SINN FEIN AND REVOLUTION

Will social condition lead to immediate revolution?

“Eamonn De Valera, the President of the Irish Republic, who has been in hiding since his escape from Lincoln jail, will be welcomed back to Dublin by a public reception. Tomorrow evening at seven o’clock he will be met at the Mount street bridge by Lawrence O’Neill, Lord Mayor of Dublin....”

The news note was in the morning papers. In small type it was hidden on the back pages the Irish papers have a curious habit of six-pointing articles in which the people are vitally interested and putting three-column heads on such stuff as: “Do Dublin Girls Rouge?” That day the concern of the people was unquestionably not rouge but republics. For the question that sibilated in Grafton street cafes and at the tram change at Nelson pillar was: “Will Dublin Castle permit?”

Orders and gun enforcement. The empire did not deviate from the usual program of empires action without discussion. In the crises that are always occurring between organized revolt and the empire, there is never any consideration of the physical agony that goads the people to revolt. There wasn’t now. By early afternoon, the answer, on great, black-lettered posters, was swabbed to the sides of buildings all over town:

“De Valera reception forbidden!”

That was the headline, and after instructions warning the people not to take part in the ceremony, the government order ended:

“God save the king!”

How would the revolutionaries reply? Rumors ran riot. The Sinn Fein volunteers would pit themselves against His Majesty’s troops. The streets would be red again. The belief that the meeting would be held in spite of the proclamation was supported by a statement on green-lettered posters that appeared later next the British dictum:

“Lord mayor requests good order at reception!”

This plea was followed by a paragraph asking that the people attending the reception would not allow themselves to be provoked into disorder by the British military. Then there was the concluding exclamation:

“God save Ireland!”

On my way to the Sinn Fein headquarters in Harcourt street, I passed the Mansion House of the Lord Mayor and found two long-coated Dublin Military Police stripping the new wet poster from the yellow walls. When I arrived at Number 6, Harcourt street, I saw black-clad Mrs. Sheehy-Sheffington, in somewhat agitated absorption of thought, coming down the worn steps of the old Georgian house. In the upper back room, earnest young secretaries worked in swift silence. One of them, a curly-haired girl with her mouth o-ed about a cigarette, puffed unceasingly. At last Harry Boland, secretary of Sinn Fein, entered.

“The council decides tonight,” he admitted. His eyes were bright and faraway like one whose mind is on a coming crisis. When I told him I would drop in again to hear the decision, he protested that they would be at it till late. On my counter protest that time made no difference to me, he promised that if I would not come he would send me word at eleven that night. “But I think,” he added, “we won’t know till morning.”

At ten that night, Boots knocked at my door. I concluded that there had been a stampeded decision. But on going out I discovered the Associated Press correspondent there. He told me that he heard that I was to receive the news and that he did not believe that there was any necessity of bothering the Sinn Feiners twice for the same decision.

“I think the reception is quite likely,” he volunteered. “This afternoon a good many of the Sinn Fein army were at University chapel at confession. At the girls’ hostels of National University which is regarded as a sort of adolescent Sinn Fein headquarters there have been strict orders that the girls are to remain indoors tomorrow night.”

When the messenger arrived at eleven to say that no decision had been reached, I made an appointment for an interview on the following day with DeValera.

Electricity was in the air by morning. There were all sorts of sparks. Young men in civilian clothes ran for trams with their hands over their hip pockets. A delightful girl whom I had met, boarded my car with a heavy parcel in her hands. As the British officer next me rose to give her his seat, her cheeks became very pink. Sometime later she told me that, like the rest of the Sinn Fein volunteers, she had received her mobilization orders, and that the parcel the officer had relented for was her rifle.

At that time, her division of the woman’s section of the Sinn Fein volunteers was pressing a plan for the holding of the reception. In order, however, that no needed fighters would be killed, the girls had asked that they should be first to meet the president. Then, when the machine guns commenced, “only girls” would fall.

Into College Green a brute of a tank had cruised. The man in charge was inviting people to have a look. Inside there were red-lipped munition boxes, provender cases, and through the skewer-sized sight-holes next the jutting guns, there were glimpses of shoppers emerging from Grafton street into the Green. Over the city, against the silver-rimmed, Irish gray clouds, aeroplanes there were sixteen in one formation buzzed insistently. Between the little stone columns of the roof railing of Trinity College, machine guns poked out their cold snouts.

“Smoke bombs were dropped over Mount street bridge today,” said Harry Boland with a shrug of his shoulders when I arrived at Sinn Fein headquarters to ask if the reception would still be held. “What can we do against a force like theirs?”

But there was a strained feeling at headquarters as if the decision had been made after a hard fight. Alderman Thomas Kelly, one of the oldest of the Sinn Feiners, told me that he had backed DeValera in his refusal to countenance a needless loss of life, and that it was only after a good struggle that their point had won.

“DeValera’s just beyond the town,” whispered Harry Boland to me when he decided that we would leave to see the president at seven the hour the executive was due to appear at the bridge. “They’re searching all the cars that cross the canal bridges. If there is any trouble as we pass just say that you are an American citizen that’d get you through anywhere.”

Knots of still expectant people were gathered at the Mount street bridge. Squads of long-coated military police patrolled the place. Children called at games. The starlight dripped into the canal. At Portobello bridge we made our crossing. Nothing happened. The constables did not even punch the cushions of our car as they did with others to see if munitions were concealed therein. We swooped down curving roads between white walls hung with masses of dark laurel. We stopped dead on a road arched with trees. We got out, clicked the car door softly shut, turned a corner, and walked some distance in the cool night. As we walked I made I forget what request in regard to the interview from young Mr. Boland, and with the reverent regard and complete obedience to DeValera’s wishes that is characteristic in the young Sinn Feiners a state of mind that does not, however, prevent calling the president “Dev” he said simply: “But I must do what he tells me.” At the door of a modestly comfortable home whose steps we mounted, a thick-set man blocked my way for a moment.

“You won’t,” he asked, “say where you came?”

“I’m sure,” I returned, “I haven’t an idea where I am.”

DeValera was giving rapid, almost breathless, orders in Irish to some one as I entered his room. His thin frame towered above a dark plush-covered table. A fire behind him surrounded him with a soft yellow aura. His white, ascetic, young he is thirty-seven face was lined with determination. Doors and windows were hung with thick, dark-red portieres, and the walls were almost as white as DeValera’s face.

“Pardon us for speaking Irish,” he apologized. “We forget. Now first of all, we will go over the questions you sent me. I have written the answers. They must appear as I have put them down. That is the condition on which the interview takes place.”

Did Sinn Fein plan immediate revolution? The president ran a fountain pen under the small, finely written lines as he remarked in an aside that he was not a writer but a mathematician. No. The sudden set of the president’s jaw indicated that this man who had fought in the 1916 rebellion till even his enemies had praised him, was the man who had decided there would be no reception at the bridge. No. There would be no armed revolt till all peaceable methods had failed.

If Sinn Fein succeeded in getting separation, would it establish a bolshevistic government? DeValera returned that he was not sure what bolshevism is. As far as he understood bolshevism, Sinn Fein was not bolshevistic. But perhaps, by the way, bolshevism had been as misrepresented in the American press as Sinn Fein. Right there, I took exception and said that from his own point of view I did not see what good slurring the American press would do his cause. Immediately he answered as if only the principal phase of the matter had occurred to him: “But it’s true.” Then he continued: The worker is unfairly treated. Whether it is bolshevistic or not, Sinn Fein hopes to bring about a government in which there will be juster conditions for the laboring classes.

CAUSE AND REMEDY OF SOCIAL CONDITIONS.

The empire does not consider the cause of revolt. But the republic is interested not only in the cause but also in the remedy.

Relief, the republic has said, must come through Sinn Fein ourselves. Neither the Sinn Fein leaders nor the people believe in the power of the Irish vote in the British House of Commons. At the last general elections the Sinn Fein party pledged that if its members were elected they would not go to the British parliament, but would remain at home to form the Irish parliament, the governing body of the Irish republic. Dodgers explaining why Sinn Fein had decided to forego the House of Commons were widely distributed. These read: “What good has parliamentarianism been? For thirty-three years England has been considering Home Rule while Irish members pleaded for it. But in three weeks the English parliament passed a conscriptive act for Ireland, though the Irish party was solid against it.” On this platform, Sinn Fein won seventy-three out of 105 seats.

If Sinn Fein is to relieve the social conditions in Ireland, it must, say Sinn Feiners, find out the cause. So they have pondered on this question: What is the cause of the unemployment in Ireland today? The answer to that question was the one point that the sharp-mustached, sardonic little Arthur Griffith, founder of Sinn Fein, wanted the American delegates from the Philadelphia Race Convention to carry back to America.

It was revealed at a meeting of the Irish parliament specially called for the delegates. Cards were difficult to get for that meeting, and as each one passed through the long dreary ante-room of the circular assembly hall of the Mansion House, he was subjected to close scrutiny by the two dozen Irish volunteers on guard. In the civilian audience there was a sprinkling of American and Australian officers. Up on the platform was the throne of the Lord Mayor, in front of which sat the delegates Frank Walsh, Edward F. Dunne, and Michael Ryan. In a roped-off semi-circle below the platform were deep upholstered chairs wherein rested the members of the Irish parliament. Countess Markewicz was, of course, the only woman there. White-haired, trembling-handed Laurence Ginnel, who is given long jail terms because he refuses to take his hat off in a British court, sat forward on his chair. The rich young Protestant named Robert Barton regarded the crowd through his shining eyeglasses. Keen, boyish Michael Collins, minister of finance, fingered the paper he was going to read. The last two men had recently escaped from prison and were wanted by the police both, as they say in Ireland, were “on the run.”

“England kills Irish industry,” said the succinct Arthur Griffith as he rose from the right hand of DeValera to address the delegates. “Early in the nineteenth century, England wanted a cheap meat supply center. She therefore made it more profitable for the landowners in Ireland to grow cattle instead of crops. Only a few herders are required in cattle care. So literally millions of Irish, tillers of the soil and millers of grain, were thrown out of employment, and from 1841 to 1911 the population fell from 8,000,000 to 4,400,000. Today, Ireland, capable of supporting 16,000,000, cannot maintain 4,000,000."

What is the Sinn Fein remedy for unemployment? Industry. Plans were then under way for DeValera to make his escape to America to obtain American capital to back Irish industry. But money was not to be his sole business. He was to work for the recognition of Irish consuls and Irish mercantile marine. And inside Ireland the movement to establish industry on a sound basis was going on. Irish banks, Irish courts, Irish schools are to sustain the movement. At present the English-controlled Irish banks handicap Irish entrepreneurs by charging them one per cent more interest than English banks charge English borrowers; therefore, a national bank is regarded as an imperative need. Decisions of British judges in Irish courts may hamper Irish industry; so in parts of the country perfectly legal courts of arbitration manned by Irishmen have been established. School children under the present system of education are trained neither to commerce nor to love of the development of their native land; accordingly a Sinn Fein school fund is now being collected so that the Irish parliament may soon be able to take over national education.

Sinn Fein could develop industry more easily if Ireland were free. There is hope. It lies in Ireland’s very lack of jobs. British labor does not like the competition of the cheap labor market next door. It rather welcomes the party that would push Irish industry. For with Irish industry developed Irish labor would become scarce and high. Already the British labor party has declared in favor of the self-determination of Ireland, and it is expected that with its accession to power there may be a final granting of self-determination to Ireland.

As we were leaving the Mansion House to which some of us were invited to return to a reception for the delegates that evening I found intense reaction to the speakers of the day. I asked a young American non-commissioned officer how he liked DeValera. He seemed to be as stirred by the name as the young members of DeValera’s regiment who besiege Mrs. DeValera for some little valueless possession of the “chief’s.” The boy drew in his breath, and I expected him to let it out again in a flow of praise, but emotion seemed to get the better of him, and all he could manage was a fervent: “Oh, gee!” Then I came across young Sylvia Pankhurst, disowned by her family for her communist sympathies, and in Dublin for the purpose of persuading the Irish parliament to become soviet. The Irish speakers, she told me, were much to be preferred to the Americans. They used more figures and less figures of speech. And when I repeated her remark to Desmond Fitzgerald, a pink and fastidious member of parliament, he smilingly commented: “Well, we Irish are more sophisticated, aren’t we?”

THE MAILED FIST

In the afternoon the curtain went up on a matinee performance of The Mailed Fist.

The first act was in the home of Madame Gonne-McBride. It was, properly, an exposition of the power of the enemy.

With Madame Gonne-McBride, once called the most beautiful woman in Europe, Sylvia Pankhurst, and the sister, of Robert Barton, I entered the big house on Stephen’s Green. Modern splashily vivid wall coloring. Japanese screens. Ancient carved madonnas. Two big Airedales thudded up and down in greeting to their mistress. I spoke of their unusual size.

Madame Gonne-McBride, taking the head of one of them between her hands: “They won’t let any one arrest me again, will they?”

She is tall and slim in her deep mourning her husband was killed in the rebellion of 1916. Her widow’s bonnet is a soft silky guipure lace placed on her head like a Red Cross worker’s coif. On the breast of her black gown there hangs a large dull silver cross. Beggars and flower-sellers greet her by name. It is said that a large part of her popularity is due to her work in obtaining free school lunches. Anyway, there was great grief among the people when she was thrown into jail for supposed complicity in the unproved German plot. The arrest, she said, came one Sunday night. She was walking unconcernedly from one of George Russell’s weekly gatherings, when five husky constables blocked the bridge road and hurried her off to jail. At last, on account of her ill health, she was released from prison very weak and very pale.

Enter seventeen-year-old Sean McBride. Places back against the door. Blue eyes wide. Breathlessly: “They’re after Bob Barton and Michael Collins. They’ve surrounded the Mansion House.”

Hatless we raced across Stephen’s Green that little handkerchief of a park that never seemed so embroidered with turns and bridges and bandstands and duck ponds before. Through the crowd that had already gathered we edged our way till we came to the double line of bayonets and batons that guarded the entrance to Dawson street. Over the broad, blue shoulder of the policeman directly in front of me, I glimpsed a wicked-looking little whippet tank with two very conscious British officers just head and shoulders out. Still further down were three covered motor lorries that had been used to convey the soldiers.

Sean, for the especial benefit of constable just ahead: “Wars for democracy and small nations! And that’s the only way they can keep us in the British empire. Brute force. Nice exhibition for the American journalists in town.”

Constable stalked Sean back to edge of crowd. Sean looked at him steadily with slight twinkle in his eye. Miss Barton, Miss Pankhurst, and I climbed up a low stone wall that commanded the guarded street, and clung to the iron paling on top. Sean came and stood beneath.

Miss Pankhurst, regarding crowd in puzzled manner: “Why do you all smile? When the suffragists were arrested we used to become furious.”

Sean looking up at her in kindly manner in which old rebel might glance at impatient young rebel: “You forget. We’re very used to this.”

Miss Pankhurst made an unexpected jump from her place. She wedged her way to the line of soldiers. As she talked to two young Tommies they blushed and fiddled with their bayonets like girls with their first bouquets of flowers. Twice a British major admonished them.

Miss Pankhurst, returning: “Welsh boys. Just babies. I asked them why they came out armed to kill fellow workers. They said they had enlisted for the war. If they had known they were to be sent to Ireland they would have refused to go. I told them it was not too late to act. They could take off their uniforms. But they? They’re weak weak.”

As dusk fell, party capes and tulle mists of head dresses began to appear between the drab or tattered suits of the bystanders. Among the coming reception guests was Susan Mitchell, co-editor with George Russell on The Irish Homestead.

Susan Mitchell, of constable: “Can’t I go through? No? But there’s to be a party, and the tea will get all cold.”

In the courage of the crowd, the people began to sing The Soldiers’ Song. It took courage. It was shortly after John O’Sheehan had been sentenced for two years for caroling another seditious lyric. A surge of sound brought out the words: “The west’s awake!” Dying yokes. And a sudden right-about-face movement of the throng.

Crowd shouting: “Up the Americans!”

With Sinn Fein and American flags flying, the delegates’ car rolled up to the outskirts of the crowd. A sharp order. The crowd-fearing bayonets lunged forward. Frank Walsh, looking through his tortoise-rim glasses at the steel fence, got out of his car. He walked up to the pointing bayonets, and asked for the man in charge.

Frank Walsh: “What’s the row?”

The casualness of the question must have disarmed Lieutenant-Colonel Johnstone of the Dublin Military Police. He laughed. Then conferred. While the confab was on, the Countess Markewicz slipped from Mr. Walsh’s car to our paling. She was, as usual, dressed in a “prepared” style. She had on her green tweed suit with biscuits in the pockets, “so if anything happened.”

Countess Markewicz, rubbing her hands: “Excellent propaganda! Excellent propaganda!”

The motor lorries chugged. Soldiers broke line, and climbed in. The people screamed, jumped, waved their hands, and hurrahed for Walsh. Mr. Walsh returned to his car. And in the path made by the heartily boohed motor lorries, the American’s machine commenced its victorious passage to the Mansion House. In order to get through the crowd to the reception we sprang to the rear of the motor. Clinging to the dusty mudguard, I remarked to Miss Pankhurst that we would not look very partified. And she, pushed about by the tattered people, said she did not mind. Long ago she had decided she would never wear evening dresses because poor people never have them.

Last act. Turkish-rugged and velvet-portiered reception room of the Mansion House. Assorted people shaking hands with the delegates. Delegates filled with boyish glee at the stagey turn of events.

Frank Walsh: “Look! There’s Bob Barton talking to his sister. Out there by the portrait of Queen Victoria see that man in a green uniform. That’s Michael Collins of the Irish Volunteers and minister of finance of the Irish Republic. The very men they’re after.

“Is this a play? Or a dream?”