Ireland in Travail

by Joice NanKivell Loch; Sydney Loch

The new year started as the old year had ended in fury and ruin.

One of the dreariest of those afternoons, when evening was sweeping up out of the Liffey in the guise of a river fog, I found myself upon O’Connell Bridge watching a line of soldiers holding up traffic and searching motor cars. Standing there as chilly of thought as I was chilly of body, I became intuitive like a prophet, so that I was ready to open my mouth and prophesy.

Militant Sinn Fein had reached the limit of its popularity with the nation, the swing of the pendulum had got to its end and would come back again. It had been a melancholy task for loyal people watching the Republican ideal spreading through the country like a disease, finding week by week the British Empire losing the Irish nation, first by tens, then by hundreds, then by thousands, and for this reason above others, that Irishmen—be their opinions wrong, be their deeds wrong—were being hunted down in Ireland. The case of the deserting Unionists was the case of the man who is willing to beat his own wife, but who takes her part when an outsider appears to do the business.

Waiting on the bridge this evening, watching the fog rise off the river and the soldiers search the cars as they drove up, I knew the Sinn Fein militant policy had reached the limit of national sympathy and patience. As restrictions grew worse, as trade grew worse, that numerically greatest portion of the population to whom ideals are a consideration secondary to material prosperity, would look more and more askance at the people who were bringing them to ruin.

The Republican cry was a false cry as far as the Irish nation was concerned. Only a minority of the people were genuine in a desire for the Republic, and many who shouted “Up the Republic” had no idea what they meant. A band of enthusiasts had struck a spark, and now the country was wrapped in the flames of a national passion; but the majority of the people had been caught in the conflagration through circumstance. The psychology of the crowd had operated, the spirit of the herd.

Now that the youth of Ireland, who had been cheated of the European war, had had a fill of struggle, the time was at hand when the wise fireman, dragging his hose after him, might get into position to put the fire out.

Ireland suffered under a genuine grievance. The taxation was unjust; there were other injustices. But if a truce could be called and an offer made which put right what had before been wrong, the dream of a Republic would pass away as a man’s dream passes away in the morning. Let the tension be slackened and life find its true values again, and all the shouts left in the throats of the true Republicans would not trouble the nation again. The effort had been used up, and the gods do not give such passion twice in a generation. They are chary of their gifts.

Thinking this, I waited on the bridge, wondering how long would go by before some one in the crowd fired at the soldiers, whereupon the soldiers would return the compliment, and there would follow a stampede, and I would be offered the choice of being shot to death or crushed to death. But nobody drew a gun on this occasion, though another time, very soon afterwards, I was on the same spot, and somebody in the crowd threw a bomb or fired a shot, somebody who was well down a side street a moment afterwards, and the soldiers fired into the brown as I expected, and a woman was killed.

But the dove of peace, which had fluttered into sight for a day or two before Christmas, had fled away, and was not yet to be seen back again, and during these first weeks of the new year it became evident that spirit was to descend yet farther into matter.

I take the following quotations haphazard from issues of the Irish Bulletin (the Republican organ) of that date. Such remedies as these were tried to cope with the situation.