deadened and inert though the barbarity of solitary confinement caused one to become (and even as solitary confinement ours was particularly severe and therefore particularly barbarous) there were times when the whole being rose in revolt. anything would have been preferable to it. on one such occasion i demanded to see the commandant of the jail. when he came, i requested to know exactly why i was being punished, and for what offence. i told him that i wished to have his answer in writing and to be able to communicate with my solicitor with a view to taking action. my thought was that a personal suit against him might prove abortive, but that it might cause a publicity the effect of which would be healthy.
he replied that i was not being punished; that i was simply being “detained.” i said that this could not be. according to prison regulations, solitary confinement of so severe a [88]nature was punishment at least equivalent to birching. would he birch me without acquainting me with the cause of such a punishment? no, he said, he would not. then why, i asked, was i receiving a punishment equivalent in severity without a cause assigned. i wished to be provided with a cause, and to be provided with it in writing.
the commandant himself was gentlemanly and courteous. a few days afterwards when i repeated my request he told me he was simply acting under orders, and that he could not change matters without orders. i asked him then if he would communicate my request to the war office, under whose instructions he proceeded; and he promised to do so.
some time elapsed; and when he spoke to me further about the matter he asked what it was that i demanded. he asked me if i would particularise. i replied that the war office had on their own initiative defined us as prisoners of war. it had been announced to us that all our letters had to be so addressed; all the orders given to us were made applicable under that heading. i said i did not quarrel with the designation; both nationally and personally i hailed it. it was, i agreed, a splendid designation; [89]but such being our state, i demanded on our behalf the application of the international agreement governing the treatment of prisoners of war—an agreement that, i believed, had been ratified between the belligerent powers during the first week of the war. in other words, i wanted tobacco and pipe, i wished any books that i might order or that might be sent in to me, daily papers, free communication with my fellow-prisoners, and the opening of cell doors by night and by day, the right to have food sent into us, and the return of my money in order that i might be able to purchase food in the town, and facilities to purchase it, by canteen or by order. i added that what i demanded i demanded not for myself but for all of us, and in all of the prisons.
after a few days he came to me to say that the war office had authorised him to grant these rights, but to grant them in stages, and with one stipulation. that stipulation he would announce to the men. having put us all on parade he announced the rights that would be granted, but said that it would first be necessary for us to choose a commandant from among ourselves who would be responsible to him for the good order of the prison, and who [90]would have power to maintain discipline. the men appointed me, and i created officers for each of the landings.
so began our little republic, and so extended our educative influence. when the rights were in full force the staff became supernumeraries. we created our post office and handled our own parcels and letters for distribution. rules were laid down for the ordering of our life together; and only once or twice was it necessary to take disciplinary measures (solitary confinement in one case as a pathetic reminder!), for the general spirit of loyalty and affection was sufficient—was, in fact, remarkable with a body of men not accustomed to the strict rules necessary to the ordering of such a community. the appointed officers were responsible for their landings, made daily reports, and brought up any cases with which they were unable to deal. and so from top to bottom we maintained ourselves, quietly eliminating the staff, to the no small dissatisfaction of some of them, though with the good will of most. there was, in fact, no work for most of the staff to do.
at seven each morning, after breakfast, and at eight at night, the bell was rung, and we all gathered for public prayers. michael macrory [91]irish orator, and padraic pearse’s gardener, led the rosary. englishmen speak much of our religious differences. it devolved upon me as a protestant to summon the prayers, and none thought otherwise of it than as a natural thing, while every protestant knelt with his fellows in prayer to the one god. whatever announcements or enquiries father moore had to make were made through a protestant, and had anyone suggested that they should not have been so made, it would have fared ill with him. they were made as a simple matter of authority by whoever was in authority. the reason for this was that we were sufficient in ourselves to guard over our own affairs without a stranger’s hand to create trouble.
these daily prayers were a great astonishment to the staff. one sergeant declared to a visitor: “i heard a lot about these sinn feiners being a bad lot, but you should see them. they’re a religious lot. they goes to prayers and church same as we goes to the theaytre.” and when, some days after our public prayers had begun, the news came that the “hampshire” had sunk, there was not a man of the staff but was fully assured that it was our prayers had sent lord kitchener to his death.
[92]
at ten each night every man was required to be off the corridor and balconies, and any conversation in cells after that time had to be conducted softly, in order not to interfere with those who wished to sleep; and within five minutes of the ringing of the bell the prison was clear and quiet. the staff became accustomed, if they had business to execute with us, to resign it into our hands for prosecution. those who did not do so made a sad affair of their undertaking. which is a parable. in a phrase, our motto was: [gaelic: sinn féin a?áin].
it was interesting to notice our influence on the staff. we never troubled about them; they had their interests and we had ours; and only occasionally the national opposition clashed sharply. yet they confided in us. with our extended rights the library was opened to us; and the librarian-warder informed us that he was at first afraid to be left alone in the library with any one of us. apparently he thought we would bite out his windpipe unexpectedly, or playfully split his skull. but when his first visitor, a man from belfast, contemptuously described his collection of books as “piffle,” and asked that certain other books should be procured from the officers’ library, as he himself [93]declared: “my word, i was surprised. i thought you sinn feiners were a wild lot of savages from what i heard of you. but you are men of culture, most of you. it’s a bit of a shock to a man to find out.” the librarian-warder was quite pleased at the widening range of his ethnographical knowledge.
yet the most interesting member of the staff was the sergeant of the r.a.m.c. he was a doctor of literature at oxford, and also, i believe, a docteur ès lettres at the sorbonne. he had been out at gallipoli, whence he had been invalided home. as he passed on his rounds he would often come into my cell for a talk. we very seldom spoke on national questions, for i assumed that our orbits of interest on such matters would not cut each other at any point; our conversation was generally on literary or philosophical matters. but once he came up to me with a definite thing to say.
“you know,” he said, “the government make a great mistake putting men like you into prison. you will never forget it; you can never forget it; no man could who canvasses experience with his intellect. they’re simply a lot of grandfatherly old fools at the top of affairs, and we always make a muddle of things. [94]they should either give you a clear run, and let you make what you can of your country and take the chances; or they should wait their chance and shoot you out of hand and laugh at the racket afterwards. but all this sentimental talk about your country, followed up by all this muddle, simply makes a thinking man sick. all this business,” and he indicated the hundreds of us standing talking about the yard, “is clumsy, it’s idiocy, and it breeds more clumsiness and idiocy for the future.”
“which of your two alternatives would you adopt?” i asked him.
“well, you know, one likes to meet a man to whom one can talk; intellect, and all that sort of thing, and culture, and care for art, they’re rare enough in this world, and one wouldn’t altogether care to take the responsibility of destroying any part of it—”
“but you’d shoot me all the same.”
“yes, i think i would.” he was quite serious. “quite possibly that’s because i’ve just been seeing a lot of blood; and i don’t think i would have said that two years ago. but just now i’d shoot you. i wouldn’t of course do it in a stupid way. i’d wait till you gave me a chance; and sooner or later you [95]would, for you have your convictions, and they’d lead you into my hand; and then i’d shoot you instantly, and without trial if need be, without waiting anyhow. of course there’d be trouble afterwards, but i’d wait quietly till that blew over, as it would.”
“that wouldn’t get you out of the wood, for you’d make a martyr of me and exploit my ideals.”
“that’s so. there’s that side, of course. but still that’s what i think i’d do. i certainly wouldn’t go muddling about trying to do two mutually contradictory things at the same time. all you men here—the whole thing’s simply offensive.”
“does the hypocrisy offend you then? you ought to have become accustomed to that by this time as a nation.”
“well, yes, in a way it does, i suppose. but it’s not that mainly; it’s the clumsy thinking; it’s not thinking the thing out from the beginning. do i horrify you?”
“not at all. if you came over to ireland you’d have a great audience. we’d agree with you in every word, simply and utterly. we’d be delighted to meet one of your nation who looked at things without any silly sentiment. you’re [96]a sentimental people, and at bottom very cruel; we’re not sentimental. you are as sentimental as any yourself; but you’ve at least got your mentality clear of it, and so for the first time you can see things as they are. the worst of it is that, dealing with a sentimental people, you are making us superficially sentimental too, and that’s distracting us from our work. i only wish that more of you would talk as you do, instead of slobbering. and shoot away; as long as you say why, without using words that convey nothing to us and that only mean sloppy thinking on your part.”
“but i thought you objected to the shootings in dublin.”
“certainly. those men were my brothers. but they weren’t shot as you said you’d shoot me, because you were out to smash an opposed thing as the only logical alternative to giving it the run of its own life, but, if you please, because they didn’t accept certain standards which none of us can ever accept until we make and endorse them in terms of ourselves—or, rather, which we now do and must for ever act upon in that sense, because it’s the first principle of life so to do. and then, when you have them shot, you turn round and praise their [97]noble ideals! in the name of heaven, what ideals?”
“i think i should certainly shoot you now.”
“to smash me. good man! we’d understand that in ireland, where your liberal sentiments bore us, and your tory hectoring irritates us. we’re a kindly people—human and hospitable; but you, because you can escape into words and hide realities from yourselves, are cruel and inhospitable.”
and i believe he would have shot me. many were the conversations we had; many were the kindly, thoughtful acts he did for us; and he was courtesy itself to the ladies who spent their days at the prison gate taking rebuffs from everyone in the prison, in the determination to see that each man of us received what he had need of, food or clothing. but he would have reasoned the thing out and shot me, without the least ill-will or high-falutin. and i would have borne him no ill-will, for the fight would have continued long past the two of us.
