Ireland in Travail

by Joice NanKivell Loch; Sydney Loch

Now that an armistice had been signed, and Dublin was again the centre of affairs, my wife and I packed up at the end of the Orange celebrations and returned home. We arrived in the middle of another blazing hot day, and as we rattled from the station on a jaunting-car, Crossley tenders full of unarmed Auxiliaries with towels about their necks passed us, going in the direction of the sea. It was an astonishing sight, and more eloquent than all the newspaper accounts.

There had been no public rejoicings to speak of at the turn of affairs. For a night or two fires had been lighted in the streets, and small boys had danced round them, and the public had shown a reluctance to go indoors and to bed; but the late hours were little more than an expression of the people’s satisfaction at the liberty which had followed the lifting of the Curfew. Irishmen and the British troops in Ireland took the cessation of hostilities in a sober spirit, as if every man carried a hidden sorrow. The gods had humbled all alike and given victory to none.

But though soldier and civilian both felt something of the melancholy that follows the cessation of all protracted trials, public satisfaction at the new conditions was undeniable, and as the truce continued opinions were expressed with a freedom unknown during the reign of terror. It was evident the man in the street had longed for stable conditions, and was eager to accept the compromise which had been effected.

Republican leaders who had managed to elude capture to the end had come down from the Olympian heights. They had magically materialised, and might be seen in the streets rubbing shoulders with common men, dining in restaurants off forks that previously had gone into common mouths, wiping their lips with napkins that before had known less glorious patrons. They were joined soon by such deputies of Dail Eireann as had been in prison and in internment camps, and were unconditionally released for the furtherance of the negotiations.

Young men, romantic men, high-spirited men had gone up to the Olympian heights two years, three years, four years before; there came down sober men, weary men, nervy men, and men with blood upon their hands. Rumour had long had it that many of the Olympians were on the verge of collapse, and rumour had been true. Chastened demigods came down to walk among common men again.

The Sunday after our return we went out to Mrs. Fitzgerald’s cottage. Her husband, the Minister of Propaganda, was out of prison, and came wandering in from the dining-room. Under his eyes were marks of wear and tear. He was one of the least provincial of the Dail deputies, had the easy manner of a travelled man, and gave glimpses of an educated mind. The Minister of Commerce turned up during the afternoon. He had been much hunted before the armistice; but he had not been taken. He looked very strung up, and admitted he had nerves. “I shall dye my hair if it starts again,” he announced. “There’s nothing to beat that.” Later two uniformed Republican officers dropped in from a camp on the hill at the back. It was astonishing to sit among these people who had been shadows a few days before.

The camp at the back of the cottage was a military centre for the district, and now and then the local volunteers were reviewed there. They came from all points on bicycles and on foot, the new generation, the young men, the people who were most affected by this national birth, this Irish renaissance. Some leader of the Republican Army would be there to review, a man who a few weeks before had a price on his head, and who could not have been seen by common men without permits, passwords, and all the paraphernalia of the Sinn Fein underworld.

The astonishing thing about these materialised Irish Volunteers was their youth. The country had been given into the keeping of boys, and even the leaders of the movement were nearly all young men. Elderly people shook their heads; but I believe the omen a good one, for Ireland suffers under the burden of her antiquity, and only young men can bring her a new life. One looks forward fearfully, but with hope, to the new Ireland that is being hammered into shape. Ploughboys and shop assistants wield the hammers.

The days passed, and the long hot summer drew to an end.

Auxiliaries and Black-and-Tans continued to drive in state to their daily dips in the sea, and one never again saw them with anything more formidable than a bath-towel round their necks. In course of time the British Government came to the conclusion that idleness in the erstwhile enemy land of Dublin was not well, and rumour said the bathers were to be sent away on leave. It is a fact that after a while the strange spectacle of these people come out of their wire cages and sitting unarmed and unharmed in open Crossley tenders with towels round their necks took place no more, and the sounds of lorry wheels were not heard again in the noble squares of Dublin city. But the memory of these people stays behind with Cromwell’s memory, and Strongbow’s memory.