statesmanship. . . . To rule from Hamburg and Berlin a remote island and a discontented people, with a highly discontented and separated Britain intervening, by methods of exploitation and centralisation, would be a task beyond the capacity of German statecraft.'

German effort, then, would plainly be directed to creating an Ireland satisfied with the change and fully determined to maintain it.

'Were annexation by the victor indeed to follow a British defeat, Ireland might very conceivably find the changed circumstances greatly to her advantage. . . . But there is a third alternative (he wrote) I have never seen discussed or hinted at, and yet it is at least as likely as the first alternative, and far more probable than the second, for I do not think the annexation of Ireland by an European power is internationally possible, however decisive might be the overthrow of England. Such an overthrow would be of enormous import to Europe and to the whole world. . . . It would be with the victor to see that the conditions of peace he imposed were such as, while ensuring to him the objects for which he had fought, would be the conditions least likely to provoke external intervention or a combination of alarmed world interests. ...

' Germany would have to attain her end-the permanent disabling of the maritime supremacy of Great Britain-by another and less provocative measure than annexation. It is here and in just these circumstances that the third alternative, which no Englishman, I venture to think, has ever dreamed of, would be born on the field of battle and baptised a German godchild with European Diplomacy as sponsor. Germany for her own Imperial ends and in pursuit of a great world-policy might successfully accomplish what Louis XIV and Napoleon only contemplated. An Ireland already severed by a sea held by German warships and temporarily occupied by a German Army might well and irrevocably be severed from Great Britain, and with common assent erected into a neutralised independent European state under international guarantees. An independent Ireland would of itself be no threat or hurt to any European interest. On the contrary, to make Ireland an Atlantic Holland, a maritime Belgium,* would be an act of restoration to Europe of this most

*This was before The Scrap of Paper' was torn up.

naturally favoured of European Islands that a Peace Congress should in the end be glad to ratify at the instance of a victorious Germany. . . .

'It is evident that, if Great Britain were defeated, Germany would carry the Irish question to an European solution in harmony with her maritime interests, and could count on the support of the great bulk of European opinion to support the settlement those interests imposed. And if, politically and commercially, an independent and neutral Irish state commended itself to Europe, on moral and intellectual grounds the claim could be put still higher. Nothing advanced on behalf of England could meet the case for a free Ireland as stated by Germany. Germany would attain her ends as the champion of national liberty, and could destroy England's naval supremacy for all time by an act of irreproachable morality. . . . A more and more pent-in Central Europe may discover there is a Near-Western question, and that Ireland, a free Ireland, restored to Europe, is the key to unlock the western ocean and open the seaways of the world.'

To further the Sinn Fein foreign policy, Casement went to Germany and entered into traitorous dealings there. The Irish rebels fought to carry it into effect. It has permeated and fired revolutionary Ireland, while Germany has intrigued and plotted there, and is still plotting to assist it. Through it, Mathew J. Cummings of Boston, the President of the A.O.H. (American Alliance), linked together the German and Irish Associations in America, and was given the assurance that Germany would recognise the Irish rebels as belligerents and take charge of the Irish claim at the Peace Conference. This is the policy adopted on April 19, 1917, by the Sinn Fein Conference in the Mansion House, Dublin, held under the Republican Flag, and attended by over 150 of the younger priests and 900 other delegates. It was reiterated at the Convention held to frame the Sinn Fein constitution, on Oct. 25, 1917. Backing this policy, Germany, in the Note to America on Jan. 31, 1917, declares that,

'to the principles and wishes which she professes belongs in the first place the right of all nations to self-government

* See New York World,' March 7, 1915.

and equal rights, and in acknowledging this principle she would sincerely rejoice if peoples like those of Ireland and India, who do not enjoy the blessings of independence, now obtained their freedom.'

Meanwhile, through this policy, thousands of British troops are tied fast' from the front to control Ireland, where, alone among all the belligerent people of Europe, conscription is not enforced and a quarter of a million stalwart Irishmen are left unenrolled for military service. Major Hills told the Prime Minister, 'It will not be pleasant for England to have to go to a Peace Conference with Ireland standing in the corner as a naughty child. It will want some explaining to the world, and I am not sure that the world will not listen to Ireland as much as to ourselves.'† The official organ replied:

'English statesmen will succeed in settling the Irish question when they restore to Ireland the same sovereign rights they profess to be fighting for in the case of Belgium, Serbia, and Roumania. To claim these rights Ireland is going to the Peace Conference, whereat Major Hills confesses her voice will be listened to equally with England's; and, while the English Government and Ireland's misrepresentatives conspire to try and prevent her going there, let our countrymen in each constituency prepare, when opportunity comes, to elect an Irishman to go, not to the London Parliament where they break treaties, but to the Peace Conference where all Europe will make treaties.' ‡

VIGILANT.

II.-Sinn Fein and Labour.

Whether a special degree of patriotism will render a community specially zealous about the efficiency of its internal institutions and its own social and economic well-being, or not, depends largely on the general history, temperament and education of that community. A people whose love for their native land is constantly being called upon for dynamic acts of resistance or rebellion, in order to 'free' the land from a more or

* Irish Opinion,' Feb. 24, 1917.

Parl. Deb. (March 22, 1917), 2090. Nationality,' March 31, 1917.

less hated domination, may have neither the ability nor the energy to attack those inherent evils which they share in common with friends and foes alike. Conversely (and other things being equal), there may be much material progress and a vast activity in the arts of peace in a kingdom which needs the flame of war itself to kindle the dormant patriotic zeal of its inhabitants. In a country like England, enjoying centuries of independence, and a comparative immunity from foreign aggression, the note of national self-consciousness (which is the static form of patriotism) will not be heard so frequently as in a country like Ireland, where pride of ancestry is deeply scarred with a sense of subjection to an alien race. Patriotism, more than any other of the instinctive virtues, thrives on persecution- and especially on the memory of persecution. The growth of other feelings in the body politic-some good, some not so good-is often checked in consequence. This must be borne in mind by any who seek to make a critical examination of that extremely dark horse in the industrial stable, the Irish Labour Movement.

It has been said that all civil risings, like all wars, are economic in origin. On this hypothesis the Irish insurrection of 1916 may be attributed to the agelong animosity set in motion by the spoliations of English conquerors and their camp-followers, or to the more immediate exasperation caused by the implacability of modern (and mostly native) capitalism-according to whether the historian prefers to take a longer or a shorter view. Enough, however, can be deduced from the prevailing circumstances to prove that, like all previous exhibitions of its kind in Ireland, this was both a Patriot's and a Poor Man's Revolt-though the sentimental side of it was undoubtedly more apparent than the practical side. Easter Week came from Dublin's slums,' says a recent writer on the subject. The Dublin slums were certainly well represented at this carnival, but as the hot-bed of a disaffected Nationalism rather than as the seed-ground for enlightened economic ideals. The grievances of the labouring classes may have been implied in the Republican programme; but from the

.

Austin Harrison in 'The English Review' (Sept. 1917). Vol. 229.-No. 454.

S

first the intellectuals' of the Separatist movement overshadowed the Socialist and Syndicalist leaders, one figure alone among whom (and of him more anon) stands out with any prominence.

This, of course, was only to be expected. Among the vast majority who populate the South, West and Eastern Midlands of Ireland national consciousness has always been much more in evidence, and more deliberately fostered, than either civic, social, or even class consciousness. Socialism, and theories of proletarian cooperation, are more prevalent among the working men of Ulster; but there they have hitherto been held in check by the anxiety and uncertainty about Home Rule. In the other districts they have, to a considerable extent, been subordinated to the fulfilment of Home Rule. Among the agrarian element (forming still, by far, the larger part of the labouring population) they have made hardly any headway at all; while even with the shop and factory hands of the big cities south of the Boyne the green flag (now the green, yellow and white) has invariably provoked more enthusiasm than the red. And this in a country where the agricultural workers - the cabinboys of the national ship, as they might be calledhad stood up to the landlords with a ferocity unequalled in this class outside France; where the Larkinite strikes of a few years back were bitterer and bloodier than any similar uprisings in England; and where, as James Connolly points out in his posthumous work on the struggles of the Irish poor, the capitalist system is the most foreign thing' that has ever been introduced. This seeming paradox gives rise to the following interesting questions: How strong is the current of Labour 'unrest' beneath the surface of Sinn Fein politics? To what degree have the doctrines and aspirations of 'class-consciousness' caught on among Irish workers? Would the granting of self-government, with its inevitable consequence of dulling the edge of merely national egoism, have the effect of emphasising still further the 'class-cleavage' which the strikes and the Rebellion all too fatally revealed?

Labour in Ireland; Labour in Irish History; the Re-conquest of Ireland.' By James Connolly. Maunsell, 1917.