty
inspired by their devotion. But their errors we must rectify; what they
left undone we must take up and fulfil. That is the task of every
generation, to take up the uncompleted work of the former one, and hand
on to their successors an achievement and a heritage. Youth recognises
this instinctively, and every generation will take a step in advance of
its predecessor, putting by its prejudices and developing its truth.
Every individual may know this from his own experience, and from it he
knows that those who are now voicing old bitter cries are ageing, and
will soon pass and leave no successors. Not that prejudice will die for
ever. Each new day will have its own, but that which is now dividing and
hampering us will pass. Let the memory of its bitterness be an
incentive to checking new animosities and keeping the future safe; but
in the present let us grasp and keep in our mind that the barrier that
sundered our nation must crumble, if only we have faith and persist,
undeterred by old bitter cries, for they are dying cries, undepressed by
millions apathetic, for it is the great recurring sign of the ideal,
that one hour its light will flash through quivering multitudes, and
millions will have vision and rouse to regenerate the land.


V


Happily, it is nothing new to plead for brotherhood among Irishmen now;
unhappily, it is not so generally admitted, nor even recognised, that
the same reason that exists for restoring friendly relations among
Irishmen, exists for the re-establishing of friendship with any
outsider--England or another--with whom now or in the future we may be
at war. Friendliness between neighbours is one of the natural things of
life. In the case of individuals how beautifully it shows between two
dwellers in the same street or townland. They rejoice together in
prosperity; give mutual aid in adversity; in the ordinary daily round
work together in a spirit of comradeship; at all times they find a bond
of unity in their mutual interests. Consider, then, the sundering of
their friendship by some act of evil on either side. The old friendship
is turned to hate. Now the proximity that gave intimate pleasure to
their comradeship gives as keen an edge to their enmity; they meet one
another, cross one another, harass one another at every point. The
bitterness that is such a poison to life must be revolting to their best
instincts; deep in their hearts must be a yearning for the casting out
of hate and the return of old comradeship. Still the estranged brothers
are at daggers drawn. Sometimes the evil done is so great and the
bitterness so keen that the old spirit can apparently never be restored;
but while there is any hope whatever the true heart will keep it alive
deep down, for it must be cherished and kept in mind if the whole beauty
of life is to be renewed and preserved for ever. It is so with nations
as with individuals. Once this is recognised we must be on guard against
a new error, which is an old error in new form, the taking of means for
end. The end of general peace is to give all nations freedom in
essentials, to realise the deeper purpose, possibilities, fulness and
beauty of life; it is not to have a peace at any price, peace with a
certain surrender, the meaner peace that is akin to slavery. No, its
message is to guard one nation from excess that has plunged another into
evil, to leave the way open to a final peace, not base but honourable;
it is to preserve the divine balance of the soul. It may be further
urged that we are engaged in a great fight; that to try to rouse in men
the more generous instincts will but weaken their hands by removing a
certain driving bitterness that gives strength to their fight. Whatever
it removes it will not be their strength. In a war admittedly between
brothers, a civil war, where different conceptions of duty force men
asunder, father is up against son, and brother against brother; yet they
are not weakened in their contest by ties of blood and the deeper-lying
harmony of things that in happier times prevail to the exclusion of
bitterness and hate. When, therefore, you teach a man his enemy is in a
deep sense his brother, you do not draw him from the fight, but you give
him a new conception of the goal to win and with a great dream inspire
him to persevere and reach the goal.


VI


If, then, beyond individual and national freedom there is this great
dream still to be striven for, let us not decry it as something too
sublime for earth. It must be our guiding star to lead us rightly as far
as we may go. We can travel rightly that part of the road we now tread
on only by shaping it true to the great end that ought to inspire us
all. We shall have many temptations to swerve aside, but the power of
mind that keeps our position clear and firm will react against every
destroying influence. In the first stage of the fight for internal
unity, when blind bigotry is furiously insisting that we but plan an
insidious scheme for the oppression of a minority, our firmness will
save us till our conception of the end grow on that minority and
convince all of our earnestness. Then the dream will inspire them, the
flag will claim them, and the first stage in the fight will be won. When
internal unity is accomplished, we are within reach of freedom. Yes, but
cries an objector, "Why plead for friendship with England, who will have
peace only on condition of her supremacy?" And an answer is needed. If
it takes two to make a fight, it also most certainly takes two to make a
peace, unless one accepts the position of serf and surrenders. But this
we do not fear; we can compel our freedom and we are confident of
victory. There is still the step to friendship. Many will be baffled by
the difficulty, that while we must keep alive our generous instincts, we
must be stern and resolute in the fight; while we desire peace we must
prosecute war; while we long for comradeship we must be breaking up
dangerous alliances: literary, political, trades and social unions
formed with England while she is asserting her supremacy must be broken
up till they can be reformed on a basis of independence, equality and
universal freedom. While we are prosecuting these vigorous measures it
may not seem the way to final friendship; but we must persist;
independence is first indispensable. Here again, however, while
insisting among our own ranks on our conception of the end, it will grow
on the mind of the enemy. They may put it by at first as a delusion or a
snare, but one intimate moment will come when it will light up for them,
and a new era is begun. In such a moment is evil abandoned, hate buried
and friendship reborn. There is one honest fear that our independence
would threaten their security: it will yet be replaced by the conviction
that there is a surer safeguard in our freedom than in our suppression;
the light will break through the clouds of suspicion and a star of stars
will glorify the earth. For this end our enemy must have an ideal as
high as our own; if thus an objector, he is right. But if in the gross
materialism and greed of empire that is now the ruling passion with the
enemy there is apparently little hope of a transformation that will make
them spiritual, high-minded and generous, we must not abandon our ideal:
while the meanness and tyranny of contemporary England stand forward
against our argument and leave our reasoning cold, we can find a more
subtle appeal in spirit, such an appeal as comes to us in a play of
Shakespeare's, a song of Shelley's, or a picture of Turner's. From the
heart of the enemy Genius cries, bearing witness to our common humanity,
and the yearning for such high comradeship is alive, and the dream
survives to light us on the forward path. We must travel that path
rightly. We can so travel whatever the enemy's mind. More difficult it
will be, but it can be done. That is the great significance and
justification of Nationalism: it is the unanswerable argument to
cosmopolitanism. If the greatness and beauty of life that ought to be
the dream of all nations is denied by all but one, that one may keep
alive the dream within her own frontier till its fascination will arrest
and inspire the world. If this ultimate dream is still floating far off,
in its pursuit there is for us achievement on achievement, and each
brave thing done is in itself a beauty and a joy for ever. For the good
fighter there is always fine recompense; a clear mind, warm blood, quick
imagination, grasp of life and joy in action, and at the end of day
always an eminence won. Yes, and from the height of that eminence will
come ringing down to the last doubter a last word: we may reach the
mountaintops in aspiring to the stars.




CHAPTER V

THE SECRET OF STRENGTH


I


To win our freedom we must be strong. But what is the secret of
strength? It is fundamental to the whole question to understand this
rightly, and, once grasped, make it the mainstay of individual
existence, which is the foundation of national life. So much has the
bodily power of over-riding minorities been made the criterion of
absolute power, that to make clear the truth requires patience, insight,
and a little mental study. But the end is a great end. It is to
reconnoitre the most important battlefield, to discover the dispositions
of the enemy, to measure our own resources and forge our strength link
by link till we put on the armour of invincibility.


II


We have to grasp a distinction, knowledge of which is essential to
discerning true strength. It can be clearly seen in the contrast between
two certain fighting forces; first, a well-organised army, capably led,
marching forward full of hope and buoyancy; second, a remnant of that
army after disaster, a mere handful, not swept like their comrades in
panic, but with souls set to fight a forlorn hope. Let us study the two:
in the contrast we shall learn the secret. The courage of the
well-organised army is not of so fine a quality as that nerving the few
to fight to the last gasp. Consider first the army. What is its value as
a force? Its discipline, its consolidation, the absolute obedience of
its units to its officers, with the resulting unity of the whole; added
to this is the sense of security in numbers, buoyancy of marching in a
compact body, confidence in capable chiefs--all these factors go to the
making of the courage and strength of the army. It is because their
combination makes for the reliability of the force that discipline is
so much valued and enforced, even to the point of death. Let us keep
this in our mind, that their strength lies in their numbers,
concentration, unity, reliance on one another and on their chiefs. A
sudden disaster overtakes that army--the death of a great general, the
miscarriage of some plan, a surprise attack, any of the chances of war,
and the strength of the army is pierced, the discipline shaken, the
sense of security gone. There is an instinctive movement to retreat; the
habit of discipline keeps it orderly at first; the fear grows; all
precaution and restraint are thrown aside--the retreat is a rout, the
army a rabble, the end debacle. External discipline in giving them its
strength left them without individual resource; internal discipline was
ignored. When their combined strength was gone there was individual
helplessness and panic. Consider, now, a remnant of that army, the
members of which have the courage of the finer quality, individually
resolute and set on resistance, clearly seeing at once all the possible
consequences of their action, yet with that higher quality of soul
accepting them without hesitation, pledging all human hopes for one
last great hope of snatching victory from defeat, or, if not to save a
lost battle, to check an advancing host, rally flying forces, and redeem
a campaign. This is the heroic quality. In a crisis, the mind possessed
of it does not wait for instructions or to reason a conclusion. It sees
definite things, and swift as thought decides. There are flying legions,
a flag down, a conquering army, and flight or death--to all eyes these
are apparent; but to a brave company between that flight and death there
is a gleam of hope, of victory, and for that forlorn hope flight is put
by with the acceptance of death in the alternative if they fail. That is
the quality to redeem us. Because it is witnessed so often in our
history we are going to win; not for our prowess in more fortunate war
on an even field or with the flowing tide, not for many victories in
many lands, but for the sacred places in this our brave land that are
memorable for fights that registered the land unconquerable. Why a last
stand and a sacrifice are more inspiring than a great victory is one of
the hidden things; but the truth stands: for thinking of them our
spirits re-kindle, our courage re-awakens, and we stiffen our backs for
another battle.


III


We have, then, to develop individual patience, courage, and resolution.
Once this is borne in mind our work begins. In places there is a
dangerous idea that sometime in the future we may be called on to strike
a blow for freedom, but in the meantime there is little to do but watch
and wait. This is a fatal error; we have to forge our strength in the
interval. There is a further mistake that our national work is something
apart, that social, business, religious and other concerns have no
relation to it, and consequently we set apart a few hours of our leisure
for national work, and go about our day as if no nation existed. But the
middle of the day has a natural connection with the beginning of the day
and the end of the day, and in whatever sphere a man finds himself, his
acts must be in relation to and consistent with every other sphere. He
will be the best patriot and the best soldier who is the best friend and
the best citizen. One cannot be an honest man in one sphere and a
rascal in another; and since a citizen to fulfil his duty to his country
must be honourable and zealous, he must develop the underlying virtues
in private life. He must strengthen the individual character, and to do
this he must deal with many things seemingly remote and inconsequential
from a national point of view. Everything that crosses a man's path in
his day's round of little or great moment requires of him an attitude
towards it, and the conscious or unconscious shaping of his attitude is
determining how he will proceed in other spheres not now in view.
Suppose the case of a man in business or social life. He has to work
with others in a day's routine or fill up with them hours of leisure
they enjoy together. Consider to what accompaniment the work is often
done and with what manner of conversation the leisure is often filled.
In a day's routine, where men work together, harmonious relations are
necessary; yet what bickerings, contentions, animosities fill many a day
over points never worth a thought. You will see two men squabble like
cats for the veriest trifle, and then go through days like children,
without a word. You will see something similar in social life among men
and women equally--petty jealousies, personalities, slanderings, mean
little stories of no great consequence in themselves, except in the
converse sense of showing how small and contemptible everything and
everyone concerned is. A keen eye notes with some depression the absence
from both spheres of a fine manliness, a generous conception of things,
a large outlook, that prevents a squabble with a smile, and because of a
consciousness of the need for determination in a great fight for a
principle, holds in true contempt the trivialities of an hour. For in
all the mean little bickerings of life there is involved not a
principle, but a petty pride. One has to note these things and decide a
line of action. In the abstract the right course seems quite natural and
easy, but in fact it is not so. A man finds another act towards him with
unconscious impudence or arrogance, and at once flies into a rage; there
is a fierce wrangle, and at the end he finds no purpose served, for
nothing was at stake. He has lost his temper for nothing. In his heat he
may tell you "he wouldn't let so-and-so do so-and-so," but on the same
principle he should hold a street-argument with every fish-wife who
might call him a name. He may tell you "he will make so-and-so respect
him," but he offends his own self-respect if he cannot consider some
things beneath him. One must have a sense of proportion and not elevate
every little act of impudence into a challenge of life to be fought over
as for life and death. It may be corrected with a little humour or a
little disdain, but always with sympathy for the narrow mind whose view
of life cannot reach beyond these petty things. Yet, to repeat, it is
not easy. An irritable temper will be on fire before reason can check
it; the process of correction will prove uncomfortable--the reasons will
be there, but the feelings in revolt. Still, little by little, it is
brought under, and in the end the nasty little irritability is killed
just like a troublesome nerve; and, by and by, what once provoked a
fierce rage becomes a subject for humorous reflection. Let no one fear
we kill the nerve for the great Battle of Life; this we but strengthen
and make constant. Every act of personal discipline is contributing to a
subconscious reservoir whence our nobler energies are supplied for
ever. And so, little things lead to great; and in an office wrangle or a
social squabble there is need for developing those very qualities of
judgment, courage, and patience which equip a man for the trials of the
battlefield or the ruling of the state.


IV


We have considered the individual in business and social life. Let us
now follow him into a political assembly. We find the same conditions
prevail. Again, men fight bitterly but most frequently for nothing worth
a fight; and again those rightly judging the situation must resolve not
to be tempted into a wrangle even if their restraint be called by
another name. What in a political assembly is often the first thing to
note? We begin by the assumption, "this is a practical body of men," the
words invariably used to cover the putting by of some great principle
that we ought all endorse and uphold. But, first, by one of the many
specious reasons now approved, we put the principle by, and before long
we are at one another's throats about things involving no principle. It
is not necessary to particularise. Note any meeting for the same general
conditions: a chairman, indecisive, explaining rules of order which he
lacks the grit to apply; members ignoring the chair and talking at one
another; others calling to order or talking out of time or away from the
point; one unconsciously showing the futility of the whole business by
asking occasionally what is before the chair, or what the purpose of the
meeting. This picture is familiar to us all, and curiously we seem to
take it always as the particular freak of a particular time or locality;
but it is nothing of the kind. It is the natural and logical result of
putting by principle and trying to live away from it. Yet, that is what
we are doing every day. It means we lack collectively the courage to
pursue a thing to its logical conclusion and fight for the truth
realised. If we are to be otherwise as a body, it will only be by
personal discipline training for the wider and greater field. We must
get a proper conception of the great cause we stand for, its magnitude
and majesty, and that to be worthy of its service we must have a
standard above reproach, have an end of petty proposals and underhand
doings, be of brave front, resolute heart, and honourable intent. We
must all understand this each in his own mind and shape his actions,
each to be found faithful in the test. In fine, if in private life there
is need for developing the great virtues requisite for public service,
even more is it necessary in public life to develop the courage,
patience and wisdom of the soldier and the statesman.


V


A concrete case will give a clearer grasp of the issue than any abstract
reasoning. Our history, recent and remote, affords many examples of the
abandoning by our public men of a principle, to defend which they
entered public life; and our action on such an occasion is invariably
the same--to regard the delinquent as simply a traitor, to load him with
invective and scorn and brand him for ever. We never see it is not
innate wickedness in the man, but a weakness against which he has been
untrained and undisciplined, and which leaves him helpless in the first
crisis. Ireland has recently been incensed by the action of some of her
mayors and lord mayors in connection with the English Coronation
festival; the feeling has been acute in the metropolis. Certain things
are obvious, but how many see what is below the surface? Let me suggest
a case and a series of circumstances; the more pointed the case, the
more interesting. I will suppose a particular mayor is an old Fenian:
let us see how for him a web is finely woven, and in the end how
securely he is netted. First a mayor is a magistrate, and must take the
judicial oath, but the old Fenian has taken an oath of allegiance to
Ireland--clash number one. It is not simply a question of yes or no;
there are attendant circumstances. Around a public man in place
circulates a swarm of interested people, needy friends, meddling
politicians, "supporters" generally. The chief magistrate will have
influence on the bench which they all wish to invoke now and then, and
they all wish to see him there. They don't approve of any principle that
stands in the way. They group themselves together as his "supporters,"
and claiming to have put him into public life, they act as if they had
acquired a lease of his soul. Not what he knows to be right, but what
they believe to be useful, must be done; and before the first day is
done the first fight must be made. However, the old Fenian has enough of
the spirit of old times to come safe through the first round. But the
second is close on his heels: Dublin Castle has been attentive. The
mayor, as chief magistrate, has privileges on which the Castle now
silently closes. There are private and veiled remonstrances by secret
officials: "The mayor is acting illegally; he must not do so-and-so;
such is the function of a magistrate; he has not taken the oath," etc.
All this renewing the fight of the first day, for the Castle, too, wants
the mayor on the bench to brand him as its own and alienate him from the
old flag. It puts on the pressure by suppressing his privileges,
weakening his influence, and disappointing his "supporters." All this is
silently done. Still, the mayor holds fast, but he has not counted on
this, and is beginning to be baffled and worried. Meanwhile a sort of
guerilla attack is being maintained: invitations arrive to garden
parties at Windsor, lesser functions nearer home, free passages to all
the gay festivals, free admissions everywhere, the route indicated, and
a gracious request for the presence of the mayor and mayoress. Genuine
business engagements now save the situation, and the invitations are put
by, but our chief citizen is now bewildered. These social missiles are
flying in all directions, always gracious and flattering, never
challenging and rude--who can withstand them? Still he is bewildered,
but not yet caught. A new assault is made: the great Health Crusade
Battery is called up. Here we must all unite, God's English and the wild
Irish, the Fenian and the Castleman, the labourer and the lord. Surely,
we are all against the microbes. There is a great demonstration, their
Excellencies attend--and the mayor presides. Under the banner of the
microbe he is caught. It is a great occasion, which their Excellencies
grace and improve. His Excellency is affable with the mayor; her
Excellency is confidential and gracious with the mayoress--we might have
been schoolchildren in the same townland we are so cordial. Everything
proceeds amid plaudits, and winds up in acclamation. Their Excellencies
depart. Great is the no-politics era--you can so quietly spike the guns
of many an old politician--and keep him safe. The social amenities do
this. Their Excellencies have gone, but they do not forget. There is a
warm word of thanks for recent hospitality. Perhaps the mayor has a
daughter about to be married, or a son has died; it is remembered, and
the cordial congratulation or gracious sympathy comes duly under the
great seal. What surly man would resent sympathy? And so, the strength
of the old warrior is sapped; the web is woven finely; in its secret net
the Castle has its man. You who have exercised yourselves in Dublin
recently over mayoral doings, note all this--not to the making light of
any man's surrender, but to the true judging of the event, its deeper
significance and danger. Whoever fails must be called to account. When a
man takes a position of trust, influence, and honour, and, whatever the
difficulty, abandons a principle he should hold sacred, he must be held
responsible. A battle is an ordeal, and we must be stern with friend and
foe. But there is something more sinister than the weakness of the man:
remember the net.


VI


The concrete case makes clear the principle in question. The man whom we
have seen go down would have been safe if he had to fight no battle but
one he could face with all his true friends, and in the open light of
day. Having to fight a secret battle was never even considered: threats
direct or vague or subtle, blandishments, cajolery, graciousness,
patronage, flattery, plausible generalities, attacks indirect and
insidious--all coming without pause, secret, silent, tireless. He who is
to be proof against this, and above threat or flattery, must have been
disciplined with the discipline of a life that trains him for every
emergency. You cannot take up such a character like a garment to suit
the occasion: it must be developed in private and public by all those
daily acts that declare a man's attitude, register his convictions, and
form his mind. It gives its own reward at once, even in the day where
nothing is apparently at stake; where men scramble furiously over the
petty things of life; for he who sees these things at their proper value
is unruffled. His composure in all the fury has its own value. But the
mind that held him so, by the very act of dismissing something petty,
gets a clearer conception of the great things of life; by intuition is
at once awake to a hovering and fatal menace to individual or national
existence, unseen of the common eye; and in that hour proves, to the
confusion of the enemy, clear, vigorous and swift. Let us, then, for
this great end note what is the secret of strength. Not alone to be
ready to stand in with a host and march bravely to battle--the
discipline that provides for this is great and valuable and must be
always observed and practised. This gives, however, only the common
courage of the crowd, and can only be trusted on an even field where the
chances of war are equal. But when there is a struggle to restore
freedom, where from the nature of the case the chances are uneven and
the soldiers of liberty are at every disadvantage, then must we seek to
adjust the balance by a finer courage and a more enduring strength. The
mustering of legions will not suffice. The general reviewing this fine
array who would rightly estimate the power he may command, must silently
examine the units, to judge of this brave host how large a company can
be formed to fight a forlorn hope. If this spirit is in reserve, he is
armed against every emergency. If the chances are equal, he will have a
splendid victory; if by any of the turns of war his legions are shaken
and disaster threatened, there is always a certain rallying-ground where
the host can re-form and the field be re-won, and the flag that has seen
so many vicissitudes be set at last high and proudly in the light of
Freedom.




CHAPTER VI

PRINCIPLE IN ACTION


I


Our philosophy is valueless unless we bring it into life. With
sufficient ingenuity we might frame theory after theory, and if they
could not be put to the test of a work-a-day existence we but add
another to the many dead theories that litter the History of Philosophy.
Our principles are not to argue about, or write about, or hold meetings
about, but primarily to give us a rule of life. To ignore this is to
waste time and energy. To observe and follow it is to take from the
clouds something that appeals to us, work it into life, by it interpret
the problems to hand, make our choice between opposing standards, and
maintain our fidelity to the true one against every opposition and
through every fitful though terrible depression; so shall we startle
people with its reality, and make for it a disciple or an opponent, but
always at once convince the generation that there is a serious work in
hand.


II


If our philosophy is to be worked into life the first thing naturally is
to review the situation. If we are to judge rightly, we must understand
the present, draw from the past its lesson, and shape our plans for the
future true to the principles that govern and inform every generation.
Let us survey the past, taking a sufficiently wide view between two
points--say '98 and our own time--and we see certain definite
conditions. Great luminous years--'98, '03, '48, '67, rise up, witness
to a great principle, readiness for sacrifice, unshaken belief in truth,
valour and freedom, and a flag that will ultimately prevail. In these
years the people had vision, the blood quickened, a living flame swept
the land, scorching up hypocrisy, deceit, meanness, and lighting all
brave hearts to high hope and achievement--for, the whimperers
notwithstanding, it was always achievement to challenge the enemy and
stagger his power, though yet his expulsion is delayed. Between the
glorious years of the living flame there intervened pallid times of
depression, where every disease of soul and body crept into the open.
True hearts lived, scattered here and there, believing still but
disorganised and bewildered--the leaders were stricken down and in their
place, obscuring the beauty of life, the grandeur of the past, and our
future destiny, came time-servers, flatterers, hypocrites, open
traffickers in honour and public decency, fastening their mean authority
on the land. These are the two great resting-places in our historic
survey: the generation of the living flame and the generation of
despair; and it is for us to decide--for the decision rests with
us--whether we shall in our time merely mark time or write another
luminous chapter in the splendid history of our race.


III


Let us consider these two generations apart, to understand their
distinctive features more clearly for our own guidance. Take first the
years of vision and the general effort to replant the old flag on our
walls. With the first enthusiasts breathing the living flame abroad,
the kindling hope, the widening fires, the deepening dream, there grows
a consciousness of the greatness of the goal, of the general duty, of
the individual responsibility for higher character, steadier work, and
purer motive; and gradually meanness, trickeries, and treacheries are
weeded out of the individual and national consciousness: there is a
realisation of a time come to restore the nation's independence, and
with passion and enthusiasm are fused a fine resolve and nerve. All the
excited doings of the feverish or pallid years are put by as unworthy or
futile. The great idea inspires a great fight; and that fight is made,
and, notwithstanding any reverse, must be recorded great. Whatever
concourse of circumstances mar the dream and delay the victory, those
brave years are as a torch in witness to the ideal, in justification of
its soldiers and in promise of final success.


IV


Let us examine now the deadening years that intervene between the great
fights for freedom. We have known something of these times ourselves,
have touched on them already, and need not further draw out the
demoralising things that corrupt and dishearten us. But what we urgently
require to study is the kind of effort--more often the absence of
effort--made in such years by those who keep their belief in freedom and
feel at times impelled in some way or other to action. They have
followed a lost battle, and in the aftermath of defeat they are numbed
into despair. They refuse to surrender to the forces of the hour, but
they lack the fine faith and enthusiasm of the braver years that
challenged these forces at every point and stood or fell by the issue.
They lie apathetic till, moved by some particular meanness or treachery,
they are roused to spasmodic anger, rush to act in some spasmodic
way--generally futile, and then relapse into helplessness again. They
lack the vision that inspires every moment, discerns a sure way, and
heightens the spirit to battle without ceasing, which is characteristic
of the great years. They tacitly accept that theirs is a useless
generation, that the enemy is in the ascendant, that they cannot unseat
him, and their action, where any is made, is but to show their attitude,
never to convince opponents that the battle is again beginning, that
this is a bid for freedom, that history will be called on to record
their fight and pay tribute to their times. Their action has never this
great significance. When stung to fitful madness by the boastful
votaries of power, their occasional frantic efforts are more as relief
to their feelings than destructive to the tyranny in being. Let us
realise this to the full; and seeing the futility in other years of
every pathetic makeshift to annoy or circumvent the enemy, put by
futilities and do a great work to justify our time.


V


We have, then, to consider and decide our immediate attitude to life,
where we stand. There are errors to remove. The first is the assumption
that we are only required to acknowledge the flag in places, offer it
allegiance at certain meetings at certain times that form but a small
part of our existence; while we allow ourselves to be dispensed from
fidelity to our principles when in other places, where other standards
are either explicitly or tacitly recognised. That we must carry our flag
everywhere; that there must be no dispensation: these are the cardinal
points of our philosophy. Life is a great battlefield, and any hour in
the day a man's flag may be challenged and he must stand and justify it.
An idea you hold as true is not to be professed only where it is
proclaimed; it will whisper and you must be its prophet in strange
places; it is insistent of all things--you must glory in it or deny it;
there is no escaping it, and there is no middle way; wherever your path
lies it will cross you and you must choose.

Beware lest on any plea you put it by. You cannot elect to do nothing;
the concourse of circumstances would take you to some side; to do
nothing is still to take a side. Priest, poet, professor, public man,
professional man, business man, tradesman--everyone will be called to
answer; in every walk of life the true idea will find the false in
conflict and the battle must be fought out there--the battle is lost
when we satisfy ourselves with an academic debate in our spare moments.
This is a debating club age, and a plea for an ideal is often wasted,
taken as a mere point in an argument; but to walk among men fighting
passionately for it as a thing believed in, is to make it real, to
influence men never reached in other ways; it is to arrest attention,
arouse interest and quicken the masses to advance. And wherever the
appeal for the flag is calling us the snare of the enemy is in wait. Our
history so bristles with instances that a particular concrete case need
not be cited. We know that priests will get more patronage if they
discourage the national idea; that professors will get more emoluments
and honours if they can ban it; that public men will receive places and
titles if they betray it; that the professional man will be promised
more aggrandisement, the business man more commerce, and the tradesman
more traffic of his kind--if only he put by the flag. Most treacherous
and insidious the temptation will come to the man, young and able,
everywhere. It will say, "You have ability; come into the light--only
put that by; it keeps you obscure. And what purpose does it serve now?
Be practical; come." And you may weaken and yield and enter the light
for the general applause, but the old idea will rankle deep down till
smothered out, and you will stand in the splendour--a failure,
miserable, hopeless, not apparent, indeed, but for all that, final. You
may stand your ground, refuse the bribe, uphold the flag, and be rated
a fool and a failure, but they who rate you so will not understand that
you have won a battle greater than all the triumphs of empires; you will
keep alive in your soul true light and enduring beauty; you will hear
the music eternally in the heart of the high enthusiast and have vision
of ultimate victory that has sustained all the world over the efforts of
centuries, that uplifts the individual, consolidates the nation, and
leads a wandering race from the desert into the Promised Land.


VI


If we are to justify ourselves in our time we must have done with
dispensations. Many honest men are astray on this point and think
attitudes justifiable that are at the root of all our failures. What is
the weakness? It is so simple to explain and so easy to understand that
one must wonder how we have been ignoring it quietly and generally so
long. A man, as we have seen, acknowledges his flag in certain places;
in other places it is challenged and he pulls it down. He is dispensed.
He believes in his heart, may even write an anonymous letter to the
paper, will salute the flag again elsewhere, but he will not carry his
flag through every fight and through every day. When a particular crisis
arises, which involves our public boards, public men, and business men
in action, that requires a decision for or against the nation, he will
find it in his place in life not wise to be prominent on his own side,
and he is silently absent from his meetings--he gives a subscription but
excuses himself from attendance. He satisfies himself with private
professions of faith and whispered encouragement to those who fill the
gap--words that won't be heard at a distance--and, worst of all, he
thinks, because some stake in life may be jeopardised by bolder action,
he is justified. The answer is, simply he is not justified. Nor should
anyone who is prepared to take the risk himself take it on himself to
absolve others--nor, least of all, openly preach a milder doctrine to
lead others who are timid to the farther goal, believed in at heart.
Encourage them by all means to practise their principles as far as they
go; never restrict yours, or you will find yourself saying things you
can't altogether approve; and if you tell a man to do things you can't
altogether approve, and keep on telling him, it wears into you, and a
thing you once held in abhorrence you come to think of with
indifference. You change insensibly. Old friends rage at you, and
because of it you rage at them--not knowing how you have changed. You
dare not let what you believe lie in abeyance or say things inconsistent
with it, else to-morrow you'll be puzzled to say what you believe. You
will hardly say two things to fit each other. Let us have no half
policies. Our policy must be full, clear, consistent, to satisfy the
restless, inquiring minds; when we win all such over, the merely passive
people will follow. It should be clear that no man can dispense himself
or his fellow from a grave duty; but for all that we have been liberal
with our dispensations, and it has left us in confusion and failure. On
the understanding that we will be heroes to-morrow, we evade being men
to-day. We think of some hazy hour in the future when we may get a call
to great things; we realise not that the call is now, that the fight is
afoot, that we must take the flag from its hidden resting-place and
carry it boldly into life. So near a struggle may touch us with dread;
but to dread provoking a fight is to endure without resistance all the
consequences of a lost battle--a battle that might have been won. And
if we are to be fit for the heroic to-morrow we must arise and be men
to-day.


VII


At times we find ourselves on neutral ground. The exigencies of the
struggle involve this; and unfortunately we have in our midst sincere
men who do not believe in restoring Ireland to her original
independence. Perhaps, from a tendency to lose our balance at times, it
is well to have near by these men whose obvious sincerity may serve as a
correcting influence. We have to make them one with us; in the meantime
we meet them on neutral ground for some common purpose. Yet, we must
take our flag everywhere? Yes, that is fundamental. What then of the
places where men of diverging views meet; do we abjure the flag? By no
means. The understanding here is not to force our views on others, but
we must keep our principles clear in mind that no hostile view be forced
on us. We must see to it that neutrality be observed. One of the
pitfalls to be aware of is, that something which on our principles we
should not recognise, is assumed as recognised by others because to
attack it would be to violate neutrality. But if it may not be resisted,
it may not be recognised; this is neutrality; it is to stand on equal
terms. And since grave matters divide us--not directly concerned in our
national struggle for freedom--let the dangerous idea be banished, that
in entering on common ground we decry all opposing beliefs. For men who
hold beliefs as vital it would not be creditable to either side to put
them easily by. No, we do not ask them to forget themselves, but to
respect one another--an entirely greater and more honourable principle.
On neutral ground a man is not called on to abjure his flag; rather he
and his flag are in sanctuary.


VIII


When we find the national idea touches life at every point, we begin to
realise how frequent the call is to defend it without warning. It is not
that men directly raise the idea purposely to reject it, but that their
habit of life, to which they expect all to conform, is unconsciously
assuming that our ruling principle can have no place now or in the
future. Their assumption that the _status quo_ cannot be changed will
be the cause of most collision at first; and we must be quietly ready
with the counter-assumption, stand for the old idea and justify it. We
must realise, too, that the number of people who have definite, strong,
well-developed views against ours are comparatively small. This small
number embraces the English Government that commands forces, obeying it
without reason, and influencing the general mass of people whose general
attitude is indecision--adrift with the ruling force. It is this general
mass of men we must permeate with the true idea, and give them more
decision, more courage, more pride of race, and bring them to prove
worthy of the race. They will begin to have confidence in the Cause when
they begin to see it vindicated amongst them day by day; and that
vindication must be our duty. That duty will not be to seek; it will
offer itself and we shall have our test. How? Consider when men come
together for any purpose where different views prevail and general
things of no great moment form the subject of debate--suddenly,
unconsciously or tentatively, one will raise some idea that may divide
the company--say, acknowledging the English Crown in Ireland, putting
by the claim for freedom, in the foolish hope of some material gain.
There is much nonsense talked and confusion abroad on this head, and it
is quite possible a man, believing in Ireland's full claim, will find
himself in a large company who ought to stand for Ireland, yet who have
lost a clear conception of her rights. But he will find that they have
no clear conception the other way, either; they are confused and
generally pliable; and so, when the challenging idea is introduced, if
he is quick and clear with the vital points, he can tear the surface off
the many nostrums of the hour and prove them mean, worthless, and
degrading; and, doing so, he will be forming the minds about him. He
must be ready; that is the great need. Understand how a conversation is
often turned by a chance word, and how governed by one man who has
passionate, well-defined views, while others are cold and undecided. Be
that one man. You do not know where the circumstances of life will take
you; your flag may be directly challenged to your face, and you must
reveal yourself. These are things to avoid. Be firm, rather than
aggressive; but be always quietly prepared for the aggressive man; that
is to inspire confidence in the timid. Avoid vituperation as a disease,
but have your facts clear and ready for friend or foe. Whenever, and
wherever least expected, a false idea comes wandering forth, put in at
once a luminous word or two to clear the air, hearten friends and keep
them steady. If you find yourself alone in the midst of opponents, who
assume you are with them and expect your co-operation, you put them
right with a word. This will arrest them; they will understand where you
stand, and that you are ready; and they will generally yield you
respect. But whether it involve a fight or not, thus do you declare your
attitude. We may conveniently call it--putting up the flag.


IX


It is well to consider something of the opposition that confronts a man
who tries to fill his life with a brave purpose. He will be told it is
an illusion; he is a dreamer, a crank, or a fool. And it may serve a
purpose to see if our critics are blinded by no illusion, to contrast
our folly with their wisdom. Here is one pushing by who will not be a
fool, as he thinks--he's for the emigrant-ship. Ask yourself if the
people who go out from the remote places of Ireland, quiet-spoken and
ruddy-faced, and return after a few years loud-voiced and pallid, have
found things exactly as their hope. They protest, yes; but their voice
and colour belie them. Take the other man who does not emigrate but who
has his fling at home, who "knocks around" and tells you to do likewise
and be no fool--mark him for your guidance. You will find his leisure is
boisterous, but never gay. Catch him between whiles off his guard and
you will find the deadening lassitude of his life. This votary of
pleasure has a burden to carry in whatever walk of life, high or low. On
the higher plane he may have a more fastidious club or two, a more
epicurean sense of enjoyment, more leisure and more luxury; but the type
wherever found is the same. Life is an utter burden to him; in his soul
is no interest, no inspiration, no energy, and no hope. Let him be no
object of envy. Here a friend pats you on the shoulder: "Quite right; be
neither an emigrant nor a waster; but be practical; have no illusions;
deal with possibilities--who can say what is in the future? We must
face these facts." Our confident friend lacks a sense of humour. He
would put your plan by for its bearing on the future, but he proposes
one himself that the future must justify. He tells you circumstances
will not be in your favour: he assumes them in his own. But we only
claim that our principles will rule the future as they have ruled the
past; for the circumstances no man can speak. He calls you a dreamer for
your principles, but he can't show, now nor in history, that his
exemplars were ever justified. We are all dreamers, then; but some have
ugly dreams, while the dreams of others are beautiful worlds,
star-lighted and full of music.


X


Let the newborn enthusiast, just come eagerly to the flag, be warned of
hours of depression that seize even the most earnest, the boldest and
the strongest. Our work is the work of men, subject to such vicissitudes
as hover around all human enterprise; and every man enrolled must face
hard struggles and dark hours. Then the depression rushes down like a
horrible, cold, dark mist that obscures every beautiful thing and every
ray of hope. It may come from many causes: perhaps, a body not too
robust, worn down by a tireless mind; perhaps, the memory of long years
of effort, seemingly swallowed in oblivion and futility; perhaps contact
with men on your own side whose presence there is a puzzle, who have no
character and no conception of the grandeur of the Cause, and whose
mean, petty, underhand jealousies numb you--you who think anyone
claiming so fine a flag as ours should be naturally brave,
straightforward and generous; perhaps the seemingly overwhelming
strength of the enemy, and the listlessness of thousands who would hail
freedom with rapture, but who now stand aloof in despair--and along with
all this and intensifying it, the voice of our self-complacent practical
friend, who has but sarcasm for a high impulse, and for an immutable
principle the latest expedient of the hour. Through such an experience
must the soldier of freedom live. But as surely as such an hour comes,
there comes also a star to break the darkened sky; let those who feel
the battle-weariness at times remember. When in places there may be but
one or two to fight, it may seem of no avail; still let them be true
and their numbers will be multiplied: love of truth is infectious. When
progress is arrested, don't brood on what is, but on what was once
achieved, what has since survived, and what we may yet achieve. If some
have grown lax and temporise a little, with more firmness on your part
mingle a little sympathy for them. It is harder to live a consistent
life than die a brave death. Most men of generous instincts would rouse
all their courage to a supreme moment and die for the Cause; but to rise
to that supreme moment frequently and without warning is the burden of
life for the Cause; and it is because of its exhausting strain and
exacting demands that so many men have failed. We must get men to
realise that to live is as daring as to die. But confusion has been made
in our time by the glib phrase: "You are not asked now to die for
Ireland, but to live for her," without insisting that the life shall aim
at the ideal, the brave and the true. To slip apologetically through
existence is not life. If such a mean philosophy went abroad, we would
soon find the land a place of shivering creatures, without the capacity
to live or the courage to die--calamity, surely. All these circumstances
make for the hour of depression; and it may well be in such an hour,
amid apathy and treachery, cold friends and active enemies, with
worn-down frame and baffled mind, you, pleading for the Old Cause, may
feel your voice is indeed a voice crying in the wilderness; and it may
serve till the blood warms again and the imagination recover its glow,
to think how a Voice, that cried in the wilderness thousands of years
ago, is potent and inspiring now, where the voice of the "practical" man
sends no whisper across the waste of years.


XI


What, then, to conclude, must be our decision? To take our philosophy
into life. When we do that generally, in a deep and significant sense
our War of Independence will have begun. Let there be no deferring a
duty to a more convenient future. It is as possible that an opening for
freedom may be thrust on us, as that we shall be required to organise a
formal war with the usual movements of armies; in our assumptions for
the second, let us not be guilty of the fatal error of overlooking the
first. As in other spheres, so in politics we have our conventions; and
how little they may be proven has been lately seen, when England went
through a war of debate,[Footnote: Debate over House of Lords.] largely
unreal, over her constitution and her liberties, even while foreign wars
and complications were still being debated; and in the middle of it all,
suddenly, from a local labour dispute, putting by all thought of the
constitution, feeling as comparatively insignificant the fear of
invasion, all England stood shuddering on the verge of frantic civil
war;[Footnote: The Railway strike.] and all Ireland, when the moment of
possible freedom was given, when England might have been hardly able to
save herself, much less to hold us--Ireland, thinking and working in old
grooves, lay helpless. Let us draw the moral. We cannot tell what
unsuspected development may spring on us from the future, but we can
always be prepared by understanding that the vital hour is the hour at
hand. Let the brave choice now be made, and let the life around be
governed by it; let every man stand to his colours and strike his flag
to none; then shall we recover ground in all directions, and our time
shall be recorded, not with the deadening but with the luminous years.
In all the vicissitudes of the fight, let us not be distracted by the
meanness of the mere time-server nor the treachery of the enemy, but be
collected and cool; and remembering the many who are not with us from
honest motives or unsuspected fears, live to show our belief beautiful
and true and, in the eternal sense, practical. Then shall those who are
worth convincing be held, and our difference may reduce itself to what
is possible; then will they come to realise that he who maintains a
great faith unshaken will make more things possible than the opportunist
of the hour; then will they understand how much more is possible than
they had ever dared to dream: they will have a vision of the goal; and
with that vision will be born a steady enthusiasm, a clear purpose, and
a resolute soul. The regeneration of the land will be no longer a
distant dream but a shaping reality; the living flame will sweep through
all hearts again; and Ireland will enter her last battle for freedom to
emerge and reassume her place among the nations of the earth.




CHAPTER VII

LOYALTY


I


To be loyal to his cause is the finest tribute that can be paid to any
man. And since loyalty to the Irish cause has been the great virtue of
Irishmen through all history, it is time to have some clear thinking as
to who are the Irish rebels and who the true men. When a stupid
Government, grasping our reverence for fidelity, tried to ban our heroes
by calling them felons, it was natural we should rejoin by writing "The
Felons of our Land" and heap ridicule on their purpose. But once this
end was achieved we should have reverted to the normal attitude and
written up as the true Irish Loyalists, Brian the Great, and Shane the
Proud, the valiant Owen Roe and the peerless Tone, Mitchel and
Davis--irreconcilables all. When men revolt against an established evil
it is their loyalty to the outraged truth we honour. We do not extol a
rebel who rebels for rebellion's sake. Let us be clear on this point, or
when we shall have re-established our freedom after centuries of effort
it shall be open to every knave and traitor to challenge our
independence and plot to readmit the enemy. Loyalty is the fine
attribute of the fine nature; the word has been misused and maligned in
Ireland: let us restore it to its rightful honour by remembering it to
be the virtue of our heroes of all time. In considering it from this
view-point we shall find occasion to touch on delicate positions that
have often baffled and worried us--the asserting of our rights while
using the machinery of the Government that denies them, the burning
question of consistency, our attitude towards the political adventurer
on one hand, and towards the honest man of half-measures on the other.
Loyalty involves all this. And it shows that the man who revolts to win
freedom is the same as he who dies to defend it. He does not change his
face and nature with the changing times. He is loyal always and most
wonderfully lovable, because in the darkest times, when banned as wild,
wicked and rebelly, he is loyal still as from the beginning, and will be
to the end. Yes, Tone is the true Irish Loyalist, and every aider and
abettor of the enemy a rebel to Ireland and the Irish race.


II


When you insist on examining the question in the light of first
principles your opportunist opponent at once feels the weakness of his
position and always turns the point on your consistency. It is well,
then, in advance to understand the relative value and importance of
argument as argument in the statement of any case. A body of principles
is primarily of value, not as affording a case that can be argued with
ingenuity, but as enshrining one great principle that shines through and
informs the rest, that illumines the mind of the individual, that warms,
clarifies and invigorates--that, so to speak, puts the mind in focus,
gets the facts of existence into perspective, and gives the individual
everything in its right place and true proportion. It brings a man to
the point where he does not dispute but believes. He has been wandering
about cold and irresolute, tasting all philosophies, or none, and
drinking deep despair. He does not understand the want in his soul while
he has been looking for some panacea for its cure till the great light
streams on him, and instead of receiving something he finds himself.
That is it. There is a power of vision latent in us, clouded by error;
the true philosophy dissipates the cloud and leaves the vision clear,
wonderful and inspiring. He who acquired that vision is impervious to
argument--it is not that he despises argument; on the contrary, he
always uses it to its full strength. But he has had awakened within him
something which the mere logician can never deduce, and that mysterious
something is the explanation of his transformed life. He was a doubter,
a falterer, a failure; he has become a believer, a fighter, a conqueror.
You miss his significance completely when you take him for a theorist.
The theorist propounds a view to which he must convert the world; the
philosopher has a rule of life to immediately put into practice. His
spirit flashes with a swiftness that can be encircled by no theory. It
is his glory to have over and above a new penetrating argument in the
mind--a new and wonderful vitality in the blood. The unbeliever, near
by, still muddled by his cold theories, will argue and debate till his
intellect is in a tangle. He fails to see that a man of intellectual
agility might frame a theory and argue it out ably, and then suddenly
turn over and with equal dexterity argue the other side. Do we not have
set debates with speakers appointed on each side? That is dialectic--a
trick of the mind. But philosophy is the wine of the spirit. The
capacity then to argue the point is not the justification of a
philosophy. That justification must be found in the virtue of the
philosophy that gives its believer vision and grasp of life as a whole,
that warms and quickens his heart and makes him in spirit buoyant,
beautiful, wise and daring.


III


Let us come now to that burning question of consistency. "Very well, you
won't acknowledge the English Crown. Why then use English coins and
stamps? You don't recognise the Parliament at Westminster. Why then
recognise the County Councils created by Bill at Westminster? Why avail
of all the Local Government machinery?"--and so forth. The argument is a
familiar one, and the answer is simple. Though no guns are thundering
now, Ireland is virtually in a state of war. We are fighting to recover
independence. The enemy has had to relax somewhat in the exigencies of
the struggle and to concede all these positions of local government and
enterprise now in question. We take these posts as places conceded in
the fight and avail of them to strengthen, develop and uplift the
country and prepare her to carry the last post. Surely this is adequate.
On a field of battle it is always to the credit of a general to capture
an enemy's post and use it for the final victory. It is a sign of the
battle's progress, and tells the distant watchers on the hills how the
fight is faring and who is going to win. There would be consternation
away from the field only if word should come that the soldiers had gone
into the tents of the enemy, acknowledging him and accepting his flag.
That is the point to question. There can be no defence for the occupying
of any post conceded by the enemy. It may be held for or against
Ireland; any man accepting it and surrendering his flag to hold it
stands condemned thereby. That is clear. Yet it may be objected that
such a clear choice is not put to most of those undertaking the local
government of Ireland, that few are conscious of such an issue and few
governed by it. It is true. But for all that the machinery of local
government is clearly under popular control, and as clearly worked for
an immediate good, preparing for a greater end. Men unaware of it are
unconsciously working for the general development of the country and
recovering her old power and influence. Those conscious of the deeper
issue enter every position to further that development and make the end
obvious when the alien Government--finding those powers conceded to sap
further resistance are on the contrary used to conquer wider
fields--endeavours to force the popular government back to the purposes
of an old and failing tyranny. That is the nature of the struggle now.
At periods the enemy tries to stem the movement, and then the fight
becomes general and keen around a certain position. In our time there
were the Land Leagues, the Land War, fights for Home Rule,
Universities, Irish; and these fights ended in Land Acts, Local
Government Acts, University Acts, and the conceding of pride of place to
the native language in university life. Every position gained is a step
forward; it is accepted as such, and so is justified. For anyone who
grasps the serious purpose of recovering Ireland's independence all
along the line, the suggestion that we should abandon all machinery of
local government and enterprise--because they are "Government
positions"--to men definitely attached to the alien garrison is so
foolish as not to be even entertained. When our attitude is questioned
let it be made clear. That is the final answer to the man who challenges
our consistency: we are carrying the trenches of the enemy.


IV


Even while dismissing a false idea of consistency we have to make clear
another view still remote from the general mind. If we are to have an
effective army of freedom we must enrol only men who have a clear
conception of the goal, a readiness to yield full allegiance, and a
determination to fight always so as to reflect honour on the flag. The
importance of this will be felt only when we come to deal with concrete
cases. While human nature is what it is we will have always on the
outskirts of every movement a certain type of political adventurer who
is ready to transfer his allegiance from one party to another according
as he thinks the time serves. He has no principle but to be always with
the ascendant party, and to succeed in that aim he is ready to court and
betray every party in turn. As a result, he is a character well known to
all. The honest man who has been following the wrong path, and after
earnest inquiry comes to the flag, we readily distinguish. But it is
fatal to any enterprise where the adventurer is enlisted and where his
influence is allowed to dominate. It may seem strange that such men are
given entry to great movements: the explanation is found in the desire
of pioneers to make converts at once and convince the unconverted by the
confidence of growing numbers. We ignore the danger to our growing
strength when the adventurer comes along, loud in protest of his
support--he is always affable and plausible, and is received as a "man
of experience"; and in our anxiety for further strength we are apt to
admit him without reserve. But we must make sure of our man. We must
keep in mind that an alliance with the adventurer is more dangerous than
his opposition; and we must remember the general public, typified by the
man in the street whom we wish to convince, is quietly studying us,
attracted perhaps by our principles and coming nearer to examine. If he
knows nothing else, he knows the unprincipled man, and when he sees such
in our ranks and councils he will not wait to argue or ask questions; he
will go away and remain away. The extent to which men are ruled by the
old adage, "Show me your company and I'll tell you what you are," is
more widespread than we think. Moreover, consistency in a fine sense is
involved in our decision. We fight for freedom, not for the hope of
material profit or comfort, but because every fine instinct of manhood
demands that man be free, and life beautiful and brave, and surely in
such a splendid battle to have as allies mean, crafty profit-seekers
would be amazing. Let us be loyal in the deep sense, and let us not be
afraid of being few at first. An earnest band is more effective than a
discreditable multitude. That band will increase in numbers and strength
till it becomes the nucleus of an army that will be invincible.


V


The fine sense of consistency that keeps us clear of the adventurer
decides also our attitude to the well-meaning man of half-measures. He
says separation from England is not possible now and suggests some
alternative, if not Home Rule, Grattan's Parliament, or leaving it an
open question. In the general view this seems sensible, and we are
tempted to make an alliance based on such a ground; and the alliance is
made. What ensues? Men come together who believe in complete freedom,
others who believe in partial freedom that may lead to complete freedom,
and others who are satisfied with partial freedom as an end. Before long
the alliance ends in a deadlock. The man of the most far-reaching view
knows that every immediate action taken must be consistent with the
wider view and the farther goal, if that goal is to be attained; and he
finds that his ultimate principle is frequently involved in some action
proposed for the moment. When such a moment comes he must be loyal to
his flag and to a principle that if not generally acknowledged is an
abiding rule with him; but his allies refuse to be bound by a principle
that is an unwritten law for him because the law is not written down for
them. This is the root of the trouble. The friends, thinking to work
together for some common purpose, find the unsettled issue intrudes, and
a debate ensues that leads to angry words, recriminations, bad feeling
and disruption. The alliance based on half measures has not fulfilled
its own purpose, but it has sown suspicion between the honest men whom
it brought together; that is no good result from the practical proposal.
There is an inference: men who are conscious of a clear complete demand
should form their own plans, equally full of care and resolution, and go
ahead on their own account. But we hear a plaintive cry abroad: "Oh,
another split; that's Irishmen all over--can never unite," etc. We will
not turn aside for the plaintive people; but let it be understood there
can be an independent co-operation, where of use, with those honest men
who will not go the whole way. That independent co-operation can serve
the full purpose of the binding alliance that has proved fatal. Above
all, let there be no charge of bad faith against the earnest man who
chooses other ways than ours; it is altogether indefensible because we
disagree with him to call his motives in question. Often he is as
earnest as we are; often has given longer and greater service, and only
qualifies his own attitude in anxiety to meet others. To this we cannot
assent, but to charge him with bad faith is flagrantly unjust and always
calamitous. In getting rid of the deadlock we have too often fallen to
furiously fighting with one another. Let us bear this in mind, and
concern ourselves more with the common enemy; but let not the hands of
the men in the vanguard be tied by alien King, Constitution, or
Parliament. All the conditions grow more definite and seem, perhaps, too
exacting; remember the greatness of the enterprise. Suppose in the
building of a mighty edifice the architect at any point were careless or
slurred over a difficulty, trusting to luck to bring it right, how the
whole building would go awry, and what a mighty collapse would follow.
Let us stick to our colours and have no fear. When all these principles
have been combined into one consistent whole, a light will flash over
the land and the old spirit will be reborn; the mean will be purged of
their meanness, the timid heartened with a fine courage, and the
fearless will be justified: the land will be awake, militant, and
marching to victory.


VI


This is, surely, the fine view of loyalty. Let us write it on our
banners and proclaim it to the world. It is consistent, _honourable_,
fearless and immutable. What is said here to-day with enthusiasm,
exactness and care, will stand without emendation or enlargement, if in
a temporary reverse we are called to stand in the dock to-morrow; or if,
finely purged in the battle of freedom, we come through our last fight
with splendid triumph, our loyalty is there still, shining like a great
sun, the same beautiful, unchanging thing that has lighted us through
every struggle--perhaps now to guide us in framing a constitution and
giving to a world, distracted by kings, presidents and theorists, a new
polity for nations. A waverer, half-caught between the light, half
fearful with an old fear, pleads: "This is too much--we are men, not
angels." Precisely, we are not angels; and because of our human
weakness, our erring minds, our sudden passions, the most confident of
us may at any moment find himself in the mud. What, then, will uplift
him if he has been a waverer in principle as well as in fact? He is
helpless, disgraced and undone. Let him know in time we do not set up
fine principles in a fine conceit that we can easily live up to them,
but in the full consciousness that we cannot possibly live away from
them. That is the bed-rock truth. When the man of finer faith by any
slip comes to the earth, he has to uplift him a staff that never fails,
and to guide him a principle that strengthens him for another fight, to
go forth, in a sense Alexander never dreamed of, to conquer new worlds.
'Tis the faith that is in him, and the flag he serves, that make a man
worthy; and the meanest may be with the highest if he be true and give
good service. Let us put by then the broken reed and the craft of little
minds, and give us for our saving hope the banner of the angels and the
loyalty of gods and men.




CHAPTER VIII

WOMANHOOD


"And another said: I have married a wife and therefore
                   I cannot come."

Yes, and we have been satisfied always to blame the wife, without
noticing the man who is fond of his comfort first of all, who slips
quietly away to enjoy a quiet smoke and a quiet glass in some quiet
nook--always securing his escape by the readiest excuse. We are coming
now to consider the aspect of the question that touches our sincere
manhood; but let no one think we overlook that mean type of man who
evades every call to duty on the comfortable plea: "I have married a
wife."


I


When the mere man approaches the woman to study her, we can imagine the
fair ones getting together and nudging one another in keen amusement as
to what this seer is going to say. It is often sufficiently amusing when
the clumsy male approaches her with self-satisfied air, thinking he has
the secret of her mysterious being. I have no intention here of entering
a rival search for the secret. But we can, perhaps, startle the gay ones
from merriment to gravity by stating the simple fact that every man
stands in some relationship to woman, either as son, brother, or
husband; and if it be admitted that there is to be a fight to-morrow,
then there are some things to be settled to-day. How is the woman
training for to-morrow? How, then, will the man stand by that very
binding relationship? Will clinging arms hold him back or proud ones
wave him on? Will he have, in place of a comrade in the fight, a burden;
or will the battle that has too often separated them but give them
closer bonds of union and more intimate knowledge of the wonderful thing
that is Life?


II


I wish to concentrate on one heroic example of Irish Womanhood that
should serve as a model to this generation; and I do not mean to dwell
on much that would require detailed examination. But some points should
be indicated. For example, the awakening consciousness of our womanhood
is troubling itself rightly over the woman's place in the community, is
concentrating on the type delineated in "The Doll's House," and is
agitating for a more honourable and dignified place. We applaud the
pioneers thus fighting for their honour and dignity: but let them not
make the mistake of assuming the men are wholly responsible for "The
Doll's House," and the women would come out if they could. We have
noticed the man who prefers his ease to any troubling duty: he has his
mate in the woman who prefers to be wooed with trinkets, chocolates, and
the theatre to a more beautiful way of life, that would give her a
nobler place but more strenuous conditions. Again, the man is not always
the lord of the house. He is as often, if not more frequently, its
slave. Then there are the conventions of life. In place of a fine sense
of courtesy prevailing between man and woman, which would recognise with
the woman's finer sensibility a fine self-reliance, and with the man's
greater strength a fine gentleness, we have a false code of manners, by
which the woman is to be taken about, petted and treated generally as
the useless being she often is; while the man becomes an effeminate
creature that but cumbers the earth. Fine courtesy and fine comradeship
go together. But we have allowed a standard to gain recognition that is
a danger alike to the dignity of our womanhood and the virility of our
manhood. It is for us who are men to labour for a finer spirit in our
manhood: we cannot throw the blame for any weakness over on external
conditions. The woman is in the same position. She must understand that
greater than the need of the suffrage is the more urgent need of making
her fellow-woman spirited and self-reliant, ready rather to anticipate a
danger than to evade it. When she is thus trained, not all the men of
all the nations can deny her recognition and equality.


III


For the battle of to-morrow then there is a preliminary fight to-day.
The woman must come to this point, too. In life there is frequently so
much meanness, a man is often called to acknowledge some degrading
standard or fight for the very recognition of manhood, and the woman
must stand in with him or help to pull him down. Let her understand this
and her duty is present and urgent. The man so often wavers on the verge
of the right path, the woman often decides him. If she is nobler than
he, as is frequently the case, she can lift him to her level; if she is
meaner, as she often is, she as surely drags him down. When they are
both equal in spirit and nobility of nature, how the world is filled
with a glory that should assure us, if nothing else could, of the truth
of the Almighty God and a beautiful Eternity to explain the origin and
destiny of their wonderful existence. They are indispensable to each
other: if they stand apart, neither can realise in its fulness the
beauty and glory of life. Let the man and woman see this, and let them
know in the day that is at hand, how the challenge may come from some
petty authority of the time that rules not by its integrity but by its
favourites. We are cursed with such authority, and many a one drives
about in luxury because he is obsequious to it: he prefers to be a
parasite and to live in splendour than be a man and live in straits. He
has what Bernard Shaw so aptly calls "the soul of a servant." If we are
to prepare for a braver future, let us fight this evil thing; if we are
to put by national servitude, let us begin by driving out individual
obsequiousness. This is our training ground for to-morrow. Let the woman
realise this, and at least as many women as men will prefer privation
with self-respect to comfort with contempt. Let us, then, in the name of
our common nature, ask those who have her training in hand, to teach the
woman to despise the man of menial soul and to loathe the luxury that is
his price.


IV


I wish to come to the heroic type of Irish Womanhood. When we need to
hearten ourselves or others for a great enterprise, we instinctively
turn to the examples of heroes and heroines who, in similar difficulties
to ours, have entered the fight bravely, and issued heroically, leaving
us a splendid heritage of fidelity and achievement. It is little to our
credit that our heroes are so little known. It is less to our credit
that our heroines are hardly known at all; and when we praise or sing
of one our selection is not always the happiest. How often in the
concert-hall or drawing-room do we get emotional when someone sings in
tremulous tones, "She is far from the Land." There is a feeling for
poetry in our lives, a feeling that patriotism will not have it, a
melting pity for the love that went to wreck, a sympathy for ourselves
and everybody and everything--a relaxing of all the nerves in a wave of
sentiment. This emotion is of the enervating order. There is no sweep of
strong fire through the blood, no tightening grip on life, no set
resolve to stand to the flag and see the battle through. It is well,
then, a generation that has heard from a thousand platforms, in
plaintive notes, of Sarah Curran and her love should turn to the braver
and more beautiful model of her who was the wife of Tone.


V


When we think of the qualities that are distinctive of the woman, we
have in mind a finer gentleness, sensibility, sympathy and tenderness;
and when we have these qualities intensified in any woman, and with
them combined the endurance, courage and daring that are taken as the
manly virtues, we have a woman of the heroic type. Of such a type was
the wife of Tone. We can speak her praise without fear, for she was put
to the test in every way, and in every way found marvellously true. For
her devotion to, and encouragement of, her great husband in his great
work, she would have won our high praise, even if, when he was stricken
down and she was bereft of his wonderful love and buoyant spirits, she
had proved forgetful of his work and the glory of his name. But she was
bereft, and she was then found most marvellously true. Her devotion to
Tone, while he was living and fighting, might be explained by the
woman's passionate attachment to the man she loved. It is the woman's
tenderness that is most evident in these early years, but there is
shining evidence of the fortitude that showed her true nobility in the
darker after-years. It was no ordinary love that bound them, and reading
the record of their lives this stands out clear and beautiful. Tone,
whom we know as patient organiser, tenacious fighter, far-seeing
thinker, indomitable spirit--a born leader of men--writes to his wife
with the passionate simplicity of an enraptured child: "I doat upon you
and the babes." And his letters end thus: "Kiss the babies for me ten
thousand times. God Almighty for ever bless you, my dearest life and
soul." (This from the "French Atheist." I hope his traducers are
heartily ashamed of themselves.) Nor is it strange. When, in the
beginning of his enterprise, he is in America, preparing to go to France
on his great mission, he is troubled by the thought of his defenceless
ones. In the crisis how does his wife act? Does she wind clinging arms
around him, telling him with tears, of their children and his early
vows, and beseeching him to think of his love and forget his country?
No; let the diary speak: "My wife especially, whose courage and whose
zeal for my honour and interests were not in the least abated by all her
past sufferings, supplicated me to let no consideration of her or our
children stand for a moment in the way of my engagements to our friends
and my duty to my country, adding that she would answer for our family
during my absence, and that the same Providence which had so often, as
it were, miraculously preserved us, would, she was confident, not desert
us now." It is the unmistakable accent of the woman. She is quivering as
she sends him forth, but the spirit in her eyes would put a trembling
man to shame--a spirit that her peerless husband matched but no man
could surpass. Her fortitude was to be more terribly tried in the
terrible after-time, when the Cause went down in disaster and Tone had
to answer with his life. No tribute could be so eloquent as the letter
he wrote to her when the last moment had come and his doom was
pronounced: "Adieu, dearest love, I find it impossible to finish this
letter. Give my love to Mary; and, above all, remember you are now the
only parent of our dearest children, and that the best proof you can
give of your affection for me will be to preserve yourself for their
education. God Almighty bless you all." That letter is like Stephens'
speech from the dock, eloquent for what is left unsaid. There is no
wailing for her, least of all for himself, not that their devoted souls
were not on the rack: "As no words can express what I feel for you and
our children, I shall not attempt it; complaint of any kind would be
beneath your courage and mine"--but their souls, that were destined to
suffer, came sublimely through the ordeal. When Tone left his children
as a trust to his wife, he knew from the intimacy of their union what we
learn from the after-event, how that trust might be placed and how
faithfully it would be fulfilled. What a tribute from man to wife! How
that trust was fulfilled is in evidence in every step of the following
years. Remembering Tone's son who survived to write the memoirs was a
child at his father's death, his simple tribute written in manhood is
eloquent in the extreme: "I was brought up by my surviving parent in all
the principles and in all the feelings of my father"--of itself it would
suffice. But we can follow the years between and find moving evidence of
the fulfilment of the trust. We see her devotion to her children and her
proud care to preserve their independence and her own. She puts by
patronage, having a higher title as the widow of a General of France;
and she wins the respect of the great ones of France under the Republic
and the Empire. Lucien Buonaparte, a year after Tone's death, pleaded
before the Council of Five Hundred, in warm and eloquent praise: "If
the services of Tone were not sufficient of themselves to rouse your
feelings, I might mention the independent spirit and firmness of that
noble woman who, on the tomb of her husband and her brother, mingles
with her sighs aspirations for the deliverance of Ireland. I would
attempt to give you an expression of that Irish spirit which is blended
in her countenance with the expression of her grief. Such were those
women of Sparta, who, on the return of their countrymen from the battle,
when with anxious looks they ran over the ranks and missed amongst them
their sons, their husbands, and their brothers, exclaimed, 'He died for
his country; he died for the Republic.'" When the Republic fell, and in
the upheaval her rights were ignored, she went to the Emperor Napoleon
in person and, recalling the services of Tone, sought naturalization for
her son to secure his career in the army; and to the wonder of all near
by, the Emperor heard her with marked respect and immediately granted
her request. She sought only this for her surviving son. She had seen
two children die--there was moving pathos in the daughter's death--and
now she was standing by the last. Never was child guarded more
faithfully or sent more proudly on his path in life. One should read the
memoirs to understand, and pause frequently to consider: how she
promised her husband bravely in the beginning that she would answer for
their children, and how, in what she afterwards styled the hyperbole of
grief, she was called to fulfil to the letter, and was found faithful,
with an unexampled strength and devotion; how she saw two children
struck down by a fatal disease, and how she drew the surviving son back
to health by her watchful care to send him on his college and military
career with loving pride; how, when a Minister of France, irritated at
her putting by his patronage, roughly told her he could not "take the
Emperor by the collar to place Mr. Tone"--she went to the Emperor in
person, with dignity but without fear, and won his respect; how the
suggestion of the mean-minded that her demand was a pecuniary one, drew
from her the proud boast that in all her misfortunes she had never
learned to hold out her hand; how through all her misfortunes we watch
her with wonderful dignity, delicacy, courage, and devotion quick to
see what her trust demanded and never failing to answer the call, till
her task is done, and we see her on the morning when her son sets out on
the path she had prepared, the same quivering woman, who had sent her
husband with words of comfort to his duty, now, after all the years of
trial, sending her son as proudly on his path. It is their first
parting. Let her own words speak: "Hitherto I had not allowed myself
even to feel that my William was my own and my only child; I considered
only that Tone's son was confided to me; but in that moment Nature
resumed her rights. I sat in a field: the road was long and white before
me and no object on it but my child.... I could not think; but all I had
ever suffered seemed before and around me at that moment, and I wished
so intensely to close my eyes for ever, that I wondered it did not
happen. The transitions of the mind are very extraordinary. As I sat in
that state, unable to think of the necessity of returning home, a little
lark rushed up from the grass beside me; it whirled over my head and
hovered in the air singing such a beautiful, cheering, and, as it
sounded to me, approving note, that it roused me. I felt in my heart as
if Tone had sent it to me. I returned to my solitary home." It is a
picture to move us, to think of the devoted woman there in the sunshine,
bent down in the grass, utterly alone, till the lark, sweeping
heavenward in song, seems to give a message of gentle comfort from her
husband's watching spirit. Our emotion now is of no enervating order. We
are proud of our land and her people; our nerves are firm and set; our
hearts cry out for action; we are not weeping, but burning for the
Cause. How little we know of this heroic woman. We are in some ways
familiar with Tone, his high character, his genial open nature, his
daring, his patience, his farsightedness, his judgment--in spirit
tireless and indomitable: a man peerless among his fellows. But he had
yet one compeer; there was one nature that matched his to depth and
height of its greatness--that nature was a woman's, and the woman was
Wolfe Tone's wife.


VI


It is well this heroic example of our womanhood should be before not
only our womanhood but our manhood. It should show us all that
patriotism does not destroy the finer feelings, but rather calls them
forth and gives them wider play. We have been too used to thinking that
the qualities of love and tenderness are no virtues for a soldier, that
they will sap his resolution and destroy his work; but our movements
fail always when they fail to be human. Until we mature and the poetry
in life is wakening, we are ready to act by a theory; but when Nature
asserts herself the hard theorist fails to hold us. Let us remember and
be human. We have been saying in effect, if not in so many words: "For
Ireland's sake, don't fall in love"--we might as well say: "For
Ireland's sake, don't let your blood circulate." It is impossible--even
if it were possible it would be hateful. The man and woman have a great
and beautiful destiny to fulfil together: to substitute for it an
unnatural way of life that can claim neither the seclusion of the
cloister nor the dominion of the world is neither beautiful nor great.
We have cause for gratitude in the example before us. The woman can
learn from it how she may equal the bravest man; and the man should
learn to let his wife and children suffer rather than make of them
willing slaves and cowards. For there are some earnest men who are
ready to suffer themselves but cannot endure the suffering of those they
love, and a mistaken family tenderness binds and drags them down. No
one, surely, can hold it better to carefully put away every duty that
may entail hardship on wife and child, for then the wife is, instead of
a comrade, a burden, and the child becomes a degenerate creature,
creeping between heaven and earth, afraid to hold his head erect, and
unable to fulfil his duty to God or man. Let no man be afraid that those
he loves may be tried in the fire; but let him, to the best of his
strength, show them how to stand the ordeal, and then trust to the
greatness of the Truth and the virtue of a loyal nature to bring each
one forth in triumph, and he and they may have in the issue undreamed of
recompense. For the battle that tries them will discover finer chords
not yet touched in their intercourse; finer sympathies,
susceptibilities, gentleness and strength; a deeper insight into life
and a wider outlook on the world, making in fine a wonderful blend of
wisdom, tenderness and courage that gives them to realise that life,
with all its faults, struggles, and pain is still and for ever great and
beautiful.




CHAPTER IX

THE FRONTIER


I


Our frontier is twofold, the language and the sea. For the majesty of
our encircling waters we have no need to raise a plea, but to give God
thanks for setting so certain a seal on our individual existence and
giving us in the spreading horizon of the ocean some symbol of our
illimitable destiny. For the language there is something still to be
said; there are some ideas gaining currency that should be
challenged--the cold denial of some that the unqualified name Irish be
given to the literature of Irishman that is passionate with Irish
enthusiasm and loyalty to Ireland, yet from the exigencies of the time
had to be written in English; the view not only assumed but asserted by
some of the Gael that the Gall may be recognised only if he take second
place; the aloofness of many of the Gall, not troubling to understand
their rights and duties; the ignoring on both sides of the fine
significance of the name Irishman, of a spirit of patriotism and a
deep-lying basis of authority and justice that will give stability to
the state and secure its future against any upheaval that from the
unrest of the time would seem to threaten the world.


II


Consider first the literature of Irishmen in English. From the attitude
commonly taken on the question of literary values, it is clear that the
primary significance of expression in writing is often lost. What is
said, and the purpose for which it is said, take precedence of the
medium through which it is said. But from our national awakening to the
significance of the medium so long ignored we have grown so excited that
we frequently forget the greater significance of the thing. The
utterance of the man is of first importance, and, where his utterance
has weight, the vital need is to secure it through some medium, the
medium becoming important when one more than another is found to have a
wider and more intimate appeal; and then we do well to become insistent
for a particular medium when it is in anxiety for full delivery of the
writer's thought and a wide knowledge of its truth. But we are losing
sight of this natural order of things. It is well, then, the unconvinced
Gall should hear why he should accept the Irish language; not simply to
defer to the Gael, but to quicken the mind and defend the territory of
what is now the common country of the Gael and Gall. Davis caught up the
great significance of the language when he said: "Tis a surer barrier,
and more important frontier, than fortress or river." The language is at
once our frontier and our first fortress, and behind it all Irishmen
should stand, not because a particular branch of our people evolved it,
but because it is the common heritage of all. One who has a knowledge of
Irish can easily get evidence of its quickening power on the Irish mind.
Travel in an Irish-speaking district and hail one of its old people in
English, and you get in response a dull "Good-day, Sir." Salute him in
Irish and you touch a secret spring. The dull eyes light up, the face
is all animation, the body alert, and for a dull "good-day," you get
warm benedictions, lively sallies, and after you, as you pass on your
road, a flood of rich and racy Irish comes pouring down the wind. That
is the secret power of the language. It makes the old men proud of their
youth and gives to the young quickened faculties, an awakened
imagination and a world to conquer. This is no exaggeration. It is not
always obvious, because we do not touch the secret spring nor wander
near the magic. But the truth is there to find for him who cares to
search. You discover behind the dullness of a provincial town a bright
centre of interest, and when you study the circle you know that here is
some wonderful thing: priests, doctors, lawyers, teachers, tradesmen,
clerks--all drawn together, young and old, both sexes, all enthusiasts.
Sometimes a priest is teaching a smith, sometimes the smith is teaching
the priest: for a moment at least we have unconsciously levelled
barriers and there is jubilation in the natural life re-born. Out of
that quickened life and consciousness rises a vivid imagination with a
rush of thought and a power of expression that gives the nation a new
literature. That is the justification of the language. It awakens and
draws to expression minds that would otherwise be blank. It is not that
the revelation of Davis is of less value than we think, but that through
the medium of Irish other revelations will be won that would otherwise
be lost. Again, in subtle ways we cannot wholly understand, it gives the
Irish mind a defence against every other mind, taking in comradeship
whatever good the others have to offer, while retaining its own power
and place. The Irish mind can do itself justice only in Irish. But still
some ardent and faithful spirits broke through every difficulty of time
and circumstance and found expression in English, and we have the
treasures of Davis, Mitchel, and Mangan; yet, the majority remained
cold, and now, to quicken the mass, we turn to the old language. But
this is not to decry what was won in other fields. In the widening
future that beckons to us, we shall, if anything, give greater praise to
these good fighters and enthusiasts, who in darker years, even with the
language of the enemy, resisted his march and held the gap for Ireland.


III


On this ground the Gael and Gall stand on footing of equality. That is
the point many on both sides miss and we need to emphasise it. Some
Irishmen not of Gaelic stock speak of Irish as foreign to them, and
would maintain English in the principal place now and in the future. We
do well then to make clear to such a one that he is asked to adopt the
language for Ireland's sake as a nation and for his own sake as a
citizen. If he wishes to serve her he must stand for the language; if he
prefers English civilisation he should go back to England. There only
can he develop on English lines. An Irishman in Ireland with an English
mind is a queer contradiction, who can serve neither Ireland nor England
in any good sense, and both Ireland and England disown him. So the
Irishman of other than Gaelic ancestors should stand in with us, not
accepting something disagreeable as inevitable, but claiming a right by
birth and citizenship, joining the fine army of the nation for a brave
adventurous future, full of fine possibility and guaranteed by a fine
comradeship--owning a land not of flattery and favouritism, but of
freedom and manhood. This saving ideal has been often obscured by our
sundering class names. This is why we would substitute as common for all
the fine name of Irishman.


IV


But in asking all parties to accept the common name of Irishman, we find
a fear rather suggested than declared--that men may be asked in this
name to put by something they hold as a great principle of Life; that
Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter will all be asked to find agreement
in a fourth alternative, in which they will not submit to one another
but will all equally belie themselves. There is such a hidden fear, and
we should have it out and dispose of it. The best men of all parties
will have no truck with this and they are right. But on what ground,
then, shall we find agreement, the recognition of which Irish
Citizenship implies? On this, that the man of whatever sincere
principles, religious or civic, counts among his great duties his duty
as citizen; and he defends his creed because he believes it to be a safe
guide to the fulfilling of all duties, this including. When, therefore,
we ask him to stand in as Irish Citizen, it is not that he is to abandon
in one iota his sincere principles, but that he is to give us proof of
his sincerity. He tells us his creed requires him to be a good citizen:
we give him a fine field in which he can be to us a fine example.


V


In further consideration of this we should put by the thought of finding
a mere working agreement. There is a deep-lying basis of authority and
justice to seek, which it should be our highest aim to discover. Modern
governments concede justice to those who can compel justice--even the
democracy requires that you be strong enough to formulate a claim and
sustain it; but this is the way of tyranny. A perfect government should
seek, while careful to develop its stronger forces and keep them in
perfect balance, to consider also the claims of those less powerful but
not less true. A government that over-rides the weak because it is safe,
is a tyranny, and tyranny is in seed in the democratic governments of
our time. We must consider this well, for it is pressing and grave; and
we must get men to come together as citizens to defend the rights as
well of the unit which is unsupported as of the party that commands
great power. So shall we give steadiness and fervour to our growing
strength by balancing it with truth and justice: so shall we found a
government that excesses cannot undermine nor tyranny destroy.


VI


We have to consider, in conclusion, the unrest in the world, the war of
parties and classes, and the need of judging the tendencies of the time
to set our steps aright. With the wars and rumours of wars that threaten
the great nations from without and the wild upheavals that threaten them
within, it would be foolish to hide from ourselves the drift of events.
We must decide our attitude; and if it is too much to hope that we may
keep clear of the upheavals, we should aim at strengthening ourselves
against the coming crash. We cannot set the world right, but we can go a
long way to setting things in our own land right, by making through a
common patriotism a united people. What if we are held up occasionally
by the cold cries shot at every high aim--"dreamer--Utopia"; cry this
in return: no vision of the dreamer can be more wild than the frantic
make-shifts of the Great Powers to vie in armaments with one another or
repress internal revolts. Consider England in the late strike that
paralysed her. It was only suspended by a step that merely deferred the
struggle; the strife is again threatening. All the powers are so
threatened and their efforts to defer the hour are equally feverish and
fruitless; for the hour is pressing and may flash on the world when 'tis
least prepared. Let who will deride us, but let us prepare. We may not
guide our steps with the certainty of prophets, nor hope by our
beautiful schemes to make a perfect state; but we can only come near to
perfection in the light of a perfect ideal, and however far below it we
may remain, we can at least, under its inspiration, reach an existence
rational and human: our justification for a brave effort lies in that
the governments of this time are neither one nor the other. He who
thinks Ireland's struggle to express her own mind, to give utterance to
her own tongue, to stand behind her own frontier, is but a sentiment
will be surprised to find it leads him to this point. Herein is the
justification and the strength of the movement. Men are deriding things
around them, of the significance of which they have not the remotest
idea. Ireland is calling her children to a common banner, to the defence
of her frontier, to the building up of a national life, harmonious and
beautiful--a conception of citizenship, from which a right is conceded,
not because it can be compelled, but because it is just: to the
foundation of a state that will by its defence of the least powerful
prove all powerful, that will be strong because true, beautiful because
free, full of the music of her olden speech and caught by the magic of
her encircling sea.




CHAPTER X

LITERATURE AND FREEDOM--THE PROPAGANDIST PLAYWRIGHT


I


A nation's literature is an index to its mind. If the nation has its
freedom to win, from its literature may we learn if it is passionately
in earnest in the fight, or if it is half-hearted, or if it cares not at
all. Whatever state prevails, passionate men can pour their passion
through literature to the nation's soul and make it burn and move and
fight. For this reason it is of transcendent importance to the Cause.
Literature is the Shrine of Freedom, its fortress, its banner, its
charter. In its great temple patriots worship; from it soldiers go
forth, wave its challenge, and fight, and conquering, write the charter
of their country. Its great power is contested by none; rather, all
recognise it, and many and violent are the disputes as to its right use
and purpose. I propose to consider two of the disputants--the
propagandist playwright and the art-for-art's-sake artist, since they
raise issues that are our concern. It is curious that two so violently
opposed should be so nearly alike in error: they are both afraid of
life. The propagandist is all for one side; the artist afraid of every
side. The one lacks imagination; the other lacks heart; they are both
wide of the truth. The service of the truth requires them to pursue one
course; in their dispute they swerve from that course, one to right, one
to left. Because they leave the path on opposite sides, they do not see
how much alike is their error; but that they do both leave the path is
my point, and it is well we should consider it. It would be difficult to
deal with both sides at once; so I will consider the propagandist first.
What I have to charge against him is that his work is insincere, that he
is afraid to do justice to the other side, that he makes ridicule of our
exemplars, that he helps to keep the _poseur_ in being; and to conclude,
that only by a saving sense of humour can we find our way back to the
truth.


II


When we judge literature we do so by reference to the eternal truth, not
by what the writer considers the present phase of truth; and if
literature so tested is found guilty of suppression, evasion or
misinterpretation, we call the work insincere, though the author may
have written in perfect good faith. That is a necessary distinction to
keep in mind. If you call a man's work insincere, the superficial critic
will take it as calling the man himself insincere; but the two are
distinct, and it needs to be emphasised, for sincere men are making
these propagandist plays, of which the manifest and glaring untruth is
working mischief to the national mind. A type of such a play is familiar
enough in these days when we like to ridicule the West Briton. We are
served up puppets representing the shoneen with a lisp set over against
the patriot who says all the proper things suitable to the occasion.
Now, such a play serves no good purpose, but it has a certain bad
effect. It does not give a true interpretation of life; it enlightens no
one; but it flatters the prejudices of people who profess things for
which they have no zeal. That is the root of the mischief. Many of us
will readily profess a principle for which we will not as readily
suffer, but when the pinch comes and we are asked to do service for the
flag, we cover our unwillingness by calling the man on the other side
names. Where such a spirit prevails there can be no national awakening.
If we put a play before the people, it must be with a hope of arresting
attention, striking their imagination, giving them a grip of reality,
and filling them with a joy in life. Now, the propagandist play does
none of these things; it has neither joy nor reality; its characters are
puppets and ridiculous; they are essentially caricatures. This is
supposed to convert the unbeliever; but the intelligent unbeliever
coming to it is either bored or irritated by its extravagant absurdity,
and if he admits our sincerity, it is only at the expense of our
intelligence.


III


A propagandist play for a political end is even more mischievous--at
least lovers of freedom have more cause for protest. It makes our heroes
ridiculous. No man of imagination can stand these impossible persons of
the play who "walk on" eternally talking of Ireland. Our heroes were
men; these are _poseurs_. Get to understand Davis, Tone, or any of our
great ones, and you will find them human, gay, and lovable. "Were you
ever in love, Davis?" asked one of his wondering admirers, and prompt
and natural came the reply: "I'm never out of it." We swear by Tone for
his manly virtues; we love him because we say to ourselves: "What a fine
fellow for a holiday." A friend of Mitchel's travelling with him once
through a storm, was astonished to find him suddenly burst out into a
fine recitation, which he delivered with fine effect. He was joyous in
spirit. For their buoyancy we love them all, and because of it we
emulate them. We are influenced, not by the man who always wants to
preach a sermon at us, but by the one with whom we go for a holiday. Our
history-makers were great, joyous men, of fine spirit, fine imagination,
fine sensibility, and fine humour. They loved life; they loved their
fellow man; they loved all the beautiful, brave things of earth. When
you know them you can picture them scaling high mountains and singing
from the summits, or boating on fine rivers in the sunlight, or walking
about in the dawn, to the music of Creation, evolving the philosophy of
revolutions and building beautiful worlds. You get no hint of this from
the absurd propagandist play, yet this is what the heart of man craves.
When he does not get it, he cannot explain what he wants; but he knows
what he does not want, and he goes away and keeps his distance. The play
has missed fire, and the playwright and his hero are ridiculous. Let us
understand one thing: if we want to make men dutiful we must make them
joyous.


IV


It is because we must talk of grave things that we must preserve our
gaiety; otherwise we could not preserve our balance. By some freak of
nature, the average man strikes attitudes as readily as the average boy
whistles. We know how the _poseur_ works mischief to every cause, and we
can see the _poseur_ on every side. In politics, he has made the
platform contemptible, which is a danger to the nation, needing the
right use of platform; in literature--well, we all know bourgeois, but
who has done justice to the artist who gets on a platform to talk about
the bourgeois?--in religion, the _poseur_ is more likely to make
agnostics than all the Rationalist Press; and the agnostic _poseur_ in
turn is very funny. Now all these are an affliction, a collection of
absurdities of which we must cure the nation. If we cannot cure the
nation of absurdity we cannot set her free. Let it be our rule to
combine gaiety with gravity and we will acquire a saving sense of
proportion. Only the solemn man is dull; the serious man has a natural
fund of gaiety: we need only be natural to bring back joy to serious
endeavour. Then we shall begin to move. Let us remember a revolution
will surely fail when its leaders have no sense of humour.


V


But our humour will not be a saving humour unless it is of high order. A
great humorist is as rare as a great poet or a great philosopher. Though
ours may not be great we must keep it in the line of greatness.
Remember, great humour must be made out of ourselves rather than out of
others. The fine humorist is delightfully courteous; the commonplace
wit, invariably insulting. We must keep two things in mind, that in
laughter at our own folly is the beginning of wisdom; and the keenest
wit is pure fun, never coarse fun. We start a laugh at others by getting
an infallible laugh at ourselves. The commonplace wit arranges incidents
to make someone he dislikes ridiculous; his attitude is the attitude of
the superior person. He is nearly always--often unintentionally--offensive;
he repels the public sometimes in irritation, sometimes in amusement, for
they often see point in his joke, but see a greater joke in him, and they
are often laughing, not at his joke, but at himself. Let us for our
salvation avoid the attitude of the superior person. Don't make sport
of others--make it of yourself. Ridicule of your neighbour must be
largely speculation; of the comedy in yourself there can be no doubt.
When you get the essential humour out of yourself, you get the infallible
touch, and you arrest and attract everyone. You are not the superior
person. In effect, you slap your neighbour on the back and say, "We're
all in the same boat; let us enjoy the joke"; and you find he will come
to you with glistening eye. He may feel a little foolish at first--you
are poking his ribs; but you cannot help it--having given him the way to
poke your own. By your merry honesty he knows you for a safe comrade,
and he comes with relief and confidence--we like to talk about
ourselves. He will be equally frank with yourself; you will tell one
another secrets; you will reach the heart of man. That is what we need.
We must get the heart-beat into literature. Then will it quiver and
dance and weep and sing. Then we are in the line of greatness.


VI


It is because we need the truth that we object to the propagandist
playwright. Only in a rare case does he avoid being partial; and when he
is impartial he is cold and unconvincing. He gives us argument instead
of emotion; but emotion is the language of the heart. He does not touch
the heart; he tries to touch the mind: he is a pamphleteer and out of
place. He fails, and his failure has damaged his cause, for it leaves us
to feel that the cause is as cold as his play; but when the Cause is a
great one it is always vital, warm and passionate. It is for the sake of
the Cause we ask that a play be made by a sincere man-of-letters, who
will give us not propagandist literature nor art-for-art's-sake, but
the throbbing heart of man. The great dramatist will have the great
qualities needed, sensibility, sympathy, insight, imagination, and
courage. The special pleader and the _poseur_ lack all these things, and
they make themselves and their work foolish. Let us stand for the truth,
not pruning it for the occasion. The man who is afraid to face life is
not competent to lead anyone, to speak for anyone, or to interpret
anything: he inspires no confidence. The one to rouse us must be
passionate, and his passion will win us heart and soul. When from some
terribly intense moment, he turns with a merry laugh, only the fool will
take him as laughing at his cause; the general instinct will see him
detecting an attitude, tripping it up, and making us all merry and
natural again. In that moment we shall spring up astonished,
enthusiastic, exultant--here is one inspired; we shall enter a
passionate brotherhood, no cold disputes now--the smouldering fire along
the land shall quicken to a blaze, history shall be again in the making.
We shall be caught in the living flame.




CHAPTER XI

LITERATURE AND FREEDOM--ART FOR ART'S SAKE


I


Art for art's sake has come to have a meaning which must be challenged,
but yet it can be used in a sense that is both high and sacred. If a
gifted writer take literature as a great vocation and determine to use
his talents faithfully and well, without reference to fee or reward; if
prosperity cannot seduce him to the misuse of his genius, then we give
him our high praise. Let it still not be forgotten that the labourer is
worthy of his hire. But if the hire is not forthcoming, and he knowing
it, yet says in his heart, "The work must still be done"; and if he does
it loyally and bravely, despite the present coldness of the world,
doing the good work for the love of the work and all beautiful things;
and if with this meaning he take "art for art's sake" as his battle-cry,
then we repeat it is used in a sense both high and sacred.


II


But there are artists abroad whose chief glory seems to be to deny that
they have convictions--that is, convictions about the passionate things
of life that rouse and move their generation. Now that they should not
be special pleaders is an obvious duty, but unless they have a
passionate feeling for the vital things that move men, heart and soul,
they cannot interpret the heart and soul of passionate men, and their
work must be for ever cold. When literature is not passionate it does
not touch the spirit to lift and spread its wings and soar to finer air.
That is the great want about all the clever books now being turned
out--they often give us excitement; they never give us ecstasy. Then
there is an obvious feeling of something lacking which men try to make
up with art; and they produce work faultless in form and fastidious in
phrase, but still it lacks the touch of fire that would lift it from
common things to greatness.


III


If we are to apply art to great work we must distinguish art from
artifice. We find the two well contrasted in Synge's "Riders to the Sea"
and his "Playboy." The first was written straight from the heart. We
feel Synge must have followed those people carrying the dead body, and
touched to the quick by the _caoine_, passed the touch on to us, for in
the lyric swell of the close we get the true emotion. Here alone is he
in the line of greatness. This gripped his heart and he wrote out of
himself. But in the other work of his it was otherwise. He has put his
method on record: he listened through a chink in the floor, and wrote
around other people. It is characteristic of the art of our time. Let it
be called art if the critics will, but it is not life.


IV


No, it is not life. But there is so much talk just now of getting "down
to fundamentals," of the poetry of the tramp "walking the world," and
the rest of it, that it would be well if we _did get_ down to
fundamentals; and this is one thing fundamental--the tramp is a deserter
from life. He evades the troubled field where great causes are fought;
he shuns the battle because of the wounds and the sacrifice; he has no
heart for high conflict and victory. Let him under the cover of darkness
but secure his share of the spoils and the world may go to wreck. Yes,
he is the meanest of things--a deserter. On the field of battle he would
be shot. If we let him desert the field of life, go his way and walk the
world, let us not at least hail him as a hero.

The Repertory Theatre is the nursery of this particular art-cult, and
'twould relieve some of us to talk freely about it. The Repertory
Theatre has already become fashionable, and is quite rapidly become a
nuisance. Men are making songs and plays and lectures for art's sake,
for the praise of a coterie or to shock the bourgeois--above all shock
the bourgeois. A certain type of artist delights in shocking the
bourgeois--a riot over a play gives him great satisfaction. In passing,
one must note with exasperation, perhaps with some misgiving, how men
raise a riot over something not worth a thought, and will not fight for
things for which they ought to die. But he likes the bourgeois to think
him a terrible person; in his own esteem he is on an eminence, and he
proceeds to send out more shock-the-bourgeois literature; and 'tis
mostly very sorry stuff. Sometimes he tries to be emotional and is but
painfully artificial; sometimes he tries to be merry and gives us
flippancy for fun. And we feel a terrible need for getting back to a
standard, worthy and true. Great work can be made only for the love of
work; not for money, not for art's sake, not for intellectual appeal nor
flippant ridicule, but for the pure love of things, good, true and
beautiful. With the best of intentions we may fail; and this should be
laid down as a safe guiding principle; a dramatist should be moved by
his own tragedy; the novelist should be interested in his own story; the
poet should make his song for the love of the song and his comedy for
the fun of the thing.


VI


We naturally think of the Abbey Theatre when we speak of these things,
and as the Abbey work has certainly suffered from overpraise we may
correct it by comparison with Shakespeare. Before the Abbey we were so
used to triviality that when clever and artistic work appeared we at
once hailed it great. We _did_ get one or two great things, a fact to
note with hearty pleasure and pride. But the rest was merely clever; and
now that we are getting nothing great we must insist, and keep on
insisting, that 'tis merely clever. But let us remember that value of
the word great. Let it be kept for such names as Shakespeare and
Molière; and lesser men may be called brilliant, talented or
able--anything you will but great. Consider the scenes from the supreme
plays of Shakespeare and compare with them the innumerable plays now
coming forth and note a vital difference. These give us excitement,
where Shakespeare gave us vision. We may be reminded of Shakespeare's
duels and brawls and battles and blood; his generation revelled in
excitement. Yes, they craved it, and he gave it to them, but shot
through with wonder, subtlety, ecstasy; and his splendid creations, like
mighty worlds, keep us wondering for ever. We must get back that supreme
note of blended music and wonder, that makes the spirit beautiful and
tempts it to soar, till it rise over common things and mere commotion,
spreading its wings for the finer air where reason faints and falls to
earth.


VII


A dramatist cannot make a great play out of little people. His chief
characters at least must be great of heart and soul--the great hearts
that fight great causes. When such are caught, in the inevitable
struggle of affections and duties and the general clash of life their
passionate spirits send up all the elements that make great literature.
The writer who cannot enter into their battles and espouse their cause
cannot give utterance to their hearts; and we don't want what he thinks
about them; we want what they think about themselves. He who is in
passionate sympathy with them feels their emotion and writing from the
heart does great things. The artist who is in mortal dread of being
thought a politician or suspected of motives cannot feel, and will as
surely fail, as the one who sits down to play the rôle of politician
disguised as play-right. That is what the artist has got to see; and he
has got to see that while the Irish Revolution for centuries has
attracted the greatest hearts and brains of Ireland, for him carefully
to avoid it is to avoid the line of greatness. For a propagandist to sit
down to give it utterance would be as if a handy-man were to set out to
build a cathedral. The Revolution does not need to be argued; it
justifies itself--all we need is to give it utterance--give it utterance
once greatly. Then the writer may proceed to give utterance to every
good thing under the sun. But our artists are making, and will continue
to make, only second-class literature, for they are afraid of the
Revolution, and it is all over our best of life; they are afraid of that
life. But to enter the arena of greatness they must give it a voice.
That is the vocation of the poet.


VIII


Yes, and the poet will be unlike you, gentlemen of the fastidious
phrase. He will not be careless of form, but the passion that is in him
will make simple words burn and live; never will he in the mode of the
time go wide of the truth to make a picturesque phrase; his mind rapt on
the thing will fix on the true word; his heart warm with the battle will
fashion more beautiful forms than you, O detached and dainty artist; his
soul full of music and adventure will scale those heights it is your
fate to dream of but not your fortune to possess. Yet, you, too, might
possess them would you but step with him into the press of adventurous
legions, and make articulate the dream of men, and make splendid their
triumph. He is the prophet of to-morrow, though you deny him to-day. He
is not like to you, supercilious and aloof--he would have you for a
passionate brother, would raise your spirit in ecstasy, flood your mind
with thought, and touch your lips with fire. Because of his
sensitiveness he knows every mood and every heart and gives a voice and
a song to all. You might know him for a good comrade, where freedom is
to win or to hold, over in the van or the breach; able to deal good
blows and take them in the fine manner, a fine fighter; not with
darkened brow crying, "an eye for an eye"--for who _could_ give him
blow for blow or match his deed with a deed?--but one of open front and
open hand who will count it happiness to have made for a victory he may
not live to enjoy, as ready to die in its splendour as he had been to
live through the darkness before the dawn; remembering with soldier
tenderness the comrades of old battles, forgetting the malice of old
enemies; a high example of the magnanimous spirit, happily not yet
unknown on earth; with fine generosity and noble fire, full of that
great love the common cry can never make other than humanising and
beautiful, not without a gleam of humour more than half divine, he will
pass, leaving to the foe that hated him heartily equally with the friend
that loved him well, the wonder of his thought and the rapture of his
melody.




CHAPTER XII

RELIGION


I


It ought to be laid down as a first principle that grave questions which
have divided us in the past, and divide us still with much bitterness,
should not be thrust aside and kept out of view in the hope of harmony.
Where the attitude is such, the hope is vain. They should be approached
with courage in the hope of creating mutual respect and an honourable
solution for all. Religion is such a question. To the majority of men
this touches their most intimate life. Because of their jealous regard
for that intimate part of themselves they are prepared for bitter
hostilities with anyone who will assail it; and because of the
unmeasured bitterness of assaults on all sides we have come to count it
a virtue to bring together in societies labelled non-sectarian, men who
have been violently opposed on this issue. It will be readily allowed
that to bring men together anyhow, even suspiciously, is somewhat of an
advance, when we keep in mind how angrily they have quarrelled. But 'tis
not to our credit that in any assembly a particular name hardly dare be
mentioned; and it must be realised that, whatever purpose it may serve
in lesser undertakings, in the great fight for freedom no such attitude
will suffice. No grave question can be settled by ignoring it. Since it
is our duty to make the War of Independence a reality and a success, we
must invoke a contest that will as surely rouse every latent passion and
give every latent suspicion an occasion and a field. That is the danger
ahead. We must anticipate that danger, meet and destroy it. Perhaps at
this suggestion most of us will at once get restive. Some may say with
irritation: Why raise this matter? Others on the other side may prepare
forthwith to dig up the hatchet. Is not the attitude on both sides
evidence of the danger? Does anyone suppose we can start a fight for
freedom without making that danger a grimmer reality? Who can claim it a
wise policy merely for the moment to dodge it? For that is what we do.
Let us have courage and face it. At what I have to say let no man take
offence or fright--it commits no one to anything. It is written to try
and make opponents understand and respect one another, not to set them
at one another, least of all to make them "liberal," that is, lax and
contemptible, ready to explain everything away. We want primarily the
man who is prepared to fight his ground, but who is big enough in heart
and mind to respect opponents who will also fight theirs. In the
integrity and courage of both sides is the guarantee of the independence
of both. That should be our guiding thought. But as on this question
most people abandon all tolerance, it is quite possible what may be
written will satisfy none; still, it may serve the purpose of making a
need apparent. To repeat, we must face the question. But whoever elects
to start it, should approach the issue with sympathy and forbearance.
These are as necessary as courage and resolution; yet, since many often
sacrifice firmness to sympathy, others will take the opposite line of
riding roughshod over everyone, a harshness that confirms the weakling
in his weakness. To note all this is but to note the difficulty; and if
what is now written fails in its appeal, it need only be said to walk
unerringly here would require the insight of a prophet and the balance
of an angel.


II


What everyone should take as a fair demand is that all men should be
sincere in their professions, and that we should justify ourselves by
the consistency of our own lives rather than by the wickedness of our
neighbours: which is nothing new. It is our trouble that we must
emphasise obvious duties. To approach the question frankly with no
matter what good faith will lead to much heart-burning, perhaps, to no
little bitterness; but if we realise that all sides are about equally to
blame, we may induce an earnestness that may lead to better things. It
is in that hope I write. Catholics and Protestants, instead of saying to
one another the things with which we are familiar, should look to their
own houses; and if in this age of fashionable agnosticism, they should
conclude that the general enemy is the atheist, socialist, and the
syndicalist, they should still be reminded to look to their own houses;
and if the agnostic take this to justify himself, he should be reminded
he has never done anything to justify himself. It may seem a curious way
for inducing harmony to set out to prove everyone in the wrong; but the
point is clear, not to attack what men believe but to ask them to
justify their words by their deeds. The request is not unreasonable and
it may be asked in a tone that will show the sincerity of him who makes
it and waken a kindred feeling in all earnest men. The world will be a
better place to live in, and we shall be all better friends when every
man makes a genuine resolve to give us all the example of a better life.


III


A development that would require a treatise in itself I will but touch
on, to suggest to all interested a matter of general and grave
concern--the growing materialism of religious bodies. On all sides
self-constituted defenders of the faith are troubling themselves, not
with the faith but with the numbers of their adherents who have jobs,
equal sharers in emoluments, and so forth. A Protestant of standing
writes a book and proves his religion is one of efficiency; a Catholic
of equal standing quickly rejoins with another book to prove his
religion is also efficient; each blind to the fact that the resulting
campaign is disgraceful to both. When religion ceases to represent to us
something spiritual, and purely spiritual, we begin to drift away from
it. "Where thy treasure is, there thy heart is also." "No man can serve
God and Mammon." The modern rejoinder is familiar: "We must live." This,
our generation is not likely to forget. The grave concern is that
well-meaning men are accustoming themselves to this cry to sacrifice all
higher considerations for the "equal division of emoluments." Let us as
citizens and a community see that every man has the right and the means
to live; but when self-interested bodies start a rivalry in the name of
their particular creeds, we know it ends in a squalid greed and fight
for place, in a pursuit of luxury, the logical outcome of which must be
to make the world ugly, sordid and brutal. It would be a mistake to
overlook that high-minded men are allowing themselves to be committed
by plausible reasons to this growing evil. It is misguided enthusiasm.
There is a divine authority that warns us all: "Be zealous for the
better gifts."


IV


I wish to examine the attitude of the average Christian to the Agnostic.
"The world is falling away from religion," he will cry when depressed,
without thinking how much he himself may be a contributing cause. Let
him study it in this light. What is his attitude? When he comes to speak
of the tendency of the age he will indulge in vague generalities about
atheism, socialism, irreligion, and the rest; always the cause is
outside of him, and against him; he is not part of it. I ask him to pass
by the atheist awhile and take what may be of more concern. There is a
type of Catholic and Protestant who has as little genuine religion in
him as any infidel, who does not deny the letter of the law, but who
does not observe its spirit, whose only use for the letter is to
criticise and harass adversaries. Observe the high use he has for
liberty--drinking, card-playing, gambling, luxury; he has no place in
his life for any worthy deeds, nay, only scorn for such. Still he passes
for orthodox. If he is a Catholic, he secures that by putting in an
appearance at Mass on Sundays. His mind is not there; he arrives late
and goes early. His Protestant fellow in his private judgment finds more
scope: "Let the women go listen to the parson." This is the sort of
saying gives him such a conceit of himself. We have the type on both
sides, so all can see it. Now it is not in the way of the Pharisee we
come to note them, but to note that, strange as it may appear, either or
both together will come to applaud the denouncing of the atheist. We
gather such into our religious societies, and flatter them that they are
adherents of religion and the bulwark of the faith, and they forthwith
anathematise the atheist with great gusto. The one so anathematised is
often as worthless as themselves with a conceit to despise priest and
parson alike. But it sometimes happens he is a fine character who has no
religion as most of us understand it, but who has yet a fine spiritual
fervour, ready to fight and make sacrifices for a national or social
principle that he believes will make for better things, a man of
integrity and worth whom the best of men may be glad to hold as a
friend. Yet we find in the condition to which we have drifted such a one
may be pilloried by wasters, gamblers, rioters, a crew that are the
curse of every community. We lash the atheist and the age but give
little heed to the insincerity and cant of those we do not refuse to
call our own. What an example for the man anathematised. He sees the
vice and meanness of those we allow to pass for orthodox, and when he
sees also the complacency of the better part, he is unconvinced. We
praise the sweetness of the healing waters of Christ-like charity, but
despite our gospel he never gets it, never. We give him execration,
injustice; if we let him go with a word, it is never a gentle word, but
a bitter epithet; and we wonder he is estranged, when he sees our
amazing composure in an amazing welter of hypocrisy and deceit. There
is, of course, the better side, the many thousands of Catholics and
Protestants who sincerely aim at better things. But what has to be
admitted is that most sincerely religious people adopt to the man of no
established religion the same attitude as does the hypocrite: they join
in the general cry. They should look to their own houses; they should
purge the temple of the money-lender and the knave; they should see that
their field gives good harvest; they should remember that not to the
atheist only but to the orthodox was it written: "Every tree therefore
that doth not yield good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the
fire."


V


There is a word to be said to the man for whom was invented the curious
name agnostic. I'm concerned only with him who is sincere and
high-minded. Let us pass the flippant critics of things they do not
understand. But all sincere men are comrades in a deep and fine sense.
What the honest unbeliever has to keep in mind is that the darker side
is but one side. If he stands studying a crowd of the orthodox and finds
therein the drunkard, the gambler, the sensualist; and if he says bitter
things of the value of religion and gets in return the clerical fiat of
one who is more a politician than a priest; and if he rejoins
contemptuously, "This is fit for women and children," let him be
reminded that he can also study the other side if he care. If he has the
instinct of a fighter he must know every army has in its trail the
camp-follower and the vulture, but when the battle is set and the danger
is imminent, only the true soldier stands his ground. Because some who
are of poor spirit are in high place, let him not forget the old spirit
still exists. Not only the women but the best intellects of men still
keep the old traditions. Newman and Pascal, Dante and Milton, Erigena
and Aquinas, are all dead, but in our time even they have had followers
not too far off. In the same spirit Gilbert Chesterton found wonder at a
wooden post, and Francis Thompson, in his divine wandering, troubled the
gold gateways of the stars. Let our friend before he frames his final
judgment pause here. He may well be baffled by many anomalies of the
time, his eye may rest on the meaner horde, his ear be filled with the
arrogance of some unworthy successor of Paul; and if he says: "Why
permit these things?" he may be told there are some alive in this
generation who will question all such things, and who, however hard it
go with them, have no fear for the final victory.


VI


Perhaps the conventional Christian and conventional non-Christian may
rest a moment to consider the reality. Between the bitter believer and
the exasperated unbeliever, Christianity is being turned from a practice
to a polemic, and if we are to recall the old spirit we must recall the
old earnestness and simplicity of the early Martyrs. We do not hear that
they called Nero an atheist, but we do hear that they went singing to
the arena. By their example we may recover the spirit of song, and have
done with invective. If we find music and joyousness in the old
conception, it is not in the fashion of the time to explain it away in
some "new theology," for he to whom it is not a fashion, but a vital
thing, keeps his anchor by tradition. To him it is the shining light
away in the mists of antiquity; it is the strong sun over the living
world; it is the pillar of fire over the widening seas and worlds of the
unknown; it is the expanse of infinity. When he is lost in its mystery
he adverts to the wonder about him, for all that is wonderful is touched
with it, and all that is lovely is its expression. It is in the breath
of the wind, pure and bracing from the mountain top. It is in the song
of the lark holding his musical revel in the sunlight. It is in the
ecstasy of a Spring morning. It is in the glory of all beautiful things.
When it has entered and purified his spirit, his heart goes out to the
persecuted in all ages and countries. None will he reject. "I am not
come to call the just but sinners." He remembers those words, and his
great charity encompasses not only the persecuted orthodox, but the
persecuted heretics and infidels.


VII


I will not say if such an endeavour as I suggest can have an immediate
success. But I think it will be a step forward if we get sincere men on
one side to understand the sincerity of the other side; and if in
matters of religion and speculation, where there is so much difficulty
and there is likely to be so much conflict of opinion, there should be
no constraint, but rather the finest charity and forbearance; then the
orthodox would be concerned with practising their faith rather than in
harassing the infidel, and the infidel would receive a more useful
lesson than the ill-considered tirades he despises. He may remain still
unconvinced, but he will give over his contempt. This question of
religion is one on which men will differ, and differing, ultimately they
will fight if we find no better way. We must remember while freedom is
to win we are facing a national struggle, and if we are threatened
within by a civil war of creeds it may undo us. That is why we must face
the question. That is why I think utter frankness in these grave matters
is of grave urgency. If we approach them in the right spirit we need
have no fear--for at heart the most of men are susceptible to high
appeals. What we need is courage and intensity; it is gabbling about
surface things makes the bitterness. If in truth we safeguard the right
of every man as we are bound to do we shall win the confidence of all,
and we may hope for a braver and better future, wherein some light of
the primal Beauty may wander again over earth as in the beginning it
dawned on chaos when the Spirit of God first moved over the waters.




CHAPTER XIII

INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM


I


It will probably cause surprise if I say there is, possibly, more
intellectual freedom in Ireland than elsewhere in Europe. But I do not
mean by intellectual freedom conventional Free-thought, which is,
perhaps, as far as any superstition from true freedom of the mind. The
point may not be admitted but its consideration will clear the air, and
help to dispose of some objections hindering that spiritual freedom,
fundamental to all liberty.


II


I have no intention here of in any way criticising the doctrine of
Free-thought, but one so named cannot be ignored when we consider
Intellectual Freedom. This, then, has to be borne in mind when speaking
of Free-thought, that while it allows you latitude of opinion in many
things, it will not allow you freedom in all things, in, for example,
Revealed Religion. I only mention this to show that on both sides of
such burning questions you have disputants dogmatic. A dogmatic "yes"
meets an equally dogmatic "no." The dogmas differ and it is not part of
our business here to discuss them: but to come to a clear conception of
the matter in hand, it must be kept in mind, that if you,
notwithstanding, freely of your own accord, accept belief in certain
doctrines, the freethinkers will for that deny you freedom. And the
freethinkers are right in that they are dogmatic. (But this they
themselves appear to overlook.) Freedom is absolutely dogmatic. It is
fundamentally false that freedom implies no attachment to any belief, no
being bound by any law, "As free as the wind," as the saying goes, for
the wind is not free. Simple indeterminism is not liberty.


III


We must, then, find the true conception of Intellectual Freedom. It is
the freedom of the individual to follow his star and reach his goal.
That star binds him down to certain lines and his freedom is in exact
proportion to his fidelity to the lines. The seeming paradox may be
puzzling: a concrete example will make it clear. Suppose a man,
shipwrecked, finds himself at sea in an open boat, without his bearings
or a rudder. He is at the mercy of the wind and wave, without freedom,
helpless. But give him his bearings and a helm, and at once he recovers
his course; he finds his position and can strike the path to freedom. He
is at perfect liberty to scuttle his boat, drive it on the rocks or do
any other irrational thing; but if he would have freedom, he must follow
his star.


IV


This leads us to track a certain error that has confused modern debate.
A man in assumed impartiality tells you he will stand away from his own
viewpoint and consider a case from yours. Now, if he does honestly hold
by his own view and thinks he can put it by and judge from his
opponent's, he is deceiving both himself and his opponent. He can do so
_apparently,_ but, whatever assumption is made, he is governed
subconsciously by his own firm conviction. His belief is around him like
an atmosphere; it goes with him wherever he goes; he can only stand free
of it by altogether abandoning it. If his case is such that he can come
absolutely to the other side to view it uninfluenced by his own, then he
has abandoned his own. He is like a man in a boat who has thrown over
rudder and bearings: he may be moved by any current: he is adrift. If he
is to recover the old ground, he must win it as something he never had.
But if instead of this he does at heart hold by his own view, he should
give over the deception that he is uninfluenced by it in framing
judgment. It is psychologically impossible. Let the man understand it as
a duty to himself to be just to others, and to substitute this principle
for his spurious impartiality. This is the frank and straightforward
course. While he is under his own star, he is moving in its light: he
has, if unconsciously, his hand on the helm: he judges all currents
scrupulously and exactly, but always from his own place at the wheel and
with his own eyes. To abandon one or the other is to betray his trust,
or in good faith and ignorance to cast it off till it is gone, perhaps,
too far to recover.


V


If we so understand intellectual freedom, in what does its denial
consist? In this: around every set of principles guiding men, there
grows up a corresponding set of prejudices that with the majority in
practice often supersede the principles; and these prejudices with the
march of time assume such proportions, gather such power, both by the
numbers of their adherents and the authority of many supporting them,
that for a man of spirit, knowing them to be evil and urgent of
resistance, there is needed a vigour and freedom of mind that but few
understand and even fewer appreciate or encourage. The prejudices that
grow around a man's principles are like weeds and poison in his garden:
they blight his flowers, trees and fruit; and he must go forth with fire
and sword and strong unsparing hand to root out the evil things. He
will find with his courage and strength are needed passion and patience
and dogged persistence. For men defend a prejudice with bitter venom
altogether unlike the fire that quickens the fighter for freedom; and
the destroyer of the evil may find himself assailed by an astonishing
combination--charged with bad faith or treachery or vanity or sheer
perversity, in proportion as those who dislike his principles deny his
good faith; or those who profess them, because of his vigour and candour
denounce him for an enemy within the fold. But for all that he should
stand fast. If he has the courage so to do, he gives a fine example of
intellectual freedom.


VI


It will serve us to consider some prejudices, free-thinking and
religious. First the free-thinker. He has a prejudice very hard to kill.
If I believe in the beginning what Bernard Shaw has found out thus late
in the day, that priests are not as bad as they are painted, the
free-thinker would deny me intellectual freedom. The fact of my right to
think the matter out and come to that conclusion would count for
nothing. On the other hand, if I were known to have professed a certain
faith and to have abandoned it, he would acclaim that as casting off
mental slavery. This is hopelessly confusing. If a man has ceased to
hold a certain belief he deserves no credit for courage in saying so
openly. If he thinks what he once believed, or is supposed to have
believed, has no vitality, surely he can have no reason for being afraid
of it, and to speak of dangerous consequences from it to him, can be
_for him_ at least only a bogey. His simple denial is, then, no mark of
courage. Courage is a positive thing. Yet he may well have that courage.
Suppose him in taking his stand to have taken up some social faith that
for him has promise of better things. He will find his new creed
surrounded by its own swarm of prejudices, and if he refuse to worship
every fetish of the free-thinker, declaring that this stands to him for
a certain definite, beautiful thing, and fighting for it, he will find
himself denied and scouted by his new friends. He may find himself often
in company with some supposed enemies. He will surely need in his
sincere attitude to life a freedom of mind that is not a name merely but
a positive virtue that demands of him more than denunciation of
obscurantism, the recognition of a personal duty and the justification
of personal works.


VII


The religious prejudice will be no less hard to kill. Indiscriminate
denunciation of unbelievers as wicked men serves no good purpose and
leads nowhere. There are wicked men on all sides. Our standard must be
one that will distinguish the sincere men on all sides; and our loyalty
to our particular creeds must be shown in our lives and labours, not in
the reviling of the infidel. We are justified in casting out the
hypocrite from every camp, and when we come to this task we can be sure
only of the hypocrites in our own; and we should lay it as an injunction
on all bodies to purge themselves. The burden will be laid on all--not
one surely of which men can complain--that they shall prove their
principles in action and lay their prejudices by. Christians might well
find exemplars in the early martyrs, those who for their principles went
so readily to the lions. One may anticipate the complacent rejoinder:
"This is not so exacting an age; men are not asked to die for religion
now"--and one may in turn reply, that, perhaps our age may not be
without occasion for such high service, but that we may be unwilling to
go to the lions. Our time has its own trial--by no means unexacting let
me tell you--but we quietly slip it by: it is much easier to revile the
infidel. This as a test of loyalty should be pinned: we shall shut up
thereby the hypocrite. And the earnest man, more conscious of his own
burden, will be more sympathetic, generous and just, and will come to be
more logical and to see what Newman well remarked, that one who asks
questions shows he has no belief and in asking may be but on the road to
one. If to ask a question is to express a doubt, it is no less, perhaps,
to seek a way out of it. "What better can he do than inquire, if he is
in doubt?" asks Newman. "Not to inquire is in his case to be satisfied
with disbelief." We should, acting in this light, instead of denouncing
the questioner, answer his question freely and frankly, encourage him to
ask others and put him one or two by the way. Men meeting in this manner
may still remain on opposite sides, but there will be formed between
them a bond of sympathy that mutual sincerity can never fail to
establish. This is freedom, and a fine beautiful thing, surely worth a
fine effort. What we have grown accustomed to, the bitterness, the
recriminations, the persecutions and retaliations, are all the evil
weeds of prejudice, growing around our principles and choking them. They
are so far a denial of principle, a proof of mental slavery. Our freedom
will attest to faith: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
Liberty."


VIII


This, in conclusion, is the root of the matter: to claim freedom and to
allow it in like measure; rather than to deny, to urge men to follow
their beliefs: only thus can they find salvation. To constrain a man to
profess what we profess is worse than delusion: should he give lip
service to what he does not hold at heart, 'twere for him deceitful and
for us dangerous. Where his star calls, let him walk sincerely. If his
creed is insufficient or inconsistent, in his struggle he shall test it,
and in his sincerity he must make up the insufficiency or remove the
inconsistency. This is the only course for honourable men and no man
should object. To repeat, it puts an equal burden on all--the onus of
justifying the faith that is in them. Life is a divine adventure and he
whose faith is finest, firmest and clearest will go farthest. God does
not hold his honours for the timid: the man who buried his talent,
fearing to lose it, was cast into exterior darkness. He who will step
forward fearlessly will be justified. "All things are possible to him
who believeth." Many on both sides may be surprised to find suddenly
proposed as a test to both sides the readiness to adventure bravely on
the Sea of Life. The free-thinker may be astonished to hear, not that he
goes too far, but does not go far enough. He may gasp at the test, but
it is in effect the test and the only true one. The man who does not
believe he is to be blotted out when his body ceases to breathe, who
holds all history for his heritage and the wide present for his
battle-ground, believes also the future is no repellent void but a
widening and alluring world. If in his travel he is scrupulous in
detail, it is in the spirit of the mariner who will neither court a
ship-wreck nor be denied his adventure. He cannot deny to others the
right to hesitate and halt by the way, but his spirit asks no less than
the eternal and the infinite. Yes, but many good religious people are
not used to seeing the issue in this light, and those who make a trade
of fanning old bitterness will still ply their bitter trade, crying that
anarchists, atheists, heretics, infidels, all outcasts and wicked men,
are all rampant for our destruction. It may be disputed, but, admitting
it, one may ask: Is there no place among Christian people for those
distinctive virtues on which we base the superiority of our religion?
When the need is greatest, should the practice be less urgent? It is not
evident that the free-thinker is obliged by any of his principles to
give better example. It is evident the Christian is so obliged. Why is
he found wanting? If human weakness were pleaded, one could understand.
It is against the making a virtue of it lies the protest. How many noble
things there are in our philosophies, and how little practised. No
violent convulsions should be needed to make us free, if men were but
consistent: we should find ourselves wakening from a wicked dream in a
bloodless and beautiful revolution. We are in the desert truly and a
long way from the Promised Land. But we must get to the higher ground
and consider our position; and if one by one we are stripped of the
prejudices that too long have usurped the place of faith, and we find
ourselves, to our dismay, perhaps lacking that faith that we have so
long shouted but so little testified, and tremble on the verge of panic,
there is one last line that gives in four words with divine simplicity
and completeness a final answer to all timidity and objections: "Fear
not; only believe."




CHAPTER XIV

MILITARISM


I


To defend or recover freedom men must be always ready for the appeal to
arms. Here is a principle that has been vindicated through all history
and needs vindication now. But in our time the question of rightful war
has been crossed by the evil of militarism, and in our assertion of the
principle, that in the last resort freemen must have recourse to the
sword, we find ourselves crossed by the anti-militarist campaign. We
must dispose of this confusing element before we can come to the ethics
of war. Of the evil of militarism there can be no question, but a
careful study of some anti-militaristic literature discloses very
different motives for the campaign. I propose to lay some of the
motives bare and let the reader judge whether there may not be an
insidious plot on foot to make a deal between the big nations to crush
the little ones. For this purpose I will consider two books on the
question, one by Mr. Norman Angell, "The Great Illusion," and one by M.
Jacques Novikow, "War and Its Alleged Benefits." In the work of Mr.
Angell the reader will find the suggestion of the deal, while in the
work of M. Novikow is given a clear and honest statement of the
anti-militarist position, with which we can all heartily agree. Those of
us who would assert our freedom should understand the right
anti-militarist position, because in its exponents we shall find allies
at many points. But with Mr. Angell's book it is otherwise. These points
emerge: the basis of morality is self-interest; the Great Powers have
nothing to gain by destroying one another, they should agree to police
and exploit the territory of the "backward races"; if the statesmen take
a different view from the financiers, the financiers can bring pressure
to bear on the statesmen by their international organisation; the
capitalist has no country. Well, our comment is, the patriot has a
country, and when he wakens to the new danger, he may spoil the
capitalist dream, and this book of Mr. Angell's may in a sense other
than that the author intended be appropriately named "The Great
Illusion."


II


The limits of this essay do not admit of detailed examination of the
book named. What I propose to do is make characteristic extracts
sufficiently full to let the reader form judgment. As we are only
concerned for the present with the danger I mention, I take particular
notice of Mr. Angell's book, and I refer the reader for further study to
the original. But the charge of taking an accidental line from its
context cannot be made here, as the extracts are numerous, the tendency
of all alike, and more of the same nature can be found. I divide the
extracts into three groups, which I name:


  1. The Ethics of the Case.

  2. The Power of Money.

  3. The Deal.


Where italics are used they are mine.

  1. THE ETHICS OF THE CASE.--"The real basis of Social Morality is
  self-interest." ("The Great Illusion," 3rd Ed., p. 66.) "Have we not
  abundant evidence, indeed, that the passion of patriotism, as divorced
  from material interest, is being modified by the pressure of material
  interest?" (p. 167.) "Piracy was magnificent, doubtless, but it was
  not business." (Speaking of the old Vikings, p. 245.) "The pacifist
  propaganda has failed largely because it has not put (and proven) the
  plea of interest as distinct from the moral plea." (p. 321.)

  2. THE POWER OF MONEY.--"The complexity of modern finance makes New
  York dependent on London, London upon Paris, Paris upon Berlin, to a
  greater degree than has ever yet been the case in history." (p. 47.)

  "It would be a miracle if already at this point the whole influence of
  British Finance were not thrown against the action of the British
  Government." (On the assumed British capture of Hamburg, p. 53).

  "The most absolute despots cannot command money." (p. 226.)

  "With reference to capital, it may almost be said that it is organised
  so naturally internationally that _formal organisation is not
  necessary_." (p. 269.)

  3. THE DEAL.--"France has benefited by the conquest of Algeria,
  England by that of India, because in each case the arms were employed
  not, properly speaking, for conquest at all, but _for police
  purposes_." (p. 115.)

  "While even the wildest Pan-German has never cast his eyes in the
  direction of Canada, he has cast them, and does cast them, in the
  direction of Asia Minor.... _Germany may need to police Asia Minor_."
  (pp. 117, 118.)

  "_It is much more to our interest to have an orderly and organised
  Asia Minor under German tutelage than to have an unorganised and
  disorderly one which should be independent_." (p. 120.)

  "Sir Harry Johnston, in the 'Nineteenth Century' for December, 1910,
  comes a great deal nearer to touching the real kernel of the
  problem.... He adds that the best informed Germans used this language
  to him: '_You know that we ought to make common cause in our dealings
  with backward races of the world_!'"


The quotations speak for themselves. Note the policing of the "backward
races." The Colonies are not in favour. Mr. Angell writes: "What in the
name of common sense is the advantage of conquering them if the only
policy is to let them do as they like?" (p. 92.) South Africa occasions
bitter reflections: "The present Government of the Transvaal is in the
hands of the Boer Party." (p. 95.) And he warns Germany, that, supposing
she wishes to conquer South Africa, "she would learn that the policy
that Great Britain has adopted was not adopted by philanthropy, but in
the hard school of bitter experience." (p. 104.) We believe him, and we
may have to teach a lesson or two in the same school. It may be noted in
passing Mr. Angell gives Ireland the honour of a reference. In reply to
a critic of the _Morning Post_, who wrote thus: "It is the sublime
quality of human nature that every great nation has produced citizens
ready to sacrifice themselves rather than submit to external force
attempting to dictate to them a conception other than their own of what
is right." (p. 254.) Mr. Angell replied: "One is, of course, surprised
to see the foregoing in the _Morning Post_; the concluding phrase would
justify the present agitation in India, or in Egypt, or in Ireland
against British, rule." (p. 254.) Comment is needless. The reading and
re-reading of this book forces the conclusion as to its sinister
design. Once that design is exposed its danger recedes. There is one at
least of the "backward races" that may not be sufficiently alive to
self-interest, but may for all that upset the capitalist table and
scatter the deal by what Ruskin described in another context as "the
inconvenience of the reappearance of a soul."


III


We must not fail to distinguish the worth of the best type of
anti-militarist and to value the truth of his statement. It is curious
to find Mr. Angell writing an introduction to M. Novikow's book, for M.
Novikow's position is, in our point of view, quite different. He does
not draw the fine distinction of policing the "backward races." Rather,
he defends the Bengalis. Suppose their rights had never been violated,
he says: "They would have held their heads higher; they would have been
proud and dignified, and perhaps might have taken for their motto, _Dieu
et mon droit_." ("War and Its Alleged Benefits," p. 12.) He can be
ironical and he can be warm. Later, he writes; "The French (and all
other people) should vindicate their rights with their last drop of
blood; so what I write does not refer to those who defend their rights,
but to those who violate the rights of others." (Note p. 70.) He does
not put by the moral plea, but says: "Political servitude develops the
greatest defects in the subjugated peoples." (p. 79.) And he pays his
tribute to those who die for a noble cause: "My warmest sympathy goes
out to those noble victims who preferred death to disgrace." (p. 82.)
This is the true attitude and one to admire; and any writer worthy of
esteem who writes for peace never fails to take the same stand. Emerson,
in his essay on "War," makes a fine appeal for peace, but he writes: "If
peace is sought to be defended or preserved for the safety of the
luxurious or the timid, it is a sham and the peace will be base. War is
better, and the peace will be broken." And elsewhere on "Politics," he
writes: "A nation of men unanimously bent on freedom or conquest can
easily confound the arithmetic of the statists and achieve extravagant
actions out of all proportions to their means." Yes, and by our
unanimity for freedom we mean to prove it true.




CHAPTER XV

THE EMPIRE


I


With the immediate promise of Home Rule many strange apologists for the
Empire have stepped into the sun. Perhaps it is well--we may find
ourselves soon more directly than heretofore struggling with the Empire.
So far the fight has been confused. Imperialists fighting for Home Rule
obscured the fact that they were _not_ fighting the Empire. Now Home
Rule is likely to come, and it will serve at least the good purpose of
clearing the air and setting the issue definitely between the nation and
the Empire. We shall have our say for the nation, but as even now many
things, false and hypocritical, are being urged on behalf of the
Empire, it will serve us to examine the Imperial creed and show its
tyranny, cruelty, hypocrisy, and expose the danger of giving it any
pretext whatever for aggression. For the Empire, as we know it and deal
with it, is a bad thing in itself, and we must not only get free of it
and not be again trapped by it, but must rather give hope and
encouragement to every nation fighting the same fight all the world
over.


II


One candid writer, Machiavelli, has put the Imperial creed into a book,
the examination of which will--for those willing to see--clear the air
of illusion. Now, we are conscious that defenders of the Empire profess
to be shocked by the wickedness of Machiavelli's utterance--we shall
hear Macaulay later--but this shocked attitude won't delude us. Let
those who have not read Machiavelli's book, "The Prince," consider
carefully the extracts given below and see exactly how they fit the
English occupation of Ireland, and understand thoroughly that the Empire
is a thing, bad in itself, utterly wicked, to be resisted everywhere,
fought without ceasing, renounced with fervour and without
qualification, as we have been taught from the cradle to renounce the
Devil with all his works and pomps. Consider first the invasion.
Machiavelli speaks:--"The common method in such cases is this. As soon
as a foreign potentate enters into a province those who are weaker or
disobliged join themselves with him out of emulation and animosity to
those who are above them, insomuch that in respect to those inferior
lords no pains are to be omitted that may gain them; and when gained,
they will readily and unanimously fall into one mass with the State that
is conquered. Only the conqueror is to take special care that they grow
not too strong, nor be entrusted with too much authority, and then he
can easily with his own forces and their assistance keep down the
greatness of his neighbours, and make himself absolute arbiter in that
province." Here is the old maxim, "Divide and conquer." To gain an entry
some pretence is advisable. Machiavelli speaks with approval of a
certain potentate who always made religion a pretence. Having entered a
vigorous policy must be pursued. We read--"He who usurps the government
of any State is to execute and put in practice all the cruelties which
he thinks material at once." Cromwell rises before us.

"A prince," says Machiavelli, "is not to regard the scandal of being
cruel if thereby he keeps his subjects in their allegiance." "For," he
is cautioned, "whoever conquers a free town and does not demolish it
commits a great error and may expect to be ruined himself; because
whenever the citizens are disposed to revolt they betake themselves, of
course, to that blessed name of Liberty, and the laws of their
ancestors, which no length of time nor kind usage whatever will be able
to eradicate." An alternative to utter destruction is flattery and
indulgence. "Men are either to be flattered and indulged or utterly
destroyed." We think of the titles and the bribes. Again, "A town that
has been anciently free cannot more easily be kept in subjection than by
employing its own citizens." We think of the place-hunter, the King's
visit, the "loyal" address. To make the conquest secure we read: "When a
prince conquers a new State and annexes it as a member to his old, then
it is necessary your subjects be disarmed, all but such as appeared for
you in the conquest, and they are to be mollified by degrees and
brought into such a condition of laziness and effeminacy that in time
your whole strength may devolve upon your own natural militia." We think
of the Arms Acts and our weakened people. But while one-half is disarmed
and the other half bribed, with neither need the conqueror keep faith.
We read: "A prince who is wise and prudent cannot, or ought not, to keep
his parole, when the keeping of it is to his prejudice and the causes
for which he promised removed." This is made very clear to prevent any
mistake. "It is of great consequence to disguise your inclination and
play the hypocrite well." We think of the Broken Treaty and countless
other breaches of faith. It is, of course, well to seem honourable, but
Machiavelli cautions: "It is honourable to seem mild, and merciful, and
courteous, and religious, and sincere, and indeed to be so, provided
your mind be so rectified and prepared, that you can act quite contrary
upon occasion." Should anyone hesitate at all this let him hear: "He is
not to concern himself if run under the infamy of those vices, without
which his dominion was not to be preserved." Thus far the philosophy of
Machiavelli. The Imperialist out to "civilise the barbarians" is, of
course, shocked by such wickedness; but we are beginning to open our
eyes to the wickedness and hypocrisy of both. To us this book reads as
if a shrewd observer of the English Occupation in Ireland had noted the
attending features and based these principles thereon. We have reason to
be grateful to Machiavelli for his exposition. His advice to the prince,
in effect, lays bare the marauders of his age and helps us to expose the
Empire in our own.


III


There is a lesson to be learnt from the fact that this book of
Machiavelli's, written four centuries ago in Italy, is so apt here
to-day. We must take this exposition as the creed of Empire and have no
truck with the Empire. It may be argued that the old arts will be no
longer practised on us. Let the new supporters of the Empire know that
by the new alliance they should practise these arts on other people,
which would be infamy. We are not going to hold other people down; we
are going to encourage them to stand up. If it means a further fight we
have plenty of stimulus still. Our oppression has been doubly bitter
for having been mean. The tyranny of a strong mind makes us rage, but
the tyranny of a mean one is altogether insufferable. The cruelty of a
Cromwell can be forgotten more easily than the cant of a Macaulay. When
we read certain lines we go into a blaze, and that fire will burn till
it has burnt every opposition out. In his essay on Milton, Macaulay
having written much bombast on the English Revolution, introduces this
characteristic sentiment: "One part of the Empire there was, so
unhappily circumstanced, that at that time its misery was necessary to
our happiness and its slavery to our freedom." For insolence this would
be hard to beat. Let it be noted well. It is the philosophy of the
"Predominant Partner." If he had thanked God for having our throats to
cut, and cut them with loud gratitude like Cromwell, a later generation
would be incensed. But this other attitude is the gall in the cup.
Macaulay is, of course, shocked by Machiavelli's "Prince." In his essay
on Machiavelli we read: "It is indeed scarcely possible for any person
not well acquainted with the history and literature of Italy to read
without horror and amazement the celebrated treatise which has brought
so much obloquy on the name of Machiavelli. Such a display of
wickedness, naked, yet not ashamed, such cool, judicious, scientific
atrocity, seemed rather to belong to a fiend than to the most depraved
of men." But, later, in the same essay, is a valuable sidelight. He
writes of Machiavelli as a man "whose only fault was that, having
adopted some of the maxims then generally received, he arranged them
most luminously and expressed them more forcibly than any other writer."
Here we have the truth, of course not so intended, but evident:
Machiavelli's crime is not for the sentiments he entertained but for
writing them down luminously and forcibly--in other words, for giving
the show away.

Think of Macaulay's "horror and amazement," and read this further in the
same essay: "Every man who has seen the world knows that nothing is so
useless as a general maxim. If it be very moral and very true it may
serve for a copy to a charity boy." So the very moral and the very true
are not for the statesman but for the charity-boy. This perhaps may be
defended as irony; hardly, but even so, in such irony the character
appears as plainly as in volumes of solemn rant. To us it stands out
clearly as the characteristic attitude of the English Government. The
English people are used to it, practise it, and will put up with it; but
the Irish people never were, are not now, and never will be used to it;
and we won't put up with it. We get calm as old atrocities recede into
history, but to repeat the old cant, above all to try and sustain such
now, sets all the old fire blazing--blazing with a fierceness that will
end only with the British connection.


IV


Not many of us in Ireland will be deceived by Macaulay, but there is
danger in an occasional note of writers, such as Bernard Shaw and Stuart
Mill. Our instinct often saves us by natural repugnance from the
hypocrite, when we may be confused by some sentiment of a sincere man,
not foreseeing its tendency. When an aggressive power looks for an
opening for aggression it first looks for a pretext, and our danger lies
in men's readiness to give it the pretext. Such a sentiment as this from
Mill--on "Liberty"--gives the required opening: "Despotism is a
legitimate mode of government in dealing with Barbarians, provided the
end be their improvement"; or this from Shaw's preface to the Home Rule
edition of "John Bull's Other Island": "I am prepared to Steam-roll
Tibet if Tibet persist in refusing me my international rights." Now, it
is within our right to enforce a principle within our own territory, but
to force it on other people, called for the occasion "barbarians," is
quite another thing. Shaw may get wrathful, and genuinely so, over the
Denshawai horror, and expose it nakedly and vividly as he did in his
first edition of "John Bull's Other Island," Preface for Politicians;
but the aggressors are undisturbed as long as he gives them pretexts
with his "steam-roll Tibet" phrase. And when he says further that he is
prepared to co-operate with France, Italy, Russia, Germany and England
in Morocco, Tripoli, Siberia and Africa to civilise these places, not
only are his denunciations of Denshawai horrors of no avail--except to
draw tears after the event--but he cannot co-operate in the civilising
process without practising the cruelty; and perhaps in their privacy the
empire-makers may smile when Shaw writes of Empire with evident
earnestness as "a name that every man who has ever felt the sacredness
of his own native soil to him, and thus learnt to regard that feeling in
other men as something holy and inviolable, spits out of his mouth with
enormous contempt." When, further, in his "Representative Government"
Mill tells the English people--a thing about which Shaw has no
illusions--that they are "the power which of all in existence best
understands liberty, and, whatever may have been its errors in the past,
has attained to more of conscience and moral principle in its dealing
with foreigners than any other great nation seems either to conceive as
possible or recognise as desirable"--they not only go forward to
civilise the barbarians by Denshawai horrors, but they do so unctuously
in the true Macaulayan style. We feel a natural wrath at all this, not
unmingled with amusement and amazement. In studying the question we read
much that rouses anger and contempt, but one must laugh out heartily in
coming to this gem of Mill's, uttered with all Mill's solemnity:
"Place-hunting is a form of ambition to which the English, considered
nationally, are almost strangers." When the sincerest expression of the
English mind can produce this we need to have our wits about us; and
when, as just now, so much nonsense, and dangerous nonsense, is being
poured abroad about the Empire, we need to pause, carefully consider all
these things, and be on our guard.


V


In conclusion, we may add our own word to the talk of the hour--the
politicians on Home Rule. It should raise a smile to hear so often the
prophecy that Ireland will be loyal to the Empire when she gets Home
Rule. We are surprised that any Irishman could be so foolish, though, no
doubt, many Englishmen are so simple as to believe it. History and
experience alike deny it. Possibly the Home Rule chiefs realise their
active service is now limited to a decade or two, and assume Home Rule
may be the limit for that time, and speak only for that time; but at the
end of that time our generation will be vigorous and combative, and if
we cannot come into our own before then, we shall be ready then. We need
say for the moment no more than this--the limit of the old generation
is not the limit of ours. If anyone doubt the further step to take let
him consider our history, recent and remote. The old effort to subdue or
exterminate us having failed, the new effort to conciliate us began.
Minor concessions led to the bigger question of the land. One Land Act
led to another till the people came by their own. Home Rule, first to be
killed by resolute government, was next to be killed by kindness, and
Local Government came. Local Government made Home Rule inevitable; and
now Home Rule is at hand and we come to the last step. Anyone who reads
the history of Ireland, who understands anything of progress, who can
draw any lesson from experience, must realise that the advent of Home
Rule marks the beginning of the end.




CHAPTER XVI

RESISTANCE IN ARMS--FOREWORD


I


The discussion of freedom leads inevitably to the discussion of an
appeal to arms. If proving the truth and justice of a people's claim
were sufficient there would be little tyranny in the world, but a
tyrannical power is deaf to the appeal of truth--it cannot be moved by
argument, and must be met by force. The discussion of the ethics of
revolt is, then, inevitable.


II


The ubiquitous pseudo-practical man, petulant and critical, will at once
arise: "What is the use of discussing arms in Ireland? If anyone wanted
to fight it would be impossible, and no one wants to fight. What
prevents ye going out to begin?" Such peevish criticism is anything but
practical, and one may ignore it; but it suggests the many who would
earnestly wish to settle our long war with a swift, conclusive fight,
yet who feel it no longer practical. Keeping to the practical issue, we
must bear in mind a few things. Though Ireland has often fought at odds,
and could do so again, it is not just now a question of Ireland poorly
equipped standing up to England invincible. England will never again
have such an easy battle. The point now to emphasise is this--by
remaining passive and letting ourselves drift we drift into the conflict
that involves England. We must fight for her or get clear of her. There
can be no neutrality while bound to her; so a military policy is an
eminently practical question. Moreover, it is an urgent one: to stand in
with England in any danger that threatens her will be at least as
dangerous as a bold bid to break away from her. One thing above all,
conditions have changed in a startling manner; England is threatened
within as without; there are labour complications of all kinds of which
no one can foresee the end, while as a result of another complication
we find the Prime Minister of England going about as carefully protected
as the Czar of Russia.[Footnote: The militant suffragette agitation.]
The unrest of the times is apt to be even bewildering. England is not
alone in her troubles--all the great Powers are likewise; and it is at
least as likely for any one of them to be paralysed by an internal war
as to be prepared to wage an external one. This stands put clearly--we
cannot go away from the turmoil and sit down undisturbed; we must stand
in and fight for our own hand or the hand of someone else. Let us
prepare and stand for our own. However it be, no one can deny that in
all the present upheavals it is at least practical to discuss the ethics
of revolt.


III


We can count on a minority who will see wisdom in such a discussion; it
must be our aim to make the discussion effective. We must be patient as
well as resolute. We are apt to get impatient and by hasty denunciation
drive off many who are wavering and may be won. These are held back,
perhaps, by some scruple or nervousness, and by a fine breath of the
truth and a natural discipline may yet be made our truest soldiers.
Emerson, in his address at the dedication of the Soldiers' Monument,
Concord, made touching reference in some such in the American Civil War.
He told of one youth he knew who feared he was a coward, and yet
accustomed himself to danger, by forcing himself to go and meet it. "He
enlisted in New York," says Emerson, "went out to the field, and died
early." And his comment for us should be eloquent. "It is from this
temperament of sensibility that great heroes have been formed." The
pains we are at to make men physically fit we must take likewise to make
them mentally fit. We are minutely careful in physical training, drill
regulations and the rest, which is right, for thus we turn a mob into an
army and helplessness into strength. Let us be minutely careful, too,
with the untried minds--timid, anxious, sensitive in matters of
conscience; like him Emerson spoke of, they may be found yet in the
foremost fighting line, but we must have patience in pleading with them.
Here above all must we keep our balance, must we come down with sympathy
to every particular. It is surely evident that it is essential to give
the care we lavish on the body with equal fulness to the mind.


IV


At the heart of the question we will be met by the religious objection
to revolt. Here all scruples, timidity, wavering, will concentrate; and
here is our chief difficulty to face. The right to war is invariably
allowed to independent states. The right to rebel, even with just cause,
is not by any means invariably allowed to subject nations. It has been
and is denied to us in Ireland. We must answer objectors line by line,
leading them, where it serves, step by step to our conclusions; but this
is not to make freedom a mere matter of logic--it is something more.
When it comes to war we shall frequently give, not our promises, but our
conclusions. This much must be allowed, however, that, as far as logic
will carry, our position must be perfectly sound; yet, be it borne in
mind, our cause reaches above mere reasoning--mere logic does not
enshrine the mysterious touch of fire that is our life. So, when we
argue with opponents we undertake to give them as good as or better than
they can give, but we stake our cause on the something that is more. On
this ground I argue not in general on the right of war, but in
particular on the right of revolt; not how it may touch other people
elsewhere ignoring how it touches us here in Ireland. A large treatise
could be written on the general question, but to avoid seeming academic
I will confine myself as far as possible to the side that is our
concern. For obvious reasons I propose to speak as to how it affects
Catholics, and let them and others know what some Catholic writers of
authority have said on the matter. One thing has to be carefully made
clear. It is seen in the following quotation from an eminent Catholic
authority writing in Ireland in the middle of the last century, Dr.
Murray, of Maynooth: "The Church has issued no definition whatever on
the question--has left it open. Many theologians have written on it; the
great majority, however (so far as I have been able to examine them),
pass it over in silence." (_Essays chiefly Theological_, vol. 4). This
has to be kept in mind. Theologians have written, some on one side and
some on the other, but the Church has left it open. I need not labour
the point why it is useful to quote Catholic authorities in particular,
since in Ireland an army representative of the people would be largely
Catholic, and much former difficulty arose from Catholics in Ireland
meeting with opposition from some Catholic authorities. It may be seen
the position is delicate as well as difficult, and in writing a
preliminary note one point should be emphasised. We must not evade a
difficulty because it is delicate and dangerous, and we must not
temporise. In a physical contest on the field of battle it is allowable
to use tactics and strategy, to retreat as well as advance, to have
recourse to a ruse as well as open attack; but _in matters of principle
there can be no tactics, there is one straightforward course to follow,
and that course must be found and followed without swerving to the end_.




CHAPTER XVII

RESISTANCE IN ARMS--THE TRUE MEANING OF LAW


I


When we stand up to question false authority we should first make our
footing firm by showing we understand true authority and uphold it. Let
us be clear then as to the meaning of the word law. It may be defined;
an ordinance of reason, the aim of which is the public good and
promulgated by the ruling power. Let us cite a few authorities. "A human
law bears the character of law so far as it is in conformity with right
reason; and in that point of view it is manifestly derived from the
Eternal Law." (_Aquinas Ethicus,_ Vol. 1, p. 276.) Writing of laws that
are unjust either in respect to end, author or form, St. Thomas says:
"Such proceedings are rather acts of violence than laws; because St.
Augustine says: 'A law that is not just goes for no law at all.'"
(_Aquinas Ethicus_, Vol. 1, p. 292.) "The fundamental idea of all law,"
writes Balmez, "is that it be in accordance with reason, that it be an
emanation from reason, an application of reason to society" (_European
Civilisation_, Chap. 53). In the same chapter Balmez quotes St. Thomas
with approval: "The kingdom is not made for the king, but the king for
the kingdom"; and he goes on to the natural inference: "That all
governments have been established for the good of society, and that this
alone should be the compass to guide those who are in command, whatever
be the form of government." It is likewise the view of Mill, in
_Representative Government_, that the well-being of the governed is the
sole object of government. It was the view of Plato before the Christian
era: his ideal city should be established, "that the whole City might be
in the happiest condition." (_The Republic_, Book 4.) Calderwood writes:
"Political Government can be legitimately constructed only on condition
of the acknowledgment of natural obligations and rights as inviolable."
(_Handbook of Modern Philosophy, Applied Ethics_, Sec. 4.) Here all
schools and all times are in agreement. Till these conditions are
fulfilled for us we are at war. When an independent and genuine Irish
Government is established we shall yield it a full and hearty
allegiance: the law shall then be in repute. We do not stand now to deny
the idea of authority, but to say that the wrong people are in
authority, the wrong flag is over us.


II


"We must overthrow the arguments that might be employed against us by
the advocates of blind submission to any power that happens to be
established," writes Balmez, on resistance to _De Facto_ Governments.
(_European Civilisation_, Chap. 55.) We could not be more explicit than
the famous Spanish theologian. To such arguments let the following stand
out from his long and emphatic reply:--"Illegitimate authority is no
authority at all; the idea of power involves the idea of right, without
which it is mere physical power, that is force." He writes further: "The
conqueror, who, by mere force of arms, has subdued a nation, does not
thereby acquire a right to its possession; the government, which by
gross iniquities has despoiled entire classes of citizens, exacted undue
contributions, abolished legitimate rights, cannot justify its acts by
the simple fact of its having sufficient strength to execute these
iniquities." There is much that is equally clear and definite. What
extravagant things can be said on the other side by people in high
places we know too well. Balmez in the same book and chapter gives an
excellent example and an excellent reply: "Don Felix Amat, Archbishop of
Palmyra, in the posthumous work entitled _Idea of the Church Militant_,
makes use of these words: 'Jesus Christ, by His plain and expressive
answer, _Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's_, has sufficiently
established that the mere fact of a government's existence is sufficient
for enforcing the obedience of subjects to it....' His work was
forbidden at Rome," is Balmez' expressive comment, and he continues,
"and whatever may have been the motives for such a prohibition, we may
rest assured that, in the case of a book advocating such doctrines,
every man who is jealous of his rights might acquiesce in the decree of
the Sacred Congregation." So much for _De Facto_ Government. It is
usurpation; by being consummated it does not become legitimate. When its
decrees are not resisted, it does not mean we accept them in
principle--nor can we even pretend to accept them--but that the hour to
resist has not yet come. It is the strategy of war.


III


We stand on the ground that the English Government in Ireland is founded
in usurpation and as such deny its authority. But if it be argued,
assuming it as Ireland's case, that a usurped authority, gradually
acquiesced in by the people, ultimately becomes the same as legitimate,
the reply is still clear. For ourselves we meet the assumption with a
simple denial, appealing to Irish History for evidence that we never
acquiesced in the English Usurpation. But to those who are not satisfied
with this simple denial, we can point out that even an authority,
originally founded legitimately, may be resisted when abusing its power
to the ruin of the Commonwealth. We still stand on the ground that the
English government is founded in usurpation, but we can dispose of all
objections by proving the extremer case. This is the case Dr. Murray,
already quoted, discusses. "The question," he writes, "is about
resistance to an established and legitimate government which abuses its
power." (_Essays, Chiefly Theological_, Vol. 4.) He continues: "The
common opinion of a large number of our theologians, then, is that it is
lawful to resist by force, and if necessary to depose, the sovereign
ruler or rulers, in the extreme--the very extreme--case wherein the
following conditions are found united:


  "1. The tyranny must be excessive--intolerable.

  "2. The tyranny must be manifest, manifest to men of good sense and
  right feeling.

  "3. The evils inflicted by the tyrant must be greater than those which
  would ensue from resisting and deposing him.

  "4. There must be no other available way of getting rid of the tyranny
  except by recurring to the extreme course.

  "5. There must be a moral certainty of success.

  "6. The revolution must be one conducted or approved by the community
  at large ... the refusal of a small party in the State to join with
  the overwhelming mass of their countrymen would not render the
  resistance of the latter unlawful." (_Essays, Chiefly Theological_;
  see also Rickaby, _Moral Philosophy_, Chap. 8, Sec. 7.)

Some of these conditions are drawn out at much length by Dr. Murray. I
give what is outstanding. How easily they could fit Irish conditions
must strike anyone. I think it might fairly be said that our leaders
generally would, if asked to lay down conditions for a rising, have
framed some more stringent than these. It might be said, in truth, of
some of them that they seem to wait for more than a moral certainty of
success, an absolute certainty, that can never be looked for in war.


IV


When a government through its own iniquity ceases to exist, we must, to
establish a new government on a true and just basis, go back to the
origin of Civil Authority. No one argues now for the Divine Right of
Kings, but in studying the old controversy we get light on the subject
of government that is of all time. To the conception that kings held
their power immediately from God, "Suarez boldly opposed the thesis of
the initial sovereignty of the people; from whose consent, therefore,
all civil authority immediately sprang. So also, in opposition to
Melanchthon's theory of governmental omnipotence, Suarez _a fortiori_
admitted the right of the people to depose those princes who would have
shown themselves unworthy of the trust reposed in them." (De Wulf,
_History of Medieval Philosophy,_ Third Edition, p. 495.) Suarez'
refutation of the Anglican theory, described by Hallam as clear, brief,
and dispassionate, has won general admiration. Hallam quotes him to the
discredit of the English divines: "For this power, by its very nature,
belongs to no one man but to a multitude of men. This is a certain
conclusion, being common to all our authorities, as we find by St.
Thomas, by the Civil laws, and by the great canonists and casuists; all
of whom agree that the prince has that power of law-giving which the
people have given him. And the reason is evident, since all men are
born equal, and consequently no one has a political jurisdiction over
another, nor any dominion; nor can we give any reason from the nature of
the thing why one man should govern another rather than the contrary."
(Hallam--_Literature of Europe_, Vol. 3, Chap. 4.) Dr. Murray, in the
essay already quoted, speaks of Sir James Mackintosh as the ablest
Protestant writer who refuted the Anglican theory, which Mackintosh
speaks of as "The extravagance of thus representing obedience as the
only duty without an exception." Dr. Murray concludes his own essay on
_Resistance to the Supreme Civil Power_ by a long passage from
Mackintosh, the weight and wisdom of which he praises. The greater part
of the passage is devoted to the difficulties even of success and
emphasising the terrible evils of failure. In what has already been
written here I have been at pains rather to lay bare all possible evils
than to hide them. But when revolt has become necessary and inevitable,
then the conclusion of the passage Dr. Murray quotes should be endorsed
by all: "An insurrection rendered necessary by oppression, and warranted
by a reasonable probability of a happy termination, is an act of public
virtue, always environed with so much peril as to merit admiration."
Yes, and given the happy termination, the right and responsibility of
establishing a new government rest with the body of the people.


V


We come, then, to this conclusion, that government is just only when
rightfully established and for the public good; that usurpation not only
may but ought to be resisted; that an authority originally legitimate
once it becomes habitually tyrannical may be resisted and deposed; and
that when from abuse or tyranny a particular government ceases to exist,
we have to re-establish a true one. It is sometimes carelessly said,
"Liberty comes from anarchy," but this is a very dangerous doctrine. It
would be nearer truth to say from anarchy inevitably comes tyranny. Men
receive a despot to quell a mob. But when a people, determined and
disciplined, resolve to have neither despotism nor anarchy but freedom,
then they act in the light of the Natural Law. It is well put in the
doctrine of St. Thomas, as given by Turner in his _History of
Philosophy_ (Chap. 38): "The redress to which the subjects of a tyrant
have a just right must be sought, not by an individual, but by an
authority temporarily constituted by the people and acting according to
law." Yes, and when wild and foolish people talk hysterically of our
defiance of all authority, let us calmly show we best understand the
basis of Authority--which is Truth, and most highly reverence its
presiding spirit--which is Liberty.




CHAPTER XVIII

RESISTANCE IN ARMS--OBJECTIONS


I


Having stated the case for resistance, it will serve us to consider some
objections. Many inquiring minds may be made happy by a clear view of
the doctrine, till some clever opponent holds them up with remarks on
prudence, possibly sensible, or remarks on revolutionists, most probably
wild, with, perhaps, the authority of a great name, or unfailing refuge
in the concrete. It is curious that while often noticed how men, trying
to evade a concrete issue, take refuge in the abstract, it is not
noticed that men, trying to avoid acknowledging the truth of some
principle, take refuge in the concrete. A living and pressing
difficulty, though transient, looms larger than any historical fact or
coming danger. Seeing this, we may restore confidence to a baffled mind,
by helping it to distinguish the contingent from the permanent. Thus, by
disposing of objections, we make our ground secure.


II


To the name of prudence the most imprudent people frequently appeal.
Those whose one effort is to evade difficulties, who to cover their
weakness plead patience, would be well advised to consider how men
passionately in earnest, enraged by these evasions, pour their scorn on
patience as a thing to shun. The plea does not succeed; it only for the
moment damages the prestige of a great name. Patience is not a virtue of
the weak but of the strong. An objector says: "Of course, all this is
right in the abstract, but consider the frightful abuses in practice,"
and some apt replies spring to mind. Dr. Murray, writing on "Mental
Reservation," in his _Essays, chiefly Theological_, speaks thus: "But it
is no objection to any principle of morals to say that unscrupulous men
will abuse it, or that, if publicly preached to such and such an
audience or in such and such circumstances, it will lead to mischief."
This is admirable, to which the objector can only give some helpless
repetitions. With Balmez, we reply: "But in recommending prudence to the
people let us not disguise it under false doctrines--let us beware of
calming the exasperation of misfortune by circulating errors subversive
of all governments, of all society." (_European Civilisation_, Chap.
55.) Of men who shrink from investigating such questions, Balmez wrote:
"I may be permitted to observe that their prudence is quite thrown away,
that their foresight and precaution are of no avail. Whether they
investigate these questions or not, they _are_ investigated, agitated
and decided, in a manner that we must deplore." (Ibid. Chap. 54.) Take
with this Turner on France under the old _régime_ and the many and
serious grievances of the people: "The Church, whose duty it was to
inculcate justice and forbearance, was identified, in the minds of the
people, with the Monarchy which they feared and detested." (_History of
Philosophy_, Chap. 59.) The moral is that when injustice and evil are
rampant, let us have no palliation, no weakness disguising itself as a
virtue. What we cannot at once resist, we can always repudiate. To
ignore these things is the worst form of imprudence--an imprudence which
we, for our part at least, take the occasion here heartily to disclaim.


III


There is so much ill-considered use of the word revolutionist, we should
bear in mind it is a strictly relative term. If the freedom of a people
is overthrown by treachery and violence, and oppression practised on
their once thriving land, that is a revolution, and a bad revolution.
If, with tyranny enthroned and a land wasting under oppression, the
people rise and by their native courage, resource and patience
re-establish in their original independence a just government, that is a
revolution, and a good revolution. The revolutionist is to be judged by
his motives, methods and ends; and, when found true, his insurrection,
in the words of Mackintosh, is "an act of public virtue." It is the
restoration of, Truth to its place of honour among men.


IV


Balmez mentions Bossuet as apparently one who denies the right here
maintained; and we may with profit read some things Bossuet has said in
another context, yet which touches closely what is our concern. Writing
of _Les Empires_, thus Bossuet: "Les révolutions des empires sont
réglées par la providence, et servent à humilier les princes." This is
hardly calculated to deter us from a bid for freedom; and if we go on to
read what he has written further under this heading, we get testimony to
the hardihood and love of freedom and country that distinguished early
Greece and Rome in language of eloquence that might inflame any people
to liberty. Of undegenerate Greece, free and invincible: "Mais ce que la
Grece avait de plus grand était une politique ferme et prévoyante, qui
savait abandonner, hasarder et défendre, ce qu'il fallait; et, ce qui
est plus grand encore, un courage que l'amour de la liberté et celui de
la patrie rendaient invincible." Of undegenerate Rome, her liberty: "La
liberté leur était donc un trésor qu'ils préferoient à toutes les
richesses de l'univers." Again: "La maxime fondamentale de la
république était de regarder la liberté comme une chose inséparable du
nom Roman." And her constancy: "Voila de fruit glorieux de la patience
Romaine. Des peuples qui s'enhardissaient et se fortifiaient par leurs
malheurs avaient bien raison de croire qu'on sauvait tout pourvu qu'on
ne perdit pas l'esperance." And again: "Parmi eux, dans les états les
plus tristes, jamais les faibles conseils n'ont été seulement écoutés."
The reading of such a fine tribute to the glory of ancient liberties is
not likely to diminish our desire for freedom; rather, to add to the
natural stimulus found in our own splendid traditions, the further
stimulus of this thought that must whisper to us: "Persevere and
conquer, and to-morrow our finest opponent will be our finest panegyrist
when the battle has been fought and won."


V


In conclusion, in the concrete this simple fact will suffice: we have
established immutable principles; the concrete circumstances are
contingent and vary. It is admirably put in the following passage: "The
historical and sociological sciences, so carefully cultivated in modern
times, have proved to evidence that social conditions _vary_ with the
epoch and the country, that they are the resultant of quite a number of
fluctuating influences, and that, accordingly, the science of Natural
Right should not merely establish _immutable_ principles bearing on the
moral end of man, but should likewise deal with the _contingent_
circumstances accompanying the application of those principles." (De
Wulf, _Scholasticism, Old and New_, Part 2, Chap. 2, Sec. 33.) Yes, and
if we apply principles to-morrow, it is not with the conditions of
to-day we must deal, but "with the contingent circumstances accompanying
the application of those principles." Let that be emphasised. The
conditions of twenty years ago are vastly changed to-day; and how
altered the conditions of to-morrow can be, how astonishing can be the
change in the short span of twenty years, let this fact prove. Ireland
in '48 was prostrate after a successful starvation and an unsuccessful
rising--to all appearances this time hopelessly crushed; yet within
twenty years another rising was planned that shook English government in
Ireland to its foundations. Let us bear in mind this further from De
Wulf: "Sociology, understood in the wider and larger sense, is
transforming the methods of the science of Natural Right." In view of
that transformation he is wise who looks to to-morrow. What De Wulf
concludes we may well endorse, when he asks us to take facts as they are
brought to light and study "each question on its merits, in the light of
these facts and not merely in its present setting but as presented in
the pages of history." It can be fairly said of those who have always
stood for the separation of Ireland from the British Empire, that they
alone have always appealed to historical evidence, have always regarded
the conditions of the moment as transient, have always discussed
possible future contingencies. The men who temporised were always
hypnotised by the conditions of the hour. But in the life-story of a
nation stretching over thousands of years, the British occupation is a
contingent circumstance, and the immutable principle is the Liberty of
the Irish People.




CHAPTER XIX

THE BEARNA BAOGHAIL--CONCLUSION


I


But when principles have been proved and objections answered, there are
still some last words to say for some who stand apart--the men who held
the breach. For, they do stand apart, not in error but in constancy; not
in doubt of the truth but its incarnation; not average men of the
multitude for whom human laws are made, who must have moral certainty of
success, who must have the immediate allegiance of the people. For it is
the distinguishing glory of our prophets and our soldiers of the forlorn
hope, that the defeats of common men were for them but incentives to
further battle; and when they held out against the prejudices of their
time, they were not standing in some new conceit, but most often by
prophetic insight fighting for a forgotten truth of yesterday, catching
in their souls to light them forward, the hidden glory of to-morrow.
They knew to be theirs by anticipation the general allegiance without
which lesser men cannot proceed. They knew they stood for the Truth,
against which nothing can prevail, and if they had to endure struggle,
suffering and pain, they had the finer knowledge born of these things, a
knowledge to which the best of men ever win--that if it is a good thing
to live, it is a good thing also to die. Not that they despised life or
lightly threw it away; for none better than they knew its grandeur, none
more than they gloried in its beauty, none were so happily full as they
of its music; but they knew, too, the value of this deep truth, with the
final loss of which Earth must perish: the man who is afraid to die is
not fit to live. And the knowledge for them stamped out Earth's oldest
fear, winning for life its highest ecstasy. Yes, and when one or more of
them had to stand in the darkest generation and endure all penalties to
the extreme penalty, they knew for all that they had had the best of
life and did not count it a terrible thing if called by a little to
anticipate death. They had still the finest appreciation of the finer
attributes of comradeship and love; but it is part of the mystery of
their happiness and success, that they were ready to go on to the end,
not looking for the suffrage of the living nor the monuments of the
dead. Yes, and when finally the re-awakened people by their better
instincts, their discipline, patriotism and fervour, will have massed
into armies, and marched to freedom, they will know in the greatest hour
of triumph that the success of their conquering arms was made possible
by those who held the breach.


II


When, happily, we can fall back on the eloquence of the world's greatest
orator, we turn with gratitude to the greatest tribute ever spoken to
the memory of those men to whom the world owes most. Demosthenes, in the
finest height of his finest oration, vindicates the men of every age and
nation who fight the forlorn hope. He was arraigned by his rival,
Æschines, for having counselled the Athenians to pursue a course that
ended in defeat, and he replies thus: "If, then, the results had been
foreknown to all--not even then should the Commonwealth have abandoned
her design, if she had any regard for glory, or ancestry, or futurity.
As it is, she appears to have failed in her enterprise, a thing to which
all mankind are liable, if the Deity so wills it." And he asks the
Athenians: "Why, had we resigned without a struggle that which our
ancestors encountered every danger to win, who would not have spit upon
you?" And he asks them further to consider strangers, visiting their
City, sunk in such degradation, "especially when in former times our
country had never preferred an ignominious security to the battle for
honour." And he rises from the thought to this proud boast: "None could
at any period of time persuade the Commonwealth to attach herself in
secure subjection to the powerful and unjust; through every age has she
persevered in a perilous struggle for precedency and honour and glory."
And he tells them, appealing to the memory of Themistocles, how they
honoured most their ancestors who acted in such a spirit: "Yes; the
Athenians of that day looked not for an orator or a general, who might
help them to a pleasant servitude: they scorned to live if it could not
be with freedom." And he pays them, his listeners, a tribute: "What I
declare is, that such principles are your own; I show that before my
time such was the spirit of the Commonwealth." From one eloquent height
to another he proceeds, till, challenging Æschines for arraigning him,
thus counselling the people, he rises to this great level: "But, never,
never can you have done wrong, O Athenians, in undertaking the battle
for the freedom and safety of all: I swear it by your forefathers--those
that met the peril at Marathon, those that took the field at Platæa,
those in the sea-fight at Salamis, and those at Artimesium, and many
other brave men who repose in the public monuments, all of whom alike,
as being worthy of the same honour, the country buried, Æschines, not
only the successful and victorious." We did not need this fine eloquence
to assure us of the greatness of our O'Neills and our Tones, our
O'Donnells and our Mitchels, but it so quickens the spirit and warms the
blood to read it, it so touches--by the admiration won from ancient and
modern times--an enduring principle of the human heart--the capacity to
appreciate a great deed and rise over every physical defeat--that we
know in the persistence of the spirit we shall come to a veritable
triumph. Yes; and in such light we turn to read what Ruskin called the
greatest inscription ever written, that which Herodotus tells us was
raised over the Spartans, who fell at Thermopylæ, and which Mitchel's
biographer quotes as most fitting to epitomise Mitchel's life:
"Stranger, tell thou the Lacedemonians that we are lying here, having
obeyed their words." And the biographer of Mitchel is right in holding
that he who reads into the significance of these brave lines, reads a
message not of defeat but of victory.


III


Yes; and in paying a fitting tribute to those great men who are our
exemplars, it would be fitting also, in conclusion, to remember
ourselves as the inheritors of a great tradition; and it would well
become us not only to show the splendour of the banner that is handed on
to us, but to show that this banner _we_, too, are worthy to bear. For,
how often it shall be victorious and how high it shall be planted, will
depend on the conception we have of its supreme greatness, the
knowledge that it can be fought for in all times and places, the
conviction that we may, when least we expect, be challenged to deny it;
and that by our bearing we may bring it new credit and glory or drag it
low in repute. We do well, I say, to remember these things. For in our
time it has grown the fashion to praise the men of former times but to
deny their ideal of Independence; and we who live in that ideal, and in
it breathe the old spirit, and preach it and fight for it and prophesy
for it an ultimate and complete victory--we are young men, foolish and
unpractical. And what should be our reply? A reply in keeping with the
flag, its history and its destiny. Let them, who deride or pity us, see
we despise or pity their standards, and let them know by our works--lest
by our election they misunderstand--that we are not without ability in a
freer time to contest with them the highest places--avoiding the boast,
not for an affected sense of modesty but for a saving sense of humour.
For in all the vanities of this time that make Life and Literature choke
with absurdities, pretensions and humbug, let us have no new folly. Let
us with the old high confidence blend the old high courtesy of the
Gaedheal. Let us grow big with our cause. Shall we honour the flag we
bear by a mean, apologetic front? No! Wherever it is down, lift it;
wherever it is challenged, wave it; wherever it is high, salute it;
wherever it is victorious, glorify and exult in it. At all times and
forever be for it proud, passionate, persistent, jubilant, defiant;
stirring hidden memories, kindling old fires, wakening the finer
instincts of men, till all are one in the old spirit, the spirit that
will not admit defeat, that has been voiced by thousands, that is
noblest in Emmet's one line, setting the time for his epitaph: "_When_
my country"--not _if_--but "_when_ my country takes her place among the
nations of the earth." It is no hypothesis; it is a certainty. There
have been in every generation, and are in our own, men dull of
apprehension and cold of heart, who could not believe this, but we
believe it, we live in it: _we know it_. Yes, we know it, as Emmet knew
it, and as it shall be seen to-morrow; and when the historian of
to-morrow, seeing it accomplished, will write its history, he will not
note the end with surprise. Rather will he marvel at the soul in
constancy, rivalling the best traditions of undegenerate Greece and
Rome, holding through disasters, persecutions, suffering, and not less
through the seductions of milder but meaner times, seeing through all
shining clearly the goal: he will record it all, and, still marvelling,
come to the issue that dauntless spirit has reached, proud and happy;
but he will write of that issue--_Liberty; Inevitable_: in two words to
epitomise the history of a people that is without a parallel in the
Annals of the World.





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