What would happen if the Lord Mayor died? It was hinted there would be some terrible reply from the Irish Volunteers.
Now, when the strikers were becoming legendary, one of them had died, and crisis had returned like a thunderbolt.
“Monstrous!” Mrs. Slaney exclaimed, meeting me at the top of the stairs. “Monstrous! So at last they have murdered that splendid young Irishman! They’ll murder the others before they have finished their bloody work!”
The British Government murdered two others, or two others decided to murder themselves, according to one’s politics, and it looked as though the British Government had the strength of mind to murder the lot; but before this could be done Sinn Fein gave up the battle, and Arthur Griffith, the acting President, called off the strikers. Victory went to the British Government, and there were no more hunger strikes.
Did these men, who had suffered a long illness and a painful death, die for nothing? No. In spite of doubts as to the strictness of the fast, the sacrifice made by them helped in the hardening process the nation was undergoing.
It had been intended to bring the dead Lord Mayor to Dublin; but this was forbidden, and the coffin was taken by ship to Cork. Sinn Fein replied by ordering a day of mourning, and presented Dublin with the shadow of a funeral, flowers taking the place of the coffin in the hearse. Citizens were ordered to close their shops, and those whom sentiment for the Lord Mayor did not persuade to renounce a day’s trade, put up their shutters upon warnings that they would be wise to show visible marks of respect.
I went down to O’Connell Bridge to see this funeral without a corpse. The day had turned into a Sunday, and the streets were filled with the proletariat. The Mass, which I had listened to at the pro-cathedral, had been a stupendous experience. Every inch of the stone pavement of the great church had been covered with kneeling humanity crying out dolorous Latin cries to the chanting of the priests, and fingering countless rosaries. The flood of feeling flowed this way and that like waves heaving in a sea. I did not know whether to marvel at this spectacle or to sneer at it. Were we in this mourning church wrapped in a flame of sorrow, which was going to weld the nation into a metal out of which an everlasting sword could be forged: or more truly were a few tricksters playing on the easily wrought feelings of a not quite adult nation, which, childlike, weeps as easily as it laughs? Labour and Capital over again! Look right, look left—who here was not drawn from the working or shop assistant classes? As I heard these people calling out the sounding Latin phrases, I shook my head.
The press upon O’Connell Bridge was tremendous, and presently the hearse came round a corner. It was filled with flowers. After it rolled a Dublin funeral, only there went by a greater line of shabby carriages than even Dublin usually gets together. One looked and looked, and still more horses came round the distant corner.
In the following of this funeral marched Irish Volunteers and Cumann na mBan. They left no impression on me other than being dusty and riding on the top of a wave of emotion, which might set them down as quickly as it had lifted them up. Again it was Labour versus Capital, the servant against the master. These people were the same as the kneeling congregation, and the majority of them were growing up.
But this demonstration was a manifestation of that resolution which was affecting the nation as new blood poured into the veins of an anæmic man. Whether the exaltation was enduring enough to carry the nation to a renaissance, to a splendid rebirth, or whether it was sufficient and no more to take this people through a struggle with Britain, was a matter for a prophet. A temporary state or a lasting state, its existence could not be denied.