 The Insurrection in Dublin by James Stephens This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer Please visit LibriVox.org This is the final part incorporating chapters 9 through 12 chapter 9 the volunteers There is much talk of the extraordinary organizing powers displayed in the insurrection, but in truth there was nothing extraordinary in it The real essence and singularity of the rising exists in its simplicity and saving for the courage which carried it out The word extraordinary is misplaced in this context The tactics of the volunteers as they began to emerge were reduced to the very skeleton of strategy It was only that they seized certain central and strategical districts Garrisoned those and held them until they were put out of them Once in their forts there was no further egress by the doors and for purpose of entry and sortie They used the skylights and the roofs On the roofs they had plenty of cover and this cover conferred on them a mobility Which was their chief asset and which alone enabled them to protract the rebellion beyond the first day this was the entire of their home plan and There is no doubt that they had studied Dublin roofs and means of intercommunication by roofs with the closest care Further than that, I do not think they had organized anything But this was only the primary plan and unless they were entirely mad there must have been a sequel to it Which did not materialize and which would have materialized, but that the English fleet blocked the way There is no doubt that they expected the country to rise with them and They must have known what their own numbers were and what chance they had of making a protracted resistance The word resistance is the key word of the rising and the plan of holding out must have been rounded off with a date At that date something else was to have happened, which would relieve them There is not much else that could happen except the landing of German troops in Ireland or in England It would have been I think immaterial to them where these were landed But the reasoning seems to point to the fact that they expected and had arranged for such a landing Although on this point there is as yet no evidence The logic of this is so simple so plausible that it might be accepted without further examination and yet further examination is Necessary for in a country like Ireland logic and plausibility are more often wrong than right It may just as easily be that except for furnishing some arms and ammunition Germany was not in the rising at all and this I prefer to believe It had been current long before the rising that the volunteers knew they could not seriously embarrass England and That their sole aim was to make such a row in Ireland that the Irish question would take the status of an international one and On the discussion of terms of peace in the European war the claims of Ireland would have to be considered by the whole Council of Europe and The world that is in my opinion the metaphysic behind the rising It is quite likely that they hoped for German aid Possibly some thousands of men who would enable them to prolong the row But I do not believe they expected German armies nor do I think they would have welcomed to these with any cordiality In this insurrection there are two things which are singular in the history of Irish risings One is that there were no informers or there were no informers among the chiefs. I Did hear people say in the streets the two days before the rising they knew it was to come They invariably added that they had not believed the news and had laughed at it a Priest said the same thing in my hearing and it may be that the rumor was widely spread and that everybody Including the authorities looked upon it as a joke The other singularity of the rising is the amazing silence in which it was fought Nothing spoke but the guns and The volunteers on the one side and the soldiers on the other potted each other and died in whispers It might have been said that both sides feared the Germans would hear them and to take advantage of their preoccupation There is a third reason given for the rebellion and it also is divorced from foreign plots It is said and the belief in Dublin was widespread that the government intended to raid the volunteers and seize their arms One remembers today the paper which alderman kelly read to the Dublin corporation and which purported to be state Instructions that the military and police should raid the volunteers and seize their arms and leaders The volunteers had sworn they would not permit their arms be taken from them a List of the places to be raided was given and the news created something of a sensation in Ireland when it was published that evening The press by instruction apparently Repudiated this document, but the volunteers with most of the public believed it to be true And it is more than likely that the rebellion took place in order to forestall the government This is also an explanation of the rebellion and it is just as good a one as any other It is the explanation which I believe to be the true one all the talk of German invasion and the landing of German troops In Ireland is so much nonsense in view of the fact that England is master of disease and that from a week before the war down to this date She has been the undisputed monarch of those ridges During this war there will be no landing of troops in either England or Ireland unless Germany in the meantime can solve the problem of submarine transport It is a problem which will be solved someday for every problem can be solved But it will hardly be during the progress of this war The men at the head of the volunteers were not geniuses Neither were they fools and the difficulty of acquiring military aid from Germany must have seemed as insurmountable to them as it does to the Germans themselves They rose because they felt that they had to do so or be driven like sheep into the nearest police barracks And be laughed at by the whole of Ireland as cowards and braggarts It would be interesting to know why on the eve of the insurrection Professor McNeill resigned the presidency of the volunteers The story of treachery which was hered in the streets is not the true one for men of his type are not traitors and This statement may be dismissed without further comment or notice One is left to imagine what can have happened during the conference which is said to have preceded the rising and which Ended with the resignation of Professor McNeill This is my view or my imagining of what occurred The conference was called because the various leaders felt that a hostile movement was projected by the government and that the times were exceedingly black for them Neither mr. Burrell nor mr. Matthew Nathan had any desire that there should be a conflict in Ireland during the war this cannot be doubted From such a conflict there might follow all kinds of political repercussions But although the government favored the policy of laissez-faire There was a powerful military and political party in Ireland whose whole effort was towards the disarming and punishment of the volunteers Particularly I should say the punishment of the volunteers. I Believe or rather I imagine that Professor McNeill was approached at the instance of mr. Burrell and Sir Matthew Nathan and assured that the government did not meditate any move against his men And that's so long as his volunteers remained quiet. They would not be molested by the authorities. I Would say that professor McNeill gave and accepted the necessary assurances And that's when he informed his conference of what had occurred and found that they did not believe faith would be kept with them He resigned in the despairing hope that his action might turn them from a purpose Which he considered lunatic or at least by restraining a number of his followers from rising He might limit the tale of men who would be uselessly killed He was not alone in his vote against a rising The orally and some others are reputed to have voted with him But when insurrection was decided on the orally marched with his men and surely a gallant man could not have done otherwise When the story of what occurred is authoritatively written it may be written I think that this will be found to be the truth of the matter and that German intrigue and German money Counted for so little in the insurrection as to be negligible chapter 10 Some of the leaders Meanwhile the insurrection like all its historical forerunners has been quelled in blood It sounds rhetorical to say so but it was not quelled in pea soup or to sane while it lasted the fighting was very determined And it is easily I think the most considerable of Irish rebellions The country was not with it For be it remembered that a whole army of Irishmen possibly 300,000 of our race are fighting with England instead of against her In Dublin alone there is scarcely a poor home in which a father a brother or a son is not serving in one of the many fronts Which England is defending Had the country risen and fought as stubbornly as the volunteers did no troops could have beaten them Well, that is a wild statement the heavy guns could always beat them But from whatever angle Irish people consider this affair it must appear to them tragic and lamentable beyond expression But not mean and not unheroic It was hard enough that our men in the English armies should be slain for causes Which no amount of explanation will ever render less foreign to us or even intelligible But that our men who were left should be killed in Ireland fighting against the same England that their brothers are fighting for Ties the question into such knots of contradiction as we may give up trying to unravel We can only think this has happened and Let it unhappen itself as best it may We say that the time always finds the man and by it we mean that when a responsibility is toward There will be found some shoulder to bend for the yoke which all others shrink from It is not always nor often the great ones of the earth who undertake these burdens It is usually the good folk that gentle hierarchy who swear allegiance to mournfulness and the underdog as others dedicate themselves to mutton chops and the easy nymph It is not my intention to idealize any of the men who are concerned in this rebellion Their country will some few years hence do that as adequately as she has done it for those who went before them Those of the leaders whom I knew were not great men nor brilliant That is they were more scholars than thinkers and more thinkers than men of action and I believe that in no capacity could they have attained to what is called eminence Nor do I consider they coveted any such public distinction as is noted in that word But in my definition they were good men Men that is who willed no evil and whose movements of body or brain were unselfish and healthy No person living is the worse off for having known Tomas McDonough and I at least have never heard McDonough speak unkindly or even harshly of anything that lived It has been said of him that his lyrics were epical In a measure it is true and it is true in the same measure that his death was epical He was the first of the leaders who was tried and shot It was not easy for him to die leaving behind two young children and the young wife And the thought that his last moment must have been tormented by their memory is very painful We are all fatalists when we strike against power and I hope he put care from him as the soldiers marched him out The O'Reilly also I knew but not intimately and I can only speak of a good humor a courtesy and an energy that never failed He was a man of unceasing ideas and unceasing speech and laughter accompanied every sound made by his lips Plunkett and Pierce I knew also but not intimately Young Plunkett as he was always called would never strike one as a militant person He like Pierce and McDonough wrote verse and it was no better nor worse than theirs where He had an appetite for quaint and difficult knowledge He studied Egyptian and Sanskrit and distant curious matter of that sort and was interested in inventions and the theater He was tried and sentenced and shot as to Pierce I do not know how to place him nor what to say of him If there was an idealist among the men concerned in this insurrection It was he and if there was any person in the world less fitted to head an insurrection It was he also I never could touch or sense in him the qualities which other men spoke of and which made him military Commandant of the rising none of these men were magnetic in the sense that mr. Larkin is magnetic And I would have said that pierce was less magnetic than any of the others yet. It was to him and around him they clung Men must find some center either of power or action or intellect about which they may group themselves And I think that pierce became the leader because his temperament was more profoundly emotional than any of the others He was emotional not in a flighty but in a serious way and one felt more that he suffered than that he enjoyed He had a power Men who came into intimate contact with him began to act differently to their own desires and interests His school masters did not always receive their salaries with regularity The reason that he did not pay them was the simple one that he had no money Given by another man this explanation would be uneconomic, but from him it was so logical that even a child could comprehend it These masters did not always leave him They remained marveling perhaps and accepting even which stupefaction the theory that children must be taught But that no such urgency is due towards the payment of wages One of his boys said there was no fun in telling lies to mr. pierce for however outrageous to lie He always believed it He built and renovated and improved his school because the results were good for his scholars And somehow he found builders to undertake these forlorn hopes It was not I think that he put his trust in god But that when something had to be done he did it and entirely disregarded logic or economics or force He said such a thing has to be done and so far as one man can do it I will do it and he bowed straight away to the task It is mournful to think of men like these having to take charge of bloody and desolate work And one can imagine them say oh cursed spite as they accepted responsibility chapter 11 labor and the insurrection No person in Ireland seems to have exact information about the volunteers their aims or their numbers We know the names of the leaders now They were recited to us with the tale of their execution And with the declaration of a republic we learned something of their aim But the estimate of their number runs through the figures 10 30 and 50 000 The first figure is undoubtedly too slender the last excessive and something between 15 and 20 000 for all Ireland would be a reasonable guess Of these the citizen army or labor side of the volunteers would not number more than 1000 men And it is with difficulty such a figure could be arrived at Yet it is freely argued and the theory will grow that the causes of this latest insurrection Should be sought among the labor problems of Dublin rather than in any national or patriotic sentiment And this theory is buttressed by all the agile facts which such a theory would be furnished with It is an interesting view, but in my opinion it is an erroneous one That Dublin labor was in the volunteer movement to the strength of perhaps 200 men may be true It is possible there were more but it is unlikely that a greater number Or as many of the citizen army marched when the order came The overwhelming bulk of volunteers were actuated by the patriotic ideal Which is the heritage and the burden of almost every Irishman born out of the unionist circle And their connection with labor was much more manual than mental This view of the importance of labor to the volunteers is held by two distinct and opposed classes Just as there are some who find the explanation of life in a sexual formula So there is a class to whom the economic idea is very clear And beneath every human activity they will discover the shock of wages and profit It is truly there but it pulls no more than its weight And in Irish life the part played by labor has not yet been a weighty one Although on every view it is an important one The labor idea in Ireland has not arrived It is in process of becoming And when labor problems are mentioned in this country A party does not come to the mind but two men only They are Mr. Larkin and James Connolly And they are each in their way exceptional and curious men There is another class who implicate labor and they do so because it enables them to urge That as well as being grasping and nihilistic Irish labor is disloyal and treacherous The truth is that labor in Ireland has not yet succeeded in organizing anything Not even discontent It is not self-conscious to any extent and outside of Dublin it scarcely appears to exist The national imagination is not free to deal with any other subject than that of freedom And part of the policy of our masters is to see that we be kept busy with politics Instead of social ideas From their standpoint the policy is admirable The policy is admirable and up to the present it has thoroughly succeeded One does not hear from the lips of the Irish working men Even in Dublin any of the affirmations and rejections which have long since become The common places of his comrades in other lands But on the subject of Irish freedom his views are instantly forthcoming And his desires are explicit and to a degree informed This latter subject they understand and have fabricated an entire language to express it But the other they do not understand nor cherish And they are not prepared to die for it It is possibly true that before any movement can attain to really national proportions There must be as well as the intellectual ideal which gives it utterance and the frame A sense of economic misfortune to give it weight And when these fuse the combination may well be irresistible The organised labour discontent in Ireland in Dublin Was not considerable enough to impose its aims or its colours on the volunteers And it is the labour ideal which merges and disappears in the national one The reputation of all the leaders of the Insurrection Not except in Connolly is that they were intensely patriotic Irishmen And also, but this time with the exception of Connolly That they were not particularly interested in the problems of labour The great strike of two years ago remained undoubtedly As a bitter and lasting memory with Dublin labour Perhaps even it was not so much a memory as a hatred Still it was not a hatred of England which was evoked at that time Nor can the stress of their conflict be traced to an English source It was hatred of local traders and particularly hatred of the local police And the local powers and tribunals which were raid against them One can without trouble discover reasons why they should go on strike again But by no reasoning can I understand why they should go into rebellion against England Unless it was that they were patriots first and trade unionists a very long way afterwards I do not believe that this combination of the ideal and the practical was consummated Into Dublin insurrection But I do believe that the first step towards the formation of such a party has now been taken And that if years hence there should be further trouble in Ireland Such trouble will not be so easily dealt with as this one has been It may be that further trouble will not arise For the cooperative movement which is growing slowly but steadily in Ireland May arrange our economic question and incidentally our national question also That is if the English people do not decide that the latter ought to be settled at once James Connolly had his heart in both the national and the economic camp But he was a great hearted man and could afford to extend his affections Where others could only dissipate them There can be no doubt that his powers of orderly thinking were of great service to the volunteers For while Mr Larkin was the magnetic centre of the Irish labour movement Connolly was its brains He has been sentenced to death for his part in the insurrection And for two days now he has been dead He had been severely wounded in the fighting and was tended One does not doubt with great care until he regained enough strength To stand up and be shot down again Others are dead also I was not acquainted with them and with Connolly I was not more than acquainted I had met him twice many months ago but other people were present each time And he scarcely uttered a word on either of these occasions I was told that he was by nature silent He was a man who can be ill spared in Ireland But labour throughout the world may mourn for him also A doctor who attended on him during his last hours Says that Connolly received the sentence of his death quietly He was to be shot on the morning following the sentence The gentleman said to him Connolly when you stand up to be shot will you say a prayer for me Connolly replied I will His visitor continued Will you say a prayer for the men who are shooting you I will say Connolly And I will say a prayer for every good man in the world who is doing his duty He was a steadfast man in all that he undertook We may be sure he steadfastly kept that promise He would pray for others who had not time to pray for himself As he had worked for others during the years when he might have worked for himself Chapter 12 The Irish Questions There is truly an Irish question There are two Irish questions and the most important of them is not that which appears in our newspapers and in our political propaganda The first is international and can be stated shortly It is the desire of Ireland to assume control of our national life With this desire the English people have professed to be in accord and it is at any rate so thoroughly understood that nothing further need to be made of it in these pages The other Irish question is different and less simply described The difficulty about it is that it cannot be approached until the question of Ireland's freedom has by some means been settled for this ideal of freedom has captured the imagination of the race It rides Ireland like a nightmare thwarting or preventing all civilizing or cultural work in this country and it is not too much to say that Ireland cannot even begin to live until that obsession and fever has come to an end and her imagination has been set free to do the work which imagination alone can do Imagination is intelligent kindness We have sore need of it The second question might plausibly be called a religious one It has been so called and for it is less troublesome to accept an idea than to question it The statement has been accepted as truth but it is untrue and it is deeply and villainously untrue No lie in Irish life has been so persistent and so mischievous as this one and no political lie has ever been so ingeniously and malevenantly exploited There is no religious intolerance in Ireland except that which is political I am not a member of the Catholic Church and I'm not inclined to be the advocate of a religious system which my mentality dislikes but I have never found real intolerance among my fellow countrymen of that religion I have found it among Protestants I will limit that statement too I have found it among some Protestants but outside of the north of Ireland there is no religious question and in the north it is fundamentally more political than religious All thinking is a finding down of one's ideas and thus far we have come to the statement of Ireland's second question It is not Catholic or nationalist nor have I said that it's entirely Protestant and Unionist but it is on the extreme wing of this latter party that responsibility must be laid It is difficult even for an Irishman living in Ireland to come on the real political fact which underlies Irish Protestant politics and which fact has consistently opposed and baffled every attempt made by either England or Ireland to come to terms There is such a fact and clustered around it is a body of men whose hatred of their country is persistent and deadly and unexplained One may make broad generalizations on the apparent situation and endeavour to solve it by those We may say that loyalty to England is the true centre of their action I will believe it but only to a point Loyalty to England does not inevitably include this active hatred this blindness this withering of all sympathy for the people among whom one is born and among whom one has lived in peace for they have lived in peace among us We may say that it is due to the idea of privilege and the desire for power Again I will accept it up to a point but these are cultural obsessions and they cease to act when the breaking point is reached I know of only two mental states which are utterly without bowels or conscience These are cowardice and greed Is it to a synthesis of these states that this more than mortal enmity may be traced? What do they fear and what is it they covet? What can they read out in a country which is practically crimeless or covet in a land that is almost as bare as a mutton bone? They have mesmerized themselves these men and have imagined into our quiet air brigands and thugs and titans with all the other notabilities of a tale for children I do not think that this either will tell the tale but I do think there is a story to be told I imagine an esoteric wing to the unionist party I imagine that party includes a secret organization They may be orange men, they may be masons and I would dearly like to know what the metaphysic of their position is and how they square it with any idea of humanity or social life Meantime all this is surmise and I as a novelist have a notoriously flighty imagination and I'm content to leave it at that But this secondary Irish question is not so terrible as it appears It is terrible now It would not be terrible if Ireland had national independence The great protection against a lie is not to believe it and Ireland in this instance has that protection The claims made by the unionist wing do not rely solely on the religious base They use all the arguments It is according to them unsafe to live in Ireland Let us leave this insurrection of a week out of the question Life is not safe in Ireland Property shivers in terror of daily or nightly appropriation Other undefined but even more woeful glooms and creeps wriggle stealthily abroad These things are not regarded in Ireland and in truth they are not meat for Irish consumption Irish judges are presented with white gloves with a regularity which may even be annoying to them and were it not for political trouble they would be unable to look their salaries in the face The Irish bar almost weep in chorus at the word land act and stare not dumbly on destitution These tales are meant for England and are sent there They will cease to be exported when there is no market for them and these men will perhaps end by becoming patriotic and social when they learn that they do not really command the big battalions But Ireland has no protection against them while England can be thrilled by their nonsense and whilst he is willing to pound Ireland to a jelly on their appeal Her only assistance against them is freedom There are certain simplicities upon which all life is based A man finds that he is hungry and the knowledge enables him to go to work for the rest of his life A man makes the discovery it has been a discovery to many that he is an Irishman and the knowledge simplifies all his subsequent political action There is discomfort about being an Irishman you can be entirely Irish and claim thus to be as complete as a peddle or a star But no Irish person can hope to be more than a muletto Englishman and if that be an ambition and an end it is not an heroic one but there is an Ulster difficulty and no amount of birking it will solve it It is too generally conceived among nationalists that the attitude of Ulster towards Ireland is rooted in ignorance and bigotry Allow that both of these bad parts are included in the northern outlook they do not explain the Ulster standpoint and nothing can explain the attitude of official Ireland vis-à-vis with Ulster What has the Irish party ever done to allay northern prejudice or bring the discontented section into line with the rest of Ireland? The answer is pathetically complete they have done nothing or if they have done anything it was only that which would set every northerner grinding his teeth in anger At a time when orangism was dying they raised and marshaled the hibernians and we have the Ulster man's answer to the hibernians in the situation by which we are confronted today If the party had even a little statesmanship among them they would for the past ten years have marched up and down the north explaining and mollifying and courting the black northerner But like good Irishmen they could not tear themselves away from England and they paraded that country where parade was not so urgent and they made orations there until the mere accent of an Irishman must make Englishmen wail for very boredom Some of that parade might have gladdened the eyes of the Belfast citizens A few of those orations might have assisted the men of Derry to comprehend that for the good of our common land home rule and the unity of a nation was necessary if only to rid the country of these blatherers Let the party explain why among their political duties they neglected the duty of placating Ulster in their proper persons Why, in short, they boycotted Ulster and permitted political and religious and racial antagonism to grow inside of Ireland unchecked by any word from them upon that ground Were they afraid nuts would be drawn at them? Whatever they dreaded they gave Ulster the widest of wide berths and wherever else they were visible and audible they were silent and unseen in that part of Ireland The Ulster grievance is ostensibly religious but safeguards on this count are so easily created and applied that this issue might almost be left out of account The real difficulty is economic and it is a tangled one But unless profit and loss are immediately discernible the soul of man is not easily stirred by an accountant's tale and therefore the religious banner has been waived for our kin's folk of Ulster and under the sacred emblem they are fighting for what some people call mammon but which may be in truth just plain bread and butter The words shin fame mean ourselves and it is of ourselves I write in this chapter More urgent than any political emancipation is the drawing together of men of goodwill in the endeavour to assist their necessitous land Our eyes must be withdrawn from the ends of the earth and fixed on that which is around us and which we can touch No politician will talk to us of Ireland if by any trick he can avoid the subject His tale is still of Westminster and Chimborazo and the mountains of the moon Irishmen must begin to think for themselves and of themselves instead of expending energy on causes too distant to be assisted or hindered by them I believe that our human material is as good as will be found in the world No better perhaps but not worse and I believe that all but local politics are unfruitful and soul-destroying We have an island that is called Little It is more than twenty times two spaces for our needs and we will not have explored the last of it in our children's lifetime We have more problems to resolve in our towns and cities than many generations of minds will get tired of striving with Here is the world and all that perplexes or delights the world is here also Nothing is lost Not even brave men They have been used From this day the great adventure opens for Ireland The volunteers are dead and the call is now for volunteers End of The Insurrection in Dublin by James Stevens