Читать книгу Ireland in Travail онлайн

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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.