Читать книгу Ireland in Travail онлайн

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After a month in Ireland I could pick out the Irish Volunteer. He wore a dirty velour hat, a shabby raincoat, and generally had his hands in his pockets. There was a youthful, cheeky type, belonging to the National University, and there was a dirtier, rather more prepossessing type, drawn from the errand boy and working classes. There was a better type still, which came from the country.

One had only to notice the Republican Volunteer rubbing shoulders in the street with the British officer, to comprehend these people belonged to two poles, which could never meet. Barriers of class, education, and standards were between them—it was Capital and Labour over again. The British officer, from his stupendous height, regarded the Sinn Feiner through the big end of the telescope, classed all connected with Sinn Fein as “Shinners” and valued them as such.

The Irish struggle did not develop along the lines of an ordinary war. It was not the late European war on a smaller scale. It was the case of an immensely powerful man fighting the shadow of a man.