Nationalist Ireland had been officially committed to a peaceful and constitutional policy since the inception of the Home Rule Movement in 1870. Home Rule did not satisfy, and was never admitted as satisfying, the national demand. But the Fenian Movement had at last driven into the heads of even Irish landlords and Tories that some concession to national sentiment was necessary if the government of Ireland was to be made a tolerable task for decent men. The Home Rule programme was one in which Repealers and Conservatives agreed to join, the former in despair of getting anything better, the latter in despair of retaining any longer all that they had. But once accepted by the Repealers it had committed them, in the necessities of the case, to a strictly parliamentary policy; and that policy continued to be pursued even after the necessities which caused it to be adopted ceased to operate. It was not a policy ever accepted without reservation by Irish Nationalists: a considerable body of them held aloof always from the Home Rulers, regretting the old virile ways and words of Mitchel and Davis, and regarding the Home Rule programme as a Tory snare into which Irish Nationalism had fallen. The years of Parnell’s leadership saw a nearer approach to national unanimity in the parliamentary policy than was seen before or has been seen since. But it was emphatically in the eyes of “strong” Nationalists a policy that could only be justified by results, and the results were slow to appear. When they appeared at last in the shape of a Home Rule Bill of the Asquith Ministry there is no doubt that had it been carried and put into operation the advocates of a stronger policy would have been overborne by the men of moderate opinions. That is not to say that Home Rule would have been accepted by all coming generations as a satisfactory solution of the Irish situation; but it would have meant an immediate settling down of the country to the solution of many internal problems and the return to Ireland of something approaching the normal conditions of a civilized country. The prospect was shattered by the enrolling of the Ulster Volunteers. To the ordinary Home Ruler, the moderate Irish Nationalist, their action seemed to be a gross and unpardonable breach of faith. For a century Irish Unionists had uttered to Irish Nationalists the unvarying challenge to acknowledge and submit to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament: they had called upon Ireland to abandon its appeal to history and its “impossible claims” to an independence which Parliament could never sanction. The Home Rule Party had done so: no renunciation of a claim to sovereign independence could be more explicit and unequivocal than that made by Mr. Redmond. So far as the Home Rule Party was concerned, they had agreed to all the terms imposed upon them: they had appealed to Parliament, submitting to all the conditions implied in the recognition of it as the court of final resort, and now their opponents challenged in advance the competence of Parliament to decide, and fell back upon the weapons which Nationalist Ireland had been persuaded to abandon. But though the Ulster Unionists might break the pact, it was generally expected that the court to which they had taken their appeal would see that its competence to decide it was not challenged. The expectation was vain. The English Tory Party bluntly proclaimed that if Ulster decided to repudiate the verdict of Parliament, Ulster would be supported in any measure to that end which it should resolve to take. And in the face of this proclamation the Liberal Party seemed to hesitate: the Irish Party in Parliament could extract nothing from the Government beyond vague assurances that all would finally be well. Nationalist Ireland, surprised, uneasy, suspicious, indignant saw nothing more reassuring than broad smiles of indulgent benevolence upon the faces of Cabinet Ministers.

But Ulster Unionists were not the only people in Ireland who disliked Home Rule. It was just as little to the taste of Sinn Fein and the Republicans and the Labour Party as it was to them. If the Ulster Party thought that Home Rule was too great a concession, the others thought that it was practically no concession at all. But being in a minority they were prepared for the present to submit. The Sinn Fein Party and the Republicans were well aware that Home Rule meant a set back to their programme. Little as it conferred in comparison with what they wished to have, it was certain to allay for many years the sting of Irish discontent and to prolong the period during which Ireland would seek its satisfaction in the shadow of its coming fortunes. The Labour Party had already begun to organize its forces with a view to participation in the activities of the expected Parliament, and looked forward with a modest confidence to its immediate future. To all of these the arming of Ulster, which made the Parliamentarians so indignant, was a light in the darkness. They had been for years protesting unheeded against a policy which acknowledged the Act of Union by acknowledging the supremacy of the Parliament which it set up: their words had fallen for the most part upon stopped ears. And now from the party supposed to regard the supremacy of Parliament as on a level with the Ten Commandments came the mutterings of revolt and the rattle of arms. Ulster had decided to defy “the English edict which would keep Irishmen disarmed while the meanest Englishman may arm himself to the teeth”; Ulster had taken up arms “against the usurped authority of the Parliament of Great Britain to make laws to bind them.” Sinn Fein promised that Unionist Ulster would in its coming struggle with the English Parliament “receive the sympathy and support of Nationalist Ireland.” From the Republican Party the action of the Volunteers received unstinted and enthusiastic commendation. “Ulster has done one thing,” wrote Irish Freedom, “which commands the respect and admiration of all genuine Nationalists—she has stood up for what she believes to be right and will be cajoled neither by English threats nor English bayonets. Her attitude in this affair is the attitude of the O’Neills and the O’Donnells: no other people but an Irish people could do it and something of the kind was very necessary to shame the rest of Ireland out of J.P.-ships and jobs into some facing of the facts.... In present circumstances accursed be the soul of any Nationalist who would dream of firing a shot or drawing a sword against the Ulster Volunteers in connection with this Bill. Any such action would be an enforcement of a British law upon an Irish populace which refused it, would be a marshalling under the Union Jack. We are willing to fight Ulster or to negotiate with her, but we will not fight her over the miserable shadow of autonomy, we will not fight her because she tells England to go to Hell.” “The sheen of arms in Ulster was always the signal for the rest of Ireland. And Ireland even in this generation, hypnotized as most of her people are by catch cries about ‘imperilling Home Rule,’ by mockeries of all ‘wild’ politics and ‘wild’ plans, by doctrines even more debasing in their shameless lying than O’Connell’s, Ireland has answered the call.”

But to see in a revolt against a particular Act of Parliament a revolt against the supremacy of Parliament simpliciter was a mistake. Ulster was willing, anxious indeed, that the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament should be maintained in Ireland, but she made one condition: that Parliament should ensure in Ireland the Protestant Ascendancy. For that Ulster Protestantism professed to be prepared to fight to the death. It was secured by the Legislative Union; and to weaken the Union was to weaken it. So long as Ireland formed “an integral part of the United Kingdom,” so long as Catholic Irishmen were in a permanent minority in the Parliament of that kingdom, so long did it seem certain that the Protestant interest would be secure. Protestant England was considered to have made a pact with Protestant Ulster, and Ulster was prepared to enforce its observance even by force of arms. Ulster trembled when the shadow of the Vatican fell across her as men once trembled at an eclipse of the sun: and the Union seemed the only guarantee that recurrent eclipses would not be the harbingers of a perpetual darkness.

And whatever elements of hope for the future Sinn Fein and Republican Ireland might see in the attitude of the Ulster Volunteers towards England it was plain that while they might be praised and imitated they could not be followed. They were a strictly sectarian force formed to promote a strictly sectarian object, while Sinn Feiners and Republicans stood for the union of all Irishmen without distinction of creed. And their close (and, as it seemed to many Irishmen, unnatural) alliance with the English Tory Party was clear proof that their revolt (so far as it went) against the authority of Parliament could and would be utilized to the greater advantage of England and the detriment of Ireland. Ulster might propose to fight for her own hand and her own position in Ireland, but her English allies would see to it that nothing which Ulster gained would be lost to England. The moral to be drawn was that Ulster being part of Ireland was, however wayward and bitter, to be treated with consideration and respect; her fears for her safety to be allayed; even her prejudices to be considered and met; her incipient feeling of resentment against England applauded and encouraged. So far and no farther Irish Nationalists could go: but Ulster’s claim to ascendancy could not for a moment be recognized. Meanwhile the rest of Ireland should follow the example of the North and arm in defence of a threatened liberty.

This was the attitude not merely of Sinn Feiners and Republicans, but of many followers of the Parliamentary Party. But the bulk of the parliamentarians took a different view. Some of them deprecated all appeals to violence on the part of Irish Nationalists and held that it was the business of Parliament to enforce its own authority upon the recalcitrants: others thought nothing should be done, because nothing need be done, Ulster being accustomed to threaten, but never being known to strike: others again thought that the Ulster threats should be countered by threats as determined, backed by means not less efficacious.

The last of these Nationalist sections joined with the Republicans and some of the Sinn Feiners, Sinn Fein still officially adhering to its traditional policy, to form, in imitation of the Ulstermen, the force of the Irish Volunteers. The promoters of the movement were anxious to avoid all appearance of opposition to a body of Irishmen whom, however they might differ from them and no matter what collisions with them might occur later, they respected for their vigour and resolution: on the other hand they desired to make it perfectly plain that Ulster was not the only part of Ireland that had the courage to proclaim its intention of standing up for its rights. At a meeting held in the Rotunda in Dublin on November 25, 1913, the movement was publicly inaugurated.

Of the committee which took charge of the movement during its earlier stages some were (or had been) supporters of Sinn Fein, others were Republicans, more than a third were supporters of the Parliamentary Party and a few had never identified themselves with any Irish political party of any kind. And the manifesto to the Irish people issued by the committee bore clear indications of its composite origin. It took sides neither with nor against any form of Irish Nationalism and it contained no word of hostility against the Ulster force. “The object proposed,” it said, “for the Irish Volunteers is to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to all the people of Ireland. Their duties will be defensive and protective, and they will not contemplate either aggression or domination. Their ranks are open to all able-bodied Irishmen without distinction of creed, politics or social grade.... In the name of National Unity, of National Dignity, of National and Individual Liberty, of Manly Citizenship, we appeal to our countrymen to recognize and accept without hesitation the opportunity that has been granted them to join the ranks of the Irish Volunteers, and to make the movement now begun not unworthy of the historic title which it has adopted.” Volunteers were to sign a declaration that they desired “to be enrolled in the Irish Volunteers formed to secure and maintain the rights and liberties common to all the people of Ireland without distinction of creed, class or politics.” The final words of the declaration were an answer to the charge, printed in an English newspaper a few days before, that the new movement was to form a Volunteer force of Catholics in hostility to Protestants, and an answer by anticipation to the charge, made freely afterwards, that the Volunteers were intended to deprive Unionist Ulster of her just rights. The attitude deliberately adopted towards Ulster could not have been better put than it was by the President of the Volunteers, Professor Eoin MacNeill, in his speech at the inaugural meeting. “We do not contemplate,” he said, “any hostility to the Volunteer movement that has already been initiated in parts of Ulster. The strength of that movement consists in men whose kinsfolk were amongst the foremost and the most resolute in winning freedom for the United States of America, in descendants of the Irish Volunteers of 1782, of the United Irishmen, of the Antrim and Down insurgents of 1798, of the Ulster Protestants who protested in thousands against the destruction of the Irish Parliament in 1800. The more genuine and successful the local Volunteer movement in Ulster becomes, the more completely does it establish the principle that Irishmen have the right to decide and govern their own national affairs. We have nothing to fear from the existing Volunteers in Ulster nor they from us. We gladly acknowledge the evident truth that they have opened the way for a National Volunteer movement, and we trust that the day is near when their own services to the cause of an Irish Nation will become as memorable as the services of their forefathers.”

This was noble and chivalrous language and it loses none of its force when one recollects that many of the platforms in Ulster were ringing at the time with denunciations of “our hereditary enemies” and with references to Irish Catholics as “hewers of wood and drawers of water,” “the men whom we hate and despise.”

But in spite of the fact that the leaders of the Irish Volunteers wished to preserve, and largely succeeded in preserving, a non-provocative attitude towards the Ulstermen, the governing facts of the situation could hardly be ignored completely. Phrases used at meetings for the enrolment of Irish Volunteers appreciative of the spirit of Ulster were strongly resented by many Nationalists who saw in the Ulster Volunteers a menace not to the English exploitation of Ireland but to the national hopes. And even the leading spirits in the movement could not conceal the fact that the Ulster Volunteers, whatever they might prove to be in the future, were certainly a present obstacle to the attainment of Home Rule, which, little regarded by Sinn Fein and the Republicans as a final settlement, was undoubtedly the only approach to a settlement that could be looked for in the near future. The blame of this it was sought to throw on the English Tory Party. “A use has been made,” said Professor MacNeill, “and is daily made, of the Ulster Volunteer movement, that leaves the whole body of Irishmen no choice but to take a firm stand in defence of their liberties. The leaders of the Unionist Party in Great Britain and the journalists, public speakers and election agents of that party are employing the threat of armed force to control the course of political elections and to compel, if they can, a change of Government in England with the declared object of deciding what all parties admit to be vital political issues concerning Ireland. They claim that this line of action has been successful in recent parliamentary elections and that they calculate by it to obtain further successes, and at the most moderate estimate to force upon this country some diminished and mutilated form of National Self-Government. This is not merely to deny our rights as a nation. If we are to have our concerns regulated by a majority of British representatives owing their position and powers to a display of armed force, no matter from what quarter that force is derived, it is plain to every man that even the modicum of civil rights left to us by the Union is taken from us, our franchise becomes a mockery and we ourselves become the most degraded nation in Europe. This insolent menace does not satisfy the hereditary enemies of our National Freedom. Within the past few days a political manifesto has been issued, signed most fittingly by a Castlereagh and a Beresford, calling for British Volunteers and for money to arm and equip them to be sent into Ireland to triumph over the Irish people and to complete their disfranchisement and enslavement.”

All this was true, but it was only half the truth. It was true that the Tory Party was making use of the threat of armed force; but the threat had been made before the Tory Party could make use of it, and it had been made by a body of armed Irishmen. But the followers were, as often happens, less virulent than their leaders; and months after this the sight might have been witnessed in Belfast of Ulster Volunteers and Irish Volunteers using the same drill ground through the good offices of a tolerant Ulsterman: and though the Ulster Volunteers were prepared undoubtedly to fight for their privileges, some of the most vicious appeals to their passions and their prejudices came from men who were not of the Ulster, not even of the Irish, blood. Right through their tragic and tempestuous career the Irish Volunteers in spite of countless difficulties and provocations continued their attitude of punctilious courtesy to the Ulster force. When the Ulstermen succeeded in their great coup of running a cargo of rifles from Hamburg to Larne the Irish Volunteer congratulated them heartily and warmly. Their attitude towards their fellow-countrymen was deeply regretted, but for what they had done to assert the freedom of Irishmen from English dictation they were accorded generous praise. The spirit of the leaders in this matter permeated the force. The head of the Irish Volunteers in Tralee wrote at a time when threats of suppressing the Ulstermen with the help of the army were made: “To my mind the Volunteers should prevent if possible and by force the English soldiers attacking the Ulster rebels. Say to the English soldiers and to the English Government, ‘This is our soil and the Ulster rebels are our countrymen; fire on them and you fire on us.’... Ulster is not our real enemy, though ... Ulster thinks we are her enemy. Time will prove who are Ulster’s friends and ours.”

But the history of the Irish Volunteers, though indispensable for the understanding of the development of Sinn Fein is not the history of Sinn Fein. Individual Sinn Feiners were prominent in the movement and brought into it the spirit of national unity and disregard of the differences of creed which kept Irishmen divided: but the Sinn Fein organization remained distinct, praising, warning and criticizing the new movement and the tactics of its leaders. It pointed out at once that for the Volunteers to combine and to drill was not enough: they must have rifles and rifle ranges, and urged that the provision of them should be seen to without delay. But though it wished the Volunteers to be equipped as effectively and as quickly as possible it still regarded an armed force of Irishmen as inadequate to the task of winning Irish freedom. “To help the Volunteer movement,” said Sinn Fein, “is a national duty: they may not defeat England, but the movement will help to make Ireland self-reliant.” And Sinn Fein was emphatic in urging the dangers of a sectional policy, of any attempt to narrow the basis upon which the new force was to be built up. “It is better,” ran a leader on the subject, “at the beginning of the National Volunteer movement there should be frank speaking and frank understanding. If it were designed to be a movement confined to or controlled by any one Nationalist section we would not write a word in its support. It would fail badly.... It is quite true that we must work through public opinion in the circumstances of Ireland rather than through force of arms, but it is a poor thinker who does not realize that the public opinion which lacks the confidence, the calmness, the steadiness, the judgment, the resolution and the understanding which a training in arms gives a people is a poor weapon to rely upon in times of crisis.” The Volunteers were in the opinion of Sinn Fein a useful auxiliary in the task of developing the one quality from which alone ultimate success was to be expected, the self-reliance and moral resolution of the Irish people. But a?t?? ?f???eta? ??d?a s?d????—the mere “sheen of arms” has an attraction superior to all arguments and all policies: and there is little doubt that the superior attractions of the Volunteers proved too strong for many young and ardent Sinn Feiners and induced them to put the means first and the end second. The phrase of Irish Freedom in noticing the inauguration of the Volunteers probably gives the view of most of the younger generation: “In this welcome departure from our endless talk we touch reality at last.”

The Irish Volunteers were not the only militant body which the example of Ulster had formed in Ireland. While the Ulster campaign was in full swing the workers of Dublin had been engaged in a bitter industrial struggle with their employers in which after a prolonged battle victory had somewhat doubtfully declared itself against them. The Labour leader, Jim Larkin, decided to found a Citizen Army for Irish workers. “Labour,” he said in addressing the meeting at which the new force was inaugurated, “in its own defence must begin to train itself to act with disciplined courage and with organized and concentrated force. How could they accomplish this? By taking a leaf out of the book of Carson. If Carson had permission to train his braves of the North to fight against the aspirations of the Irish people, then it was legitimate and fair for Labour to organize in the same militant way to preserve their rights and to ensure that if they were attacked they would be able to give a very satisfactory account of themselves.” He went on to say that the object of the Citizen Army was “that Labour might no longer be defenceless but might be able to utilize that great physical power which it possessed to prevent their elemental rights from being taken from them and to evolve such a system of unified action, self-control and ordered discipline that Labour in Ireland might march in the forefront of all movements for the betterment of the whole people of Ireland.” The Citizen Army thus formed, never very numerous, efficient or enthusiastic, was practically destroyed by the formation of the Irish Volunteers. Most of its members joined the Volunteers, partly because they were the more numerous and popular body, but principally because a national policy had more attraction for them than one which was purely sectional. Captain White, who had trained the first Citizen Army, now urged that it should be reorganized upon a broader basis and in March, 1914, the Citizen Army, which afterwards played such a memorable part, was put upon its final footing. The new constitution was as follows: “That the first and last principle of the Irish Citizen Army is the avowal that the ownership of Ireland, moral and material, is vested of right in the people of Ireland: that the Irish Citizen Army shall stand for the absolute unity of Irish nationhood and shall support the rights and liberties of the democracies of all nations: that one of its objects shall be to sink all differences of birth, property and creed under the common name of the Irish People: that the Citizen Army shall be open to all who accept the principle of equal rights and opportunities for the Irish People.”

It might have seemed that the constitution and principles of the Citizen Army were wide enough and national enough to justify a union or at least a close co-operation with the Irish Volunteers. But at first the two bodies held sternly aloof. The Labour Party had not been invited to send representatives to the meeting at which the Volunteers had been inaugurated, and many of the Volunteer Committee were suspected, rightly or wrongly, of being entirely out of sympathy with Labour ideals and Labour policy. When members of the Labour Party began to flock into the Volunteer ranks their action was the occasion of a bitter controversy in the official Labour organ. The Sinn Fein movement, whose spirit was supposed to preside over the Volunteer organization, had never been on cordial terms with organized Labour, and the members of the Irish Citizen Army were publicly warned to keep clear of these “Girondin politicians, who will simply use the workers as the means towards their own security and comfort.” Nor were the members of the Ancient Order of Hibernians and of the United Irish League who belonged to the Volunteer Committee any more to the taste of Labour; they regarded these two bodies as bitter and implacable opponents of their rights. Regarding themselves as the true successors of the Nationalism of Wolfe Tone and John Mitchel, they called upon the Volunteers for an explicit declaration of what was meant by “the rights common to all Irishmen” which they were enrolled to maintain. Did they mean the right to Home Rule, or to the constitution of 1782 or to an Irish Republic? The Volunteers could not have said “Yes” to any one of the three alternatives without driving out members who desired to say “Yes” to one or other of the remaining two. The Volunteers had deliberately left in abeyance controversies which the Labour Army wished to fight out in advance. They, undoubtedly, desired a Republic and meant to say so. When it was announced that the Irish Volunteers would be under the control of the Irish Parliament (when there should be such a body to control them) Labour became more suspicious still; was not the only Irish Parliament even in contemplation to be subordinate to the Parliament of England? The Volunteers seemed to treat the Citizen Army with indifference, if not with contempt: and a bitter antagonism was developed which only common misfortune was able to mitigate.

In all this welter of sharp antagonisms and conflicting policies the only party which walked in the old political ways was the Parliamentary Party. They expected confidently that political conventions would finally be observed or that Parliament would deal effectively with those who tried to break them. It was becoming plain, however, as time went on that the conventions were not going to be regarded and that Parliament was as likely as not to acquiesce in the breach of them. And the Party was not aware of the change that was slowly passing over Ireland. A long tenure of their place among the great personages and amid the high doings of Westminster seemed to have made them somewhat oblivious of the fact that Irish politics are made in Ireland. They did not feel the thrill of chastened pride that shivered gently through Ireland when the quiet places of Ulster echoed to the march of the Ulster Volunteers. They did not know how many Irishmen regarded the action of Ulster not as a menace to the dignity of the Parliament in which the Party sat but as the harbinger of national independence. They underrated (as who then did not?) the influence of Sinn Fein; they regarded the foundation of the Irish Volunteers as the work of “irresponsible young men,” though the “young men” were nearer the heart of Young Ireland: like O’Connell, they “stood for Old Ireland and had some notion that Old Ireland would stand by them.” Ireland, though no one guessed it at the time, was the crucible in which were slowly melting and settling down all the elements that were to go to the making of the future Sinn Fein.

Sinn Fein was at the time to all outward seeming an insignificant and discredited party with an impossible programme. It still published a small weekly paper with no great circulation. It did not agree with the parliamentarians: it had a standing feud with the Labour Party: it gave a dignified and pontifical blessing to the Volunteers without committing itself to their whole programme. Its only electioneering venture, outside municipal politics, had been a disastrous failure: it had won a few seats on the Dublin City Council: it had tried and failed to run a daily paper. When all Nationalist Ireland was waiting for Home Rule it declared Home Rule to be a thing of naught. To the buoyant confidence of the Parliamentary Party it opposed a cynical distrust of their aims and methods, a constant incredulity of their ultimate success. When the Party pointed to what it had done and to what it was about to do Sinn Fein reminded the country that the very existence of a Parliamentary Party was an acknowledgment of the Act of Union. When the Liberal Government was engaged in an embittered and apparently final struggle for supremacy with the Tory Party in the interests of Ireland, Sinn Fein professed entire disbelief in its sincerity; it asserted that the Liberals really loved the Tories very much better than they loved the Irish. With a querulous and monotonous insistence it preached distrust of all English parties and even of the English nation, towards whom it displayed a hostility that seemed almost to amount to a monomania. To Irish Labour this indiscriminating attitude seemed insensate bigotry: to the Irish people as a whole it seemed incomprehensible that a Nationalist Party should regard the Liberals as enemies and the Ulster Volunteers as brothers in arms. Sinn Fein never seemed less certain of a future in Ireland than when events were preparing to make Ireland Sinn Fein.

Early in 1914 Sinn Fein saw in the King’s Speech at the opening of Parliament indications that the Cabinet and the Opposition had arranged “a deal” over Home Rule and foretold an attempt at compromise. The next month the Prime Minister proposed the partition of Ireland between the Unionists and the Nationalists and the Irish Party accepted the proposal as a temporary device to ease the parliamentary situation for the Cabinet. No proposal better calculated to offend the deepest instincts of Irish nationalism could have been made: no concession more fatal to the party which agreed to it could have been devised. The mention of it provoked an outburst in Ireland which did more to smash the Parliamentary Party and leave the field open to their rivals than anything which had happened since Home Rule was first mooted. The criticisms passed upon it by the non-Parliamentary Nationalists were important, not so much on account of the quarters they came from, as for the grounds on which they were made, and their words awakened deeper feelings than had come to the surface for years. “To even discuss,” said Sinn Fein, “the exclusion of Ulster or any portion of Ulster from a Home Rule measure is in itself traitorous. When God made this country, He fixed its frontiers beyond the power of man to alter while the sea rises and falls.... So long as England is strong and Ireland is weak, England may continue to oppress this country, but she shall not dismember it.” “If this nation is to go down,” wrote Irish Freedom, “let it go down gallantly as becomes its history, let it go down fighting, but let it not sink into the abjectness of carving a slice out of itself and handing it over to England.... As for Ulster, Ulster is Ireland’s and shall remain Ireland’s. Though the Irish nation in its political and corporate capacity were gall and wormwood to every Unionist in Ulster yet shall they swallow it. We will fight them if they want fighting: but we shall never let them go, never.” Sinn Fein and the Republicans were no more emphatic than the Labour Party. James Connolly in the Irish Worker said of Partition: “To it Labour should give the bitterest opposition, against it Labour in Ulster should fight even to the death if necessary as our fathers fought before us.” It even used the menace of partition as an argument in favour of joining the Citizen Army and urged that Volunteers should transfer their membership to a body which “meant business.” “The Citizen Army,” said an article signed with the initials of one of its principal organizers, “stands for Ireland—Orange and Green—one and indivisible. The men who tread the valleys and places Cuchullain, Conall Cearnach, Russell and McCracken trod are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. Because they may have a different creed does not matter to us; it never mattered to the Government: an Irish Protestant corpse dangled as often at the end of a rope as did the corpse of an Irish Catholic.”

But Sinn Fein saw that, though partition was unacceptable, it was no use continually asking the Ulstermen to name the safeguards they wanted. They would not name what they did not want: no safeguards would secure them in a democratic modern community against their chief objection to Home Rule—that in an Irish Parliament Protestants, as such, would be in “a permanent minority.” It was of the very nature of things that they should be, if representative institutions were to be recognized at all. But though in a minority they need not be, as they asserted they would be, subject to disabilities, and Sinn Fein held that every offer to allay their fears compatible with free institutions should be made. A Sinn Fein Convention held in Dublin towards the end of April, 1914, agreed to make the Ulstermen, on behalf of Sinn Fein, the following proposals: (1), increased representation in the Irish Parliament on the basis partly of population, partly of rateable value and partly of bulk of trade, the Ulster representation to be increased by fifteen members including one for the University of Belfast: two members to be given to the Unionist constituency of Rathmines; (2), to fix all Ireland as the unit for the election of the Senate or Upper House and to secure representation to the Southern Unionist minority by Proportional Representation; (3), to guarantee that no tax should be imposed on the linen trade without the consent of a majority of the Ulster representatives; (4), that the Chairman of the Joint Exchequer Board should always be chosen by the Ulster Representatives; (5), that all posts in the Civil Service should be filled by examination; (6), that the Ulster Volunteer Force should be retained under its present leaders as portion of an Irish Volunteer Force and should not, except in case of invasion, be called upon to serve outside Ulster; (7), that the Irish Parliament should sit alternately in Dublin and in Belfast; (8), that the clauses in the Home Rule Bill restricting Irish trade and finance and prohibiting Ireland from collecting and receiving its own taxes, or otherwise conflicting with any of the above proposals, should be amended. These proposals, the most statesmanlike and generous proposals put forward on the Nationalist side, were, though approved of generally by the Belfast Trades Council, contemptuously ignored by the Ulster leaders.

The offer of partition likewise was promptly rejected by Ulster: like the Irish Citizen Army they “meant business.” They meant to smash Home Rule for good and all, for the South as well as for the North of Ireland, and in conjunction with the English Tories they felt strong enough to do it. They began openly to tamper with the allegiance of the army. Nor were their efforts without success. Not only did large numbers of ex-officers offer their services to the Ulster Volunteers, but many officers upon the active list announced their intention of refusing to obey orders if despatched to preserve order in Ulster and forestall the intention, broadly hinted, of some of the Ulstermen to seize military depots in the province. It was an open boast in Belfast that the ship conveying the arms from Hamburg to Ulster had been sighted, but allowed to pass unchallenged by officers of the Royal Navy on the ships detailed to intercept it. They seemed deliberately to have adopted the policy of Catiline, ruina exstinguere incendium, “to put out the fire by pulling down the house.” If the Protestant interest were to go down in Ireland, then should the British Constitution which had fostered it go down with it.

All this was, of course, matter for unfeigned delight to all the “advanced” people both in Ireland and outside of it. If officers were to have the option of obeying orders or not at their will why should a like latitude be denied the common soldier? If officers refused to act against Ulster why should a private be required to fire upon strikers? Thanks were publicly returned by Irish Freedom to “the gallant British officers who have helped their beloved Empire on to the brink above the precipice.” But so far as England was concerned, the crisis was tided over by the usual method of compromise. There had been a “misunderstanding” for which both sides were more or less responsible. There had been no actual intention of employing force in a political dispute and therefore the question in debate did not arise. The Minister of War was dismissed on a side issue, the Premier assumed his responsibilities and everybody was more or less satisfied, except the Irish.

Whatever were the rights or wrongs of the dispute between the Army and the Government, it was plain that the dispute had been composed at the expense of Home Rule. Partition in some form or other was now certain to accompany Home Rule, if Home Rule were not actually shelved. The Irish Party were solemnly warned by the advanced Nationalist papers. “Mr. Redmond has had his chance,” wrote one of these. “When partition is again mentioned, let him stand aside even at the cost of the ‘Home Rule’ Bill. There is a force and a spirit growing in Ireland which in the wrangle of British politics he but vaguely realizes.”

But Mr. Redmond was not so preoccupied with “the wrangle of British politics” as he seemed. He realized quite clearly that the Irish Volunteers were growing in numbers and in influence and that neither their object nor their existence was compatible with the principles of Home Rule. They proclaimed their intention of putting themselves eventually at the disposal of the Irish Parliament: but the Bill contemplated a Parliament which should have no right to accept their services. They were largely controlled by men who thought little of Home Rule and everything of the “rights of Irishmen,” which might mean just what the Liberal Government proposed to give but might also mean a great deal more. They were a menace to the success of the parliamentary policy, and it seemed to be his plain duty to suppress or to control them. To attempt suppression would be dangerous: to control them seemed not impossible. He decided to demand the right to nominate on their committee twenty-five “tried and true” Nationalists whose allegiance to his policy was unquestioned. The committee, faced by the alternative of either declaring war on Mr. Redmond (a course as dangerous to them as to declare war on them would have been to him) or of submitting to his demand, decided to submit. The twenty-five new members (four of whom were priests and the majority of the remainder Dublin Nationalists) joined the Committee and the Irish “military crisis” seemed to have been solved. In reality it was only beginning. The Citizen Army promptly declared war upon the reconstituted Volunteer Committee. “Is there,” asked The Irish Worker, “one reliable man at the head of the National Volunteer movement apart from Casement who, we believe, is in earnest and honest?... We admit the bulk of the rank and file are men of principle and men who are out for liberty for all men: but why allow the foulest growth that ever cursed this land (the Hibernian Board of Erin) to control an organization that might if properly handled accomplish great things.” It accused the committee of having passed the Volunteers over to a “gang of placehunters and political thugs” and called upon the rank and file to sever all connection with them: “Our fathers died that we might be free men. Are we going to allow their sacrifices to be as naught? Or are we going to follow in their footsteps at the Rising of the Moon?” The Citizen Army was gradually coming round to a standpoint more and more national, and saw in the control of the Volunteers by the Parliamentarians nothing but disaster to its idea of what nationalism involved. Sinn Fein was equally vehement: “Redmond is only a tool,” it wrote, “in the hands of Asquith and Birrell who wish to destroy the Volunteers as Lord Northington was a tool in the hands of Fox, to whom he wrote in 1783: ‘They have got too powerful, and there is nothing for us but for our friends to go into their meetings and disturb the harmony of them and create division.’” When Mr. Redmond appealed to America for money to “strengthen” the Volunteers it pointed out that if he had been in earnest he would have asked not for money but for arms, and would have had the Arms Proclamation withdrawn by the Government. It printed a series of letters to the Volunteers, of which the first contained the words: “The object [i.e. of the Volunteers] is obtaining and maintaining the independence of Ireland. Those who are in earnest should have their own committee, independent of Redmond and Co.” Irish Freedom headed its leader on the transaction “The Kiss of Judas,” and declared that “after the British Government the Irish Parliamentary Party in its later years has been the most evil force in Ireland.”

The original members of the Volunteer Committee were clearly uneasy and tried to put the best face they could upon the matter. In their official organ; The Irish Volunteer, they informed the public “The control of the committee by Mr. John Redmond does not matter, provided his nominees represent the feelings of the Volunteers: if they do the Irish Party will see to the withdrawing of the Arms Proclamation and proceed to arm the Volunteers at once.” But the Irish Party did neither; and if Mr. Redmond was expected to share the feelings of the Volunteers, the Volunteers cannot have shared the feelings of the committee. A month before this the Irish Volunteer had printed the following: “For over a generation Ireland has taken her national views from men whose whole lives were bound up with the preservation of the peace. Suddenly, in a day, in an hour, the whole situation has undergone a change. Force has reappeared as a factor in Irish political life.... It is to be hoped that men are not joining the national army from any motives but those which actuated the founders. The object of the Volunteers is to maintain and preserve the rights and liberties common to the whole people of Ireland. There is no question of preserving merely the ‘legal’ rights graciously permitted us by a foreign power.” If the original committee seriously expected Mr. Redmond and his nominees to acquiesce in the views expressed in the last sentence they must have been simple to a degree. They were admittedly in a difficult position; but they knew what they meant and they knew what Mr. Redmond meant; and the sequel might have been foreseen.

It was put upon record later by a member of the committee that in the task of arming the Volunteers the new members gave little effective assistance, and that when arms were obtained they tried to have them taken from the men who had paid for them and handed over gratis to the Hibernians of the North to use (without, it is true, a supply of ammunition) to overawe the aggression of the Ulster Volunteers. But the members of the original committee procured arms upon their own responsibility. In July they succeeded in imitating the exploit of the Ulstermen at Larne. They ran a cargo of rifles into Howth and another was landed at Kilcool. But the forces of the Crown, absent at Larne and inactive in Ulster ever since, displayed their unsuccessful vigour at Howth. The Volunteers were intercepted on the way back, but after a scuffle succeeded in getting away with their guns. The soldiers on the return journey fired upon a provoking but unarmed crowd in the streets of Dublin. The country had barely time to appreciate the contrast between Larne and Howth, when the sound of the German guns in Belgium broke upon its ears.