Six days of the Irish Republic: A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish PoliticsRedmond-Howard, L. G., (Louis George)
History
Six days of the Irish Republic: A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics
Redmond-Howard, L. G., (Louis George)
Ireland -- History -- Easter Rising, 1916
"Truth, and right, and justice have had very little to say to this war,
which is an outbreak of materialism and irreligion. The peoples did not
want this war; there is no hatred of one another amongst them: but the
governing cliques in each country have led or driven them like sheep to
the slaughter. God has been ignored; His law has been put aside;
Christianity is not allowed to govern the relations of nations. And now
the retribution is on them all. The fair dreams of victory and expanded
empire and increased wealth and prosperity with which they set out have
vanished long ago, and there is not a Government amongst them but is
trembling for the day when it shall have to answer for its stewardship
to its own people. If they knew as much in July 1914 as they do now,
which of them would have plunged into war? And probably if the war goes
on for another year they will curse the cowardice which kept them from
manfully facing the problem of peace, for which every principle of
religion and humanity, every interest, social, material, and political,
of their countries, calls aloud."
All this, of course, goes to disprove that the Bishop of Limerick was a
Sinn Feiner, but it also goes to prove that one cannot shake the
foundations of international relations without stirring internal
conditions to their very depths.
The clergy, however, were upon the whole, as they always are, with the
Government, as was instanced in a hundred different cases during the
rebellion.
Two of the leaders were typical of the old Fenians of darker days. One
was Thomas Clarke, who earned his living by running a newsagent's and
tobacconist's shop, but who was also engaged a lot in writing for many
of the minor newspapers which were responsible for much of the
propaganda which prepared the way for the rising.
The other--better known especially in the days of the South African War,
when he was, like Colonel Lynch, one of the Nationalist heroes--was
"Major" John McBride, who had actually raised an Irish Brigade to fight
for the Boers against the British, and who must consequently have felt a
very kindred spirit in Sir Roger Casement, who was merely repeating his
tactics.
It shows how much Irish politics have progressed, however, that while
all Nationalist Ireland is now watching the trial for high treason of
Sir Roger Casement with indifference, the Nationalists of those days
nominated McBride as Parliamentary candidate for South Mayo when a
vacancy occurred by the resignation of Mr. Davitt.
He was at the time of the rising engaged as an official of the Dublin
Corporation, and had been married to--and divorced from--Miss Maud
Gonne, a patriot of much the same type as the Countess Markievicz.
It was he who had conducted the fight at Jacobs's factory.
McBride was really the one link between the two wars--the Anglo-Boer and
the Anglo-German War, to use a Sinn Fein phrase--and if his later
attitude was now impracticable, it was certainly logical and consistent
with itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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