It was in their defeat that the Sinn Feiners won their great victory, and they knew it. They had been scoffed at, derided, denounced by the official party almost to—in fact, actually to—a state of desperation, and an act of despair became their last resort. The Statute Book indeed proclaimed Ireland a nation once again, but the Government treated Ireland more like a province than ever, and her own representatives seemed to acquiesce; so, as Mrs. Pearse, the mother of the "President," told me afterwards, "there was nothing left for them but to accomplish the sacrifice demanded to save the soul of Ireland and proclaim her on the scaffold once again unconquered and unconquerable."
It was an act of folly, if you like, to try to set up a republic, especially during such a crisis as this war, but since the death of the leaders brought out their true character, it has ceased to be looked upon as a piece of knavery, for these men, according to all accounts of the priests, died the death of saints, not scoundrels; so that we now realize the old, old story of the tragedy of misunderstanding, as much, indeed, by their own countrymen as by the Englishman.
If it was to illustrate in one dramatic coup that misunderstanding which has been growing between all parties in Ireland, then they have not died in vain, for every party must feel to a certain extent responsible for the catastrophe. Several things, however, seem to stand out prominently amidst the chaos.
Castle government is dead as Queen Anne and Home Rule as natural and as inevitable as the morrow's sunrise; Unionism, in the English sense of Empire, survives: everyone is a Unionist now; but what still remains inexorable is the attitude of Sir Edward Carson, whose "Unionism" is merely a euphemism for "bureaucracy," and who, with the Ulster Volunteers still in arms, equally prepared to resist constitutional government, whether from Westminster or from Dublin, is the greatest Home Ruler of us all—or should we say Sinn Feiner?
Personally, I have always thought, and still think, that the Orangeman has more to gain in an Irish Parliament than anyone else as representing the layman, the business man; but I, for one, should be sorry to see Home Rule at the cost of a single Ulster Volunteer's life.
Mr. William O'Brien has for years, as a species of political outcast, been preaching the doctrine of conciliation, and has suffered in consequence, but his successful opponents have not gained the victory, for we are now rapidly drifting towards the total exclusion of several counties—the thing of all things they most wished to avoid.
All the while people are wondering whether it is the people themselves or the politicians who are responsible for the antagonism, and three of the greatest national movements since the days of tenant grievances stare us in the face as outside, if not politics, at least outside the ordinary conventional politicians—I mean Sir Horace Plunkett's Co-operative Movement, Larkin-Connolly's Labour Movement, and Sinn Fein.
Surely something is wrong if such movements cannot be assimilated by either of the great political parties, as they should have been if those parties were together completely representative of the nation.
All our greatest men were isolated—Redmond, Carson, Plunkett, O'Brien, Connolly, W. M. Murphy, the Lord-Lieutenant—all appealing to or threatening the unfortunate Premier, already sufficiently occupied with the intricacies of English politics, let alone European.