It is only fair to say that nine out of every ten of the Republicans to whom I spoke expressed sorrow and regret that the policy of violence had been adopted instead of that of passive resistance.
“But now that the fighting has been begun it is very difficult to stop it without laying ourselves open to the charge that we are weakening, or without giving the British Government the opportunity of saying that its policy of reprisals has succeeded. The very thought of these things is hateful to the sons and daughters of a brave fighting race.” The distinguished old lady who said this drew herself up as she spoke with the dignity of a queen and flashed swords and daggers from her fine proud eyes.
Her house had been searched twice by Crown forces. They did some small damage to doors and windows, nothing serious, for she is a woman of property and social position, an outstanding example of the thing I found to be true, that the severity of the reprisals, the ruthlessness of the visitations, the length and discomforts of the imprisonments were generally in proportion to the means or in accordance with the religious beliefs of the suspects. Age and sex did not count.
During an official reprisal which I witnessed in Cork, the blowing-up of two excellent shops in one of the main thoroughfares, when armed troops kept the crowd moving, and armoured cars, fully manned, kept the roads, I heard an old woman tremblingly ask a good-natured Tommy carelessly swinging his rifle as he moved people along the pavement, what the matter was. “We’re only going to send all you bloody Catholics to hell,” was the cheerful reply.
To refer once more to the searchings of private houses and shops: I investigated three cases, the one to which I have referred, the house of the old lady and her secretary, and two others, both shops. The usual practice is to knock loudly and demand admittance, but to give no time for anyone to run to the door, which is frequently burst open. Sometimes shots are fired into the passage as a precaution, killing or wounding perchance the man who is descending the stairs to answer the summons, which often comes in the middle of the night. A soldier stands guard over each member of the family. If the house be big enough each is placed in a separate room. If it be small they are turned into the streets and guarded there. A rigorous search is made, beds stripped, mattresses sometimes bayoneted, drawers opened and their contents tossed out, pictures pulled off the walls, letters opened and read, cupboards emptied—the whole house turned topsy-turvy. A shop is usually looted of half its contents. Recently, in the attempt to restore discipline, the householder has been requested to sign a paper stating that the soldiers left all in order and stole nothing. But no opportunity of checking is allowed, and the dazed and frightened woman (it is generally a woman, for the men are “on the run”) signs quickly, and would sign anything to get the soldiers and police out of the house and her terrified children into their beds.
In the case of the little sweet and tobacco shop the whole family, including two young children and an old woman, were turned into the street at midnight and made to stand there in the pouring rain for two hours. The gentle young Irish mother with the soft voice and seductive Irish drawl told me the story.
“It was me brother they wanted. He’s in the arrmy. But it’s weeks since Oi saw the face av him. Oi couldn’t tell thim where he was, but they wouldn’t belave me. It nearly broke me heart to see thim poke thurr bayonets thru the pickshure av the Blessed Virgin. An’ all the swates was trampled on the flure. The bits av tobaccy wint into the pockets av the crathurs. An’ the pore children was gittin’ thurr deaths av cold in the rain outside. An’ now the pore lambs will nut slape widout a light over thurr beds in the noight furr the fear av the cruel men that is on them. An’ what have Oi done but keep moi house an’ pay moi way like an honest woman? Shure,” she said, with a droll look and a twinkle, “if Oi knew whurr moi brother was, would Oi be tellin’ the soldiers? Oi would not, indade. Wolfe Tone is the name av him. An’ wouldn’t they be afther shootin’ at sight a man wid a name loike that?”
The Irish sense of humour never forsakes them even in their deepest distress. Mrs. A. Stopford Green, the widow of the great historian and herself an historian of merit, told me of a Catholic priest who had his home invaded and sacked. Standing amongst the wreckage of his little home, he exclaimed, between tears and smiles: “Glory be to God! They’ve taken everything they could lay their hands on. But there’s one thing they haven’t taken, because they can’t take it, and that is—the laugh!”
I came to one house in order to have an interview with a young Irish patriot who is “on the run.” He came secretly and at great risk to himself. He was cheerful and jolly; but, like everybody else in Ireland, he showed clear signs of strain and of an imminent breakdown. Eight times his premises had been searched, and each time valuable things had been stolen. Even whilst we talked a telegram from a friend arrived to say that the night before they had raided him again and taken away a pair of much-prized army boots.
A splendid type of cultivated and idealistic young manhood, he was hunted hourly from pillar to post on suspicion of ill-doing; but his life’s work had been humanitarian, designed by the slow but sure methods of education and co-operation to win the suspicious and illiterate peasant from his bondage to ignorance and intolerance.