“And you must agree,” said a third speaker, “that Ireland has been very badly tricked by your Government. Witness the Convention and the use that was made of it to impose conscription upon Ireland; the conscription of a country which has been reviled by Englishmen for years, and which it was proposed even then to partition—conscription which was by very many disapproved of for England, accepted with extreme reluctance by Canada and rejected by Australia.”
I recalled at this stage of the proceedings the humorous hall-porter at one of the hotels who had put his head round the corner of the writing-room when I was alone there and whispered: “John Redmond’s the man who made all the trouble. He wasn’t clever enough for your Lloyd George. Why the divil didn’t he get the promise in writin’. There’s no wrigglin’ out av somethin’ that’s in black and white, wid a good strong name at the end av the paper. Shure,” he continued with a roguish smile broadening his honest red face, “isn’t it the Kingdom av ’Ivin Oi’d be afther promisin’ if Oi was the Proime Minister an thurr was throuble brewin’?”
I am sure this must have been the man who tried to persuade one of the Labour delegates not to go into the street when the Black and Tans were busy shooting. “But I’m an Englishman, friend. They’ll not shoot me.”
“Shure, sorr, an’ I wouldn’t be trustin’ thim divils. They’ll shoot ye first, and thin find out ye’re an Englishman aftherwards.”
“What about the rebellion of 1916? Talk to me a little about that,” I said to a young fellow whose keenness was very attractive.
“It was a very small rising of extremists, a piece of insanity repudiated by nearly everybody in Ireland. A group of idealists, who believed they could imitate the Ulster Unionists and enjoy the same immunity, thought they would make a similar demonstration. The hideous severity with which the rebels were treated and the long-continued persecution of perfectly innocent people suspected of sympathy with the rebels were the causes of the rise of political Sinn Fein.”
“And now?” I asked. “What is the exact situation now? What are the hopes for peace?”
“There is no hope unless the English people wake up, change this Government and Parliament for one more competent and humane, which will adopt a saner policy, the one for which they say they fought the war. Ireland must have the right to choose her own form of government.”
“The Irish have chosen their government, and it is working very well,” chimed in a determined-looking young woman wearing the uniform of the Irish Republican Army. “All we ask is to be let alone. We can keep order if the English will let us. They cannot do so.”