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diff --git a/old/14728.txt b/old/14728.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1b4ec5a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/14728.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4222 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Crime Against Europe, by Roger Casement + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Crime Against Europe + A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914 + +Author: Roger Casement + +Release Date: January 18, 2005 [EBook #14728] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRIME AGAINST EUROPE *** + + + + +Produced by David Starner, William Flis, and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + + + + +THE + +Crime Against Europe + + * * * * * + +_A Possible Outcome of the War of 1914_ + +BY + +SIR ROGER CASEMENT + + * * * * * + +COPYRIGHTED 1915 + + * * * * * + + + +INTRODUCTION. + + * * * * * + +The reader must remember that these articles were written before +the war began. They are in a sense prophetic and show a remarkable +understanding of the conditions which brought about the present great +war in Europe. + +The writer has made European history a life study and his training in +the English consular service placed him in a position to secure the +facts upon which he bases his arguments. + +Sir Roger Casement was born in Ireland in September, 1864. He was made +consul to Lorenzo Marques in 1889, being transferred to a similar +post in the Portuguese Possessions in West Africa, which included the +consulate to the Gaboon and the Congo Free State. He held this post +from 1898 to 1905, when he was given the consulate of Santos. The +following year he was appointed consul to Hayti and San Domingo, but +did not proceed, going instead to Para, where he served until 1909, +when he became consul-general to Rio de Janeiro. He was created a +knight in 1911. + +He was one of the organizers of the Irish Volunteers at Dublin in +November, 1913, being one of their provisional committee. At present +he is a member of the governing body of that organization. He spent +the summer of this year in the United States. Sir Roger is at present +in Berlin, where, after a visit paid to the foreign office by him, +the German Chancellor caused to be issued the statement that "should +the German forces reach the shores of Ireland they would come not as +conquerors but as friends." + +Sir Roger is well known for his investigation into the Putomayo rubber +district atrocities in 1912. + +December, 1914. + + + + +Chapter I + +THE CAUSES OF THE WAR AND THE FOUNDATION OF PEACE + + +Since the war, foreshadowed in these pages, has come and finds public +opinion in America gravely shocked at a war it believes to be solely +due to certain phases of European militarism, the writer is now +persuaded to publish these articles, which at least have the merit of +having been written well before the event, in the hope that they may +furnish a more useful point of view. For if one thing is certain it is +that European militarism is no more the cause of this war than of any +previous war. Europe is not fighting to see who has the best army, +or to test mere military efficiency, but because certain peoples wish +certain things and are determined to get and keep them by an appeal to +force. If the armies and fleets were small the war would have broken +out just the same, the parties and their claims, intentions, and +positions being what they are. To find the causes of the war we must +seek the motives of the combatants, and if we would have a lasting +peace the foundations upon which to build it must be laid bare by +revealing those foundations on which the peace was broken. To find +the causes of the war we should turn not to Blue Books or White +Papers, giving carefully selected statements of those responsible +for concealing from the public the true issues that move nations to +attack each other, but should seek the unavowed aims of those nations +themselves. + +Once the motive is found it is not hard to say who it is that broke +the peace, whatever the diplomats may put forward in lieu of the real +reason. + +The war was, in truth, inevitable, and was made inevitable years ago. +It was not brought about through the faults or temper of Sovereigns +or their diplomats, not because there were great armies in Europe, +but because certain Powers, and one Power in particular, nourished +ambitions and asserted claims that involved not only ever increasing +armaments but insured ever increasing animosities. In these cases +peace, if permitted, would have dissipated the ambitions and upset +claims, so it was only a question of time and opportunity when those +whose aims required war would find occasion to bring it about. + +As Mr. Bernard Shaw put it, in a recent letter to the press: "After +having done all in our power to render war inevitable it is no use now +to beg people not to make a disturbance, but to come to London to be +kindly but firmly spoken to by Sir Edward Grey." + +To find the motive powerful enough to have plunged all Europe into war +in the short space of a few hours, we must seek it, not in the pages +of a "white paper" covering a period of only fifteen days (July 20th +to August 4th, 1914), but in the long anterior activities that led the +great Powers of Europe into definite commitments to each other. For +the purposes of this investigation we can eliminate at once three of +the actual combatants, as being merely "accessories after the fact," +viz.:--Servia, Belgium and Japan, and confine our study of the +causes of the conflict to the aims and motives of the five principal +combatants. For it is clear that in the quarrel between Servia and +Austria, Hungary is only a side issue of the larger question that +divides Europe into armed camps. Were categoric proof sought of how +small a part the quarrel between Vienna and Belgrade played in the +larger tragedy, it can be found in the urgent insistence of the +Russian Government itself in the very beginning of the diplomatic +conversations that preceded the outbreak of hostilities. + +As early as the 24th of July, the Russian Government sought to prevail +upon Great Britain to proclaim its complete solidarity with Russia and +France, and on the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg pointing out +that "direct British interests in Servia were nil, and a war on behalf +of that country would never be sanctioned by British public opinion," +the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs replied that "we must not +forget that the _general European_ question was involved, the Servian +question being but a part of the former, and that Great Britain +could not afford to efface herself from the problem _now at issue_." +(Despatch of Sir G. Buchanan to Sir E. Grey, 24th July, 1914). + +Those problems involved far mightier questions than the relations of +Servia to Austria, the neutrality of Belgium or the wish of Japan to +keep the peace of the East by seizing Kiao-Chau. + +The neutrality never became a war issue until long after war had been +decided on and had actually broken out; while Japan came into the +contest solely because Europe had obligingly provided one, and because +one European power preferred, for its own ends, to strengthen an +Asiatic race to seeing a kindred white people it feared grow stronger +in the sun. + +Coming then to the five great combatants, we can quickly reduce them +to four. Austria-Hungary and Germany in this war are indivisible. +While each may have varying aims on many points and ambitions that, +perhaps, widely diverge both have one common bond, self-preservation, +that binds them much more closely together than mere formal "allies." +In this war Austria fights of necessity as a Germanic Power, although +the challenge to her has been on the ground of her Slav obligations +and activities. Germany is compelled to support Austria by a law of +necessity that a glance at the map of Europe explains. Hence, for +the purpose of the argument, we may put the conflict as between the +Germanic peoples of Central Europe and those who have quarreled with +them. + +We thus arrive at the question, "why should such strangely consorted +allies as England, Russia and France be at war with the German +people?" + +The answer is not to be found in the White Book, or in any statement +publicly put forward by Great Britain, Russia or France. + +But the answer must be found, if we would find the causes of the war, +and if we would hope to erect any lasting peace on the ruins of this +world conflict. + +To accept, as an explanation of the war the statement that Germany +has a highly trained army she has not used for nearly half a century +and that her people are so obsessed with admiration for it that they +longed to test it on their neighbours, is to accept as an explanation +a stultifying contradiction. It is of course much easier to put +the blame on the Kaiser. This line of thought is highly popular: it +accords, too, with a fine vulgar instinct. + +The German people can be spared the odium of responsibility for a +war they clearly did nothing to provoke, by representing them as the +victims of an autocracy, cased in mail and beyond their control. +We thus arrive at "the real crime against Germany," which explains +everything but the thing it set out to explain. It leaves unexplained +the real crime against Europe. + +To explain the causes of the war we must find the causes of the +alliances of England, France and Russia against Germany. + +For the cause of the war is that alliance--that and nothing else. The +defence of the _Entente Cordiale_ is that it is an innocent pact of +friendship, designed only to meet the threat of the Triple Alliance. +But the answer to that is that whereas the Triple Alliance was formed +thirty years ago, it has never declared war on anyone, while the +_Triple Entente_ before it is eight years old has involved Europe, +America, Africa, and Asia in a world conflict. We must find the motive +for England allying herself with France and Russia in an admittedly +anti-German "understanding" if we would understand the causes of the +present war and why it is that many besides Bernard Shaw hold that +"after having done all in our power to render war inevitable" it was +idle for the British Government to assume a death-bed solicitude +for peace, having already dug its grave and cast aside the shovel +for the gun. When that motive is apparent we shall realise who it +was preferred war to peace and how impossible it is to hope for any +certain peace ensuing from the victory of those who ensured an appeal +to arms. + +The _Entente Cordiale_, to begin with, is unnatural. There is nothing +in common between the parties to it, save antagonism to someone +else. It is wrongly named. It is founded not on predilections but on +prejudices--not on affection but on animosity. To put it crudely it is +a bond of hate not of love. None of the parties to it like or admire +each other, or have consistent aims, save one. + +That satisfied, they will surely fall out among themselves, and the +greater the plunder derived from their victory the more certain their +ensuing quarrel. + +Great Britain, in her dealings with most white people (not with all) +is a democracy. + +Russia in her dealings with all, is an autocracy. + +Great Britain is democratic in her government of herself and in her +dealings with the great white communities of Canada, Australia, New +Zealand, and South Africa. She is not democratic in her dealings with +subject races within the Empire--the Indians, notably, or the Irish. +To the Indians her rule is that of an absentee autocracy, differing +in speech, colour, religion and culture from those submitted to it by +force; to the Irish that of a resident autocracy bent on eliminating +the people governed from residence in their own country, and replacing +them with cattle for British consumption. + +In both instances Britain is notably false to her professions of +devotion to democratic principles. Her affinity with Russia is found +then, not in the cases where her institutions are good, but in those +where they are bad. + +An alliance founded on such grounds of contact can only produce evil. + +To such it gave birth in Persia, to such it must give birth in the +present war. + +In Persia we saw it betray the principles of democratic government, +destroy an infant constitution and disembowel the constitutionalists, +whilst it divided their country into "spheres of influence" and to-day +we see it harvesting with hands yet red with the blood of Persian +patriots the redder fruit of the seed then sown. + +The alliance with France, while more natural than that with Russia if +we regard Great Britain as a democracy (by eliminating India, Egypt, +Ireland) had the same guilty end in view, and rests less on affinity +of aims than on affinity of antipathies. + +The _Entente Cordiale_, the more closely we inspect it, we find is +based not on a cordial regard of the parties to it for each other, but +on a cordial disregard all three participants share for the party it +is aimed against. + +It will be said that Germany must have done something to justify the +resentment that could bring about so strangely assorted a combination +against herself. What has been the crime of Germany against the powers +now assailing her? She has doubtless committed many crimes, as have +all the great powers, but in what respect has she so grievously sinned +against Europe that the Czar, the Emperor of India, the King of +Great Britain and Ireland, the Mikado and the President of the French +Republic--to say nothing of those minor potentates who like Voltaire's +minor prophets seem _capable de tout_--should now be pledged, by +irrevocable pact, to her destruction as a great power? + +"German militarism," the reply that springs to the lips, is no more a +threat to civilisation than French or Russian militarism. It was born, +not of wars of aggression, but of wars of defence and unification. +Since it was welded by blood and iron into the great human organism of +the last forty years it has not been employed beyond the frontiers of +Germany until last year. + +Can the same be said of Russian militarism or of French militarism or +of British navalism? + +We are told the things differ in quality. The answer is what about the +intent and the uses made. German militarism has kept peace and has +not emerged beyond its own frontier until threatened with universal +attack. Russian militarism has waged wars abroad, far beyond the +confines of Russian territory; French militarism, since it was +overthrown at Sedan, has carried fire and sword across all Northern +Africa, has penetrated from the Atlantic to the Nile, has raided +Tonquin, Siam, Madagascar, Morocco, while English navalism in the last +forty years has bombarded the coast lines, battered the ports, and +landed raiding parties throughout Asia and Africa, to say nothing of +the well nigh continuous campaigns of annexation of the British army +in India, Burma, South Africa, Egypt, Tibet, or Afghanistan, within +the same period. + +As to the quality of the materialism of the great Continental Powers +there is nothing to prefer in the French and Russian systems to +the German system. Each involved enormous sacrifices on the people +sustaining it. We are asked, however, to believe that French +militarism is maintained by a "democracy" and German militarism by an +"autocracy." Without appealing to the captive Queen of Madagascar for +an opinion on the authenticity of French democracy we may confine the +question to the elected representatives of the two peoples. + +In both cases the war credits are voted by the legislative bodies +responsible to French and German opinion. The elected representatives +of Germany are as much the spokesman of the nation as those of France, +and the German Reichstag has sanctioned every successive levy for +the support of German armaments. As to Russian militarism, it may be +presumed no one will go quite so far as to assert that the Russian +Duma is more truly representative of the Russian people than the +Parliament of the Federated peoples of Germany at Berlin. + +The machines being then approximately the same machines, we must seek +the justification for them in the uses to which they have been put. + +For what does France, for what does Russia maintain a great army? Why +does Germany call so many youthful Germans to the colours? On what +grounds of moral sanction does Great Britain maintain a navy, whose +cost far exceeds all the burdens of German militarism? + +Russia stretches across the entire area of Central Asia and comprises +much of the greater part of Europe as well. In its own territory, it +is unassailable, and never has been invaded with success. No power +can plunder or weaken Russia as long as she remains within her own +borders. Of all the great powers in Europe she is the one that after +England has the least need of a great army. + +She cannot be assailed with success at home, and she has no need +to leave her own territories in search of lands to colonize. Her +population, secure in its own vast numbers and vast resources has, for +all future needs of expansion the continent of Siberia into which to +overflow. Russia cannot be threatened within Russia and has no need +to go outside Russia. A Russian army of 4,000,000 is not necessary to +self-defence. Its inspiration can be due only to a policy of expansion +at the cost of others, and its aim to extend and to maintain existing +Russian frontiers. As I write it is engaged not in a war of defence +but in a war of invasion, and is the instrument of a policy of avowed +aggression. + +Not the protection of the Slavs from Austria, herself so largely a +Slavic power and one that does not need to learn the principles of +good government from Russia, but the incorporation of the Slavs within +the mightiest empire upon earth--this is the main reason why Russia +maintains the mightiest army upon earth. Its threat to Germany, as the +protector of Austria-Hungary, has been clear, and if we would find +the reason for German militarism we shall find at least one half of it +across the Russian frontier. + +The huge machine of the French army, its first line troops almost +equal to Germany's, is not a thing of yesterday. + +It was not German aggression founded it--although Germany felt it once +at Jena. Founded by kings of France, French militarism has flourished +under republic, empire, constitutional monarchy, and empire again +until to-day we find its greatest bloom full blown under the mild +breath of the third republic. What is the purpose of this perfect +machine? Self-defence? From what attack? Germany has had it in her +power, again and again within the last thirty years to attack +France at a disadvantage, if not even with impunity. Why has she +refrained--whose hand restrained her? Not Russia's--not England's. +During the Russo-Japanese war or during the Boer war, France could +have been assailed with ease and her army broken to pieces. But German +militarism refrained from striking that blow. The object of the great +army France maintains is not to be found in reasons of self-defence, +but may be found, like that of Russia in hopes of armed expansion. +Since the aim in both cases was the same, to wage a war of aggression +to be termed of "recovery" in one case and "protection" in the other, +it was not surprising that Czar and President should come together, +and that the cause of the Slavs should become identified with the +cause of Strasburg. + +To "protect" the Slavs meant assailing Austria-Hungary (another way of +attacking Germany), and to "recover" Strasburg meant a _mes-alliance_ +between democrat of France and Cossack of the Don. + +We come now to the third party to die Entente, and it is now we begin +to perceive how it was that a cordial understanding with England +rendered a Russo-French attack upon Germany only a question of time +and opportunity. Until England appeared upon the scene neither Russia +nor France, nor both combined, could summon up courage to strike the +blow. Willing to wound they were both afraid to strike. It needed a +third courage, a keener purpose and a greater immunity. + +German militarism was too formidable a factor in the life of +65,000,000 of the most capable people in Europe to be lightly assailed +even by France and Russia combined. Russia needed money to perfect the +machinery of invasion, so sorely tried by the disastrous failure to +invade Korea and Manchuria. France had the money to advance, but she +still doubted the ability of her stagnant population of 40,000,000 to +face the growing magnitude of the great people across the Rhine. It +needed another guarantee--and England brought it. + +From the day that Great Britain and her mighty fleet joined the +separated allies with their mighty armies, the bond between them and +the circle round Germany grew taut. From that day the counsels of +the allies and their new found "friend" thickened and quickened. The +immovable "menace across the Rhine" in one case had become the active +"menace across the North Sea" in the other case. + +The sin of German militarism was at last out. It could take to the +water as kindly as to the land. As long as the war machine guaranteed +the inviolability of German territory it was no threat to European +peace, but when it assumed the task of safe-guarding German rights +at sea it became the enemy of civilization. These trading people not +content with an army that kept French "revanche" discreetly silent +and Slav "unity" a dream of the future presumed to have a sea-born +commerce that grew by leaps and bounds, and they dared to build a navy +to defend and even to extend it. _Delenda est Carthago!_ From that day +the doom of "German militarism" was sealed; and England, democratic +England, lay down with the Czar in the same bed to which the French +housewife had already transferred her republican counterpane. + +The duration of peace became only a question of time, and the war of +to-day only a question of opportunity and pretext. Each of the parties +to the understanding had the same clear purpose to serve, and while +the aim to each was different the end was the same. Germany's power +of defence must be destroyed. That done each of the sleeping partners +to the unsigned compact would get the share of the spoils, guarded by +armed German manhood, he coveted. + +To Russia, the dismemberment of Austria-Hungary and the incorporation +of the Slav elements in part into her own vast empire, in part into a +vassal and subordinate Balkan Confederacy. + +To France the restoration of Lorraine, with Metz, and of Alsace with +Strasburg and their 1,500,000 of German speaking Teutons to the French +Empire. + +To England, the destruction of German sea-power and along with it the +permanent crippling of German competition in the markets of the world. + +Incidentally German colonies would disappear along with German +shipping, and with both gone a German navy would become a useless +burden for a nation of philosophers to maintain, so that the future +status of maritime efficiency in Europe could be left to the power +that polices the seas to equitably fix for all mankind, as well as for +the defeated rival. + +Such an outline was the altruistic scope of the unsigned agreement +entered into by the three parties of the _Triple Entente_; and it only +remained to get ready for the day when the matter could be brought +to issue. The murder of the Archduke Ferdinand furnished Russia with +the occasion, since she felt that her armies were ready, the sword +sharpened, and the Entente sure and binding. + +The mobilization by Russia was all that France needed "to do that +which might be required of her by her interests." (Reply of the French +Government to the German Ambassador at Paris, August 1st, 1914.) + +Had the neutrality of Belgium been respected as completely as the +neutrality of Holland, England would have joined her "friends" in the +assault on Germany, as Sir Edward Grey was forced to admit when the +German Ambassador in vain pressed him to state his own terms as the +price of English neutrality. + +The hour had struck. Russia was sure of herself, and the rest followed +automatically since all had been provided for long before. The French +fleet was in the Mediterranean, as the result of the military compact +between France and England signed, sealed and delivered in November, +1912, and _withheld from the cognizance of the British Parliament +until after war had been declared_. The British fleet had been +mobilized early in July in anticipation of Russia's mobilization on +land--and here again it is Sir Edward Grey who incidentally supplies +the proof. + +In his anxiety, while there was still the fear that Russia might hold +her hand, he telegraphed to the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg +on 27th of July, requiring him to assure the Russian Foreign Minister, +that the British Fleet, "which is concentrated, _as it happens_" would +not disperse from Portland. + +That "as it happens" is quite the most illuminating slip in the +British White Paper, and is best comprehended by those who know what +have been the secret orders of the British fleet since 1909, and what +was the end in view when King George reviewed it earlier in the month, +and when His Majesty so hurriedly summoned the unconstitutional +"Home Rule" conference at Buckingham Palace on 18th of July. Nothing +remained for the "friends" but to so manoeuvre that Germany should be +driven to declare war, or see her frontiers crossed. If she did the +first, she became the "aggressor"; if she waited to be attacked she +incurred the peril of destruction. + +Such, in outline, are the causes and steps that led to the outbreak of +war. The writer has seen those steps well and carefully laid, tested +and tried beforehand. Every rung of the scaling ladder being raised +for the storming of the German defences on land and sea was planed and +polished in the British Foreign Office. + +As Sir Edward Grey confessed three years ago, he was "but the fly on +the wheel." That wheel was the ever faster driven purpose of Great +Britain to destroy the growing sea-power and commerce of Germany. The +strain had reached the breaking point. + +During the first six months of 1914, German export trade almost +equalled that of Great Britain. Another year of peace, and it would +certainly have exceeded it, and for the first time in the history of +world trade Great Britain would have been put in the second place. +German exports from January to June had swelled to the enormous total +of $1,045,000,000 as against the $1,075,000,000 of Great Britain. A +war against such figures could not be maintained in the markets, it +must be transferred to the seas. + +Day by day as the war proceeds, although it is now only six weeks old, +the pretences under which it was begun are being discarded. England +fights not to defend the neutrality of Belgium, not to destroy German +militarism, but to retain, if need be by involving the whole world in +war, her supreme and undisputed ownership of the seas. + +This is the crime against Europe, the crime against the world that, +among other victims the United States are invited to approve, in order +that to-morrow their own growing navy may be put into a like posture +with that of a defeated Germany. + +With the Kiel Canal "handed to Denmark," as one of the fruits of +British victory, as Lord Charles Beresford yesterday magnanimously +suggested, how long may it be before the Panama Canal shall be found +to be "a threat to peace" in the hands of those who constructed it? + +A rival fleet in being, whether the gunners be Teuton or Anglo-Saxon +unless the Admiralty controlling it is seated at Whitehall, will +always be an eyesore to the Mistress of the seas, in other words, "a +threat to the peace of the world." + +The war of armaments cannot be ended by the disarming of the German +people. To hand Europe over to a triumphal alliance of Russian and +French militarism, while England controls the highways and waterways +of mankind by a fleet whose function is "to dictate the maritime +law of nations," will beget indeed a new Europe, but a Europe +whose acquiescence is due to fear and the continued pressure of +well-sustained force--a Europe submitted to the despotism of unnatural +alliances designed to arrest the laws of progress. + +The laws of progress demand that efficiency shall prevail. The crime +of Germany has been superior efficiency, not so much in the arts +of war as in the products of peace. If she go down to-day before a +combination of brute force and unscrupulous intelligence her fall +cannot be permanent. Germany has within herself the forces that ensure +revival, and revival means recovery. Neither France nor Russia nor +both combined, can give to Europe what Britain now designs to take +from it by their help. + +Whatever may be the result of this war on the field of battle, to +France indeed it can bring only one end. For her there is no future +save that of a military empire. Her life blood is dried up. This war +will sweep away all power of recuperation. She will remain impotent +to increase her race, sterile of new forces for good, her young men's +blood gone to win the barren fields of Alsace. Her one purpose in the +new Europe will be to hold a sword, not her own, over the struggling +form of a resurgent Germany in the interests of another people. Let +Germany lose 1,000,000 men in the fighting of to-day, she can recover +them in two years of peace. But to France the losses of this war, +whether she win or lose, cannot be made good in a quarter of a century +of child births. Whatever comes to Russia, to England, France as a +great free power is gone. Her future function will be to act in a +subordinate capacity alone; supported and encouraged by England she +will be forced to keep up a great army in order that the most capable +people of the continent, with a population no defeat can arrest, +shall not fill the place in Europe and in the world they are called +on surely to fill, and one that conflicts only with British aims and +appetites. + +German expansion was no threat to France. It was directed to other +fields, chiefly those of commerce. In order to keep it from those +fields England fanned the dying fires of French resentment and strove +by every agency to kindle a natural sentiment into an active passion. + +The historian of the future will record that whatever the immediate +fate of Germany may be, the permanent victim was France. + +The day England won her to an active policy of vengeance against +the victor of 1870, she wooed her to abiding loss. Her true place in +Europe was one of friendship with Germany. But that meant, inevitably, +the discovery by Europe that the chief barrier to European concord +lay not in the armies of the powers, but in the ring of hostile +battleships that constrained her peoples into armed camps. + +European militarism rests on English navalism. English navalism +requires for its continued existence a disunited Europe; and a Europe +kept apart is a Europe armed, anxious and watchful, bent on mutual +attack, its eyes fixed on the _earth_. Europe must lift its eyes +to the sea. There lies the highway of the nations, the only road to +freedom--the sole path to peace. + +For the pent millions of Europe there can be no peace, no laying aside +of arms, no sincere development of trade or culture while one people, +_in Europe but not of Europe_, immune themselves from all attack, +and sure that whatever suffering they inflict on others can never be +visited on their own shores, have it in their power to foment strife +with impunity and to call up war from the ends of the earth while they +themselves enjoy the blessing of peace. + +England, the soul and brain of this confederacy of war abroad remains +at peace at home. As I write these words a despatch from Sir Alfred +Sharpe, the correspondent of a London paper in France, comes to hand. +It should be placarded in every Foreign Office of the world, in every +temple of justice, in every house of prayer. + +"It is difficult for the people in England to realize the condition of +Northern France at the present time. Although the papers are full of +accounts of desolation and destruction caused by the German invasion, +it is only by an actual experience that a full realization of the +horror comes. To return to England after visiting the French war zone +is to come back to a land of perfect peace, where everything is normal +and where it is not easy to believe we are almost within hearing +distance of the cannonade on the Aisne." + +(Sir Alfred Sharpe, to the _Daily Chronicle_ from the Front, September +2nd, 1914.) + +It is this immunity from the horror of war that makes all Englishmen +jingoes. They are never troubled by the consequences of belligerency. +Since it is only by "an actual experience that the full realization of +the horror comes." Until that horror strikes deep on English soil her +statesmen, her Ministers, her Members of Parliament, her editors, will +never sincerely love peace, but will plan always to ensure war abroad, +whenever British need or ambition demands it. + +Were England herself so placed that responsibility for her acts could +be enforced on her own soil, among her own people, and on the head +of those who devise her policies, then we might talk of arbitration +treaties with hope, and sign compacts of goodwill sure that they were +indeed cordial understandings. + +But as long as Great Britain retains undisputed ownership of the chief +factor that ensures at will peace or war on others, there can be only +armaments in Europe, ill-will among men and war fever in the blood of +mankind. + +British democracy loves freedom of the sea in precisely the same +spirit as imperial Rome viewed the spectacle of Celtic freedom beyond +the outposts of the Roman legions; as Agricola phrased it, something +"to wear down and take possession of so that freedom may be put out of +sight." + +The names change but the spirit of imperial exploitation, whether it +call itself an empire or a democracy, does not change. + +Just as the Athenian Empire, in the name of a democracy, sought to +impose servitude at sea on the Greek world, so the British Empire, in +the name of a democracy, seeks to encompass mankind within the long +walls of London. + +The modern Sparta may be vanquished by the imperial democrats +assailing her from East and West. But let the world be under no +illusions. + +If Germany go down to-day, vanquished by a combination of Asiatic, +African, American, Canadian and European enemies, the gain will not be +to the world nor to the cause of peace. + +The mistress of the seas will remain to ensure new combinations of +enmity to prohibit the one league of concord that alone can bring +freedom and peace to the world. The cause that begot this war will +remain to beget new wars. + +The next victim of universal sea-power may not be on the ravaged +fields of mid-Europe, but mid the wasted coasts and bombarded seaports +of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. + +A permanent peace can only be laid on a sure foundation. A sure +foundation of peace among men can only be found when mastery of the +sea by one people has been merged in freedom of the seas for all. + + + + +Chapter II + +THE KEEPER OF THE SEAS + + +As long ago as 1870 an Irishman pointed out that if the English press +did not abandon the campaign of prejudiced suspicion it was even then +conducting against Germany, the time for an understanding between +Great Britain and the German people would be gone for ever. + +It was Charles Lever who delivered this shrewd appreciation of the +onlooker. + +Writing from Trieste on August 29th, 1870, to John Blackwood, he +stated: + +"Be assured the _Standard_ is making a great blunder by its +anti-Germanism and English opinion has _just now_ a value in Germany +which if the nation be once disgusted with us will be gone for ever." + +Lever preserved enough of the Irishman through all his official +connection to see the two sides of a question and appreciate the point +of view of the other man. + +What Lever pointed out during the early stages of the Franco-German +war has come to pass. The _Standard_ of forty years ago is the British +press of to-day, with here and there the weak voice of an impotent +Liberalism crying in the wilderness. Germany has, indeed, become +thoroughly disgusted and the hour of reconciliation has long since +gone by. In Lever's time it was now or never; the chance not taken +then would be lost for ever, and the English publicist of to-day +is not in doubt that it is now too late. His heart-searchings need +another formula of expression--no longer a conditional assertion of +doubt, but a positive questioning of impending fact, "is it too soon." +That the growing German navy must be smashed he is convinced, but how +or when to do it he is not so clear. + +The situation is not yet quite intolerable, and so, although many urge +an immediate attack before the enemy grows too strong, the old-time +British love of compromise and trust in luck still holds his hand. The +American "alliance" too, may yet come off. The Entente with France, +already of great value, can be developed into something more assuredly +anti-German, and if present-day relations of friendship with the +United States can be but tightened into a mutual committal of both +Powers to a common foreign policy, then the raid on Germany may never +be needed. She can be bottled up without it. No man who studies the +British mind can have any doubt of the fixed trend of British thought. + +It can be summed up in one phrase. German expansion is not to be +tolerated. It can only be a threat to or attained at the expense of +British interests. Those interests being world-wide, with the seas +for their raiment nay, with the earth for their footstool--it follows +that wherever Germany may turn for an outlet she is met by the British +challenge: "Not there!" British interests interdict the Old World; the +Monroe Doctrine, maintained, it is alleged by British naval supremacy, +forbids the New. + +Let Germany acquire a coaling station, a sanitorium, a health resort, +the ground for a hotel even, on some foreign shore, and "British +interests" spring to attention, English jealousy is aroused. How +long this state of tension can last without snapping could, perhaps, +be best answered in the German naval yards. It is evident that some +7,000,000 of the best educated race in the world, physically strong, +mentally stronger, homogeneous, highly trained, highly skilled, +capable and energetic and obedient to a discipline that rests upon and +is moulded by a lofty conception of patriotism, cannot permanently be +confined to a strictly limited area by a less numerous race, less well +educated, less strong mentally and physically and assuredly less well +trained, skilled and disciplined. Stated thus the problem admits of a +simple answer; and were there no other factor governing the situation, +that answer would have been long since given. + +It is not the ethical superiority of the English race that accounts +for their lead, but the favourable geographical situation from which +they have been able to develop and direct their policy of expansion. + +England has triumphed mainly from her position. The qualities of +her people have, undoubtedly, counted for much, but her unrivalled +position in the lap of the Atlantic, barring the seaways and closing +the tideways of Central and North-eastern Europe, has counted for +more. + +With this key she has opened the world to herself and closed it to her +rivals. + +The long wars with France ended in the enhancement of this position by +the destruction of the only rival fleet in being. + +Europe, without navies, without shipping became for England a mere +westward projection of Asia, dominated by warlike peoples who +could always be set by the ears and made to fight upon points of +dynastic honour, while England appropriated the markets of mankind. +Thenceforth, for the best part of a century, while Europe was spent +in what, to the superior Britain were tribal conflicts, the seas and +coasts of the world lay open to the intrusions of his commerce, his +colonists, his finance, until there was seemingly nothing left outside +the two Americas worth laying hands on. This highly favoured maritime +position depends, however, upon an unnamed factor, the unchallenged +possession and use of which by England has been the true foundation +of her imperial greatness. Without Ireland there would be to-day +no British Empire. The vital importance of Ireland to England is +understood, but never proclaimed by every British statesman. To subdue +that western and ocean-closing island and to exploit its resources, +its people and, above all its position, to the sole advantage of the +eastern island, has been the set aim of every English Government from +the days of Henry VIII onwards. The vital importance of Ireland to +Europe is not and has not been understood by any European statesman. +To them it has not been a European island, a vital and necessary +element of European development, but an appanage of England, an island +beyond an island, a mere geographical expression in the titles of the +conqueror. Louis XIV, came nearest, perhaps, of European rulers to +realizing its importance in the conflict of European interests when +he sought to establish James II on its throne as rival to the monarch +of Great Britain and counterpoise to the British sovereignty in +the western seas. Montesquieu alone of French writers grasped the +importance of Ireland in the international affairs of his time, and he +blames the vacillation of Louis, who failed to put forth his strength, +to establish James upon the throne of Ireland and thus by a successful +act of perpetual separation to _affaiblir le voisin_. Napoleon, +too late, in St. Helena, realized his error: "Had I gone to Ireland +instead of to Egypt the Empire of England was at an end." + +With these two utterances of the French writer and of the French ruler +we begin and end the reference of Ireland to European affairs which +continental statecraft has up to now emitted, and so far has failed to +apply. + +To-day there is probably no European thinker (although Germany +produced one in recent times), who, when he faces the over-powering +supremacy of Great Britain's influence in world affairs and the +relative subordination of European rights to the asserted interests +of that small island, gives a thought to the other and smaller island +beyond its shores. And yet the key to British supremacy lies there. +Perhaps the one latter day European who perceived the true relation of +Ireland to Great Britain was Neibuhr. + +"Should England," he said, "not change her conduct, Ireland may still +for a long period belong to her, but not always; and the loss of that +country is the death day, not only to her greatness, but of her very +existence." + +I propose to point out as briefly as may be possible in dealing +with so unexpected a proposition, that the restoration of Ireland to +European life lies at the bottom of all successful European effort to +break the bonds that now shackle every continental people that would +assert itself and extend its ideals, as opposed to British interests, +outside the limits of Europe. + +It may be well first to define "British interests" and to show that +these are not necessarily synonymous with European interests. British +interests are: first, the control of all the seas of all the world--in +full military and commercial control. If this be not challenged peace +is permitted: to dispute it seriously means war. + +Next in order of British interests stands the right of pre-emption to +all healthy, fertile, "unoccupied" lands of the globe not already in +possession of a people capable of seriously disputing invasion, with +the right of reversion to such other regions as may, from time to +time prove commercially desirable or financially exploitable, whether +suitable for British colonization or not. + +In a word, British interests assume that the future of the world shall +be an English-speaking future. It is clear that sooner or later the +British colonies, so called, must develop into separate nationalities, +and that the link of a common crown cannot bind them forever. But, as +Sir Wilfred Laurier said at the recent Imperial Conference: "We bring +you British institutions"--English language, English law, English +trade, English supremacy, in a word--this is the ideal reserved for +mankind and summed up in words "British interests." + +Turn where you will these interests are in effective occupation, and +whether it be Madeira, Teneriffe, Agadir, Tahiti, Bagdad, the unseen +flag is more potent to exclude the non-British intruder than the +visible standard of the occupying tenant. England is the landlord of +civilization, mankind her tenantry, and the earth her estate. If this +be not a highly exaggerated definition of British interests, and in +truth it is but a strongly coloured chart of the broad outline of +the design, then it is clear that Europe has a very serious problem +to face if European civilization and ideals, as differing from the +British type, are to find a place for their ultimate expansion in any +region favoured by the sun. + +The actual conflict of European interests in Morocco is a fair +illustration of English methods.[1] + +[Footnote 1: This was written in August, 1911.] + +In the past France was the great antagonist, but since she is to-day +no longer able to seriously dispute the British usufruct of the +overseas world she is used (and rewarded) in the struggle now +maintained to exclude Germany at all costs from the arena. Were France +still dangerous she would never have been allowed to go to Algeciras, +or from Algeciras to Fez. She has uses, however, in the anti-German +prize ring and so Morocco is the price of her hire. That Germany +should presume to inspect the transaction or claim a share in the +settlement has filled the British mind with profound indignation, the +echoes of which are heard rumbling round the world from the Guildhall +to Gaboon and from the Congo to Tahiti. The mere press rumour that +France might barter Tahiti for German goods filled the British +newspaper world with supermundane wrath. That France should presume +to offer or Germany should accept a French Pacific island in part +discharge of liabilities contracted at Algeciras was a threat to +British interests. Tahiti in the hands of a decadent republic, the +greatest if you will, but still one of the dying nations, is a thing +to be borne with, but Tahiti possibly in the hands of Germany becomes +at once a challenge and a threat. + +And so we learn that "Australasia protests" to the Home Government +at the mere rumour that France may choose to part with one of her +possessions to win German goodwill in Morocco. Neither France nor +Germany can be permitted to be a free agent in a transaction that +however regarded as essential to their own interests might affect, +even by a shadow on the sea, the world orbit of British interests. +These interests it will be noted have reached such a stage of +development as to require that all foreign States that cannot be used +as tools, or regarded as agencies, must be treated as enemies. Germany +with her growing population, her advancing industries, her keen +commercial ability, and her ever expanding navy has become the enemy +of civilization. Far too strong to be openly assailed on land she must +at all costs be pent up in Central Europe and by a ring-fence of armed +understandings prohibited from a wider growth that would certainly +introduce a rival factor to those British institutions and that world +language that are seriously if not piously meditated as the ordained +future for mankind. + +For English mentality is such that whatever England does is divinely +ordained, and whether she stamps out a nation or merely sinks a ship +the hymn of action is "Nearer My God, to Thee." In a recent deputation +to King George V it will be remembered that certain British religious +bodies congratulated that monarch on the third centenary of the +translation into English of the Bible. + +Both the addresses of the subjects, eminent, religious and cultured +men, and the sovereign's reply were highly informative of the mental +attitude of this extraordinary people. The Bible, it appeared, was the +"greatest possession of the English race." "The British Bible" was the +first and greatest of British investments and upon the moral dividends +derived from its possession was founded the imperial greatness of this +Island Empire. That other peoples possessed the Bible and had even +translated it before England was not so much as hinted at. That the +Bible was Greek and Hebrew in origin was never whispered. It began and +ended with the English Authorised Version. The British Bible was the +Bible that counted. It was the Bible upon which the sun never sets, +the Bible that had blown Indian mutineers from its muzzle in +the 'fifties and was prepared to-day to have a shot at any other +mutineers, Teuton or Turk, who dared to dispute its claim that the +meek shall inherit the earth. The unctuous rectitude that converts the +word of God into wadding for a gun is certainly a formidable opponent, +as Cromwell proved. To challenge English supremacy becomes not merely +a threat to peace, it is an act of sacrilege. And yet this world-wide +empire broad based upon the British Bible and the English navy, and +maintained by a very inflexible interpretation of the one and a very +skilful handling of the other, rests upon a sunk foundation that is +older than both and will surely bring both to final shipwreck. + +The British Empire is founded not upon the British Bible or the +British dreadnought but upon Ireland. The empire that began upon an +island, ravaged, sacked and plundered shall end on an island, "which +whether it proceed from the very genius of the soil, or the influence +of the stars, or that Almighty God hath not yet appointed the time of +her reformation, or that He reserveth her in this unquiet state still +for some secret scourge which shall by her come unto England, it is +hard to be known but yet much to be feared." Thus Edmund Spenser +340 years ago, whose muse drew profit from an Irish estate (one of +the first fruits of empire) and who being a poet had imagination +to perceive that a day of payment must some day be called and that +the first robbed might be the first to repay. The Empire founded on +Ireland by Henry and Elizabeth Tudor has expanded into mighty things. +England deprived of Ireland resumes her natural proportions, those of +a powerful kingdom. Still possessing Ireland she is always an empire. +For just as Great Britain bars the gateways of northern and west +central Europe, to hold up at will the trade and block the ports of +every coast from the Baltic to the Bay of Biscay, so Ireland stands +between Britain and the greater seas of the west and blocks for +her the highways of the ocean. An Ireland strong, independent and +self-contained, a member of the European family of nations, restored +to her kindred, would be the surest guarantee for the healthy +development of European interests in those regions whence they are +to-day excluded by the anti-European policy of England. + +The relation of Ireland to Great Britain has been in no wise +understood on the continent. The policy of England has been for +centuries to conceal the true source of her supplies and to prevent +an audit of transactions with the remoter island. As long ago as the +reign of Elizabeth Tudor this shutting off of Ireland from contact +with Europe was a settled point of English policy. The three "German +Earls" with letters from the Queen who visited Dublin in 1572 were +prevented by the Lord Deputy from seeing for themselves anything +beyond the walls of the city.[2] + +[Footnote 2: This time-honoured British precept--that foreigners +should not see for themselves the workings of English rule in +Ireland--finds frequent expression in the Irish State Papers. In +a letter from Dublin Castle of August, 1572, from the Lord Deputy +Fitzwilliam to Burghley Elizabeth's chief Minister, we are told that +the "three German Earls" with "their conductor," Mr. Rogers, have +arrived. The Viceroy adds, as his successors have done up to the +present day: "According to Your Lordship's direction they shall +travell as little way into the cuntry as I can."] + +To represent the island as a poverty striken land inhabited by a +turbulent and ignorant race whom she has with unrewarded solicitude +sought to civilise, uplift and educate has been a staple of England's +diplomatic trade since modern diplomacy began. To compel the trade of +Ireland to be with herself alone; to cut off all direct communication +between Europe and this second of European islands until no channel +remained save through Britain; to enforce the most abject political +and economic servitude one people ever imposed upon another; to +exploit all Irish resources, lands, ports, people, wealth, even her +religion, everything in fine that Ireland held, to the sole profit +and advancement of England, and to keep all the books and rigorously +refuse an audit of the transaction has been the secret but determined +policy of England. + +We have read lately something of Mexican peonage, of how a people +can be reduced to a lawless slavery, their land expropriated, their +bodies enslaved, their labour appropriated, and how the nexus of this +fraudulent connection lies in a falsified account. The hacenade holds +the peon by a debt bondage. His palace in Mexico City, or on the sisal +plains of Yucatan is reared on the stolen labour of a people whose +bondage is based on a lie. The hacenade keeps the books and debits +the slave with the cost of the lash that scourges him into the fields. +Ireland is the English peon, the great peon of the British Empire. +The books and the palaces are in London but the work and the wealth +have come from peons on the Irish Estate. The armies that overthrew +Napoleon; the fleets that swept the navies of France and Spain from +the seas were recruited from this slave pen of English civilisation. +During the last 100 years probably 2,000,000 Irishmen have +been drafted into the English fleets and armies from a land +purposely drained of its food. Fully the same number, driven by +executive-controlled famines have given cheap labour to England and +have built up her great industries, manned her shipping, dug her +mines, and built her ports and railways while Irish harbours silted up +and Irish factories closed down. While England grew fat on the crops +and beef of Ireland, Ireland starved in her own green fields and +Irishmen grew lean in the strife of Europe. + +While a million Irishmen died of hunger on the most fertile plains +of Europe, English Imperialism drew over one thousand million pounds +sterling for investment in a world policy from an island that was +represented to that world as too poor to even bury its dead. The +profit to England from Irish peonage cannot be assessed in terms of +trade, or finance, or taxation. It far transcends Lord MacDonnell's +recent estimate at Belfast of L320,000,000--"an Empire's ransom," as +he bluntly put it. + +Not an Empire's ransom but the sum of an Empire's achievement, the +cost of an Empire's founding, and to-day the chief bond of an Empire's +existence. Detach Ireland from the map of the British Empire and +restore it to the map of Europe and that day England resumes her +native proportions and Europe assumes its rightful stature in the +empire of the world. Ireland can only be restored to the current of +European life, from which she has so long been purposely withheld by +the act of Europe. What Napoleon perceived too late may yet be the +purpose and achievement of a congress of nations. Ireland, I submit, +is necessary to Europe, is essential to Europe, to-day she is retained +against Europe, by a combination of elements hostile to Europe and +opposed to European influence in the world. Her strategic importance +is a factor of supreme weight to Europe and is to-day used in the +scales against Europe. Ireland is appropriated and used, not to the +service of European interests but to the extension of anti-European +interests. The _arbitium mundi_ claimed and most certainly exercised +by England is maintained by the British fleet, and until that power +is effectively challenged and held in check it is idle to talk of +European influence outside of certain narrow continental limits. + +The power of the British fleet can never be permanently restrained +until Ireland is restored to Europe. Germany has of necessity become +the champion of European interests as opposed to the world domination +of England and English-speaking elements. She is to-day a dam, a great +reservoir rapidly filling with human life that must some day find an +outlet. England instead of wisely digging channels for the overflow +has hardened her heart, like Pharaoh, and thinks to prevent it or +to so divert the stream that it shall be lost and drunk up in the +thirsty sands of an ever expanding Anglo-Saxondom. German laws, German +language, German civilization are to find no ground for replenishing, +no soil to fertilize and make rich. + +I believe this to be not only the set policy of England, but to +be based on the temperamental foundations of the English character +itself, from which that people could not, even if they would, depart. +The lists are set. The English mind, the English consciousness are +such, that to oppose German influence in the world is to this people +a necessity. They oppose by instinct, against argument, in the face +of reason, they will do it blindly come what may and at all costs, and +they will do it to the end. + +Their reasoning, if reason exists in what is after all a matter of +primal instinct, might find expression somewhat as follows: + +"German influence cannot but be hostile to British interests. The +two peoples are too much alike. The qualities that have made England +great they possess in a still greater degree. Given a fair field and +no favour they are bound to beat us. They will beat us out of every +market in the world, and we shall be reduced ultimately to a position +like that of France to-day. Better fight while we are still die +stronger. Better hinder now ere it be too late. We have bottled up +before and destroyed our adversaries by delay, by money, by alliances. +To tolerate a German rivalry is to found a German empire and to +destroy our own." + +Some such obscure argument as this controls the Englishman's reasoning +when he faces the growing magnitude of the Teutonic people. A bitter +resentment, with fear at the bottom, a hurried clanging of bolt and +rivet in the belt of a new warship and a muffled but most diligent +hammering at the rivets of an ever building American Alliance--the +real Dreadnought this, whose keel was laid sixteen years ago and whose +slow, secret construction has cost the silent swallowing of many a +cherished British boast. + +English Liberalism might desire a different sort of reckoning with +Germany, but English Liberalism is itself a product of the English +temperament, and however it may sigh, by individuals, for a better +understanding between the two peoples, in the mass, it is a part of +the national purpose and a phase of the national mind and is driven +relentlessly to the rivets and the hammering, the "Dreadnoughts" +in being and that mightier Dreadnought yet to be, the Anglo-Saxon +Alliance which Germany must fight if she is to get out. + +Doubtless she has already a naval policy and the plans for a naval +war, for the fight will be settled on the sea, but the fate will be +determined on an island. + +The Empire that has grown from an island and spread with the winds and +the waves to the uttermost shores will fight and be fought for on the +water and will be ended where it began, on an island. + +That island, I believe, will be Ireland and not Great Britain. + + + + +Chapter III + +THE BALANCE OF POWER + + +A conflict between England and Germany exists already, a conflict of +aims. + +England rich, prosperous, with all that she can possibly assimilate +already in her hands, desires peace on present conditions of world +power. These conditions are not merely that her actual possessions +should remain intact, but that no other Great Power shall, by +acquiring colonies and spreading its people and institutions into +neighbouring regions, thereby possibly affect the fuller development +of those pre-existing British States. For, with England equality +is an offence and the Power that arrives at a degree of success +approximating to her own and one capable of being expanded into +conditions of fair rivalry, has already committed the unpardonable +sin. As Curran put it in his defence of Hamilton Rowan in 1797, +"England is marked by a natural avarice of freedom which she is +studious to engross and accumulate, but most unwilling to impart; +whether from any necessity of her policy or from her weakness, or from +her pride, I will not presume to say." + +Thus while England might even be the attacking party, and in all +probability will be the attacking party, she will embark on a war +with Germany at an initial disadvantage. She will be on her defence. +Although, probably, the military aggressor from reasons of strategy, +she will be acting in obedience to an economic policy of defence and +not of attack. Her chief concern will be not to advance and seize, +always in war the more inspiring task, but to retain and hold. At best +she could come out of the war with no new gain, with nothing added +worth having to what she held on entering it. Victory would mean for +her only that she had secured a further spell of quiet in which to +consolidate her strength and enjoy the good things already won. + +Germany will fight with far other purpose and one that must inspire a +far more vigorous effort; she will fight, not merely to keep what she +already has, but to escape from an intolerable position of inferiority +she knows to be unmerited and forced not by the moral or intellectual +superiority of her adversary or due to her own short comings, but +maintained by reason of that adversary's geographical position and +early seizure of the various points of advantage. + +Her effort will be not merely military, it will be an intellectual +assertion, a fight in very truth for that larger freedom, that +citizenship of the world England is studious to "engross and +accumulate" for herself alone and to deny to all others. Thus, while +English attack at the best will be actuated by no loftier feeling +than that of a man who, dwelling in a very comfortable house with an +agreeable prospect resists an encroachment on his outlook from the +building operations of his less well lodged neighbour, Germany will be +fighting not only to get out of doors into the open air and sunshine, +but to build a loftier and larger dwelling, fit tenement for a +numerous and growing offspring. + +Whatever the structure Germany seeks to erect England objects to the +plan and hangs out her war sign "Ancient Lights." + +Who can doubt that the greater patriotism and stronger purpose must +inspire the man who fights for light, air, and freedom, the right to +walk abroad, to learn, to teach, aye, and to inspire others, rather +than him whose chief concern it is to see that no one but himself +enjoys these opportunities. The means, moreover, that each combatant +will bring to the conflict are, in the end, on the side of Germany. +Much the same disproportion of resources exists as lay between Rome +and Carthage. + +England relies on money. Germany on men. And just as Roman men beat +Carthaginian mercenaries, so must German manhood, in the end, triumph +over British finance. Just as Carthage in the hours of final shock, +placing her gold where Romans put their gods, and never with a soul +above her ships, fell before the people of United Italy, so shall +the mightier Carthage of the North Seas, in spite of trade, shipping, +colonies, the power of the purse and the hired valour of the foreign +(Irish, Indian, African), go down before the men of United Germany. + +But if the military triumph of Germany seems thus likely, the ultimate +assurance, nay even the ultimate safety of German civilization can +only be secured by a statemanship which shall not repeat the mistake +of Louis XIV and Napoleon. The military defeat of England by Germany +is a wholly possible achievement of arms, _if the conflict be between +these two alone_, but to realize the economic and political fruits +of that victory, Ireland must be detached from the British Empire. +To leave a defeated England still in the full possession of Ireland +would be, not to settle the question of German rights at sea or in +world affairs, but merely to postpone the settlement to a second and +possibly far greater encounter. It would be somewhat as if Rome, after +the first Punic war had left Sicily to Carthage. But Ireland is far +more vital to England than Sicily was to Carthage, and is of far more +account to the future of Europe on the ocean than the possession of +Sicily was to the future of the Mediterranean. + +If Germany is to permanently profit from a victory over England, she +must free the narrow seas, not only by the defeat of British fleets +in being, but by ensuring that those seas shall not again be closed +by British fleets yet to be. The German gateway to a free Atlantic +can only be kept open through a free Ireland. For just as the English +Channel under the existing arrangement, whereby Ireland lies hidden +from the rest of Europe, can be closed at will by England, so with +Ireland no longer tied to the girdle of England, that channel cannot +be locked. The key to the freedom of European navigation lies at +Berehaven and not at Dover. With Berehaven won from English hands, +England might close the Channel in truth, but Ireland could shut the +Atlantic. As Richard Dox put it in 1689, quaintly but truly, in his +dedication to King William III, and Queen Mary of his "History of +Ireland from the Earliest Times." + +"But no cost can be too great where the prize is of such value, and +whoever considers the situation, ports, plenty and other advantages +of Ireland will confess that it must be retained at what rate soever; +because if it should come into an enemy's hands, England would find +it impossible to _flourish_ and perhaps difficult to _subsist_ without +it. To demonstrate this assertion it is enough to say that Ireland +lies in the Line of Trade and that all the English vessels that +sail to the East, West, and South must, as it were, run the gauntlet +between the harbours of Brest and Baltimore; and I might add that +the Irish Wool being transported would soon ruin the English Clothing +Manufacture. Hence it is that all Your Majesty's Predecessors have +kept close to this fundamental maxim of retaining Ireland inseparably +united to the Crown of England." + +The sole and exclusive appropriation of Ireland and of all her +resources has indeed formed, since the Recorder of Kinsale wrote, the +mainstay and chief support of British greatness. + +The natural position of Ireland lying "in the line of trade," was +possibly its chief value, but that "Irish Wool" which was by no means +to be allowed free access to world markets typifies much else that +Ireland has been relentlessly forced to contribute to her neighbour's +growth and sole profit. + +I read but yesterday "Few people realise that the trade of Ireland +with Great Britain is equal to that of our trade with India, is +13,000,000 pounds greater than our trade with Germany, and 40,000,000 +pounds greater than the whole of our trade with the United States." +How completely England has laid hands on all Irish resources is +made clear from a recent publication that Mr. Chamberlain's "Tariff +Commission" issued towards the end of 1912. + +This document, entitled "The Economic Position of Ireland and its +relation to Tariff Reform," constitutes, in fact, a manifesto calling +for the release of Ireland from the exclusive grip of Great Britain. +Thus, for instance, in the section "External Trade of Ireland," +we learn that Ireland exported in 1910, L63,400,000 worth of Irish +produce. Of this Great Britain took L52,600,000 worth, while some +L10,800,000 went either to foreign countries, or to British colonies, +over L4,000,000 going to the United States. Of these eleven million +pounds worth of Irish produce sent to distant countries, only L700,000 +was shipped direct from Irish ports. + +The remainder, more than L10,000,000, although the market it was +seeking lay chiefly to the West, had to be shipped East into and to +pay a heavy transit toll to that country for discharge, handling, +agency, commission, and reloading on British vessels in British ports +to steam back past the shores of Ireland it had just left. While +Ireland, indeed, lies in the "line of trade," between all Northern +Europe and the great world markets, she has been robbed of her trade +and artificially deprived of the very position assigned to her by +nature in the great tides of commercial intercourse. It is not only +the geographical situation and the trade and wealth of Ireland that +England has laid hands on for her own aggrandizement, but she has +also appropriated to her own ends the physical manhood of the island. +Just as the commerce has been forcibly annexed and diverted from +its natural trend, so the youth of Ireland has been fraudulently +appropriated and diverted from the defence of their own land to the +extension of the power and wealth of the realm that impoverished it +at home. The physical qualities of the Irish were no less valuable +than "Irish wool" to Empire building, provided always they were not +displayed in Ireland. + +So long ago as 1613 we find a candid admission in the State papers +that the Irish were the better men in the field. "The next rebellion +whenever it shall happen, doth threaten more danger to the State than +any heretofore, when the cities and walled towns were always faithful; +(1) because they have the same bodies they ever had and therein they +had and have advantage of us; (2) from infancy they have been and +are exercised in the use of arms; (3) the realm by reason of the long +peace was never so full of youths; (4) that they are better soldiers +than heretofore, their continental employment in wars abroad assures +us, and they do conceive that their men are better than ours." + +This testimony to Irish superiority, coming as it does from English +official sources just three hundred years ago, would be convincing +enough did it stand alone. But it is again and again reaffirmed by +English commanders themselves as the reason for their failure in some +particular enterprise. In all else they were superior to the Irish; in +arms, armaments, munitions, supplies of food and money, here the long +purse, settled organization and greater commerce of England, gave +her an overwhelming advantage. Moreover the English lacked the moral +restraints that imposed so severe a handicap on the Irish in their +resistance. They owned no scruple of conscience in committing any +crime that served their purpose. Beaten often in open fight by the +hardier bodies, stouter arms and greater courage of the Irishmen, +they nevertheless won the game by recourse to means that no Irishman, +save he who had joined them for purposes of revenge or in pursuit of +selfish personal aims, could possibly have adopted. The fight from +the first was an unequal one. Irish valour, chivalry, and personal +strength were matched against wealth, treachery and cunning. The Irish +better bodies were overcome by the worse hearts. As Curran put it in +1817--"The triumph of England over Ireland is the triumph of guilt +over innocence." + +The Earl of Essex who came to Ireland in 1599 with one of the largest +forces of English troops that, up to then, had ever been dispatched +into Ireland (18,000 men), had ascribed his complete failure, in +writing to the Queen, to the physical superiority of the Irish: + +"These rebels are more in number than your Majesty's army and have +(though I do unwillingly confess it), better bodies, and perfecter +use of their arms, than those men who your Majesty sends over." + +The Queen, who followed the war in Ireland with a swelling wrath on +each defeat, and a growing fear that the Spaniards would keep their +promise to land aid to the Irish princes, O'Neill and O'Donnell, +issued "instructions" and a set of "ordinances" for the conduct of the +war in Ireland, which, while enjoining recourse to the usual methods +outside the field of battle--(i.e. starvation, "politic courses," +assassination of leaders; and the sowing of dissension by means of +bribery and promises), required for the conflict, that her weaker +soldiers should be protected against the onslaught of the unarmoured +Irishmen by head pieces of steel. She ordered "every soldier to be +enforced to wear a murrion, because the enemy is encouraged by +the advantage of arms to _come to the sword_ wherein he commonly +prevaileth." + +One of the generals of the Spanish King, Philip III, who came to +Ireland in the winter of 1601 with a handful of Spanish troops (200 +men), to reinforce the small expedition of de Aguila in Kinsale, thus +reported on the physical qualities of the Irish in a document that +still lies in Salamanca in the archives of the old Irish College. it +was written by Don Pedro De Zubiarr on the 16th of January, 1602, on +his return to the Asturias. Speaking of the prospect of the campaign, +he wrote: "If we had brought arms for 10,000 men we could have had +them, for they are very eager to carry on the war against the English. +The Irish are very strong and well shaped, accustomed to endure hunger +and toil, and very courageous in fight." + +Perhaps the most vivid testimony to the innate superiority of the +Irishman as a soldier is given in a typically Irish challenge issued +in the war of 1641. The document has a lasting interest for it +displays not only the "better body" of the Irishman of that day, but +something of his better heart as well, that still remains to us. + +One Parsons, an English settler in Ireland, had written to a friend +to say that, among other things, the head of the Colonel of an Irish +regiment then in the field against the English, would not be allowed +to stick long on its shoulders. The letter was intercepted by the very +regiment itself, and a captain in it, Felim O'Molloy, wrote back to +Parsons: + +"I will do this if you please: I will pick out sixty men and fight +against one hundred of your choice men if you do but pitch your camp +one mile out of your town, and then if you have the victory, you may +threaten my Colonel; otherwise, do not reckon your chickens before +they are hatched." + +The Anglo-Saxon preferred "politic courses" to accepting the Irish +soldier's challenge, even where all the advantage was conceded by +the Irishman to his foe and all the risks, save that of treachery (a +very necessary precaution in dealing with the English in Ireland), +cheerfully accepted by the Celt. + +This advantage of the "better bodies" the Irish retained beyond all +question up to the Famine. It was upon it alone that the Wexford +peasantry relied in 1798, and with and by it alone that they again and +again, armed with but pike and scythe swept disciplined regiments of +English mercenaries in headlong rout from the field. + +This physical superiority of his countrymen was frequently referred to +by O'Connell as one of the forces he relied on. With the decay of all +things Irish that has followed the Famine, these physical attributes +have declined along with so much else that was typical of the nation +and the man. + +It could not to-day be fearlessly affirmed that sixty Irishmen were +more than a match for one hundred Englishmen; yet depleted as it is +by the emigration of its strongest and healthiest children, by growing +sickness and a changed and deteriorated diet the Irish race still +presents a type, superior physically, intellectually and morally to +the English. It was on Irish soldiers that the English chiefly relied +in the Boer War, and it is no exaggeration to say that could all +the Irishmen in the ranks of the British army have been withdrawn, a +purely British force would have failed to end the war and the Dutch +would have remained masters of the field in South Africa. + +It was the inglorious part of Ireland to be linked with those "methods +of barbarism" she herself knew only too well, in extinguishing the +independence of a people who were attacked by the same enemy and +sacrificed to the same greed that had destroyed her own freedom. + +Unhappy, indeed, is it for mankind, as for her own fate and honour +that Ireland should be forced by dire stress of fortune to aid her +imperial wrecker in wrecking the fortune and freedom of brave men +elsewhere. + +That these physical qualities of Irishmen, even with a population now +only one tenth that of Great Britain are still of value to the empire, +Mr. Churchill's speech on the Home Rule Bill made frankly clear +(February, 1913). We now learn that the First Lord of the Admiralty +has decided to establish a new training squadron, "with a base +at Queenstown," where it is hoped to induce with the bribe of +"self-government" the youth of Cork and Munster to again man the +British fleet as they did in the days of Nelson, and we are even told +that the prospects of brisk recruiting are "politically favourable." + +Carthage got her soldiers from Spain, her seamen, her slingers from +the Balearic Islands and the coasts of Africa, her money from the +trade of the world. Rome beat her, but she did not leave a defeated +Carthage to still levy toll of men and mind on those external sources +of supply. + +Germany must fight, not merely to defeat the British fleet of to-day, +but to neutralize the British fleet of to-morrow. Leave Ireland to +Great Britain and that can never be. Neutralize Ireland and it is +already accomplished. + +One of the conditions of peace, and _for this reason_ the most +important condition of peace that a victorious Germany must impose +upon her defeated antagonist is that Ireland shall be separated +and erected into an independent European State under international +guarantees. England, obviously would resist such conditions to the +last, but then the last has already come before England would consent +to any peace save on terms she dictated. + +A defeated England is a starved England. She would have to accept +whatever terms Germany imposed unless those terms provoked external +intervention on behalf of the defeated power. + +The prize Germany seeks to win from victory is not immediate +territorial aggrandizement obtained from annexing British possessions, +not a heavy money indemnity wrung from British finance and trade +(although this she might have), but German freedom throughout the +world on equal terms with Britain. This is a prize worth fighting for, +for once gained the rest follows as a matter of course. + +German civilization released from the restricted confines and unequal +position in which Britain had sought to pen it must, of itself win +its way to the front, and of necessity acquire those favoured spots +necessary to its wide development. + +"This is the meaning of his (the German's) will for power; safety from +interference with his individual and national development. Only one +thing is left to the nations that do not want to be left behind in the +peaceful rivalry of human progress--that is to become the equals of +Germany in untiring industry, in scientific thoroughness, in sense of +duty, in patient persistence, in intelligent, voluntary submission +to organization." (History of German Civilization, by Ernst Richard, +Columbia University, New York.) + +Once she had reduced Great Britain to an opposition based on _peaceful +rivalry_ in human progress, Germany would find the path of success +hers to tread on more than equal terms, and many fields of expansion +now closed would readily open to German enterprise without that +people incurring and inflicting the loss and injury that an attempted +invasion of the great self-governing dominions would so needlessly +involve. Most of the British self-governing colonies are to-day great +States, well able to defend themselves from overseas attack. The +defeat of the British navy would make scarcely at all easier the +landing of German troops in, say, Australia, South Africa or New +Zealand. A war of conquest of those far-distant regions would be, +for Germany, an impossible and a stupidly impossible task. + +A defeated England could not cede any of these British possessions as +a price of peace, for they are inhabited by free men who, however +they might deplore a German occupation of London, could in no wise be +transferred by any pact or treaty made by others, to other rule than +that of themselves. Therefore, to obtain those British dominions, +Germany would have to defeat not only England, but after that to begin +a fresh war, or a series of fresh wars, at the ends of the earth, with +exhausted resources and probably a crippled fleet. + +The thing does not bear inspection and may be dismissed from our +calculation. + +The only territories that England could cede by her own act to +a victorious power are such as, in themselves, are not suited +to colonization by a white race. Doubtless, Germany would seek +compensation for the expense of the war in requiring the transfer +of some of these latter territories of the British Crown to herself. +There are points in tropical Africa, in the East, islands in the ocean +to-day flying the British flag that might, with profit to German +trade and influence, be acquired by a victorious Germany. But none of +these things in itself, not all of them put together, would meet the +requirements of the German case, or ensure to Germany that future +tranquil expansion and peaceful rivalry the war had been fought to +secure. England would be weakened, and to some extent impoverished by +a war ending with such results; but her great asset, her possession +beyond price would still be hers--her geographical position. Deprive +her to-day, say of the Gold Coast, the Niger, Gibraltar, even of +Egypt, impose a heavy indemnity, and while Germany would barely have +recouped herself for the out-of-pocket losses of the war, England in +fact would have lost nothing, and ten years hence the Teuton would +look out again upon the same prospect, a Europe still dominated beyond +the seas by the Western islanders. + +The work would have to be done all over again. A second Punic war +would have to be fought with this disadvantage--that the Atlantic +Sicily would be held and used still against the Northern Rome, by the +Atlantic Carthage. + +A victorious Germany, in addition to such terms as she may find +it well to impose in her own immediate financial or territorial +interests, must so draft her peace conditions as to preclude her great +antagonist from ever again seriously imperilling the freedom of the +seas. I know of no way save one to make sure the open seas. Ireland, +in the name of Europe, and in the exercise of European right to +free the seas from the over-lordship of one European island, must be +resolutely withdrawn from British custody. A second Berlin Conference, +an international Congress must debate, and clearly would debate, with +growing unanimity the German proposal to restore Ireland to Europe. + +The arguments in favour of that proposal would soon become so clear +from the general European standpoint, that save England and her +defeated allies, no power would oppose it. + +Considerations of expediency no less than naval, mercantile, and +moral claims would range themselves on the side of Germany and a free +Ireland. For a free Ireland, not owned and exploited by England, but +appertaining to Europe at large, its ports available in a sense they +never can be while under British control for purposes of general +navigation and overseas intercourse, would soon become of such +first-rank importance in continental affairs as to leave men stupified +by the thought that for five hundred years they had allowed one +sole member of their community the exclusive use and selfish +misappropriation of this, the most favoured of European islands. + +Ireland would be freed, not because she deserved or asked for freedom, +not because English rule has been a tyranny, a moral failure, a +stupidity and sin against the light; not because Germany cared for +Ireland, but because her withdrawal from English control appeared to +be a very necessary step in international welfare and one very needful +to the progress of German and European expansion. + +An Ireland released from the jail in which England had confined +her would soon become a populous State of possibly 10,000,000 to +12,000,000 people, a commercial asset of Europe in the Atlantic of the +utmost general value, one holding an unique position between the Old +and New Worlds, and possibly an intellectual and moral asset of no +mean importance. This, and more, a sovereign Ireland means to Europe. +Above all it means security of transit, equalizing of opportunity, +freedom of the seas--an assurance that the great waterways of the +ocean should no longer be at the absolute mercy of one member of the +European family, and that one the least interested in general European +welfare. + +The stronger a free Ireland grew the surer would be the guarantee that +the role of England "consciously assumed for many years past, to be +an absolute and wholly arbitrary judge of war and peace" had gone for +ever, and that at last the "balance of power" was kept by fair weight +and fair measure and not with loaded scales. + + + + +Chapter IV + +THE ENEMY OF PEACE + + +I believe England to be the enemy of European peace, and that until +her "mastery of the sea" is overmastered by Europe, there can be +no peace upon earth or goodwill among men. Her claim to rule the +seas, and the consequences, direct and indirect, that flow from its +assertion are the chief factors of international discord that now +threaten the peace of the world. + +In order to maintain that indefensible claim she is driven to +aggression and intrigue in every quarter of the globe; to setting +otherwise friendly peoples by the ears; to forming "alliances" and +ententes, to dissolving friendships, the aim always being the old one, +_divide et impera_. + +The fact that Europe to-day is divided into armed camps is mainly due +to English effort to retain that mastery of the sea. It is generally +assumed, and the idea is propagated by English agencies, that Europe +owes her burden of armaments to the antagonism between France and +Germany, to the loss of Alsace-Lorraine by France, and the spirit and +hope of a _revanche_ thereby engendered. But this antagonism has long +ceased to be the chief factor that moulds European armaments. + +Were it not for British policy, and the unhealthy hope it proffers +France would ere this have resigned herself, as the two provinces +have done, to the solution imposed by the war of 1870. It is England +and English ambition that beget the state of mind responsible for +the enormous growth of armaments that now over-shadows continental +civilization. Humanity, hemmed in in Central Europe by a forest of +bayonets and debarred all egress to the light of a larger world by a +forbidding circle of dreadnoughts, is called to peace conferences and +arbitration treaties by the very power whose fundamental maxim of rule +ensures war as the normal outlook for every growing nation of the Old +World. + +If Europe would not strangle herself with her own hands she must +strangle the sea serpent whose coils enfold her shores. + +Inspect the foundation of European armaments where we will, and we +shall find that the master builder is he who fashioned the British +Empire. It is that empire, its claim to universal right of pre-emption +to every zone and region washed by the waves and useful and necessary +for the expansion of the white races, and its assertion of a right to +control at will all the seas of all the world that drives the peoples +of Europe into armed camps. The policy of the Boer War is being tried +on a vaster scale against Europe. Just as England beat the Boers by +concentration camps and not by arms, by money and not by men, so she +seeks to-day to erect an armourplate barrier around the one European +people she fears to meet in the field, and to turn all Central Europe +into a vast concentration camp. By use of the longest purse she has +already carried this barrier well towards completion. One gap remains, +and it is to make sure that this opening, too, shall be closed that +she now directs all the force of her efforts. Here the longest purse +is of less avail, so England draws upon another armoury. She appeals +to the longest tongue in history--the longest and something else. + +In order to make sure the encompassing of Europe with a girdle of +steel it is necessary to circle the United States with a girdle of +lies. With America true to the great policy of her great founder, +an America, "the friend of all powers but the ally of none," English +designs against European civilization must in the end fail. Those +plans can succeed only by active American support, and to secure this +is now the supreme task and aim of British stealth and skill. Every +tool of her diplomacy, polished and unpolished, from the trained +envoy to the boy scout and the minor poet has been tried in turn. The +pulpit, the bar, the press; the society hostess, the Cabinet Minister +and the Cabinet Minister's wife, the ex-Cabinet Minister and the Royal +Family itself, and last, but not least, even "Irish nationality"--all +have been pilgrims to that shrine; and each has been carefully primed, +loaded, well aimed, and then turned full on the weak spots in the +armour of republican simplicity. To the success of these resources +of panic the falsification of history becomes essential and the +vilification of the most peace-loving people of Europe. The past +relations of England with the United States are to be blotted out, +and the American people who are by blood so largely Germanic, are to +be entrapped into an attitude of suspicion, hostility and resentment +against the country and race from whom they have received nothing +but good. Germany is represented as the enemy, not to England's +indefensible claim to own the seas, but to American ideals on the +American continent. Just as the Teuton has become the "enemy of +civilization" in the Old World because he alone has power, strength of +mind, and force of purpose to seriously dispute the British hegemony +of the seas, so he is assiduously represented as the only threat to +American hegemony of the New World. + +This, the key note of the attack on Germany, is sounded from every +corner of the British Empire, wherever the Imperial editor, resting on +the labours of the lash he wields against the coloured toilers in mine +and camp, directs his eyes from the bent forms of these indentured +slaves of dividend to the erect and stalwart frames of the new Goths +who threaten the whole framework of Imperial dividend from across +the North Sea. From the _Times_ to the obscurest news-sheet of the +remotest corner of the British Dominions the word has gone forth. + +The Monroe Doctrine, palladium of the Anglo-Saxon world empire, is +imperilled by German ambitions, and were it not for the British +fleet, America would be lost to the Americans. Wherever Englishmen are +gathered to-day their journals, appealing possibly to only a handful +of readers, assert that the function of the British fleet is to +exclude the European States, with Germany at their head, from +South America, not because in itself that is a right and worthy +end to pursue, but because that continent is earmarked for future +exploitation and control by their "kinsmen" of the United States, +and they need the support of those "kinsmen" in their battle against +Germany. + +I need quote but a single utterance from the mass of seditious libels +of this character before me to show how widespread is the propaganda +of falsehood and how sustained is the effort being made to poison +the American mind against the only people in Europe England genuinely +fears, and therefore wholeheartedly hates. + +The _Natal Mercury_ for instance, a paper written for the little town +of Durban and appealing to a population of only some 30,000 whites, +in a recent issue (March, 1913), devoted a leader to the approaching +"Peace Centennial" of 1914, to be held in commemoration of the signing +of the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the second war between Great +Britain and the American people in 1814. + +"After all, blood is thicker than water," quotes the Natal journal +with satisfaction, and after pointing out some latter day indications +of rapprochement between England and the United States, it goes on to +proclaim the chief function of the British navy and the claim thereby +established on the goodwill of America. + +"We make mention of them because such incidents are likely to repeat +themselves more and more frequently in that competition for naval +supremacy in Europe which compels the United States to put her own +fleets into working order and to join in the work that England has +hitherto been obliged to perform _unaided_. + +"It is England that polices the Seven Seas, and America has reaped no +small benefits from the _self-imposed task_, an aspect of the matter +to which every thoughtful American is alive. There is a real and +hearty recognition in the New World of the _silent barrier_ that Great +Britain has set up to what might become something more than a dream +of expansion into South America on the part of _one_ potent European +State. It is, indeed, hardly too much to say that the maintenance +of the Monroe Doctrine is at the present moment almost as fully +guaranteed by England as it is by the country that enunciated the +policy and is the chief gainer by it. It is a case in which a _silent +understanding_ is of far greater value than a formal compact that +'would serve as a target for casual discontent on this side or that'." + +The article concludes by proclaiming "the precious permanence of an +unseen bond" and the lofty and enduring worth of "good faith mutually +acknowledged and the ultimate solidarity of mutual interests rightly +perceived." "The ultimate solidarity" aimed at by those who direct +these world-wide pronouncements is not one of mere sterile friendship +between the American and the British peoples. American friendship with +England is only worth having when it can be translated by world acts +into enmity against Germany. + +It might truly be said of the British Empire to-day that where two or +three are gathered together, there hatred of Germany shall be in the +midst of them. Turn where he will, from the Colonies to England, from +England to her fleet, from the seas to the air, the Englishman lives +and moves and has his being in an atmosphere not of love but of +hatred. And this too, a hatred, fear, and jealousy of a people who +have never injured him, who have never warred upon him, and whose sole +crime is that they are highly efficient rivals in the peaceful rivalry +of commerce, navigation, and science. + +We are told, for instance, in one of the popular London magazines +for January, 1913, in an article upon the financial grievances of +the British navy that were it not for Germany there would be to-day +another Spithead. "Across the North Sea is a nation that some fifty +years ago was so afraid of the British navy that it panicked itself +into building an iron-clad fleet. + +"To-day, as the second naval power, its menace is too great for any +up-to-date Spithead mutiny to come off. But the pay question was +so acute that it is possibly only the Germans and their 'menace' +that saved us from the trouble." But while the "patriotism" of the +"lower-deck" may have been sufficiently stout to avert this peril, +the patriotism of the "quarter-deck" is giving us a specimen of its +quality that certainly could not be exhibited in any other country in +the world. + +Even as I write I read in the "British Review" how Admiral Sir +Percy Scott attacks Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, dubs him the +"laughing-stock of the fleet," accuses him of publishing in his book +_The Betrayal_ a series of "deliberate falsehoods," and concludes by +saying that the gallant Admiral is "not a seaman." + +And it is a fleet commanded by such Admirals as these that is to sweep +the German navy from the seas! + +During the Crimean war the allied British and French navies +distinguished themselves by their signal failure to effect the +reduction of such minor fortresses as Sveaborg, Helsingfors, and +the fortified lighthouses upon the Gulf of Finland. Their respective +Admirals fired their severest broadsides into each other, and the +bombardment of the forts was silenced by the smart interchange of +nautical civilities between the two flagships. Napoleon III, who +sought an explanation of this failure of his fleet, was given a reply +that I cannot refrain from recommending to the British Admiralty +to-day. "Well, Sire," replied the French diplomatist, who knew the +circumstances, "both the Admirals were old women, but ours was at +least a lady." If British Admirals cannot put to sea without incurring +this risk, they might, at least, take the gunboat woman with them to +prescribe the courtesies of naval debate. + +That England to-day loves America, no one who goes to the private +opinions of Englishmen, instead of to their public utterances, or the +interested eulogies of their press, can for a moment believe. + +The old dislike is there, the old supercilious contempt for the +"Yankee" and all his ways. "God's Englishman" no more loves an +American citizen now than in 1846 when he seriously contemplated an +invasion of the United States, and the raising of the negro-slave +population against his "Anglo-Saxon kinsmen." + +To-day, when we hear so much of the Anglo-Saxon Alliance it may be +well to revert to that page of history. For it will show us that if a +British premier to-day can speak as Mr. Asquith did on December 16th, +1912, in his reference to the late American Ambassador as "a great +American and a kinsman," one "sprung from a common race, speaking our +own language, sharing with us by birth as by inheritance not a few of +our most cherished traditions and participating when he comes here by +what I may describe as _his natural right in our domestic interests +and celebrations_," then this new-found kinship takes its birth not in +a sense of common race, indeed, but in a very common fear of Germany. + +In the year 1846, the British army was engaged in robbing the Irish +people of their harvest in order that the work of the famine should +be complete and that the then too great population of Ireland should +be reduced within the limits "law and order" prescribed, either by +starvation or flight to America. + +Fleeing in hundreds and thousands from the rule of one who claimed +to be their Sovereign, expelled in a multitude exceeding the Moors of +Spain, whom a Spanish king shipped across the seas with equal pious +intent, the fugitive Irish Nation found friendship, hope, and homes in +the great Celtic Republic of the West. All that was denied to them in +their own ancient land they found in a new Ireland growing up across +the Atlantic. + +The hate of England pursued them here and those who dared to give help +and shelter. The United States were opening wide their arms to receive +the stream of Irish fugitives and were saying very harsh things of +England's infamous rule in Ireland. This could not be brooked. England +in those days had not invented the Anglo-Saxon theory of mankind, and +a united Germany had not then been born to vex the ineptitude of her +statesmen or to profit from the shortcomings of her tradesmen. + +So the greatest Ministers of Queen Victoria seriously contemplated war +with America and naturally looked around for some one else to do the +fighting. The Duke of Wellington hoped that France might be played +on, just as in a later day a later Minister seeks to play France in a +similar role against a later adversary.[3] + +[Footnote 3: Sir Edward Grey and the _Entente Cordiale_.] + +The Mexicans, too, might be induced to invade the Texan frontier. +But a greater infamy than this was seriously planned. Again it is an +Irishman who tells the story and shows us how dearly the English loved +their trans-Atlantic "kinsmen" when there was no German menace to +threaten nearer home. + +Writing from Carlsruhe, on January 26th, 1846, to his friend, +Alexander Spencer, in Dublin, Charles Lever said: "As to the war the +Duke[4] says he could smash the Yankees, and ought to do so while +France in her present humour and Mexico opens the road to invasion +from the South--not to speak of the terrible threat that Napier +uttered, that with two regiments of infantry and a field battery he'd +_raise the slave population in the United States_." + +[Footnote 4: The Duke of Wellington: the report was brought to Lever +by the Marquis of Douro, the Duke's heir.] + +The infamy of this suggestion cannot be surpassed. The brilliant +soldier who conceived it was the chivalrous Englishman who conquered +Scinde, one of the chief glories of the Britannic hierarchy of +soldier-saints. + +The Government planning it was that of the late Queen Victoria with +the Duke of Wellington's advice, and the people against whom the +black-slave millions were to be loosed were the "kith and kin" of +those meditating this atrocious form of massacre. Truly, as an old +Irish proverb, old even in the days of Henry VIII. put it, "the pride +of France, the _treason of England_ and the warre of Ireland shall +never have end." + +As a latter day witness of that treason, one who had suffered it from +birth to the prison cell, a dead Irishman speaks to us from the grave. +Michael Davitt in a letter to Morrison Davidson on August 2701, 1902, +thus summed up in final words what every Irishman feels in his heart: + +"The idea of being ruled by Englishmen is to me the chief agony +of existence. They are a nation without faith, truth or conscience +enveloped in a panoplied pharisaism and an incurable hypocrisy. Their +moral appetite is fed on falsehood. They profess Christianity and +believe only in Mammon. They talk of liberty while ruling India and +Ireland against the principles of a constitution, professed as +a political faith, but prostituted to the interests of class and +landlord rule." + +Have Englishmen in less than two generations substituted love for +the hate that Napier, Wellington, and the Queen's Ministers felt and +expressed in 1846 for the people of the United States? Is it love +to-day for America or fear of someone else that impels to the +"Arbitration Treaties" and the celebration of the "Hundred years of +Peace?" + +The Anglo-American "Peace Movement" was to be but the first stage in +an "Anglo-Saxon Alliance," intended to limit and restrict all further +world changes, outside of certain prescribed continental limits, to +these two peoples alone on the basis of a new "Holy Alliance," whose +motto should be _Beati possidentes_. + +Since England and America, either in fact or by reservation enjoy +almost all the desirable regions of the earth, why not bring about +a universal agreement to keep everyone in his right place, to stay +"just as we are," and to kindly refer all possible differences to an +"International Tribunal?" + +Once again the British Bible was thrown into the scale, and the +unrighteousness of Germany, who did not see her way to join in the +psalm singing, was exposed in a spirit of bitter resignation and +castigated with an appropriate selection of texts. The Hague Tribunal +would be so much nicer than a war of armaments! With no reckless +rivalries and military expenditure there could be no question of the +future of mankind. + +An idyllic peace would settle down upon the nations, contentedly +possessing each in its own share of the good things of life, and no +questionable ambitions would be allowed to disturb the buying and +selling of the smaller and weaker peoples. The sincerity of the wish +for universal arbitration can be best shown by England, when she, +or any of the Powers to whom she appeals, will consent to submit the +claim of one of the minor peoples she or they hold in subjection to +the Hague Tribunal. Let France submit Madagascar and Siam, or her +latest victim, Morocco, to the franchise of the Court. Let Russia +agree to Poland or Finland seeking the verdict of this bench of +appeal. Let England plead her case before the same high moral tribunal +and allow Ireland, Egypt, or India to have the law of her. Then, and +not until then, the world of little States and beaten peoples may +begin to believe that the Peace Crusade has some foundations in honour +and honesty--but not till then. + +Germany has had the straightforwardness and manliness to protest that +she is still able to do her own shooting and that what she holds she +will keep, by force if need be, and what she wants she will, in her +own sure time, take, and by force too, if need be. Of the two cults +the latter is the simpler, sincerer, and certainly the less dishonest. + +Irish-American linked with German-American keen-sighted hostility did +the rest. The rivalry of Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Taft aided, and the +effort (for the time at any rate) has been wrecked, thereby plunging +England into a further paroxysm of religious despondency and grave +concern for German morals. This mood eventuated in Lord Haldane's +"week end" trip to Berlin. The voice was the voice of Jacob, in spite +of the hand of Esau. Mr. Churchill at Glasgow, showed the real hand +and the mess of pottage so amiably offered at Berlin bought no German +birthright. The Kreuz Zeitung rightly summed up the situation by +pointing out that "Mr. Churchill's testimony can now be advanced +as showing that the will of England alone comes in question as +the exponent of peace, and that England for many years past has +consciously assumed the role of an absolute and perfectly arbitrary +judge of war and peace. It seems to us all the more significant that +Mr. Churchill proposes also in the future to control, with the help of +the strong navies of the Dominions, the trade and naval movements of +all the Powers on the face of the earth--that is to say, his aim is to +secure a world monopoly for England." There has never been any other +thought in the English mind. As I said in Part I. of this paper, +"British interests are first the control of all the seas of all +the world in full military and commercial control. If this be not +challenged peace is permitted; to dispute it seriously means war." + +Germany is driven by necessity to dispute it seriously and to overcome +it. She cannot get out to play her part in world life, _nay, she +cannot hope to ultimately maintain herself at home_ until that battle +has been fought and won. + +Arrangements with England, detentes, understandings, call them what +you will, are merely parleys before the fight. The assault must be +delivered, the fortress carried, or else Germany, and with her +Europe, must resign the mission of the white races and hand over the +government and future of the world to one chosen people. + +Europe reproduces herself yearly at the present time at the rate of +about five million souls. Some three-fifths of the number are to-day +absorbed into the life of the Continent, the balance go abroad and +principally to North America, to swell the English-speaking world. +Germany controls about one-fifth of Europe's natural annual increase, +and realising that emigration to-day means only to lose her people and +build up her antagonist's strength, she has for years now striven to +keep her people within German limits, and hitherto with successful +results far in excess of any achieved by other European States. But +the limit must be reached, and that before many years are past. +Where is Germany to find the suitable region, both on a scale and +under conditions of climate, health and soil that a people of say +90,000,000 hemmed in a territory little larger than France, will find +commensurate to their needs? No European people is in such plight. + +Russia has the immense and healthy world of Siberia into which to +overflow. France, far from needing outlets, increases not at all, and +during 1911 showed an excess of close on 40,000 deaths over births. +For France the day of greatness is past. A French Empire, in any other +sense than the Roman one of commercial and military exploitation of +occupied territories and subjugated peoples is gone forever. + +France has no blood to give except in war. French blood will not +colonize even the Mediterranean littoral. Italy is faced with +something of the same problem as Germany, but to a lesser extent. Her +surplus population already finds a considerable outlet in Argentina +and South Brazil, among peoples, institutions, and language largely +approximating to those left behind. While Italy has, indeed need of a +world policy as well as Germany, her ability to sustain a great part +abroad cannot be compared to that of the Teutonic people. Her claim is +not so urgent; her need not so insistent, her might inadequate. + +The honesty and integrity of the German mind, the strength of the +German intellect, the skill of the German hand and brain, and justice +and vigour of German law, the intensity of German culture, science, +education and social development, these need a great and healthy field +for their beneficial display, and the world needs these things more +than it needs the British mastery of the seas. The world of European +life needs to-day, as it needed in the days of a decadent Roman +Empire, the coming of another Goth, the coming of the Teuton. The +interposing island in the North Sea alone intervenes. How to surmount +that obstacle, how to win the freedom of the "Seven Seas" for Europe +must be the supreme issue for Germany. + +If she falls she is doomed to sterility. The supreme test of German +genius, of German daring, of German discipline and imagination lies +there. + +Where Louis XIV., the Directory, and Napoleon failed, will the heirs +of Karl the Great see clearly? + +And then, when that great hour has struck, will Germany, will Europe, +produce the statesman soldier who shall see that the key to ocean +freedom lies in that island beyond an island, whose very existence +Europe has forgotten? + +Till that key is out from the Pirate's girdle, Germany may win a +hundred "Austerlitzes" on the Vistula, the Dnieper, the Loire, but +until she restores that key to Europe, to paraphrase Pitt, she may +"roll up that map of the world; it will not be wanted these fifty +years." + + + + +Chapter V + +THE PROBLEM OF THE NEAR WEST + + +The foregoing reflections and the arguments drawn from them were +penned before the outbreak of the war between Turkey and the Balkan +Allies. + +That war is still undecided as I write (March 1913), but whatever its +precise outcome may be, it is clear that the doom of Turkey as a great +power is sealed, and that the complications of the Near East will, +in future, assume an entirely fresh aspect. Hitherto, there was only +the possibility that Germany might find at least a commercial and +financial outlet in the Asiatic dominions of the Sultan. There was +even the possibility, had Turkey held together, that England, to +mitigate pressure elsewhere, would have conceded to an expanding and +insistent Germany, a friendly interest and control in Asia Minor. It +is true that the greatest possible development, and under the most +favoured conditions of German interests in that region, could not have +met the needs or satisfied the ever increasing necessities of Teutonic +growth; but at least it would have offered a safety valve, and could +have involved preoccupations likely to deflect the German vision, for +a time, from the true path to greatness, the Western highways of the +sea. + +An occupation or colonisation of the Near East by the Germanic peoples +could never have been a possible solution under any circumstances of +the problem that faces German statemanship. As well talk of reviving +the Frank Kingdom of Jerusalem. + +The occupation by the fair-haired peoples of the Baltic and North Seas +of the lands of Turk and Tartar, of Syrian and Jew, of Armenian and +Mesopotamian, was never a practical suggestion or one to be seriously +contemplated. "East is East and West is West," sings the poet of +Empire, and Englishmen cannot complain if the greatest of Western +peoples, adopting the singer, should apply the dogma to themselves. +Germany, indeed, might have looked for a considerable measure of +commercial dominance in the Near East, possibly for a commercial +protectorate such as France applies to Tunis and Algeria and hopes +to apply to morocco, or such as England imposes on Egypt, and this +commercial predominance could have conferred considerable profits on +Rhenish industries and benefited Saxon industrialism, but it could +never have done more than this. A colonisation of the realms of +Bajazet and Saladin by the fair-skinned peoples of the North, or the +planting of Teutonic institutions in the valley of Damascus, even with +the benevolent neutrality of England, is a far wider dream (and one +surely no German statesman ever entertained) than a German challenge +to the sea supremacy of England. + +The trend of civilized man in all great movements since modern +civilization began, has been from East to West, not from West to East. +The tide of the peoples moved by some mysterious impulse from the +dawn of European expansion has been towards the setting sun. The +few movements that have taken place in the contrary direction have +but emphasized the universality of this rule, from the days of the +overthrow of Rome, if we seek no earlier date. The Crusades furnished, +doubtless, the classic example. The later contrary instance, that of +Russia towards Siberia, scarcely, if at all affects the argument, for +there the Russian overthrow is filling up Northern rather than Eastern +lands, and the movement involves to the Russian emigrant no change +of climate, soil, law, language or environment while that emigrant +himself belongs, perhaps, as much to Asia as to Europe. + +But whatever value to German development the possible chances of +expansion in the Near East may have offered before the present Balkan +war, those chances to-day, as the result of that war, scarcely exist. +It is probably the perception of this outcome of the victory of the +Slav States that has influenced and accelerated the characteristic +change of English public opinion that has accompanied with shouts of +derision the dying agonies of the Turk. "In matters of mind," as a +recent English writer says in the _Saturday Review_, "the national +sporting instinct does not exist. The English public invariably backs +the winner." And just as the English public invariably backs the +winner, British policy invariably backs the anti-German, or supposedly +anti-German side in all world issues. "What 1912 seems to have +effected is a vast aggrandizement of the Slavonic races in their +secular struggle against the Teutonic races. Even a local and +temporary triumph of Austria over Servia cannot conceal the fact that +henceforth the way south-east to the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea is +barred to the Germans."[5] + +[Footnote 5: Mr. Frederick Harrison in the _English Review_, Jan., +1913.] + +That is the outstanding fact that British public opinion perceives +with growing pleasure from the break up of Turkey. + +No matter where the dispute or what the purpose of conflict may be, +the supreme issue for England is "Where is Germany?" + +Against that side the whole weight of Great Britain will, openly or +covertly, be thrown. German expansion in the Near East has gone by +the board, and in its place the development of Greek naval strength +in the Mediterranean, to take its stand by the Triple Entente, comes +to be jauntily considered, while the solid wedge of a Slav Empire +or Federation, commanding in the near future 2,000,000 of armed men +is agreeably seen to be driven across South-eastern Europe between +Austro-German efforts and the fallow lands of Asia Minor. These latter +can safely be left in Turkish hands yet a while longer, until the day +comes for their partition into "spheres of influence," just as Persia +and parts of China are to-day being apportioned between Russia and +England. This happy consummation, moreover, has fallen from heaven, +and Turkey is being cut up for the further extension of British +interests clearly by the act of God. + +The victory of the Balkan States becomes another triumph for the +British Bible; it is the victory of righteousness over wrong-doing. + +The true virtue of the Balkan "Christians" lies in the possibility of +their being moulded into an anti-German factor of great weight in the +European conflict, clearly impending, and in their offering a fresh +obstacle, it is hoped, to German world policy. + +Let us first inspect the moral argument on the lips of these +professors. We are assured, by it, that the claim of the Balkan Allies +to expel Turkey from Europe rests upon a just and historic basis. + +Briefly stated it is that the Turk has held his European provinces +by a right of conquest only. What the sword took, die sword may take +away. When the sword was struck from the Ottoman's grasp his right +to anything it had given him fell too. Thus Adrianople, a city he has +held for over five hundred years, must be given up to a new conqueror +who never owned it in the past and who certainly has far less moral +claim to be there to-day than the descendants of Selim's soldiers. + +But the moral argument brings strange revenges. + +If Turkey has no right to Adrianople, to Thrace--"right of sword to be +shattered by the sword"--what right has England to Ireland, to Dublin, +to Cork? She holds Ireland by exactly the same title as that by which +Turkey has hitherto held Macedonia, Thrace, Salonika--a right of +invasion, of seizure, of demoralization. If Turkey's rights, nearly +six hundred years old, can be shattered in a day by one successful +campaign, and if the powers of Europe can insist, with justice, that +this successful sword shall outweigh the occupation of centuries, +then, indeed, have the Powers, led by England, furnished a precedent +in the Near East which the victor in the next great struggle should +not be slow to apply to the Near West, when a captive Ireland shall be +rescued from the hands of a conqueror whose tide is no better, indeed +somewhat worse than that of Turkey to Macedonia. And when the day of +defeat shall strike for the Turkey of the Near West, then shall an +assembled Europe remember the arguments of 1912-13 and a freed Ireland +shall be justified on the very grounds England to-day has been the +first to advance against a defeated Turkey. + +"But the Turk is an Asiatic," say the English Bashaws: to which +indeed, Europe might aptly reply, "and are the English European or +non-European?" The moral argument, and the "Asiatic argument" are +strange texts for the desecrater of Christian Ireland to appeal to +against that continent which she would fain hem in with Malayan and +Indian battleships, and Canadian and Australasian dreadnoughts. Not +the moral argument, but the anti-German argument, furnishes the real +ground for the changed British attitude in the present war. + +The moral failure of Turkey, her inability to govern her Christian +peoples is only the pretext: but just as the moral argument brings +its strange revenges and shows an Ireland that has suffered all that +Macedonia has suffered, and this at the hands of Christians, and not +of Moslems, so the triumph of the Balkan Allies, far from benefiting +Britain, must, in the end, react to her detriment. + +The present apparent injury to German interests by the closing of +South-eastern Europe, and the road to Asia Minor, will inevitably +force Germany to still more resolutely face the problem of opening the +Western seaways. To think otherwise is to believe that Germany will +accept a quite impossible position tamely and without a struggle. + +Hemmed in by Russia on the East and the new Southern Slav States on +the South-east, with a vengeful France being incited on her Western +frontier to fresh dreams of conquest, Germany sees England preparing +still mightier armaments to hold and close the seaways of the world. +The Canadian naval vote, the Malayan "gift" of a battleship come as +fresh rivets in the chain forged for the perpetual binding of the +seas, or it might more truly be said, for the perpetual binding of the +hands of die German people. + +We read in a recent London periodical how these latest naval +developments portend the coming of the day when "the Imperial navy +shall keep the peace of the seas as a policeman does the peace of the +streets. The time is coming when a naval war (except by England), will +be as relentlessly suppressed as piracy on the high seas." (_Review of +Reviews_, December, 1912.) + +The naive arrogance of this utterance is characteristically English. +It is, after all, but the journalistic echo of the Churchill Glasgow +speech, and the fullest justification of the criticism of the +Kreuz Zeitung already quoted. It does not stand alone; it could be +paralleled in the columns of any English paper--Liberal as much as +Conservative--every day in the week. Nothing is clearer than that +no Englishman can think of other nations save in terms of permanent +inferiority. Thus, for instance, in a November (1912) issue of the +_Daily News_ we find a representative Englishman (Sir R. Edgecumbe), +addressing that Liberal journal in words that no one but an Englishman +would dream of giving public utterance to. Sir R. Edgecumbe deprecated +a statement that had gone round to the effect that the Malayan +battleship was not a free gift of the toiling Tamils, Japanese, +Chinese, and other rubber workers who make up, with a few Malays, the +population of that peninsula, but was really the fruit of an arbitrary +tax imposed upon these humble, but indifferent Asiatics by their +English administration. + +Far from being indifferent, Sir R. Edgecumbe asserted these poor +workers nourished a reverence "bordering on veneration" for the +Englishman. "This is shown in a curious way by their refusing to +call any European 'a white man' save the Englishman alone. The German +trader, the Italian and Frenchman all are, in their speech coloured +men." + +After this appreciation of themselves the English cannot object to the +present writer's view that they are non-Europeans. + +Thus while the Eastern question is being settled while I write, by the +expulsion of the Turk from Europe, England, who leads the cry in the +name of Europe, is preparing the exclusion of Europe from all world +affairs that can be dominated by sea power. Lands and peoples held +for centuries by Turkey by a right not less moral than that by which +England has held Ireland, are being forcibly restored to Europe. So be +it. + +With settlement of the Eastern question by this act of restitution +Europe must inevitably gain the clarity of vision to deal with the +Western question by a similar act of restoration. + +The Western Macedonia must go the way of its Eastern fellow. Like +those of the Orient, the problems of the Occident for Europe are +twofold--a near Western and a far Western question. Ireland, keeper +of the seas, constitutes for Europe the near Western question. + +The freedom of those seas and their opening to all European effort +alike on equal terms constitutes the far Western question. But in both +cases the antagonist of Europe, the non-European power is the same. +The challenge of Europe must be to England, and the champion of Europe +must be and can be only Germany. No other European people has the +power, the strength of mind, of purpose and of arm to accomplish the +great act of deliverance. Europe too long blinded to her own vital +interests while disunited, must now, under the guidance of a united +Germany, resolutely face the problem of freeing the seas. + +_That war of the seas is inevitable_. It may be fought on a continent; +it may be waged in the air--it must be settled on the seas and it must +mean either the freeing of those seas or the permanent exclusion +of Europeans from the affairs of the world. It means for Europe the +future, the very existence of European civilization as opposed to +the Anglo-Saxon world domination. In that war, Germany will stand not +alone as the champion of Europe, she will fight for the freedom of the +world. + +As an Irishman I have no fear of the result to Ireland of a German +triumph. I pray for it; for with the coming of that day the "Irish +question" so dear to British politicians, becomes a European, a world +question. + +With the humbling of Great Britain and the destruction of her sea +ownership, European civilization assumes a new stature, and Ireland, +oldest and yet youngest of the European peoples, shall enter into free +partnership with the civilization, culture, and prosperity that that +act of liberation shall bring to mankind. + + + + +Chapter VI + +THE DUTY OF CHRISTENDOM + + +It is only the truth that wounds. An Irishman to-day in dealing with +Englishmen is forced, if he speak truly, to wound. That is why so +many Irishmen do not speak the truth. The Irishman, whether he be a +peasant, a farm labourer, however low in the scale of Anglicization +he may have sunk, is still in imagination, if not always in manner, +a gentleman. The Englishman is a gentleman by chance, by force of +circumstances, by luck of birth, or some rare opportunity of early +fellowship. The Irishman is a gentleman by instinct and shrinks from +wounding the feelings of another man and particularly of the man who +has wounded him. He scorns to take it out of him that way. That is +why the task of misgoverning him has been so easy and has come so +naturally to the Englishman. One of the chief grievances of the +Irishman in the middle ages was that the man who robbed him was such +a boor. Insult was added to injury in that the oppressor was no knight +in shining armour, but a very churl of men; to the courteous and +cultured Irishman a "bodach Sassenach," a man of low blood, of low +cunning, caring only for the things of the body, with no veneration +for the things of the spirit--with, in fine, no music in his soul. +The things that the Irishman loved he could not conceive of. Without +tradition or history himself he could not comprehend the passionate +attachment of the Irishman to both, and he proceeded to wipe both out, +so far as in him lay, from off the map of Ireland and from out the +Irishman's consciousness. + +Having, as he believed, with some difficulty accomplished his task, +he stands to-day amazed at the result. The Irishman has still a +grievance--nay more, Ireland talks of "wrongs." But has she not got +him? What more can she want except his purse? And, that too, she +is now taking. In the indulgence of an agreeable self-conceit which +supplies for him the want of imagination he sees Ireland to-day as a +species of "sturdy beggar," half mendicant, half pickpocket--making +off with the proceeds of his hard day's work. The past slips from +him as a dream. Has he not for years now, well, for thirty years +certainly, a generation, a life time, done all in his power to meet +the demands of this incessant country that more in sorrow than in +anger he will grant you, was misgoverned in the past. That was its +misfortune, never his fault. This is a steadily recurring phase of the +fixed hallucination in his blood. Ireland never _is_, but only always +has been cursed by English rule. He himself, the Englishman of the +day, is always a simple, bluff, good-hearted fellow. His father if you +like, his grandfather very probably, misgoverned Ireland, but never he +himself. Why, just look at him now, his hand never out of his pocket +relieving the shrill cries of Irish distress. There she stands, a +poverty-stricken virago at his door, shaking her bony fist at him, +Celtic porter in her eye, the most fearful apparition in history, his +charwoman, shaming him before the neighbours and demanding payment for +long past spring cleanings that he, good soul, has forgotten all about +or is quite certain were settled at the time. Yes, there she stands, +the Irish charwoman, the old broom in her hand and preparing for +one last sweep that shall make the house sweet and fit for her own +children. And John Bull, honest, sturdy John Bull, believing the house +to be his, thinks that the only thing between him and the woman is +the matter of wages; that all she wants is an extra shilling. Ireland +wants but one thing in the world. She wants her house to herself, and +the stranger out of her house. + +While he is, in his heart, perfectly aware of this, John Bull (for the +reasons given by Richard Cox), is quite determined that nothing shall +get him out of the house. "Separation is unthinkable," say English +Ministers. The task of Ireland is to-day what it always has been--to +get the stranger out of the house. It is no shame to Ireland or her +sons, that up to this they have failed in each attempt. Those attempts +are pillars of fire in her history, beacons of light in the desert of +sin, where the Irish Israel still wanders in search of the promised +land. Few of the peoples in Europe who to-day make up the concert of +powers, have, unaided, expelled the invader who held them down, and +none has been in the situation of Ireland. + +As Mr. Gladstone wrote in 1890, "can anyone say we should have treated +Ireland as we have done had she lain not between us and the ocean, but +between us and Europe?" + +In introducing the scheme of mild Home Rule termed the Councils Bill +in 1907, Mr. Birrell prefaced it with the remark that "separation was +unthinkable--save in the event of some great world cataclysm." World +cataclysms up to this have not reached Ireland--England intervened too +well. She has maintained her hold by sea power. The lonely Andromeda +saw afar off the rescuing Perseus, a nude figure on the coast of Spain +or France, but long ere his flight reached her rock-bound feet she +beheld him fall, bruised and mangled, and devoured by the watching sea +monster. + +Had Italy been placed as Ireland is, cut off from all external succour +save across a sea held by a relentless jailor, would she have been +to-day a free people, ally of Austria on terms of high equality? + +The blood shed by the founders of modern Italy would all have been +shed in vain--that blood that sanctified the sword of Garibaldi--had +it not been for the selfish policy of Louis Napoleon and the invading +armies of France. Italy, no more than Ireland, could have shaken +herself free had it not been for aid from abroad. The late Queen +Victoria saw clearly the parallel, and as hereditary custodian of +Ireland, Her Majesty protested against the effort then being made to +release Italy from an Austrian prison, when she herself was so hard +put to it to keep Ireland in an English jail. Writing to her Prime +Minister on July 25th, 1848, Her Majesty said:-- + +"The Queen must tell Lord John (Russell) what she has repeatedly told +Lord Palmerston, but without apparent effect, that the establishment +of an entente cordiale with the French Republic, for the purpose +of driving the Austrians out of their dominions in Italy would be a +disgrace to this country. That the French would attach the greatest +importance to it and gain the greatest advantage from it, there can +be no doubt of. But how will England appear before the world at the +moment she is struggling for her supremacy in Ireland?..." and on Oct. +10th following Her Majesty wrote to her uncle, the first King of +the Belgians (who owed his new minted crown to the Belgian people +depriving the Dutch Sovereign of his "lawful possessions") in the +following memorable words: + +"Really it is quite immoral, with Ireland quivering in our grasp, +and ready to throw off her allegiance at any moment, for us to force +Austria to give up her lawful possessions. What shall we say if +Canada, Malta, etc., begin to trouble us? It hurts me terribly." (Page +237, Queen Victoria's letters, published by order of His Majesty, King +Edward VII.) + +It hurt Ireland much more terribly, that failure to throw off the +hand that held her "quivering in our grasp," so soon to stretch her +"a corpse upon the dissecting table." + +Ireland has failed to win her freedom, not so much because she has +failed to shed her blood, but because her situation in the world +is just that unique situation I have sought to depict. Belonging to +Europe, she has not been of Europe; and England with a persistency +that would be admirable were it not so criminal in intention and +effect, has bent all her efforts, all her vigour, an unswerving +policy, and a pitiless sword to extend the limits of exclusion. To +approach Ireland at all since the first English Sovereign laid hands +upon it was "quite immoral." When Frederick of Hohenstaufen (so long +ago as that!) sent his secretary (an Irishman) to Ireland we read that +Henry III of England declared "it hurt him terribly," and ordered all +the goings out and comings in of the returned Irish-German statesman +to be closely watched. + +The dire offence of Hugh O'Neill to Elizabeth was far less his +rebellion than his "practises" with Spain. At every cessation of +arms during the Nine Years War he waged with England, she sought to +obtain from him an abjuration of "foreign aid," chiefly "that of the +Spaniard." "Nothing will become the traitor (O'Neill) more than his +public confession of any Spanish practices, and his abjuration of any +manner of harkening or combining with any foreigners." + +Could O'Neill be brought to publicly repudiate help from abroad it +would have, the Queen thought, the effect that "in Spain... the hopes +of such attempts might be extinguished." + +As long as the sea was open to Spain there was grave danger. If +Spaniard and Irishman came close together O'Neill's offence was +indeed "fit to be made vulgar"--all men would see the strength of +combination, the weakness of isolation. + +"Send me all the news you receive from Spain for Tyrone doth fill all +these parts with strange lies, although some part be true, that there +came some munition." It was because O'Neill was a statesman and knew +the imperative need to Ireland of keeping in touch with Europe that +for Elizabeth he became "the chief traitor of Ireland--a reprobate +from God, reserved for the sword." + +Spain was to Elizabethan Englishmen what Germany is to-day. + +"I would venture to say one word here to my Irish fellow countrymen of +all political persuasions. If they imagine they can stand politically +or economically while Britain falls they are woefully mistaken. The +British fleet is their one shield. It if be broken Ireland will go +down. They may well throw themselves heartily into the common defence, +for no sword can transfix England without the point reaching behind +her." (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in the _Fortnightly Review_, Feb., +1913, "Great Britain and the Next War.") + +The voice is a very old one, and the bogey has done duty for a long +time in Ireland. When, to-day, it is from Germany that freedom may +be feared, Ireland is warned against the German. When, three hundred +years ago the beacon of hope shone on the coast of Spain, it was the +Spaniards who were the bad people of history. + +Fray Mattheo de Oviedo, who had been sent to Ireland as Archbishop, +wrote to King Philip III from O'Neill's stronghold, Dungannon, on +June 24, 1600. We might be listening to the voice of the _Fortnightly +Review_ of yesterday. "The English are making great efforts to bring +about a peace, offering excellent terms, and for this purpose the +Viceroy sent messengers twice to O'Neill, saying among other things, +that Your Majesty is making peace with the Queen, and that his +condition will be hopeless. At other times he says that no greater +misfortune could happen to the country than to bring Spaniards into +it, because they are haughty and vicious and they would destroy and +ruin the country." The Irish princes were no fools. "To all this they +reply most honourably that they will hold out as long as they have one +soldier or there remains a cow to eat." + +Hugh O'Neill saw clearly that all compromise between Ireland and +England was futile, and that the way of escape was by complete +separation and lay only through Europe. He again and again begged +the Spanish King to sever Ireland and erect it into an allied State. +He offered the crown of Ireland to a Spanish prince, just as three +centuries earlier another and a great O'Neill offered the crown of +Ireland to Edward Bruce in 1315. + +The coming of the Bruce saved Gaelic Ireland for three centuries. Had +Philip of Spain sent his son as King to Ireland, her fate had been +settled then instead of remaining three centuries later to still +confront European statesmanship with an unsolved problem. + +In many letters addressed by the Irish leaders to Philip II and Philip +III we find the constantly recurring note of warning that to leave +England in possession of Ireland meant the downfall of Spain. The +Irish princes knew that in fighting England they were in truth +fighting the battle of European civilization. + +Writing to Philip II from Lifford, on May 16th, 1596, O'Neill and +O'Donnell drew the King's attention to the cause of Ireland as the +cause of Europe, and in the name of Ireland offered the crown to +a Spanish prince. "But inasmuch as we have felt to our great and +indescribably harm the evil doings and crimes of those whom the Queen +of England is in the habit of sending amongst us, we beg and beseech +Your Majesty to send someone well known to you and perfectly fit to +be the King of this island, for his own welfare, ours, and that of the +Christian State (Christendom)." + +They asked for a prince "who will not be unwilling to rule over and +live amongst us and to direct and guide our nation, well and wisely." +They pointed out how "he will obtain much advantage and glory by so +doing," and finally they begged "would that Your Majesty would appoint +the Archduke of Austria, now Governor of Flanders, a famous man and +worthy of all praise, than whom none would be more acceptable." (The +original is in Latin and in the archives of Simancas.) + +No more statesmanlike appeal was ever made from Ireland; and had +the Archduke of Austria assumed the crown of Ireland in 1596, "now +or never" would indeed have become "now and forever." Had Philip II +carried out his often repeated promises of sending aid to that country +the fate of his own kingdom must have been a very different one. + +"I wish it were possible for me, by word of mouth, to show the +importance of this undertaking and the great service that would be +rendered thereby to God and His Church, and _the great advantage it +would be to the service of Your Majesty and the peace of Your States +to attack the enemy here_." + +So wrote in 1600 to Philip II, the Archbishop of Dublin, already +quoted, Mattheo de Oviedo. + +This prelate had been specially sent to Ireland "to see and understand +the state of the country misrepresented by English emissaries at +foreign courts." + +The wrath of Elizabeth against O'Neill was largely due to his keeping +in touch with the continent, whereby the lies of her agents abroad +were turned to her own ridicule. To Essex, her Viceroy, she wrote: +"Tyrone hath blazed in foreign parts the defeat of regiments, the +death of captains, and loss of men of quality in every quarter." + +O'Neill not only for years beat her generals in the field, her beat +herself and her councillors at their own game. To Essex, in an ecstacy +of rage at the loss of the last great army sent, she wrote (September +17th, 1599): "To trust this traitor upon oath is to trust the devil +upon his religion. Only this we are sure (for we see it in effect), +that you have prospered so ill for us by your warfare, as we cannot +but be very jealous lest we should be as well overtaken by the +treaty." + +(Essex wished to bring O'Neill in by a treaty which, while ostensibly +conceding the terms of the Irish prince was to allow the Queen time to +carry out her purpose.) + +The Irish princes knew Elizabeth and her Ministers, as well as she +read Essex. "Believe no news from Ireland of any agreement in this +country," they had written to Philip II in 1597, "great offers have +been made by the Queen of England, but we will not break our word and +promise to your." In a letter written a year earlier (Oct. 18, 1596), +replying to the special envoy sent by the king, they said: "Since +the former envoys left us we have used every means in our power, as +we promised we should do, to gain time and procrastination from one +day to another. But how could we impose on so clever an enemy so +skilled in every kind of cunning and cheating if we did not use much +dissimulation, and especially if we did not pretend we were anxious +for peace? We will keep firm and unshaken the promises which we made +to Your Majesty with our last breath; if we do not we shall incur at +once the wrath of God and the contempt of men." + +How faithfully they kept those promises and how the Spanish King +failed in his, their fate and the bitter ruin of their country shows. +That men fighting for Ireland had to meet Elizabeth and her statesmen +with something of her own cunning is made very clear to anyone reading +the State papers in Ireland. + +Essex, in one of his "answers" wrote: "I advise Her Majesty to allow +me, at my return to Dublin, to conclude this treaty, yielding some +of their grants in the present; and when Her Majesty has made secret +preparations to enable me to prosecute, I will find quarrels enough to +break and give them a deadly blow." + +The Irish, however, failed in this contest. They were not sufficiently +good liars, and lacked the higher flights of villainy necessary to +sustain the encounter. The essential English way in Tudor days, and +much later, for administering a deadly blow to an Irish patriot was +"assassination." Poison frequently took the place of the knife, and +was often administered wrapped in a leaf of the British Bible. A +certain Atkinson, knowing the religious nature of Cecil, the Queen's +Prime Minister, the founder of a long line of statesmen, foremost as +champions of Church and Book, suggested the getting rid of O'Neill by +some "poisoned Hosts." This proposal to use the Blessed Sacrament as +a veritable Last Supper for the last great Irish chief remains on +record, was endorsed by Cecil. + +Another Briton, named Annyas, was charged to poison "the most +dangerous and open rebel in Munster," Florence MacCarthy More, the +great MacCarthy. Elizabeth's Prime Minister piously endorsed the +deed--"though his soul never had the thought to consent to the +poisoning of a dog, much less a Christian ." + +To Carew, the President of Munster, Cecil wrote enjoining the +assassination of the young Earl of Desmond, then "in the keeping +of Carew": "Whatever you do to abridge him out of Providence shall +never be imputed to you for a fault, but exceedingly commended +by the Queen." After this, we are not surprised to learn that in +her instructions to Mountjoy, the successor of Essex, the Queen +recommended "to his special care to preserve the true exercise of +religion among her loving subjects." As O'Neill was still in the field +with a large army, she prudently pointed out, however, that the time +"did not permit that he should intermeddle by any severity or violence +in matters of religion until her power was better established there +to countenance his action." That the character of their adversary was +faithfully appreciated by contemporary Irish opinion stands plain in +a letter written by James Fitzthomas, nephew of the great Earl Gerald +of Desmond, to Philip II. "The government of the English is such as +Pharaoh himself never used the like; for they content not themselves +with all temporal prosperity, but by cruelty desire our blood and +perpetual destruction to blot out the whole remembrance of our +posterity--for that Nero, in his time, was far inferior to that Queen +in cruelty." + +The Irish chiefs well sustained their part in meeting this combination +of power and perfidy, and merited, on the highest grounds of policy +the help so often promised by the King of Spain. They showed him not +only by their valour on the field but by their sagacious council how +great a part was reserved for Ireland in the affairs of Europe if he +would but profit from it and do his part. + +In this the Spanish King failed. Philip II had died in 1598, too +immersed in religious trials to see that the centre of his griefs was +pivoted on the possession of Ireland by the female Nero. With his son +and successor communication was maintained and in a letter of Philip +III to O'Neill, dated from Madrid, Dec. 24th, 1599, we read: "Noble +and well beloved I have already written a joint letter to you and your +relative O'Donnell, in which I replied to a letter of both of you. By +this, which I now write to you personally I wish to let you know my +good will towards you, and I mean to prove it, not only by word, but +by deed." That promise was not fulfilled, or so inadequately fulfilled +that the help, when it came, was insufficient to meet the needs of the +case. + +History tells us what the sad consequences were to the cause of +civilisation in Ireland, from the failure of the Spanish King to +realize the greatness of his responsibilities. But the evil struck +deeper than to Ireland alone. Europe lost more than her historians +have yet realised from the weakness of purpose that let Ireland go +down transfixed by the sword of Elizabeth. + +Had the fate of Europe been then controlled by a Hohenzollern, instead +of by a Spanish Hapsburg, how different might have been the future of +the world! + +Although Europe had forgotten Ireland, Ireland had never forgotten +Europe. Natural outpost and sentinel of that continent in the West for +three-hundred years now gagged and bound, since the flight to Rome of +her last native Princes, she stands to-day as in the days of Philip +III, if an outcast from European civilization non the less rejecting +the insular tradition of England, as she has rejected her insular +Church. And now once more in her career she turns to the greatest of +European Sovereigns, to win his eyes to the oldest, and certainly the +most faithful of European peoples. Ireland already has given and owes +much to Germany. + +In the dark ages intercourse between the Celtic people of the +West and the Rhinelands and Bavaria was close and long sustained. +Irish monasteries flourished in the heart of Germany, and German +architecture gave its note possibly to some of the fairest cathedral +churches in Ireland. + +Clonfert and Cashel are, perhaps amongst the most conspicuous examples +of the influence of that old-time intercourse with Germany. To-day, +when little of her past remains to venerate, her ancient language on +what seemed its bed of death owes much of its present day revival +to German scholarship and culture. Probably the foremost Gaelic +scholar of the day is the occupant of the Chair of Celtic at Berlin +University, and Ireland recognises with a gratitude she is not easily +able to express, all that her ancient literature owes to the genius +and loving intellect of Dr. Kuno Meyer. + +The name of Ireland may be known on the Bourses or in the +Chancelleries of Europe; it is not without interest, even fame, in the +centres of German academical culture. But that the German State may +also be interested in the political fate of Ireland is believed by the +present writer. + +Maurice Fitzgerald, the outlawed claimant to the Earldom of Desmond, +wrote to Philip II, from Lisbon on September 4th, 1593: + +"We have thought it right to implore your Majesty to send the aid +you will think fit and with it to send us (the Irish refugees in the +Peninsula) to defend and uphold the same undertaking; for we hope, +with God's help Your Majesty will be victorious and conquer and hold +as your own the kingdom of Ireland.--We trust in God that Your Majesty +and the Council will weigh well the advantages that will ensue to +Christendom from this enterprise--since the opportunity is so good +and the cause so just and weighty, and the undertaking so easily +completed." + +The history of human freedom is written in letters of blood. It is the +law of God. No people who clutch to safety, who shun death are worthy +of freedom. + +The dead who die for Ireland are the only live men in a free Ireland. +The rest are cattle. Freedom is kept alive in man's blood only by +shedding of that blood. It was not an act of a foreign Parliament they +were seeking, those splendid "scorners of death," the lads and young +men of Mayo, who awaited with a fearless joy the advance of the +English army fresh from the defeat of Humbert in 1798. Then, if ever, +Irishmen might have run from a victorious and pitiless enemy who, +having captured the French General and murdered in cold blood the +seven hundred Killala peasants who were with his colours, were now +come to Killala itself to wreak vengeance on the last stronghold of +Irish rebellion. + +The ill-led and half armed peasants, the last Irishmen in Ireland +to stand the pitched fight for their country's freedom, went to +meet the army of England, as the Protestant Bishop, who saw them, +says:--"running upon death with as little appearance of reflection +or concern as if they were hastening to a show." + +The late Queen Victoria, in one of her letters to her uncle, the King +of the Belgians, wrote thus of the abortive rising of fifty years +later in 1848: + +"There are ample means of crushing the rebellion in Ireland, and I +think it is very likely to go off without any contest, which people +(and I think rightly) rather regret. The Irish should receive _a +good lesson or they will begin again_." (Page 223, Vol. II, Queen +Victoria's letters.) Her Majesty was profoundly right. Ireland needed +that lesson in 1848, as she needs it still more to-day. Had Irishmen +died in 1848 as they did in 1798 Ireland would be to-day fifty years +nearer to freedom. It is because a century has passed since Europe +saw Ireland willing to die that to-day Europe has forgotten that she +lives. + +As I began this essay with a remark of Charles Lever on Germany so +shall end it here with a remark of Lever on his own country, Ireland. + +In a letter to a friend in Dublin, he thus put the epitaph of Europe +on the grave of a generation who believed that "no human cause was +worth the shedding one drop of human blood." + +"As to Ireland all foreign sympathy is over owing to the late +cowardice and poltroonery of the patriots. _Even Italians can fight_" +(Letter of C. Lever from Florence, August 19th, 1848). + +It is only the truth that wounds. It is that reproach that has cursed +Ireland for a century. + +Sedition, the natural garment for an Irishman to wear, has been for a +hundred years a bloodless sedition. It is this fiery shirt of Nessus +that has driven our strong men mad. How to shed our blood with honour, +how to give our lives for Ireland--that has been, that is the problem +of Irish nationality. + + + + +Chapter VII + +THE FREEDOM OF THE SEAS + + +It would be idle to attempt to forecast the details of a struggle +between Great Britain and Germany. That is a task that belongs to the +War Department of the two States. I have assigned myself merely to +point out that such a struggle is inevitable, and to indicate what +I believe to be the supreme factors in the conflict, and how one of +these, Ireland, and that undoubtedly the most important factor, has +been overlooked by practically every predecessor of Germany in the +effort to make good at sea. The Spaniards in Elizabeth's reign, +the French of Louis XIV and of the Directory took some steps, it +is true, to challenge England's control of Ireland, but instead of +concentrating their strength upon that line of attack they were +content to dissipate it upon isolated expeditions and never once to +push home the assault on the one point that was obviously the key +to the enemy's whole position. At any period during that last three +centuries, with Ireland gone, England was, if not actually at the +mercy of her assailants, certainly reduced to impotency beyond her own +shores. But while England knew the value to herself of Ireland, she +appreciated to the full the fact that this profitable juxtaposition +lay on her right side hidden from the eyes of Europe. + +"Will anyone assert," said Gladstone, "that we would have dared to +treat Ireland as we have done had she lain, not between us and the +ocean, but between us and the continent?" And while the bulk of +England, swollen to enormous dimensions by the gains she drew from +Ireland interposed between her victim and Europe, her continental +adversaries were themselves the victims of that strange mental disease +psychologists term the collective illusion. All the world saw that +which in fact did not exist. The greatness of England as they beheld +it, imposing, powerful, and triumphant, existed not on the rocky base +they believed they saw, but on the object, sacked, impoverished, and +bled, they never saw. And so it is to-day. The British Empire is the +great illusion. Resembling in much the Holy Roman Empire it is not +British, it is not an Empire, and assuredly it is not holy. It lives +on the life-blood and sufferings of some, on the suffrance and mutual +jealousy of others, and on the fixed illusion of all. Rather is it a +great Mendicity Institute. England now, instead of "robbing from Pole +to Pole," as John Mitchel once defined her activities, goes begging +from Pole to Pole that all and every one shall give her a helping hand +to keep the plunder. Chins, Goorkhas, Sikhs, Malays, Irish, Chinese, +South African Dutch, Australasians, Maoris, Canadians, Japanese, and +finally "Uncle Sam"--these are the main components that when skilfully +mixed from London, furnish the colouring material for the world-wide +canvas. If we take away India, Egypt and the other coloured races the +white population that remains is greatly inferior to the population of +Germany, and instead of being a compact, indivisible whole, consists +of a number of widely scattered and separated communities, each with +separate and absorbing problems of its own, and more than one of them +British neither in race, speech, nor affection. Moreover if we turn +to the coloured races we find that the great mass of the subjects of +this Empire have less rights within it than they possess outside its +boundaries, and occupy there a lower status than that accorded to most +foreigners. + +The people of India far out number all other citizens of the British +Empire put together, and yet we find the British Indians resident in +Canada, to take but one instance, petitioning the Imperial Government +in 1910 for as favourable terms of entry into that British possession +as the Japanese enjoyed. + +They pointed out that a Japanese could enter Canada on showing that he +held from six pounds to ten pounds, but that no British Indian could +land unless he had forty pounds and had come direct from India,--a +physical impossibility, since no direct communication exists. But they +went further, for they showed that their "citizenship" of the British +Empire entailed penalties that no foreign state anywhere imposed upon +them. + +"We appeal," they said, "and most forcibly bring to your notice +that no such discriminating laws are existing against us in foreign +countries like the United States of America, Germany, Japan, and +Africa, to whom we do not owe any allegiance whatsoever." + +So that outside its white or European races it is clear the Empire has +no general or equal citizenship, and that, far from being one, it is +more divided racially against itself than are even opposing Asiatic +and European nations which have the good fortune not to be united in a +common, imperial bond. + +The total white population of this incongruous mass in 1911 consisted +of some 59,000,000 human beings made up of various national and racial +strains, as against 66,000,000 of white men in the German Empire the +vast majority of them of German blood. And while the latter form a +disciplined, self-contained, and self-supporting and self-defending +whole, the former are swelled by Irish, French-Canadians, and Dutch +South Africans who, according to Sir R. Edgcumbe, must be reckoned as +"coloured." + +It is one thing to paint the map red, but you must be sure that your +colours are fast and that the stock of paints wont run out. England, +apart from her own perplexities is now faced with this prospect. Great +Britain can no longer count on Ireland, that most prolific source +of supply of her army, navy, and industrial efforts during the last +century, while she is faced with a declining birth-rate, due largely, +be it noted, to the diminished influx of the Irish, a more prolific +and virile race. While her internal powers of reproduction are +failing, her ability to keep those already born is diminishing still +more rapidly. Emigration threatens to remove the surplus of births +over deaths. + +As long as it was only the population of Ireland that fell (8,500,000 +in 1846 to 4,370,000 in 1911), Great Britain was not merely untroubled +but actually rejoiced at a decrease in numbers that made the Irish +more manageable, and yet just sufficiently starvable to supply her +with a goodly surplus for army, navy, and industrial expansion in +Great Britain. Now that the Irish are gone with a vengeance it is +being perceived that they did not take their vengeance with them and +that the very industrial expansion they built up from their starving +bodies and naked limbs contains within itself the seeds of a great +retribution. + +"Since Free Trade has ruined our agriculture, our army has become +composed of starving slum dwellers who, according to the German notion +are better at shouting than at fighting. German generals have pointed +out that in the South African war our regular and auxiliary troops +often raised the white flag and surrendered, without necessity, +sometimes to a few Boers, and they may do the same to a German +invading force. Free Trade which "benefits the consumer" and the +capitalist has, unfortunately, through the destruction of our +agriculture and through forcing practically the whole population of +Great Britain into the towns, destroyed the manhood of the nation." +(Modern Germany page 251, by J. Ellis Barker, 1907). An army of slum +dwellers is a poor base on which to build the structure of a perpetual +world dominion. + +While the navy shows an imposing output of new battleships +and cruisers for 1913, the record, we are told, of all warship +construction in the world, it takes blood as well as iron to cement +empires. Battleships may become so much floating scrap iron (like the +Russian fleet at Tsushima), if the men behind the guns lack the right +stamina and education. + +We learn, too, that it is not only the slum dwellers who are failing, +but that to meet the shortage of officers a large number of transfers +from the merchant marine to the Royal Navy are being sanctioned. +To this must be added the call of the Great Dominions for men and +officers to man their local fleets. As the vital resources of England +become more and more inadequate to meet the menace of German naval and +moral strength, she turns her eyes to Ireland, and we learn from the +London _Daily Telegraph_ that Mr. Churchill's scheme of recruiting at +Queenstown may furnish "matter for congratulation, as Irish boys make +excellent bluejackets happy of disposition, amenable to discipline, +and extremely quick and handy." + +As I can recall an article in this same journal, written during the +course of the Boer War, in which Ireland was likened to a "serpent +whose head must be crushed beneath the heel," the _Daily Telegraph's_ +praise to-day of the Irish disposition should leave Irish boys +profoundly unmoved--and still ashore. + +There is yet another aspect of the growing stream of British +emigration. "Death removes the feeble, emigration removes the strong. +Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa, have no use for the +sick and palsied, or of those incapable of work through age or youth. +They want the workers and they get them. Those who have left the +United Kingdom during 1912 are not the scum of our islands, but the +very pick. And they leave behind, for our politicians to grapple with, +a greater proportion of females, of children and of disabled than ever +before." (_London Magazine_!) + +The excess of females over males, already so noteworthy a feature +of England's decay, becomes each year more accentuated and doubtless +accounts for the strenuous efforts now being made to entrap Irish boys +into the British army and navy. + +If we compare the figures of Germany and Great Britain, and then +contrast them with those of Ireland, we shall see, at a glance, how +low England is sinking, and how vitally necessary it is for her to +redress the balance of her own excess of "militants" over males by +kidnapping Irish youths into her emasculated services and by fomenting +French and Russian enmities against the fruitful German people. + +Germany 1910, males, 32,031,967; females, 32,871,456; total, +64,925,993. Excess of females, 739,489. + +Great Britain, 1911: + +England and Wales--Males, 17,448,476; females, 18,626,793; total, +36,075,269. Excess of females, 1,178,317. + +Scotland--Males, 2,307,603; females, 2,251,842; total, 4,759,445. +Excess of females, 144,239. + +Total for Great Britain, 40,834,714. Excess of females, 1,322,556. + +Thus on a population much less than two thirds that of Germany Great +Britain has almost twice as many females in excess over males as +Germany has, and this disproportion of sexes tends yearly to increase. +We read in every fresh return of emigration that it is men and not +women who are leaving England and Scotland. That Irish emigration, +appalling as its ravages have been since 1846, is still maintained on +a naturally healthier basis the sex returns for 1911 make clear. The +figures for Ireland at the census were as follows: + +Ireland--Males, 2,186,802; females, 2,195,147; total, 4,381,949. +Excess of females, 8,346. + +Ireland, it is seen, can still spare 100,000 or 150,000 males for the +British armed forces and be in no unhealthier sex plight than Scotland +or England is in. It is to get this surplus of stout Irish brawn and +muscle that Mr. Churchill and the British War Office are now touting +in Ireland. + +I take the following Government advertisement from the Cork _Evening +Echo_ (of March, 1913), in illustration: + +"Notice--Any person that brings a recruit for the Regular or Special +Reserve Branches of the Army to the Recruiting Officer at Victoria +Barracks, Cork, will be paid the money reward allowed for each recruit +which ranges from 1/6 to 5/- each." + +From whatever point of view we survey it we shall find that England's +Empire at bottom rests upon Ireland to make good British deficiencies. +The Dominions are far off, and while they may give battleships they +take men. Ireland is close at hand--she gives all and takes nothing. +Men, mind, food and money--all these she has offered through the +centuries, and it is upon these and the unrestricted drain of these +four things from that rich mine of human fertility and wealth that +the British Empire has been founded and maintained. To secure to-day +the goodwill and active co-operation of the Irish race abroad as well +as in Ireland, and through that goodwill to secure the alliance and +support of the United States has become the guiding purpose of British +statesmanship. + +The Home Rule Bill of the present Liberal Government is merely the +petty party expression of what all English statesmen recognize as +a national need. Were the present Liberal Government thrown out +to-morrow their Unionist successors would hasten to bind Ireland +(and America) to them by a measure that, if necessary, would go much +further. Every Unionist knows this. Ireland is always the key to the +situation. + +I will quote two pronouncements, one English and one American, to show +that Home Rule has now become an imperial necessity for England. + +Speaking in the House of Lords on the Home Rule Bill, Earl Grey, the +late Governor-General of Canada, said on January 27th, 1913: + +"In the interests of the Empire I feel very strongly that it is +imperative that the Irish question should be settled on lines which +will satisfy the sentiment of the over-sea democracies, both in our +self-governing colonies and in the United States. Everyone, I think +will agree that it is most important and in the highest interests of +the empire that there should be the friendliest feelings of generous +affection and goodwill, not only between the self-governing Dominions +and the Motherland, but also between America and England.... I need +not elaborate this point. We are all agreed upon it. A heavy shadow +at present exists, and it arises from our treatment of Ireland.... +If this be so is it not our duty to remove the obstacle that prevents +that relationship with America from being that which we all desire?" + +The American utterance came from one equally representative of +American Imperial interests. It is that of Mr. Roosevelt, published in +the _Irish World_ of New York, Feb. 8th, 1913. + +"I feel that the enactment into law of this measure ... bids fair to +establish goodwill among the English-speaking peoples. This has been +prevented more than by any other one thing by this unhappy feud that +has raged for centuries, and the settlement of which, I most earnestly +hope, and believe, will be a powerful contribution to the peace of the +world, based on international justice and goodwill. I earnestly feel +that the measure is as much in the interests of Great Britain as of +Ireland." + +Did we judge of Ireland only by many of the public utterances made +in her name, then, indeed might we despair of a people who having +suffered so much and so valiantly resisted for so many centuries +were now to be won to their oppressor's side, by, perhaps, the most +barefaced act of bribery ever attempted by a Government against a +people. + +"Injured nations cannot so entirely forgive their enemies without +losing something of their virility, and it grates upon me to hear +leader after leader of the Parliamentary Party declaring without shame +that Home Rule when it is won for Ireland is to be used for a new +weapon of offence in England's hands against the freedom of the world +elsewhere." + +Did the Irish Parliamentary Party indeed represent Ireland in this, +Mr. Wilfred Blunt's noble protest in his recent work, _The Land War +in Ireland_, would stand for the contemptuous impeachment, not of a +political party but of a nation. + +Mr. Redmond in his latest speech shows how truly Mr. Blunt has +depicted his party's aim; but to the credit of Ireland it is to be +recorded that Mr. Redmond had to choose not Ireland, but England for +its delivery. Speaking at St. Patrick's Day dinner in London on March +17th, 1913, Mr. Redmond, to a non-Irish audience, thus hailed the +future part his country is to play under the restoration of what he +describes as a "National Parliament." + +"We will, under Home Rule, devote our attention to education, reform +of the Poor Law, and questions of that kind which are purely domestic, +which are, if you like, hum-drum Irish questions, and the only way +in which we will attempt to interfere in any Imperial question will +be by our representatives on the floor of the Imperial Parliament in +Westminster doing everything in our power to increase the strength and +the glory of what will then be our empire at long last; and by sending +in support of the empire the strong arms and brave hearts of Irish +soldiers and Irish sailors, to maintain the traditions of Irish valour +in every part of the world. That is our ambition." + +Were this indeed the ambition of Ireland, did this represent the true +feeling of Irishmen towards England, and the Empire of England, then +Home Rule, on such terms, would be a curse and a crime. Thierry, the +French historian, is a truer exponent of the passionate aspirations of +the Irish heart than anyone who to-day would seek to represent Ireland +as willing to sell her soul no less than the strong arms and brave +hearts of her sons in an unholy cause. + +"... For notwithstanding the mixture of races, the intercommunion of +every kind brought about by the course of centuries, hatred of the +English Government still subsists as a native passion in the mass of +the Irish nation. Ever since the hour of invasion this race of men +has invariably desired that which their conquerors did not desire, +detested that which they liked, and liked that which they detested +... This indomitable persistency, this faculty of preserving through +centuries of misery the remembrance of lost liberty, and of never +despairing of a cause always defeated, always fatal to those who dared +to defend it, is perhaps the strangest and noblest example ever given +by any nation." (_Histoire De La Conquete De L'Angleterre Par Les +Normands_, Paris edition, 1846. London, 1891.) + +The French writer here saw deeper and spoke truer than many who seek +to-day not to reveal the Irish heart, whose deep purpose they have +forgotten, but barter its life-blood for a concession that could be +won to-morrow by half that blood if shed at home, thus offered without +warrant "as a new weapon of offence to England's hands against the +freedom of the world elsewhere." + +The Irishman, who in the belief that Home Rule has come or that +any measure of Home Rule the London Parliament will offer can be a +substitute for his country's freedom, joins the British army or navy +is a voluntary traitor to his country. Almost everything that Ireland +produces, or consumes, must all go out or come solely through England +and on payment of a transit and shipping tax to English trade. + +The London press has lately waxed indignant over Servia denied by +Austria a port on the Adriatic, and we have been told a Servia +without a port is a Servia held in "economic slavery," and that her +independence is illusory unless she have free outlet to the sea. But +what of Ireland? With not one, but forty ports, the finest in all +Western Europe, they lie idle and empty. With over 1,000 miles of +seaboard, facing the West and holding the seaway between Europe and +America, Ireland, in the grip of England, has been reduced to an +economic slavery that has no parallel in civilization. + +And it is to this island, to this people that the appeal is now made +that we should distrust the Germans and aid our enslavers. Better far, +were that the only outcome, the fate of Alsace-Lorraine (who got their +Home Rule Parliament years ago) than the "friendship" of England. We +have survived the open hate, the prolonged enslavement, the secular +robbery of England and now the England smiles and offers us with one +hand Home Rule to take it away with the other, are we going to forget +the experience of our forefathers? A Connacht proverb of the Middle +Ages should come back to us--"Three things for a man to avoid; +the heels of a horse, the horns of a bull; and the smile of an +Englishman." + +That Ireland must be involved in any war that Great Britain undertakes +goes without saying; but that we should willingly throw ourselves into +the fray on the wrong side to avert a British defeat, is the counsel +of traitors offered to fools. + +We must see to it that what Thierry wrote of our fathers is not +shamefully belied by their sons. Our "indomitable persistency" +has up to this excelled and subdued the unvarying will applied to +one unvarying purpose of those who, by dint of that quality, have +elsewhere subjugated the universe. We who have preserved through +centuries of misery, the remembrance of lost liberty, are not +now going to merge our unconquered souls in the base body of our +oppressor. + +One of the few Liberal statesmen England has produced, certainly the +only Liberal politician she has ever produced, the late Mr. Gladstone, +compared the union between Great Britain and Ireland to "the union +between the mangled corpse of Hector and the headlong chariot of +Achilles." (1890.) + +But, while I cannot admit that England is an Achilles, save, perhaps, +that she may be wounded like him in the heel, I will not admit, I +will not own that Ireland, however mangled, however "the plowers have +ploughed upon her back and made long furrows," is in truth dead, is +indeed a corpse. No; there is a juster analogy, and one given us by +the only Englishman who was in every clime, and in every circumstance +a Liberal; one who died fighting in the cause of liberty, even as in +life he sang it. Byron denounced the union between England and Ireland +as "the union of the shark with its prey." + + + + +Chapter VIII + +IRELAND, GERMANY AND THE NEXT WAR + + +In the February, 1913, _Fortnightly Review_, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle at +the end of an article, "Great Britain and the Next War," thus appeals +to Ireland to recognize that her interests are one with those of Great +Britain in the eventual defeat of the latter: + +"I would venture to say one word here to my Irish fellow-countrymen +of all political persuasions. If they imagine that they can stand +politically or economically while Britain falls they are woefully +mistaken. The British fleet is their one shield. If it be broken +Ireland will go down. They may well throw themselves heartily into the +common defence, for no sword can transfix England without the point +reaching Ireland behind her...." + +I propose to briefly show that Ireland, far from sharing the +calamities that must necessarily fall on Great Britain from defeat +by a great power, might conceivably thereby emerge into a position of +much prosperity. + +I will agree with Sir A. Conan Doyle up to this--that the defeat of +Great Britain by Germany must be the cause of a momentous change to +Ireland: but I differ from him in believing that that change must +necessarily be disastrous to Ireland. On the contrary, I believe that +the defeat of Great Britain by Germany might conceivably (save in one +possible condition) result in great gain to Ireland. + +The conclusion that Ireland must suffer all the disasters and eventual +losses defeat would entail on Great Britain is based on what may be +termed the fundamental maxim that has governed British dealings with +Ireland throughout at least three centuries. That maxim may be given +in the phrase, "Separation is unthinkable." Englishmen have come to +invincibly believe that no matter what they may do or what may betide +them, Ireland must inseparably be theirs, linked to them as surely +as Wales or Scotland, and forming an eternal and integral part of a +whole whose fate is indissolubly in their hands. While Great Britain, +they admit, might well live apart (and happily) from an Ireland +safely "sunk under the sea" they have never conceived of an Ireland, +still afloat, that could possibly exist, apart from Great Britain. +Sometimes, as a sort of bogey, they hold out to Ireland the fate that +would be hers if, England defeated, somebody else should "take" her. +For it is a necessary corollary to the fundamental maxim already +stated, that Ireland, if not owned by England, must necessarily be +"owned" by someone else than her own inhabitants. + +The British view of the fate of Ireland in the event of British defeat +may be stated as twofold. Either Ireland would remain after the war as +she is to-day, tied to Great Britain, or she _might_ be (this is not +very seriously entertained) annexed by the victor. No other solution, +I think, has ever been suggested. Let us first discuss No. I. + +This, the ordinary man in the street view, is that as Ireland would +be as much a part and belonging to Great Britain after a war as before +it, whatever the termination of that war might be, she could not +fail to share the losses defeat must bring to a common realm. The +partnership being indissoluble, if the credit of the house were +damaged and its properties depreciated, all members of the firm must +suffer. In this view, an Ireland weaker, poorer, and less recuperative +than Great Britain, would stand to lose even more from a British +defeat than the predominant partner itself. Let us at once admit that +this view is correct. If on the condition of a great war Ireland were +still to remain, as she is to-day, an integral portion of a defeated +United Kingdom, it is plain she would suffer, and might be made to +suffer possibly more even than fell to the share of Great Britain. + +But that is not the only ending defeat might bring to the two islands. +We must proceed then to discuss No. 2, the alternative fate reserved +for Ireland in the unlikely event of a great British overthrow. This +is, that if the existing partnership were to be forcibly dissolved, by +external shock, it would mean for Ireland "out of the frying pan into +the fire." The idea here is that I have earlier designated as the +"bogey man" idea. Germany, or the other victor in the great conflict, +would proceed to "take" Ireland. An Ireland administered, say, +by Prussians would soon bitterly regret the milder manners of +the Anglo-Saxon and pine for the good old days of "doles" from +Westminster. I know many Irishmen who admit that as between England +and Germany they would prefer to remain in the hands of the former--on +the principle that it is better to keep the devil you know than fall +into the hands of a new devil. + +German rule, you are asked to believe, would be so bad, so stern, that +under it Ireland, however much she might have suffered from England in +the past, would soon yearn to be restored to the arms of her sorrowing +sister. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that Germany "annexed" +Ireland, is it at all clear that she would (or even could) injure +Ireland more than Great Britain has done? To what purpose and with +what end in view? "Innate brutality"--the Englishman replied--"the +Prussian always ill-treats those he lays hands on--witness the poor +Poles." Without entering into the Polish language question, or the +Polish agrarian question, it is permissible for an Irishman to reply +that nothing by Prussia in those respects has at all equalled English +handling of the Irish language or England land dealings in Ireland. +The Polish language still lives in Prussian Poland and much more +vigorously than the Irish language survives in Ireland. + +But it is not necessary to obscure the issue by reference to the +Prussian Polish problem. An Ireland annexed to the German Empire +(supposing this to be internationally possible) as one of the fruits +of a German victory over Great Britain would clearly be administered +as a common possession of the German people, and not as a Prussian +province. The analogy, if one can be set up in conditions so +dissimilar, would lie not between Prussia and her Polish provinces, +but between the German Empire and Alsace-Lorraine. What, then, +would be the paramount object of Germany in her administration of an +overseas Reichsland of such extraordinary geographical importance to +her future as Ireland would be? + +Clearly not to impoverish and depress that new-won possession but +to enhance its exceeding strategic importance by vigorous and wise +administration, so as to make it the main counterpoise to any possible +recovery of British maritime supremacy, so largely due as this was in +the past to Great Britain's own possession of this island. + +A prosperous and flourishing Ireland, recognizing that her own +interests lie with those of the new Administration, would assuredly be +the first and chief aim of German statesmanship. + +The very geographical situation of Ireland would alone ensure wise and +able administration by her new rulers had Germany no other and special +interest in advancing Irish well-being; for 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 centralization, would be a task beyond the capacity +of German statecraft. German effort, then, would be plainly directed +to creating an Ireland satisfied with the change, and fully determined +to maintain it. + +And it might be remembered that Germany is possibly better equipped, +intellectually and educationally, for the task of developing Ireland +than even 20th century England. She has already faced a remarkable +problem, and largely solved it in her forty years' administration of +Alsace-Lorraine. There is a province torn by force from the bleeding +side of France and alien in sentiment to her new masters to a degree +that Ireland could not be to any changes of authority imposed upon her +from without, has, within a short lifetime, doubled in prosperity and +greatly increased her population, despite the open arms and insistent +call of France, and despite a rule denounced from the first as +hateful. + +However hateful, the Prussian has proved himself an able administrator +and an honest and most capable instructor. In his strong hands +Strasburg has expanded from being an ill-kept, pent-in French garrison +town to a great and beautiful city. Already a local Parliament +gives to the population a sense of autonomy, while the palace and +constant presence of an Imperial prince affirms the fact that German +Imperialism, far from engrossing and centralizing all the activities +and powers of the empire in Berlin, recognizes that German nationality +is large enough and great enough to admit of many capitals, many +individualities, and many separate State growths within the sure +compass of one great organism. + +That an Ireland severed by force of arms from the British Empire and +annexed to the German Empire would be ill-governed by her new masters +is inconceivable. On the contrary, the ablest brains in Germany, +scientific, commercial, and financial, no less than military and +strategic, would be devoted to the great task of making sure the +conquest not only of an island but of the intelligence of a not +unintelligent people, and by wisely developing so priceless a +possession to reconcile its inhabitants through growing prosperity and +an excellent administration, to so great a change in their political +environment. Can it be said that England, even in her most lucid +intervals, has brought to the Government of Ireland her best efforts, +her most capable men, or her highest purpose? The answer may be given +by Li Hung Chang, whose diary we have so lately read. Recording his +interview with Mr. Gladstone, the Chinese statesman says: "He spoke +about ... Ireland; and I was certain that he hoped to see that unhappy +country governed better before he died. 'They have given their best +to England,' he said, 'and in return have been given only England's +worst.'" It is certain that Germany, once in possession of Ireland, +would assuredly not give to that country only Germany's worst. + +In a score of ways Ireland would stand to gain from the change of +direction, of purpose, of intention, and, I will add, of inspiration +and capacity in her newly-imposed rulers. + +Whether she liked them or not, at the outset, would be beside the +question. In this they would differ but little from those she had so +long and wearily had measure of, and if they brought to their new task +a new spirit and a new intellectual equipment Irishmen would not be +slow to realize that if they themselves were never to rule their own +country, they had, at least, found in their new masters something more +than emigration agents. + +Moreover, to Germany there would be no "Irish question," no "haggard +and haunting problem" to palsy her brain and miscredit her hand with +its old tags and jibes and sordid impulses to deny the obvious. + +To Germany there would be only an English question. To prevent that +from ever again imperilling her world future would be the first +purpose of German overseas statesmanship. And it is clear that a wise +and capable Irish Administration, designed to build up and strengthen +from within and not to belittle and exploit from without, would be the +sure and certain purpose of a victorious Germany. + +I have now outlined the two possible dispositions of Ireland that up +to this British opinion admits as conceivable in die improbable event +of a British defeat by Germany. Only these two contingencies are +ever admitted. First that Ireland, sharing the common disaster, must +endure with her defeated partner all the evils that a great overthrow +must inflict upon the United Kingdom. Second, that Ireland, if Great +Britain should be completely defeated, might conceivably be "taken" or +annexed by the victor and held as a conquered territory, and in this +guise would bitterly regret the days of her union with Great Britain. +I have sought to show, in answer to the latter argument, that 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 contingency I have nowhere seen discussed or +hinted at, and yet it is at least as likely as No. 1, and far more +probable than No. 2--for I do not think that the annexation of Ireland +by a European power is internationally possible, however decisive +might be the overthrow of England. It is admitted (and it is upon this +hypothesis that the discussion is proceeding) that Great Britain might +be defeated by Germany, and that the British fleet might be broken and +an enemy's sword might transfix England. Such an overthrow would be +of enormous import to Europe and to the whole world. The trident would +have changed hands, for the defeat of England could only be brought +about by the destruction of her sea supremacy. Unless help came +from without, a blockaded Britain would be more at the mercy of the +victor than France was after Sedan and Paris. It would lie 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 least likely conditions to provoke external intervention or a +combination of alarmed world interests. Now, putting aside lesser +consideration, the chief end Germany would have in a war with England +would be to ensure her own free future on the seas. For with that +assured and guaranteed by a victory over England, all else that she +seeks must in the end be hers. To annex resisting British colonies +would be in itself an impossible task--physically a much more +impossible task than to annex Ireland. + +To annex Ireland would be, as a military measure, once command of the +seas was gained, a comparatively easy task. No practical resistance +to one German army corps even could be offered by any force Ireland +contains, or could of herself, put into the field. No arsenal or means +of manufacturing arms exists. The population has been disarmed for a +century, and by bitter experience has been driven to regard the use +of arms as a criminal offence. Patriotism has been treated as felony. +Volunteers and Territorials are not for Ireland. To expect that a +disarmed and demoralized population who have been sedulously batoned +into a state of physical and moral dejection, should develop military +virtues in face of a disciplined army is to attribute to Irishmen +the very qualities their critics unite in denying them. "The +Irishman fights well everywhere except in Ireland," has passed into a +commonplace: and since every effort of government has been directed +to ensuring the abiding application of the sneer, Englishmen would +find, in the end, the emasculating success of their rule completely +justified in the physical submission of Ireland to the new force that +held her down. With Great Britain cut off and the Irish Sea held by +German squadrons, no power from within could maintain any effective +resistance to a German occupation of Dublin and a military +administration of the island. To convert that into permanent +administration could not be opposed from within, and with Great +Britain down and severed from Ireland by a victorious German navy, it +is obvious that opposition to the permanent retention of Ireland by +the victor must come from without, and it is for this international +reason that I think a German annexation of any part of a defeated +United Kingdom need not be seriously considered. Such a complete +change in the geography of Europe as a German-owned Ireland could not +but provoke universal alarm and a widespread combination to forbid its +realization. The bogey that Ireland, if not John Bull's other island, +must necessarily be somebody else's other island will not really bear +inspection at close quarters. + +Germany would have to attain her end, the permanent disabling of the +maritime supremacy of Great Britain, by another and less provocative +measure. It is here and in just these circumstances that the third +contingency, and one no Englishman I venture to think, has ever +dreamed of, would be born on the field of battle and baptized a +Germanic 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 be permanently and +irrevocably severed from Great Britain, and with common assent erected +into a neutralized, 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 of Ireland an +Atlantic Holland, a maritime Belgium, would be an act of restoration +to Europe of this the most naturally favoured of European islands that +a Peace Congress should, in the end, be glad to ratify at the instance +of a victorious Germany. That Germany should propose this form of +dissolution of the United Kingdom in any interests but her own, or +for the _beaux yeux_ of Ireland I do not for a moment assert. Her main +object would be the opening of the seas and their permanent freeing +from that overwhelming control Great Britain has exercised since +the destruction of the French navy, largely based, as all naval +strategists must perceive on the unchallenged possession of Ireland. + +That Ireland is primarily a European island inhabited by a European +people who are not English, and who have for centuries appealed +to Europe and the world to aid them in ceasing to be politically +controlled by England, is historic fact. And since the translation of +this historic fact into practice European politics would undoubtedly +effect the main object of the victorious power, it is evident that, +Great Britain once defeated, Germany would carry the Irish question to +a 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. +The United States, however distasteful from one point of view the +defeat of England might be, could do nothing to oppose a European +decision that could dearly win an instant support from influential +circles--Irish and German--within her own borders. + +In any case the Monroe Doctrine cuts both ways, and unless at the +outset the United States could be drawn into an Anglo-Teutonic +conflict, it is clear that the decision of a European Congress to +create a new European State out of a very old European people could +not furnish ground for American interference. + +I need not further labour the question. If Englishmen will but awaken +from the dream that Ireland "belongs" to them and not to the Irish +people, and that that great and fertile island, inhabited by a brave, +a chivalrous and an intellectual race (qualities they have alas! done +their utmost to expel from the island) is a piece of real estate they +own and can dispose of as they will, they cannot fail to perceive that +the Irish question cannot much longer be mishandled with impunity, +and that far from being, as they now think it, merely a party +question--and not even a "domestic question" or one the colonies have +a voice in--it may in a brief epoch become a European question. + +With the approaching disappearance of the Near Eastern question (which +England is hastening to the detriment of Turkey) a more and more +pent-in Central Europe may discover that 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. + +Again it is Mr. Gladstone who comes to remind Englishmen that Ireland, +after all, is a European island, and that Europe has some distant +standing in the issue. + +"I would beseech Englishmen to consider how they would behave to +Ireland, if instead of having 5,000,000 of people, she had 25,000,000; +or if instead of being placed between us and the ocean she were placed +between us and the Continent." (Notes and queries on the Irish Demand, +February, 1887.) While the geographical positions of the islands +to each other and to Europe have not changed, and cannot change, +the political relation of one to the other, and so the political +and economical relation of both to Europe, to the world and to the +carrying trade of the world and the naval policies of the powers may +be gravely altered by agencies beyond the control of Great Britain. + +The changes wrought in the speed and capacity of steam shipping, the +growth and visible trend of German naval power, and the increasing +possibilities of aerial navigation, all unite to emphasize the +historian Niebuhr's warning, and to indicate for Ireland a possible +future of restored communion with Europe, and less and less the +continued wrong of that artificial exclusion in which British policy +has sought to maintain her--"an island beyond an island." + + + + +Chapter IX + +THE ELSEWHERE EMPIRE + + +Every man born in Ireland holds a "hereditary brief" for the opponents +of English sway, wherever they may be. The tribunal of history in his +own land is closed to him; he must appeal to another court; he must +seek the ear of those who make history elsewhere. The Irishman is +denied the right of having a history, as he is denied the right of +having a country. He must recover both. For him there is no past any +more than a future. And if he seeks the record of his race in the only +schools or books open to him he will find that hope has been shut out +of the school and fame taken out of the story. + +The late John Richard Green, one of the greatest of English +historians, was attracted to Ireland by a noble sympathy for the +fallen which he shared with very few of his fellow-countrymen. We +are told that he sympathized with the spirit of Irish nationality. "A +State," he would say, "is accidental; it can be made or unmade; but a +nation is something real which can be neither made nor destroyed." + +He had once planned a history of Ireland, "but abandoned the idea +because the continuous record of misery and misgovernment was too +painful to contemplate." All pleasure lies in contrast. The history of +Ireland offers no contrast; it is a tale of unmitigated wrong. + +It is too full of graves and the ghosts are not laid yet. As well +write the history of a churchyard. Forty years before John Richard +Green thus explained why he had abandoned the plan of the graveyard, +Victor Hugo lashed the front of England with this very thong. "Ireland +turned into a cemetery; Poland transported to Siberia; all Italy a +galleys--there is where we stand in this month of November, 1831!" + +The history of Ireland remains to be written, because the purpose of +Ireland remains yet to be achieved. The widow of John Richard Green +has laid the foundations of that temple of hope in which the youth +of Ireland must enter and be sworn to the task that yet remains for +Irishmen to accomplish. + +And so in closing the days of 1913 I bring, with a message of hope, +these scattered thoughts upon the British Empire and its approaching +dissolution to lay before the youth of Ireland. I say approaching +dissolution advisedly, for the signs are there to be read. "Home Rule" +will not save it. The attempt now being made to bribe Ireland and the +greater Ireland beyond the seas, to the side of the Elsewhere Empire +by what has been aptly termed a "ticket-of-leave" bill, will not +suffice. The issue lies in stronger hands. Even could the two Irelands +be won by the dole now offered, of a subordinate Parliament in Dublin, +its hands tied so that it must be impotent for any national effort, +"a Parliament" as Mr. Herbert Samuel says, "for the local affairs of +Irishmen," there are other and more powerful agencies that no measure +of conciliation within the Empire can permanently win to that system +of world exploitation centred in London. + +"I would let the Irish have Home Rule," said recently Mr. Winston +Churchill, "for their own idiotic affairs." But the last word came +from Lord Morley, the "father of Home Rule." "Give it them," he said, +in friendly, private counsel, "give it them; let them have the full +savour of their own dunghill civilization." + +But the last word of all will come, not from Lord Morley, or "Home +Rule," but from the land and the myriad peoples whose ancient +civilization, Lord Morley, like every preceding Viceroy, has striven +to bury under the dunghill of British supremacy in India, and to +hide the very outlines of the ancient body of the set designs of a +new purpose. The capital of British India is to be the "new Delhi," +planned in Whitehall, but paid for in India--the apotheosis of dung. +The new India will make short work of "the new Delhi." + +"An unplumbed, salt, estranging sea" of moral and spiritual separation +sets between the imperial conception as nourished in Britain and the +growing hope of the great millions of mankind who make up the greatest +realm of her empire. + +Ireland _might_ be bought or bribed, at any rate in this generation, +to forfeit her national ideals and barter the aspiration that six +centuries of contact with England have failed to kill; but the +350,000,000 of Indian mankind can never be, or bought, or bribed in +the end. + +Even if Ireland forgot the deathless words of Grattan, delivered in +the subordinate Parliament of 1780, those words will find a response +in the hearts of men who never heard of Grattan. For the voice of +the Irish patriot was, in truth, a world voice--a summons to every +audience wherever men gather in quest of freedom. The prophesy Grattan +uttered in the name of Ireland assuredly will be fulfilled, and that +in the life time of many of us, in that greater Ireland England +holds in the eastern seas by the very same tide of raid, conquest and +spoliation that has given her our own land. + +Substitute India for Ireland and the Grattan of 1780 becomes the +Indian patriot of to-day. + +"I will never be satisfied so long as the meanest cottager in Ireland +has a link of the British chain clanking in his rags; he may be naked, +he shall not be in irons; and I do see the time is at hand; the spirit +has gone forth, the declaration is planted; and though great men +should apostasize, yet the cause will live; and though the public +speaker should die, yet the immortal fire shall outlast the organ +which conveyed it, and the breath of liberty, like the word of holy +men, will not die with the prophet, but survive him." + +Were Ireland to accept the bribe now offered she would indeed justify +the reproach of Wilfred Blunt; but she would become some thing else +than a "weapon of offence in England's hands against the freedom of +the world elsewhere;" she would share, and rightly share the fate of +the parasite growth that, having gripped her trunk so tightly, has +by that aid reached the sunlight. The British Empire is no northern +oak tree. It is a creeping, climbing plant that has fastened on the +limbs of others and grown great from a sap not its own. If we seek an +analogy for it in the vegetable and not in the animal world we must +go to the forests of the tropics and not to the northland woodlands. +In the great swamps at the mouth of the Amazon the naturalist Bates +describes a monstrous liana, the "Sipo Matador" or Murdering Creeper, +that far more fitly than the oak tree of the north typifies John Bull +and the place he has won in the sunlight by the once strong limbs of +Ireland. + +Speaking of the forests round Para, Bates says:--"In these tropical +forests each plant and tree seems to be striving to outvie its +fellows, struggling upwards towards light and air--branch and leaf +and stem--regardless of its neighbours. Parasitic plants are seen +fastening with firm grip on others, making use of them with reckless +indifference as instruments for their own advancement. Live and let +live is clearly not the maxim taught in these wildernesses. There is +one kind of parasitic tree very common near Para which exhibits this +feature in a very prominent manner. It is called the "Sipo Matador," +or Murderer Liana. It belongs to the fig order, and has been described +and figured by Von Martius as the Atlas to Spix and Martius' Travels. +I observed many specimens. _The base of its stem would be unable +to bear the weight of the upper growth_; it is obliged therefore +to support itself on a tree of _another species_. In this it is not +essentially different from other climbing trees and plants, but the +way the Matador sets about it is peculiar and produces certainly a +disagreeable impression. It springs up close to the tree on which it +intends to fix itself, and the wood of its stem grows by spreading +itself like a plastic mould over one side of the trunk of its +supporter. It then puts forth, from each side, an armlike branch, +which grows rapidly, and looks as though a stream of sap were flowing +and hardening as it went. This adheres closely to the trunk of the +victim, and the two arms meet at the opposite side and blend together. +These arms are put forth at somewhat regular intervals in mounting +upwards, and the victim, when its strangler is full grown, becomes +tightly clasped by a number of inflexible rings. These rings gradually +grow larger as the Murderer flourishes, rearing its crown of foliage +to the sky mingled with that of its neighbour, and in course of time +they kill it, by stopping the flow of its sap. The strange spectacle +now remains of the selfish parasite clasping in its arms the lifeless +and decaying body of its victim, which had been a help to its own +growth. Its ends have been served--it has flowered and fruited, +reproduced and disseminated its kind; and _now when the dead trunk +moulders away its own end approaches; its support is gone and itself +also falls_." + +The analogy is almost the most perfect in literature, and if we would +not see it made perfect in history we must get rid of the parasite +grip before we are quite strangled. If we would not share the coming +darkness we must shake off the murderer's hold, before murderer and +victim fall together. That fall is close at hand. A brave hand may yet +cut the "Sipo Matador," and the slayer be slain before he has quite +stifled his victim. + +If that hand be not a European one, then may it come, bronzed, keen, +and supple from the tropic calm! The birds of the forest are on the +wing. + +Regions Caesar never knew, including Hibernia, have come under the +eagles, nay the vultures, of imperial Britain. But the lion's maw is +full. + +At length the overgorged beast of prey, with all the diseases in his +veins that over-eating brings, finds that his claws are not so sharp +as they were, that his belly is much heavier when he tries to leap and +that it is now chiefly by his voice he still scares his enemies. + +The Empire of England dates from Tudor times. Henry VIII was the first +John Bull. When the conquered Irish and the wealth derived from their +rich country England set out to lay low every free people that had +a country worth invading and who, by reasons of their non-imperial +instinct were not prepared to meet her on equal terms. India she +overran by the same methods as had given her Ireland. + +Wholesale plunder, treachery and deceit met at her council board +under a succession of Governors and Viceroys, whose policy was that of +Captain Kidd, and whose ante-room of state led every native prince to +the slippery plank. The thing became the most colossal success upon +earth. No people were found able to withstand such a combination. How +could peoples still nursed in the belief of some diviner will ruling +men's minds resist such an attack? + +For one brief space Napoleon reared his head; and had he cast his +vision to. Ireland instead of to Egypt he would have found out the +secret of the pirate's stronghold. But the fates willed otherwise; the +time was not yet. He sailed for Alexandria, lured by a dream, instead +of for Cork; and the older Imperialists beat the new Imperialists and +secured a fresh century of unprecedented triumph. The Pyramids looked +down on Waterloo; but the headlands of Bantry Bay concealed the +mastery, and the mystery, of the seas. + +With 1811 was born the era of Charles Peace, no less than of John +Bull--on Sundays and Saint's days a churchwarden, who carried the +plate; on week days a burglar who lifted it. Truly, as John Mitchel +said on his convict hulk: "On English felony the sun never sets." May +it set in 1915. + +From Napoleon's downfall to the battle of Colenso, the Empire founded +by Henry VIII has swelled to monstrous size. Innumerable free peoples +have bit the dust and died with plaintive cries to heaven. The wealth +of London has increased a thousand fold, and the giant hotels and +caravanserais have grown, at the millionaire's touch, to rival the +palaces of the Caesars. + +"All's well with God's world"--and poet and plagiarist, courtier +and courtesan, Kipling and cant--these now dally by the banks of +the Thames and dine off the peoples of the earth, just as once the +degenerate populace of imperial Rome fed upon the peoples of the +Pyramids. But the thing is near the end. The "secret of Empire" is no +longer the sole possession of England. Other peoples are learning to +think imperially. The Goths and the Visigoths of modern civilisation +are upon the horizon. Action must soon follow thought. London, like +Rome, will have strange guests. They will not pay their hotel bills. +Their day is not yet but it is at hand. "Home Rule" assemblies and +Indian "Legislative Councils" may prolong the darkness; but the dawn +is in die sky. And in the downfall of the Tudor Empire, both Ireland +and India shall escape from the destruction and join again the free +civilizations of the earth. + +The birds of the forest are on the wing. + +It is an Empire in these straights that turns to America, through +Ireland, to save it. And the price it offers is--war with Germany. +France may serve for a time, but France like Germany, is in Europe, +and in the end it is all Europe and not only Germany England assails. +Permanent confinement of the white races, as distinct from the +Anglo-Saxon variety, can only be achieved by the active support +and close alliance of the American people. These people are to-day, +unhappily republicans and free men, and have no ill-will for Germany +and a positive distaste for imperialism. It is not really in their +blood. That blood is mainly Irish and German, the blood of men not +distinguished in the past for successful piracy and addicted rather to +the ways of peace. The wars that Germany has waged have been wars of +defence, or wars to accomplish the unity of her people. Irish wars +have been only against one enemy, and ending always in material +disaster they have conferred always a moral gain. Their memory uplifts +the Irish heart; for no nation, no people, can reproach Ireland with +having wronged them. She has injured no man. + +And now, to-day, it is the great free race of this common origin +of peace-loving peoples, filling another continent, that is being +appealed to by every agency of crafty diplomacy, in every garb but +that of truth, to aid the enemy of both and the arch-disturber of +the old world. The jailer of Ireland seeks Irish-American support +to keep Ireland in prison; the intriguer against Germany would win +German-American good-will against its parent stock. There can be no +peace for mankind, no limit to the intrigues set on foot to assure +Great Britain "the mastery of the seas." + +If "America" will but see things aright, as a good "Anglo-Saxon" +people should, she will take her place beside, nay, even a little in +front of John Bull in the plunder of the earth. Were the "Anglo-Saxon +Alliance" ever consummated it would be the biggest crime in human +history. That alliance is meant by the chief party seeking it to be +a perpetual threat to the peoples of Europe, nay, to the whole of +mankind outside the allied ranks. And instead of bringing peace it +must assuredly bring the most distracting and disastrous conflict that +has ever stained the world with blood. + +John Bull has now become the great variety artist, one in truth whose +infinite variety detention cannot stale any more than Customs officers +can arrest the artist's baggage. + +At one moment the "Shirt King," being prosecuted for the sale of cheap +cottons as "Irish Linen" in London; the next he lands the "Bloater +King" in New York, offering small fish as something very like a whale. +And the offer in both cases is made in the tongue of Shakespeare. + +The tongue has infinite uses; from China it sounds the "call for +prayer," and lo, the Book of Dividends opens at the right text. Were +Bull ever caught in the act, and put from the trade of international +opium-dosing to that of picking oakum and the treadmill we should hear +him exclaim, as he went out of sight, "Behold me weaving the threads +of democratic destiny as I climb the golden stair." + +The roles are endless! In Ireland, the conversion of Irishmen into +cattle; in England, the conversion of Irish cattle into men; in +India and Egypt the suppression of the native press; in America the +subsidising of the non-native press; the tongue of Shakespeare has +infinite uses. He only poached deer--it would poach dreadnoughts. The +emanations of Thames sewage are all over the world, and the sewers are +running still. The penalty for the pollution of the Thames is a high +one; but the prize for the pollution of the Mississippi is still +higher; the fountains of the deep, the mastery of the great waters, +these are the things John Bull seeks on the shore of the "Father of +Waters." + +The sunset of the fading Empire would turn those waters into blood. +The British Empire was not founded in peace; how, then can it be kept +by peace, or ensured by peace-treaties? It was born of pillage and +blood-shed, and has been maintained by both; and it cannot now be +secured by a common language any more than a common Bible. The lands +called the British Empire belong to many races, and it is only by the +sword and not by the Book of Peace or any pact of peace that those +races can be kept from the ownership of their own countries. + +The "Anglo-Saxon Alliance" means a compact to ensure slavery and +beget war. The people who fought the greatest war in modern history to +release slaves are not likely to begin the greatest war in all history +to beget slaves. + +Let the truth be known in America that England wants to turn the great +Republic of free men into die imperial ally of the great Empire of +bought men, and that day die "Anglo-Saxon Alliance" gives place to the +Declaration of Independence. + +The true alliance to aim at for all who love peace is the friendly +Union of Germany, America and Ireland. These are the true United +States of the world. + +Ireland, the link between Europe and America, must be freed by both. + +Denied to-day free intercourse with either, she yet forms in the great +designs of Providence the natural bond to bring the old world and the +new together. + +May 1915 lay the foundation of this--the true Hundred Years of Peace! + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Crime Against Europe, by Roger Casement + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRIME AGAINST EUROPE *** + +***** This file should be named 14728.txt or 14728.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/4/7/2/14728/ + +Produced by David Starner, William Flis, and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team. + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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