a system of protection for Irish industries. The public could be organised for the support of native industry, and capital could be encouraged by the offer of rate-free sites, etc. Arbitration Courts could be set up everywhere, superseding the British courts in civil matters. National insurance could be undertaken. National banks could divert from foreign fields the Irish money which could so much more profitably be invested in buying up Irish land, financing Irish developments and extending Irish control of home resources. A national mercantile marine could be co-operatively bought and set to carrying Irish produce to those Continental markets which offered so much better prices than the English markets to which English ships carried Irish cattle and manufactured goods. Irish commercial agents-consuls-could be sent to the great foreign trade centres.*

It was this policy of boycotting foreign institutions, and of "non-co-operation" with the usurping power, which, under Deak's leadership, won Hungary the status of an independent nation in the struggle with Austria that culminated in 1867. Griffith's personality is in ways reminiscent of Deak's. In Hungarian history you will read that Deak was above all other things, inflexible. He was not an "extremist," but he was trusted by those who went farther than he did because they knew that he would never be betrayed into standing for a party instead of for a nation. He would do nothing to help Austria govern Hungary. He preached the pure doctrine of nationality. The blandishments of the Emperor, paper promises of a constitution, the actual setting-up of a subordinate Home-Rule parliament; all failed to extort one sign of recognition from this iron leader. When even all his demands were promised him if he would promise in return Hungarian military aid, he refused to be moved. Freedom was a right, not a thing to be bargained for. Only when the free Hungarian constitution was brought into being did he extend the hand of friendship.

That has been Arthur Griffith's attitude, and the fact that his policy has made such remarkable progress is due to his iron refusal

This policy was not wholly a novel one. Daniel O'Connell once contemplated summoning a Council of Three Hundred, withdrawing representation at Westminster, and proceeding to legislate for the country. The idea had been enthusiastically taken up by the Young Irelanders, but when O'Connell found he had a militant and united nation behind him, he abandoned the scheme. That it had frightened the British supremacy is clear from Lord John Russell's dictum: "In six months the power and function of government will be wrested from our hands, and the Lord Lieutenant will sit powerless in Dublin Castle." The Arbitration Courts which had been prepared with a view to superseding the English courts, were surrendered as well as the Council, and Ireland heard no more of the proposal until it was brought to mind by Griffith.

to compromise on any point, or to parley, until liberty is brought into being. A pen-portrait thus describes him: . . "A small man, very sturdily built, nothing remarkable about his appearance except his eyes, which are impenetrable and steely; taciturn, deliberate, speaking when he does speak with the authority and finality of genius, totally without rhetoric, under complete self-control, and the coolest and best brain in Ireland." And: "He believes intensely in himself, and he has no real faith in anybody else, so that he is always more or less cold towards anybody who tries to do any political work in or about his own particular sphere.. Once he has made up his mind on anything he never changes. In controversy he is like a bull-dog: he is always the last to let go, and by that time there isn't much left of the other man's case. As a controversialist he is able and . . . unscrupulous, but he is nearly always right." The same writer adds that "he is naturally a believer in evolutionary methods in politics rather than in revolutionary methods, and, in a free Ireland, would I think be found on the side of what The Times would call 'stability.' He is no great believer in the rights of man, and modern radical catch-cries leave him cold; his creed being rather the rights of nations and the duties of man, the rights of a nation being freedom and the allegiance and service of all its children, and the rights of man being to fear God and serve his nation. He believes in the State as against the individual."

5

We give this extended account of Arthur Griffith, because it may justly be said that his personality is the Sinn Fein movement. Though he alone could not have made Sinn Fein the power in Ireland that it is, yet those brilliant minds, those fighters and doers, who brought his movement to its present position, would without him have been disunited and perhaps conflicting forces. In particular, the Volunteer movement, had it stood as a Physical Force movement alone, would have resulted in a disastrous and disheartening failure such as took the heart out of former generations in Ireland. When Easter Week was over, and the insurgents were crushed, the country was not broken as after '98 or '48 or '67, because the large fabric of the comprehensive Sinn Fein policy remained, and the sacrifice of Pearse and his comrades served but as a stimulus to the masses to carry on the work of industrial revival, language-restoration, etc.

Griffith, in his long years of propaganda, had taught the rising

5 It is just to say, here, that the writer of this foot-note, long intimate with Griffith's work, can recall nothing to justify this surprising charge.-S. M. M.

generation that nationality was to be served in every act of life. The pages of Sinn Fein teemed with ideas, represented every phase of national existence. Art, literature, the drama, economics, industry, sociology; all such topics were discussed by enthusiasts, and plans were even laid for a national decimal coinage of which the unit was to be the Gael (equivalent to the Franc). When in 1910 Mr. Redmond secured the Balance of Power in the British Parliament, Mr. Griffith suspended the organising of Sinn Fein as a political party, giving the Parliamentary leader a free hand to achieve whatever he could achieve for Ireland with the parliamentary weapon. For years, then, Sinn Fein was apparently dormant, its only large activity being the publication of the weekly with its constructive and critical articles. Mr. Griffith believed that the parliamentary dice was weighted against Ireland, and that at the critical moment, the rival British parties would coalesce, rather than be played off against each other to yield Irish freedom. So he bided his time. It may here be remarked that one man could have wielded the weapon of Abstention with force at that time. Mr. Redmond had the leadership of the nation and could have secured its approval of a dramatic leaving of the House of Commons when the Liberals played Ireland false. It is a tragedy that (for whatever cause) he was not able to co-operate with Arthur Griffith in this way. Much blood and sorrow might have been spared.

Unhappily Redmond allowed himself to be coerced by the threats of Sir Edward Carson, and early in 1914, accepted the principle of Partition. Weakness, and perhaps anglicisation led him to almost abject surrender, and ever since, English politicians have used the authority of an Irish leader for a policy of dividing the Irish nation. In Ireland, there was horror and almost despair. Meanwhile, Nationalists had organised a Volunteer force numbering up to 200,000 to repel the threat of Sir Edward Carson's Volunteers, who were armed with the connivance of English military authorities and at the expense of English Unionists. There was even talk of Civil War on the eve of the Great War: but this must be largely discounted as journalistic sensationalism, since the Ulster Volunteer, who would not even subscribe for his own equipment, not parade without the free gift of a bowler-hat, was not likely to play the hero in the field against men fighting for a real cause. Indeed, when the Great War came, only one in ten of these loyal warriors enlisted for the defence of the Empire which they professed to love so dearly.

But the Great War found the Irish situation under the influence of another element than Unionism, Parliamentarianism and Sinn

Fein-an element which we have not yet referred to, to wit, Fenianism, or Republicanism. A Physical Force party, aiming at an independent Irish Republic, owned a monthly paper, Irish Freedom, and through a series of "Wolfe Tone Clubs," exerted an influence on public opinion that was far from being negligible. This party enjoyed the allegiance of several of the best brains of modern Ireland: in particular, it numbered among its leading adherents, Padraic Pearse, one of the most remarkable men of his age.

Parnell had said that Fenianism was the backbone of the nation. Though not a Physical Force man himself, he did nothing to check the activities of those who believed in freeing Ireland by armed conflict: he refused to be "England's policeman." And so his own movement was the stronger because his opponents knew that if it were withdrawn they would have to deal with the desperate men who stood behind. Even so, Grattan once had used the menace of the Volunteers of 1782. But Fenianism appeared to the outer world to have perished in our own days. A few old Fenians here and there, "embers" kept the fire of freedom aflame in the country, and some, like the venerable John O'Leary, preached that Physical Force was needed, not because it was capable of winning against England, but because sacrifice alone would keep Nationality alive.

How far Fenianism survived as an organisation only the initiates could tell; but it is a known fact that Fenianism definitely took up arms again some years before the war.

The Fenians adopted from Fintan Lalor the motto: "Repeal not the Union, but the Conquest." These were lean years for Sinn Fein, but these two small parties of enthusiasts worked side by side without acrimony. Each was equally devoted to the full Irish-Ireland program of a Gaelicised nation. The Fenians were the active element in the Volunteers when that extraordinary armed movement came into being: but they did not at first control the new development.

Such, then, were the factors in the Irish situation on which the Great War descended in August, 1914.

CHAPTER LXXIX

EASTER RISING

'TIS said that the first shots in the Great War were fired in Ireland. This happened on July 26th, 1914, a beautiful summer Sunday. It came about thus:

Early in 1914 the Carsonite Volunteers, with the connivance of British sympathisers in high places, ran a big cargo of arms ashore at Larne, and distributed them over Ulster by motors flying through the night. The exploit was carried out with excellent generalship, and one life, that of an over-excited official, was lost. Those were dull days in world affairs-the calm before the storm-and the press received the news with voracious joy. Every newspaper published thrilling (often imaginative) accounts, garnished with maps and war-artists' pictures. The public enjoyed a sensation bigger than anything since the Boer War. Forthwith, the British Government prohibited the importation of arms into Ireland, lest the Nationalists should secure weapons too.

On Sunday, July 19th, the Dublin Volunteers were mobilised for a route march. A big column assembled at the Volunteer grounds at Clontarf after Mass, and received orders to march towards Howth. Only one or two officers knew what the day's program was, and the section commanders and rank and file obediently tramped out along the side of Dublin Bay, turning off to the left, according to orders, where a bye-road leads to Baldoyle, a little village near a racecourse. The Volunteers were, as usual, watched by police. This being the first big muster of Volunteers, perhaps a suspicion passed through the minds of both the Volunteers and the police, that some coup was being planned. However, arrived at Baldoyle, the column was dismissed and allowed to take refreshments. After an hour or so, the whistles sounded, and the men were marched back to Dublin. Nothing remarkable had happened. There was talk that at the next route march there would probably be some drill in field operations. .

On the following Sunday, the volunteers were again mobilised. Nearly a thousand paraded. As they hurried from all parts of