IV
Throughout July, 1914, all parties were working industriously to amend the home rule bill in such a way as to compensate the "ascendancy" party for the loss of its ascendancy. That solution had not been discovered when war broke out. To present a united front in face of the enemy, Lord Lansdowne and Mr. Bonar Law patriotically promised the prime minister their support in this latest crisis; the prime minister, not to be outdone in patriotism, undertook to postpone controversial legislation for the duration of the war. The contentious bills were left to hibernate in the statute-book; the constitutionalists in Ireland were left to compare the failure of constitutionalism with the success of treason; and the political historian observed that, once more, the major crisis had saved the government from the consequences of the minor.
Unhappily, as controversial legislation was only postponed, so the consequences of this surrender to rebellion were only postponed; more unhappily still, they were not postponed for so long. Certain lessons were learned in the years from 1911 to 1914; and they have not been forgotten.
First, the government, as the suffragettes and Orangemen had shewn, could be bullied; it either would not or could not keep order. And for more than two years it was bullied by strikers, conscriptionists, "war groups", newspaper proprietors and those who wished for a coalition; it was bullied in open session and in secret session by private members, ex-ministers and commissions of enquiry.
Secondly, officers of the British army could refuse to obey orders if commanded to suppress a political agitation with which they might sympathise; it was not made clear by the army council that privates had the same freedom if commanded to suppress a labour agitation with which they might sympathise.
Thirdly, a privy councillor might, with impunity, preach armed resistance to a law, though the result of his preaching were local bloodshed or a general war; Sir Roger Casement might not practice armed resistance in protest against the suspension of that law.
Fourthly, the word of a British minister could no longer be accepted. A political bargain is as binding as any other; and since 1910 the government had depended on nationalist support of which the price was the home rule bill. When pressure was applied, the government refused to honour its bargain; payment was to be made on new conditions and in debased coinage. It is instructive to read the list of those who acquiesced in this surrender, for the dishonour of the prime minister was shared by all of his colleagues and supporters who consented to the act of betrayal: they are English, Irish, Scotch, Welsh, Jewish and hybrid, so that the disgrace is not confined to a single nationality; they are men who probably pay their tradesmen, certainly their opponents at bridge. And many of them made eloquent speeches of righteous indignation when the Imperial German government abrogated the Belgian and Luxemburg treaties. In Ireland to this day and for many years to come there is not a man, woman or child who will take the British government seriously. For defence it is urged that, if the home rule act had been enforced in 1914, there would have been civil war in Ulster; temporary peace was bought at the price of civil war throughout the rest of Ireland from the Easter rising onwards, as the rest of Ireland learned from British ministers and from Sir Edward Carson that "the great questions of the time are to be decided not by speeches and votes of majorities but by blood and iron." Faced with this choice of evils, it was unfortunate that ministers selected the alternative which carried with it the repudiation of their own bond.
As the unconstructive critic is no less irritating and no more helpful than a howling child, the Irish policy of the liberal government may only be attacked by those who are prepared to suggest an alternative. The present first essential is that the imperial parliament should reestablish in Ireland a belief in its own good-faith; the second, that, as nationalist history has advanced rapidly since 1914, the Irish should be given a measure of independence relatively as great as that promised to them in the third home rule act; the third, that they should determine its form for themselves. All Ireland should be divided into electoral areas to choose a constituent assembly which would contain Ulster Protestants, Ulster Catholics, Southern Protestants, Southern Catholics and Sinn Feiners (who can enter no conference so long as there is a price on their heads). When a two-thirds majority of this constituent assembly has agreed upon a constitution, the imperial parliament should undertake to enforce it, if necessary by arms, whatever its form and without favour for any recalcitrants; and every section of parliament should pledge itself, jointly and severally, to this. The minds of those who are disturbed by talk of an Irish republic may be soothed if the word "commonwealth," sufficiently honoured in other parts of the world, be substituted. Those who see in Ireland a base of attack on England in a future war are not entitled to be heard until they have stated (1) what war they anticipate; (2) where Ireland is to find the money to build a fleet or to equip an army, and (3) how, in any war, Ireland is more immune from the supervision of the British navy than are France, Belgium and Holland.
Until Ireland has been pacified, the reciprocal murdering and incendiarism of this new Thirty Years' War will continue, at the lowest, to hinder succeeding governments in their task of reconstruction after the war, as the unsettled Irish problem hindered the task of social amelioration which had been entrusted to the liberal government in 1906. Month by month, as the shadow of Ireland advanced farther into British politics, the authority and usefulness of a great reforming party receded; and, at the end, the bruised, the broken-hearted and the disillusionised agreed that, if the liberal ministry which the genius of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had contrived and which the biggest liberal majority in history supported so long and faithfully could have been caught up to heaven on the morrow of the parliament act, every liberal would have said: "Felix opportunitate mortis."
The outbreak of war marked the death of liberalism. Freedom of speech was curtailed and suppressed until one scrupulous patriot asked in the House of Commons whether the Sermon on the Mount should not be regarded as subversive of military discipline; freedom of action was drowned by a wave of collective hysteria in which governors and governed vied with one another to impose new burdens and to bend submissive and welcoming necks to receive them. The theory of representative government, shaken to its foundations when a House of Commons which had been elected to carry the parliament bill engaged—as a parergon—in a European war, was finally destroyed when conscription was imposed without election or referendum. The lusty growth of autocracy soon choked such sickly flowers of liberalism as a care for the rights of minorities and a concern for the pleadings of conscience; though a moment's reflection would have shewn that, if Christianity is persistently thrust down the throats of all English children, a few will almost certainly accept it literally, those who looked for no qualifications to the injunction that a man must not kill were quickly taught that Christianity was not a practicable creed for times of war; and a country which prided itself on a traditional love of fair play first reviled and then persecuted conscientious objectors with so little discrimination that, when one Quaker who had acted as a stretcher-bearer received the Mons medal, he could only wear it in the prison to which he had been confined for refusing to undertake military service.
Whenever, in the first two years of the war, an article of liberal faith came in conflict with the heterogeneous policy of a coalition government, the article of faith was thrust aside. The resolutions of the Paris economic conference committed Great Britain to a tariff war with her enemies; the treaty of London converted a war which had been undertaken to satisfy British obligations to Belgium into an imperialist war in which the present and future allies of Great Britain were invited to help themselves at the expense of their neighbours; gradually there was heard less talk of a crusade on behalf of small nationalities, and the liberal party committed itself to a "knock-out blow". So committed, it could neither utter nor listen to proposals which involved less than unconditional surrender; and, though Belgian neutrality might perhaps have been vindicated and reparation secured before the war had run half its ultimate course, the imperialist policy in which liberalism acquiesced allowed of no check to hostilities until Europe was exhausted and revolution had been unloosed in Russia, to spread no man knows whither. The peace party in English politics finally assented to a settlement of which any militarist in France or Prussia would have been proud to acknowledge the authorship.
It was not to be expected that any set of political principles could remain unchanged by war, though liberalism would have been less violently mutilated if it had appealed to the heart rather than to the head of liberal leaders. How far their foreign policy contributed to the war which destroyed liberalism must be discussed later.