London Days: A Book of Reminiscences

by Arthur Warren

"It's another Piggott trick! Parnell's defence will show it all up."

"Suppose he should n't defend himself?"

"That's unfair!"

"Let me tell you a thing or two. Make a note of 'em, and see what happens within a year!"

In the course of the next two hours Roche heard more of the inside of Irish and English politics than I would have supposed could previously have escaped an editor's mind. It was clear that the comings and goings of Irish parliamentarians bent on propaganda and money-raising had not left behind much information that could guide a distant editor over a course abounding with obstacles. My experience with Roche that evening resembled all the experiences I have ever had in the United States when talking on the Irish question with persons who seemed really anxious for information. And the situation is much the same at this hour, differing only in kind, not in degree.

The events of November and December, 1890, proved to my doubting friend the truth of all I had told in print or out of it during the preceding months. But he was as much surprised at the end of the year as he had been when I talked with him in May. Roche died years ago; perhaps he knew by that time how matters stood. At all events, perhaps he knows now. The Irish in America were not in those days, and have not been since then much or far behind the scenes of a certain political stage. They have paid their money, and, like other audiences, have remained in front to watch, to listen, to applaud, or to hiss. If they have frequently applauded or derided in the wrong places, other audiences beholding other dramas have done no less.

The conditions in Ireland, and concerning Ireland, are not new to me. I have known them pretty well for forty years. If I were an Irishman I would think, no doubt, on most points political, with other fellow countrymen of my party. But what party would that be? I might answer, if you could tell me where I would have been born and of what religious faith. My sympathy with Ireland is deep; it would be so, if only for the matchless, the invincible stupidity with which she has been and is still governed. But her "injustices" and "woes" have long since been wiped out. That is one thing they do not know in America. But it is unnecessary to go beyond certain Nationalist speeches in the House of Commons to learn as much. John Redmond said a good deal on that point. But now there are no Nationalist speeches, no Nationalist members to speak of. The Nationalist Party is dead. The Irish seats in the House of Commons are empty, voluntarily empty. Had Ireland done her share in the War, she would have had Home Rule before the Armistice. But she would not do her share, and she does not appear to desire Home Rule, and Great Britain did not try to force her. In America the meaning of this is not quite understood. While Great Britain was sending millions of men to the front, while her manhood was everywhere conscripted, while her fathers and sons were fighting the malignant German, while she was depriving herself of money, food, clothing, economising in the very necessaries of life, not merely in order to provide for her armies, but to aid her allies, Ireland did nothing. Ireland's food was not rationed; she had plenty and to spare; plenty to eat, plenty to drink, plenty to wear; petrol and motor cars were not forbidden her, they were forbidden to Britain; the luxuries which Britain denied herself were abundant in Ireland; she was, in fact, the most favoured country in Europe. She was never so prosperous as throughout the war.

But not a hand would she lift to defend her soil against the Germans. Thousands of Irishmen were at the front; they fought splendidly, but it was not in accordance with the will of Ireland that they fought. It was because they willed it themselves. Ireland was exempted from conscription. Englishmen and Scotsmen, Welshmen and Cornishmen, all the men and all the women from Land's End to John O'Groat's have long memories for things like that. And so have many Americans.

It is useless, I suppose, to say that Parnell's course had he lived to and through the war time, still leading Irish politics, would have been this, or would have been that. He did not have to face such conditions; they were not forward in his time, but they were always at the back of the minds of some British statesmen, and he knew it. He knew that the dominant reason which stood between Ireland and Independence was the need of Great Britain to guard herself against attacks and invasions from the Continent. France was thought to be the potential enemy then, as she had been supposedly since the days of Napoleon I. Well, we know what Germany did. England could no more allow the island on her western flank to become an independent power than the United States could permit any of her forty-eight States to break away from the family roof. Are arguments for separation based on racial and religious differences more valid in the case of Ireland than they are in the case of the United States? What are the racial differences between Ireland and Great Britain compared with the racial differences in the United States, differences which arose through conquest and purchase, not alone through immigration? The Indians, the Mexicans, the Spaniards, the French, the Negroes? And then the welter of immigrations on top of these? And is the argument for majority rule, based, as it is usually, upon the majority in Ireland, more valid? Ireland is, and has been for centuries, an integral part, a vital part of the political organism known since 1801 as "the United Kingdom", and of that organism the Irish population, in Ireland, is but a small minority of the whole! In an age of democracy shall a minority rule? In the United States we know something about secession; we have clear and firm opinions on it now. Why should we expect Britain to permit the secession of Ireland? And if the Ulster problem presents such "vast difficulties", what becomes of the famous panacea—Self-Determination? Won't the panacea work in Ulster's case?