Then, about 1906, the birth of Sinn Fein, in those days not a thing of the sword; but a mild and respectable movement claiming Ireland’s right to develop along her own lines to nationhood. Half a dozen years and this movement making little headway, then 1914, Ulster thwarting Home Rule and the Citizen Army getting itself together; next 1916 and the Easter Week rising. A thousand romantic men strike at Britain in her extremity and rouse her at last.
Was that week which followed the Easter rising the time when a pitiless policy might have brought this movement to an end? The general who could ably have struck the blow was in Ireland at the time. The movement was not yet a national matter. A thousand men had stood together in what they believed was a splendid burst of chivalry; but the nation was still impatient of them, thought them a little ridiculous. A hammer was at hand to be used. Had the blow fallen, would this live thing called Sinn Fein have been killed outright?
The hammer did not fall; it gave a tap or two. Sixteen men were executed, and numerous restrictions followed; restrictions which did not affect considerably the law-abiding citizen, but were intended to fetter the growth of a distinctively national spirit. Once again Britain was loth to cripple, discovering a quality for which her enemies refuse her credit; but for which she may receive credit some day when national bitternesses have gone out of fashion. She tapped here, she tapped there; and she succeeded in rousing to a renewed courage that live thing, Sinn Fein.
Two years of repression, and the Irish Republican Party coming to life again like the Phœnix under the flag of Sinn Fein. Here a policeman shot, there a house burned. The British Government replying with a new repressive measure. Other houses levelled, and in answer sterner repressive measures; other policemen murdered, and still sterner repressive measures. So the descent into war.
It is understandable that the youth of Ireland, represented by the Irish Republican Army and the Cumann na mBan, should throw in their lot with a movement which had a gentle beginning as a Celtic revival. First of all the great European war had passed most of Ireland by; and the spirit of combat and sacrifice, which had bred giants on the Continent, must have trailed the fringe of its garments into all corners of the British Isles. There was the great Capital and Labour unrest, which must have rippled across the Irish Sea in course of time. The Irish peasant boy, with his plough and his pigs as a horizon, with America as an ultimate limit of vision, was in a state to welcome any change in the procession of his days; and along comes the patriot with his splendid story.
The unprejudiced person admits that the British Government passed by first challenges and insults, and in the beginning the task of Irish Volunteer was more exhilarating than onerous. It presented itself to the gaping ploughboy as a great adventure at little cost. Here was opportunity to defy authority, to expand into something more eloquent than a cowherd. So a beginning was made.
But in time the duties of a volunteer spelt more than an inspiring game. They called ever and anon for a man’s whole courage. But there was come a new thing to take the place of the bait of splendour which had sufficed in the beginning. The flame of a national being had burst alight. The prize of sacrifice for an ideal was now offered to the dazzled feeder of swine.
This burst of nationalism, which had been lighted and fanned quite falsely by the first enthusiasts, penetrated from the cities to the villages; and the laggard to join the I.R.A. became inspired by example. Thus the army swelled its ranks, thus the national spirit was fanned as if by a bellows. And a third agent went to work in intimidation. The village lout who hesitated to enlist found it the worse for him. That youths joined the I.R.A. in haste to repent at leisure is borne out by orders issued by Republican authorities concerning deserters. But every wide movement of necessity gathers a certain scum, and there is no denying this national awakening was to turn many a village clown into a staunch soldier of the Irish Republic.
A fact to be examined at this point is the surprising absence of people of breeding in the ranks of Sinn Fein. The rank and file of the movement was drawn from the working classes, while the leaders for the most part belonged to the lower middle classes. It would seem as if the Sinn Fein movement was a peculiar national expression of the world-wide conflict between servant and master. Europe as a whole, the world indeed, was in the throes of the Capital versus Labour question, and the Sinn Fein movement was Ireland’s personal expression of the revolt of the humble person against authority.
There was, of course, a sprinkling of gentry in the movement.