there is truly an irish question. there are two irish questions, and the most important of them is not that which appears in our newspapers and in our political propaganda.
the first is international, and can be stated shortly. it is the desire of ireland to assume control of her national life. with this desire the english people have professed to be in accord, and it is at any rate so thoroughly understood that nothing further need be made of it in these pages.
the other irish question is different, and less simply described. the difficulty about it is that it cannot be approached until the question of ireland's freedom has by some means been settled, for this ideal of freedom has captured the imagination of the race. it rides ireland like a nightmare, thwarting or preventing all civilising or cultural work in this country, and it is not too much to say that ireland cannot even begin to live until that obsession and fever has come to an end, and her imagination has been set free to do the work which imagination alone can do—imagination is intelligent kindness—we have sore need of it.
the second question might plausibly be called a religious one. it has been so called, and, for it is less troublesome to accept an idea than to question it, the statement has been accepted as truth—but it is untrue, and it is deeply and villainously untrue. no lie in irish life has been so persistent and so mischievous as this one, and no political lie has ever been so ingeniously, and malevolently exploited.
there is no religious intolerance in ireland except that which is political. i am not a member of the catholic church, and am not inclined to be the advocate of a religious system which my mentality dislikes, but i have never found real intolerance among my fellow-countrymen of that religion. i have found it among protestants. i will limit that statement, too. i have found it among some protestants. but outside of the north of ireland there is no religious question, and in the north it is fundamentally more political than religious.
all thinking is a fining down of one's ideas, and thus far we have come to the statement of ireland's second question. it is not catholic or nationalist, nor have i said that it is entirely protestant and unionist, but it is on the extreme wing of this latter party that responsibility must be laid. it is difficult, even for an irishman living in ireland, to come on the real political fact which underlies irish protestant politics, and which fact has consistently opposed and baffled every attempt made by either england or ireland to come to terms. there is such a fact, and clustered around it is a body of men whose hatred of their country is persistent and deadly and unexplained.
one may make broad generalisations on the apparent situation and endeavour to solve it by those. we may say that loyalty to england is the true centre of their action. i will believe it, but only to a point. loyalty to england does not inevitably include this active hatred, this blindness, this withering of all sympathy for the people among whom one is born, and among whom one has lived in peace, for they have lived in peace amongst us. we may say that it is due to the idea of privilege and the desire for power. again, i will accept it up to a point—but these are cultural obsessions, and they cease to act when the breaking-point is reached.
i know of only two mental states which are utterly without bowels or conscience. these are cowardice and greed. is it to a synthesis of these states that this more than mortal enmity may be traced? what do they fear, and what is it they covet? what can they redoubt in a country which is practically crimeless, or covet in a land that is almost as bare as a mutton bone? they have mesmerised themselves, these men, and have imagined into our quiet air brigands and thugs and titans, with all the other notabilities of a tale for children.
i do not think that this either will tell the tale, but i do think there is a story to be told—i imagine an esoteric wing to the unionist party. i imagine that party includes a secret organisation—they may be orangemen, they may be masons, and, if there be such, i would dearly like to know what the metaphysic of their position is, and how they square it with any idea of humanity or social life. meantime, all this is surmise, and i, as a novelist, have a notoriously flighty imagination, and am content to leave it at that.
but this secondary irish question is not so terrible as it appears. it is terrible now, it would not be terrible if ireland had national independence.
the great protection against a lie is—not to believe it; and ireland, in this instance, has that protection. the claims made by the unionist wing do not rely solely on the religious base. they use all the arguments. it is, according to them, unsafe to live in ireland. (let us leave this insurrection of a week out of the question.) life is not safe in ireland. property shivers in terror of daily or nightly appropriation. other, undefined, but even more woeful glooms and creeps, wriggle stealthily abroad.
these things are not regarded in ireland, and, in truth, they are not meat for irish consumption. irish judges are presented with white gloves with a regularity which may even be annoying to them, and were it not for political trouble they would be unable to look their salaries in the face. the irish bar almost weep in chorus at the words "land act," and stare, not dumbly, on destitution. these tales are meant for england and are sent there. they will cease to be exported when there is no market for them, and these men will perhaps end by becoming patriotic and social when they learn that they do not really command the big battalions. but ireland has no protection against them while england can be thrilled by their nonsense, and while she is willing to pound ireland to a jelly on their appeal. her only assistance against them is freedom.
there are certain simplicities upon which all life is based. a man finds that he is hungry and the knowledge enables him to go to work for the rest of his life. a man makes the discovery (it has been a discovery to many) that he is an irishman, and the knowledge simplifies all his subsequent political action. there is this comfort about being an irishman, you can be entirely irish, and claim thus to be as complete as a pebble or a star. but no irish person can hope to be more than a muletto englishman, and if that be an ambition and an end it is not an heroic one.
but there is an ulster difficulty, and no amount of burking it will solve it. it is too generally conceived among nationalists that the attitude of ulster towards ireland is rooted in ignorance and bigotry. allow that both of these bad parts are included in the northern outlook, they do not explain the ulster standpoint; and nothing can explain the attitude of official ireland vis-a-vis with ulster.
what has the irish party ever done to allay northern prejudice, or bring the discontented section into line with the rest of ireland? the answer is pathetically complete. they have done nothing. or, if they have done anything, it was only that which would set every northerner grinding his teeth in anger. at a time when orangeism was dying they raised and marshalled the hibernians, and we have the ulsterman's answer to the hibernians in the situation by which we are confronted to-day. if the party had even a little statesmanship among them they would for the past ten years have marched up and down the north explaining and mollifying and courting the black northerner. but, like good irishmen, they could not tear themselves away from england, and they paraded that country where parade was not so urgent, and they made orations there until the mere accent of an irishman must make englishmen wail for very boredom.
some of that parade might have gladdened the eyes of the belfast citizens; a few of those orations might have assisted the men of derry to comprehend that, for the good of our common land, home rule and the unity of a nation was necessary if only to rid the country of these blatherers.
let the party explain why, among their political duties, they neglected the duty of placating ulster in their proper persons. why, in short, they boycotted ulster and permitted political and religious and racial antagonism to grow inside of ireland unchecked by any word from them upon that ground. were they afraid "nuts" would be thrown at them? whatever they dreaded, they gave ulster the widest of wide berths, and wherever else they were visible and audible, they were silent and unseen in that part of ireland.
the ulster grievance is ostensibly religious; but safeguards on this count are so easily created and applied that this issue might almost be left out of account. the real difficulty is economic, and it is a tangled one. but unless profit and loss are immediately discernible the soul of man is not easily stirred by an accountant's tale, and therefore the religious banner has been waved for our kinsfolk of ulster, and under the sacred emblem they are fighting for what some people call mammon, but which may be in truth just plain bread and butter.
the words sinn fein mean "ourselves," and it is of ourselves i write in this chapter. more urgent than any political emancipation is the drawing together of men of good will in the endeavour to assist their necessitous land. our eyes must be withdrawn from the ends of the earth and fixed on that which is around us and which we can touch. no politician will talk to us of ireland if by any trick he can avoid the subject. his tale is still of westminster and chimborazo and the mountains of the moon. irishmen must begin to think for themselves and of themselves, instead of expending energy on causes too distant to be assisted or hindered by them. i believe that our human material is as good as will be found in the world. no better, perhaps, but not worse. and i believe that all but local politics are unfruitful and soul-destroying. we have an island that is called little. it is more than twenty times too spacious for our needs, and we will not have explored the last of it in our children's lifetime. we have more problems to resolve in our towns and cities than many generations of minds will get tired of striving with. here is the world, and all that perplexes or delights the world is here also. nothing is lost. not even brave men. they have been used. from this day the great adventure opens for ireland. the volunteers are dead, and the call is now for volunteers.
