The Sacred Egoism of Sinn Féin

The perversity of the fate which governs the relations of England and Ireland obtrudes itself once more in this connection. It might be thought that the simultaneous movement of revolt against the sham of politics would lead to sympathetic understanding of the Sinn Féin point of view. It is true, to some extent, that during the pre-war years of constant Sinn Féin activity, friendly references were made in certain English quarters to the regenerate nationalism which was manifesting itself in literature and industry. Under less ominous names the Sinn Féin spirit had developed and spread until, at the outbreak of the war, the country was apparently absorbed in various enterprises which had received the benediction of benevolent commentators, relieved to find Ireland at last in a practical mood. But the war has changed all that. Not only have these innocent undertakings been revealed as part of the malign machinations of Sinn Féin, but the term itself has become associated with an event undreamt of in the essential pacific and economic philosophy of those who expressed some twelve years ago the growing tendencies in the direction of national self-help. Sinn Féin did not repudiate the task which destiny thrust upon it in Easter 1916, but accepted the hitherto rejected theory of physical force, at the cost of the platonic affection of many who had previously smiled approvingly at the programme of social reconstruction contemplated by the founders of the Sinn Féin movement.

It is doubtful, however, if the Sinn Féin policy could have continued, after the war had broken out, to escape the hostile attention of England. Political realists ceased to recommend themselves to the favourable notice of a people embarking upon a crusade for the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, and whose minds were glamoured by the idealisms so prodigally proclaimed since August 1914. In a burst of enthusiasm the “free peoples of the world” undertook to restore the right of small nations, and since they knew of only one transgressor, they could not wait to consider their own possible sins against the spirit of nationality. At the same time, the discredit and futility of the parliamentary system became more and more obvious as it failed to meet the exigencies of the crisis which had come in the history of the political democracies. From the moment when the latter undertook to vindicate their superiority they were obliged to compromise hastily, when not to abandon entirely, the principles upon which they rested. Normally one might have thought that this would give the final blow to a fiction previously weakened, but the seriousness of national peril, coupled with the mobilization of thought, has helped to obscure that conclusion. Once the system had become a gage of battle, and a challenge to the enemy, it was endeared to its defenders, who clung to it all the more desperately, the more elusive and illusory it appeared.

So it happened that Irishmen were invited to share the enthusiasm for an ideal about which they entertained no more illusions, except the one which experience had not had a chance to confirm or dispel. Pseudo-democracy they knew and rejected, as revealed in the light of a spurious political liberty under the control of English Capitalism, but they had not yet been allowed to make the experiment of politico-economic freedom on their own account. Meanwhile, by an amazing inconsequence, the imposition of these pseudo-democratic conditions became the ambition of precisely the most restive and acute critics of the political system upon which those conditions repose. The complete demoralization of the intellectuals by the present war will supply some future critic material for sceptical reflection. In the past, both remote and immediate, the educated have succeeded in differentiating themselves from the mob by refusing, in times of crisis, to be stampeded by appeals to ignorance. But gradually the Intelligentsia had been learning the expediency of attaching themselves to some social or political propaganda until, when the war broke out, they found themselves everywhere imprisoned by the new status they had assumed. They were no longer free to serve their real master, but had sold their intellectual birthright for a mess of official pottage. Their conscripted minds have definitely lowered their prestige, since they have set themselves to bluster and shout across their respective frontiers, in a manner indistinguishable from that of the plain people, without pretensions to mental discipline and rational speech. Though financially strengthened the intellectuals have been bankrupted, as a class, by the war for liberty.

Without postulating the incompatibility of reason and mob patriotism, although the divergence of the two has been recorded in prominent examples, one may legitimately ask: Why this religious enthusiasm for an ideal whose discredit and disintegration were the chief preoccupation of intelligent men during the years leading up to the war? The greatest iconoclasts, so far as the idols of political democracy are concerned, have become the most fervent advocates of such “democratization,” seized with a malign altruism which would share its ills with those untroubled by them. Benefits, which would be extravagant if claimed for a Utopia, are promised on behalf of a social organization whose human imperfections were never more indecently exposed than during the crisis when it was exalted as the panacea of civilization. But, in inverse ratio to their own hasty abandonment of the fictions tenable only in the uncritical times of peace, the pseudo-democrats urge the adoption of methods which even they find useless in the stress of national crisis. The foxes having lost the ornament of intellectual and economic freedom in the trap of capitalist politics are convinced that the whole world should be handicapped in like manner. The new gospel of equality of sacrifice, internationally interpreted, means the equality of weakness.

It is natural that the great resources of the English-speaking world should be pledged to the defence of the form of democracy which is the special creation of Anglo-Saxon culture, and that Britishers and Americans, rather than Frenchmen and Italians, should be most insistent upon the blessings of “democratization.” That peculiar conception of liberty which has fostered the ignoble individualism of mediocrity, at the expense of intellectual independence and social strength, has evolved, under the ægis of England to her own satisfaction and advantage, until, at last, she came to be admired by foreigners unblessed by so unique a possession. Hence the fiction of British freedom, hymned by harassed outlaws or academic critics, concerned only for the more obvious advantages of a system which offered a refuge to the one and a guarantee of respectable stability to the other. When England was the safe haven for continental refugees, the admiring gratitude of the latter was untroubled by the reflection that it is one thing to harbour persons likely to cause trouble with an immediate neighbour, whose frontier is invitingly near, and quite another to give them the shelter of insular isolation. Moreover, the governments of more inflammable peoples, susceptible to the contagion of revolutionary ideas, cannot afford to take risks, which have no reality in the case of a people protected from that contagion by semi-education and an innate servility. Perhaps the greatest illusion of the last century has been the innocent admiration of other nations for the security of a system which postulates a race inhibited by ignorance, snobbishness, and mal-nutrition, from all revolutionary desires. They envy the impunity with which scandals, whose publication would elsewhere inspire assassination, if not revolution, may be revealed in the reports of Royal Commissions, without provoking more than a few columns of newspaper summary and comment. But these benighted foreigners know the temper of their own populations too well not to pay them at least the compliment of being afraid to provoke popular fury. Blue Books and parliamentary questions are not yet universally accepted substitutes for democratic control.

The Irish people have more wisely adopted the ancient device, oderint, dum metuant, as the more intelligent attitude of a people towards its rulers, who have essayed in vain the process of demoralization so effective elsewhere. In Ireland alone the familiar ostentatious displays of Blue Book liberty fail in their purpose of disarming criticism, and consigning vital questions to an oblivion of official words. The capacious and retentive Irish memory actually feeds on those indigestible slices of British freedom, whose price and mode of distribution render them inaccessible to the vast majority of taxpayers at whose expense these sepulchres of truth are constructed. The effect of such serious attention to utterances designed as soporifics is a profound contempt for precisely that democratic virtue which has excited the admiration of certain foreigners, so consoling to the Anglo-Saxon sense of superiority. When the Irish-Irelander learns of England’s claim to be the leader of democratic progress in Europe, and finds that claim endorsed by apparently disinterested critics, his instinctive movement is one of revulsion from all implied in the laudation. If English rule involves the acceptance of the democratic ideal, then he rejects the ideal, for he knows that its irradiations have not lightened his political darkness, and its practical workings have effected the ruin of his country. If democratization be synonymous with anglicization, Ireland begs to be excused. She is, therefore, thrown back upon herself, brooding and indifferent to the issues which convulse the peoples for whom the problems of the war have a definite meaning. This scepticism, however, does not bring Ireland into contact with any current of internationalism, based upon a conviction of economic evil existing in all capitalistic countries alike. The egoism of Sinn Féin determines the Irish attitude towards the war. “Ourselves alone,” not German gold, determines Ireland’s foreign policy.

III

THE SPLENDID ISOLATION OF SINN FÉIN

The prevalence of the illusion of British liberty has been an obstacle to the understanding of Ireland’s problem for many years, and correspondingly the Sinn Féin foreign policy is not a recent phenomenon, since its objective has been the same for centuries as it is to-day. The French critic, Emile Montégut, writing in 1855 of Mitchel’s Jail Journal, admitted the difficulty when he said: “If the oppressor of Ireland were Austria or Russia, no invective, no anger, would suffice to denounce the injustice and cruelty of the tyrant. Unhappily, the oppressor of Ireland is England, Protestant England, constitutional, liberal, industrial, and trading England, the most accomplished type of the modern nation, the model of nineteenth century civilization.” In recent times circumstances have tended to correct and modify the enthusiasm of an opinion which has been fortified, nevertheless, by the current identification of British commercial democracy with an ideal condition of society which must be protected at all costs. The neutral world is blandly assured of the necessity for accepting every humiliation, in view of the precious heritage at stake. The tacit, and often avowed, assumption is that the human race is deeply indebted to the noble altruism of the belligerents, who have brought devastation and famine upon the world for the greater glory of civilization.

As a consequence of this Sinn Féin view of foreign affairs, the Irish themselves are at a disadvantage in presenting their case, for again, it is a question of an unauthorized egoism, an egoism not upon the official schedule of edifying war-aims. Montégut became aware of this when he tried to diagnose John Mitchel as a revolutionary, who might expect the sympathy of Europe. “The most anarchical Irishman,” he wrote, “the most fiery partisan of physical force is, in fact, less versed in liberal ideas than the most obstinate monarchist on the Continent.” As for John Mitchel, his French critic estimated him in terms which are as true of his disciples to-day as of the Young Ireland Movement and its predecessors. “He is revolutionary on the surface, in his accent and expression, but not in spirit or in principle”; such was the judgment of the first impartial admirer who was attracted to Mitchel by the purely literary qualities of that masterpiece of passion and irony, The Jail Journal. The most learned of the leaders of Sinn Féin, with a carelessness incredible in a professional historian, has tried to dismiss Emile Montégut as a hack journalist of the Entente! This sixty year old essay on John Mitchel contains, nevertheless, a classic description of the Irish rebel, as he exists, and has always existed, to the discomfiture of those who do not appreciate the “splendid isolation” of the Sinn Féin idea. Summing up the Young Ireland leader’s attitude in foreign affairs, Montégut says:

“Do not ask the author if he is Catholic, Liberal, or Republican, do not ask what government he would give to Ireland. He hardly knows. He does know that he hates England with all the forces of his soul, and that he is ready to rebel against her on every occasion, and that there is no party of which he is not prepared to declare himself the defender, provided that England perish: French sans-culottes, Austrian aristocrats, Russian despotism please him in turn. The revolution of February drove him to revolt; but do not think that he was consistent with himself, and that he was much afflicted by the death of the Republic! Of all succeeding events he asks but one thing; will they or will they not hurt England? Do they contain an occasion for the humiliation of Carthage? He applauds Mazzini, the enemy of Catholicism; likewise he would applaud an Ultramontane Bishop of Ireland blessing the standards of a Celtic insurrection. He salutes the French Republic with hope; but when on the pontoons of Bermuda he learns of Louis Napoleon’s election to the Presidency, he gives a great shout of joy; on his arrival in America he learns the news from the east, and he echoes the warlike trumpets of the Tsar which resound on the Danube. In each of these events he hears the good news: England’s agony!”

European history moves on, but Ireland’s hymn of hate is still unaltered, and to its accompaniment Sinn Féin adapts the incidents, great and trivial, which mark the progress of a conflict that is changing the world. Cut off from the war by intellectual and geographical barriers, Ireland is, therefore, not exactly the most fruitful ground in which to sow the ideas which have aroused to a frenzy all but a few disillusioned neutrals. The pathetic dreams of Liberal forward-lookers, the pious platitudes of Dr. Woodrow Wilson, and the prize-fighting rhetoric of embattled bureaucrats and newspapermen fall alike upon deaf Irish ears, which listen only for the rending and cracking of an abhorred political system. To speak of the sufferings of Belgians, Poles, and Serbians is merely to suggest analogies from Irish history; the reaction to the stimulus of atrocity-mongering is unexpected. Even the Russian revolution aroused only a passive, almost academic interest, until Lenin and Trotsky referred specifically to the question of Irish freedom. Then messages of congratulation to the Bolsheviki were sent from those who had been openly supporting Count Czernin in his amazing debate with the representatives of the first Social Democracy to engage in diplomatic pourparlers with a foreign power. But the capitalist press had scarcely published its execration of Irish “Bolshevism,” when the Ukrainian peace was joyously greeted by Sinn Féin spokesmen, who were unperturbed in their unholy innocence of international capitalism, by the discreditable circumstances of that event, and its subsequently disintegrating effect upon Russia. These patriots, as Montégut said of their forerunner, Mitchel, “would unhesitatingly sacrifice modern civilization if there were no other means of striking England to the dust.” Unfortunately, on this occasion, their ignorance of the solidarity of the capitalist Internationalism betrayed them into an easy acceptance of a situation by no means repugnant to the aims of their adversaries. The defeat of Bolshevism was the first great Allied victory of the war, tempered only by the melancholy reflection that Germany would be the immediate beneficiary of this restoration of “Law and Order” – that marvellous euphemism which covers a multitude of sins.

If the isolation of Ireland from European politics has stultified her erratic excursions into foreign affairs, it has even more seriously affected the political relations of England and Ireland during the past four years. The Britisher, sympathetic or otherwise, is apparently quite incapable of realizing the fathomless indifference of the vast majority of the Irish nation towards the issues of the present conflict in Europe. Naive Liberals have been heard inquiring with plaintive optimism: “But surely you Irish can appreciate the seriousness of a German victory, even if you are not willing to fight for England”? And a look of incredulous despair follows, when the composure of the Irishman is evidently undisturbed by the lurid tableau of the victorious super-Hun, composed for sceptics on such occasions. He usually is polite enough to convey to his interlocutor his belief that no such triumph is possible for any of the belligerents. This perfectly intelligible and essentially neutral attitude has never failed to exasperate even more profoundly than pro-Germanism, the legendary malady of all neutrals who fail to accept the Allies and their policies unreservedly. As it is those who themselves denounce the Treaties in which the real aims of the Allied “democracies” were secretly formulated who also insist with the greatest unction upon the moral superiority of the Allies, the embarrassment of the impartial is not diminished by this demand upon their credulity.

While one may expect the average man to put faith in his country “right or wrong,” he has exceeded the bounds of patriotic gregariousness when he asks foreigners to display an identical devotion. The imposition is all the more intolerable when made, not by the plain man in the street, but by intellectuals, professing the use of reason. It is positively revolting to the Irishman who, not being a citizen of those small nations happily outside the dominion of the belligerents, is prohibited from detailed neutral argument in defence of his own position. Denmark can speak through a Georg Brandes, but Ireland may not even quote the Allied press in support of her contentions. The Irish case for neutrality is expurgated of necessity – of military necessity! The possibilities of arriving at any understanding with the Allied countries have, therefore, been seriously hampered, apart altogether from the inherent obstacles to an admission on the part of Anglo-Saxondom that its statecraft is not an admirable combination of the choicest maxims of Holy Writ. Naturally, such conditions have in no wise modified the splendid isolation of Sinn Féin, since they have rendered free intercommunication between Ireland and the outside world impossible.

The ultimate issue of this unequal debate, between a gagged nation and one in free possession of innumerable voices, was reached when those who transcended mere discussion interposed with their policy of “shoot: don’t argue.” The conscription of Irishmen is the logical conclusion to the secular denial by England of the claims of Irish nationality, a denial which has ceased even to be expressed in specific words, so comfortably has it sunk into the English sub-consciousness. This is the negation which underlies all political discussion between English and Irish, and has not a little to say in that futile debate already described. Since the Irishman’s premises are not accepted, all his conclusions seem unreasonable to his opponent. Similarly the arguments of the latter; for they rest upon a denial, or, at best, an academic recognition of the fact that Ireland is a nation, with religious, social and cultural traditions as unlike those of England as the economic conditions of the two countries are dissimilar. No agreement is likely when discussion is vitiated by so vital a misunderstanding. Hence the logic of the Imperialists who shoot but don’t argue. They know that Ireland is not a colony, and thinking imperially, they are unwilling to concede rights which they grant to their colonial fellow-citizens.

This differentiation between colonials, who are Britishers, and Irishmen who are not, does not lead to its corollary that Ireland is a nation, for it is not the Anglo-Saxon habit to admit unpleasant truths, unpleasant here, because the admission would weaken the “moral” case for conscription, so dear to the British heart. The brutal Hun may dispense with moral sanctions, he may admit his wrong-doing, when military necessity involves the invasion of neutral territory. The German sheep – for we are assured of his docility – may masquerade in the wolf’s clothing of intellectual honesty, his adversaries must have some law (of “angary”), or preferably, some text of Scripture, enjoining them to act as they have decided. Their wisdom is justified by the universal execration of Prussianism which, under other names, smells quite sweet. Unfortunately, Ireland, like other small neutrals, has failed to be impressed by the ingenious variety of the Imperialist technique, whose results are monotonously the same. In the particular instance of the proposal to apply conscription to Ireland, it is hard to say which attitude in the Englishman is the more preposterous from the Irish point of view: that of the virtuosi of Imperialism, who insist upon their moral “right” to conscript, or that of the soothsayers of liberalism, who think it “inexpedient” to impose upon the Irish colony a claim which they dared not impose on Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and Canada. Both are obnoxious in so far as they rest upon the “great refusal,” the negation of Irish nationality.

It happens, however, that a corresponding divergence of opinion has expressed itself in Ireland to meet the conditions of British politics. Constitutional Nationalists and not wholly degraded Unionists have met the argument of inexpediency by adopting it, obeying the law of their parliamentary being, which demands cohesion with political friends in England. This section protests, therefore, against the attempt to enforce a theoretical right which was not exercised in the case of the British colonies. If logic were any part of a politician’s equipment this position would be untenable, since only the Unionists profess to regard themselves as Colonials. The Nationalists assert that Ireland is a nation, but they act as if she were a colony, thereby adding to the incongruity of their revolt against participation in a war which they have supported and declared to be just. But happily only their illogical opponents insist upon the logical weakness of the position, as is the practice in politics, where the beam in the eye of one party never interferes with its perception of the mote in the eye of the other. Their respective constituents are quite satisfied.

Sinn Féin, on the other hand, rejects contemptuously the theory of inexpediency (while admitting the fact), and prefers to deal with the Britisher in excelsis, whose proposal is felt to be a declaration of war by one nation against another. The failure of England to regard the Republican army of 1916 as military prisoners of war is not felt to be a weak link in the logic of this reasoning – a very human exhibition of that political blindness to which reference has been made. The Sinn Féin contention is that Ireland is under no obligation to take part in the European conflict, and that even a measure of Colonial Home Rule should not involve a departure from this attitude of neutrality. It is argued, simultaneously, that the war is no concern of the Irish people, and that Ireland is one of the most important strategic factors of the Anglo-German struggle, owing to her geographical position. In short, the destiny of Ireland is to be largely determined by the outcome of the present hostilities, but the country itself is to remain outside and above the battle – a sort of ideal war aim, suspended in vacuo, and knowing none of the evils which normally befall small countries when they lie across the path of great empires. The ingenuous egoism of this viewpoint is, of course, obvious, and perhaps irritating, to the unsympathetic outsider, but it is neither better nor worse than the logic of the various Powers, great and small, whose national egoisms have been touched by the war. Every country affected is convinced that its particular existence and ambitions must be assured, if the true purpose of the war is to be achieved. All see in the satisfaction of their respective aspirations a guarantee of the millenium, and the triumph of Freedom, Justice and Humanity.