the day on which deportations were due was always tense and strained throughout. we were generally warned a day or so in advance by the soldiers, and sometimes had some of the names conveyed to us of those who were destined to go. however they obtained this information, it was always correct. this meant that from the time we awoke we were all restless. about two o’clock an officer would enter and read a list of names. each of those so summoned would be given a knapsack, and informed that he was to be ready to fall in on parade outside at half-past two. no more was said; and no more was needed to be said.
some were glad to go. it meant their removal from the danger zone, and implied that the military did not know all that might have been known. but these were few. for the most part men waited anxiously all day, and if their names were called they made a brief comment, jocular sometimes, and sometimes [61]defiant, that intimated the dead weight that had fallen on them with the news. whatever courts-martial might sit, so long as we were in ireland we were at home. there was always the consciousness with us that our own people were about us and bitterly resented our fate. whereas deportation was deportation. moreover, one of the men who had been deported a short time before had been brought back again for trial, and his tale of what had been meted out to him in an english jail was not pleasant to hear. altogether, this breaking up of bonds and transference to the conqueror’s own particular prisons was a thing of dread, however that dread might be covered by jocularity or grimness.
the first deportation after my arrival was on saturday, may 20th. on that occasion none was taken from our room. we crowded to the windows to see the parade and to cheer our comrades by our presence there; but we were shouted back by the officers, who were conducting the parade,
our very friendship with one another had become an offence.
[62]
the following week there was another list of deportations. three from our room were taken, their places being filled the following day by new arrivals from the country. on may 23rd my name was called, with three others from the room. the previous day i had had an interview with solicitor and counsel with a view to getting a statement of the charges against me and to demanding a trial. an officer had been present throughout the interview, although we had protested against his presence. he was under discipline to the very men against whom it was our intention to proceed, and it was a strange thing that he should be present to learn exactly what our case might be and how it was our intention to proceed. a further interview was arranged for two days later, in order that counsel might turn up certain points of law. but in the meantime i received notice that i was to be deported.
i had been, and then was, ill. i was really unfit to travel, especially under these particular conditions. but that was a matter easily mended. when i reported sick on parade i was taken over to the dispensary and ... ... others who had been summoned to the parade were treated in [63]the same way; and we stood out there till about half-past four, when our escort arrived. it was a beautiful afternoon; the sunlight poured down through a cloudless sky and lay like a sultry blanket on the ground. there were about a hundred and fifty of us, in two companies, for two destinations. we stood there in ranks with soldiers guarding us, while officers busied themselves with papers all about us. i thought of the sun shining on the sea, and clothing the mountains with a new soft beauty, and of the summer that began now to flow back over the earth in achill. there was time to indulge in reflection to the full.
at five o’clock our guards handed us over to the escort. the barrack guard had been comprised of english troops. the escort was an irish regiment. ironic, that an irish regiment should escort irishmen for deportation to england. stranger still when, as we were being marched through the city, the people crowded about us to let us know of their sympathy, and the soldiers were instructed to keep the people back with their rifle-stocks.
[64]
we are sometimes derided as a people rent by divisions, but the division in this case was due to the same cause as has created nearly all our other divisions. that cause was symbolised by the scene that was enacted that day. in no way more picturesquely could the fact of a perpetual military conquest have been staged. and when, as we marched down along the quays, most of us saw, for the first time, the havoc wrought in our capital by the guns of the conqueror, that only gave the appropriate scenery without which dramatists have agreed that the work of their artistry cannot be given to the world.
at the north wall we were put on board a cattle boat. the cattle were herded at one end of the pens, we were being herded at the other end of the pens. when it came to my turn to be penned i was surprised to hear myself accosted by the embarkation officer:
“i’m b——, you know.”
“certainly,” i replied; “we meet again.” but i had not the dimmest notion who he was.
“i hope to be in castlebar soon,” he said. “i haven’t been back since i went out.”
“is that so?” i said. “i was in castlebar a fortnight ago. i was stopping at the jail.”
[65]
he laughed, and turned to p. j. d., who stood beside me as we awaited our turn to be penned. his manner was frank and pleasant and not at all constrained, although his penning of us was quite efficiently done. i informed him that i was not well, and asked if certain accommodation could not be found slightly more efficient than a cattle pen packed with my fellows. he promised to see what he could do, and went off. when he had gone, p. j. d. informed me that he had been a volunteer when i was in command of the county, and had since gained some distinction in the european war. presently he returned, and conveyed some of us to a room in the forecastle, where we had seats on which we could stretch ourselves.
when we arrived in england, however, we struck quite another atmosphere. inquisitive crowds gathered about us who lost no opportunity of displaying their enmity and hostility. german prisoners of war might have aroused an equal curiosity, but they could not have an equal enmity. clearly and sharply we stood out, whether we gathered on railway platforms or were marched through streets, as nation against nation, with an unbridgeable hatred [66]between us. any attempt on our part to meet taunt with taunt was at
and so we were compelled to stand as the mark of contumely and the target of contempt. to be sure, that only stiffened us, and we held ourselves high and unflinchingly before the crowds. nevertheless, there was a sickening in most of us, for ireland was behind us and we were utterly in the stranger’s power.
i had lived some years in england, and had formed many good friendships. unlike many of my companions, england and the english were no strange things to me. yet i came then into something utterly strange, foreign, and hostile. i could not more strangely have been led captive among the mountains of the moon, so icy was this world and such leagues apart from that which i had known.
everything was coloured by that relation. one looked on england with new eyes, and old thoughts became startling new discoveries. stafford lay for the most part steeped in slumber as we were marched through its streets in the morning, accompanied by a small, inquisitive crowd. it looked incredibly sleek and prosperous [67]beside our irish towns. the villas were sleek and comfortable; the roads were sleek and neat; the very grass beside the canal looked sleek as though nurtured with the centuries. everything had an air of being well fed and well groomed, and quite consciously proud of the fact that it was part of a prosperous whole, where no invader’s foot had trampled, where no spoliation had dared to efface the moss that had gathered for centuries on the gables, or to rough the smooth lawns. the villas might be the latest examples of modernity, yet that was the air they suggested, for they became part of something that was smooth and sleek. how different to our irish towns, that look as though they—not the people in them, but they themselves—live a precarious day-to-day existence. each suggests the history of their nation. one has grown sleek with prosperity, and smooth and round with the large air of the conqueror, with shores that have never known invasion. the other has been hunted from end to end by rapacious conquest; the forests that were its pride burnt away the better to root out its people; the people hunted until they lost the instinct to build for themselves permanent abodes, and, more latterly, rack-rented till they stealthily [68]hid any small savings and kept middens before their doors, until a show of poverty from being a disguise became a habit; rising against the conqueror in a series of revolts foredoomed to failure, but triumphant in what they spoke of—a spirit still unbroken; stricken to earth again by soldiery that marched through the land; and harnessed by a network of legislative acts that intended to inhibit industry and commerce with the nations of the earth, and that succeeded in their intention. and yet there was no question of a choice between the two. for with one individuality had become smoothened away, the wheel having come full circle; with the other individuality was sharp and keen, angular it might be, but alive for the future.
h. p. and i were speaking of these things when we arrived at stafford jail. it was about six o’clock in the morning as we were marched through the gates and lined up outside the prison. the building looked gloomy and forbidding as it frowned down on us with its hundreds of barred windows. it had lately been used as a detention barracks; that is to say, as a prison for soldiers, the major part of the population of england having donned khaki [69]but not having doffed their sins therewith. therefore, it was staffed by military, who received us from our escort and marched us up the great building to the cells that had been allotted us. and once again i heard the key grate behind me.
