The Sacred Egoism of Sinn Féin

The absurdity of appeals to reason, addressed to nations unbalanced by fear and desire, has never been more apparent than to-day. With the tissue of patriotic idealism worn threadbare, exposing ugly national greeds, self-complacent incompetence, and shameless commercialism, it would seem incredible that even the mob mind should not revolt. Yet, it is just at this supreme moment of disillusion, when the showing up of all belligerents is complete, that voices are heard clamouring for more soldiers to fight for Liberty, and the more incurable professors of Democracy – that blessed word – actually suggest that the true significance of the war should be explained to an ignorant Ireland. Once our darkness was lightened by the lords of propaganda we would take our places, not in the rear as become late-comers, but in the forefront of the great crusade, which is to restore to France her frontier of 1814, to allocate the Balkan States to various masters, to partition Turkey, and rearrange the economic and geographical map, to the greater glory of the Allied God. To say the least, the moment is not quite propitious to the cultivation of the necessary faith in people living, politically, in partibus infidelium. It is no wonder that the Irish nation, without introspection of motive, has united in opposition to the application of a law which could never have established itself, if it had been born into a world as sceptical as that of to-day. Illusion or panic must urge the duty of compulsory military service.

The ruthless Sinn Féin policy of the English in Ireland called forth an equivalent Irish retort. Sinn Féin with its programme of national economics, has its roots in the history of the commercial relations between the two countries. From 1663, when the Cattle and Navigation Acts laid the first avowed restrictions on Irish industry and commerce, down to the present, the destruction of the economic, in addition to the national, freedom of Ireland, has been the deliberate policy of Britain. The programme of industrial revival, the plea for industrial autonomy, which was the point of departure for Sinn Féin many years ago, what is it, after all, but the crystallization of ideas common to three centuries of Irish economic literature? From the beginning of the seventeenth century a vast library of protest against English commercial jealousy has grown up, and is still growing. Obscure pamphleteers and writers of the highest fame stand side by side in this indictment of a country which dares now to assert that its crimes have not been deliberate. Swift’s Proposal for the Universal Use of Irish Manufactures, his Short View of the State of Ireland, his Modest Proposal; the Querist of Bishop Berkeley; Hely Hutchinson’s Commercial Restraints of Ireland; – these are only some of the most prominent documents in the history of the economic revolt, subsequently known as the Sinn Féin movement. A sharp corrective of the lazy ignorance of the fiction which describes the Irish case against England as one of retrospective sentimentality is provided by the economic writings of Irishmen for the past three hundred years.

Sinn Féin succeeds Sinn Féin; one egoism has aroused another, and England now faces in Ireland the projection of her own spirit. Just as British policy has served only England’s interests, so Ireland has learnt to think first of herself, having never seen her enemy give one thought even to fair play, as between country and country. Whatever claims the British Empire may have upon the gratitude or self-interest of other peoples, it has none on Ireland, which has not yet been allowed, as the phrase goes, to be just before she is generous. The sacred egoism of nations, so commendable when urging them to fight for their national existence – and even aggrandisement – against the Hun, is unfavourably regarded in all other circumstances. Neither Russia nor Greece has been pardoned a natural impulse towards self-preservation. Only great Powers are allowed to think of their own welfare; small nations are denied the luxury, except on specified conditions. Yet, in spite of brute force, and perhaps because of it, the smaller nationalities persist in a tenacious selfishness, without which they must abandon the struggle for life. Editors of military age, who are too proud of their verbiage to fight, may lament the shame of a people incapable of the noble altruism which fights for the Sacred Treaties. Even if a miracle of democracy in the Allied ranks had not come to give us those shreds of the truth behind the war, Ireland would still remain unconscious of her shameless soullessness. Strong in the sacred egoism of Sinn Féin, the Irish nation is convinced that only in his own country can an Irishman usefully engage in the struggle for freedom. Flanders, Gallipoli, and Mesopotamia are not milestones on the road which leads to the liberation of at least one forgotten small nationality.

If the anti-conscription movement had not asserted itself pious Liberal phrase-makers would never have believed – British fashion – that any community could actually stand by principles whose statement in England has invariably been a preliminary to their ignominious abandonment. Once again our political realism impinged unpleasantly upon the Anglo-Saxon consciousness, confronting the impotent mourners of theories they were too feeble to defend with the spectacle of a people aroused to fight against the supreme sacrifice demanded by the State of its citizens. The sacred egoism of the individual and of the nation was challenged, and a sacred union was the result, in which Ireland asserted, with uncompromising unanimity, her separate national identity. Characteristically, the professional Protestants kept aloof from this manifestation of liberty, to the bewilderment and shame of certain continental observers, proud of their Calvinistic origins, and surprised to find that, in Ireland, Protestantism is, by definition, antagonistic to the libertarian impulses with which it is associated on the continent of Europe. An aftermath of tragi-comedy followed the religious tension of the anti-conscription demonstrations, when a number of Protestant Irishwomen were contemptuously excluded from the church in which they had intended to associate their prayers with those of their Catholic countrywomen. They discovered that the Church of “Ireland” denied them the elementary right of every Protestant to direct communication with God. The Dean who interposed between heaven and the prayers of the faithful was not, strange to say, invited to enter the communion which teaches the necessity for priestly intercession between man and his Maker. On the contrary, some of the victims of his ecclesiastical and political insolence were more concerned to absolve him from the blame of such an insult than to assert the principle for which Irish Protestants were alleged to be fighting. Such is the dilemma, and such is the quality, of the religion implanted by England in this country, and fostered, like the weakling that it is, in all the peevish selfishness of the spoilt child, eternally exerting the petty tyrannies it imputes to others.

The reaction of Anglo-Saxondom to this Irish experiment in the teaching of the Allies has been somewhat similar to that described in the case of Russia, on the analogous occasion of the revolutionary realization of theories reserved for the academic leisure of the English upper classes. Mr. Lloyd George, that distinguished Liberal, was most insistent upon the “moral right” to impose military service upon subject races, his contention was echoed by all “responsible” statesmen, and the lofty example of Austria was cited as a model. This was a daring instance of associating with enemy ideas, only permissible to the chemically pure in heart.

If only the Hun had served the Bible as he served Bernhardi, the Lord would not have deserted him in his hour of need. In Ireland, however, the devil of imperialism quoted the Scriptures to no purpose, for this is an island, not only of Saints and Scholars, but also of theologians and politicians, who proved equal to this ingenious conflict of moralities. This alliance was particularly obnoxious to those who had engineered the politico-religious Carsonade of North-East Ulster. Just as the Allied governments have standardized the business of rescuing small nationalities, so the dominant British statesmen have the exclusive right to combine religion and politics. A Covenant of “loyalists,” in full Protestant regalia, organizing treason to the King and Parliament recognized by them, is but an incident on the path to political preferment and the honours of public life. A national pledge to resist the greatest infamy one nation can inflict upon another becomes a Papist plot. An Irish bishop is a sinister intruder only when he does not wear the shovel-hat and apron of the Episcopalian minority.

In the greater Anglo-Saxondom across the seas, particularly in the Wilsonian Republic, the spectacle of Irish freedom was most offensive. An American critic once summed up the different characteristics of North and South in the Civil War by saying: “The Southerner was an imitation of an English gentleman, the Northerner was an imitation of an English cad.” In other words, society in the South was a shadowy reflection of the British landed aristocracy, in the North, it followed the example of the capitalist class. In terms of present day America this definition must be modified to meet the change effected by the triumph of the North, and the general disappearance of the old South. An American to-day is an English Liberal … only more so. He combines the anti-social commercialism of the industrial early nineteenth century with the empty, verbal radicalism of the Cocoa Press tear-squeezers. Needless to say he has shown, on the whole, a more ferocious intolerance of minorities and individuals than any other belligerent in the present war. His hatred is more bestial; his patriotic zeal more inquisitorial. The slowly mounting tide of perverted Puritan legislation has broken over America, swollen by the tributaries of war lust, until the country is a vast wilderness of freak prohibitions aimed at the destruction of freedom. In these circumstances it is not surprising to find American journals occasionally protesting against the excessive zeal of the Administration in suppressing opinions and harassing individuals, because of pro-Irish sympathies which have been granted expression even in England. The New York Nation, a respectable and orthodox journal, written by and for intellectually anæmic college professors, sighs in vain for such toleration in Irish affairs as that of the Manchester Guardian. A striking tribute to the decadent anglicization of the Benighted States!

At no time remarkable for the suppression of the national ego, America has now abandoned all pretence of respecting the egoism of other nations which have dared to display the instinct of self-preservation, in opposition to the ukases of absolutists of international virtue. Thus, we find the great minds of the Anglo-Saxon world with but a single thought, although forward-lookers in England still comfort their depressed followers with gallant attempts to extract hope from the rhetorical felicities of President Wilson, whose verbal harmonies are contrasted with the discordant defiance of ministerial utterances at home. Just as in America, progressive Radicals compare the autocracy of Washington with the democracy of London, and complain that Americans are deprived of the blessings of liberty and efficiency which the English enjoy. The great advantage of a numerous Alliance may be appreciated by all who observe the reciprocal illusions of the Allied peoples, of whom each believes that all is well with the others. An idea, or a reputation, exploded in London, will linger peacefully in more distant regions, until the circuit of disillusionment has been completed. By that time it may start afresh in some new guise, on the principle that you can pass as a statesman of genius with all the Allies some of the time, if not with some of them all the time, as certain idols of the market place would seem to indicate.

When the collapsible German “plot” was landed in Ireland, and a number of arrests was made in the better-organized ranks of the anti-conscriptionists, it was doubtless the intention to prove Irish Nationalism synonymous with pro-Germanism, but the result has been to make it so, rather than to prove that it was so. This unexpected achievement has been pointed out – the Censor permitting – in various journals, and there has been a consequent recrudescence of activity to persuade Ireland that she is isolating herself from the world by turning towards Germany. With a tranquility in accepting the possibility as strange as the disinclination to remove its motives, Englishmen have set themselves to argue against the desirability of an Irish-German alliance. That being a highly conjectural and theoretical matter, it at once appeals to the Liberal British mind as a more suitable theme for discussion than the actual question at issue between England and Ireland. The Celt, whose preference for the dream over the reality is proverbial in non-Celtic circles, has been superseded by the theorists of freedom, who would much sooner argue academic points than face real political problems. They enjoy the task of setting forth the dire consequences of a Central European combination, with Ireland annexed, and contrasting this with the federation of free peoples, in which everyone is happy.

Unfortunately, the future does not present itself to the Irish mind in any such simplified terms, and some Irishmen, too, offer the will for the deed of participation, but their reception is the most unfavourable. They are accused of supporting a war in which they refuse to fight. There is to be no reciprocity in this exchange. The pro-Ally Irishman is to give his life at once, but no instalment is forthcoming of the common ideal he has been invited to achieve. The democratic millenium to which the Milners, Curzons, and Carsons are leading, under the special patronage of Lord Northcliffe, is apparently so certain, that only the rudeness of parochial and provincial minds could prompt a demand for the commonplace realizations of here and now. So it comes, as the war progresses, that the number of Ireland’s grievances is increased simultaneously with the demands upon her honour, her credulity and her patience. Consequently, as is the way of human nature, her egoism is exasperated, and becomes more firmly concentrated upon her own welfare. Precisely at that moment of exasperation an appeal is made for the voluntary surrender of that which was witheld even under threat of force. Since it is only the tactless Hun who is lacking in psychological subtlety, this strange phenomenon must be otherwise explicable.

The truth is that our sacred egoism, strong and exacerbated as it is, has not yet touched the sublime heights of British selfishness and self-complacency. England refuses absolutely to be convinced, by the painful and reiterated facts of our history, that this country is not merely a turbulent province! Therefore, it ought to be possible to break our resistance, or to cajole us, as was done in England when the various Military Service Acts were passed. The men of the country were split up into antagonistic groups; the married against the single, the middle-aged against the young, trade against trade. Each wanted to escape at the cost of the other. In Ireland, of course, no such division can be created, for the simple reason that we have never refused to fight for our own country. Our detestation of pacifists equals even that of the English gutter-press, and our incredible indifference to personal, as distinct from national, convictions makes Ireland a paradise for militarists. But they must be militarists of our own creation. Sinn Féin fosters the development of native industries, and supports home products, often with an embarrassing disregard for the consequences. The Irish anti-militarist is, therefore, rarely a pacifist, and his objections are of a very different order from those which are surmounted or crushed by the advocates of military service in Great Britain. But it does not seem as if this elementary fact will be recognized, for to recognize it would be for England to admit that Ireland is a nation. To the denial and obscuration of that enduring truth centuries of English policy have gone, and in Ireland everything has been sacrificed to its assertion and reiteration. It lies at the back of the whole Anglo-Irish controversy, and sums up the essence of innumerable volumes which have attempted to state the case for Irish freedom. Until the fact of Irish Nationality is accepted by England, and acted upon, it will be the task of Sinn Féin to proclaim the sacred egoism of a nation that will not die.