I. Two Stones in a Square
When I had for the first time crossed St. George’s Channel, and for the first time stepped out of a Dublin hotel on to St. Stephen’s Green, the first of all my impressions was that of a particular statue, or rather portion of a statue. I left many traditional mysteries already in my track, but they did not trouble me as did this random glimpse or vision. I have never understood why the Channel is called St. George’s Channel; it would seem more natural to call it St. Patrick’s Channel since the great missionary did almost certainly cross that unquiet sea and look up at those mysterious mountains. And though I should be enchanted, in an abstract artistic sense, to imagine St. George sailing towards the sunset, flying the silver and scarlet colours of his cross, I cannot in fact regard that journey as the most fortunate of the adventures of that flag. Nor, for that matter, do I know why the Green should be called St. Stephen’s Green, nor why the parliamentary enclosure at Westminster is also connected with the first of the martyrs; unless it be because St. Stephen was killed with stones. The stones piled together to make modern political buildings, might perhaps be regarded as a cairn, or heap of missiles, marking the place of the murder of a witness to the truth. And while it seems unlikely that St. Stephen was pelted with statues as well as stones, there are undoubtedly statues that might well kill a Christian at sight. Among these graven stones, from which the saints suffer, I should certainly include some of those figures in frock coats standing opposite St. Stephen’s, Westminster. There are many such statues in Dublin also; but the one with which I am concerned was at first partially veiled from me. And the veil was at least as symbolic as the vision. I saw what seemed the crooked hind legs of a horse on a pedestal and deduced an equestrian statue, in the somewhat bloated fashion of the early eighteenth century equestrian statues. But the figure, from where I stood, was wholly hidden in the tops of trees growing round it in a ring; masking it with leafy curtains or draping it with leafy banners. But they were green banners, that waved and glittered all about it in the sunlight; and the face they hid was the face of an English king. Or rather, to speak more correctly, a German king. When laws can stay … it was impossible that an old rhyme should not run in my head, and words that appealed to the everlasting revolt of the green things of the earth… . “And when the leaves in summer time their colour dare not show.” The rhyme seemed to reach me out of remote times and find arresting fulfilment, like a prophecy; it was impossible not to feel that I had seen an omen. I was conscious vaguely of a vision of green garlands hung on gray stone; and the wreaths were living and growing, and the stone was dead. Something in the simple substances and elemental colours, in the white sunlight, and the sombre and even secret image, held the mind for a moment in the midst of all the moving city, like a sign given in a dream. I was told that the figure was that of one of the first Georges; but indeed I seemed to know already that it was the White Horse of Hanover that had thus grown gray with Irish weather or green with Irish foliage. I knew only too well, already, that the George who had really crossed the Channel was not the saint. This was one of those German princes whom the English aristocracy used when it made the English domestic polity aristocratic and the English foreign policy German. Those Englishmen who think the Irish are pro-German, or those Irishmen who think the Irish ought to be pro-German, would presumably expect the Dublin populace to have hung the statue of this German deliverer with national flowers and nationalist flags. For some reason, however, I found no traces of Irish tributes round the pedestal of the Teutonic horseman. I wondered how many people in the last fifty years have ever cared about it, or even been conscious of their own carelessness. I wonder how many have ever troubled to look at it, or even trouble not to look at it. If it fell down, I wonder whether anybody would put it up again. I do not know; I only know that Irish gardeners, or some such Irish humorists, had planted trees in a ring round that prancing equestrian figure; trees that had, so to speak, sprung up and choked him, making him more unrecognisable than a Jack-in-the-Green. Jack or George had vanished; but the Green remained. About a stone’s-throw from this calamity in stone there stood, at the corner of a gorgeously coloured flower-walk, a bust evidently by a modern sculptor with modern symbolic ornament surmounted by the fine falcon face of the poet Mangan; who dreamed and drank and died, a thoughtless and thriftless outcast, in the darkest of the Dublin streets around that place. This individual Irishman really was what we were told that all Irishmen were, hopeless, heedless, irresponsible, impossible, a tragedy of failure. And yet it seemed to be his head that was lifted and not hidden; the gay flowers only showed up this graven image as the green leaves shut out the other; everything around him seemed bright and busy, and told rather of a new time. It was clear that modern men did stop to look at him; indeed modern men had stayed there long enough to make him a monument. It was almost certain that if his monument fell down, it really would be put up again. I think it very likely there would be competition among advanced modern artistic schools of admitted crankiness and unimpeachable lunacy; that somebody would want to cut out a Cubist Mangan in a style less of stone than of bricks; or to set up a Vorticist Mangan, like a frozen whirlpool, to terrify the children playing in that flowery lane. For when I afterwards went into the Dublin Art Club, or mixed generally in the stimulating society of the intellectuals of the Irish capital, I found a multitude of things which moved both my admiration and amusement. Perhaps the best thing of all was that it was the one society that I have seen where the intellectuals were intellectual. But nothing pleased me more than the fact that even Irish art was taken with a certain Irish pugnacity; as if there could be street fights about aesthetics as there once were about theology. I could almost imagine an appeal for pikes to settle a point about art needlework, or a suggestion of dying on the barricades for a difference about bookbinding. And I could still more easily imagine a sort of ultra-civilised civil war round the half-restored bust of poor Mangan. But it was in a yet plainer and more popular sense that I felt that bust to be the sign of a new world, where the statue of Royal George was only the ruin of an old one. And though I have since seen many much more complex, and many decidedly contradictory things in Ireland, the allegory of those two stone images in that public garden has remained in my memory, and has not been reversed. The Glorious Revolution, the great Protestant Deliverer, the Hanoverian Succession, these things were the very pageant and apotheosis of success. The Whig aristocrat was not merely victorious; it was as a victor that he asked for victory. The thing was fully expressed in all the florid and insolent statuary of the period, in all those tumid horsemen in Roman uniform and Rococo periwigs shown as prancing in perpetual motion down shouting streets to their triumphs; only to-day the streets are empty and silent, and the horse stands still. Of such a kind was the imperial figure round which the ring of trees had risen, like great green fans to soothe a sultan, or great green curtains to guard him. But it was in a sort of mockery that his pavilion was thus painted with the colour of his conquered enemies. For the king was dead behind his curtains, his voice will be heard no more, and no man will even wish to hear it, while the world endures. The dynastic eighteenth century is dead if anything is dead; and these idols at least are only stones. But only a few yards away, the stone that the builders rejected is really the head of a corner, standing at the corner of a new pathway, coloured and crowded with children and with flowers. That, I suspect, is the paradox of Ireland in the modern world. Everything that was thought progressive, as a prancing horse, has come to a standstill. Everything that was thought decadent, as a dying drunkard, has risen from the dead. All that seemed to have reached a cul de sac has turned the corner, and stands at the opening of a new road. All that thought itself on a pedestal has found itself up a tree. And that is why those two chance stones seem to me to stand like graven images on either side of the gateway by which a man enters Ireland. And yet I had not left the same small enclosure till I had seen one other sight which was even more symbolic than the flowers near the foot of the poet’s pedestal. A few yards beyond the Mangan bust was a model plot of vegetables, like a kitchen garden with no kitchen or house attached to it, planted out in a patchwork of potatoes, cabbages, and turnips, to prove how much could be done with an acre. And I realised as in a vision that all over the new Ireland that patch is repeated like a pattern; and where there is a real kitchen garden there is also a real kitchen; and it is not a communal kitchen. It is more typical even than the poet and the flowers; for these flowers are also food, and this poetry is also property; property which, when properly distributed, is the poetry of the average man. It was only afterwards that I could realise all the realities to which this accident corresponded; but even this little public experiment, at the first glance, had something of the meaning of a public monument. It was this which the earth itself had reared against the monstrous image of the German monarch; and I might have called this chapter Cabbages and Kings. My life is passed in making bad jokes and seeing them turn into true prophecies. In the little town in South Bucks, where I live, I remember some talk of appropriate ceremonies in connection with the work of sending vegetables to the Fleet. There was a suggestion that these proceedings should end with “God Save the King,” an amendment by some one (of a more naval turn of mind) to substitute “Rule Britannia;” and the opposition of one individual, claiming to be of Irish extraction, who loudly refused to lend a voice to either. Whatever I retain, in such rural scenes, of the frivolity of Fleet Street led me to suggest that we could all join in singing “The Wearing of the Greens.” But I have since discovered that this remark, like other typical utterances of the village idiot, was in truth inspired; and was a revelation and a vision from across the sea, a vision of what was really being done, not by the village idiots but by the village wise men. For the whole miracle of modern Ireland might well be summed up in the simple change from the word “green” to the word “greens.” Nor would it be true to say that the first is poetical and the second practical. For a green tree is quite as poetical as a green flag; and no one in touch with history doubts that the waving of the green flag has been very useful to the growing of the green tree. But I shall have to touch upon all such controversial topics later, for those to whom such statements are still controversial. Here I would only begin by recording a first impression as vividly coloured and patchy as a modernist picture; a square of green things growing where they are least expected; the new vision of Ireland. The discovery, for most Englishmen, will be like touching the trees of a faded tapestry, and finding the forest alive and full of birds. It will be as if, on some dry urn or dreary column, figures which had already begun to crumble magically began to move and dance. For culture as well as mere caddishness assumed the decay of these Celtic or Catholic things; there were artists sketching the ruins as well as trippers picnicking in them; and it was not only evidence that a final silence had fallen on the harp of Tara, that it did not play “Tararaboomdeay.” Englishmen believed in Irish decay even when they were large-minded enough to lament it. It might be said that even those who were penitent because the thing was murdered, were quite convinced that it was killed. The meaning of these green and solid things before me is that it is not a ghost that has risen from the grave. A flower, like a flag, might be little more than a ghost; but a fruit has that sacramental solidity which in all mythologies belongs not to a ghost but to a god. This sight of things sustaining, and a beauty that nourishes and does not merely charm, is the premonition of practicality in the miracle of modern Ireland. It is a miracle more marvellous than the resurrection of the dead. It is the resurrection of the body.
II. The Root of Reality
The only excuse of literature is to make things new; and the chief misfortune of journalism is that it has to make them old. What is hurried has to be hackneyed. Suppose a man has to write on a particular subject, let us say America; if he has a day to do it in, it is possible that, in the last afterglow of sunset, he may have discovered at least one thing which he himself really thinks about America. It is conceivable that somewhere under the evening star he may have a new idea, even about the new world. If he has only half an hour in which to write, he will just have time to consult an encyclopaedia and vaguely remember the latest leading articles. The encyclopaedia will be only about a decade out of date; the leading articles will be aeons out of date— having been written under similar conditions of modern rush. If he has only a quarter of an hour in which to write about America, he may be driven in mere delirium and madness to call her his Gigantic Daughter in the west, to talk of the feasibility of Hands Across the Sea, or even to call himself an Anglo-Saxon, when he might as well call himself a Jute. But whatever debasing banality be the effect of business scurry in criticism, it is but one example of a truth that can be tested in twenty fields of experience. If a man must get to Brighton as quickly as possible, he can get there quickest by travelling on rigid rails on a recognised route. If he has time and money for motoring, he will still use public roads; but he will be surprised to find how many public roads look as new and quiet as private roads. If he has time enough to walk, he may find for himself a string of fresh footpaths, each one a fairy-tale. This law of the leisure needed for the awakening of wonder applies, indeed, to things superficially familiar as well as to things superficially fresh. The chief case for old enclosures and boundaries is that they enclose a space in which new things can always be found later, like live fish within the four corners of a net. The chief charm of having a home that is secure is having leisure to feel it as strange. I have often done the little I could to correct the stale trick of taking things for granted: all the more because it is not even taking them for granted. It is taking them without gratitude; that is, emphatically as not granted. Even one’s own front door, released by one’s own latchkey, should not only open inward on things familiar, but outward on things unknown. Even one’s own domestic fireside should be wild as well as domesticated; for nothing could be wilder than fire. But if this light of the higher ignorance should shine even on familiar places, it should naturally shine most clearly on the roads of a strange land. It would be well if a man could enter Ireland really knowing that he knows nothing about Ireland; if possible, not even the name of Ireland. The misfortune is that most men know the name too well, and the thing too little. This book would probably be a better book, as well as a better joke, if I were to call the island throughout by some name like Atlantis, and only reveal on the last page that I was referring to Ireland. Englishmen would see a situation of great interest, objects with which they could feel considerable sympathy, and opportunities of which they might take considerable advantage, if only they would really look at the place plain and straight, as they would at some entirely new island, with an entirely new name, discovered by that seafaring adventure which is the real romance of England. In short, he might do something with it, if he would only treat it as an object in front of him, and not as a subject or story left behind him. There will be occasion later to say all that should be said of the need of studying the Irish story. But the Irish story is one thing, and what is called the Irish Question quite another; and in a purely practical sense the best thing the stranger can do is to forget the Irish Question and look at the Irish. If he looked at them simply and steadily, as he would look at the natives of an entirely new nation with a new name, he would become conscious of a very strange but entirely solid fact. He would become conscious of it, as a man in a fairy tale might become conscious that he had crossed the border of fairyland, by such a trifle, as a talking cow or a haystack walking about on legs. For the Irish Question has never been discussed in England. Men have discussed Home Rule; but those who advocated it most warmly, and as I think wisely, did not even know what the Irish meant by Home. Men have talked about Unionism; but they have never even dared to propose Union. A Unionist ought to mean a man who is not even conscious of the boundary of the two countries; who can walk across the frontier of fairyland, and not even notice the walking haystack. As a fact, the Unionist always shoots at the haystack; though he never hits it. But the limitation is not limited to Unionists; as I have already said, the English Radicals have been quite as incapable of going to the root of the matter. Half the case for Home Rule was that Ireland could not be trusted to the English Home Rulers. They also, to recur to the parable, have been unable to take the talking cow by the horns; for I need hardly say that the talking cow is an Irish bull. What has been the matter with their Irish politics was simply that they were English politics. They discussed the Irish Question; but they never seriously contemplated the Irish Answer. That is, the Liberal was content with the negative truth, that the Irish should not be prevented from having the sort of law they liked. But the Liberal seldom faced the positive truth, about what sort of law they would like. He instinctively avoided the very imagination of this; for the simple reason that the law the Irish would like is as remote from what is called Liberal as from what is called Unionist. Nor has the Liberal ever embraced it in his broadest liberality, nor the Unionist ever absorbed it into his most complete unification. It remains outside us altogether, a thing to be stared at like a fairy cow; and by far the wisest English visitor is he who will simply stare at it. Sooner or later he will see what it means; which is simply this: that whether it be a case for coercion or emancipation (and it might be used either way) the fact is that a free Ireland would not only not be what we call lawless, but might not even be what we call free. So far from being an anarchy, it would be an orderly and even conservative civilisation—like the Chinese. But it would be a civilisation so fundamentally different from our own, that our own liberals would differ from it as much as our own conservatives. The fair question for an Englishman is whether that fundamental difference would make division dangerous; it has already made union impossible. Now in turning over these notes of so brief a visit, suffering from all the stale scurry of my journalistic trade, I have been in doubt between a chronological and a logical order of events. But I have decided in favour of logic, of the high light that really revealed the picture, and by which I firmly believe that everything else should be seen. And if any one were to ask me what was the sight that struck me most in Ireland, both as strange and as significant, I should know what to reply. I saw it long after I had seen the Irish cities, had felt something of the brilliant bitterness of Dublin and the stagnant optimism of Belfast; but I put it first here because I am certain that without it all the rest is meaningless; that it lies behind all politics, enormous and silent, as the great hills lie beyond Dublin. I was moving in a hired motor down a road in the North-West, towards the middle of that rainy autumn. I was not moving very fast; because the progress was slowed down to a solemn procession by crowds of families with their cattle and live stock going to the market beyond; which things also are an allegory. But what struck my mind and stuck in it was this: that all down one side of the road, as far as we went, the harvest was gathered in neatly and safely; and all down the other side of the road it was rotting in the rain. Now the side where it was safe was a string of small plots worked by peasant proprietors, as petty by our standards as a row of the cheapest villas. The land on which all the harvest was wasted was the land of a large modern estate. I asked why the landlord was later with his harvesting than the peasants; and I was told rather vaguely that there had been strikes and similar labour troubles. I did not go into the rights of the matter; but the point here is that, whatever they were, the moral is the same. You may curse the cruel Capitalist landlord or you may rave at the ruffianly Bolshevist strikers; but you must admit that between them they had produced a stoppage, which the peasant proprietorship a few yards off did not produce. You might support either where they conflicted, but you could not deny the sense in which they had combined, and combined to prevent what a few rustics across the road could combine to produce. For all that we in England agree about and disagree about, all for which we fight and all from which we differ, our darkness and our light, our heaven and hell, were there on the left side of the road. On the right side of the road lay something so different that we do not even differ from it. It may be that Trusts are rising like towers of gold and iron, overshadowing the earth and shutting out the sun; but they are only rising on the left side of the road. It may be that Trades Unions are laying labyrinths of international insurrection, cellars stored with the dynamite of a merely destructive democracy; but all that international maze lies to the left side of the road. Employment and unemployment are there; Marx and the Manchester School are there. The left side of the road may even go through amazing transformations of its own; its story may stride across abysses of anarchy; but it will never step across the road. The landlord’s estate may become a sort of Morris Utopia, organised communally by Socialists, or more probably by Guild Socialists. It may (as I fear is much more likely) pass through the stage of an employer’s model village to the condition of an old pagan slave-state. But the peasants across the road would not only refuse the Servile State, but would quite as resolutely refuse the Utopia. Europe may seem to be rent from end to end by the blast of a Bolshevist trumpet, sundering the bourgeois from the proletarian; but the peasant across the road is neither a bourgeois nor a proletarian. England may seem to be rent by an irreconcilable rivalry between Capital and Labour; but the peasant across the road is both a capitalist and a labourer. He is several other curious things; including the man who got his crops in first; who was literally first in the field. To an Englishman, especially a Londoner, this was like walking to the corner of a London street and finding the policeman in rags, with a patch on his trousers and a smudge on his face; but the crossing-sweeper wearing, a single eyeglass and a suit fresh from a West End tailor. In fact, it was nearly as surprising as a walking haystack or a talking cow. What was generally dingy, dilatory, and down-at-heels was here comparatively tidy and timely; what was orderly and organised was belated and broken down. For it must be sharply realised that the peasant proprietors succeeded here, not only because they were really proprietors, but because they were only peasants. It was because they were on a small scale that they were a great success. It was because they were too poor to have servants that they grew rich in spite of strikers. It was, so far as it went, the flattest possible contradiction to all that is said in England, both by Collectivists and Capitalists, about the efficiency of the great organisation. For in so far as it had failed, it had actually failed, not only through being great, but through being organised. On the left side of the road the big machine had stopped working, because it was a big machine. The small men were still working, because they were not machines. Such were the strange relations of the two things, that the stars in their courses fought against Capitalism; that the very clouds rolling over that rocky valley warred for its pigmies against its giants. The rain falls alike on the just and the unjust; yet here it had not fallen alike on the rich and poor, It had fallen to the destruction of the rich. Now I do, as a point of personal opinion, believe that the right side of the road was really the right side of the road. That is, I believe it represented the right side of the question; that these little pottering peasants had got hold of the true secret, which is missed both by Capitalism and Collectivism. But I am not here urging my own preferences on my own countrymen; and I am not concerned primarily to point out that this is an argument against Capitalism and Collectivism. What I do point out is that it is the fundamental argument against Unionism. Perhaps it is, on that ultimate level, the only argument against Unionism; which is probably why it is never used against Unionists. I mean, of course, that it was never really used against English Unionists by English Home Rulers, in the recriminations of that Irish Question which was really an English Question. The essential demanded of that question was merely that it should be an open question; a thing rather like an open wound. Modern industrial society is fond of problems, and therefore not at all fond of solutions. A consideration of those who really have understood this fundamental fact will be sufficient to show how confusing and useless are the mere party labels in the matter. George Wyndham was a Unionist who was deposed because he was a Home Ruler. Sir Horace Plunkett is a Unionist who is trusted because he is a Home Ruler. By far the most revolutionary piece of Nationalism that was ever really effected for Ireland was effected by Wyndham, who was an English Tory squire. And by far the most brutal and brainless piece of Unionism that was ever imposed on Ireland was imposed in the name of the Radical theory of Free Trade, when the Irish juries brought in verdicts of wilful murder against Lord John Russell. I say this to show that my sense of a reality is quite apart from the personal accident that I have myself always been a Radical in English politics, as well as a Home Ruler in Irish politics. But I say it even more in order to reaffirm that the English have first to forget all their old formula and look at a new fact. It is not a new fact; but it is new to them. To realise it, we must not only go outside the British parties but outside the British Empire, outside the very universe of the ordinary Briton. The real question can be easily stated, for it is as simple as it is large. What is going to happen to the peasantries of Europe, or for that matter of the whole world? It would be far better, as I have already suggested, if we could consider it as a new case of some peasantry in Europe, or somewhere else in the world. It would be far better if we ceased to talk of Ireland and Scotland, and began to talk of Ireland and Serbia. Let us, for the sake of our own mental composure, call this unfortunate people Slovenes. But let us realise that these remote Slovenes are, by the testimony of every truthful traveller, rooted in the habit of private property, and now ripening into a considerable private prosperity. It will often be necessary to remember that the Slovenes are Roman Catholics; and that, with that impatient pugnacity which marks the Slovene temperament, they have often employed violence, but always for the restoration of what they regarded as a reasonable system of private property. Now in a hundred determining districts, of which France is the most famous, this system has prospered. It has its own faults as well as its own merits; but it has prospered. What is going to happen to it? I will here confine myself to saying with the most solid confidence what is not going to happen to it. It is not going to be really ruled by Socialists; and it is not going to be really ruled by merchant princes, like those who ruled Venice or like those who rule England. It is not so much that England ought not to rule Ireland as that England cannot. It is not so much that Englishmen cannot rule Irishmen, as that merchants cannot rule peasants. It is not so much merely that we have dealt benefits to England and blows to Ireland. It is that our benefits for England would be blows to Ireland. And this we already began to admit in practice, before we had even dimly begun to conceive it in theory. We do not merely admit it in special laws against Ireland like the Coercion Acts, or special laws in favour of Ireland like the Land Acts; it is admitted even more by specially exempting Ireland than by specially studying Ireland. In other words, whatever else the Unionists want, they do not want to unite; they are not quite so mad as that. I cannot myself conceive any purpose in having one parliament except to pass one law; and one law for England and Ireland is simply something that becomes more insanely impossible every day. If the two societies were stationary, they would be sufficiently separate; but they are both moving rapidly in opposite directions. England may be moving towards a condition which some call Socialism, and I call Slavery; but whatever it is, Ireland is speeding farther and farther from it. Whatever it is, the men who manage it will no more be able to manage a European peasantry than the peasants in these mud cabins could manage the Stock Exchange. All attempts, whether imperial or international, to lump these peasants along with some large and shapeless thing called Labour, are part of a cosmopolitan illusion which sees mankind as a map. The world of the International is a pill, as round and as small. It is true that all men want health; but it is certainly not true that all men want the same medicine. Let us allow the cosmopolitan to survey the world from China to Peru; but do not let us allow the chemist to identify Chinese opium and Peruvian bark. My parallel about the Slovenes was only a fancy; yet I can give a real parallel from the Slavs which is a fact. It was a fact from my own experience in Ireland; and it exactly illustrates the real international sympathies of peasants. Their internationalism has nothing to do with the International. I had not been in Ireland many hours when several people mentioned to me with considerable excitement some news from the Continent. They were not, strange as it may seem, dancing with joy over the disaster of Caporetto, or glowing with admiration of the Crown Prince. Few really rejoiced in English defeats; and none really rejoiced in German victories. It was news about the Bolshevists; but it was not the news of how nobly they had given votes to the Russian women, nor of how savagely they had fired bullets into the Russian princesses. It was the news of a check to the Bolshevists; but it was not a glorification of Kerensky or Korniloff, or any of the newspaper heroes who seem to have satisfied us all, so long as their names began with K and nobody knew anything about them. In short, it was nothing that could be found in all our myriad newspaper articles on the subject. I would give an educated Englishman a hundred guesses about what it was; but even if he knew it, he would not know what it meant. It had appeared in the little paper about peasant produce so successfully conducted by Mr. George Russell, the celebrated “A. E.,” and it was told me eagerly by the poet himself, by a learned and brilliant Jesuit, and by several other people, as the great news from Europe. It was simply the news that the Jewish Socialists of the Bolshevist Government had been attempting to confiscate the peasants’ savings in the co-operative banks; and had been forced to desist. And they spoke of it as of a great battle won on the Danube or the Rhine. That is what I mean when I say that these people are of a pattern and belong to a system which cuts across all our own political divisions. They felt themselves fighting the Socialists as fiercely as any Capitalist can feel it; but they not only knew what they were fighting against, but what they were fighting for; which is more than the Capitalist does. I do not know how far modern Europe really shows a menace of Bolshevism, or how far merely a panic of Capitalism. But I know that if any honest resistance has to be offered to mere robbery, the resistance of Ireland will be the most honest, and probably the most important. It may be that international Israel will launch against us out of the East an insane simplification of the unity of Man, as Islam once launched out of the East an insane simplification of the unity of God. If it be so, it is where property is well distributed that it will be well defended. The post of honour will be with those who fight in very truth for their own land. If ever there came such a drive of wild dervishes against us, it would be the chariots and elephants of plutocracy that would roll in confusion and rout; and the squares of the peasant infantry would stand. Anyhow, the first fact to realise is that we are dealing with a European peasantry; and it would be really better, as I say, to think of it first as a Continental peasantry. There are numberless important inferences from this fact; but there is one point, politically topical and urgent, on which I may well touch here. It will be well to understand about this peasantry something that we generally misunderstand, even about a Continental peasantry. English tourists in France or Italy commonly make the mistake of supposing that the people cheat, because the people bargain, or attempt to bargain. When a peasant asks tenpence for something that is worth fourpence, the tourist misunderstands the whole problem. He commonly solves it by calling the man a thief and paying the tenpence. There are ten thousand errors in this, beginning with the primary error of an oligarchy, of treating a man as a servant when he feels more like a small squire. The peasant does not choose to receive insults; but he never expected to receive tenpence. A man who understood him would simply suggest twopence, in a calm and courteous manner; and the two would eventually meet in the middle at a perfectly just price. There would not be what we call a fixed price at the beginning, but there would be a very firmly fixed price at the end: that is, the bargain once made would be a sacredly sealed contract. The peasant, so far from cheating, has his own horror of cheating; and certainly his own fury at being cheated. Now in the political bargain with the English, the Irish simply think they have been cheated. They think Home Rule was stolen from them after the contract was sealed; and it will be hard for any one to contradict them. If “le Roi le veult” is not a sacred seal on a contract, what is? The sentiment is stronger because the contract was a compromise. Home Rule was the fourpence and not the tenpence; and, in perfect loyalty to the peasant’s code of honour, they have now reverted to the tenpence. The Irish have now returned in a reaction of anger to their most extreme demands; not because we denied what they demanded, but because we denied what we accepted. As I shall have occasion to note, there are other and wilder elements in the quarrel; but the first fact to remember is that the quarrel began with a bargain, that it will probably have to end with another bargain; and that it will be a bargain with peasants. On the whole, in spite of abominable blunders and bad faith, I think there is still a chance of bargaining, but we must see that there is no chance of cheating. We may haggle like peasants, and remember that their first offer is not necessarily their last. But we must be as honest as peasants; and that is very hard for politicians. The great Parnell, a squire who had many of the qualities of a peasant (qualities the English so wildly misunderstood as to think them English, when they were really very Irish), converted his people from a Fenianism fiercer than Sinn Fein to a Home Rule more moderate than that which sane statesmanship could now offer to Ireland. But the peasants trusted Parnell, not because they thought he was asking for it, but because they thought he could get it. Whatever we decide to give to Ireland, we must give it; it is now worse than useless to promise it. I will say here, once and for all, the hardest thing that an Englishman has to say of his impressions of another great European people: that over all those hills and valleys our word is wind, and our bond is waste paper. But, in any case, the peasantry remains: and the whole weight of the matter is that it will remain. It is much more certain to remain than any of the commercial or colonial systems that will have to bargain with it. We may honestly think that the British Empire is both more liberal and more lasting than the Austrian Empire, or other large political combinations. But a combination like the Austrian Empire could go to pieces, and ten such combinations could go to pieces, before people like the Serbians ceased to desire to be peasants, and to demand to be free peasants. And the British combination, precisely because it is a combination and not a community, is in its nature more lax and liable to real schism than this sort of community, which might almost be called a communion. Any attack on it is like an attempt to abolish grass; which is not only the symbol of it in the old national song, but it is a very true symbol of it in any new philosophic history; a symbol of its equality, its ubiquity, its multiplicity, and its mighty power to return. To fight against grass is to fight against God; we can only so mismanage our own city and our own citizenship that the grass grows in our own streets. And even then it is our streets that will be dead; and the grass will still be alive.
III. The Family and the Feud
There was an old joke of my childhood, to the effect that men might be grouped together with reference to their Christian names. I have forgotten the cases then under consideration; but contemporary examples would be sufficiently suggestive to-day. A ceremonial brotherhood-in-arms between Father Bernard Vaughan and Mr. Bernard Shaw seems full of possibilities. I am faintly pleased with the fancy of Mr. Arnold Bennett endeavouring to extract the larger humanities of fiction from the political differences of Mr. Arnold White and Mr. Arnold Lupton. I should pass my own days in the exclusive society of Professor Gilbert Murray and Sir Gilbert Parker; whom I can conceive as differing on some points from each other, and on some points from me. Now there is one odd thing to notice about this old joke; that it might have been taken in a more serious spirit, though in a saner style, in a yet older period. This fantasy of the Victorian Age might easily have been a fact of the Middle Ages. There would have been nothing abnormal in the moral atmosphere of mediaevalism in some feast or pageant celebrating the fellowship of men who had the same patron saint. It seems mad and meaningless now, because the meaning of Christian names has been lost. They have fallen into a kind of chaos and oblivion which is highly typical of our time. I mean that there are still fashions in them, but no longer reasons for them. For a fashion is a custom without a cause. A fashion is a custom to which men cannot get accustomed; simply because it is without a cause. That is why our industrial societies, touching every topic from the cosmos to the coat-collars, are merely swept by a succession of modes which are merely moods. They are customs that fail to be customary. And so, amid all our fashions in Christian names, we have forgotten all that was meant by the custom of Christian names. We have forgotten all the original facts about a Christian name; but, above all, the fact that it was Christian. Now if we note this process going on in the world of London or Liverpool, we shall see that it has already gone even farther and fared even worse. The surname also is losing its root and therefore its reason. The surname has become as solitary as a nickname. For it might be argued that the first name is meant to be an individual and even isolated thing; but the last name is certainly meant, by all logic and history, to link a man with his human origins, habits, or habitation. Historically, it was a word taken from the town he lived in or the trade guild to which he belonged; legally it is still the word on which all questions of legitimacy, succession, and testamentary arrangements turn. It is meant to be the corporate name; in that sense it is meant to be the impersonal name, as the other is meant to be the personal name. Yet in the modern mode of industrialism, it is more and more taken in a manner at once lonely and light. Any corporate social system built upon it would seem as much of a joke as the joke about Christian names with which I began. If it would seem odd to require a Thomas to make friends with any other Thomas, it would appear almost as perplexing to insist that any Thompson must love any other Thompson. It may be that Sir Edward Henry, late of the Police Force, does not wish to be confined to the society of Mr. Edward Clodd. But would Sir Edward Henry necessarily have sought the society of Mr. O. Henry, entertaining as that society would have been? Sir John Barker, founder of the great Kensington emporium, need not specially seek out and embrace Mr. John Masefield; but need he, any more swiftly, precipitate himself into the arms of Mr. Granville Barker? This vista of varieties would lead us far; but it is enough to notice, nonsense apart, that the most ordinary English surnames have become unique in their social significance; they stand for the man rather than the race or the origins. Even when they are most common they are not communal. What we call the family name is not now primarily the name of the family. The family itself, as a corporate conception, has already faded into the background, and is in danger of fading from the background. In short, our Christian names are not the only Christian things that we may lose. Now the second solid fact which struck me in Ireland (after the success of small property and the failure of large organisation) was the fact that the family was in a flatly contrary position. All I have said above, in current language, about the whole trend of the modern world, is directly opposite to the whole trend of the modern Irish world. Not only is the Christian name a Christian name; but (what seems still more paradoxical and even pantomimic) the family name is really a family name. Touching the first of the two, it would be easy to trace out some very interesting truths about it, if they did not divert us from the main truth of this chapter: the second great truth about Ireland. People contrasting the “education” of the two countries, or seeking to extend to the one the thing which is called education in the other, might indeed do worse than study the simple problem of the meaning of Christian names. It might dawn at last, even on educationists, that there is a value in the content as well as the extent of culture; or (in other words), that knowing nine hundred words is not always more important than knowing what some of them mean. It is strictly and soberly true that any peasant, in a mud cabin in County Clare, when he names his child Michael, may really have a sense of the presence that smote down Satan, the arms and plumage of the paladin of Paradise. I doubt whether it is so overwhelmingly probable that any clerk in any villa on Clapham Common, when he names his son John, has a vision of the holy eagle of the Apocalypse, or even of the mystical cup of the disciple whom Jesus loved. In the face of that simple fact, I have no doubt about which is the more educated man; and even a knowledge of the Daily Mail does not redress the balance. It is often said, and possibly truly, that the peasant named Michael cannot write his own name. But it is quite equally true that the clerk named John cannot read his own name. He cannot read it because it is in a foreign language, and he has never been made to realise what it stands for. He does not know that John means John, as the other man does know that Michael means Michael. In that rigidly realistic sense, the pupil of industrial intellectualism does not even know his own name. But this is a parenthesis; because the point here is that the man in the street (as distinct from the man in the field) has been separated not only from his private but from his more public description. He has not only forgotten his name, but forgotten his address. In my own view, he is like one of those unfortunate people who wake up with their minds a blank, and therefore cannot find their way home. But whether or no we take this view of the state of things in an industrial society like the English, we must realise firmly that a totally opposite state of things exists in an agricultural society like the Irish. We may put it, if we like, in the form of an unfamiliar and even unfriendly fancy. We may say that the house is greater than the man; that the house is an amiable ogre that runs after and recaptures the man. But the fact is there, familiar or unfamiliar, friendly or unfriendly; and the fact is the family. The family pride is prodigious; though it generally goes along with glowing masses of individual humility. And this family sentiment does attach itself to the family name; so that the very language in which men think is made up of family names. In this the atmosphere is singularly unlike that of England though much more like that of Scotland. Indeed, it will illustrate the impartial recognition of this, apart from any partisan deductions, that it is equally apparent in the place where Ireland and Scotland are supposed to meet. It is equally apparent in Ulster, and even in the Protestant corner of Ulster. In all the Ulster propaganda I came across, I think the thing that struck me most sharply was one phrase in one Unionist leading article. It was something that might fairly be called Scottish; something which was really even more Irish; but something which could not in the wildest mood be called English, and therefore could not with any rational meaning be called Unionist. Yet it was part of a passionately sincere, and indeed truly human and historic outburst of the politics of the northeast corner, against the politics of the rest of Ireland. Most of us remember that Sir Edward Carson put into the Government a legal friend of his named Campbell; it was at the beginning of the war, and few of us thought anything of the matter except that it was stupid to give posts to Carsonites at the most delicate crisis of the cause in Ireland. Since then, as we also know, the same Campbell has shown himself a sensible man, which I should translate as a practical Home Ruler; but which is anyhow something more than what is generally meant by a Carsonite. I entertain myself, a profound suspicion that Carson also would very much like to be something more than a Carsonite. But however this may be, his legal friend of whom I speak made an excellent speech, containing some concession to Irish popular sentiment. As might have been expected, there were furious denunciations of him in the press of the Orange party; but not more furious than might have been found in the Morning Post or the Saturday Review. Nevertheless, there was one phrase that I certainly never saw in the Morning Post or the Saturday Review; one phrase I should never expect to see in any English paper, though I might very probably see it in a Scotch paper. It was this sentence, that was read to me from the leading article of a paper in Belfast: “There never was treason yet but a Campbell was at the bottom of it.” Let anybody imagine an Englishman saying, about some business quarrel, “How like an Atkins!” or “What could you expect of a Wilkinson?” A moment’s reflection will show that it would be even more impossible touching public men in public quarrels. No English Liberal ever connected the earlier exploits of the present Lord Birkenhead with atavistic influences, or the totem of the wide and wandering tribe of Smith. No English patriot traced back the family tree of any English pacifist; or said there was never treason yet but a Pringle was at the bottom of it. It is the indefinite article that is here the definite distinction. It is the expression “a Campbell” which suddenly transforms the scene, and covers the robes of one lawyer with the ten thousand tartans of a whole clan. Now that phrase is the phrase that meets the traveller everywhere in Ireland. Perhaps the next most arresting thing I remember, after the agrarian revolution, was the way in which one poor Irishman happened to speak to me about Sir Roger Casement. He did not praise him as a deliverer of Ireland; he did not abuse him as a disgrace to Ireland; he did not say anything of the twenty things one might expect him to say. He merely referred to the rumour that Casement meant to become a Catholic just before his execution, and expressed a sort of distant interest in it. He added: “He’s always been a Black Protestant. All the Casements are Black Protestants.” I confess that, at the moment of that morbid story, there seemed to me to be something unearthly about the very idea of there being other Casements. If ever a man seemed solitary, if ever a man seemed unique to the point of being unnatural, it was that man on the two or three occasions when I have seen his sombre handsome face and his wild eyes; a tall, dark figure walking already in the shadow of a dreadful doom. I do not know if he was a Black Protestant; but he was a black something; in the sad if not the bad sense of the symbol. I fancy, in truth, he stood rather for the third of Browning’s famous triad of rhyming monosyllables. A distinguished Nationalist Member, who happened to have had a medical training, said to me, “I was quite certain when I first clapped eyes on him; the man was mad.” Anyhow the man was so unusual, that it would never have occurred to me or any of my countrymen to talk as if there were a class or clan of such men. I could almost have imagined he had been born without father or mother. But for the Irish, his father and mother were really more important than he was. There is said to be a historical mystery about whether Parnell made a pun, when he said that the name of Kettle was a household word in Ireland. Few symbols could now be more contrary than the name of Kettle and the name of Casement (save for the courage they had in common); for the younger Kettle, who died so gloriously in France, was a Nationalist as broad as the other was cramped, and as sane as the other was crazy. But if the fancy of a punster, following his own delightful vein of nonsense, should see something quaint in the image of a hundred such Kettles singing as he sang by a hundred hearths, a more bitter jester, reading that black and obscure story of the capture on the coast, might utter a similar flippancy about other Casements, opening on the foam of such very perilous seas, in a land so truly forlorn. But even if we were not annoyed at the pun, we should be surprised at the plural. And our surprise would be the measure of the deepest difference between England and Ireland. To express it in the same idle imagery it would be the fact that even a casement is a part of a house, as a kettle is a part of a household. Every word in Irish is a household word. The English would no more have thought of a plural for the word Gladstone than for the word God. They would never have imagined Disraeli compassed about with a great cloud of Disraelis; it would have seemed to them altogether too Apocalyptic, and exaggeration of being on the side of the angels. To this day in England, as I have reason to know, it is regarded as a rabid and insane form of religious persecution to suggest that a Jew very probably comes of a Jewish family. In short, the modern English, while their rulers are willing to give due consideration to Eugenics as a reasonable opportunity for various forms of polygamy and infanticide, are drifting farther and farther from the only consideration of Eugenics that could possibly be fit for Christian men, the consideration of it as an accomplished fact. I have spoken of infanticide; but indeed the ethic involved is rather that of parricide and matricide. To my own taste, the present tendency of social reform would seem to consist of destroying all traces of the parents, in order to study the heredity of the children. But I do not here ask the reader to accept my own tastes or even opinions about these things; I only bear witness to an objective fact about a foreign country. It can be summed up by saying that Parnell is the Parnell for the English; but a Parnell for the Irish. This is what I mean when I say that English Home Rulers do not know what the Irish mean by home. And this is also what I mean when I say that the society does not fit into any of our social classifications, liberal or conservative. To many Radicals this sense of lineage will appear rank reactionary aristocracy. And it is aristocratic, if we mean by this a pride of pedigree; but it is not aristocratic in the practical and political sense. Strange as it may sound, its practical effect is democratic. It is not aristocratic in the sense of creating an aristocracy. On the contrary, it is perhaps the one force that permanently prevents the creation of an aristocracy, in the manner of the English squirearchy. The reason of this apparent paradox can be put plainly enough in one sentence. If you are really concerned about your relations, you have to be concerned about your poor relations. You soon discover that a considerable number of your second cousins exhibit a strong social tendency to be chimney-sweeps and tinkers. You soon learn the lesson of human equality if you try honestly and consistently to learn any other lesson, even the lesson of heraldry and genealogy. For good or evil, a real working aristocracy has to forget about three-quarters of its aristocrats. It has to discard the poor who have the genteel blood, and welcome the rich who can live the genteel life. If a man is interesting because he is a McCarthy, it is, so far, as he is interesting because he is a man; that is, he is interesting whether he is a duke or a dustman. But if he is interesting because he is Lord FitzArthur and lives at FitzArthur House, then he is interesting when he has merely bought the house, or when he has merely bought the title. To maintain a squirearchy, it is necessary to admire the new squire; and therefore to forget the old squire. The sense of family is like a dog and follows the family; the sense of oligarchy is like a cat and continues to haunt the house. I am not arguing against aristocracy if the English choose to preserve it in England; I am only making clear the terms on which they hold it, and warning them that a people with a strong family sense will not hold it on any terms. Aristocracy, as it has flourished in England since the Reformation, with not a little national glory and commercial success, is in its very nature built up of broken and desecrated homes. It has to destroy a hundred poor relations to keep up a family. It has to destroy a hundred families to keep up a class. But if this family spirit is incompatible with what we mean by aristocracy, it is quite as incompatible with three-quarters of what many men praise and preach as democracy. The whole trend of what has been regarded as liberal legislation in England, necessary or unnecessary, defensible and indefensible, has for good or evil been at the expense of the independence of the family, especially of the poor family. From the first most reasonable restraints of the Factory Acts to the last most maniacal antics of interference with other people’s nursery games or Christmas dinners, the whole process has turned sometimes on the pivot of the state, more often on the pivot of the employer, but never on the pivot of the home. All this may be an emancipation; I only point out that Ireland really asked for Home Rule chiefly to be emancipated from this emancipation. But indeed the English politicians, to do them justice, show their consciousness of this by the increasing number of cases in which the other nation is exempted. We may have harried this unhappy people with our persecutions; but at least we spare them our reforms. We have smitten them with plagues; but at least we dare not scourge them with our remedies. The real case against the Union is not merely a case against the Unionists; it is a far stronger case against the Universalists. It is this strange and ironic truth; that a man stands up holding a charter of charity and peace for all mankind; that he lays down a law of enlightened justice for all the nations of the earth, that he claims to behold man from the beginnings of his evolution equal, without any difference between the most distant creeds and colours; that he stands as the orator of the human race whose statute only declares all humanity to be human; and then slightly drops his voice and says, “This Act shall not apply to Ireland.”
IV. The Paradox of Labour
My first general and visual impression of the green island was that it was not green but brown; that it was positively brown with khaki. This is one of those experiences that cannot be confused with expectations; the sort of small thing that is seen but not foreseen in the verbal visions of books and newspapers. I knew, of course, that we had a garrison in Dublin, but I had no notion that it was so obvious all over Dublin. I had no notion that it had been considered necessary to occupy the country in such force, or with so much parade of force. And the first thought that flashed through my mind found words in the single sentence: “How useful these men would have been in the breach at St. Quentin.” For I went to Dublin towards the end of 1918 and not long after those awful days which led up to the end of the war, and seemed more like the end of the world. There hung still in the imagination, as above a void of horror, that line that was the last chain of the world’s chivalry; and the memory of the day when it seemed that our name and our greatness and our glory went down before the annihilation from the north. Ireland is hardly to blame if she has never known how noble an England was in peril in that hour; or for what beyond any empire we were troubled, when, under a cloud of thick darkness, we almost felt her ancient foundations move upon the floor of the sea. But I, as an Englishman at least, knew it; and it was for England and not for Ireland that I felt this first impatience and tragic irony. I had always doubted the military policy that culminated in Irish conscription, and merely on military grounds. If any policy of the English could deserve to be called in the proverbial sense Irish, I think it was this one. It was wasting troops in Ireland because we wanted them in France. I had the same purely patriotic and even pugnacious sense of annoyance, mingling with my sense of pathos, in the sight of the devastation of the great Dublin street, which had been bombarded by the British troops during the Easter Rebellion. I was distressed that such a cannonade had ever been aimed at the Irish; but even more distressed that it had not been aimed at the Germans. The question of the necessity of the heavy attack, like the question of the necessity of the large army of occupation, is of course bound up with the history of the Easter Rebellion itself. That strange and dramatic event, which came quite as unexpectedly to Nationalist Ireland as to Unionist England, is no part of my own experiences, and I will not dogmatise on so dark a problem. But I will say in passing that I suspect a certain misunderstanding of its very nature to be common on both sides. Everything seems to point to the paradox that the rebels needed the less to be conquered, because they were actually aiming at being conquered, rather than at being conquerors. In the moral sense they were certainly heroes, but I doubt if they expected to be conquering heroes. They desired to be in the Greek and literal sense martyrs; they wished not so much to win as to witness. They thought that nothing but their dead bodies could really prove that Ireland was not dead. How far this sublime and suicidal ideal was really useful in reviving national enthusiasm, it is for Irishmen to judge; I should have said that the enthusiasm was there anyhow. But if any such action is based on international hopes, as they affect England or a great part of America, it seems to me it is founded on a fallacy about the facts. I shall have occasion to note many English errors about the Irish; and this seems to me a very notable Irish error about the English. If we are often utterly mistaken about their mentality, they were quite equally mistaken about our mistake. And curiously enough, they failed through not knowing the one compliment that we had really always paid them. Their act presupposed that Irish courage needed proof; and it never did. I have heard all the most horrible nonsense talked against Ireland before the war; and I never heard Englishmen doubt Irish military valour. What they did doubt was Irish political sanity. It will be seen at once that the Easter action could only disprove the prejudice they hadn’t got; and actually confirmed the prejudice they had got. The charge against the Irishman was not a lack of boldness, but rather an excess of it. Men were right in thinking him brave, and they could not be more right. But they were wrong in thinking him mad, and they had an excellent opportunity to be more wrong. Then, when the attempt to fight against England developed by its own logic into a refusal to fight for England, men took away the number they first thought of; and were irritated into denying what they had originally never dreamed of doubting. In any case, this was, I think, the temper in which the minority of the true Sinn Feiners sought martyrdom. I for one will never sneer at such a motive; but it would hardly have amounted to so great a movement but for another force that happened to ally itself with them. It is for the sake of this that I have here begun with the Easter tragedy itself; for with the consideration of this we come to the paradox of Irish Labour. Some of my remarks on the stability and even repose of a peasant society may seem exaggerated in the light of a Labour agitation that breaks out in Ireland as elsewhere. But I have particular and even personal reasons for regarding that agitation as the exception that proves the rule. It was the background of the peasant landscape that made the Dublin strike the peculiar sort of drama that it was; and this operated in two ways: first, by isolating the industrial capitalist as something exceptional and almost fanatical; and second, by reinforcing the proletariat with a vague tradition of property. My own sympathies were all with Larkin and Connolly as against the late Mr. Murphy; but it is curious to note that even Mr. Murphy was quite a different kind of man from the Lord Something who is the head of a commercial combine in England. He was much more like some morbid prince of the fifteenth century, full of cold anger, not without perverted piety. But the first few words I heard about him in Ireland were full of that vast, vague fact which I have tried to put first among my impressions. I have called it the family; but it covers many cognate things: youth and old friendships, not to mention old quarrels. It might be more fully defined as a realism about origins. The first things I heard about Murphy were facts of his forgotten youth, or a youth that would in England have been forgotten. They were tales about friends of his poorer days, with whom he had set out to push some more or less sentimental vendetta against somebody. Suppose whenever we talked of Harrod’s Stores we heard first about the boyish day-dreams of Harrod. Suppose the mention of Bradshaw’s Railway Guide brought up tales of feud and first love in the early life of Mr. Bradshaw, or even of Mrs. Bradshaw. That is the atmosphere, to be felt rather than described, that a stranger in Ireland feels around him. English journalism and gossip, dealing with English business men, are often precise about the present and prophetic about the future, but seldom communicative about the past; et pour cause. They will tell us where the capitalist is going to, as to the House of Lords, or to Monte Carlo, or inferentially to heaven; but they say as little as possible about where he comes from. In Ireland a man carries the family mansion about with him like a snail; and his father’s ghost follows him like his shadow. Everything good and bad that could be said was said, not only about Murphy but about Murphys. An anecdote of the old Irish Parliament describes an orator as gracefully alluding to the presence of an opponent’s sister in the Ladies’ Gallery, by praying that wrath overtake the whole accursed generation “from the toothless old hag who is grinning in the gallery to the white-livered poltroon who is shivering on the floor.” The story is commonly told as suggesting the rather wild disunion of Irish parties; but it is quite as serious a suggestion of the union of Irish families. As a matter of fact, the great Dublin Strike, a conflagration of which the embers were still glowing at the time of my visit, involved another episode which illustrates once again this recurrent principle of the reality of the family in Ireland. Some English Socialists, it may be remembered, moved by an honourable pity for the poor families starving during the strike, made a proposal for taking the children away and feeding them properly in England. I should have thought the more natural course would have been to give money or food to the parents. But the philanthropists, being English and being Socialists, probably had a trust in what is called organisation and a distrust of what is called charity. It is supposed that charity makes a man dependent; though in fact charity makes him independent, as compared with the dreary dependence usually produced by organisation. Charity gives property, and therefore liberty. There is manifestly much more emancipation in giving a beggar a shilling to spend, than in sending an official after him to spend it for him. The Socialists, however, had placidly arranged for the deportation of all the poor children, when they found themselves, to their astonishment, confronted with the red-hot reality called the religion of Ireland. The priests and the families of the faithful organised themselves for a furious agitation, on the ground that the faith would be lost in foreign and heretical homes. They were not satisfied with the assurance, which some of the Socialists earnestly offered, that the faith would not be tampered with; and as a matter of clear thinking, I think they were quite right. Those who offer such a reassurance have never thought about what a religion is. They entertain the extraordinary idea that religion is a topic. They think religion is a thing like radishes, which can be avoided throughout a particular conversation with a particular person, whom the mention of a radish may convulse with anger or agony. But a religion is simply the world a man inhabits. In practice, a Socialist living in Liverpool would not know when he was, or was not tampering with the religion of a child born in Louth. If I were given the complete control of an infant Parsee (which is fortunately unlikely) I should not have the remotest notion of when I was most vitally reflecting on the Parsee system. But common sense, and a comprehension of the meaning of a coherent philosophy, would lead me to suspect that I was reflecting on it every other minute. But I mention the matter here, not in order to enter into any of these disputes, but to give yet another example of the way in which the essentially domestic organisation of Ireland will always rise in rebellion against any other organisation. There is something of a parable in the tales of the old evictions, in which the whole family was besieged and resisted together and the mothers emptied boiling kettles on the besiegers; for any official who interferes with them will certainly get into hot water. We cannot separate mothers and children in that strange land; we can only return to some of our older historical methods, and massacre them together. A small incident within my own short experience, however, illustrated the main point involved here; the sense of a peasant base, even of the proletarian attack. And this was exemplified not in any check to Labour, but rather in a success for Labour, in so far as the issue of a friendly and informal debate may be classed with its more solid successes. The business originally began with a sort of loose-jointed literary lecture which I gave in the Dublin Theatre, in connection with which I only mention two incidents in passing, because they both struck me as peculiarly native and national. One concerned only the title of my address, which was “Poetry and Property.” An educated English gentleman, who happened to speak to me before the meeting, said with the air of one who foresees that such jokes will be the death of him, “Well, I have simply given up puzzling about what you can possibly mean, by talking about poetry as something to do with property.” He probably regarded the combination of words as a mere alliterative fantasy, like Peacocks and Paddington, or Polygamy and Potatoes; if indeed he did not regard it as a mere combination of incompatible contrasts, like Popery and Protestants, or Patriotism and Politicians. On the same day an Irishman of similar social standing remarked quite carelessly, “I’ve just seen your subject for to-morrow. I suppose the Socialists won’t agree with you,” or words to that effect. The two terms told him at once, not about the lecture (which was literary if it was anything), but about the whole philosophy underlying the lecture; the whole of that philosophy which the lumbering elephant called by Mr. Shaw the Chester-Belloc laboriously toils to explain in England, under the ponderous title of Distributivism. As Mr. Hugh Law once said, equally truly, about our pitting of patriotism against imperialism, “What is a paradox in England is a commonplace in Ireland.” My actual monologue, however, dealt merely with the witness of poetry to a certain dignity in man’s sense of private possessions, which is certainly not either vulgar ostentation or vulgar greed. The French poet of the Pleiade remembers the slates on his own roof almost as if he could count them; and Mr. W. B. Yeats, in the very wildest vision of a loneliness remote and irresponsible, is careful to make it clear that he knows how many bean-rows make nine. Of course there were people of all parties in the theatre, wild Sinn Feiners and conventional Unionists, but they all listened to my remarks as naturally as they might have all listened to an equally incompetent lecture on Monkeys or on the Mountains of the Moon. There was not a word of politics, least of all party politics, in that particular speech; it was concerned with a tradition in art, or at the most, in abstract ethics. But the one amusing thing which makes me recall the whole incident was this; that when I had finished, a stalwart, hearty, heavy sort of legal gentleman, a well-known Irish judge I understand, was kind enough to move a vote of thanks to me. And what amused me about him was this: that while I, who am a Radical in sympathy with the revolutionary legend, had delivered a mild essay on minor poets to a placid if bored audience, the judge, who was a pillar of the Castle and a Conservative sworn to law and order, proceeded with the utmost energy and joy to raise a riot. He taunted the Sinn Feiners and dared them to come out; he trailed his coat if ever a man trailed it in this world; he glorified England; not the Allies, but England; splendid England, sublime England (all in the broadest brogue), just, wise, and merciful England, and so on, flourishing what was not even the flag of his own country, and a thing that had not the remotest connection with the subject in hand, any more than the Great Wall of China. I need not say that the theatre was soon in a roar of protests and repartees; which I suppose was what he wanted. He was a jolly old gentleman; and I liked him. But what interested me about him was this; and it is of some importance in the understanding of his nationality. That sort of man exists in England; I know and like scores of him. Often he is a major; often a squire; sometimes a judge; very occasionally a dean. Such a man talks the most ridiculous reactionary nonsense in an apoplectic fashion over his own port wine; and occasionally in a somewhat gasping manner at an avowedly political meeting. But precisely what the English gentleman would not do, and the Irish gentleman did do, would be to make a scene on a non-political occasion; when all he had to do was to move a formal vote of thanks to a total stranger who was talking about Ithaca and Innisfree. An English Conservative would be less likely to do it than an English Radical. The same thing that makes him conventionally political would make him conventionally non-political. He would hate to make too serious a speech on too social an occasion, as he would hate to be in morning-dress when every one else was in evening-dress. And whatever coat he wore he certainly would not trail it solely in order to make a disturbance, as did that jolly Irish judge. He taught me that the Irishman is never so Irish, as when he is English. He was very like some of the Sinn Feiners who shouted him down; and he would be pleased to know that he helped me to understand them with a greater sympathy. I have wandered from the subject in speaking of this trifle, thinking it worth while to note the positive and provocative quality of all Irish opinion; but it was my purpose only to mention this small dispute as leading up to another. I had some further talk about poetry and property with Mr. Yeats at the Dublin Arts Club; and here again I am tempted to irrelevant, but for me interesting matters. For I am conscious throughout of saying less than I could wish of a thousand things, my omission of which is not altogether thoughtless, far less thankless. There have been and will be better sketches than mine of all that attractive society, the paradox of an intelligentsia that is intelligent. I could write a great deal, not only about those I value as my own friends, like Katherine Tynan or Stephen Gwynn, but about men with whom my meeting was all too momentary; about the elvish energy conveyed by Mr. James Stephens; the social greatness of Dr. Gogarty, who was like a literary legend of the eighteenth century; of the unique universalism of A. E., who has something of the presence of William Morris, and a more transcendental type of the spiritual hospitality of Walt Whitman. But I am not in this rough sketch trying to tell Irishmen what they know already, but trying to tell Englishmen some of the large and simple things that they do not know. The large matter concerned here is Labour; and I have only paused upon the other points because they were the steps which accidentally led up to my first meeting with this great force. And it was none the less a fact in support of my argument, because it was something of a joke against myself. On the occasion I have mentioned, a most exhilarating evening at the Arts Club, Mr. Yeats asked me to open a debate at the Abbey Theatre, defending property on its more purely political side. My opponent was one of the ablest of the leaders of Liberty Hall, the famous stronghold of Labour politics in Dublin, Mr. Johnson, an Englishman like myself, but one deservedly popular with the proletarian Irish. He made a most admirable speech, to which I mean no disparagement when I say that I think his personal popularity had even more weight than his personal eloquence. My own argument was confined to the particular value of small property as a weapon of militant democracy; and was based on the idea that the citizen resisting injustice could find no substitute for private property, for every other impersonal power, however democratic in theory, must be bureaucratic in form. I said, as a flippant figure of speech, that committing property to any officials, even guild officials, was like having to leave one’s legs in the cloakroom along with one’s stick or umbrella. The point is that a man may want his legs at any minute, to kick a man or to dance with a lady; and recovering them may be postponed by any hitch, from the loss of the ticket to the criminal flight of the official. So in a social crisis, such as a strike, a man must be ready to act without officials who may hamper or betray him; and I asked whether many more strikes would not have been successful, if each striker had owned so much as a kitchen garden to help him to live. My opponent replied that he had always been in favour of such a reserve of proletarian property, but preferred it to be communal rather than individual; which seems to me to leave my argument where it was; for what is communal must be official, unless it is to be chaotic. Two minor jokes, somewhat at my expense, remain in my memory; I appear to have caused some amusement by cutting a pencil with a very large Spanish knife, which I value (as it happens) as the gift of an Irish priest who is a friend of mine, and which may therefore also be regarded as a symbolic weapon, a sort of sword of the spirit. Whether the audience thought I was about to amputate my own legs in illustration of my own metaphor, or that I was going to cut Mr. Johnson’s throat in fury at finding no reply to his arguments, I do not know. The other thing which struck me as funny was an excellent retort by Mr. Johnson himself, who had said something about the waste of property on guns, and who interrupted my remark that there would never be a good revolution without guns, by humorously calling out, “Treason.” As I told him afterwards, few scenes would be more artistic than that of an Englishman, sent over to recruit for the British army, being collared and given up to justice (or injustice) by a Pacifist from Liberty Hall. But all throughout the proceedings I was conscious, as I say, of a very real popular feeling supporting the mere personality of my opponent; as in the ovation he received before he spoke at all, or the applause given to a number of his topical asides, allusions which I could not always understand. After the meeting a distinguished Southern Unionist, who happens to own land outside Dublin, said to me, “Of course, Johnson has just had a huge success in his work here. Liberty Hall has just done something that has really never been done before in the whole Trade Union movement. He has really managed to start a Trade Union for agricultural labourers. I know, because I’ve had to meet their demands. You know how utterly impossible it has always been really to found a union of agricultural labourers in England.” I did know it; and I also knew why it had been possible to found one in Ireland. It had been possible for the very reason I had been urging all the evening; that behind the Irish proletariat there had been the tradition of an Irish peasantry. In their families, if not in themselves, there had been some memory of the personal love of the land. But it seemed to me an interesting irony that even my own defeat was an example of my own doctrine; and that the truth on my side was proved by the popularity of the other side. The agricultural guild was due to a wind of freedom that came into that dark city from very distant fields; and the truth that even these rolling stones of homeless proletarianism had been so lately loosened from the very roots of the mountains. In Ireland even the industrialism is not industrial. That is what I mean by saying that Irish Labour is the exception that proves the rule. That is why it does not contradict my former generalisation that our capitalist crisis is on the English side of the road. The Irish agricultural labourers can become guildsman because they would like to become peasants. They think of rich and poor in the manner that is as old as the world; the manner of Ahab and Naboth. It matters little in a peasant society whether Ahab takes the vineyard privately as Ahab or officially as King of Israel. It will matter as little in the long run, even in the other kind of society, whether Naboth has a wage to work in the vineyard, or a vote that is supposed in some way to affect the vineyard. What he desires to have is the vineyard; and not in apologetic cynicism or vulgar evasions that business is business, but in thunder, as from a secret throne comes the awful voice out of the vineyard; the voice of this manner of man in every age and nation: “The Lord forbid that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee.”
V. The Englishman in Ireland
With no desire to decorate my travels with too tall a traveller’s tale, I must record the fact that I found one point upon which all Irishmen were agreed. It was the fact that, for some reason or other, there had been a very hopeful beginning of Irish volunteering at the beginning of the war; and that, for some reason or other, this had failed in the course of the war. The reasons alleged differed widely with the moods of men; some had regarded the beginnings with hope and some with suspicion; some had lived to regard the failure with a bitter pleasure, and some with a generous pain. The different factions gave different explanations of why the thing had stopped; but they all agreed that it had begun. The Sinn Feiner said that the people soon found they had been lured into a Saxon trap, set for them by smooth, subservient Saxons like Mr. Devlin and Mr. Tim Healy. The Belfast citizen suggested that the Popish priest had terrorised the peasants when they tried to enlist, producing a thumbscrew from his pocket and a portable rack from his handbag. The Parliamentary Nationalist blamed both Sinn Fein and the persecution of Sinn Fein. The British Government officials, if they did not exactly blame themselves, at least blamed each other. The ordinary Southern Unionist (who played many parts of a more or less sensible sort, including that of a Home Ruler) generally agreed with the ordinary Nationalist that the Government’s recruiting methods had been as bad as its cause was good. But it is manifest that multitudes at the beginning of the war thought it really had a very good cause; and moreover a very good chance. The extraordinary story of how that chance was lost may find mention on a later page. I will begin by touching on the first incident that befell me personally in connection with the same enterprise. I went to Ireland at the request of Irish friends who were working warmly for the Allied cause, and who conceived (I fear in far too flattering a spirit) that I might at least be useful as an Englishman who had always sympathised as warmly with the Irish cause. I am under no illusions that I should ever be efficient at such work in any case; and under the circumstances I had no great hopes of doing much, where men like Sir Horace Plunkett and Captain Stephen Gwynne, far more competent, more self-sacrificing, and more well-informed than I, could already do comparatively little. It was too late. A hundredth part of the brilliant constancy and tragic labours of these men might easily, at the beginning of the war, have given us a great Irish army. I need not explain the motives that made me do the little I could do; they were the same that at that moment made millions of better men do masses of better work. Physical accident prevented my being useful in France, and a sort of psychological accident seemed to suggest that I might possibly be useful in Ireland; but I did not see myself as a very serious figure in either field. Nothing could be serious in such a case except perhaps a conviction; and at least my conviction about the great war has never wavered by a hair. Delenda est—and it is typical of the power of Berlin that one must break off for want of a Latin name for it. Being an Englishman, I hoped primarily to help England; but not being a congenital idiot, I did not primarily ask an Irishman to help England. There was obviously something much more reasonable to ask him to do. I hope I should in any case have done my best for my own country. But the cause was more than any country; in a sense it was too good for any country. The Allies were more right than they realised. Nay, they hardly had a right to be so right as they were. The modern Babylon of capitalistic states was hardly worthy to go on such a crusade against the heathen; as perhaps decadent Byzantium was hardly worthy to defend the Cross against the Crescent. But we are glad that it did defend the Cross against the Crescent. Nobody is sorry that Sobieski relieved Vienna; nobody wishes that Alfred had not won in Wessex. The cause that conquered is the only cause that survived. We see now that its enemy was not a cause but a chaos; and that is what history will say of the strange and recent boiling up of barbaric imperialism, a whirlpool whose hollow centre was Berlin. This is where the extreme Irish were really wrong; perhaps really wrong for the first time. I entirely sympathise with their being in revolt against the British Government. I am in revolt in most ways against the British Government myself. But politics are a fugitive thing in the face of history. Does anybody want to be fixed for ever on the wrong side at the Battle of Marathon, through a quarrel with some Archon whose very name is forgotten? Does anybody want to be remembered as a friend of Attila, through a breach of friendship with Aetius? In any case, it was with a profound conviction that if Prussia won, Europe must perish, and that if Europe perished England and Ireland must perish together, that I went to Dublin in those dark days of the last year of the war; and it so happened that the first occasion when I was called upon for any expression of opinion was at a very pleasant luncheon party given to the representatives of the British Dominions, who were then on an official tour in the country inspecting its conditions. What I said is of no importance except as leading up to later events; but it may be noted that though I was speaking perhaps indirectly to Irishmen, I was speaking directly, if not to Englishmen, at least to men in the more English tradition of the majority of the Colonies. I was speaking, if not to Unionists, at least largely to Imperialists. Now I have forgotten, I am happy to say, the particular speech that I made, but I can repeat the upshot of it here, not only as part of the argument, but as part of the story. The line I took generally in Ireland was an appeal to the Irish principle, yet the reverse of a mere approval of the Irish action, or inaction. It postulated that while the English had missed a great opportunity of justifying themselves to the Irish, the Irish had also missed a similar opportunity of justifying themselves to the English. But it specially emphasised this; that what had been lost was not primarily a justification against England, but a joke against England. I pointed out that an Irishman missing a joke against an Englishman was a tragedy, like a lost battle. And there was one thing, and one thing only, which had stopped the Irishman from laughing, and saved the Englishman from being laughable. The one and only thing that rescued England from ridicule was Sinn Fein. Or, at any rate, that element in Sinn Fein which was pro-German, or refused to be anti-German. Nothing imaginable under the stars except a pro-German Irishman could at that moment have saved the face of a (very recently) pro-German Englishman. The reason for this is obvious enough. England in 1914 encountered or discovered a colossal crime of Prussianised Germany. But England could not discover the German crime without discovering the English blunder. The blunder was, of course, a perfectly plain historical fact; that England made Prussia. England was the historic, highly civilised western state, with Roman foundations and chivalric memories; Prussia was originally a petty and boorish principality used by England and Austria in the long struggle against the greatness of France. Now in that long struggle Ireland had always been on the side of France. She had only to go on being on the side of France, and the Latin tradition generally, to behold her own truth triumph over her own enemies. In a word, it was not a question of whether Ireland should become anti-German, but merely of whether she should continue to be anti-German. It was a question of whether she should suddenly become pro-German, at the moment when most other pro-Germans were discovering that she had been justified all along. But England, at the beginning of her last and most lamentable quarrel with Ireland, was by no means in so strong a controversial position. England was right; but she could only prove she was right by proving she was wrong. In one sense, and with all respect to her right action in the matter, she had to be ridiculous in order to be right. But the joke against the English was even more obvious and topical. And as mine was only meant for a light speech after a friendly lunch, I took the joke in its lightest and most fanciful form, and touched chiefly on the fantastic theory of the Teuton as the master of the Celt. For the supreme joke was this: that the Englishman has not only boasted of being an Englishman; he has actually boasted of being a German. As the modern mind began to doubt the superiority of Calvinism to Catholicism, all English books, papers, and speeches were filled more and more with a Teutonism which substituted a racial for a religious superiority. It was felt to be a more modern and even a more progressive principle of distinction, to insist on ethnology rather than theology; for ethnology was supposed to be a science. Unionism was simply founded on Teutonism. Hence the ordinary honest, patriotic Unionist was in a highly humorous fix, when he had suddenly to begin denouncing Teutonism as mere terrorism. If all superiority belonged to the Teuton, the supreme superiority must clearly belong to the most Teutonic Teuton. If I claim the right to kick Mr. Bernard Shaw on the specific ground that I am fatter than he is, it is obvious that I look rather a fool if I am suddenly kicked by somebody who is fatter still. When the earth shakes under the advancing form of one coming against me out of the east who is fatter than I (for I called upon the Irish imagination to embrace so monstrous a vision), it is clear that whatever my relations to the rest of the world, in my relations to Mr. Bernard Shaw I am rather at a disadvantage. Mr. Shaw, at any rate, is rather in a position to make game of me; of which it is not inconceivable that he might avail himself. I might have accumulated a vast mass of learned sophistries and journalistic catchwords, which had always seemed to me to justify the connection between waxing fat and kicking. I might have proved from history that the leaders had always been fat men, like William the Conqueror, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Charles Fox. I might have proved from physiology that fatness is a proof of the power of organic assimilation and digestion; or from comparative zoology that the elephant is the wisest of the beasts. In short, I might be able to adduce many arguments in favour of my position. Only, unfortunately, they would now all become arguments against my position. Everything I had ever urged against my old enemy could be urged much more forcibly against me by my new enemy. And my position touching the great adipose theory would be exactly like England’s position touching the equally sensible Teutonic theory. If Teutonism was creative culture, then on our own showing the German was better than the Englishman. If Teutonism was barbarism, then on our own showing the Englishman was more barbaric than the Irishman. The real answer, of course, is that we were not Teutons but only the dupes of Teutonism; but some were so wholly duped that they would do anything rather than own themselves dupes. These unfortunates, while they are already ashamed of being Teutons, are still proud of not being Celts. There is only one thing that could save my dignity in such an undignified fix as I have fancied here. It is that Mr. Bernard Shaw himself should come to my rescue. It is that Mr. Bernard Shaw himself should declare in favour of the corpulent conqueror from the east; that he should take seriously all the fads and fallacies of that fat-headed superman. That, and that alone, would ensure all my own fads and fallacies being not only forgotten but forgiven. There is present to my imagination, I regret to say, a wild possibility that this is what Mr. Bernard Shaw might really do. Anyhow, this is what a certain number of his countrymen really did. It will be apparent, I think, from these pages that I do not believe in the stage Irishman. I am under no delusion that the Irishman is soft-headed and sentimental, or even illogical and inconsequent. Nine times out of ten, the Irishman is not only more clear-headed, but even more cool-headed than the Englishman. But I think it is true, as Mr. Max Beerbohm once suggested to me in connection with Mr. Shaw himself, that there is a residual perversity in the Irishman, which comes after and not before the analysis of a question. There is at the last moment a cold impatience in the intellect, an irony which returns on itself and rends itself; the subtlety of a suicide. However this may be, some of the lean men, instead of making a fool of the fat man, did begin almost to make a hero of the fatter man; to admire his vast curves as almost cosmic lines of development. I have seen Irish-American pamphlets which took quite seriously (or, I prefer to think, pretended to take quite seriously) the ridiculous romance about the Teutonic tribes having revived and refreshed civilisation after the fall of the Roman Empire. They revived civilisation very much as they restored Louvain or reconstructed the Lusitania. It was a romance which the English for a short time adopted as a convenience, but from which the Irish have continually suffered as from a curse. It was a suicidal perversity that they themselves, in their turn, should perpetuate their permanent curse as a temporary convenience. That was the worst error of the Irish, or of some of the best of the Irish. That is why the Easter Rising was really a black and insane blunder. It was not because it involved the Irish in a military defeat; it was because it lost the Irish a great controversial victory. The rebel deliberately let the tyrant out of a trap; out of the grinning jaws of the gigantic trap of a joke. Many of the most extreme Nationalists knew this well; it was what Kettle probably meant when he suggested an Anglo-Irish history called “The Two Fools”; and of course I do not mean that. I said all this in my very casual and rambling speech. But it was based on this idea, that men had missed the joke against England, and that now unfortunately the joke was rather against Ireland. It was Ireland that was now missing a great historical opportunity for lack of humour and imagination, as England had missed it a moment before. If the Irish would laugh at the English and help the English, they would win all along the line. In the real history of the German problem, they would inherit all the advantages of having been right from the first. It was now not so much a question of Ireland consenting to follow England’s lead as of England being obliged to follow Ireland’s lead. These are the principles, which I thought, and still think, the only possible principles to form the basis of a recruiting appeal in Ireland. But on the particular occasion in question I naturally took the matter much more lightly; hoping that the two jokes might, as it were, cancel out, and leave the two countries quits and in a better humour. And I devoted nearly all my remarks to testifying that the English had really, in the mass, shed the cruder Teutonism that had excused the cruelties of the past. I said that Englishmen were anything but proud of the past government of Ireland; that the mass of men of all parties were far more modest and humane in their view of Ireland than most Irishmen seem to suppose. And I ended with words which I only quote here from memory, because they happen to be the text of the curious incident which followed: “This is no place for us to boast. We stand here in the valley of our humiliation, where the flag we love has done very little that was not evil; and where its victories have been far more disastrous than defeats;” and I concluded with some general expression of the hope (which I still entertain) that two lands so much loved, by those who know them best, are not meant to hate each other for ever. A day or two afterwards a distinguished historian who is a professor at Trinity College, Mr. Alison Phillips, wrote an indignant letter to the Irish Times. He announced that he was not in the valley of humiliation; and warmly contradicted the report that he was, as he expressed it, “sitting in sackcloth and ashes.” He remarked, if I remember right, that I was middle-class, which is profoundly true; and he generally resented my suggestions as a shameful attack upon my fellow Englishmen. This both amused and puzzled me; for of course I had not been attacking Englishmen, but defending them; I had merely been assuring the Irish that the English were not so black, or so red, as they were painted in the vision of “England’s cruel red.” I had not said there what I have said here, about the anomaly and absurdity of England in Ireland; I had only said that Ireland had suffered rather from the Teutonic theory than the English temper; and that the English temper, experienced at close quarters, was really quite ready for a reconciliation with Ireland. Nor indeed did Mr. Alison Phillips really complain especially of my denouncing the English, but rather of my way of defending them. He did not so much mind being charged with the vice of arrogance. What he could not bear was being charged with the virtue of humility. What worried him was not so much the supposition of our doing wrong, as that anybody should conceive it possible that we were sorry for doing wrong. After all, he probably reasoned, it may not be easy for an eminent historical scholar actually to deny that certain tortures have taken place, or certain perjuries been proved; but there is really no reason why he should admit that the memory of using torture or perjury has so morbid an effect on the mind. Therefore he naturally desired to correct any impression that might arise, to the effect that he had been seen in the valley of humiliation, like a man called Christian. But there was one fancy that lingered in the mind over and above the fun of the thing; and threw a sort of random ray of conjecture upon all that long international misunderstanding which it is so hard to understand. Was it possible, I thought, that this had happened before, and that I was caught in the treadmill of recurrence? It may be that whenever, throughout the centuries, a roughly representative and fairly good-humoured Englishman has spoken to the Irish as thousands of such Englishmen feel about them, some other Englishman on the spot has hastened to explain that the English are not going in for sackcloth and ashes, but only for phylacteries and the blowing of their own trumpets before them. Perhaps whenever one Englishman said that the English were not so black as they were painted in the past, another Englishman always rushed forward to prove that the English were not so white as they were painted on the present occasion. And after all it was only Englishman against Englishman, one word against another; and there were many superiorities on the side which refused to believe in English sympathy or self-criticism. And very few of the Irish, I fear, understood the simple fact of the matter, or the real spiritual excuses of the party thus praising spiritual pride. Few understood that I represented large numbers of amiable Englishmen in England, while Mr. Phillips necessarily represented a small number of naturally irritable Englishmen in Ireland. Few, I fancy, sympathised with him so much as I do; for I know very well that he was not merely feeling as an Englishman, but as an exile.
VI. The Mistake of England
I met one hearty Unionist, not to say Coercionist in Ireland, in such a manner as to talk to him at some length; one quite genial and genuine Irish gentleman, who was solidly on the side of the system of British government in Ireland. This gentleman had been shot through the body by the British troops in their efforts to suppress the Easter Rebellion. The matter just missed being tragic; but since it did, I cannot help feeling it as slightly comic. He assured me with great earnestness that the rebels had been guilty of the most calculated cruelties; and that they must have done their bloody deeds in the coldest blood. But since he is himself a solid and (I am happy to say) a living demonstration that the firing even on his own side must have been rather wild, I am inclined to give the benefit of the doubt also to the less elaborately educated marksmen. When disciplined troops destroy people so much at random, it would seem unreasonable to deny that rioters may possibly have been riotous. I hardly think he was, or even professed to be, a person of judicial impartiality; and it is entirely to his honour that he was, on principle, so much more indignant with the rioters who did not shoot him than with the other rioters who did. But I venture to introduce him here not so much as an individual as an allegory. The incident seems to me to set forth, in a pointed, lucid, and picturesque form, exactly what the British military government really succeeded in doing in Ireland. It succeeded in half-killing its friends, and affording an intelligent but somewhat inhumane amusement to all its enemies. The fire-eater held his fire-arm in so contorted a posture as to give the wondering spectator a simple impression of suicide. Let it be understood that I speak here, not of tyranny thwarting Irish desires, but solely of our own stupidity in thwarting our own desires. I shall discuss elsewhere the alleged presence or absence of practical oppression in Ireland; here I am only continuing from the last chapter my experiences of the recruiting campaign. I am concerned now, as I was concerned then, with the simple business matter of getting a big levy of soldiers from Ireland. I think it was Sir Francis Vane, one of the few really valuable public servants in the matter (I need not say he was dismissed for having been proved right), who said that the mere sight of some representative Belgian priests and nuns might have produced something like a crusade. The matter seems to have been mostly left to elderly English landlords; and it would be cruel to record their adventures. It will be enough that I found, for a positive fact, that these unhappy gentlemen had displayed throughout Ireland a poster consisting only of the Union Jack and the appeal, “Is not this your flag? Come and fight for it!” It faintly recalls something we all learnt in the Latin grammar about questions that expect the answer no. These remarkable recruiting-sergeants did not realise, I suppose, what an extraordinary thing this was, not merely in Irish opinion, but generally in international opinion. Over a great part of the globe, it would sound like a story that the Turks had placarded Armenia with the Crescent of Islam, and asked all the Christians who were not yet massacred whether they did not love the flag. I really do not believe that the Turks would be so stupid as to do it. Of course it may be said that such an impression or association is mere slander and sedition, that there is no reason to be tender to such treasonable emotions at all, that men ought to do their duty to that flag whatever is put upon that poster; in short, that it is the duty of an Irishman to be a patriotic Englishman, or whatever it is that he is expected to be. But this view, however logical and clear, can only be used logically and clearly as an argument for conscription. It is simply muddle-headed to apply it to any appeal for volunteers anywhere, in Ireland or England. The whole object of a recruiting poster, or any poster, is to be attractive; it is picked out in words or colours to be picturesquely and pointedly attractive. If it lowers you to make an attractive offer, do not make it; but do not deliberately make it, and deliberately make it repulsive. If a certain medicine is so mortally necessary and so mortally nasty, that it must be forced on everybody by the policeman, call the policeman. But do not call an advertisement agent to push it like a patent medicine, solely by means of “publicity” and “suggestion,” and then confine him strictly to telling the public how nasty it is. But the British blunder in Ireland was a much deeper and more destructive thing. It can be summed up in one sentence; that whether or no we were as black as we were painted, we actually painted ourselves much blacker than we were. Bad as we were, we managed to look much worse than we were. In a horrible unconsciousness we re-enacted history through sheer ignorance of history. We were foolish enough to dress up, and to play up, to the part of a villain in a very old tragedy. We clothed ourselves almost carelessly in fire and sword; and if the fire had been literally stage-fire or the sword a wooden sword, the merely artistic blunder would have been quite as bad. For instance, I soon came on the traces of a quarrel about some silly veto in the schools, against Irish children wearing green rosettes. Anybody with a streak of historical imagination would have avoided a quarrel in that particular case about that particular colour. It is touching the talisman, it is naming the name, it is striking the note of another relation in which we were in the wrong, to the confusion of a new relation in which we were in the right. Anybody of common sense, considering any other case, can see the almost magic force of these material coincidences. If the English armies in France in 1914 considered themselves justified for some reason in executing some Frenchwoman, they would perhaps be indiscreet if they killed her (however logically) tied to a stake in the market-place of Rouen. If the people of Paris rose in the most righteous revolt against the most corrupt conspiracy of some group of the wealthy French Protestants, I should strongly advise them not to fix the date for the vigil of St. Bartholomew, or to go to work with white scarfs tied round their arms. Many of us hope to see a Jewish commonwealth reconstituted in Palestine; and we could easily imagine some quarrel in which the government of Jerusalem was impelled to punish some Greek or Latin pilgrim or monk. The Jews might even be right in the quarrel and the Christian wrong. But it may be hinted that the Jews would be ill-advised if they actually crowned him with thorns, and killed him on a hill just outside Jerusalem. Now we must know by this time, or the sooner we know it the better, that the whole mind of that European society which we have helped to save, and in which we have henceforth a part right of control, regards the Anglo-Irish story as one of these black and white stories in a history book. It sees the tragedy of Ireland as simply and clearly as the tragedy of Christ or Joan of Arc. There may have been more to be said on the coercive side than the culture of the Continent understands. So there was a great deal more than is usually admitted, to be said on the side of the patriotic democracy which condemned Socrates; and a very great deal to be said on the side of the imperial aristocracy which would have crushed Washington. But these disputes will not take Socrates from his niche among the pagan saints, or Washington from his pedestal among the republican heroes. After a certain testing time, substantial justice is always done to the men who stood in some unmistakable manner for liberty and light, against contemporary caprice and fashionable force and brutality. In this intellectual sense, in the only competent intellectual courts, there is already justice to Ireland. In the wide daylight of this world-wide fact, we or our representatives must get into a quarrel with children, of all people, and about the colour green, of all things in the world. It is an exact working model of the mistake I mean. It is the more brutal because it is not strictly cruel; and yet instantly revives the memories of cruelty. There need be nothing wrong with it in the abstract, or in a less tragic atmosphere where the symbols were not talismans. A schoolmaster in the prosperous and enlightened town of Eatanswill might not unpardonably protest against the school-children parading in class the Buff and Blue favours of Mr. Simpkin and Mr. Slumkey. But who but a madman would not see that to say that word, or make that sign, in Ireland, was like giving a signal for keening, and the lament over lost justice that is lifted in the burden of the noblest of national songs; that to point to that rag of that colour was to bring back all the responsibilities and realities of that reign of terror when we were, quite literally, hanging men and women too for wearing of the green? We were not literally hanging these children. As a matter of mere utility, we should have been more sensible if we had been. But the same fact took an even more fantastic form. We not only dressed up as our ancestors, but we actually dressed up as our enemies. I need hardly state my own conviction that the Pacifist trick of lumping the abuses of one side along with the abominations of the other, was a shallow pedantry come of sheer ignorance of the history of Europe and the barbarians. It was quite false that the English evil was exactly the same as the German. It was quite false; but the English in Ireland laboured long and devotedly to prove it was quite true. They were not content with borrowing old uniforms from the Hessians of 1798, they borrowed the newest and neatest uniforms from the Prussians of 1914. I will give only one story that I was told, out of many, to show what I mean. There was a sort of village musical festival at a place called Cullen in County Cork, at which there were naturally national songs and very possibly national speeches. That there was a sort of social atmosphere, which its critics would call Sinn Fein, is exceedingly likely; for that now exists all over Ireland, and especially that part of Ireland. If we wish to prevent it being expressed at all, we must not only forbid all public meetings, but all private meetings, and even the meeting of husband and wife in their own house. Still there might have been a case, on coercionist lines, for forbidding this public meeting. There might be a case, on coercionist lines, for imprisoning all the people who attended it; or a still clearer case, on those lines, for imprisoning all the people in Ireland. But the coercionist authorities did not merely forbid the meeting; which would mean something. They did not arrest the people at the meeting; which would mean something. They did not blow the whole meeting to hell with big guns; which would also mean something. What they did was this. They caused a military aeroplane to jerk itself backwards and forwards in a staggering fashion just over the heads of the people, making as much noise as possible to drown the music, and dropping flare rockets and fire in various somewhat dangerous forms in the neighbourhood of any men, women, and children who happened to be listening to the music. The reader will note with what exquisite art, and fine fastidious selection, the strategist has here contrived to look as Prussian as possible without securing any of the advantages of Prussianism. There was a certain amount of real danger to the children; but not very much. There was about as much as there generally has been when boys have been flogged for playing the fool with fireworks. But by laboriously climbing hundreds of feet into the air, in an enormous military machine, these ingenious people managed to make themselves a meteor in heaven and a spectacle to all the earth; the English raining fire on women and children just as the Germans did. I repeat that they did not actually destroy children, though they did endanger them; for playing with fireworks is always playing with fire. And I repeat that, as a mere matter of business, it would have been more sensible if they had destroyed children. That would at least have had the human meaning that has run through a hundred massacres: “wolf-cubs who would grow into wolves.” It might at least have the execrable excuse of decreasing the number of rebels. What they did would quite certainly increase it. An artless Member of Parliament, whose name I forget, attempted an apology for this half-witted performance. He interposed in the Unionist interests, when the Nationalists were asking questions about the matter; and said with much heat, “May I ask whether honest and loyal subjects have anything to fear from British aeroplanes?” I have often wondered what he meant. It seems possible that he was in the mood of that mediaeval fanatic who cried, “God will know his own”; and that he himself would fling any sort of flaming bolts about anywhere, believing that they would always be miraculously directed towards the heads harbouring, at that moment, the most incorrect political opinions. Or perhaps he meant that loyal subjects are so superbly loyal that they do not mind being accidentally burnt alive, so long as they are assured that the fire was dropped on them by government officials out of a government apparatus. But my purpose here is not to fathom such a mystery, but merely to fix the dominant fact of the whole situation; that the government copied the theatricality of Potsdam even more than the tyranny of Potsdam. In that incident, the English laboriously reproduced all the artificial accessories of the most notorious crimes of Germany; the flying men, the flame, the selection of a mixed crowd, the selection of a popular festival. They had every part of it, except the point of it. It was as if the whole British army in Ireland had dressed up in spiked helmets and spectacles, merely that they might look like Prussians. It was even more as if a man had walked across Ireland on three gigantic stilts, taller than the trees and visible from the most distant village, solely that he might look like one of those unhuman monsters from Mars, striding about on their iron tripods in the great nightmare of Mr. Wells. Such was our educational efficiency, that, before the end, multitudes of simple Irish people really had about the English invasion the same particular psychological reaction that multitudes of simple English people had about the German invasion. I mean that it seemed to come not only from outside the nation, but from outside the world. It was unearthly in the strict sense in which a comet is unearthly. It was the more appallingly alien for coming close; it was the more outlandish the farther it went inland. These Christian peasants have seen coming westward out of England what we saw coming westward out of Germany. They saw science in arms; which turns the very heavens into hells. I have purposely put these fragmentary and secondary impressions before any general survey of Anglo-Irish policy in the war. I do so, first, because I think a record of the real things, that seemed to bulk biggest to any real observer at any real moment, is often more useful than the setting forth of theories he may have made up before he saw any realities at all. But I do it in the second place because the more general summaries of our statesmanship, or lack of statesmanship, are so much more likely to be found elsewhere. But if we wish to comprehend the queer cross-purposes, it will be well to keep always in mind a historical fact I have mentioned already; the reality of the old Franco-Irish Entente. It lingers alive in Ireland; and especially the most Irish parts of Ireland. In the fiercely Fenian city of Cork, walking round the Young Ireland monument that seems to give revolt the majesty of an institution, a man told me that German bands had been hooted and pelted in those streets out of an indignant memory of 1870. And an eminent scholar in the same town, referring to the events of the same “terrible year,” said to me: “In 1870 Ireland sympathised with France and England with Germany; and as usual, Ireland was right!” But if they were right when we were wrong, they only began to be wrong when we were right. A sort of play or parable might be written to show that this apparent paradox is a very genuine piece of human psychology. Suppose there are two partners named John and James; that James has always been urging the establishment of a branch of the business in Paris. Long ago John quarrelled with this furiously as a foreign fad; but he has since forgotten all about it; for the letters from James bored him so much that he has not opened any of them for years. One fine day John, finding himself in Paris, conceives the original idea of a Paris branch; but he is conscious in a confused way of having quarrelled with his partner, and vaguely feels that his partner would be an obstacle to anything. John remembers that James was always cantankerous, and forgets that he was cantankerous in favour of this project, and not against it. John therefore sends James a telegram, of a brevity amounting to brutality, simply telling him to come in with no nonsense about it; and when he has no instant reply, sends a solicitor’s letter to be followed by a writ. How James will take it depends very much on James. How he will hail this happy confirmation of his own early opinions will depend on whether James is an unusually patient and charitable person. And James is not. He is unfortunately the very man, of all men in the world, to drop his own original agreement and everything else into the black abyss of disdain, which now divides him from the man who has the impudence to agree with him. He is the very man to say he will have nothing to do with his own original notion, because it is now the belated notion of a fool. Such a character could easily be analysed in any good novel; such conduct would readily be believed in any good play. It could not be believed when it happened in real life. And it did happen in real life; the Paris project was the sense of the safety of Paris as the pivot of human history; the abrupt telegram was the recruiting campaign, and the writ was conscription. As to what Irish conscription was, or rather would have been, I cannot understand any visitor in Ireland having the faintest doubt, unless (as is often the case) his tour was so carefully planned as to permit him to visit everything in Ireland except the Irish. Irish conscription was a piece of rank raving madness which was fortunately stopped, with other bad things, by the blow of Foch at the second battle of the Marne. It could not possibly produce at the last moment allies on whom we could depend; and it would have lost us the whole sympathy of the allies on whom we at that moment depended. I do not mean that American soldiers would have mutinied; though Irish soldiers might have done so; I mean something much worse. I mean that the whole mood of America would have altered, and there would have been some kind of compromise with German tyranny, in sheer disgust at a long exhibition of English tyranny. Things would have happened in Ireland, week after week, and month after month, such as the modern imagination has not seen except where Prussia has established hell. We should have butchered women and children; they would have made us butcher them. We should have killed priests, and probably the best priests. It could not be better stated than in the words of an Irishman, as he stood with me in a high terraced garden outside Dublin, looking towards that unhappy city, who shook his head and said sadly, “They will shoot the wrong bishop.” Of the meaning of this huge furnace of defiance I shall write when I write of the national idea itself. I am concerned here not for their nation but for mine; and especially with its peril from Prussia and its help from America. And it is simply a question of considering what these real things are really like. Remember that the American Republic is practically founded on the fact, or fancy, that England is a tyrant. Remember that it was being ceaselessly swept with new waves of immigrant Irishry telling tales (too many of them true, though not all,) of the particular cases in which England had been a tyrant. It would be hard to find a parallel to explain to Englishmen the effect of awakening traditions so truly American by a prolonged display of England as the tyrant in Ireland. A faint approximation might be found if we imagined the survivors of Victorian England, steeped in the tradition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, watching the American troops march through London. Suppose they noted that the negro troops alone had to march in chains, with a white man in a broad-brimmed hat walking beside them and flourishing a whip. Scenes far worse than that would have followed Irish conscription; but the only purpose of this chapter is to show that scenes quite as stupid marked every stage of Irish recruitment. For it certainly would not have reassured the traditional sympathisers with Uncle Tom to be told that the chains were only a part of the uniform, or that the niggers moved not at the touch of the whip, but only at the crack of it. Such was our practical policy; and the single and sufficient comment on it can be found in a horrible whisper which can scarcely now be stilled. It is said, with a dreadful plausibility, that the Unionists were deliberately trying to prevent a large Irish recruitment, which would certainly have meant reconciliation and reform. In plain words, it is said, that they were willing to be traitors to England, if they could only still be tyrants to Ireland. Only too many facts can be made to fit in with this; but for me it is still too hideous to be easily believed. But whatever our motives in doing it, there is simply no doubt whatever about what we did, in this matter of the Pro-Germans in Ireland. We did not crush the Pro-Germans; we did not convert them or coerce them; or educate them or exterminate them or massacre them. We manufactured them; we turned them out patiently, steadily, and systematically as if from a factory; we made them exactly as we made munitions. It needed no little social science to produce in any kind of Irishman, any kind of sympathy with Prussia; but we were equal to the task. What concerns me here, however, is that we were busy at the same work among the Irish-Americans, and ultimately among all the Americans. And that would have meant, as I have already noted, the thing that I always feared; the dilution of the policy of the Allies. Anything that looked like a prolonged Prussianism in Ireland would have meant a compromise; that is, a perpetuated Prussianism in Europe. I know that some who agree with me in other matters disagree with me in this; but I should indeed be ashamed if, having to say so often where I think my country was wrong, I did not say as plainly where I think she was right. The notion of a compromise was founded on the coincidence of recent national wars which were only about the terms of peace, not about the type of civilisation. But there do recur, at longer historic intervals, universal wars of religion, not concerned with what one nation shall do, but with what all nations shall be. They recommence until they are finished, in things like the fall of Carthage or the rout of Attila. It is quite true that history is for the most part a plain road, which the tribes of men must travel side by side, bargaining at the same markets or worshipping at the same shrines, fighting and making friends again; and wisely making friends quickly. But we need only see the road stretch but a little farther, from a hill but a little higher, to see that sooner or later it comes always to another place, where stands a winged image of Victory; and the ways divide.
VII. The Mistake of Ireland
There is one phrase which certain Irishmen sometimes use in conversation, which indicates the real mistake that they sometimes make in controversy. When the more bitter sort of Irishman is at last convinced of the existence of the less bitter sort of Englishman, who does realise that he ought not to rule a Christian people by alternations of broken heads and broken promises, the Irishman has sometimes a way of saying, “I am sure you must have Irish blood in your veins.” Several people told me so when I denounced Irish conscription, a thing ruinous to the whole cause of the Alliance. Some told me so even when I re-called the vile story of ‘98; a thing damned by the whole opinion of the world. I assured them in vain that I did not need to have Irish blood in my veins in order to object to having Irish blood on my hands. So far as I know, I have not one single drop of Irish blood in my veins. I have some Scottish blood; and some which, judging merely by a name in the family, must once have been French blood. But the determining part of it is purely English, and I believe East Anglian, at the flattest and farthest extreme from the Celtic fringe. But I am here concerned, not with whether it is true, but with why they should want to prove it is true. One would think they would want to prove precisely the opposite. Even if they were exaggerative and unscrupulous, they should surely seek to show that an Englishman was forced to condemn England, rather than that an Irishman was inclined to support Ireland. As it is, they are labouring to destroy the impartiality and even the independence of their own witness. It does not support, but rather surrenders Irish rights, to say that only the Irish can see that there are Irish wrongs. It is confessing that Ireland is a Celtic dream and delusion, a cloud of sunset mistaken for an island. It is admitting that such a nation is only a notion, and a nonsensical notion; but in reality it is this notion about Irish blood that is nonsensical. Ireland is not an illusion; and her wrongs are not the subjective fancies of the Irish. Irishmen did not dream that they were evicted out of house and home by the ruthless application of a land law no man now dares to defend. It was not a nightmare that dragged them from their beds; nor were they sleepwalkers when they wandered as far as America. Skeffington did not have a delusion that he was being shot for keeping the peace; the shooting was objective, as the Prussian professors would say; as objective as the Prussian militarists could desire. The delusions were admittedly peculiar to the British official whom the British Government selected to direct operations on so important an occasion. I could understand it if the Imperialists took refuge in the Celtic cloud, conceived Colthurst as full of a mystic frenzy like the chieftain who fought with the sea, pleaded that Piggott was a poet whose pen ran away with him, or that Sergeant Sheridan romanced like a real stage Irishman. I could understand it if they declared that it was merely in the elvish ecstasy described by Mr. Yeats that Sir Edward Carson, that famous First Lord of the Admiralty, rode on the top of the dishevelled wave; and Mr. Walter Long, that great Agricultural Minister, danced upon the mountains like a flame. It is far more absurd to suggest that no man can see the green flag unless he has some green in his eye. In truth this association between an Irish sympathy and an Irish ancestry, is just as insulting as the old jibe of Buckingham, about an Irish interest or an Irish understanding. It may seem fanciful to say of the Irish nationalists that they are sometimes too Irish to be national. Yet this is really the case in those who would turn nationality from a sanctity to a secret. That is, they are turning it from something which every one else ought to respect, to something which no one else can understand. Nationalism is a nobler thing even than patriotism; for nationalism appeals to a law of nations; it implies that a nation is a normal thing, and therefore one of a number of normal things. It is impossible to have a nation without Christendom; as it is impossible to have a citizen without a city. Now normally speaking this is better understood in Ireland than in England; but the Irish have an opposite exaggeration and error; and tend in some cases to the cult of real insularity. In this sense it is true to say that the error is indicated in the very name of Sinn Fein. But I think it is even more encouraged, in a cloudier and therefore more perilous fashion, by much that is otherwise valuable in the cult of the Celts and the study of the old Irish language. It is a great mistake for a man to defend himself as a Celt when he might defend himself as an Irishman. For the former defence will turn on some tricky question of temperament, while the latter will turn on the central pivot of morals. Celticism, by itself, might lead to all the racial extravagances which have lately led more barbaric races a dance. Celts also might come to claim, not that their nation is a normal thing, but that their race is a unique thing. Celts also might end by arguing not for an equality founded on the respect for boundaries, but for an aristocracy founded on the ramification of blood. Celts also might come to pitting the prehistoric against the historic, the heathen against the Christian, and in that sense the barbaric against the civilised. In that sense I confess I do not care about Celts; they are too like Teutons. Now of course every one knows that there is practically no such danger of Celtic Imperialism. Mr. Lloyd George will not attempt to annex Brittany as a natural part of Britain. No Tories, however antiquated, will extend their empire in the name of the Buff and Blue of the Ancient Britons. Nor is there the least likelihood that the Irish will overrun Scotland on the plea of an Irish origin for the old name of the Scots; or that they will set up an Irish capital at Stratford-on-Avon merely because avon is the Celtic word for water. That is the sort of thing that Teutonic ethnologists do; but Celts are not quite so stupid as that, even when they are ethnologists. It may be suggested that this is because even prehistoric Celts seem to have been rather more civilised than historic Teutons. And indeed I have seen ornaments and utensils in the admirable Dublin museum, suggestive of a society of immense antiquity, and much more advanced in the arts of life than the Prussians were, only a few centuries ago. For instance, there was actually what appeared to be a safety razor. I doubt if the godlike Goths had much use for a razor; or if they had, if it was altogether safe. Nor am I so dull as not to be stirred to an imaginative sympathy with the instinct of modern Irish poetry to praise this primordial and mysterious order, even as a sort of pagan paradise; and that not as regarding a legend as a sort of lie, but a tradition as a sort of truth. It is but another hint of a suggestion, huge, yet hidden; that civilisation is older than barbarism; and that the further we go back into pagan origins, the nearer we come to the great Christian origin of the Fall. But whatever credit or sympathy be due to the cult of Celtic origins in its proper place, it is none of these things that really prevents Celticism from being a barbarous imperialism like Teutonism. The thing that prevents imperialism is nationalism. It was exactly because Germany was not a nation that it desired more and more to be an empire. For a patriot is a sort of lover, and a lover is a sort of artist; and the artist will always love a shape too much to wish it to grow shapeless, even in order to grow large. A group of Teutonic tribes will not care how many other tribes they destroy or absorb; and Celtic tribes when they were heathen may have acted, for all I know, in the same way. But the civilised Irish nation, a part and product of Christendom, has certainly no desire to be entangled with other tribes or to have its outlines blurred with great blots like Liverpool and Glasgow, as well as Belfast. In that sense it is far too self-conscious to be selfish. Its individuality may, as I shall suggest, make it too insular; it will not make it too imperial. This is a merit in nationalism too little noted; that even what is called its narrowness is not merely a barrier to invasion, but a barrier to expansion. Therefore, with all respect to the prehistoric Celts, I feel more at home with the good if sometimes mad Christian gentleman of the Young Ireland movement, or even the Easter Rebellion. I should feel more safe with Meagher of the Sword than with the primitive Celt of the safety razor. The microscopic meanness of the Mid-Victorian English writers, when they wrote about Irish patriots, could see nothing but a very small joke in modern rebels thinking themselves worthy to take the titles of antique kings; but the only doubt I should have, if I had any, is whether the heathen kings were worthy of the Christian rebels. I am much more sure of the heroism of the modern Fenians than of the ancient ones. Of the artistic side of the cult of the Celts I do not especially speak here. And indeed its importance, especially to the Irish, may easily be exaggerated. Mr. W. B. Yeats long ago dissociated himself from a merely racial theory of Irish poetry; and Mr. W. B. Yeats thinks as hard as he talks. I often entirely disagree with him; but I disagree far more with the people who find him a poetical opiate, where I always find him a logical stimulant. For the rest, Celticism in some aspects is largely a conspiracy for leading the Englishman a dance, if it be a fairy dance. I suspect that many names and announcements are printed in Gaelic, not because Irishmen can read them, but because Englishmen can’t. The other great modern mystic in Dublin, “A. E.,” entertained us first by telling an English lady present that she would never resist the Celtic atmosphere, struggle how she might, but would soon be wandering in the mountain mists with a fillet round her head; which fate had apparently overtaken the son or nephew of an Anglican bishop who had strayed into those parts. The English lady, whom I happen to know rather well, made the characteristic announcement that she would go to Paris when she felt it coming on. But it seemed to me that such drastic action was hardly necessary, and that there was comparatively little cause for alarm; seeing that the mountain mists certainly had not had that effect on the people who happen to live in the mountains. I knew that A. E. knew, even better than I did, that Irish peasants do not wander about in fillets, or indeed wander about at all, having plenty of much better work to do. And since the Celtic atmosphere had no perceptible effect on the Celts, I felt no alarm about its effect on the Saxons. But the only thing involved, by way of an effect on the Saxons, was a practical joke on the Saxons; which may, however, have lasted longer in the case of the bishop’s nephew than it did in mine. Anyhow, I continued to move about (like Atalanta in Calydon) with unchapleted hair, with unfilleted cheek; and found a sufficient number of Irish people in the same condition to prevent me from feeling shy. In a word, all that sort of thing is simply Mr. Russell’s humour, especially his good humour, which is of a golden and godlike sort. And a man would be very much misled by the practical joke if he does not realise that the joker is a practical man. On the desk in front of him as he spoke were business papers of reports and statistics, much more concerned with fillets of veal than fillets of vision. That is the essential fact about all this side of such men in Ireland. We may think the Celtic ghost a turnip ghost; but we can only doubt the reality of the ghost; there is no doubt of the reality of the turnip. But if the Celtic pose be a piece of the Celtic ornament, the spirit that produced it does also produce some more serious tendencies to the segregation of Ireland, one might almost say the secretion of Ireland. In this sense, it is true that there is too much separatism in Ireland. I do not speak of separation from England; which, as I have said, happened long ago in the only serious sense, and is a condition to be assumed, not a conclusion to be avoided. Nor do I mean separation from a federation of free states unfortunately known as the British Empire; for that is a conclusion that could still be avoided with a little common sense and common honesty in our own politics. I mean separation from Europe, from the common Christian civilisation by whose law the nations live. I would be understood as speaking here of exceptions rather than the rule; for the rule is rather the other way. The Catholic religion, the most fundamental fact in Ireland, is itself a permanent communication with the Continent. So, as I have said, is the free peasantry which is so often the economic expression of the same faith. Mr. James Stephens, himself a spiritually detached man of genius, told me with great humour a story which is also at least a symbol. A Catholic priest, after a convivial conversation and plenty of good wine, said to him confidentially: “You ought to be a Catholic. You can be saved without being a Catholic; but you can’t be Irish without being a Catholic.” Nevertheless, the exceptions are large enough to be dangers; and twice lately, I think, they have brought Ireland into danger. This is the age of minorities; of groups that rule rather than represent. And the two largest parties in Ireland, though more representative than most parties in England, were too much affected, I fancy, by the modern fashion, expressed in the world of fads by being Celtic rather than Catholic. They were just a little too insular to accept the old unconscious wave of Christendom; the Crusade. But the case was more extraordinary than that. They were even too insular to appreciate, not so much their own international needs, as their own international importance. It may seem a strange paradox to say that both nationalist parties underrated Ireland as a nation. It may seem a more startling paradox to say that in this the most nationalist was the least national. Yet I think I can explain, however roughly, what I mean by saying that this is so. It is primarily Sinn Fein, or the extreme national party, which thus relatively failed to realise that Ireland is a nation. At least it failed in nationalism exactly so far as it failed to intervene in the war of the nations against Prussian imperialism. For its argument involved, unconsciously, the proposition that Ireland is not a nation; that Ireland is a tribe or a settlement, or a chance sprinkling of aborigines. If the Irish were savages oppressed by the British Empire, they might well be indifferent to the fate of the British Empire; but as they were civilised men, they could not be indifferent to the fate of civilisation. The Kaffirs might conceivably be better off if the whole system of white colonisation, Boer and British, broke down and disappeared altogether. The Irish might sympathise with the Kaffirs; but they would not like to be classed with the Kaffirs. Hottentots might have a sort of Hottentot happiness if the last European city had fallen in ruins, or the last European had died in torments. But the Irish would never be Hottentots, even if they were Pro-Hottentots. In other words, if the Irish were what Cromwell thought they were, they might well confine their attention to Hell and Connaught; and have no sympathy to spare for France. But if the Irish are what Wolfe Tone thought they were, they must be interested in France, as he was interested in France. In short, if the Irish are barbarians, they need not trouble about other barbarians sacking the cities of the world; but if they are citizens, they must trouble about the cities that are sacked. This is the deep and real reason why their alienation from the Allied cause was a disaster for their own national cause. It was not because it gave fools a chance of complaining that they were Anti-English. It was because it gave much cleverer people the chance of complaining that they were Anti-European. I entirely agree that the alienation was chiefly the fault of the English Government; I even agree that it required an abnormal imaginative magnanimity for an Irishman to do his duty to Ireland, in spite of being so insolently told to do it. But it is none the less true that Ireland to-day would be ten thousand miles nearer her deliverance if the Irishman could have made that effort; if he had realised that the thing ought to be done, not because such rulers wanted it, but rather although they wanted it. But the much more curious fact is this. There were any number of Irishmen, and those among the most Irish, who did realise this; who realised it with so sublime a sincerity as to fight for their own enemies against the world’s enemies; and consent at once to be insulted by the English and killed by the Germans. The Redmonds and the old Nationalist party, if they have indeed failed, have the right to be reckoned among the most heroic of all the heroic failures of Ireland. If theirs is a lost cause, it is wholly worthy of a land where lost causes are never lost. But the old guard of Redmond did also in its time, I fancy, fall into the same particular and curious error; but in a more subtle way and on a seemingly remote subject. They also, whose motives like those of the Sinn Feiners were entirely noble, did in one sense fail to be national, in the sense of appreciating the international importance of a nation. In their case it was a matter of English and not European politics; and as their case was much more complicated, I speak with much less confidence about it. But I think there was a highly determining time in politics when certain Irishmen got on to the wrong side in English politics, as other Irishmen afterwards got on to the wrong side in European politics. And by the wrong side, in both cases, I not only mean the side that was not consistent with the truth, but the side that was not really congenial to the Irish. A man may act against the body, even the main body, of his nation; but if he acts against the soul of his nation, even to save it, he and his nation suffer. I can best explain what I mean by reaffirming the reality which an English visitor really found in Irish politics, towards the end of the war. It may seem odd to say that the most hopeful fact I found, for Anglo-Irish relations, was the fury with which the Irish were all accusing the English of perjury and treason. Yet this was my solid and sincere impression; the happiest omen was the hatred aroused by the disappointment over Home Rule. For men are not furious unless they are disappointed of something they really want; and men are not disappointed except about something they were really ready to accept. If Ireland had been entirely in favour of entire separation, the loss of Home Rule would not be felt as a loss, but if anything as an escape. But it is felt bitterly and savagely as a loss; to that at least I can testify with entire certainty. I may or may not be right in the belief I build on it; but I believe it would still be felt as a gain; that Dominion Home Rule would in the long run satisfy Ireland. But it would satisfy her if it were given to her, not if it were promised to her. As it is, the Irish regard our government simply as a liar who has broken his word; I cannot express how big and black that simple idea bulks in the landscape and blocks up the road. And without professing to regard it as quite so simple, I regard it as substantially true. It is, upon any argument, an astounding thing the King, Lords, and Commons of a great nation should record on its statute-book that a law exists, and then illegally reverse it in answer to the pressure of private persons. It is, and must be, for the people benefited by the law, an act of treason. The Irish were not wrong in thinking it an act of treason, even in the sense of treachery and trickery. Where they were wrong, I regret to say, was in talking of it as if it were the one supreme solitary example of such trickery; when the whole of our politics were full of such tricks. In short, the loss of justice for Ireland was simply a part of the loss of justice in England; the loss of all moral authority in government, the loss of the popularity of Parliament, the secret plutocracy which makes it easy to take a bribe or break a pledge, the corruption that can pass unpopular laws or promote discredited men. The lawgiver cannot enforce his law because, whether or no the law be popular, the lawgiver is wholly unpopular, and is perpetually passing wholly unpopular laws. Intrigue has been substituted for government; and the public man cannot appeal to the public because all the most important part of his policy is conducted in private. The modern politician conducts his public life in private. He sometimes condescends to make up for it by affecting to conduct his private life in public. He will put his baby or his birthday book into the illustrated papers; it is his dealings with the colossal millions of the cosmopolitan millionaires that he puts in his pocket or his private safe. We are allowed to know all about his dogs and cats; but not about those larger and more dangerous animals, his bulls and bears. Now there was a moment when England had an opportunity of breaking down this Parliamentary evil, as Europe afterwards had an opportunity (which it fortunately took) of breaking down the Prussian evil. The corruption was common to both parties; but the chance of exposing it happened to occur under the rule of a Home Rule party; which the Nationalists supported solely for the sake of Home Rule. In the Marconi Case they consented to whitewash the tricks of Jew jobbers whom they must have despised; just as some of the Sinn Feiners afterwards consented to whitewash the wickedness of Prussian bullies whom they also must have despised. In both cases the motive was wholly disinterested and even idealistic. It was the practicality that was unpractical. I was one of a small group which protested against the hushing up of the Marconi affair, but we always did justice to the patriotic intentions of the Irish who allowed it. But we based our criticism of their strategy on the principle of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. The man who will cheat you about one thing will cheat you about another. The men who will lie to you about Marconi, will lie to you about Home Rule. The political conventions that allow of dealing in Marconis at one price for the party, and another price for oneself, are conventions that also allow of telling one story to Mr. John Redmond and another to Sir Edward Carson. The man who will imply one state of things when talking at large in Parliament, and another state of things when put into a witness-box in court, is the same sort of man who will promise an Irish settlement in the hope that it may fail; and then withdraw it for fear it should succeed. Among the many muddle-headed modern attempts to coerce the Christian poor to the Moslem dogma about wine and beer, one was concerned with abuse by loafers or tipplers of the privilege of the Sunday traveller. It was suggested that the travellers’ claims were in every sense travellers’ tales. It was therefore proposed that the limit of three miles should be extended to six; as if it were any harder for a liar to say he had walked six miles than three. The politicians might be as ready to promise to walk the six miles to an Irish Republic as the three miles to an Irish Parliament. But Sinn Fein is mistaken in supposing that any change of theoretic claim meets the problem of corruption. Those who would break their word to Redmond would certainly break it to De Valera. We urged all these things on the Nationalists whose national cause we supported; we asked them to follow their larger popular instincts, break down a corrupt oligarchy, and let a real popular parliament in England give a real popular parliament to Ireland. With entirely honourable motives, they adhered to the narrower conception of their national duty. They sacrificed everything for Home Rule; even their own profoundly national emotion of contempt. For the sake of Home Rule, or the solemn promise of Home Rule, they kept such men in power; and for their reward they found that such men were still in power; and Home Rule was gone. What I mean about the Nationalist Party, and what may be called its prophetic shadow of the Sinn Fein mistake, may well be symbolised in one of the noblest figures of that party or any party. An Irish poet, talking to me about the pointed diction of the Irish peasant, said he had recently rejoiced in the society of a drunken Kerry farmer, whose conversation was a litany of questions about everything in heaven and earth, each ending with a sort of chorus of “Will ye tell me that now?” And at the end of all he said abruptly, “Did ye know Tom Kettle?” and on my friend the poet assenting, the farmer said, as if in triumph, “And why are so many people alive that ought to be dead, and so many people dead that ought to be alive? Will ye tell me that now?” That is not unworthy of an old heroic poem, and therefore not unworthy of the hero and poet of whom it was spoken. “Patroclus died, who was a better man than you.” Thomas Michael Kettle was perhaps the greatest example of that greatness of spirit which was so ill rewarded on both sides of the channel and of the quarrel, which marked Redmond’s brother and so many of Redmond’s followers. He was a wit, a scholar, an orator, a man ambitious in all the arts of peace; and he fell fighting the barbarians because he was too good a European to use the barbarians against England, as England a hundred years before had used the barbarians against Ireland. There is nothing to be said of such things except what the drunken farmer said, unless it be a verse from a familiar ballad on a very remote topic, which happens to express my own most immediate feelings about politics and reconstruction after the decimation of the great war. “The many men so beautiful And they all dead did lie And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on, and so did I.” It is not a reflection that adds any inordinate self-satisfaction to the fact of one’s own survival. In turning over a collection of Kettle’s extraordinary varied and vigorous writings, which contain some of the most pointed and piercing criticisms of materialism, of modern capitalism and mental and moral anarchism generally, I came on a very interesting criticism of myself and my friends in our Marconi agitation; a suggestion, on a note of genial cynicism, that we were asking for an impossible political purity; a suggestion which, knowing it to be patriotic, I will venture to call pathetic. I will not now return on such disagreements, a man with whom I so universally agree; but it will not be unfair to find here an exact illustration of what I mean by saying that the national leaders, so far from merely failing as wild Irishmen, only failed when they were not instinctive enough, that is, not Irish enough. Kettle was a patriot whose impulse was practical and whose policy was impolitic. Here also the Nationalist underrated the importance of the intervention of his own nationality. Kettle left a fine and even terrible poem, asking if his sacrifices were in vain, and whether he and his people were again being betrayed. I think nobody can deny that he was betrayed; and it was not by the English soldiers with whom he marched to war, but by those very English politicians with whom he sacrificed so much to remain at peace. No man will ever dare to say his death in battle was in vain, not only because in the highest sense it could never be, but because even in the lowest sense it was not. He hated the icy insolence of Prussia; and that ice is broken, and already as weak as water. As Carlyle said of a far lesser thing, that at least will never through unending ages insult the face of the sun any more. The point is here that if any part of his fine work was in vain, it was certainly not the reckless romantic part; it was precisely the plodding parliamentary part. None can say that the weary marching and counter-marching in France was a thing thrown away; not only in the sense which consecrates all footprints along such a via crucis, or highway of the army of martyrs; but also in the perfectly practical sense, that the army was going somewhere, and that it got there. But it might possibly be said that the weary marching and counter-marching at Westminster, in and out of a division lobby, belonged to what the French call the salle des pas perdus. If anything was practical it was the visionary adventure; if anything was unpractical it was the practical compromise. He and his friends were betrayed by the men whose corruptions they had contemptuously condoned, far more than by the men whose bigotries they had indignantly denounced. There darkened about them treason and disappointment, and he that was the happiest died in battle; and one who knew and loved him spoke to me for a million others in saying: “And now we will not give you a dead dog until you keep your word.”
VIII. An Example and a Question
We all had occasion to rejoice at the return of Sherlock Holmes when he was supposed to be dead; and I presume we may soon rejoice in his return even when he is really dead. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in his widespread new campaign in favour of Spiritualism, ought at least to delight us with the comedy of Holmes as a control and Watson as a medium. But I have for the moment a use for the great detective not concerned with the psychical side of the question. Of that I will only say, in passing, that in this as in many other cases, I find myself in agreement with an authority about where the line is drawn between good and bad, but have the misfortune to think his good bad, and his bad good. Sir Arthur explains that he would lift Spiritualism to a graver and more elevated plane of idealism; and that he quite agrees with his critics that the mere tricks with tables and chairs are grotesque and vulgar. I think this quite true if turned upside down, like the table. I do not mind the grotesque and vulgar part of Spiritualism; what I object to is the grave and elevating part. After all, a miracle is a miracle and means something; it means that Materialism is nonsense. But it is not true that a message is always a message; and it sometimes only means that Spiritualism is also nonsense. If the table at which I am now writing takes to itself wings and flies out of the window, perhaps carrying me along with it, the incident will arouse in me a real intelligent interest, verging on surprise. But if the pen with which I am writing begins to scrawl all by itself, the sort of things I have seen in spirit writing; if it begins to say that all things are aspects of universal purity and peace, and so on, why, then I shall not only be annoyed, but also bored. If a great man like the late Sir William Crookes says a table went walking upstairs, I am impressed by the news; but not by news from nowhere to the effect that all men are perpetually going upstairs, up a spiritual staircase which seems to be as mechanical and labour-saving as a moving staircase at Charing Cross. Moreover, even a benevolent spirit might conceivably throw the furniture about merely for fun; whereas I doubt if anything but a devil from hell would say that all things are aspects of purity and peace. But I am here taking from the Spiritualistic articles a text that has nothing to do with Spiritualism. In a recent contribution to Nash’s Magazine, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle remarks very truly that the modern world is weary and wicked and in need of a religion; and he gives examples of its more typical and terrible corruptions. It is perhaps natural that he should revert to the case of the Congo, and talk of it in the torrid fashion which recalls the days when Morel and Casement had some credit in English politics. We have since had an opportunity of judging the real attitude of a man like Morel in the plainest case of black and white injustice that the world has ever seen. It was at once a replica and a reversal of the position expressed in the Pious Editor’s Creed; and might roughly be rendered in similar language. “I do believe in Freedom’s cause Ez fur away ez tropics are; But Belgians caught in Prussia’s claws To me less tempting topics are. It’s wal agin a foreign king To rouse the chapel’s rigours; But Liberty’s a kind of thing We only owe to niggers.” He had of course a lurid denunciation of the late King Leopold, of which I will only say that, uttered by a Belgian about the Belgian king in his own land and lifetime, it would be highly courageous and largely correct; but that the parallel test is how much truth was told by British journalists about British Kings in their own land and lifetime; and that until we can pass that test, such denunciations do us very little good. But what interests me in the matter at the moment is this. Sir Arthur feels it right to say something about British corruptions, and passes from the Congo to Putumayo, touching a little more lightly; for even the most honest Britons have an unconscious trick of touching more lightly on the case of British capitalists. He says that our capitalists were not guilty of direct cruelty, but of an attitude careless and even callous. But what strikes me is that Sir Arthur, with his taste for such protests and inquiries, need not have wandered quite so far from his own home as the forests of South America. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is an Irishman; and in his own country, within my own memory there occurred a staggering and almost incredible crime, or series of crimes, which were worthier than anything in the world of the attention of Sherlock Holmes in fiction, or Conan Doyle in reality. It always will be a tribute to the author of Sherlock Holmes that he did, about the same time, do such good work in reality. He made an admirable plea for Adolf Beck and Oscar Slater; he was also connected, I remember, with the reversal of a miscarriage of justice in a case of cattle-mutilation. And all this, while altogether to his credit, makes it seem all the more strange that his talents could not be used for, and in, his own home and native country, in a mystery that had the dimensions of a monstrosity, and which did involve, if I remember right, a question of cattle-maiming. Anyhow, it was concerned with moonlighters and the charges made against them, such as the common one of cutting off the tails of cows. I can imagine Sherlock Holmes on such a quest, keen-eyed and relentless, finding the cloven hoof of some sinister and suspected cow. I can imagine Dr. Watson, like the cow’s tail, always behind. I can imagine Sherlock Holmes remarking, in a light allusive fashion, that he himself had written a little monograph on the subject of cows’ tails; with diagrams and tables solving the great traditional problem of how many cows’ tails would reach the moon; a subject of extraordinary interest to moonlighters. And I can still more easily imagine him saying afterwards, having resumed the pipe and dressing-gown of Baker Street, “A remarkable little problem, Watson. In some of its features it was perhaps more singular than any you have been good enough to report. I do not think that even the Tooting Trouser-Stretching Mystery, or the singular little affair of the Radium Toothpick, offered more strange and sensational developments.” For if the celebrated pair had really tracked out the Irish crime I have in mind, they would have found a story which, considered merely as a detective story, is by far the most dramatic and dreadful of modern times. Like nearly all such sensational stories, it traced the crime to somebody far higher in station and responsibility than any of those suspected. Like many of the most sensational of them, it actually traced the crime to the detective who was investigating it. For if they had really crawled about with a magnifying glass, studying the supposed footprints of the peasants incriminated, they would have found they were made by the boots of the policeman. And the boots of a policeman, one feels, are things that even Watson might recognise. I have told the astounding story of Sergeant Sheridan before; and I shall often tell it again. Hardly any English people know it; and I shall go on telling it in the hope that all English people may know it some day. It ought to be first in every collection of causes celebres, in every book about criminals, in every book of historical mysteries; and on its merits it would be. It is not in any of them. It is not there because there is a motive, in all modern British plutocracy, against finding the big British miscarriages of justice where they are really to be found; and that is a great deal nearer than Putumayo. It is a place far more appropriate to the exploits of the family of the Doyles. It is called Ireland; and in that place a powerful British official named Sheridan had been highly successful in the imperial service by convicting a series of poor Irishmen of agrarian crimes. It was afterwards discovered that the British official had carefully committed every one of the crimes himself; and then, with equal foresight, perjured himself to imprison innocent men, one of whom lost his reason. Any one who does not know the story will naturally ask what punishment was held adequate for such a Neronian monster; I will tell him. He was bowed out of the country like a distinguished stranger, his expenses politely paid; as if he had been delivering a series of instructive lectures; and he is now probably smoking a cigar in an American hotel, and much more comfortable than any poor policeman who has done his duty. I defy anybody to deny him a place in our literature about great criminals. Charles Peace escaped many times before conviction; Sheridan escaped altogether after conviction. Jack the Ripper was safe because he was undiscovered; Sheridan was discovered and was still safe. But I only repeat the matter here for two reasons. First, we may call our rule in Ireland what we like; we may call it the Union when there is no union; we may call it Protestant ascendancy when we are no longer Protestants; or Teutonic lordship when we could only be ashamed of being Teutons. But this is what it is; and everything else is waste of words. And second, because an Irish investigator of cattle-maiming, so oblivious of the Irish cow, is in some danger of figuring as an Irish bull. Anyhow, that is the real and remarkable story of Sergeant Sheridan, and I put it first because it is the most practical test of the practical question of whether Ireland is misgoverned. It is strictly a fair test; for it is a test by the minimum and an argument a fortiori. A British official in Ireland can run a career of crime, punishing innocent people for his own felonies; and when he is found out, he is found to be above the law. This may seem like putting things at the worst, but it is really putting them at the best. This story was not told us on the word of a wild Irish Fenian, or even a responsible Irish Nationalist. It was told, word for word as I have told it, by the Unionist Minister in charge of the matter and reporting it, with regret and shame, to Parliament. He was not one of the worst Irish Secretaries, who might be responsible for the worst regime; on the contrary, he was by far the best. If even he could only partially restrain or reveal such things, there can be no deduction in common sense except that in the ordinary way such things go on gaily in the dark, with nobody to reveal and nobody to restrain them. It was not something done in those dark days of torture and terrorism, which happened in Ireland a hundred years ago; and which Englishmen talk of as having happened a million years ago. It was something that happened quite recently, in my own mature manhood, about the time that the better things like the Land Acts were already before the world. I remember writing to the Westminster Gazette to emphasise it when it occurred; but it seems to have passed out of memory in an almost half-witted fashion. But that peephole into hell has afforded me, ever since a horrible amusement, when I hear the Irish softly rebuked for remembering old unhappy, far-off things and wrongs done in the Dark Ages. Thus I was especially amused to find the Rev. R. J. Campbell saying that “Ireland has been petted and coddled more than any other part of the British Isles”; because Mr. Campbell was chiefly famous for a comfortable creed himself, for saying that evil is only “a shadow where light should be”; and there is no doubt here of his throwing a very black shadow where light is very much required. I will conceive the policeman at the corner of the street in which Mr. Campbell resides, as in the habit of killing a crossing-sweeper every now and then for his private entertainment, burgling the houses of Mr. Campbell’s neighbours, cutting off the tails of their carriage horses, and otherwise disporting himself by moonlight a fairy. It is his custom to visit the consequences of each of these crimes upon the Rev. R. J. Campbell, whom he arrests at intervals, successfully convicts by perjury, and proceeds to coddle in penal servitude. But I have another reason for mentioning Mr. Campbell, a gentleman whom I heartily respect in many other aspects; and the reason is connected with his name, as it occurs in another connection on another page. It shows how in anything, but especially in anything coming from Ireland, the old facts of family and faith outweigh a million modern philosophies. The words in Who’s Who?—“Ulster Protestant of Scottish ancestry”— give the really Irish and the really honourable reason for Mr. Campbell’s extraordinary remark. A man may preach for years, with radiant universalism, that many waters cannot quench love; but Boyne Water can. Mr. Campbell appears very promptly with what Kettle called “a bucketful of Boyne, to put the sunrise out.” I will not take the opportunity of saying, like the Ulsterman, that there never was treason yet but a Campbell was at the bottom of it. But I will say that there never was Modernism yet, but a Calvinist was at the bottom of it. The Old Theology is much livelier than the New Theology. Many other such true tales could be told; but what we need here is a sort of test. This tale is a test; because it is the best that could be said, about the best that could be done, by the best Englishman ruling Ireland, in face of the English system established there; and it is the best, or at any rate the most, that we can know about that system. Another truth which might also serve as a test, is this: to note among the responsible English not only their testimony against each other, but their testimony against themselves. I mean the consideration of how very rapidly we realise that our own conduct in Ireland has been infamous, not in the remote past, but in the very recent past. I have lived just long enough to see the wheel come full circle inside one generation; when I was a schoolboy, the sort of Kensington middle class, to which I belong, was nearly solidly resisting, not only the first Home Rule Bill, but any suggestion that the Land League had a leg to stand on, or that the landlords need do anything but get their rents or kick out their tenants. The whole Unionist Press, which was three-quarters of the Press, simply supported Clanricarde, and charged any one who did not do so with supporting the Clan-na-Gael. Mr. Balfour was simply admired for enforcing the system, which it is his real apologia to have tried to end, or at least to have allowed Wyndham to end. I am not yet far gone in senile decay; but already I have lived to hear my countrymen talk about their own blind policy in the time of the Land League, exactly as they talked before of their blind policy in the time of the Limerick Treaty. The shadow on our past shifts forward as we advance into the future; and always seems to end just behind us. I was told in my youth that the age-long misgovernment of Ireland lasted down to about 1870; it is now agreed among all intelligent people that it lasted at least down to about 1890. A little common sense, after a hint like the Sheridan Case, will lead one to suspect the simple explanation that it is going on still. Now I heard scores of such stories as the Sheridan story in Ireland, many of which I mention elsewhere; but I do not mention them here because they cannot be publicly tested; and that for a very simple reason. We must accept all the advantages and disadvantages of a rule of absolute and iron militarism. We cannot impose silence and then sift stories; we cannot forbid argument and then ask for proof; we cannot destroy rights and then discover wrongs. I say this quite impartially in the matter of militarism itself. I am far from certain that soldiers are worse rulers than lawyers and merchants; and I am quite certain that a nation has a right to give abnormal power to its soldiers in time of war. I only say that a soldier, if he is a sensible soldier, will know what he is doing and therefore what he cannot do; that he cannot gag a man and then cross-examine him, any more than he can blow out his brains and then convince his intelligence. There may be—humanly speaking, there must be—a mass of injustices in the militaristic government of Ireland. The militarism itself may be the least of them; but it must involve the concealment of all the rest. It has been remarked above that establishing militarism is a thing which a nation had a right to do, and (what is not at all the same thing) which it may be right in doing. But with that very phrase “a nation,” we collide of course with the whole real question; the alleged abstract wrong about which the Irish talk much more than about their concrete wrongs. I have put first the matters mentioned above, because I wish to make clear, as a matter of common sense, the impression of any reasonable outsider that they certainly have concrete wrongs. But even those who doubt it, and say that the Irish have no concrete grievance but only a sentiment of Nationalism, fall into a final and very serious error about the nature of the thing called Nationalism, and even the meaning of the word “concrete.” For the truth is that, in dealing with a nation, the grievance which is most abstract of all is also the one which is most concrete of all. Not only is patriotism a part of practical politics, but it is more practical than any politics. To neglect it, and ask only for grievances, is like counting the clouds and forgetting the climate. To neglect it, and think only of laws, is like seeing the landmarks and never seeing the landscape. It will be found that the denial of nationality is much more of a daily nuisance than the denial of votes or the denial of juries. Nationality is the most practical thing, because so many things are national without being political, or without being legal. A man in a conquered country feels it when he goes to market or even goes to church, which may be more often than he goes to law; and the harvest is more general than the General Election. Altering the flag on the roof is like altering the sun in the sky; the very chimney-pots and lamp-posts look different. Nay, after a certain interval of occupation, they are different. As a man would know he was in a land of strangers before he knew it was a land of savages, so he knows a rule is alien long before he knows it is oppressive. It is not necessary for it to add injury to insult. For instance, when I first walked about Dublin, I was disposed to smile at the names of the streets being gravely inscribed in Gaelic as well as English. I will not here discuss the question of what is called the Irish language, the only arguable case against which is that it is not the Irish language. But at any rate it is not the English language, and I have come to appreciate more imaginatively the importance of that fact. It may be used rather as a weapon than a tool; but it is a national weapon if it is not a national tool. I see the significance of having something which the eye commonly encounters, as it does a chimney-pot or a lamp-post; but which is like a chimney reared above an Irish hearth or a lamp to light an Irish road. I see the point of having a solid object in the street to remind an Irishman that he is in Ireland, as a red pillar-box reminds an Englishman that he is in England. But there must be a thousand things as practical as pillar-boxes which remind an Irishman that, if he is in his country, it is not yet a free country; everything connected with the principal seat of government reminds him of it perpetually. It may not be easy for an Englishman to imagine how many of such daily details there are. But there is, after all, one very simple effort of the fancy, which would fix the fact for him for ever. He has only to imagine that the Germans have conquered London. A brilliant writer who has earned the name of a Pacifist, and even a Pro-German, once propounded to me his highly personal and even perverse type of internationalism by saying, as a sort of unanswerable challenge, “Wouldn’t you rather be ruled by Goethe than by Walter Long?” I replied that words could not express the wild love and loyalty I should feel for Mr. Walter Long, if the only alternative were Goethe. I could not have put my own national case in a clearer or more compact form. I might occasionally feel inclined to kill Mr. Long; but under the approaching shadow of Goethe, I should feel more inclined to kill myself. That is the deathly element in denationalisation; that it poisons life, itself, the most real of all realities. But perhaps the best way of putting the point conversationally is to say that Goethe would certainly put up a monument to Shakespeare. I would sooner die than walk past it every day of my life. And in the other case of the street inscriptions, it is well to remember that these things, which we also walk past every day, are exactly the sort of things that always have, in a nameless fashion, the national note. If the Germans conquered London, they would not need to massacre me or even enslave me, in order to annoy me; it would be quite enough that their notices were in a German style, if not in a German language. Suppose I looked up in an English railway carriage, and saw these words written in English exactly as I have seen them in a German railway carriage written in German: “The outleaning of the body from the window of the carriage is because of the therewith bound up life’s danger strictly prohibited.” It is not rude. It would certainly be impossible to complain that it is curt. I should not be annoyed by its brutality and brevity; but on the contrary by its elaborateness and even its laxity. But if it does not exactly shine in lucidity, it gives a reason; which after all is a very reasonable thing to do. By every cosmopolitan test, it is more polite than the sentence I have read in my childhood: “Wait until the train stops.” This is curt; this might be called rude; but it never annoyed me in the least. The nearest I can get to defining my sentiment is to say that I can sympathise with the Englishman who wrote the English notice. Having a rude thing to write, he wrote it as quickly as he could, and went home to his tea; or preferably to his beer. But what is too much for me, an overpowering vision, is the thought of that German calmly sitting down to compose that sentence like a sort of essay. It is the thought of him serenely waving away the one important word till the very end of the sentence, like the Day of Judgment to the end of the world. It is perhaps the mere thought that he did not break down in the middle of it, but endured to the end; or that he could afterwards calmly review it, and see that sentence go marching by, like the whole German army. In short, I do not object to it because it is dictatorial or despotic or bureaucratic or anything of the kind; but simply because it is German. Because it is German I do not object to it in Germany. Because it is German I should violently revolt against it in England. I do not revolt against the command to wait until the train stops, not because it is less rude, but because it is the kind of rudeness I can understand. The official may be treating me casually, but at least he is not treating himself seriously. And so, in return, I can treat him and his notice not seriously but casually. I can neglect to wait until the train stops, and fall down on the platform; as I did on the platform of Wolverhampton, to the permanent damage of that fine structure. I can, by a stroke of satiric genius, truly national and traditional, the dexterous elimination of a single letter, alter the maxim to “Wait until the rain stops.” It is a jest as profoundly English as the weather to which it refers. Nobody would be tempted to take such a liberty with the German sentence; not only because he would be instantly imprisoned in a fortress, but because he would not know at which end to begin. Now this is the truth which is expressed, though perhaps very imperfectly, in things like the Gaelic lettering on streets in Dublin. It will be wholesome for us who are English to realise that there is almost certainly an English way of putting things, even the most harmless things, which appears to an Irishman quite as ungainly, unnatural, and ludicrous as that German sentence appears to me. As the famous Frenchman did not know when he was talking prose, the official Englishman does not know when he is talking English. He unconsciously assumes that he is talking Esperanto. Imperialism is not an insanity of patriotism; it is merely an illusion of cosmopolitanism. For the national note of the Irish language is not peculiar to what used to be called the Erse language. The whole nation used the tongue common to both nations with a difference far beyond a dialect. It is not a difference of accent, but a difference of style; which is generally a difference of soul. The emphasis, the elision, the short cuts and sharp endings of speech, show a variety which may be almost unnoticeable but is none the less untranslatable. It may be only a little more weight on a word, or an inversion allowable in English but abounding in Irish; but we can no more copy it than copy the compactness of the French on or the Latin ablative absolute. The commonest case of what I mean, for instance, is the locution that lingers in my mind with an agreeable phrase from one of Mr. Yeats’s stories: “Whom I shall yet see upon the hob of hell, and them screeching.” It is an idiom that gives the effect of a pointed postscript, a parting kick or sting in the tail of the sentence, which is unfathomably national. It is noteworthy and even curious that quite a crowd of Irishmen, who quoted to me with just admiration the noble ending of Kathleen-na-Hulahan, where the newcomer is asked if he has seen the old woman who is the tragic type of Ireland going out, quoted his answer in that form, “I did not. But I saw a young woman; and she walking like a queen.” I say it is curious; because I have since been told that in the actual book (which I cannot lay my hand on at the moment) a more classic English idiom is used. It would generally be most unwise to alter the diction of such a master of style as Mr. Yeats: though indeed it is possible that he altered it himself, as he has sometimes done, and not always, I think, for the better. But whether this form came from himself or from his countrymen, it was very redolent of his country. And there was something inspiring in thus seeing, as it were before one’s eyes, literature becoming legend. But a hundred other examples could be given, even from my own short experience, of such fine turns of language, nor are the finest necessarily to be found in literature. It is perfectly true, though prigs may overwork and snobs underrate the truth, that in a country like this the peasants can talk like poets. When I was on the wild coast of Donegal, an old unhappy woman who had starved through the famines and the evictions, was telling a lady the tales of those times; and she mentioned quite naturally one that might have come straight out of times so mystical that we should call them mythical; that some travellers had met a poor wandering woman with a baby in those great gray rocky wastes, and asked her who she was. And she answered, “I am the Mother of God, and this is Himself; and He is the boy you will all be wanting at the last.” There is more in that story than can be put into any book, even on a matter in which its meaning plays so deep a part; and it seems almost profane to analyse it however sympathetically. But if any one wishes to know what I mean by the untranslatable truth which makes a language national, it will be worth while to look at the mere diction of that speech, and note how its whole effect turns on certain phrases and customs which happen to be peculiar to the nation. It is well known that in Ireland the husband or head of the house is always called “himself”; nor is it peculiar to the peasantry, but adopted, if partly in jest, by the gentry. A distinguished Dublin publicist, a landlord and leader among the more national aristocracy, always called me “himself” when he was talking to my wife. It will be noted how a sort of shadow of that common meaning mingles with the more shining significance of its position in a sentence where it is also strictly logical, in the sense of theological. All literary style, especially national style, is made up of such coincidences; which are a spiritual sort of puns. That is why style is untranslatable; because it is possible to render the meaning, but not the double meaning. There is even a faint differentiation in the half-humorous possibilities of the word “boy”; another wholly national nuance. Say instead, “And He is the child” and it is something perhaps stiffer, and certainly quite different. Take away, “This is Himself” and simply substitute “This is He”; and it is a piece of pedantry ten thousand miles from the original. But above all it has lost its note of something national, because it has lost its note of something domestic. All roads in Ireland, of fact or folk-lore, of theology or grammar, lead us back to that door and hearth of the household, that fortress of the family which is the key-fortress of the whole strategy of the island. The Irish Catholics, like other Christians, admit a mystery in the Holy Trinity, but they may almost be said to admit an experience in the Holy Family. Their historical experience, alas, has made it seem to them not unnatural that the Holy Family should be a homeless family. They also have found that there was no room for them at the inn, or anywhere but in the jail; they also have dragged their new-born babes out of their cradles, and trailed in despair along the road to Egypt, or at least along the road to exile. They also have heard in the dark and the distance behind them, the noise of the horsemen of Herod. Now it is this sensation of stemming a stream, of ten thousand things all pouring one way, labels, titles, monuments, metaphors, modes of address, assumptions in controversy, that make an Englishman in Ireland know that he is in a strange land. Nor is he merely bewildered, as among a medley of strange things. On the contrary, if he has any sense, he soon finds them unified and simplified to a single impression; as if he were talking to a strange person. He cannot define it because nobody can define a person; and nobody can define a nation. He can only see it, smell it, hear it, handle it, bump into it, fall over it, kill it, be killed for it, or be damned for doing it wrong. He must be content with these mere hints of its existence; but he cannot define it, because it is like a person; and no book of logic will undertake to define Aunt Jane or Uncle William. We can only say, with more or less mournful conviction, that if Aunt Jane is not a person, there is no such thing as a person, and I say with equal conviction that if Ireland is not a nation, there is no such thing as a nation. France is not a nation, England is not a nation; there is no such thing as patriotism on this planet. Any Englishman, of any party, with any proposal, may well clear his mind of cant about that preliminary question. If we free Ireland, we must free it to be a nation; if we go on repressing Ireland, we are repressing a nation; if we are right to repress Ireland, we are right to repress a nation. After that we may consider what can be done, according to our opinions about the respect due to patriotism, the reality of cosmopolitan and imperial alternatives, and so on. I will debate with the man who does not want mankind divided into nations at all; I can imagine a case for the man who wants specially to restrain one particular nation, as I would restrain anti-national Prussia. But I will not argue with a man about whether Ireland is a nation, or about the yet more awful question of whether it is an island. I know there is a sceptical philosophy which suggests that all ultimate ideas are only penultimate ideas; and therefore perhaps that all islands are really peninsulars. But I will claim to know what I mean by an island and what I mean by an individual; and when I think suddenly of my experience in the island in question, the impression is a single one; the voices mingle in a human voice which I should know if I heard it again, calling in the distance; the crowds dwindle into a single figure whom I have seen long ago upon a strange hill-side, and she walking like a queen.
IX. Belfast and the Religious Problem
Of that cloud of dream which seems to drift over so many Irish poems and impressions, I felt very little in Ireland. There is a real meaning in this suggestion of a mystic sleep; but it does not mean what most of us imagine, and is not to be found where we expect it. On the contrary, I think the most vivid impression the nation left on me, was that it was almost unnaturally wide awake. I might almost say that Ireland suffers from insomnia. This is not only literally true, of those tremendous talks, the prolonged activities of rich and restless intellects, that can burn up the nights from darkness to daybreak. It is true on the doubtful as well as the delightful side; and the temperament has something of the morbid vigilance and even of the irritability of insomnia. Its lucidity is not only superhuman, but it is sometimes in the true sense inhuman. Its intellectual clarity cannot resist the temptation to intellectual cruelty. If I had to sum up in a sentence the one fault really to be found with the Irish, I could do it simply enough. I should say it saddened me that I liked them all so much better than they liked each other. But it is our supreme stupidity that this is always taken as meaning that Ireland is a sort of Donnybrook Fair. It is really quite the reverse of a merely rowdy and irresponsible quarrel. So far from fighting with shillelaghs, they fight far too much with rapiers; their temptation is in the very nicety and even delicacy of the thrust. Of course there are multitudes who make no such deadly use of the national irony; but it is sufficiently common for even these to suffer from it; and after a time I began to understand a little that burden about bitterness of speech, which recurs so often in the songs of Mr. Yeats and other Irish poets. “Though hope fall from you and love decay Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.” But there is nothing dreamy about the bitterness; the worst part of it is the fact that the criticisms always have a very lucid and logical touch of truth. It is not for us to lecture the Irish about forgiveness, who have given them so much to forgive. But if some one who had not lost the right to preach to them, if St. Patrick were to return to preach, he would find that nothing had failed, through all those ages of agony, of faith and honour and endurance; but I think he might possibly say, what I have no right to say, a word about charity. There is indeed one decisive sense in which the Irish are very poetical; in that of giving a special and serious social recognition to poetry. I have sometimes expressed the fancy that men in the Golden Age might spontaneously talk in verse; and it is really true that half the Irish talk is in verse. Quotation becomes recitation. But it is much too rhythmic to resemble our own theatrical recitations. This is one of my own strongest and most sympathetic memories, and one of my most definable reasons for having felt extraordinarily happy in Dublin. It was a paradise of poets, in which a man who may feel inclined to mention a book or two of Paradise Lost, or illustrate his meaning with the complete ballad of the Ancient Mariner, feels he will be better understood than elsewhere. But the more this very national quality is noted, the less it will be mistaken for anything merely irresponsible, or even merely emotional. The shortest way of stating the truth is to say that poetry plays the part of music. It is in every sense of the phrase a social function. A poetical evening is as natural as a musical evening; and being as natural it becomes what is called artificial. As in some circles “Do you play?” is rather “Don’t you play?” these Irish circles would be surprised because a man did not recite rather than because he did. A hostile critic, especially an Irish critic, might possibly say that the Irish are poetical because they are not sufficiently musical. I can imagine Mr. Bernard Shaw saying something of the sort. But it might well be retorted that they are not merely musical because they will not consent to be merely emotional. It is far truer to say that they give a reasonable place to poetry, than that they permit any particular poetic interference with reason. “But I, whose virtues are the definitions of the analytical mind,” says Mr. Yeats, and any one who has been in the atmosphere will know what he means. In so far as such things stray from reason, they tend rather to ritual than to riot. Poetry is in Ireland what humour is in America; it is an institution. The Englishman, who is always for good and evil the amateur, takes both in a more occasional and even accidental fashion. It must always be remembered here that the ancient Irish civilisation had a high order of poetry, which was not merely mystical, but rather mathematical. Like Celtic ornament, Celtic verse tended too much to geometrical patterns. If this was irrational, it was not by excess of emotion. It might rather be described as irrational by excess of reason. The antique hierarchy of minstrels, each grade with its own complicated metre, suggests that there was something Chinese about a thing so unhumanly civilised. Yet all this vanished etiquette is somehow in the air in Ireland; and men and women move to it, as to the steps of a lost dance. Thus, whether we consider the sense in which the Irish are really quarrelsome, or the sense in which they are really poetical, we find that both lead us back to a condition of clarity which seems the very reverse of a mere dream. In both cases Ireland is critical, and even self-critical. The bitterness I have ventured to lament is not Irish bitterness against the English; that I should assume as not only inevitable, but substantially justifiable. It is Irish bitterness against the Irish; the remarks of one honest Nationalist about another honest Nationalist. Similarly, while they are fond of poetry, they are not always fond of poets; and there is plenty of satire in their conversation on the subject. I have said that half the talk may consist of poetry; I might almost say that the other half may consist of parody. All these things amount to an excess of vigilance and realism; the mass of the people watch and pray, but even those who never pray never cease to watch. If they idealise sleep, it is as the sleepless do; it might almost be said that they can only dream of dreaming. If a dream haunts them, it is rather as something that escapes them; and indeed some of their finest poetry is rather about seeking fairyland than about finding it. Granted all this, I may say that there was one place in Ireland where I did seem to find it, and not merely to seek it. There was one spot where I seemed to see the dream itself in possession; as one might see from afar a cloud resting on a single hill. There a dream, at once a desire and a delusion, brooded above a whole city. That place was Belfast. The description could be justified even literally and in detail. A man told me in northeast Ulster that he had heard a mother warning her children away from some pond, or similar place of danger, by saying, “Don’t you go there; there are wee popes there.” A country where that could be said is like Elfland as compared to England. If not exactly a land of fairies, it is at least a land of goblins. There is something charming in the fancy of a pool full of these peculiar elves, like so many efts, each with his tiny triple crown or crossed keys complete. That is the difference between this manufacturing district and an English manufacturing district, like that of Manchester. There are numbers of sturdy Nonconformists in Manchester; and doubtless they direct some of their educational warnings against the system represented by the Archbishop of Canterbury. But nobody in Manchester, however Nonconformist, tells even a child that a puddle is a sort of breeding place for Archbishops of Canterbury, little goblins in gaiters and aprons. It may be said that it is a very stagnant pool that breeds that sort of efts. But whatever view we take of it, it remains true, to begin with, that the paradox could be proved merely from superficial things like superstitions. Protestant Ulster reeks of superstition; it is the strong smell that really comes like a blast out of Belfast, as distinct from Birmingham or Brixton. But to me there is always something human and almost humanising about superstition; and I really think that such lingering legends about the Pope, as a being as distant and dehumanised as the King of the Cannibal Islands, have served as a sort of negative folk-lore. And the same may be said, in so far as it is true that the commercial province has retained a theology as well as a mythology. Wherever men are still theological there is still some chance of their being logical. And in this the Calvinist Ulsterman may be more of a Catholic Irishman than is commonly realised, especially by himself. Attacks and apologies abound about the matter of Belfast bigotry; but bigotry is by no means the worst thing in Belfast. I rather think it is the best. Nor is it the strongest example of what I mean, when I say that Belfast does really live in a dream. The other and more remarkable fault of the society has indeed a religious root; for nearly everything in history has a religious root, and especially nearly everything in Irish history. Of that theoretical origin in theology I may say something in a moment; it will be enough to say here that what has produced the more prominent and practical evil is ultimately the theology itself, but not the habit of being theological. It is the creed; but not the faith. In so far as the Ulster Protestant really has a faith, he is really a fine fellow; though perhaps not quite so fine a fellow as he thinks himself. And that is the chasm; and can be most shortly stated as I have often stated it in such debates, by saying that the Protestant generally says, “I am a good Protestant,” while the Catholic always says, “I am a bad Catholic.” When I say that Belfast is dominated by a dream, I mean it in the strict psychological sense; that something inside the mind is stronger than everything outside it. Nonsense is not only stronger than sense, but stronger than the senses. The idea in a man’s head can eclipse the eyes in his head. Very worthy and kindly merchants told me there was no poverty in Belfast. They did not say there was less poverty than was commonly alleged, or less poverty than there had been, or less than there was in similar places elsewhere. They said there was none. As a remark about the Earthly Paradise or the New Jerusalem, it would be arresting. As a remark about the streets, through which they and I had both passed a few moments before, it was simply a triumph of the sheer madness of the imagination of man. These eminent citizens of Belfast received me in the kindest and most courteous fashion; and I would not willingly say anything in criticism of them beyond what is necessary for the practical needs of their country and mine. But indeed I think the greatest criticism of them is that they would not understand what the criticism means. I will therefore clothe it in a parable, which is none the worse for having also been a real incident. When told there was no poverty in Belfast, I had remarked mildly that the people must have a singular taste in dress. I was gravely assured that they had indeed a most singular taste in dress. I was left with the general impression that wearing shirts or trousers decorated with large holes at irregular intervals was a pardonable form of foppery or fashionable extravagance. And it will always be a deep indwelling delight, in the memories of my life, that just as these city fathers and I came out on to the steps of the hotel, there appeared before us one of the raggedest of the ragged little boys I had seen, asking for a penny. I gave him a penny, whereon this group of merchants was suddenly transfigured into a sort of mob, vociferating, “Against the law! Against the law!” and bundled him away. I hope it is not unamiable to be so much entertained by that vision of a mob of magistrates, so earnestly shooing away a solitary child like a cat. Anyhow, they knew not what they did; and, what is worse, knew not that they knew not. And they would not understand, if I told them, what legend might have been made about that child, in the Christian ages of the world. The point is here that the evil in the delusion does not consist in bigotry, but in vanity. It is not that such a Belfast man thinks he is right; for any honest man has a right to think he is right. It is that he does think he is good, not to say great; and no honest man can reach that comfortable conviction without a course of intellectual dishonesty. What cuts this spirit off from Christian common sense is the fact that the delusion, like most insane delusions, is merely egotistical. It is simply the pleasure of thinking extravagantly well of oneself; and unlimited indulgence in that pleasure is far more weakening than any indulgence in drink or dissipation. But so completely does it construct an unreal cosmos round the ego, that the criticism of the world cannot be felt even for worldly purposes. I could give many examples of this element in Belfast, as compared even with Birmingham or Manchester. The Lord Mayor of Manchester may not happen to know much about pictures; but he knows men who know about them. But the Belfast authorities will exhibit a maniacally bad picture as a masterpiece, merely because it glorifies Belfast. No man dare put up such a picture in Manchester, within a stone’s-throw of Mr. Charles Rowley. I care comparatively little about the case of aesthetics; but the case is even clearer in ethics. So wholly are these people sundered from more Christian traditions that their very boasts lower them; and. they abase themselves when they mean to exalt themselves. It never occurs to them that their strange inside standards do not always impress outsiders. A great employer introduced me to several of his very intelligent employees; and I can readily bear witness to the sincerity of the great Belfast delusion even among many of the poorer men of Belfast. But the sincere efforts of them and their master, to convince me that a union with the Catholic majority under Home Rule was intolerable to them, all went to one tune, which recurred with a kind of chorus, “We won’t have the likes of them making laws for the likes of us.” It never seemed to cross their minds that this is not a high example of any human morality; that judged by pagan verecundia or Christian humility or modern democratic brotherhood, it is simply the remark of a snob. The man in question is quite innocent of all this; he has no notion of modesty, or even of mock modesty; he is not only superior, but he thinks it a superiority to claim superiority. It is here that we cannot avoid theology, because, we cannot avoid theory. For the point is that even in theory the one religious atmosphere now differs from the other. That the difference had historically a religious root is really unquestionable; but anyhow it is very deeply rooted. The essence of Calvinism was certainty about salvation; the essence of Catholicism is uncertainty about salvation. The modern and materialised form of that certainty is superiority; the belief of a man in a fixed moral aristocracy of men like himself. But the truth concerned here is that, by this time at any rate, the superiority has become a doctrine as well as an indulgence. I doubt if this extreme school of Protestants believe in Christian humility even as an ideal. I doubt whether the more honest of them would even profess to believe in it. This can be clearly seen by comparing it with other Christian virtues; of which this decayed Calvinism offers at least a version, even to those who think it a perversion. Puritanism is a version of purity; if we think it a parody of purity. Philanthropy is a version of charity; if we think it a parody of charity. But in all this commercial Protestantism there is no version of humility; there is not even a parody of humility. Humility is not an ideal. Humility is not even a hypocrisy. There is no institution, no commandment, no common form of words, no popular pattern or traditional tale, to tell anybody in any fashion that there is any such thing as a peril of spiritual pride. In short, there is here a school of thought and sentiment that does definitely regard self-satisfaction as a strength; as against the strong Christian tradition in the rest of the country that does as definitely regard it as a weakness. That is the real moral issue in the modern struggle in Ireland; nor is it confined to Ireland. England has been deeply infected with this pharisaical weakness; but as I have said, England takes things vaguely where Ireland takes them vividly. The men of Belfast offer that city as something supreme, unique and unrivalled; and they are very nearly right. There is nothing exactly like it in the industrialism of this country; but for all that, the fight against its religion of arrogance has been fought out elsewhere and on a larger field. There is another centre and citadel from which this theory, of strength in a self-hypnotised superiority, has despised Christendom. There has been a rival city to Belfast; and its name was Berlin. Historians of all religions and no religion may yet come to regard it as a historical fact, I fancy, that the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century (at least in the form it actually took) was a barbaric breakdown, like that Prussianism which was the ultimate product of the Protestantism. But however this may be, historians will always be interested to note that it produced certain curious and characteristic things; which are worth studying whether we like or dislike them. And one of its features, I fancy, has been this; that it has had the power of producing certain institutions which progressed very rapidly to great wealth and power; which the world regarded at a certain moment as invincible; and which the world, at the next moment, suddenly discovered to be intolerable. It was so with the whole of that Calvinist theology, of which Belfast is now left as the lonely missionary. It was so, even in our own time, with the whole of that industrial capitalism of which Belfast is now the besieged and almost deserted outpost. And it was so with Berlin as it was with Belfast; and a subtle Prussian might almost complain of a kind of treachery, in the abruptness with which the world woke up and found it wanting; in the suddenness of the reaction that struck it impotent, so soon after it had been counted on omnipotent. These things seem to hold all the future; and in one flash they are things of the past. Belfast is an antiquated novelty. Such a thing is still being excused for seeming parvenu when it is discovered to be passe. For instance, it is only by coming in touch with some of the controversies surrounding the Convention, that an Englishman could realise how much the mentality of the Belfast leader is not so much that of a remote seventeenth century Whig, as that of a recent nineteenth century Radical. His conventionality seemed to be that of a Victorian rather than a Williamite; and to be less limited by the Orange Brotherhood than by the Cobden Club. This is a fact most successfully painted and pasted over by the big brushes of our own Party System, which has the art of hiding so many glaring facts. This Unionist Party in Ireland is very largely concerned to resist the main reform advocated by the Unionist Party in England. A political humorist, who understood the Cobden tradition of Belfast and the Chamberlain tradition of Birmingham, could have a huge amount of fun appealing from one to the other; congratulating Belfast on the bold Protectionist doctrines prevalent in Ireland; adjuring Mr. Bonar Law and the Tariff Reformers never to forget the fight made by Belfast for the sacred principles of Free Trade. But the fact that the Belfast school is merely the Manchester school is only one aspect of this general truth about the abrupt collapse into antiquity; a sudden superannuation. The whole march of that Manchester industrialism is not only halted but turned; the whole position is outflanked by new forces coming from new directions; the wealth of the peasantries blocks the road in front of it; the general strike has risen menacing its rear. That strange cloud of self-protecting vanity may still permit Belfast to believe in Belfast, but Britain does not really believe in Belfast. Philosophical forces far wider and deeper than politics have undermined the conception of progressive Protestantism in Ireland. I should say myself that mere English ascendancy in that island became intellectually impossible on the day when Shaftesbury introduced the first Factory Act, and on the day when Newman published the first pages of the Apologia. Both men were certainly Tories and probably Unionists. Neither were connected with the subject or with each other; the one hated the Pope and the other the Liberator. But industrialism was never again self-evidently superior after the first event, or Protestantism self-evidently superior after the other. And it needed a towering and self-evident superiority to excuse the English rule in Ireland. It is only on the ground of unquestionably doing good that men can do so much evil as that. Some Orangemen before the war indulged in a fine rhetorical comparison between William of Prussia and William of Orange; and openly suggested that the new Protestant Deliverer from the north would come from North Germany. I was assured by my more moderate hosts in Belfast that such Orangemen could not be regarded as representative or even responsible. On that I cannot pronounce. The Orangemen may not have been representative; they may not have been responsible; but I am quite sure they were right. I am quite sure those poor fanatics were far nearer the nerve of historical truth than professional politicians like Sir Edward Carson or industrial capitalists like Sir George Clark. If ever there was a natural alliance in the world, it would have been the alliance between Belfast and Berlin. The fanatics may be fools, but they have here the light by which the foolish things can confound the wise. It is the brightest spot in Belfast, bigotry, for if the light in its body be darkness, it is still brighter than the darkness. By the vision that goes everywhere with the virility and greatness of religion, these men have indeed pierced to the Protestant secret and the meaning of four hundred years. Their Protestantism is Prussianism, not as a term of abuse, but as a term of abstract and impartial ethical science. Belfast and Berlin are on the same side in the deepest of all the spiritual issues involved in the war. And that is the simple issue of whether pride is a sin, and therefore a weakness. Modern mentality, or great masses of it, has seriously advanced the view that it is a weakness to disarm criticism by self-criticism, and a strength to disdain criticism through self-confidence. That is the thesis for which Berlin gave battle to the older civilisation in Europe; and that for which Belfast gave battle to the older civilisation in Ireland. It may be, as I suggested, that such Protestant pride is the old Calvinism, with its fixed election of the few. It may be that the Protestantism is merely Paganism, with its brutish gods and giants lingering in corners of the more savage north. It may be that the Calvinism was itself a recurrence of the Paganism. But in any case, I am sure that this superiority, which can master men like a nightmare, can also vanish like a nightmare. And I strongly suspect that in this matter also, as in the matter of property as viewed by a peasantry, the older civilisation will prove to be the real civilisation; and that a healthier society will return to regarding pride as a pestilence, as the Socialists have already returned to regarding avarice as a pestilence. The old tradition of Christendom was that the highest form of faith was a doubt. It was the doubt of a man about his soul. It was admirably expressed to me by Mr. Yeats, who is now champion of Catholic orthodoxy, in stating his preference for mediaeval Catholicism as compared with modern humanitarianism; “Men were thinking then about their own sins, and now they are always thinking about other people’s.” And even by the Protestant test of progress, pride is seen to be arrested by a premature paralysis. Progress is superiority to oneself; and it is stopped dead by superiority to others. The case is even clearer by the test of poetry, which is much more solid and permanent than progress. The Superman may have been a sort of poem; but he could never be any sort of poet. The more we attempt to analyse that strange element of wonder, which is the soul of all the arts, the more we shall see that it must depend on some subordination of the self to a glory existing beyond it, and even in spite of it. Man always feels as a creature when he acts as a creator. When he carves a cathedral it is to make a monster that can swallow him. But the Nietzschean nightmare of swallowing the world is only a sort of yawning. When the evolutionary anarch has broken all links and laws and is at last free to speak, he finds he has nothing to say. So German songs under the imperial eagle fell silent like songbirds under a hawk; and it is but rarely, and here and there, that a Belfast merchant liberates his soul in a lyric. He has to get Mr. Kipling to write a Belfast poem, in a style technically attuned to the Belfast pictures. There is the true Tara of the silent harp, and the throne and habitation of the dream; and it is there that the Celtic pessimists should weep in silence for the end of song. Blowing one’s own trumpet has not proved a good musical education. In logic a wise man will always put the cart before the horse. That is to say, he will always put the end before the means; when he is considering the question as a whole. He does not construct a cart in order to exercise a horse. He employs a horse to draw a cart, and whatever is in the cart. In all modern reasoning there is a tendency to make the mere political beast of burden more important than the chariot of man it is meant to draw. This had led to a dismissal of all such spiritual questions in favour of what are called social questions; and this to a too facile treatment of things like the religious question in Belfast. There is a religious question; and it will not have an irreligious answer. It will not be met by the limitation of Christian faith, but rather by the extension of Christian charity. But if a man says that there is no difference between a Protestant and a Catholic, and that both can act in an identical fashion everywhere but in a church or chapel, he is madly driving the cart-horse when he has forgotten the cart. A religion is not the church a man goes to but the cosmos he lives in; and if any sceptic forgets it, the maddest fanatic beating an Orange drum about the Battle of the Boyne is a better philosopher than he. Many uneducated and some educated people in Belfast, quite sincerely believe that Roman priests are fiends, only waiting to rekindle the fires of the Inquisition. For two simple reasons, however, I declined to take this fact as evidence of anything except their sincerity. First, because the stories, when reduced to their rudiment of truth, generally resolved themselves into the riddle of poor Roman Catholics giving money to their own religion; and seemed to deplore not so much a dependence on priests as an independence of employers. And second for a reason drawn from my own experience, as well as common knowledge, concerning the Protestant gentry in the south of Ireland. The southern Unionists spoke quite without this special horror of Catholic priests or peasants. They grumbled at them or laughed at them as a man grumbles or laughs at his neighbours; but obviously they no more dreamed that the priest would burn them than that he would eat them. If the priests were as black as the black Protestants painted them, they would be at their worst where they are with the majority; and would be known at their worst by the minority. It was clear that Belfast held the more bigoted tradition, not because it knew more of priests, but because it knew less of them; not because it was on the spot, but because the spot was barred. An even more general delusion was the idea that all the southern Irish dreamed and did no work. I pointed out that this also was inconsistent with concrete experience; since all over the world a man who makes a small farm pay has to work very hard indeed. In historic fact, the old notion that the Irish peasant did no work, but only dreamed, had a simple explanation. It merely meant that he did no work for a capitalist’s profit; but dreamed of some day doing work for his own profit. But there may also have been this distorted truth in the tradition; that a free peasant, while he extends his own work, creates his own holidays. He is not idle all day, but he may be idle at any time of the day; he does not dream whenever he feels inclined, but he does dream whenever he chooses. A famous Belfast manufacturer, a man of capacity, but one who shook his head over the unaccountable prevalence of priests, assured me that he had seen peasants in the south doing nothing, at all sorts of odd times; and this is doubtless the difference between the farm and the factory. The same gentleman showed me over the colossal shipping of the great harbour, with all machinery and transport leading up to it. No man of any imagination would be insensible to such titanic experiments of his race; or deny the dark poetry of those furnaces fit for Vulcan or those hammers worthy of Thor. But as I stood on the dock I said to my guide: “Have you ever asked what all this is for?” He was an intelligent man, an exile from metaphysical Scotland, and he knew what I meant. “I don’t know,” he said, “perhaps we are only insects building a coral reef. I don’t know what is the good of the coral reef.” “Perhaps,” I said, “that is what the peasant dreams about, and, why he listens to the priest.” For there seems to be a fashionable fallacy to the effect that religious equality is something to be done and done with, that we may go on to the real matter of political equality. In philosophy it is the flat contrary that is true. Political equality is something to be done and done with, that we may go on to the much more real matter of religion. At the Abbey Theatre I saw a forcible play by Mr. St. John Ervine, called The Mixed Marriage; which I should remember if it were only for the beautiful acting of Miss Maire O’Neill. But the play moved me very much as a play; yet I felt that the presence of this fallacy falsified it in some measure. The dramatist seemed to resent a schism merely because it interfered with a strike. But the only object of striking is liberty; and the only object of liberty is life: a thing wholly spiritual. It is economic liberty that should be dismissed as these people dismiss theology. We only get it, to forget it. It is right that men should have houses, right that they should have land, right that they should have laws to protect the land; but all these things are only machinery to make leisure for the labouring soul. The house is only a stage set up by stage carpenters for the acting of what Mr. J. B. Yeats has called “the drama of the home.” All the most dramatic things happen at home, from being born to being dead. What a man thinks about these things is his life; and to substitute for them a bustle of electioneering and legislation is to wander about among screens and pulleys on the wrong side of pasteboard scenery; and never to act the play. And that play is always a miracle play; and the name of its hero is Everyman. When I came back from the desolate splendour of the Donegal sea and shore, and saw again the square garden and the statue outside the Dublin hotel, I did not know I was returning to something that might well be called more desolate. For it was when I entered the hotel that I first found that it was full of the awful tragedy of the Leinster. I had often seen death in a home, but never death decimating a vast hostelry; and there was something strangely shocking about the empty seats of men and women with whom I had talked so idly a few days before. It was almost as if there was more tragedy in the cutting short of such trivial talk than in the sundering of life-long ties. But there was all the dignity as well as the tragedy of man; and I was glad, before I left Ireland, to have seen the nobler side of the Anglo-Irish garrison; and to have known men of my own blood, however mistaken, so enduring the end of things. With the bad news from the sea came better news from the war; Mangin had struck the sensational blow that cut off the Germans as they marched upon Chalons; and with all the emotions of an exile, however temporary, I knew that my own land was secure. Somehow, the bad and good news together turned my mind more and more towards England; and all the inner humour and insular geniality which even the Irish may some day be allowed to understand. As I went homewards on the next boat that started from the Irish port, and the Wicklow hills receded in a rainy and broken sunlight, it was with all the simplest of those ancient appetites with which a man should come back to his own country. Only there clung to me, not to be denied, one sentiment about Ireland, one sentiment that I could not transfer to England; which called me like an elfland of so many happy figures, from Puck to Pickwick. As I looked at those rainy hills, I knew at least that I was looking, perhaps for the last time, on something rooted in the Christian faith. There at least the Christian ideal was something more than an ideal; it was in a special sense real. It was so real that it appeared even in statistics. It was so self-evident as to be seen even by sociologists. It was a land where our religion had made even its vision visible. It had made even its unpopular virtues popular. It must be, in the times to come, a final testing-place, of whether a people that will take that name seriously, and even solidly, is fated to suffer or to succeed. As the long line of the mountain coast unfolded before me I had an optical illusion; it may be that many have had it before. As new lengths of coast and lines of heights were unfolded, I had the fancy that the whole land was not receding but advancing, like something spreading out its arms to the world. A chance shred of sunshine rested, like a riven banner, on the hill which I believe is called in Irish the Mountain of the Golden Spears; and I could have imagined that the spears and the banner were coming on. And in that flash I remembered that the men of this island had once gone forth, not the torches of conquerors or destroyers; but as missionaries in the very midnight of the Dark Ages, like a multitude of moving candles, that were the light of the world. The End
I. Two Stones in a Square
When I had for the first time crossed St. George’s Channel, and for the first time stepped out of a Dublin hotel on to St. Stephen’s Green, the first of all my impressions was that of a particular statue, or rather portion of a statue. I left many traditional mysteries already in my track, but they did not trouble me as did this random glimpse or vision. I have never understood why the Channel is called St. George’s Channel; it would seem more natural to call it St. Patrick’s Channel since the great missionary did almost certainly cross that unquiet sea and look up at those mysterious mountains. And though I should be enchanted, in an abstract artistic sense, to imagine St. George sailing towards the sunset, flying the silver and scarlet colours of his cross, I cannot in fact regard that journey as the most fortunate of the adventures of that flag. Nor, for that matter, do I know why the Green should be called St. Stephen’s Green, nor why the parliamentary enclosure at Westminster is also connected with the first of the martyrs; unless it be because St. Stephen was killed with stones. The stones piled together to make modern political buildings, might perhaps be regarded as a cairn, or heap of missiles, marking the place of the murder of a witness to the truth. And while it seems unlikely that St. Stephen was pelted with statues as well as stones, there are undoubtedly statues that might well kill a Christian at sight. Among these graven stones, from which the saints suffer, I should certainly include some of those figures in frock coats standing opposite St. Stephen’s, Westminster. There are many such statues in Dublin also; but the one with which I am concerned was at first partially veiled from me. And the veil was at least as symbolic as the vision. I saw what seemed the crooked hind legs of a horse on a pedestal and deduced an equestrian statue, in the somewhat bloated fashion of the early eighteenth century equestrian statues. But the figure, from where I stood, was wholly hidden in the tops of trees growing round it in a ring; masking it with leafy curtains or draping it with leafy banners. But they were green banners, that waved and glittered all about it in the sunlight; and the face they hid was the face of an English king. Or rather, to speak more correctly, a German king. When laws can stay … it was impossible that an old rhyme should not run in my head, and words that appealed to the everlasting revolt of the green things of the earth… . “And when the leaves in summer time their colour dare not show.” The rhyme seemed to reach me out of remote times and find arresting fulfilment, like a prophecy; it was impossible not to feel that I had seen an omen. I was conscious vaguely of a vision of green garlands hung on gray stone; and the wreaths were living and growing, and the stone was dead. Something in the simple substances and elemental colours, in the white sunlight, and the sombre and even secret image, held the mind for a moment in the midst of all the moving city, like a sign given in a dream. I was told that the figure was that of one of the first Georges; but indeed I seemed to know already that it was the White Horse of Hanover that had thus grown gray with Irish weather or green with Irish foliage. I knew only too well, already, that the George who had really crossed the Channel was not the saint. This was one of those German princes whom the English aristocracy used when it made the English domestic polity aristocratic and the English foreign policy German. Those Englishmen who think the Irish are pro-German, or those Irishmen who think the Irish ought to be pro-German, would presumably expect the Dublin populace to have hung the statue of this German deliverer with national flowers and nationalist flags. For some reason, however, I found no traces of Irish tributes round the pedestal of the Teutonic horseman. I wondered how many people in the last fifty years have ever cared about it, or even been conscious of their own carelessness. I wonder how many have ever troubled to look at it, or even trouble not to look at it. If it fell down, I wonder whether anybody would put it up again. I do not know; I only know that Irish gardeners, or some such Irish humorists, had planted trees in a ring round that prancing equestrian figure; trees that had, so to speak, sprung up and choked him, making him more unrecognisable than a Jack-in-the-Green. Jack or George had vanished; but the Green remained. About a stone’s-throw from this calamity in stone there stood, at the corner of a gorgeously coloured flower-walk, a bust evidently by a modern sculptor with modern symbolic ornament surmounted by the fine falcon face of the poet Mangan; who dreamed and drank and died, a thoughtless and thriftless outcast, in the darkest of the Dublin streets around that place. This individual Irishman really was what we were told that all Irishmen were, hopeless, heedless, irresponsible, impossible, a tragedy of failure. And yet it seemed to be his head that was lifted and not hidden; the gay flowers only showed up this graven image as the green leaves shut out the other; everything around him seemed bright and busy, and told rather of a new time. It was clear that modern men did stop to look at him; indeed modern men had stayed there long enough to make him a monument. It was almost certain that if his monument fell down, it really would be put up again. I think it very likely there would be competition among advanced modern artistic schools of admitted crankiness and unimpeachable lunacy; that somebody would want to cut out a Cubist Mangan in a style less of stone than of bricks; or to set up a Vorticist Mangan, like a frozen whirlpool, to terrify the children playing in that flowery lane. For when I afterwards went into the Dublin Art Club, or mixed generally in the stimulating society of the intellectuals of the Irish capital, I found a multitude of things which moved both my admiration and amusement. Perhaps the best thing of all was that it was the one society that I have seen where the intellectuals were intellectual. But nothing pleased me more than the fact that even Irish art was taken with a certain Irish pugnacity; as if there could be street fights about aesthetics as there once were about theology. I could almost imagine an appeal for pikes to settle a point about art needlework, or a suggestion of dying on the barricades for a difference about bookbinding. And I could still more easily imagine a sort of ultra-civilised civil war round the half-restored bust of poor Mangan. But it was in a yet plainer and more popular sense that I felt that bust to be the sign of a new world, where the statue of Royal George was only the ruin of an old one. And though I have since seen many much more complex, and many decidedly contradictory things in Ireland, the allegory of those two stone images in that public garden has remained in my memory, and has not been reversed. The Glorious Revolution, the great Protestant Deliverer, the Hanoverian Succession, these things were the very pageant and apotheosis of success. The Whig aristocrat was not merely victorious; it was as a victor that he asked for victory. The thing was fully expressed in all the florid and insolent statuary of the period, in all those tumid horsemen in Roman uniform and Rococo periwigs shown as prancing in perpetual motion down shouting streets to their triumphs; only to-day the streets are empty and silent, and the horse stands still. Of such a kind was the imperial figure round which the ring of trees had risen, like great green fans to soothe a sultan, or great green curtains to guard him. But it was in a sort of mockery that his pavilion was thus painted with the colour of his conquered enemies. For the king was dead behind his curtains, his voice will be heard no more, and no man will even wish to hear it, while the world endures. The dynastic eighteenth century is dead if anything is dead; and these idols at least are only stones. But only a few yards away, the stone that the builders rejected is really the head of a corner, standing at the corner of a new pathway, coloured and crowded with children and with flowers. That, I suspect, is the paradox of Ireland in the modern world. Everything that was thought progressive, as a prancing horse, has come to a standstill. Everything that was thought decadent, as a dying drunkard, has risen from the dead. All that seemed to have reached a cul de sac has turned the corner, and stands at the opening of a new road. All that thought itself on a pedestal has found itself up a tree. And that is why those two chance stones seem to me to stand like graven images on either side of the gateway by which a man enters Ireland. And yet I had not left the same small enclosure till I had seen one other sight which was even more symbolic than the flowers near the foot of the poet’s pedestal. A few yards beyond the Mangan bust was a model plot of vegetables, like a kitchen garden with no kitchen or house attached to it, planted out in a patchwork of potatoes, cabbages, and turnips, to prove how much could be done with an acre. And I realised as in a vision that all over the new Ireland that patch is repeated like a pattern; and where there is a real kitchen garden there is also a real kitchen; and it is not a communal kitchen. It is more typical even than the poet and the flowers; for these flowers are also food, and this poetry is also property; property which, when properly distributed, is the poetry of the average man. It was only afterwards that I could realise all the realities to which this accident corresponded; but even this little public experiment, at the first glance, had something of the meaning of a public monument. It was this which the earth itself had reared against the monstrous image of the German monarch; and I might have called this chapter Cabbages and Kings. My life is passed in making bad jokes and seeing them turn into true prophecies. In the little town in South Bucks, where I live, I remember some talk of appropriate ceremonies in connection with the work of sending vegetables to the Fleet. There was a suggestion that these proceedings should end with “God Save the King,” an amendment by some one (of a more naval turn of mind) to substitute “Rule Britannia;” and the opposition of one individual, claiming to be of Irish extraction, who loudly refused to lend a voice to either. Whatever I retain, in such rural scenes, of the frivolity of Fleet Street led me to suggest that we could all join in singing “The Wearing of the Greens.” But I have since discovered that this remark, like other typical utterances of the village idiot, was in truth inspired; and was a revelation and a vision from across the sea, a vision of what was really being done, not by the village idiots but by the village wise men. For the whole miracle of modern Ireland might well be summed up in the simple change from the word “green” to the word “greens.” Nor would it be true to say that the first is poetical and the second practical. For a green tree is quite as poetical as a green flag; and no one in touch with history doubts that the waving of the green flag has been very useful to the growing of the green tree. But I shall have to touch upon all such controversial topics later, for those to whom such statements are still controversial. Here I would only begin by recording a first impression as vividly coloured and patchy as a modernist picture; a square of green things growing where they are least expected; the new vision of Ireland. The discovery, for most Englishmen, will be like touching the trees of a faded tapestry, and finding the forest alive and full of birds. It will be as if, on some dry urn or dreary column, figures which had already begun to crumble magically began to move and dance. For culture as well as mere caddishness assumed the decay of these Celtic or Catholic things; there were artists sketching the ruins as well as trippers picnicking in them; and it was not only evidence that a final silence had fallen on the harp of Tara, that it did not play “Tararaboomdeay.” Englishmen believed in Irish decay even when they were large-minded enough to lament it. It might be said that even those who were penitent because the thing was murdered, were quite convinced that it was killed. The meaning of these green and solid things before me is that it is not a ghost that has risen from the grave. A flower, like a flag, might be little more than a ghost; but a fruit has that sacramental solidity which in all mythologies belongs not to a ghost but to a god. This sight of things sustaining, and a beauty that nourishes and does not merely charm, is the premonition of practicality in the miracle of modern Ireland. It is a miracle more marvellous than the resurrection of the dead. It is the resurrection of the body.
I. Due pietre in una piazza
Quando per la prima volta ebbi attraversato il Canale di San Giorgio, e per la prima volta misi piede fuori da un albergo di Dublino su St. Stephen’s Green, la prima di tutte le mie impressioni fu quella di una particolare statua, o piuttosto di una porzione di statua. Molti misteri tradizionali mi ero già lasciato alle spalle, ma non mi turbavano come questo casuale scorcio o visione. Non ho mai capito perché il Canale sia chiamato Canale di San Giorgio; parrebbe più naturale chiamarlo Canale di San Patrizio, giacché il grande missionario quasi certamente attraversò quel mare inquieto e levò lo sguardo verso quei misteriosi monti. E per quanto sarei incantato, in un senso artistico astratto, d’immaginare San Giorgio veleggiare verso il tramonto, inalberando i colori d’argento e scarlatto della sua croce, non posso di fatto considerare quel viaggio la più fortunata delle avventure di quella bandiera. Né, del resto, so perché il Green debba chiamarsi St. Stephen’s Green, né perché il recinto parlamentare di Westminster sia anch’esso connesso col primo dei martiri; a meno che non sia perché Santo Stefano fu ucciso con le pietre. Le pietre ammucchiate insieme per fare i moderni edifici politici potrebbero forse considerarsi un cairn, o cumulo di proiettili, a segnare il luogo dell’assassinio di un testimone della verità. E benché sembri improbabile che Santo Stefano sia stato lapidato con statue oltre che con pietre, vi sono senza dubbio statue che ben potrebbero uccidere un cristiano a prima vista. Fra queste pietre scolpite, per opera delle quali i santi patiscono, includerei certamente alcune di quelle figure in redingote che stanno di fronte a St. Stephen’s, a Westminster. Anche a Dublino ci sono molte statue di questo genere; ma quella di cui mi occupo mi era in principio parzialmente velata. E il velo era almeno tanto simbolico quanto la visione. Vidi quelle che parevano le storte zampe posteriori di un cavallo su un piedistallo e ne dedussi una statua equestre, nella maniera alquanto gonfia delle statue equestri del primo Settecento. Ma la figura, da dove stavo, era interamente nascosta nelle cime degli alberi che le crescevano intorno in un cerchio; mascherandola con fronzute cortine o drappeggiandola con fronzuti vessilli. Ma erano vessilli verdi, che ondeggiavano e scintillavano tutt’intorno alla luce del sole; e il volto che nascondevano era il volto di un re inglese. O piuttosto, a dire più esattamente, di un re tedesco. «Quando le leggi potranno arrestare …» era impossibile che una vecchia filastrocca non mi frullasse per la testa, e parole che si appellavano all’eterna rivolta delle verdi cose della terra… . «E quando le foglie, nel tempo d’estate, non osano mostrare il loro colore.» La filastrocca pareva raggiungermi da tempi remoti e trovare un avvincente compimento, come una profezia; era impossibile non sentire di aver visto un presagio. Ero vagamente consapevole di una visione di verdi ghirlande appese a grigia pietra; e le corone erano vive e crescevano, e la pietra era morta. Qualcosa nelle semplici sostanze e nei colori elementari, nella bianca luce del sole, e nell’immagine cupa e persino segreta, tenne la mente per un istante in mezzo a tutta la città in movimento, come un segno dato in sogno. Mi fu detto che la figura era quella di uno dei primi Giorgi; ma in verità mi pareva di sapere già che era il Bianco Cavallo di Hannover a essersi così fatto grigio col tempo irlandese o verde col fogliame irlandese. Sapevo fin troppo bene, ormai, che il Giorgio che aveva davvero attraversato il Canale non era il santo. Questi era uno di quei principi tedeschi di cui l’aristocrazia inglese si servì quando rese aristocratica la politica interna inglese e tedesca la politica estera inglese. Quegli inglesi che credono gli irlandesi filotedeschi, o quegli irlandesi che credono che gli irlandesi dovrebbero essere filotedeschi, si aspetterebbero presumibilmente che il popolino di Dublino avesse ornato la statua di questo liberatore tedesco di fiori nazionali e bandiere nazionaliste. Per qualche ragione, tuttavia, non trovai traccia di tributi irlandesi intorno al piedistallo del cavaliere teutonico. Mi chiesi quante persone negli ultimi cinquant’anni se ne fossero mai curate, o fossero anche solo state consapevoli della propria incuria. Mi domando quanti si siano mai presi la briga di guardarla, o anche solo la briga di non guardarla. Se cadesse, mi domando se qualcuno la rimetterebbe su. Non lo so; so soltanto che giardinieri irlandesi, o qualche siffatto burlone irlandese, avevano piantato alberi in cerchio attorno a quella impennata figura equestre; alberi che erano, per così dire, spuntati e l’avevano soffocata, rendendola più irriconoscibile di un Jack-in-the-Green. Jack o Giorgio era svanito; ma il Verde rimaneva. A un tiro di sasso da questa calamità di pietra sorgeva, all’angolo di un vialetto fiorito dai colori sgargianti, un busto evidentemente opera di uno scultore moderno con moderno ornamento simbolico, sormontato dal bel volto di falco del poeta Mangan; che sognò e bevve e morì, un reietto sventato e scialacquatore, nella più buia delle vie di Dublino attorno a quel luogo. Questo singolo irlandese era davvero ciò che ci era stato detto essere tutti gli irlandesi: senza speranza, sbadato, irresponsabile, impossibile, una tragedia di fallimento. Eppure pareva che fosse la sua testa a essere sollevata e non nascosta; i gai fiori non facevano che mettere in risalto questa immagine scolpita come le verdi foglie escludevano l’altra; tutto intorno a lui pareva luminoso e indaffarato, e parlava piuttosto di un tempo nuovo. Era chiaro che gli uomini moderni si fermavano davvero a guardare lui; anzi, gli uomini moderni vi si erano trattenuti abbastanza a lungo da farne un monumento. Era quasi certo che se il suo monumento fosse caduto, sarebbe davvero stato rimesso su. Ritengo molto probabile che ci sarebbe competizione tra le avanzate scuole moderne artistiche di riconosciuta stramberia e ineccepibile follia; che qualcuno vorrebbe intagliare un Mangan cubista in uno stile meno di pietra che di mattoni; o erigere un Mangan vorticista, come un vortice congelato, a terrorizzare i bambini che giocano in quel viale fiorito. Poiché quando in seguito entrai nel Dublin Art Club, o mi mescolai in generale alla stimolante società degli intellettuali della capitale irlandese, trovai una moltitudine di cose che mossero tanto la mia ammirazione quanto il mio divertimento. Forse la cosa migliore di tutte fu che era l’unica società da me veduta in cui gli intellettuali fossero intellettuali. Ma nulla mi piacque più del fatto che persino l’arte irlandese fosse presa con una certa combattività irlandese; come se potessero esserci risse di strada sull’estetica come un tempo ce n’erano sulla teologia. Quasi riuscivo a immaginare un appello alle picche per dirimere una questione di ricamo artistico, o la proposta di morire sulle barricate per una divergenza sulla rilegatura dei libri. E ancora più facilmente riuscivo a immaginare una sorta di guerra civile ultra-civilizzata attorno al semirestaurato busto del povero Mangan. Ma fu in un senso ancora più schietto e popolare che sentii quel busto essere il segno di un mondo nuovo, dove la statua del Regio Giorgio era soltanto la rovina di uno vecchio. E benché da allora abbia visto in Irlanda cose molto più complesse, e molte decisamente contraddittorie, l’allegoria di quelle due immagini di pietra in quel giardino pubblico è rimasta nella mia memoria, e non si è capovolta. La Gloriosa Rivoluzione, il grande Liberatore protestante, la Successione hannoveriana, queste cose erano il vero fasto e l’apoteosi del successo. L’aristocratico whig non era semplicemente vittorioso; era come vincitore che chiedeva la vittoria. La cosa era pienamente espressa in tutta la statuaria florida e insolente dell’epoca, in tutti quei tumidi cavalieri in uniforme romana e parrucche rococò raffigurati mentre s’impennano in perpetuo movimento giù per vie vocianti verso i loro trionfi; solo che oggi le vie sono vuote e silenziose, e il cavallo sta immobile. Di tal genere era la figura imperiale attorno alla quale s’era levato il cerchio d’alberi, come grandi ventagli verdi per far vento a un sultano, o grandi verdi cortine a custodirlo. Ma era in una sorta di scherno che il suo padiglione fosse così dipinto col colore dei suoi nemici sconfitti. Perché il re era morto dietro le sue cortine, la sua voce non sarà udita mai più, e nessun uomo desidererà nemmeno udirla, finché il mondo duri. Il Settecento dinastico è morto se qualcosa è morto; e questi idoli almeno sono solo pietre. Ma a pochi metri soltanto, la pietra che i costruttori scartarono è davvero testata d’angolo, ritta all’angolo di un nuovo sentiero, colorata e affollata di bambini e di fiori. Questo, sospetto, è il paradosso dell’Irlanda nel mondo moderno. Tutto ciò che si riteneva progressivo, come un cavallo impennato, si è arrestato. Tutto ciò che si riteneva decadente, come un ubriacone morente, è risorto dai morti. Tutto ciò che pareva aver raggiunto un cul de sac ha svoltato l’angolo, e sta all’imbocco di una nuova strada. Tutto ciò che si credeva su un piedistallo si è ritrovato in cima a un albero. Ed ecco perché quelle due pietre casuali mi paiono ergersi come immagini scolpite ai due lati del portale attraverso il quale si entra in Irlanda. Eppure non avevo lasciato il medesimo piccolo recinto senza aver visto un altro spettacolo ancora più simbolico dei fiori presso il piede del piedistallo del poeta. A pochi metri oltre il busto di Mangan c’era un appezzamento modello di ortaggi, come un orto senza cucina o casa annessa, piantato in un mosaico di patate, cavoli e rape, per dimostrare quanto si potesse fare con un acro. E mi resi conto come in una visione che in tutta la nuova Irlanda quell’appezzamento si ripete come un motivo; e dove c’è un vero orto c’è anche una vera cucina; e non è una cucina comune. È più tipico persino del poeta e dei fiori; perché questi fiori sono anche cibo, e questa poesia è anche proprietà; proprietà che, quando è ben distribuita, è la poesia dell’uomo comune. Fu solo in seguito che potei rendermi conto di tutte le realtà a cui questa casualità corrispondeva; ma persino questo piccolo esperimento pubblico, a prima vista, aveva qualcosa del significato di un pubblico monumento. Era questo che la terra stessa aveva eretto contro la mostruosa immagine del monarca tedesco; e avrei potuto intitolare questo capitolo «Cavoli e Re». La mia vita trascorre nel fare cattive battute e nel vederle mutarsi in vere profezie. Nella cittadina del South Bucks, dove abito, ricordo si parlasse di cerimonie appropriate in connessione con l’opera di mandare ortaggi alla Flotta. Ci fu la proposta che queste cerimonie si concludessero con «God Save the King», un emendamento da parte di qualcuno (di mente più navale) per sostituirvi «Rule Britannia»; e l’opposizione di un individuo, che si dichiarava di origine irlandese, il quale rifiutò a gran voce di prestare la propria voce all’uno o all’altro. Quel che mi resta, in simili scene rurali, della frivolezza di Fleet Street mi indusse a proporre che ci potessimo unire tutti a cantare «The Wearing of the Greens». Ma da allora ho scoperto che questa osservazione, come altre tipiche uscite dello scemo del villaggio, era in verità ispirata; ed era una rivelazione e una visione da oltremare, una visione di ciò che veniva davvero fatto, non dagli scemi del villaggio ma dai saggi del villaggio. Poiché l’intero miracolo dell’Irlanda moderna potrebbe bene riassumersi nel semplice mutamento dalla parola «green» alla parola «greens». Né sarebbe vero dire che la prima è poetica e la seconda pratica. Perché un albero verde è del tutto poetico quanto una bandiera verde; e nessuno che sia in contatto con la storia dubita che lo sventolare della verde bandiera sia stato assai utile alla crescita dell’albero verde. Ma dovrò toccare tutti questi argomenti controversi più avanti, per coloro ai quali simili affermazioni sono ancora controverse. Qui vorrei soltanto cominciare col registrare una prima impressione vividamente colorata e screziata come un quadro modernista; un quadrato di cose verdi che crescono dove meno ce lo si aspetta; la nuova visione dell’Irlanda. La scoperta, per la maggior parte degli inglesi, sarà come toccare gli alberi di uno stinto arazzo, e trovare la foresta viva e piena di uccelli. Sarà come se, su qualche arida urna o tetra colonna, figure che già avevano cominciato a sgretolarsi cominciassero magicamente a muoversi e a danzare. Perché la cultura non meno che la mera villania davano per scontato il decadimento di queste cose celtiche o cattoliche; c’erano artisti che schizzavano le rovine non meno che gitanti che vi facevano picnic; e non era solo prova che un silenzio finale fosse calato sull’arpa di Tara, il fatto che non suonasse «Tararaboomdeay». Gli inglesi credevano nel decadimento irlandese anche quando erano di mente abbastanza larga da lamentarlo. Si potrebbe dire che persino coloro che erano pentiti perché la cosa era stata assassinata, erano del tutto convinti che fosse stata uccisa. Il significato di queste cose verdi e solide davanti a me è che non è un fantasma ciò che è risorto dalla tomba. Un fiore, come una bandiera, potrebbe essere poco più di un fantasma; ma un frutto ha quella solidità sacramentale che in tutte le mitologie appartiene non a un fantasma ma a un dio. Questa vista di cose che sostentano, e di una bellezza che nutre e non si limita a incantare, è la premonizione di concretezza nel miracolo dell’Irlanda moderna. È un miracolo più meraviglioso della resurrezione dei morti. È la resurrezione del corpo.
II. The Root of Reality
The only excuse of literature is to make things new; and the chief misfortune of journalism is that it has to make them old. What is hurried has to be hackneyed. Suppose a man has to write on a particular subject, let us say America; if he has a day to do it in, it is possible that, in the last afterglow of sunset, he may have discovered at least one thing which he himself really thinks about America. It is conceivable that somewhere under the evening star he may have a new idea, even about the new world. If he has only half an hour in which to write, he will just have time to consult an encyclopaedia and vaguely remember the latest leading articles. The encyclopaedia will be only about a decade out of date; the leading articles will be aeons out of date— having been written under similar conditions of modern rush. If he has only a quarter of an hour in which to write about America, he may be driven in mere delirium and madness to call her his Gigantic Daughter in the west, to talk of the feasibility of Hands Across the Sea, or even to call himself an Anglo-Saxon, when he might as well call himself a Jute. But whatever debasing banality be the effect of business scurry in criticism, it is but one example of a truth that can be tested in twenty fields of experience. If a man must get to Brighton as quickly as possible, he can get there quickest by travelling on rigid rails on a recognised route. If he has time and money for motoring, he will still use public roads; but he will be surprised to find how many public roads look as new and quiet as private roads. If he has time enough to walk, he may find for himself a string of fresh footpaths, each one a fairy-tale. This law of the leisure needed for the awakening of wonder applies, indeed, to things superficially familiar as well as to things superficially fresh. The chief case for old enclosures and boundaries is that they enclose a space in which new things can always be found later, like live fish within the four corners of a net. The chief charm of having a home that is secure is having leisure to feel it as strange. I have often done the little I could to correct the stale trick of taking things for granted: all the more because it is not even taking them for granted. It is taking them without gratitude; that is, emphatically as not granted. Even one’s own front door, released by one’s own latchkey, should not only open inward on things familiar, but outward on things unknown. Even one’s own domestic fireside should be wild as well as domesticated; for nothing could be wilder than fire. But if this light of the higher ignorance should shine even on familiar places, it should naturally shine most clearly on the roads of a strange land. It would be well if a man could enter Ireland really knowing that he knows nothing about Ireland; if possible, not even the name of Ireland. The misfortune is that most men know the name too well, and the thing too little. This book would probably be a better book, as well as a better joke, if I were to call the island throughout by some name like Atlantis, and only reveal on the last page that I was referring to Ireland. Englishmen would see a situation of great interest, objects with which they could feel considerable sympathy, and opportunities of which they might take considerable advantage, if only they would really look at the place plain and straight, as they would at some entirely new island, with an entirely new name, discovered by that seafaring adventure which is the real romance of England. In short, he might do something with it, if he would only treat it as an object in front of him, and not as a subject or story left behind him. There will be occasion later to say all that should be said of the need of studying the Irish story. But the Irish story is one thing, and what is called the Irish Question quite another; and in a purely practical sense the best thing the stranger can do is to forget the Irish Question and look at the Irish. If he looked at them simply and steadily, as he would look at the natives of an entirely new nation with a new name, he would become conscious of a very strange but entirely solid fact. He would become conscious of it, as a man in a fairy tale might become conscious that he had crossed the border of fairyland, by such a trifle, as a talking cow or a haystack walking about on legs. For the Irish Question has never been discussed in England. Men have discussed Home Rule; but those who advocated it most warmly, and as I think wisely, did not even know what the Irish meant by Home. Men have talked about Unionism; but they have never even dared to propose Union. A Unionist ought to mean a man who is not even conscious of the boundary of the two countries; who can walk across the frontier of fairyland, and not even notice the walking haystack. As a fact, the Unionist always shoots at the haystack; though he never hits it. But the limitation is not limited to Unionists; as I have already said, the English Radicals have been quite as incapable of going to the root of the matter. Half the case for Home Rule was that Ireland could not be trusted to the English Home Rulers. They also, to recur to the parable, have been unable to take the talking cow by the horns; for I need hardly say that the talking cow is an Irish bull. What has been the matter with their Irish politics was simply that they were English politics. They discussed the Irish Question; but they never seriously contemplated the Irish Answer. That is, the Liberal was content with the negative truth, that the Irish should not be prevented from having the sort of law they liked. But the Liberal seldom faced the positive truth, about what sort of law they would like. He instinctively avoided the very imagination of this; for the simple reason that the law the Irish would like is as remote from what is called Liberal as from what is called Unionist. Nor has the Liberal ever embraced it in his broadest liberality, nor the Unionist ever absorbed it into his most complete unification. It remains outside us altogether, a thing to be stared at like a fairy cow; and by far the wisest English visitor is he who will simply stare at it. Sooner or later he will see what it means; which is simply this: that whether it be a case for coercion or emancipation (and it might be used either way) the fact is that a free Ireland would not only not be what we call lawless, but might not even be what we call free. So far from being an anarchy, it would be an orderly and even conservative civilisation—like the Chinese. But it would be a civilisation so fundamentally different from our own, that our own liberals would differ from it as much as our own conservatives. The fair question for an Englishman is whether that fundamental difference would make division dangerous; it has already made union impossible. Now in turning over these notes of so brief a visit, suffering from all the stale scurry of my journalistic trade, I have been in doubt between a chronological and a logical order of events. But I have decided in favour of logic, of the high light that really revealed the picture, and by which I firmly believe that everything else should be seen. And if any one were to ask me what was the sight that struck me most in Ireland, both as strange and as significant, I should know what to reply. I saw it long after I had seen the Irish cities, had felt something of the brilliant bitterness of Dublin and the stagnant optimism of Belfast; but I put it first here because I am certain that without it all the rest is meaningless; that it lies behind all politics, enormous and silent, as the great hills lie beyond Dublin. I was moving in a hired motor down a road in the North-West, towards the middle of that rainy autumn. I was not moving very fast; because the progress was slowed down to a solemn procession by crowds of families with their cattle and live stock going to the market beyond; which things also are an allegory. But what struck my mind and stuck in it was this: that all down one side of the road, as far as we went, the harvest was gathered in neatly and safely; and all down the other side of the road it was rotting in the rain. Now the side where it was safe was a string of small plots worked by peasant proprietors, as petty by our standards as a row of the cheapest villas. The land on which all the harvest was wasted was the land of a large modern estate. I asked why the landlord was later with his harvesting than the peasants; and I was told rather vaguely that there had been strikes and similar labour troubles. I did not go into the rights of the matter; but the point here is that, whatever they were, the moral is the same. You may curse the cruel Capitalist landlord or you may rave at the ruffianly Bolshevist strikers; but you must admit that between them they had produced a stoppage, which the peasant proprietorship a few yards off did not produce. You might support either where they conflicted, but you could not deny the sense in which they had combined, and combined to prevent what a few rustics across the road could combine to produce. For all that we in England agree about and disagree about, all for which we fight and all from which we differ, our darkness and our light, our heaven and hell, were there on the left side of the road. On the right side of the road lay something so different that we do not even differ from it. It may be that Trusts are rising like towers of gold and iron, overshadowing the earth and shutting out the sun; but they are only rising on the left side of the road. It may be that Trades Unions are laying labyrinths of international insurrection, cellars stored with the dynamite of a merely destructive democracy; but all that international maze lies to the left side of the road. Employment and unemployment are there; Marx and the Manchester School are there. The left side of the road may even go through amazing transformations of its own; its story may stride across abysses of anarchy; but it will never step across the road. The landlord’s estate may become a sort of Morris Utopia, organised communally by Socialists, or more probably by Guild Socialists. It may (as I fear is much more likely) pass through the stage of an employer’s model village to the condition of an old pagan slave-state. But the peasants across the road would not only refuse the Servile State, but would quite as resolutely refuse the Utopia. Europe may seem to be rent from end to end by the blast of a Bolshevist trumpet, sundering the bourgeois from the proletarian; but the peasant across the road is neither a bourgeois nor a proletarian. England may seem to be rent by an irreconcilable rivalry between Capital and Labour; but the peasant across the road is both a capitalist and a labourer. He is several other curious things; including the man who got his crops in first; who was literally first in the field. To an Englishman, especially a Londoner, this was like walking to the corner of a London street and finding the policeman in rags, with a patch on his trousers and a smudge on his face; but the crossing-sweeper wearing, a single eyeglass and a suit fresh from a West End tailor. In fact, it was nearly as surprising as a walking haystack or a talking cow. What was generally dingy, dilatory, and down-at-heels was here comparatively tidy and timely; what was orderly and organised was belated and broken down. For it must be sharply realised that the peasant proprietors succeeded here, not only because they were really proprietors, but because they were only peasants. It was because they were on a small scale that they were a great success. It was because they were too poor to have servants that they grew rich in spite of strikers. It was, so far as it went, the flattest possible contradiction to all that is said in England, both by Collectivists and Capitalists, about the efficiency of the great organisation. For in so far as it had failed, it had actually failed, not only through being great, but through being organised. On the left side of the road the big machine had stopped working, because it was a big machine. The small men were still working, because they were not machines. Such were the strange relations of the two things, that the stars in their courses fought against Capitalism; that the very clouds rolling over that rocky valley warred for its pigmies against its giants. The rain falls alike on the just and the unjust; yet here it had not fallen alike on the rich and poor, It had fallen to the destruction of the rich. Now I do, as a point of personal opinion, believe that the right side of the road was really the right side of the road. That is, I believe it represented the right side of the question; that these little pottering peasants had got hold of the true secret, which is missed both by Capitalism and Collectivism. But I am not here urging my own preferences on my own countrymen; and I am not concerned primarily to point out that this is an argument against Capitalism and Collectivism. What I do point out is that it is the fundamental argument against Unionism. Perhaps it is, on that ultimate level, the only argument against Unionism; which is probably why it is never used against Unionists. I mean, of course, that it was never really used against English Unionists by English Home Rulers, in the recriminations of that Irish Question which was really an English Question. The essential demanded of that question was merely that it should be an open question; a thing rather like an open wound. Modern industrial society is fond of problems, and therefore not at all fond of solutions. A consideration of those who really have understood this fundamental fact will be sufficient to show how confusing and useless are the mere party labels in the matter. George Wyndham was a Unionist who was deposed because he was a Home Ruler. Sir Horace Plunkett is a Unionist who is trusted because he is a Home Ruler. By far the most revolutionary piece of Nationalism that was ever really effected for Ireland was effected by Wyndham, who was an English Tory squire. And by far the most brutal and brainless piece of Unionism that was ever imposed on Ireland was imposed in the name of the Radical theory of Free Trade, when the Irish juries brought in verdicts of wilful murder against Lord John Russell. I say this to show that my sense of a reality is quite apart from the personal accident that I have myself always been a Radical in English politics, as well as a Home Ruler in Irish politics. But I say it even more in order to reaffirm that the English have first to forget all their old formula and look at a new fact. It is not a new fact; but it is new to them. To realise it, we must not only go outside the British parties but outside the British Empire, outside the very universe of the ordinary Briton. The real question can be easily stated, for it is as simple as it is large. What is going to happen to the peasantries of Europe, or for that matter of the whole world? It would be far better, as I have already suggested, if we could consider it as a new case of some peasantry in Europe, or somewhere else in the world. It would be far better if we ceased to talk of Ireland and Scotland, and began to talk of Ireland and Serbia. Let us, for the sake of our own mental composure, call this unfortunate people Slovenes. But let us realise that these remote Slovenes are, by the testimony of every truthful traveller, rooted in the habit of private property, and now ripening into a considerable private prosperity. It will often be necessary to remember that the Slovenes are Roman Catholics; and that, with that impatient pugnacity which marks the Slovene temperament, they have often employed violence, but always for the restoration of what they regarded as a reasonable system of private property. Now in a hundred determining districts, of which France is the most famous, this system has prospered. It has its own faults as well as its own merits; but it has prospered. What is going to happen to it? I will here confine myself to saying with the most solid confidence what is not going to happen to it. It is not going to be really ruled by Socialists; and it is not going to be really ruled by merchant princes, like those who ruled Venice or like those who rule England. It is not so much that England ought not to rule Ireland as that England cannot. It is not so much that Englishmen cannot rule Irishmen, as that merchants cannot rule peasants. It is not so much merely that we have dealt benefits to England and blows to Ireland. It is that our benefits for England would be blows to Ireland. And this we already began to admit in practice, before we had even dimly begun to conceive it in theory. We do not merely admit it in special laws against Ireland like the Coercion Acts, or special laws in favour of Ireland like the Land Acts; it is admitted even more by specially exempting Ireland than by specially studying Ireland. In other words, whatever else the Unionists want, they do not want to unite; they are not quite so mad as that. I cannot myself conceive any purpose in having one parliament except to pass one law; and one law for England and Ireland is simply something that becomes more insanely impossible every day. If the two societies were stationary, they would be sufficiently separate; but they are both moving rapidly in opposite directions. England may be moving towards a condition which some call Socialism, and I call Slavery; but whatever it is, Ireland is speeding farther and farther from it. Whatever it is, the men who manage it will no more be able to manage a European peasantry than the peasants in these mud cabins could manage the Stock Exchange. All attempts, whether imperial or international, to lump these peasants along with some large and shapeless thing called Labour, are part of a cosmopolitan illusion which sees mankind as a map. The world of the International is a pill, as round and as small. It is true that all men want health; but it is certainly not true that all men want the same medicine. Let us allow the cosmopolitan to survey the world from China to Peru; but do not let us allow the chemist to identify Chinese opium and Peruvian bark. My parallel about the Slovenes was only a fancy; yet I can give a real parallel from the Slavs which is a fact. It was a fact from my own experience in Ireland; and it exactly illustrates the real international sympathies of peasants. Their internationalism has nothing to do with the International. I had not been in Ireland many hours when several people mentioned to me with considerable excitement some news from the Continent. They were not, strange as it may seem, dancing with joy over the disaster of Caporetto, or glowing with admiration of the Crown Prince. Few really rejoiced in English defeats; and none really rejoiced in German victories. It was news about the Bolshevists; but it was not the news of how nobly they had given votes to the Russian women, nor of how savagely they had fired bullets into the Russian princesses. It was the news of a check to the Bolshevists; but it was not a glorification of Kerensky or Korniloff, or any of the newspaper heroes who seem to have satisfied us all, so long as their names began with K and nobody knew anything about them. In short, it was nothing that could be found in all our myriad newspaper articles on the subject. I would give an educated Englishman a hundred guesses about what it was; but even if he knew it, he would not know what it meant. It had appeared in the little paper about peasant produce so successfully conducted by Mr. George Russell, the celebrated “A. E.,” and it was told me eagerly by the poet himself, by a learned and brilliant Jesuit, and by several other people, as the great news from Europe. It was simply the news that the Jewish Socialists of the Bolshevist Government had been attempting to confiscate the peasants’ savings in the co-operative banks; and had been forced to desist. And they spoke of it as of a great battle won on the Danube or the Rhine. That is what I mean when I say that these people are of a pattern and belong to a system which cuts across all our own political divisions. They felt themselves fighting the Socialists as fiercely as any Capitalist can feel it; but they not only knew what they were fighting against, but what they were fighting for; which is more than the Capitalist does. I do not know how far modern Europe really shows a menace of Bolshevism, or how far merely a panic of Capitalism. But I know that if any honest resistance has to be offered to mere robbery, the resistance of Ireland will be the most honest, and probably the most important. It may be that international Israel will launch against us out of the East an insane simplification of the unity of Man, as Islam once launched out of the East an insane simplification of the unity of God. If it be so, it is where property is well distributed that it will be well defended. The post of honour will be with those who fight in very truth for their own land. If ever there came such a drive of wild dervishes against us, it would be the chariots and elephants of plutocracy that would roll in confusion and rout; and the squares of the peasant infantry would stand. Anyhow, the first fact to realise is that we are dealing with a European peasantry; and it would be really better, as I say, to think of it first as a Continental peasantry. There are numberless important inferences from this fact; but there is one point, politically topical and urgent, on which I may well touch here. It will be well to understand about this peasantry something that we generally misunderstand, even about a Continental peasantry. English tourists in France or Italy commonly make the mistake of supposing that the people cheat, because the people bargain, or attempt to bargain. When a peasant asks tenpence for something that is worth fourpence, the tourist misunderstands the whole problem. He commonly solves it by calling the man a thief and paying the tenpence. There are ten thousand errors in this, beginning with the primary error of an oligarchy, of treating a man as a servant when he feels more like a small squire. The peasant does not choose to receive insults; but he never expected to receive tenpence. A man who understood him would simply suggest twopence, in a calm and courteous manner; and the two would eventually meet in the middle at a perfectly just price. There would not be what we call a fixed price at the beginning, but there would be a very firmly fixed price at the end: that is, the bargain once made would be a sacredly sealed contract. The peasant, so far from cheating, has his own horror of cheating; and certainly his own fury at being cheated. Now in the political bargain with the English, the Irish simply think they have been cheated. They think Home Rule was stolen from them after the contract was sealed; and it will be hard for any one to contradict them. If “le Roi le veult” is not a sacred seal on a contract, what is? The sentiment is stronger because the contract was a compromise. Home Rule was the fourpence and not the tenpence; and, in perfect loyalty to the peasant’s code of honour, they have now reverted to the tenpence. The Irish have now returned in a reaction of anger to their most extreme demands; not because we denied what they demanded, but because we denied what we accepted. As I shall have occasion to note, there are other and wilder elements in the quarrel; but the first fact to remember is that the quarrel began with a bargain, that it will probably have to end with another bargain; and that it will be a bargain with peasants. On the whole, in spite of abominable blunders and bad faith, I think there is still a chance of bargaining, but we must see that there is no chance of cheating. We may haggle like peasants, and remember that their first offer is not necessarily their last. But we must be as honest as peasants; and that is very hard for politicians. The great Parnell, a squire who had many of the qualities of a peasant (qualities the English so wildly misunderstood as to think them English, when they were really very Irish), converted his people from a Fenianism fiercer than Sinn Fein to a Home Rule more moderate than that which sane statesmanship could now offer to Ireland. But the peasants trusted Parnell, not because they thought he was asking for it, but because they thought he could get it. Whatever we decide to give to Ireland, we must give it; it is now worse than useless to promise it. I will say here, once and for all, the hardest thing that an Englishman has to say of his impressions of another great European people: that over all those hills and valleys our word is wind, and our bond is waste paper. But, in any case, the peasantry remains: and the whole weight of the matter is that it will remain. It is much more certain to remain than any of the commercial or colonial systems that will have to bargain with it. We may honestly think that the British Empire is both more liberal and more lasting than the Austrian Empire, or other large political combinations. But a combination like the Austrian Empire could go to pieces, and ten such combinations could go to pieces, before people like the Serbians ceased to desire to be peasants, and to demand to be free peasants. And the British combination, precisely because it is a combination and not a community, is in its nature more lax and liable to real schism than this sort of community, which might almost be called a communion. Any attack on it is like an attempt to abolish grass; which is not only the symbol of it in the old national song, but it is a very true symbol of it in any new philosophic history; a symbol of its equality, its ubiquity, its multiplicity, and its mighty power to return. To fight against grass is to fight against God; we can only so mismanage our own city and our own citizenship that the grass grows in our own streets. And even then it is our streets that will be dead; and the grass will still be alive.
II. La radice della realtà
La sola giustificazione della letteratura è di rendere nuove le cose; e la principale sventura del giornalismo è che è costretto a renderle vecchie. Ciò che è fatto in fretta è condannato a diventare trito. Si supponga che un uomo debba scrivere su un dato argomento, poniamo l’America; se ha una giornata intera per farlo, è possibile che, negli ultimi bagliori del tramonto, egli abbia scoperto almeno una cosa che davvero pensa lui stesso sull’America. È immaginabile che, in qualche luogo sotto la stella della sera, gli venga un’idea nuova, magari perfino sul nuovo mondo. Se ha soltanto mezz’ora per scrivere, avrà appena il tempo di consultare un’enciclopedia e di ricordare vagamente gli ultimi articoli di fondo. L’enciclopedia sarà superata soltanto di una decina d’anni; gli articoli di fondo saranno superati di ere intere, essendo stati scritti nelle medesime condizioni di frenesia moderna. Se ha soltanto un quarto d’ora per scrivere sull’America, può essere spinto, per puro delirio e follia, a chiamarla la sua Figlia Gigantesca dell’occidente, a discorrere della praticabilità di un Abbraccio attraverso il Mare, o persino a definirsi anglosassone, quando altrettanto bene potrebbe definirsi uno Iuto. Ma qualunque avvilente banalità sia l’effetto della fretta affaristica nella critica, essa è soltanto un esempio di una verità che può essere verificata in venti campi dell’esperienza. Se un uomo deve raggiungere Brighton il più in fretta possibile, vi arriverà prestissimo viaggiando su rotaie rigide lungo un percorso riconosciuto. Se ha tempo e denaro per andare in automobile, userà ancora le strade pubbliche; ma si stupirà nel constatare quante strade pubbliche appaiano nuove e quiete quanto le strade private. Se ha tempo a sufficienza per camminare, potrà scoprire da sé una fila di sentieri freschi, ciascuno una fiaba. Questa legge dell’ozio necessario al risveglio della meraviglia vale, in verità, tanto per le cose superficialmente familiari quanto per quelle superficialmente nuove. Il principale argomento a favore delle vecchie recinzioni e dei vecchi confini è che essi racchiudono uno spazio nel quale si potranno sempre trovare, più tardi, cose nuove, come pesci vivi entro i quattro angoli di una rete. Il fascino principale dell’avere una casa sicura sta nell’aver l’agio di sentirla come qualcosa di estraneo. Ho spesso fatto il poco che potevo per correggere lo stantìo vezzo di dare le cose per scontate: tanto più che non si tratta nemmeno di darle per scontate. È prenderle senza gratitudine; vale a dire, con enfasi, come non concesse. Persino la porta di casa propria, schiusa dalla propria chiave, non dovrebbe soltanto aprirsi verso l’interno su cose familiari, ma verso l’esterno su cose ignote. Persino il proprio focolare domestico dovrebbe essere selvaggio oltre che addomesticato; giacché nulla potrebbe essere più selvaggio del fuoco. Ma se questa luce della più alta ignoranza dovesse risplendere perfino sui luoghi familiari, dovrebbe naturalmente risplendere con la massima chiarezza sulle strade di una terra straniera. Sarebbe bene che un uomo potesse entrare in Irlanda sapendo davvero di non sapere nulla dell’Irlanda; se possibile, senza conoscerne nemmeno il nome. La sventura è che i più conoscono il nome troppo bene, e la cosa troppo poco. Questo libro sarebbe probabilmente un libro migliore, oltre che una beffa migliore, se chiamassi l’isola per tutto il tempo con un nome come Atlantide, rivelando soltanto all’ultima pagina che alludevo all’Irlanda. Gli inglesi vedrebbero una situazione di grande interesse, oggetti verso i quali potrebbero provare notevole simpatia, e occasioni di cui potrebbero trarre considerevole vantaggio, se solo guardassero quel luogo in modo semplice e diretto, come guarderebbero un’isola del tutto nuova, con un nome del tutto nuovo, scoperta da quell’avventura marinaresca che è il vero romanzo dell’Inghilterra. In breve, potrebbe farne qualcosa, se solo la trattasse come un oggetto posto davanti a sé, e non come un tema o una storia lasciata dietro di sé. Vi sarà occasione più avanti di dire tutto ciò che va detto sulla necessità di studiare la storia irlandese. Ma la storia irlandese è una cosa, e ciò che si chiama la questione irlandese tutt’altra; e, in senso puramente pratico, la cosa migliore che lo straniero possa fare è dimenticare la questione irlandese e guardare gli irlandesi. Se li guardasse in modo semplice e costante, come guarderebbe i nativi di una nazione del tutto nuova con un nome nuovo, diverrebbe consapevole di un fatto stranissimo ma del tutto solido. Ne diverrebbe consapevole, come un uomo in una fiaba potrebbe accorgersi d’aver varcato il confine del paese delle fate, per una bazzecola quale una mucca parlante o un pagliaio che se ne va in giro sulle gambe. Giacché la questione irlandese non è mai stata discussa in Inghilterra. Si è discusso di Home Rule; ma coloro che la sostennero con più calore, e a mio avviso con più saggezza, non sapevano nemmeno che cosa gli irlandesi intendessero per casa. Si è parlato di Unionismo; ma non si è mai osato nemmeno proporre l’Unione. Un unionista dovrebbe indicare un uomo che non è nemmeno consapevole del confine tra i due paesi; che può attraversare la frontiera del paese delle fate senza nemmeno accorgersi del pagliaio ambulante. Di fatto, l’unionista spara sempre al pagliaio; benché non lo colpisca mai. Ma la limitazione non si limita agli unionisti; come ho già detto, i Radicali inglesi sono stati altrettanto incapaci di andare alla radice della questione. Metà dell’argomento a favore dell’Home Rule era che l’Irlanda non poteva essere affidata ai Home Rulers inglesi. Anch’essi, per tornare alla parabola, sono stati incapaci di prendere per le corna la mucca parlante; giacché non occorre certo dire che la mucca parlante è un toro irlandese. Ciò che non andava nella loro politica irlandese era semplicemente che si trattava di politica inglese. Discutevano la questione irlandese; ma non contemplarono mai seriamente la Risposta irlandese. Vale a dire, il Liberale si accontentava della verità negativa, che agli irlandesi non si dovesse impedire di avere il tipo di legge che preferivano. Ma il Liberale di rado affrontava la verità positiva, riguardo a quale tipo di legge avrebbero preferito. Egli evitava istintivamente perfino l’immaginazione di ciò; per la semplice ragione che la legge gradita agli irlandesi è tanto remota da ciò che si chiama Liberale quanto da ciò che si chiama Unionista. Né il Liberale l’ha mai abbracciata nella sua più ampia liberalità, né l’Unionista l’ha mai assorbita nella sua più completa unificazione. Essa rimane del tutto al di fuori di noi, una cosa da fissare come una mucca fatata; e di gran lunga il più saggio visitatore inglese è colui che si limiterà a fissarla. Presto o tardi vedrà che cosa significa; ed è semplicemente questo: che, sia essa un caso da coercizione o da emancipazione (e potrebbe essere usata in entrambi i sensi), il fatto è che un’Irlanda libera non solo non sarebbe ciò che noi chiamiamo senza legge, ma potrebbe non essere nemmeno ciò che noi chiamiamo libera. Lungi dall’essere un’anarchia, sarebbe una civiltà ordinata e persino conservatrice, come quella cinese. Ma sarebbe una civiltà così radicalmente diversa dalla nostra, che i nostri liberali ne differirebbero tanto quanto i nostri conservatori. La giusta domanda per un inglese è se quella differenza fondamentale renderebbe pericolosa la divisione; essa ha già reso impossibile l’unione. Ora, riordinando questi appunti di una visita tanto breve, soffrendo di tutta la stantìa fretta del mio mestiere giornalistico, sono stato in dubbio tra un ordine cronologico e uno logico degli eventi. Ma ho deciso a favore della logica, dell’alta luce che davvero rivelava il quadro, e alla quale credo fermamente si debba guardare ogni altra cosa. E se qualcuno mi chiedesse quale sia stata la vista che più mi colpì in Irlanda, tanto per stranezza quanto per significato, saprei che cosa rispondere. La vidi molto dopo aver visto le città irlandesi, dopo aver avvertito qualcosa della brillante amarezza di Dublino e dello stagnante ottimismo di Belfast; ma la pongo qui per prima perché sono certo che senza di essa tutto il resto è privo di senso; che essa sta dietro ogni politica, enorme e silenziosa, come le grandi colline stanno oltre Dublino. Procedevo su un’automobile a nolo lungo una strada del Nord-Ovest, verso la metà di quel piovoso autunno. Non procedevo molto in fretta; perché l’andatura era rallentata fino a divenire una solenne processione da folle di famiglie che, coi loro armenti e il loro bestiame, si recavano al mercato più oltre; il che pure è un’allegoria. Ma ciò che colpì la mia mente e vi rimase impresso fu questo: che per tutto un lato della strada, fin dove giungemmo, il raccolto era stato radunato con ordine e al sicuro; e per tutto l’altro lato della strada marciva sotto la pioggia. Ora, il lato dove esso era al sicuro era una fila di piccoli appezzamenti lavorati da proprietari contadini, meschini secondo i nostri criteri quanto una fila delle più modeste villette. La terra su cui tutto il raccolto andava perduto era la terra di una grande tenuta moderna. Chiesi perché il proprietario fosse più in ritardo dei contadini con la mietitura; e mi fu risposto piuttosto vagamente che c’erano stati scioperi e simili agitazioni operaie. Non entrai nel merito della questione; ma il punto qui è che, qualunque fosse il torto o la ragione, la morale è la stessa. Potete maledire il crudele proprietario capitalista, o inveire contro i teppisti scioperanti bolscevichi; ma dovete ammettere che, tra loro due, avevano prodotto un arresto, che la piccola proprietà contadina, a pochi metri di distanza, non produceva. Potreste sostenere l’uno o l’altro là dove erano in conflitto, ma non potreste negare il senso in cui essi si erano uniti, e uniti per impedire ciò che pochi rustici dall’altra parte della strada sapevano unirsi a produrre. Poiché tutto ciò su cui in Inghilterra concordiamo e discordiamo, tutto ciò per cui combattiamo e tutto ciò che ci divide, le nostre tenebre e la nostra luce, il nostro cielo e il nostro inferno, stavano là, sul lato sinistro della strada. Sul lato destro della strada giaceva qualcosa di così diverso che noi non ne differiamo nemmeno. Può darsi che i Trust si ergano come torri d’oro e di ferro, adombrando la terra e oscurando il sole; ma si ergono soltanto sul lato sinistro della strada. Può darsi che i Sindacati stiano tracciando labirinti d’insurrezione internazionale, cantine colme della dinamite di una democrazia meramente distruttiva; ma tutto quel dedalo internazionale giace sul lato sinistro della strada. L’occupazione e la disoccupazione sono là; Marx e la Scuola di Manchester sono là. Il lato sinistro della strada potrà anche attraversare sue proprie stupefacenti trasformazioni; la sua storia potrà scavalcare abissi di anarchia; ma non varcherà mai la strada. La tenuta del proprietario potrà diventare una sorta di Utopia à la Morris, organizzata comunitariamente dai Socialisti, o più probabilmente dai Socialisti corporativi. Potrà (come temo sia assai più probabile) passare, attraverso lo stadio del villaggio modello padronale, alla condizione di un antico stato schiavista pagano. Ma i contadini dall’altra parte della strada non solo rifiuterebbero lo Stato Servile, ma rifiuterebbero con altrettanta risolutezza l’Utopia. L’Europa può sembrare lacerata da un capo all’altro dallo squillo di una tromba bolscevica, che separa il borghese dal proletario; ma il contadino dall’altra parte della strada non è né un borghese né un proletario. L’Inghilterra può sembrare lacerata da un’inconciliabile rivalità tra Capitale e Lavoro; ma il contadino dall’altra parte della strada è al tempo stesso un capitalista e un lavoratore. Egli è parecchie altre cose curiose; compreso l’uomo che ha raccolto per primo i suoi frutti; che è stato, alla lettera, il primo sul campo. Per un inglese, e specialmente per un londinese, questo era come giungere all’angolo di una via di Londra e trovare il poliziotto in cenci, con una toppa ai calzoni e uno sgorbio di sporco in faccia; mentre lo spazzino del crocevia sfoggiava un monocolo e un abito appena uscito da un sarto del West End. In verità, era quasi sorprendente quanto un pagliaio ambulante o una mucca parlante. Ciò che di solito era squallido, lento e scalcagnato, qui era relativamente lindo e puntuale; ciò che era ordinato e organizzato era tardivo e sfasciato. Poiché bisogna comprendere con nettezza che i proprietari contadini riuscirono qui non solo perché erano realmente proprietari, ma perché erano soltanto contadini. Fu perché operavano su piccola scala che ottennero un grande successo. Fu perché erano troppo poveri per avere servitori che si arricchirono a dispetto degli scioperanti. Era, per quanto valeva, la più netta smentita possibile di tutto ciò che si dice in Inghilterra, tanto dai Collettivisti quanto dai Capitalisti, sull’efficienza della grande organizzazione. Poiché, nella misura in cui aveva fallito, aveva fallito per l’appunto non solo per l’esser grande, ma per l’esser organizzata. Sul lato sinistro della strada la grande macchina aveva cessato di funzionare, perché era una grande macchina. I piccoli uomini lavoravano ancora, perché non erano macchine. Tali erano le strane relazioni tra le due cose, che le stelle nei loro corsi combattevano contro il Capitalismo; che le nubi stesse, rotolando su quella valle rocciosa, guerreggiavano per i suoi pigmei contro i suoi giganti. La pioggia cade ugualmente sui giusti e sugli ingiusti; eppure qui non era caduta ugualmente sui ricchi e sui poveri: era caduta a rovina dei ricchi. Ora io, come opinione personale, credo davvero che il lato destro della strada fosse veramente il lato giusto della strada. Vale a dire, credo che esso rappresentasse il lato giusto della questione; che questi piccoli contadini affaccendati avessero afferrato il vero segreto, che sfugge tanto al Capitalismo quanto al Collettivismo. Ma non sto qui a imporre le mie preferenze ai miei connazionali; e non mi preme in primo luogo far notare che questo è un argomento contro il Capitalismo e il Collettivismo. Ciò che invece faccio notare è che esso è l’argomento fondamentale contro l’Unionismo. Forse è, su quel piano ultimo, il solo argomento contro l’Unionismo; il che è probabilmente il motivo per cui non viene mai usato contro gli unionisti. Intendo, naturalmente, che non fu mai davvero usato contro gli unionisti inglesi dai Home Rulers inglesi, nelle recriminazioni di quella questione irlandese che era in realtà una questione inglese. Ciò che si esigeva essenzialmente da quella questione era soltanto che rimanesse una questione aperta; una cosa piuttosto simile a una ferita aperta. La moderna società industriale ama i problemi, e perciò non ama affatto le soluzioni. Basterà considerare coloro che hanno realmente compreso questo fatto fondamentale per mostrare quanto siano confuse e inutili, in tale materia, le semplici etichette di partito. George Wyndham era un unionista che fu deposto perché era un Home Ruler. Sir Horace Plunkett è un unionista di cui ci si fida perché è un Home Ruler. Di gran lunga l’atto di Nazionalismo più rivoluzionario che sia mai stato davvero compiuto per l’Irlanda fu compiuto da Wyndham, che era uno squire Tory inglese. E di gran lunga l’atto di Unionismo più brutale e insensato che sia mai stato imposto all’Irlanda fu imposto in nome della teoria Radicale del Libero Scambio, quando le giurie irlandesi pronunciarono verdetti di omicidio volontario contro Lord John Russell. Dico questo per mostrare che il mio senso di una realtà è del tutto indipendente dall’accidente personale che io stesso sia sempre stato un Radicale nella politica inglese, oltre che un Home Ruler nella politica irlandese. Ma lo dico ancor più per ribadire che gli inglesi devono anzitutto dimenticare tutte le loro vecchie formule e guardare a un fatto nuovo. Non è un fatto nuovo; ma è nuovo per loro. Per comprenderlo, dobbiamo uscire non solo dai partiti britannici, ma dall’Impero britannico, dall’intero universo del britannico comune. La vera questione può essere enunciata con facilità, perché è tanto semplice quanto vasta. Che cosa ne sarà delle popolazioni contadine d’Europa, o, se è per questo, del mondo intero? Sarebbe assai meglio, come ho già suggerito, se potessimo considerarla come un caso nuovo di una qualche contadinanza in Europa, o in qualche altro luogo del mondo. Sarebbe assai meglio se smettessimo di parlare di Irlanda e Scozia, e cominciassimo a parlare di Irlanda e Serbia. Chiamiamo, per amore della nostra tranquillità mentale, questo sventurato popolo Sloveni. Ma rendiamoci conto che questi remoti Sloveni sono, per testimonianza di ogni viaggiatore veritiero, radicati nell’abitudine della proprietà privata, e ora maturano verso una considerevole prosperità privata. Sarà spesso necessario ricordare che gli Sloveni sono cattolici romani; e che, con quell’impaziente combattività che contraddistingue il temperamento sloveno, hanno spesso fatto ricorso alla violenza, ma sempre per il ripristino di ciò che consideravano un ragionevole sistema di proprietà privata. Ora, in cento distretti decisivi, dei quali la Francia è il più famoso, questo sistema ha prosperato. Ha i suoi difetti oltre che i suoi meriti; ma ha prosperato. Che cosa ne sarà? Mi limiterò qui a dire, con la più salda certezza, ciò che non gli accadrà. Non sarà davvero governato da Socialisti; e non sarà davvero governato da principi mercanti, come quelli che governarono Venezia o come quelli che governano l’Inghilterra. Non è tanto che l’Inghilterra non dovrebbe governare l’Irlanda, quanto che l’Inghilterra non può. Non è tanto che gli inglesi non possano governare gli irlandesi, quanto che i mercanti non possono governare i contadini. Non è soltanto che abbiamo dispensato benefici all’Inghilterra e colpi all’Irlanda. È che i nostri benefici per l’Inghilterra sarebbero colpi per l’Irlanda. E questo cominciammo già ad ammetterlo in pratica, prima ancora d’aver anche solo vagamente cominciato a concepirlo in teoria. Non lo ammettiamo soltanto in leggi speciali contro l’Irlanda, come i Coercion Acts, o in leggi speciali a favore dell’Irlanda, come i Land Acts; lo si ammette ancor più esentando specialmente l’Irlanda che non studiandola specialmente. In altre parole, qualunque cosa vogliano gli unionisti, non vogliono unire; non sono poi tanto folli. Io stesso non riesco a concepire alcuno scopo nell’avere un solo parlamento se non quello di approvare una sola legge; e una sola legge per l’Inghilterra e l’Irlanda è semplicemente qualcosa che diventa ogni giorno più follemente impossibile. Se le due società fossero immobili, sarebbero abbastanza separate; ma si muovono entrambe rapidamente in direzioni opposte. L’Inghilterra può muoversi verso una condizione che alcuni chiamano Socialismo, e che io chiamo Schiavitù; ma qualunque cosa sia, l’Irlanda se ne allontana sempre più velocemente. Qualunque cosa sia, gli uomini che la gestiscono saranno capaci di gestire una contadinanza europea non più di quanto i contadini di queste capanne di fango sarebbero capaci di gestire la Borsa. Ogni tentativo, imperiale o internazionale che sia, di ammassare questi contadini insieme a una qualche cosa vasta e informe chiamata Lavoro, fa parte di un’illusione cosmopolita che vede l’umanità come una carta geografica. Il mondo dell’Internazionale è una pillola, altrettanto rotonda e altrettanto piccola. È vero che tutti gli uomini vogliono la salute; ma non è certo vero che tutti gli uomini vogliano la stessa medicina. Concediamo pure al cosmopolita di passare in rassegna il mondo dalla Cina al Perù; ma non concediamo al farmacista di identificare l’oppio cinese con la corteccia peruviana. Il mio parallelo sugli Sloveni era solo una fantasia; eppure posso dare un parallelo reale, tratto dagli Slavi, che è un fatto. Era un fatto tratto dalla mia esperienza in Irlanda; ed illustra esattamente le vere simpatie internazionali dei contadini. Il loro internazionalismo non ha nulla a che vedere con l’Internazionale. Non ero in Irlanda da molte ore quando parecchie persone mi accennarono con notevole eccitazione a certe notizie dal Continente. Non stavano, per quanto strano possa sembrare, danzando di gioia per il disastro di Caporetto, né ardendo d’ammirazione per il Principe Ereditario. Pochi si rallegravano davvero delle sconfitte inglesi; e nessuno si rallegrava davvero delle vittorie tedesche. Erano notizie sui bolscevichi; ma non la notizia di quanto nobilmente avessero dato il voto alle donne russe, né di quanto ferocemente avessero scaricato pallottole contro le principesse russe. Era la notizia di uno scacco ai bolscevichi; ma non un’esaltazione di Kerensky o di Korniloff, o di uno qualsiasi degli eroi da giornale che sembrano averci soddisfatti tutti, purché il loro nome cominciasse con la K e nessuno sapesse nulla di loro. In breve, non era nulla che si potesse trovare in tutta la miriade dei nostri articoli di giornale sull’argomento. Concederei a un inglese colto cento tentativi per indovinare che cosa fosse; ma, anche se lo sapesse, non saprebbe che cosa significasse. Era apparsa nel piccolo giornale sui prodotti contadini, condotto con tanto successo dal signor George Russell, il celebre «A. E.», e mi fu riferita con ardore dal poeta stesso, da un dotto e brillante gesuita, e da parecchie altre persone, come la grande notizia dall’Europa. Era semplicemente la notizia che i Socialisti ebrei del Governo bolscevico avevano tentato di confiscare i risparmi dei contadini nelle banche cooperative; ed erano stati costretti a desistere. E ne parlavano come di una grande battaglia vinta sul Danubio o sul Reno. Questo è ciò che intendo quando dico che questa gente è di un medesimo stampo e appartiene a un sistema che taglia trasversalmente tutte le nostre divisioni politiche. Si sentivano combattere i Socialisti con tanta ferocia quanta ne possa sentire qualsiasi Capitalista; ma sapevano non solo contro che cosa combattevano, bensì anche per che cosa; il che è più di quanto sappia il Capitalista. Non so fino a che punto l’Europa moderna mostri davvero una minaccia di Bolscevismo, o fino a che punto soltanto un panico di Capitalismo. Ma so che, se una qualche onesta resistenza dovrà essere opposta alla pura rapina, la resistenza dell’Irlanda sarà la più onesta, e probabilmente la più importante. Può darsi che l’Israele internazionale scagli contro di noi, dall’Oriente, una folle semplificazione dell’unità dell’Uomo, come un tempo l’Islam scagliò dall’Oriente una folle semplificazione dell’unità di Dio. Se così sarà, è là dove la proprietà è ben distribuita che essa sarà ben difesa. Il posto d’onore spetterà a coloro che combattono in tutta verità per la propria terra. Se mai venisse contro di noi una tale carica di dervisci selvaggi, sarebbero i carri e gli elefanti della plutocrazia a rotolare nella confusione e nella rotta; e i quadrati della fanteria contadina resterebbero saldi. Comunque sia, il primo fatto da comprendere è che abbiamo a che fare con una contadinanza europea; e sarebbe davvero meglio, come dico, pensarla anzitutto come una contadinanza continentale. Vi sono innumerevoli importanti deduzioni da questo fatto; ma vi è un punto, politicamente attuale e urgente, che ben posso toccare qui. Sarà bene comprendere, riguardo a questa contadinanza, qualcosa che generalmente fraintendiamo, persino a proposito di una contadinanza continentale. I turisti inglesi in Francia o in Italia commettono comunemente l’errore di supporre che la gente imbrogli, perché la gente contratta, o tenta di contrattare. Quando un contadino chiede dieci pence per qualcosa che ne vale quattro, il turista fraintende l’intero problema. Di solito lo risolve dando del ladro a quell’uomo e pagando i dieci pence. Vi sono diecimila errori in ciò, a cominciare dall’errore primario di un’oligarchia, quello di trattare un uomo da servo quando egli si sente piuttosto un piccolo signore. Il contadino non intende ricevere insulti; ma non si aspettava mai di ricevere dieci pence. Un uomo che lo capisse proporrebbe semplicemente due pence, in modo calmo e cortese; e i due finirebbero per incontrarsi a metà strada a un prezzo perfettamente giusto. Non vi sarebbe, all’inizio, ciò che chiamiamo un prezzo fisso, ma vi sarebbe, alla fine, un prezzo fissato con grande fermezza: vale a dire, l’accordo, una volta concluso, sarebbe un contratto sacralmente sigillato. Il contadino, lungi dall’imbrogliare, ha un suo orrore dell’imbroglio; e certamente un suo furore nell’essere imbrogliato. Ora, nel patto politico con gli inglesi, gli irlandesi pensano semplicemente d’essere stati imbrogliati. Pensano che l’Home Rule sia stata loro sottratta dopo che il contratto era stato sigillato; e sarà difficile per chiunque contraddirli. Se «le Roi le veult» non è un sigillo sacro su un contratto, che cosa lo è? Il sentimento è tanto più forte in quanto il contratto era un compromesso. L’Home Rule era i quattro pence e non i dieci; e, in perfetta fedeltà al codice d’onore del contadino, essi sono ora tornati ai dieci pence. Gli irlandesi sono ora tornati, in un moto di collera, alle loro rivendicazioni più estreme; non perché negammo ciò che chiedevano, ma perché negammo ciò che avevamo accettato. Come avrò occasione di notare, vi sono altri e più selvaggi elementi nella contesa; ma il primo fatto da ricordare è che la contesa cominciò con un patto, che probabilmente dovrà finire con un altro patto; e che sarà un patto con dei contadini. Nel complesso, malgrado abominevoli errori e la cattiva fede, credo che vi sia ancora una possibilità di trattare, ma dobbiamo badare che non vi sia possibilità di imbrogliare. Possiamo mercanteggiare come contadini, e ricordare che la loro prima offerta non è necessariamente l’ultima. Ma dobbiamo essere onesti come contadini; e questo è molto arduo per i politici. Il grande Parnell, uno squire che possedeva molte delle qualità di un contadino (qualità che gli inglesi fraintesero tanto follemente da crederle inglesi, quando erano in realtà assai irlandesi), convertì il suo popolo da un Fenianismo più feroce del Sinn Fein a un Home Rule più moderato di quello che una sana arte di governo potrebbe oggi offrire all’Irlanda. Ma i contadini si fidavano di Parnell, non perché pensassero che lo stesse chiedendo, ma perché pensavano che potesse ottenerlo. Qualunque cosa decidiamo di dare all’Irlanda, dobbiamo darla; ormai è peggio che inutile prometterla. Dirò qui, una volta per tutte, la cosa più dura che un inglese abbia da dire delle sue impressioni su un altro grande popolo europeo: che su tutte quelle colline e valli la nostra parola è vento, e il nostro impegno è carta straccia. Ma, in ogni caso, la contadinanza rimane: e tutto il peso della questione sta nel fatto che rimarrà. È molto più certo che rimanga essa di qualsiasi sistema commerciale o coloniale che dovrà trattare con lei. Possiamo onestamente ritenere che l’Impero britannico sia insieme più liberale e più duraturo dell’Impero austriaco, o di altre grandi combinazioni politiche. Ma una combinazione come l’Impero austriaco potrebbe andare in pezzi, e dieci simili combinazioni potrebbero andare in pezzi, prima che gente come i Serbi cessasse di desiderare d’essere contadini, e di esigere d’essere contadini liberi. E la combinazione britannica, proprio perché è una combinazione e non una comunità, è per sua natura più fiacca e soggetta a un vero scisma di quanto non lo sia questa sorta di comunità, che si potrebbe quasi chiamare una comunione. Ogni attacco contro di essa è come un tentativo di abolire l’erba; la quale non solo ne è il simbolo nella vecchia canzone nazionale, ma ne è un simbolo verissimo in ogni nuova storia filosofica; simbolo della sua uguaglianza, della sua ubiquità, della sua molteplicità e della sua possente capacità di ritornare. Combattere contro l’erba è combattere contro Dio; possiamo soltanto amministrare tanto male la nostra città e la nostra cittadinanza, che l’erba cresca nelle nostre stesse strade. E anche allora saranno le nostre strade a essere morte; e l’erba sarà ancora viva.
III. The Family and the Feud
There was an old joke of my childhood, to the effect that men might be grouped together with reference to their Christian names. I have forgotten the cases then under consideration; but contemporary examples would be sufficiently suggestive to-day. A ceremonial brotherhood-in-arms between Father Bernard Vaughan and Mr. Bernard Shaw seems full of possibilities. I am faintly pleased with the fancy of Mr. Arnold Bennett endeavouring to extract the larger humanities of fiction from the political differences of Mr. Arnold White and Mr. Arnold Lupton. I should pass my own days in the exclusive society of Professor Gilbert Murray and Sir Gilbert Parker; whom I can conceive as differing on some points from each other, and on some points from me. Now there is one odd thing to notice about this old joke; that it might have been taken in a more serious spirit, though in a saner style, in a yet older period. This fantasy of the Victorian Age might easily have been a fact of the Middle Ages. There would have been nothing abnormal in the moral atmosphere of mediaevalism in some feast or pageant celebrating the fellowship of men who had the same patron saint. It seems mad and meaningless now, because the meaning of Christian names has been lost. They have fallen into a kind of chaos and oblivion which is highly typical of our time. I mean that there are still fashions in them, but no longer reasons for them. For a fashion is a custom without a cause. A fashion is a custom to which men cannot get accustomed; simply because it is without a cause. That is why our industrial societies, touching every topic from the cosmos to the coat-collars, are merely swept by a succession of modes which are merely moods. They are customs that fail to be customary. And so, amid all our fashions in Christian names, we have forgotten all that was meant by the custom of Christian names. We have forgotten all the original facts about a Christian name; but, above all, the fact that it was Christian. Now if we note this process going on in the world of London or Liverpool, we shall see that it has already gone even farther and fared even worse. The surname also is losing its root and therefore its reason. The surname has become as solitary as a nickname. For it might be argued that the first name is meant to be an individual and even isolated thing; but the last name is certainly meant, by all logic and history, to link a man with his human origins, habits, or habitation. Historically, it was a word taken from the town he lived in or the trade guild to which he belonged; legally it is still the word on which all questions of legitimacy, succession, and testamentary arrangements turn. It is meant to be the corporate name; in that sense it is meant to be the impersonal name, as the other is meant to be the personal name. Yet in the modern mode of industrialism, it is more and more taken in a manner at once lonely and light. Any corporate social system built upon it would seem as much of a joke as the joke about Christian names with which I began. If it would seem odd to require a Thomas to make friends with any other Thomas, it would appear almost as perplexing to insist that any Thompson must love any other Thompson. It may be that Sir Edward Henry, late of the Police Force, does not wish to be confined to the society of Mr. Edward Clodd. But would Sir Edward Henry necessarily have sought the society of Mr. O. Henry, entertaining as that society would have been? Sir John Barker, founder of the great Kensington emporium, need not specially seek out and embrace Mr. John Masefield; but need he, any more swiftly, precipitate himself into the arms of Mr. Granville Barker? This vista of varieties would lead us far; but it is enough to notice, nonsense apart, that the most ordinary English surnames have become unique in their social significance; they stand for the man rather than the race or the origins. Even when they are most common they are not communal. What we call the family name is not now primarily the name of the family. The family itself, as a corporate conception, has already faded into the background, and is in danger of fading from the background. In short, our Christian names are not the only Christian things that we may lose. Now the second solid fact which struck me in Ireland (after the success of small property and the failure of large organisation) was the fact that the family was in a flatly contrary position. All I have said above, in current language, about the whole trend of the modern world, is directly opposite to the whole trend of the modern Irish world. Not only is the Christian name a Christian name; but (what seems still more paradoxical and even pantomimic) the family name is really a family name. Touching the first of the two, it would be easy to trace out some very interesting truths about it, if they did not divert us from the main truth of this chapter: the second great truth about Ireland. People contrasting the “education” of the two countries, or seeking to extend to the one the thing which is called education in the other, might indeed do worse than study the simple problem of the meaning of Christian names. It might dawn at last, even on educationists, that there is a value in the content as well as the extent of culture; or (in other words), that knowing nine hundred words is not always more important than knowing what some of them mean. It is strictly and soberly true that any peasant, in a mud cabin in County Clare, when he names his child Michael, may really have a sense of the presence that smote down Satan, the arms and plumage of the paladin of Paradise. I doubt whether it is so overwhelmingly probable that any clerk in any villa on Clapham Common, when he names his son John, has a vision of the holy eagle of the Apocalypse, or even of the mystical cup of the disciple whom Jesus loved. In the face of that simple fact, I have no doubt about which is the more educated man; and even a knowledge of the Daily Mail does not redress the balance. It is often said, and possibly truly, that the peasant named Michael cannot write his own name. But it is quite equally true that the clerk named John cannot read his own name. He cannot read it because it is in a foreign language, and he has never been made to realise what it stands for. He does not know that John means John, as the other man does know that Michael means Michael. In that rigidly realistic sense, the pupil of industrial intellectualism does not even know his own name. But this is a parenthesis; because the point here is that the man in the street (as distinct from the man in the field) has been separated not only from his private but from his more public description. He has not only forgotten his name, but forgotten his address. In my own view, he is like one of those unfortunate people who wake up with their minds a blank, and therefore cannot find their way home. But whether or no we take this view of the state of things in an industrial society like the English, we must realise firmly that a totally opposite state of things exists in an agricultural society like the Irish. We may put it, if we like, in the form of an unfamiliar and even unfriendly fancy. We may say that the house is greater than the man; that the house is an amiable ogre that runs after and recaptures the man. But the fact is there, familiar or unfamiliar, friendly or unfriendly; and the fact is the family. The family pride is prodigious; though it generally goes along with glowing masses of individual humility. And this family sentiment does attach itself to the family name; so that the very language in which men think is made up of family names. In this the atmosphere is singularly unlike that of England though much more like that of Scotland. Indeed, it will illustrate the impartial recognition of this, apart from any partisan deductions, that it is equally apparent in the place where Ireland and Scotland are supposed to meet. It is equally apparent in Ulster, and even in the Protestant corner of Ulster. In all the Ulster propaganda I came across, I think the thing that struck me most sharply was one phrase in one Unionist leading article. It was something that might fairly be called Scottish; something which was really even more Irish; but something which could not in the wildest mood be called English, and therefore could not with any rational meaning be called Unionist. Yet it was part of a passionately sincere, and indeed truly human and historic outburst of the politics of the northeast corner, against the politics of the rest of Ireland. Most of us remember that Sir Edward Carson put into the Government a legal friend of his named Campbell; it was at the beginning of the war, and few of us thought anything of the matter except that it was stupid to give posts to Carsonites at the most delicate crisis of the cause in Ireland. Since then, as we also know, the same Campbell has shown himself a sensible man, which I should translate as a practical Home Ruler; but which is anyhow something more than what is generally meant by a Carsonite. I entertain myself, a profound suspicion that Carson also would very much like to be something more than a Carsonite. But however this may be, his legal friend of whom I speak made an excellent speech, containing some concession to Irish popular sentiment. As might have been expected, there were furious denunciations of him in the press of the Orange party; but not more furious than might have been found in the Morning Post or the Saturday Review. Nevertheless, there was one phrase that I certainly never saw in the Morning Post or the Saturday Review; one phrase I should never expect to see in any English paper, though I might very probably see it in a Scotch paper. It was this sentence, that was read to me from the leading article of a paper in Belfast: “There never was treason yet but a Campbell was at the bottom of it.” Let anybody imagine an Englishman saying, about some business quarrel, “How like an Atkins!” or “What could you expect of a Wilkinson?” A moment’s reflection will show that it would be even more impossible touching public men in public quarrels. No English Liberal ever connected the earlier exploits of the present Lord Birkenhead with atavistic influences, or the totem of the wide and wandering tribe of Smith. No English patriot traced back the family tree of any English pacifist; or said there was never treason yet but a Pringle was at the bottom of it. It is the indefinite article that is here the definite distinction. It is the expression “a Campbell” which suddenly transforms the scene, and covers the robes of one lawyer with the ten thousand tartans of a whole clan. Now that phrase is the phrase that meets the traveller everywhere in Ireland. Perhaps the next most arresting thing I remember, after the agrarian revolution, was the way in which one poor Irishman happened to speak to me about Sir Roger Casement. He did not praise him as a deliverer of Ireland; he did not abuse him as a disgrace to Ireland; he did not say anything of the twenty things one might expect him to say. He merely referred to the rumour that Casement meant to become a Catholic just before his execution, and expressed a sort of distant interest in it. He added: “He’s always been a Black Protestant. All the Casements are Black Protestants.” I confess that, at the moment of that morbid story, there seemed to me to be something unearthly about the very idea of there being other Casements. If ever a man seemed solitary, if ever a man seemed unique to the point of being unnatural, it was that man on the two or three occasions when I have seen his sombre handsome face and his wild eyes; a tall, dark figure walking already in the shadow of a dreadful doom. I do not know if he was a Black Protestant; but he was a black something; in the sad if not the bad sense of the symbol. I fancy, in truth, he stood rather for the third of Browning’s famous triad of rhyming monosyllables. A distinguished Nationalist Member, who happened to have had a medical training, said to me, “I was quite certain when I first clapped eyes on him; the man was mad.” Anyhow the man was so unusual, that it would never have occurred to me or any of my countrymen to talk as if there were a class or clan of such men. I could almost have imagined he had been born without father or mother. But for the Irish, his father and mother were really more important than he was. There is said to be a historical mystery about whether Parnell made a pun, when he said that the name of Kettle was a household word in Ireland. Few symbols could now be more contrary than the name of Kettle and the name of Casement (save for the courage they had in common); for the younger Kettle, who died so gloriously in France, was a Nationalist as broad as the other was cramped, and as sane as the other was crazy. But if the fancy of a punster, following his own delightful vein of nonsense, should see something quaint in the image of a hundred such Kettles singing as he sang by a hundred hearths, a more bitter jester, reading that black and obscure story of the capture on the coast, might utter a similar flippancy about other Casements, opening on the foam of such very perilous seas, in a land so truly forlorn. But even if we were not annoyed at the pun, we should be surprised at the plural. And our surprise would be the measure of the deepest difference between England and Ireland. To express it in the same idle imagery it would be the fact that even a casement is a part of a house, as a kettle is a part of a household. Every word in Irish is a household word. The English would no more have thought of a plural for the word Gladstone than for the word God. They would never have imagined Disraeli compassed about with a great cloud of Disraelis; it would have seemed to them altogether too Apocalyptic, and exaggeration of being on the side of the angels. To this day in England, as I have reason to know, it is regarded as a rabid and insane form of religious persecution to suggest that a Jew very probably comes of a Jewish family. In short, the modern English, while their rulers are willing to give due consideration to Eugenics as a reasonable opportunity for various forms of polygamy and infanticide, are drifting farther and farther from the only consideration of Eugenics that could possibly be fit for Christian men, the consideration of it as an accomplished fact. I have spoken of infanticide; but indeed the ethic involved is rather that of parricide and matricide. To my own taste, the present tendency of social reform would seem to consist of destroying all traces of the parents, in order to study the heredity of the children. But I do not here ask the reader to accept my own tastes or even opinions about these things; I only bear witness to an objective fact about a foreign country. It can be summed up by saying that Parnell is the Parnell for the English; but a Parnell for the Irish. This is what I mean when I say that English Home Rulers do not know what the Irish mean by home. And this is also what I mean when I say that the society does not fit into any of our social classifications, liberal or conservative. To many Radicals this sense of lineage will appear rank reactionary aristocracy. And it is aristocratic, if we mean by this a pride of pedigree; but it is not aristocratic in the practical and political sense. Strange as it may sound, its practical effect is democratic. It is not aristocratic in the sense of creating an aristocracy. On the contrary, it is perhaps the one force that permanently prevents the creation of an aristocracy, in the manner of the English squirearchy. The reason of this apparent paradox can be put plainly enough in one sentence. If you are really concerned about your relations, you have to be concerned about your poor relations. You soon discover that a considerable number of your second cousins exhibit a strong social tendency to be chimney-sweeps and tinkers. You soon learn the lesson of human equality if you try honestly and consistently to learn any other lesson, even the lesson of heraldry and genealogy. For good or evil, a real working aristocracy has to forget about three-quarters of its aristocrats. It has to discard the poor who have the genteel blood, and welcome the rich who can live the genteel life. If a man is interesting because he is a McCarthy, it is, so far, as he is interesting because he is a man; that is, he is interesting whether he is a duke or a dustman. But if he is interesting because he is Lord FitzArthur and lives at FitzArthur House, then he is interesting when he has merely bought the house, or when he has merely bought the title. To maintain a squirearchy, it is necessary to admire the new squire; and therefore to forget the old squire. The sense of family is like a dog and follows the family; the sense of oligarchy is like a cat and continues to haunt the house. I am not arguing against aristocracy if the English choose to preserve it in England; I am only making clear the terms on which they hold it, and warning them that a people with a strong family sense will not hold it on any terms. Aristocracy, as it has flourished in England since the Reformation, with not a little national glory and commercial success, is in its very nature built up of broken and desecrated homes. It has to destroy a hundred poor relations to keep up a family. It has to destroy a hundred families to keep up a class. But if this family spirit is incompatible with what we mean by aristocracy, it is quite as incompatible with three-quarters of what many men praise and preach as democracy. The whole trend of what has been regarded as liberal legislation in England, necessary or unnecessary, defensible and indefensible, has for good or evil been at the expense of the independence of the family, especially of the poor family. From the first most reasonable restraints of the Factory Acts to the last most maniacal antics of interference with other people’s nursery games or Christmas dinners, the whole process has turned sometimes on the pivot of the state, more often on the pivot of the employer, but never on the pivot of the home. All this may be an emancipation; I only point out that Ireland really asked for Home Rule chiefly to be emancipated from this emancipation. But indeed the English politicians, to do them justice, show their consciousness of this by the increasing number of cases in which the other nation is exempted. We may have harried this unhappy people with our persecutions; but at least we spare them our reforms. We have smitten them with plagues; but at least we dare not scourge them with our remedies. The real case against the Union is not merely a case against the Unionists; it is a far stronger case against the Universalists. It is this strange and ironic truth; that a man stands up holding a charter of charity and peace for all mankind; that he lays down a law of enlightened justice for all the nations of the earth, that he claims to behold man from the beginnings of his evolution equal, without any difference between the most distant creeds and colours; that he stands as the orator of the human race whose statute only declares all humanity to be human; and then slightly drops his voice and says, “This Act shall not apply to Ireland.”
III. La famiglia e la faida
C’era una vecchia facezia della mia infanzia, secondo la quale gli uomini si potevano raggruppare in base al loro nome di battesimo. Ho dimenticato i casi allora presi in esame; ma esempi contemporanei sarebbero abbastanza suggestivi oggigiorno. Una cerimoniale fratellanza d’armi tra Padre Bernard Vaughan e il signor Bernard Shaw pare gravida di possibilità. Mi diverte vagamente l’idea del signor Arnold Bennett che si sforza di trarre le più ampie umanità della narrativa dalle divergenze politiche del signor Arnold White e del signor Arnold Lupton. Io stesso trascorrerei le mie giornate nell’esclusiva compagnia del professor Gilbert Murray e di Sir Gilbert Parker; i quali posso immaginare discordi su alcuni punti tra loro, e su alcuni punti da me. Ora, c’è una cosa curiosa da notare a proposito di questa vecchia facezia; che essa avrebbe potuto essere presa in uno spirito più serio, benché in uno stile più sano, in un’epoca ancor più antica. Questa fantasia dell’età vittoriana avrebbe potuto agevolmente essere un fatto del Medioevo. Non vi sarebbe stato nulla di anomalo, nell’atmosfera morale del medievalismo, in qualche festa o corteo che celebrasse la fratellanza di uomini aventi lo stesso santo patrono. Oggi ciò sembra folle e privo di senso, perché il significato dei nomi di battesimo è andato perduto. Essi sono caduti in una sorta di caos e di oblio quanto mai tipico del nostro tempo. Intendo che vi sono ancora mode in fatto di nomi, ma non più ragioni per essi. Poiché una moda è un’usanza senza causa. Una moda è un’usanza alla quale gli uomini non riescono ad abituarsi; semplicemente perché è priva di causa. Ecco perché le nostre società industriali, toccando ogni argomento dal cosmo ai colletti delle giacche, sono soltanto travolte da una successione di mode che sono soltanto umori. Sono usanze che non riescono a diventare consuete. E così, in mezzo a tutte le nostre mode in fatto di nomi di battesimo, abbiamo dimenticato tutto ciò che significava l’usanza dei nomi di battesimo. Abbiamo dimenticato tutti i fatti originari riguardo a un nome di battesimo; ma, soprattutto, il fatto che fosse cristiano. Ora, se osserviamo questo processo in atto nel mondo di Londra o di Liverpool, vedremo che è già andato ancora più lontano e ancor peggio. Anche il cognome sta perdendo la sua radice e perciò la sua ragione. Il cognome è divenuto solitario quanto un soprannome. Poiché si potrebbe sostenere che il nome proprio è destinato a essere una cosa individuale e persino isolata; ma il cognome è certamente destinato, per ogni logica e ogni storia, a legare un uomo alle sue origini, alle sue abitudini o alla sua dimora umane. Storicamente, era una parola tratta dalla città in cui viveva o dalla corporazione di mestiere cui apparteneva; giuridicamente è tuttora la parola attorno a cui ruotano tutte le questioni di legittimità, successione e disposizioni testamentarie. È destinato a essere il nome collettivo; in tal senso è destinato a essere il nome impersonale, come l’altro è destinato a essere il nome personale. Eppure, nel moderno costume dell’industrialismo, esso è preso sempre più in un modo al tempo stesso solitario e leggero. Qualsiasi sistema sociale collettivo edificato su di esso sembrerebbe altrettanto ridicolo quanto la facezia sui nomi di battesimo con cui ho cominciato. Se parrebbe strano esigere che un Thomas facesse amicizia con qualsiasi altro Thomas, apparirebbe quasi altrettanto sconcertante insistere che un qualsiasi Thompson debba amare qualsiasi altro Thompson. Può darsi che Sir Edward Henry, un tempo delle forze di polizia, non desideri essere confinato nella compagnia del signor Edward Clodd. Ma Sir Edward Henry avrebbe necessariamente cercato la compagnia del signor O. Henry, per quanto piacevole sarebbe stata tale compagnia? Sir John Barker, fondatore del grande emporio di Kensington, non ha bisogno di andare in cerca e di abbracciare in modo particolare il signor John Masefield; ma ha forse bisogno, con maggior prontezza, di gettarsi tra le braccia del signor Granville Barker? Questa prospettiva di varietà ci porterebbe lontano; ma basta notare, scherzi a parte, che i più comuni cognomi inglesi sono divenuti unici nel loro significato sociale; stanno per l’uomo piuttosto che per la stirpe o le origini. Anche quando sono comunissimi, non sono comunitari. Ciò che chiamiamo il nome di famiglia non è più, oggi, in primo luogo il nome della famiglia. La famiglia stessa, come concezione collettiva, è già sbiadita sullo sfondo, e rischia di sbiadire via dallo sfondo. In breve, i nostri nomi di battesimo non sono le sole cose cristiane che possiamo perdere. Ora, il secondo fatto solido che mi colpì in Irlanda (dopo il successo della piccola proprietà e il fallimento della grande organizzazione) fu che la famiglia si trovava in una posizione nettamente opposta. Tutto ciò che ho detto sopra, nel linguaggio corrente, sull’intera tendenza del mondo moderno, è direttamente opposto all’intera tendenza del moderno mondo irlandese. Non solo il nome di battesimo è un nome di battesimo; ma (ciò che pare ancor più paradossale e persino da pantomima) il nome di famiglia è davvero un nome di famiglia. Quanto al primo dei due, sarebbe facile rintracciare alcune verità assai interessanti a suo riguardo, se esse non ci distraessero dalla verità principale di questo capitolo: la seconda grande verità sull’Irlanda. Chi mette a confronto l’«istruzione» dei due paesi, o cerca di estendere all’uno ciò che nell’altro si chiama istruzione, potrebbe in verità far di peggio che studiare il semplice problema del significato dei nomi di battesimo. Potrebbe albeggiare finalmente, persino nella mente dei pedagogisti, che vi è un valore nel contenuto oltre che nell’estensione della cultura; o (in altre parole), che conoscere novecento parole non è sempre più importante che sapere che cosa alcune di esse significhino. È rigorosamente e sobriamente vero che un qualsiasi contadino, in una capanna di fango della contea di Clare, quando chiama il suo figlio Michael, può davvero avere il senso della presenza che abbatté Satan, le armi e il piumaggio del paladino del Paradiso. Dubito che sia così straordinariamente probabile che un qualsiasi impiegato in una qualsiasi villetta di Clapham Common, quando chiama suo figlio John, abbia una visione della sacra aquila dell’Apocalisse, o anche solo del mistico calice del discepolo che Gesù amava. Di fronte a questo semplice fatto, non ho dubbio su quale dei due sia l’uomo più istruito; e nemmeno la conoscenza del Daily Mail raddrizza la bilancia. Si dice spesso, e forse a ragione, che il contadino di nome Michael non sa scrivere il proprio nome. Ma è altrettanto vero che l’impiegato di nome John non sa leggere il proprio nome. Non sa leggerlo perché è in una lingua straniera, e non gli è mai stato fatto comprendere che cosa esso rappresenti. Egli non sa che John significa John, come l’altro sa bene che Michael significa Michael. In quel senso rigidamente realistico, l’allievo dell’intellettualismo industriale non conosce nemmeno il proprio nome. Ma questa è una parentesi; perché il punto qui è che l’uomo della strada (a differenza dell’uomo dei campi) è stato separato non solo dalla sua descrizione privata, ma da quella più pubblica. Non solo ha dimenticato il proprio nome, ma ha dimenticato il proprio indirizzo. A mio avviso, egli è come una di quelle infelici persone che si risvegliano con la mente vuota, e perciò non sanno ritrovare la via di casa. Ma, che si adotti o no questa veduta sullo stato delle cose in una società industriale come quella inglese, dobbiamo comprendere con fermezza che uno stato di cose totalmente opposto esiste in una società agricola come quella irlandese. Possiamo esprimerlo, se vogliamo, nella forma di una fantasia inconsueta e persino ostile. Possiamo dire che la casa è più grande dell’uomo; che la casa è un amabile orco che rincorre e riacchiappa l’uomo. Ma il fatto è là, consueto o inconsueto, amico od ostile; e il fatto è la famiglia. L’orgoglio familiare è prodigioso; benché di solito si accompagni ad ardenti masse di umiltà individuale. E questo sentimento familiare si attacca davvero al nome di famiglia; sicché la lingua stessa in cui gli uomini pensano è fatta di nomi di famiglia. In ciò l’atmosfera è singolarmente diversa da quella dell’Inghilterra, benché assai più simile a quella della Scozia. Anzi, a riprova dell’imparziale riconoscimento di ciò, a prescindere da ogni deduzione di parte, esso è ugualmente evidente nel luogo dove si suppone che l’Irlanda e la Scozia s’incontrino. È ugualmente evidente nell’Ulster, e persino nell’angolo protestante dell’Ulster. In tutta la propaganda dell’Ulster in cui m’imbattei, credo che la cosa che più acutamente mi colpì fosse una frase in un articolo di fondo unionista. Era qualcosa che si poteva a buon diritto chiamare scozzese; qualcosa che in realtà era ancor più irlandese; ma qualcosa che nemmeno nell’umore più sfrenato si poteva chiamare inglese, e che perciò non si poteva, con alcun senso razionale, chiamare unionista. Eppure faceva parte di uno sfogo appassionatamente sincero, e in verità autenticamente umano e storico, della politica dell’angolo nord-orientale contro la politica del resto dell’Irlanda. I più di noi ricordano che Sir Edward Carson introdusse nel Governo un suo amico avvocato di nome Campbell; era all’inizio della guerra, e pochi di noi pensarono qualcosa della faccenda, se non che fosse stupido affidare cariche ai carsoniani nel momento più delicato della crisi della causa in Irlanda. Da allora, come pure sappiamo, il medesimo Campbell si è mostrato un uomo assennato, il che io tradurrei con un pratico Home Ruler; ma che è comunque qualcosa di più di ciò che generalmente s’intende per carsoniano. Nutro io stesso il profondo sospetto che anche Carson vorrebbe assai volentieri essere qualcosa di più di un carsoniano. Ma comunque stiano le cose, l’amico avvocato di cui parlo tenne un eccellente discorso, contenente qualche concessione al sentimento popolare irlandese. Come c’era da aspettarsi, vi furono furiose denunce contro di lui nella stampa del partito orangista; ma non più furiose di quante se ne sarebbero potute trovare nel Morning Post o nella Saturday Review. Nondimeno, vi era una frase che di certo non vidi mai nel Morning Post o nella Saturday Review; una frase che non mi aspetterei mai di vedere in alcun giornale inglese, benché assai probabilmente potrei vederla in un giornale scozzese. Era questa frase, che mi fu letta dall’articolo di fondo di un giornale di Belfast: «Non ci fu mai tradimento senza che un Campbell ne fosse al fondo». Si provi qualcuno a immaginare un inglese che dica, a proposito di qualche lite d’affari: «Come è da Atkins!» oppure «Che ci si poteva aspettare da un Wilkinson?». Un momento di riflessione mostrerà che sarebbe ancor più impossibile a proposito di uomini pubblici in liti pubbliche. Nessun Liberale inglese collegò mai le prime imprese dell’attuale Lord Birkenhead a influenze ataviche, o al totem della vasta ed errante tribù degli Smith. Nessun patriota inglese risalì l’albero genealogico di un qualsiasi pacifista inglese; né disse che non ci fu mai tradimento senza che un Pringle ne fosse al fondo. È l’articolo indeterminativo a costituire qui la determinata distinzione. È l’espressione «un Campbell» a trasformare d’un tratto la scena, e a ricoprire le toghe di un solo avvocato con i diecimila tartan di un intero clan. Ora, quella frase è la frase che il viaggiatore incontra dappertutto in Irlanda. Forse la cosa più notevole che ricordo, dopo la rivoluzione agraria, fu il modo in cui un povero irlandese si trovò a parlarmi di Sir Roger Casement. Non lo lodò come un liberatore dell’Irlanda; non lo ingiuriò come un’onta per l’Irlanda; non disse nessuna delle venti cose che ci si poteva aspettare da lui. Si limitò ad accennare alla voce che Casement intendesse farsi cattolico poco prima della sua esecuzione, ed espresse una sorta di lontano interesse per la cosa. Aggiunse: «È sempre stato un Protestante Nero. Tutti i Casement sono Protestanti Neri». Confesso che, al momento di quel morboso racconto, mi parve esservi qualcosa di ultraterreno nell’idea stessa che vi fossero altri Casement. Se mai un uomo parve solitario, se mai un uomo parve unico fino al punto d’essere innaturale, fu quell’uomo nelle due o tre occasioni in cui vidi il suo cupo e bel volto e i suoi occhi selvaggi; un’alta, oscura figura che già camminava nell’ombra di una spaventosa condanna. Non so se fosse un Protestante Nero; ma era un qualcosa di nero; nel senso triste, se non cattivo, del simbolo. Immagino, in verità, che egli rappresentasse piuttosto il terzo della famosa triade di monosillabi in rima di Browning. Un illustre deputato nazionalista, che per caso aveva avuto una formazione medica, mi disse: «Ne fui certissimo appena posai gli occhi su di lui; quell’uomo era pazzo». Comunque, quell’uomo era così fuori del comune che non sarebbe mai venuto in mente a me o a un qualsiasi mio connazionale di parlarne come se esistesse una classe o un clan di uomini simili. Avrei quasi potuto immaginare che fosse nato senza padre né madre. Ma per gli irlandesi, suo padre e sua madre erano in realtà più importanti di lui. Si dice che vi sia un mistero storico sul fatto se Parnell facesse un gioco di parole, quando disse che il nome di Kettle era una parola di casa in Irlanda. Pochi simboli potrebbero oggi essere più opposti del nome di Kettle e del nome di Casement (salvo il coraggio che ebbero in comune); poiché il più giovane Kettle, morto tanto gloriosamente in Francia, era un nazionalista tanto ampio quanto l’altro era angusto, e tanto sano quanto l’altro era folle. Ma se la fantasia di un facitore di calembour, assecondando la sua deliziosa vena di nonsense, dovesse scorgere qualcosa di pittoresco nell’immagine di cento simili Kettle che cantano, come cantava lui, presso cento focolari, un più amaro burlone, leggendo quella nera e oscura storia della cattura sulla costa, potrebbe pronunciare una simile leggerezza a proposito di altri Casement, aperti sulla schiuma di mari tanto perigliosi, in una terra così davvero desolata. Ma anche se non ci infastidisse il gioco di parole, ci sorprenderebbe il plurale. E la nostra sorpresa sarebbe la misura della più profonda differenza tra l’Inghilterra e l’Irlanda. Per esprimerlo con la medesima oziosa immagine, sarebbe il fatto che perfino una finestra è parte di una casa, come un bollitore è parte di una casa. Ogni parola in Irlanda è una parola di casa. Gli inglesi non avrebbero pensato a un plurale per la parola Gladstone più di quanto lo avrebbero fatto per la parola Dio. Non avrebbero mai immaginato Disraeli circondato da una gran nube di Disraeli; sarebbe parso loro del tutto troppo apocalittico, un’esagerazione dell’essere dalla parte degli angeli. Ancora oggi in Inghilterra, come ho ragione di sapere, si considera una forma rabbiosa e folle di persecuzione religiosa suggerire che un ebreo provenga assai probabilmente da una famiglia ebrea. In breve, gli inglesi moderni, mentre i loro governanti sono disposti a dare la debita considerazione all’Eugenetica come ragionevole occasione per varie forme di poligamia e infanticidio, si allontanano sempre più dall’unica considerazione dell’Eugenetica che potrebbe mai addirsi a uomini cristiani, ossia la considerazione di essa come un fatto compiuto. Ho parlato d’infanticidio; ma in verità l’etica in gioco è piuttosto quella del parricidio e del matricidio. Per i miei gusti, l’attuale tendenza della riforma sociale sembrerebbe consistere nel distruggere ogni traccia dei genitori, allo scopo di studiare l’ereditarietà dei figli. Ma qui non chiedo al lettore di accettare i miei gusti o nemmeno le mie opinioni su queste cose; reco soltanto testimonianza di un fatto oggettivo riguardo a un paese straniero. Lo si può riassumere dicendo che Parnell è il Parnell per gli inglesi; ma un Parnell per gli irlandesi. Questo è ciò che intendo quando dico che i Home Rulers inglesi non sanno che cosa gli irlandesi intendano per casa. Ed è anche ciò che intendo quando dico che quella società non rientra in alcuna delle nostre classificazioni sociali, liberale o conservatrice. A molti Radicali questo senso del lignaggio apparirà come schietta aristocrazia reazionaria. Ed è aristocratico, se con ciò intendiamo un orgoglio di stirpe; ma non è aristocratico nel senso pratico e politico. Per quanto strano possa suonare, il suo effetto pratico è democratico. Non è aristocratico nel senso di creare un’aristocrazia. Al contrario, è forse l’unica forza che impedisce stabilmente la creazione di un’aristocrazia, alla maniera della piccola nobiltà terriera inglese. La ragione di questo apparente paradosso si può esprimere abbastanza chiaramente in una sola frase. Se ti preoccupi davvero dei tuoi parenti, devi preoccuparti dei tuoi parenti poveri. Scopri presto che un buon numero dei tuoi cugini di secondo grado mostra una spiccata tendenza sociale a fare gli spazzacamini e i calderai. Impari presto la lezione dell’uguaglianza umana se cerchi onestamente e coerentemente di imparare una qualsiasi altra lezione, persino la lezione dell’araldica e della genealogia. Nel bene o nel male, una vera aristocrazia in funzione deve dimenticare circa tre quarti dei propri aristocratici. Deve scartare i poveri che hanno il sangue signorile, e accogliere i ricchi che possono condurre la vita signorile. Se un uomo è interessante perché è un McCarthy, ciò equivale, in tal misura, a essere interessante perché è un uomo; vale a dire, è interessante sia che si tratti di un duca sia di uno spazzino. Ma se è interessante perché è Lord FitzArthur e abita a FitzArthur House, allora è interessante quando ha semplicemente comprato la casa, o quando ha semplicemente comprato il titolo. Per mantenere una nobiltà terriera, è necessario ammirare il nuovo signore; e perciò dimenticare il vecchio signore. Il senso della famiglia è come un cane e segue la famiglia; il senso dell’oligarchia è come un gatto e continua a infestare la casa. Non sto argomentando contro l’aristocrazia, se gli inglesi scelgono di conservarla in Inghilterra; sto soltanto chiarendo i termini a cui la detengono, e avvertendoli che un popolo dotato di un forte senso della famiglia non la deterrà a nessun termine. L’aristocrazia, quale è fiorita in Inghilterra fin dalla Riforma, con non poca gloria nazionale e successo commerciale, è per sua stessa natura edificata su focolari infranti e profanati. Deve distruggere cento parenti poveri per mantenere in piedi una famiglia. Deve distruggere cento famiglie per mantenere in piedi una classe. Ma se questo spirito familiare è incompatibile con ciò che intendiamo per aristocrazia, è del tutto altrettanto incompatibile con tre quarti di ciò che molti uomini lodano e predicano come democrazia. L’intera tendenza di ciò che è stato considerato legislazione liberale in Inghilterra, necessaria o superflua, difendibile e indifendibile, è stata, nel bene o nel male, a spese dell’indipendenza della famiglia, e specialmente della famiglia povera. Dalle prime, ragionevolissime restrizioni dei Factory Acts, alle ultime, maniacalissime buffonate d’ingerenza nei giochi da nursery o nei pranzi di Natale altrui, l’intero processo ha ruotato talvolta sul perno dello Stato, più spesso sul perno del datore di lavoro, ma mai sul perno della casa. Tutto ciò può essere un’emancipazione; io faccio soltanto notare che l’Irlanda chiese davvero l’Home Rule soprattutto per essere emancipata da questa emancipazione. Ma in verità i politici inglesi, per rendere loro giustizia, mostrano d’esserne consapevoli col crescente numero di casi in cui l’altra nazione viene esentata. Possiamo aver tormentato questo infelice popolo con le nostre persecuzioni; ma almeno gli risparmiamo le nostre riforme. Li abbiamo colpiti con le piaghe; ma almeno non osiamo flagellarli con i nostri rimedi. Il vero argomento contro l’Unione non è soltanto un argomento contro gli unionisti; è un argomento assai più forte contro gli universalisti. È questa strana e ironica verità: che un uomo si alza in piedi reggendo una carta di carità e di pace per tutta l’umanità; che stabilisce una legge di giustizia illuminata per tutte le nazioni della terra; che pretende di scorgere l’uomo, fin dagli albori della sua evoluzione, uguale, senza alcuna differenza tra i credi e i colori più remoti; che si erge come l’oratore del genere umano il cui statuto proclama soltanto che tutta l’umanità è umana; e poi abbassa leggermente la voce e dice: «La presente Legge non si applicherà all’Irlanda».
IV. The Paradox of Labour
My first general and visual impression of the green island was that it was not green but brown; that it was positively brown with khaki. This is one of those experiences that cannot be confused with expectations; the sort of small thing that is seen but not foreseen in the verbal visions of books and newspapers. I knew, of course, that we had a garrison in Dublin, but I had no notion that it was so obvious all over Dublin. I had no notion that it had been considered necessary to occupy the country in such force, or with so much parade of force. And the first thought that flashed through my mind found words in the single sentence: “How useful these men would have been in the breach at St. Quentin.” For I went to Dublin towards the end of 1918 and not long after those awful days which led up to the end of the war, and seemed more like the end of the world. There hung still in the imagination, as above a void of horror, that line that was the last chain of the world’s chivalry; and the memory of the day when it seemed that our name and our greatness and our glory went down before the annihilation from the north. Ireland is hardly to blame if she has never known how noble an England was in peril in that hour; or for what beyond any empire we were troubled, when, under a cloud of thick darkness, we almost felt her ancient foundations move upon the floor of the sea. But I, as an Englishman at least, knew it; and it was for England and not for Ireland that I felt this first impatience and tragic irony. I had always doubted the military policy that culminated in Irish conscription, and merely on military grounds. If any policy of the English could deserve to be called in the proverbial sense Irish, I think it was this one. It was wasting troops in Ireland because we wanted them in France. I had the same purely patriotic and even pugnacious sense of annoyance, mingling with my sense of pathos, in the sight of the devastation of the great Dublin street, which had been bombarded by the British troops during the Easter Rebellion. I was distressed that such a cannonade had ever been aimed at the Irish; but even more distressed that it had not been aimed at the Germans. The question of the necessity of the heavy attack, like the question of the necessity of the large army of occupation, is of course bound up with the history of the Easter Rebellion itself. That strange and dramatic event, which came quite as unexpectedly to Nationalist Ireland as to Unionist England, is no part of my own experiences, and I will not dogmatise on so dark a problem. But I will say in passing that I suspect a certain misunderstanding of its very nature to be common on both sides. Everything seems to point to the paradox that the rebels needed the less to be conquered, because they were actually aiming at being conquered, rather than at being conquerors. In the moral sense they were certainly heroes, but I doubt if they expected to be conquering heroes. They desired to be in the Greek and literal sense martyrs; they wished not so much to win as to witness. They thought that nothing but their dead bodies could really prove that Ireland was not dead. How far this sublime and suicidal ideal was really useful in reviving national enthusiasm, it is for Irishmen to judge; I should have said that the enthusiasm was there anyhow. But if any such action is based on international hopes, as they affect England or a great part of America, it seems to me it is founded on a fallacy about the facts. I shall have occasion to note many English errors about the Irish; and this seems to me a very notable Irish error about the English. If we are often utterly mistaken about their mentality, they were quite equally mistaken about our mistake. And curiously enough, they failed through not knowing the one compliment that we had really always paid them. Their act presupposed that Irish courage needed proof; and it never did. I have heard all the most horrible nonsense talked against Ireland before the war; and I never heard Englishmen doubt Irish military valour. What they did doubt was Irish political sanity. It will be seen at once that the Easter action could only disprove the prejudice they hadn’t got; and actually confirmed the prejudice they had got. The charge against the Irishman was not a lack of boldness, but rather an excess of it. Men were right in thinking him brave, and they could not be more right. But they were wrong in thinking him mad, and they had an excellent opportunity to be more wrong. Then, when the attempt to fight against England developed by its own logic into a refusal to fight for England, men took away the number they first thought of; and were irritated into denying what they had originally never dreamed of doubting. In any case, this was, I think, the temper in which the minority of the true Sinn Feiners sought martyrdom. I for one will never sneer at such a motive; but it would hardly have amounted to so great a movement but for another force that happened to ally itself with them. It is for the sake of this that I have here begun with the Easter tragedy itself; for with the consideration of this we come to the paradox of Irish Labour. Some of my remarks on the stability and even repose of a peasant society may seem exaggerated in the light of a Labour agitation that breaks out in Ireland as elsewhere. But I have particular and even personal reasons for regarding that agitation as the exception that proves the rule. It was the background of the peasant landscape that made the Dublin strike the peculiar sort of drama that it was; and this operated in two ways: first, by isolating the industrial capitalist as something exceptional and almost fanatical; and second, by reinforcing the proletariat with a vague tradition of property. My own sympathies were all with Larkin and Connolly as against the late Mr. Murphy; but it is curious to note that even Mr. Murphy was quite a different kind of man from the Lord Something who is the head of a commercial combine in England. He was much more like some morbid prince of the fifteenth century, full of cold anger, not without perverted piety. But the first few words I heard about him in Ireland were full of that vast, vague fact which I have tried to put first among my impressions. I have called it the family; but it covers many cognate things: youth and old friendships, not to mention old quarrels. It might be more fully defined as a realism about origins. The first things I heard about Murphy were facts of his forgotten youth, or a youth that would in England have been forgotten. They were tales about friends of his poorer days, with whom he had set out to push some more or less sentimental vendetta against somebody. Suppose whenever we talked of Harrod’s Stores we heard first about the boyish day-dreams of Harrod. Suppose the mention of Bradshaw’s Railway Guide brought up tales of feud and first love in the early life of Mr. Bradshaw, or even of Mrs. Bradshaw. That is the atmosphere, to be felt rather than described, that a stranger in Ireland feels around him. English journalism and gossip, dealing with English business men, are often precise about the present and prophetic about the future, but seldom communicative about the past; et pour cause. They will tell us where the capitalist is going to, as to the House of Lords, or to Monte Carlo, or inferentially to heaven; but they say as little as possible about where he comes from. In Ireland a man carries the family mansion about with him like a snail; and his father’s ghost follows him like his shadow. Everything good and bad that could be said was said, not only about Murphy but about Murphys. An anecdote of the old Irish Parliament describes an orator as gracefully alluding to the presence of an opponent’s sister in the Ladies’ Gallery, by praying that wrath overtake the whole accursed generation “from the toothless old hag who is grinning in the gallery to the white-livered poltroon who is shivering on the floor.” The story is commonly told as suggesting the rather wild disunion of Irish parties; but it is quite as serious a suggestion of the union of Irish families. As a matter of fact, the great Dublin Strike, a conflagration of which the embers were still glowing at the time of my visit, involved another episode which illustrates once again this recurrent principle of the reality of the family in Ireland. Some English Socialists, it may be remembered, moved by an honourable pity for the poor families starving during the strike, made a proposal for taking the children away and feeding them properly in England. I should have thought the more natural course would have been to give money or food to the parents. But the philanthropists, being English and being Socialists, probably had a trust in what is called organisation and a distrust of what is called charity. It is supposed that charity makes a man dependent; though in fact charity makes him independent, as compared with the dreary dependence usually produced by organisation. Charity gives property, and therefore liberty. There is manifestly much more emancipation in giving a beggar a shilling to spend, than in sending an official after him to spend it for him. The Socialists, however, had placidly arranged for the deportation of all the poor children, when they found themselves, to their astonishment, confronted with the red-hot reality called the religion of Ireland. The priests and the families of the faithful organised themselves for a furious agitation, on the ground that the faith would be lost in foreign and heretical homes. They were not satisfied with the assurance, which some of the Socialists earnestly offered, that the faith would not be tampered with; and as a matter of clear thinking, I think they were quite right. Those who offer such a reassurance have never thought about what a religion is. They entertain the extraordinary idea that religion is a topic. They think religion is a thing like radishes, which can be avoided throughout a particular conversation with a particular person, whom the mention of a radish may convulse with anger or agony. But a religion is simply the world a man inhabits. In practice, a Socialist living in Liverpool would not know when he was, or was not tampering with the religion of a child born in Louth. If I were given the complete control of an infant Parsee (which is fortunately unlikely) I should not have the remotest notion of when I was most vitally reflecting on the Parsee system. But common sense, and a comprehension of the meaning of a coherent philosophy, would lead me to suspect that I was reflecting on it every other minute. But I mention the matter here, not in order to enter into any of these disputes, but to give yet another example of the way in which the essentially domestic organisation of Ireland will always rise in rebellion against any other organisation. There is something of a parable in the tales of the old evictions, in which the whole family was besieged and resisted together and the mothers emptied boiling kettles on the besiegers; for any official who interferes with them will certainly get into hot water. We cannot separate mothers and children in that strange land; we can only return to some of our older historical methods, and massacre them together. A small incident within my own short experience, however, illustrated the main point involved here; the sense of a peasant base, even of the proletarian attack. And this was exemplified not in any check to Labour, but rather in a success for Labour, in so far as the issue of a friendly and informal debate may be classed with its more solid successes. The business originally began with a sort of loose-jointed literary lecture which I gave in the Dublin Theatre, in connection with which I only mention two incidents in passing, because they both struck me as peculiarly native and national. One concerned only the title of my address, which was “Poetry and Property.” An educated English gentleman, who happened to speak to me before the meeting, said with the air of one who foresees that such jokes will be the death of him, “Well, I have simply given up puzzling about what you can possibly mean, by talking about poetry as something to do with property.” He probably regarded the combination of words as a mere alliterative fantasy, like Peacocks and Paddington, or Polygamy and Potatoes; if indeed he did not regard it as a mere combination of incompatible contrasts, like Popery and Protestants, or Patriotism and Politicians. On the same day an Irishman of similar social standing remarked quite carelessly, “I’ve just seen your subject for to-morrow. I suppose the Socialists won’t agree with you,” or words to that effect. The two terms told him at once, not about the lecture (which was literary if it was anything), but about the whole philosophy underlying the lecture; the whole of that philosophy which the lumbering elephant called by Mr. Shaw the Chester-Belloc laboriously toils to explain in England, under the ponderous title of Distributivism. As Mr. Hugh Law once said, equally truly, about our pitting of patriotism against imperialism, “What is a paradox in England is a commonplace in Ireland.” My actual monologue, however, dealt merely with the witness of poetry to a certain dignity in man’s sense of private possessions, which is certainly not either vulgar ostentation or vulgar greed. The French poet of the Pleiade remembers the slates on his own roof almost as if he could count them; and Mr. W. B. Yeats, in the very wildest vision of a loneliness remote and irresponsible, is careful to make it clear that he knows how many bean-rows make nine. Of course there were people of all parties in the theatre, wild Sinn Feiners and conventional Unionists, but they all listened to my remarks as naturally as they might have all listened to an equally incompetent lecture on Monkeys or on the Mountains of the Moon. There was not a word of politics, least of all party politics, in that particular speech; it was concerned with a tradition in art, or at the most, in abstract ethics. But the one amusing thing which makes me recall the whole incident was this; that when I had finished, a stalwart, hearty, heavy sort of legal gentleman, a well-known Irish judge I understand, was kind enough to move a vote of thanks to me. And what amused me about him was this: that while I, who am a Radical in sympathy with the revolutionary legend, had delivered a mild essay on minor poets to a placid if bored audience, the judge, who was a pillar of the Castle and a Conservative sworn to law and order, proceeded with the utmost energy and joy to raise a riot. He taunted the Sinn Feiners and dared them to come out; he trailed his coat if ever a man trailed it in this world; he glorified England; not the Allies, but England; splendid England, sublime England (all in the broadest brogue), just, wise, and merciful England, and so on, flourishing what was not even the flag of his own country, and a thing that had not the remotest connection with the subject in hand, any more than the Great Wall of China. I need not say that the theatre was soon in a roar of protests and repartees; which I suppose was what he wanted. He was a jolly old gentleman; and I liked him. But what interested me about him was this; and it is of some importance in the understanding of his nationality. That sort of man exists in England; I know and like scores of him. Often he is a major; often a squire; sometimes a judge; very occasionally a dean. Such a man talks the most ridiculous reactionary nonsense in an apoplectic fashion over his own port wine; and occasionally in a somewhat gasping manner at an avowedly political meeting. But precisely what the English gentleman would not do, and the Irish gentleman did do, would be to make a scene on a non-political occasion; when all he had to do was to move a formal vote of thanks to a total stranger who was talking about Ithaca and Innisfree. An English Conservative would be less likely to do it than an English Radical. The same thing that makes him conventionally political would make him conventionally non-political. He would hate to make too serious a speech on too social an occasion, as he would hate to be in morning-dress when every one else was in evening-dress. And whatever coat he wore he certainly would not trail it solely in order to make a disturbance, as did that jolly Irish judge. He taught me that the Irishman is never so Irish, as when he is English. He was very like some of the Sinn Feiners who shouted him down; and he would be pleased to know that he helped me to understand them with a greater sympathy. I have wandered from the subject in speaking of this trifle, thinking it worth while to note the positive and provocative quality of all Irish opinion; but it was my purpose only to mention this small dispute as leading up to another. I had some further talk about poetry and property with Mr. Yeats at the Dublin Arts Club; and here again I am tempted to irrelevant, but for me interesting matters. For I am conscious throughout of saying less than I could wish of a thousand things, my omission of which is not altogether thoughtless, far less thankless. There have been and will be better sketches than mine of all that attractive society, the paradox of an intelligentsia that is intelligent. I could write a great deal, not only about those I value as my own friends, like Katherine Tynan or Stephen Gwynn, but about men with whom my meeting was all too momentary; about the elvish energy conveyed by Mr. James Stephens; the social greatness of Dr. Gogarty, who was like a literary legend of the eighteenth century; of the unique universalism of A. E., who has something of the presence of William Morris, and a more transcendental type of the spiritual hospitality of Walt Whitman. But I am not in this rough sketch trying to tell Irishmen what they know already, but trying to tell Englishmen some of the large and simple things that they do not know. The large matter concerned here is Labour; and I have only paused upon the other points because they were the steps which accidentally led up to my first meeting with this great force. And it was none the less a fact in support of my argument, because it was something of a joke against myself. On the occasion I have mentioned, a most exhilarating evening at the Arts Club, Mr. Yeats asked me to open a debate at the Abbey Theatre, defending property on its more purely political side. My opponent was one of the ablest of the leaders of Liberty Hall, the famous stronghold of Labour politics in Dublin, Mr. Johnson, an Englishman like myself, but one deservedly popular with the proletarian Irish. He made a most admirable speech, to which I mean no disparagement when I say that I think his personal popularity had even more weight than his personal eloquence. My own argument was confined to the particular value of small property as a weapon of militant democracy; and was based on the idea that the citizen resisting injustice could find no substitute for private property, for every other impersonal power, however democratic in theory, must be bureaucratic in form. I said, as a flippant figure of speech, that committing property to any officials, even guild officials, was like having to leave one’s legs in the cloakroom along with one’s stick or umbrella. The point is that a man may want his legs at any minute, to kick a man or to dance with a lady; and recovering them may be postponed by any hitch, from the loss of the ticket to the criminal flight of the official. So in a social crisis, such as a strike, a man must be ready to act without officials who may hamper or betray him; and I asked whether many more strikes would not have been successful, if each striker had owned so much as a kitchen garden to help him to live. My opponent replied that he had always been in favour of such a reserve of proletarian property, but preferred it to be communal rather than individual; which seems to me to leave my argument where it was; for what is communal must be official, unless it is to be chaotic. Two minor jokes, somewhat at my expense, remain in my memory; I appear to have caused some amusement by cutting a pencil with a very large Spanish knife, which I value (as it happens) as the gift of an Irish priest who is a friend of mine, and which may therefore also be regarded as a symbolic weapon, a sort of sword of the spirit. Whether the audience thought I was about to amputate my own legs in illustration of my own metaphor, or that I was going to cut Mr. Johnson’s throat in fury at finding no reply to his arguments, I do not know. The other thing which struck me as funny was an excellent retort by Mr. Johnson himself, who had said something about the waste of property on guns, and who interrupted my remark that there would never be a good revolution without guns, by humorously calling out, “Treason.” As I told him afterwards, few scenes would be more artistic than that of an Englishman, sent over to recruit for the British army, being collared and given up to justice (or injustice) by a Pacifist from Liberty Hall. But all throughout the proceedings I was conscious, as I say, of a very real popular feeling supporting the mere personality of my opponent; as in the ovation he received before he spoke at all, or the applause given to a number of his topical asides, allusions which I could not always understand. After the meeting a distinguished Southern Unionist, who happens to own land outside Dublin, said to me, “Of course, Johnson has just had a huge success in his work here. Liberty Hall has just done something that has really never been done before in the whole Trade Union movement. He has really managed to start a Trade Union for agricultural labourers. I know, because I’ve had to meet their demands. You know how utterly impossible it has always been really to found a union of agricultural labourers in England.” I did know it; and I also knew why it had been possible to found one in Ireland. It had been possible for the very reason I had been urging all the evening; that behind the Irish proletariat there had been the tradition of an Irish peasantry. In their families, if not in themselves, there had been some memory of the personal love of the land. But it seemed to me an interesting irony that even my own defeat was an example of my own doctrine; and that the truth on my side was proved by the popularity of the other side. The agricultural guild was due to a wind of freedom that came into that dark city from very distant fields; and the truth that even these rolling stones of homeless proletarianism had been so lately loosened from the very roots of the mountains. In Ireland even the industrialism is not industrial. That is what I mean by saying that Irish Labour is the exception that proves the rule. That is why it does not contradict my former generalisation that our capitalist crisis is on the English side of the road. The Irish agricultural labourers can become guildsman because they would like to become peasants. They think of rich and poor in the manner that is as old as the world; the manner of Ahab and Naboth. It matters little in a peasant society whether Ahab takes the vineyard privately as Ahab or officially as King of Israel. It will matter as little in the long run, even in the other kind of society, whether Naboth has a wage to work in the vineyard, or a vote that is supposed in some way to affect the vineyard. What he desires to have is the vineyard; and not in apologetic cynicism or vulgar evasions that business is business, but in thunder, as from a secret throne comes the awful voice out of the vineyard; the voice of this manner of man in every age and nation: “The Lord forbid that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee.”
IV. Il paradosso del lavoro
La mia prima impressione generale e visiva dell’isola verde fu che essa non era verde bensì bruna; che era addirittura bruna di kaki. È una di quelle esperienze che non si possono confondere con le aspettative; il genere di piccola cosa che si vede ma non si prevede nelle visioni verbali dei libri e dei giornali. Sapevo, naturalmente, che avevamo una guarnigione a Dublino, ma non avevo idea che fosse così evidente per tutta Dublino. Non avevo idea che si fosse ritenuto necessario occupare il paese con tanta forza, o con tanta ostentazione di forza. E il primo pensiero che mi balenò per la mente trovò parole in questa sola frase: «Quanto sarebbero stati utili questi uomini sulla breccia di San Quintino». Poiché andai a Dublino verso la fine del 1918, e non molto dopo quei giorni tremendi che condussero alla fine della guerra, e che parevano piuttosto la fine del mondo. Aleggiava ancora nell’immaginazione, come sopra un vuoto d’orrore, quella linea che era l’ultima catena della cavalleria del mondo; e la memoria del giorno in cui parve che il nostro nome e la nostra grandezza e la nostra gloria crollassero dinanzi all’annientamento venuto dal nord. Non si può certo biasimare l’Irlanda se non ha mai saputo quanto nobile fosse l’Inghilterra in pericolo in quell’ora; o per che cosa, al di là di ogni impero, fossimo angosciati, quando, sotto una nube di fitta tenebra, sentimmo quasi le sue antiche fondamenta muoversi sul fondo del mare. Ma io, quanto meno da inglese, lo sapevo; e fu per l’Inghilterra e non per l’Irlanda che provai questa prima impazienza e questa tragica ironia. Avevo sempre dubitato della politica militare che culminò nella coscrizione irlandese, e per ragioni puramente militari. Se una qualche politica degli inglesi meritasse d’essere chiamata, nel senso proverbiale, irlandese, credo fosse questa. Consisteva nello sprecare truppe in Irlanda perché ci servivano in Francia. Provai il medesimo senso di fastidio, puramente patriottico e persino bellicoso, che si mescolava al mio senso di pathos, alla vista della devastazione della grande via di Dublino, che era stata bombardata dalle truppe britanniche durante la Rivolta di Pasqua. Mi affliggeva che una tale cannonata fosse mai stata diretta contro gli irlandesi; ma ancor più mi affliggeva che non fosse stata diretta contro i tedeschi. La questione della necessità del pesante attacco, come la questione della necessità del grande esercito d’occupazione, è naturalmente legata alla storia della Rivolta di Pasqua stessa. Quello strano e drammatico evento, che giunse tanto inatteso all’Irlanda nazionalista quanto all’Inghilterra unionista, non fa parte delle mie esperienze, e non dogmatizzerò su un problema così oscuro. Ma dirò di sfuggita che sospetto un certo fraintendimento della sua stessa natura essere comune a entrambe le parti. Tutto sembra indicare il paradosso che i ribelli avevano tanto meno bisogno di essere vinti, in quanto miravano in realtà a essere vinti, piuttosto che a essere vincitori. In senso morale erano certamente eroi, ma dubito che si aspettassero di essere eroi vincitori. Desideravano essere martiri, nel senso greco e letterale; volevano non tanto vincere quanto testimoniare. Pensavano che nient’altro se non i loro corpi morti potesse davvero provare che l’Irlanda non era morta. Fino a che punto questo sublime e suicida ideale fosse davvero utile a ravvivare l’entusiasmo nazionale, spetta agli irlandesi giudicarlo; io avrei detto che l’entusiasmo c’era comunque. Ma se una tale azione si fonda su speranze internazionali, per quanto riguardano l’Inghilterra o gran parte dell’America, mi pare che essa poggi su un errore riguardo ai fatti. Avrò occasione di notare molti errori inglesi sugli irlandesi; e questo mi pare un assai notevole errore irlandese sugli inglesi. Se noi spesso ci sbagliamo del tutto sulla loro mentalità, essi si sbagliavano altrettanto sul nostro sbaglio. E, cosa abbastanza curiosa, fallirono per non aver saputo l’unico complimento che davvero avevamo sempre reso loro. Il loro atto presupponeva che il coraggio irlandese avesse bisogno di prove; e non ne ebbe mai bisogno. Ho udito le più orribili assurdità dette contro l’Irlanda prima della guerra; e non udii mai inglesi dubitare del valore militare irlandese. Ciò di cui invece dubitavano era la sanità politica irlandese. Si vedrà subito che l’azione di Pasqua poteva soltanto smentire il pregiudizio che non avevano; e in realtà confermò il pregiudizio che avevano. L’accusa contro l’irlandese non era una mancanza di audacia, ma piuttosto un eccesso di essa. Gli uomini avevano ragione nel crederlo coraggioso, e non potevano avere più ragione. Ma avevano torto nel crederlo pazzo, ed ebbero un’eccellente occasione per avere ancor più torto. Poi, quando il tentativo di combattere contro l’Inghilterra si sviluppò, per sua propria logica, in un rifiuto di combattere per l’Inghilterra, gli uomini tolsero il numero che avevano dapprima pensato; e, irritati, giunsero a negare ciò che in origine non si erano mai sognati di mettere in dubbio. In ogni caso, questo era, credo, lo stato d’animo con cui la minoranza dei veri sinnfeiniani cercò il martirio. Io, per parte mia, non irriderò mai a un simile movente; ma esso non sarebbe certo assurto a un movimento tanto grande, se non fosse stato per un’altra forza che si trovò ad allearsi con loro. È per amore di questa che ho qui cominciato con la Tragedia di Pasqua stessa; poiché, considerando questa, giungiamo al paradosso del Lavoro irlandese. Alcune delle mie osservazioni sulla stabilità e persino sulla quiete di una società contadina potranno sembrare esagerate alla luce di un’agitazione operaia che scoppia in Irlanda come altrove. Ma ho ragioni particolari e persino personali per considerare quell’agitazione come l’eccezione che conferma la regola. Fu lo sfondo del paesaggio contadino a fare dello sciopero di Dublino quel peculiare genere di dramma che fu; e ciò operò in due modi: primo, isolando il capitalista industriale come qualcosa di eccezionale e quasi fanatico; e, secondo, rinforzando il proletariato con una vaga tradizione di proprietà. Le mie simpatie erano tutte per Larkin e Connolly contro il defunto signor Murphy; ma è curioso notare che persino il signor Murphy era un tipo d’uomo assai diverso dal Lord Qualcuno che è a capo di un consorzio commerciale in Inghilterra. Somigliava assai più a qualche morboso principe del Quattrocento, colmo di freddo sdegno, non senza una pietà pervertita. Ma le prime poche parole che udii sul suo conto in Irlanda erano piene di quel vasto e vago fatto che ho cercato di porre in cima alle mie impressioni. L’ho chiamato la famiglia; ma esso comprende molte cose affini: la giovinezza e le vecchie amicizie, per non dire delle vecchie liti. Lo si potrebbe definire più compiutamente come un realismo intorno alle origini. Le prime cose che udii su Murphy erano fatti della sua giovinezza dimenticata, o di una giovinezza che in Inghilterra sarebbe stata dimenticata. Erano racconti su amici dei suoi giorni più poveri, con i quali s’era messo a portare avanti una più o meno sentimentale vendetta contro qualcuno. Si supponga che, ogni volta che parliamo dei magazzini Harrod, udissimo dapprima parlare dei sogni a occhi aperti del giovane Harrod. Si supponga che la menzione della Guida Ferroviaria di Bradshaw suscitasse racconti di faide e di primo amore nella prima vita del signor Bradshaw, o persino della signora Bradshaw. Questa è l’atmosfera, da sentire più che da descrivere, che uno straniero in Irlanda si sente attorno. Il giornalismo e i pettegolezzi inglesi, trattando di uomini d’affari inglesi, sono spesso precisi sul presente e profetici sul futuro, ma di rado loquaci sul passato; et pour cause. Ci diranno dove il capitalista sta andando, se alla Camera dei Lord, o a Monte Carlo, o, per illazione, in cielo; ma dicono il meno possibile su da dove egli venga. In Irlanda un uomo si porta dietro la dimora avita come una lumaca; e il fantasma di suo padre lo segue come la sua ombra. Tutto ciò che di buono e di cattivo si poteva dire fu detto, non solo su Murphy, ma sui Murphy. Un aneddoto del vecchio Parlamento irlandese descrive un oratore che alludeva con grazia alla presenza della sorella di un avversario nella tribuna delle signore, augurando che l’ira colpisse l’intera maledetta stirpe «dalla vecchia strega sdentata che ghigna nella tribuna, al vigliacco dal fegato bianco che trema in aula». La storia si racconta di solito come suggerimento della piuttosto selvaggia disunione dei partiti irlandesi; ma è un suggerimento altrettanto serio dell’unione delle famiglie irlandesi. In effetti, il grande Sciopero di Dublino, una conflagrazione le cui braci ardevano ancora al tempo della mia visita, comportò un altro episodio che illustra ancora una volta questo ricorrente principio della realtà della famiglia in Irlanda. Alcuni Socialisti inglesi, si ricorderà, mossi da un’onorevole pietà per le povere famiglie che pativano la fame durante lo sciopero, avanzarono la proposta di portar via i bambini e di nutrirli come si deve in Inghilterra. Avrei pensato che il corso più naturale sarebbe stato dare denaro o cibo ai genitori. Ma i filantropi, essendo inglesi ed essendo Socialisti, avevano probabilmente fiducia in ciò che si chiama organizzazione e diffidenza di ciò che si chiama carità. Si suppone che la carità renda un uomo dipendente; mentre in realtà la carità lo rende indipendente, in confronto alla squallida dipendenza di solito prodotta dall’organizzazione. La Carità dà proprietà, e perciò libertà. Vi è manifestamente assai più emancipazione nel dare a un mendicante uno scellino da spendere, che nel mandargli dietro un funzionario a spenderlo per lui. I Socialisti, tuttavia, avevano placidamente predisposto la deportazione di tutti i bambini poveri, quando si trovarono, con loro stupore, di fronte alla realtà rovente chiamata la religione dell’Irlanda. I preti e le famiglie dei fedeli si organizzarono per una furiosa agitazione, adducendo che la fede sarebbe andata perduta in case straniere ed eretiche. Non si accontentarono della rassicurazione, offerta con ardore da alcuni dei Socialisti, che la fede non sarebbe stata toccata; e, come questione di pensiero limpido, credo che avessero perfettamente ragione. Coloro che offrono una simile rassicurazione non hanno mai riflettuto su che cosa sia una religione. Nutrono la straordinaria idea che la religione sia un argomento di conversazione. Pensano che la religione sia una cosa come i ravanelli, che si possono evitare per tutto il corso di una data conversazione con una data persona, che la menzione di un ravanello potrebbe far contorcere d’ira o d’angoscia. Ma una religione è semplicemente il mondo che un uomo abita. In pratica, un Socialista che vivesse a Liverpool non saprebbe quando stesse, o non stesse, manomettendo la religione di un bambino nato a Louth. Se mi si desse il controllo completo di un infante parsi (il che è fortunatamente improbabile), non avrei la più remota idea di quando incidessi più vitalmente sul sistema parsi. Ma il buon senso, e la comprensione del significato di una filosofia coerente, mi indurrebbero a sospettare che vi incidessi a ogni minuto. Ma menziono la cosa qui, non per entrare in alcuna di queste dispute, ma per dare ancora un altro esempio del modo in cui l’organizzazione essenzialmente domestica dell’Irlanda si leverà sempre in rivolta contro qualsiasi altra organizzazione. Vi è qualcosa di una parabola nei racconti dei vecchi sfratti, in cui l’intera famiglia veniva assediata e resisteva unita, e le madri rovesciavano bollitori d’acqua bollente sugli assedianti; poiché qualsiasi funzionario che s’immischi con loro finirà di certo nell’acqua calda. Non possiamo separare le madri dai figli in quella strana terra; possiamo soltanto tornare a qualcuno dei nostri più antichi metodi storici, e massacrarli insieme. Un piccolo episodio, tuttavia, entro la mia breve esperienza, illustrò il punto principale qui in gioco: il senso di una base contadina, persino nell’attacco proletario. E ciò fu esemplificato non in una qualche battuta d’arresto del Lavoro, ma piuttosto in un successo del Lavoro, nella misura in cui l’esito di un amichevole e informale dibattito possa essere annoverato tra i suoi successi più solidi. La faccenda cominciò in origine con una sorta di sconnessa conferenza letteraria che tenni al Teatro di Dublino, a proposito della quale menziono soltanto due episodi di sfuggita, perché entrambi mi colpirono come peculiarmente autoctoni e nazionali. Uno riguardava soltanto il titolo del mio discorso, che era «Poesia e Proprietà». Un colto gentiluomo inglese, che per caso mi rivolse la parola prima dell’incontro, disse con l’aria di chi prevede che simili scherzi saranno la sua morte: «Ebbene, ho semplicemente rinunciato a scervellarmi su che cosa mai possiate intendere, parlando della poesia come di qualcosa che ha a che fare con la proprietà». Egli considerava probabilmente l’accostamento di parole come una mera fantasia allitterativa, tipo Pavoni e Paddington, o Poligamia e Patate; se pure non la considerava come una mera combinazione di contrasti incompatibili, tipo Papismo e Protestanti, o Patriottismo e Politicanti. Lo stesso giorno un irlandese di analoga condizione sociale osservò con tutta noncuranza: «Ho appena visto il tuo argomento per domani. Suppongo che i Socialisti non saranno d’accordo con te», o parole di questo tenore. I due termini gli dissero subito, non della conferenza (che era letteraria, se mai era qualcosa), ma dell’intera filosofia sottesa alla conferenza; tutta quella filosofia che l’ingombrante elefante, che il signor Shaw chiamò il Chester-Belloc, faticosamente s’affanna a spiegare in Inghilterra, sotto il ponderoso titolo di Distributismo. Come una volta disse il signor Hugh Law, con altrettanta verità, a proposito del nostro contrapporre il patriottismo all’imperialismo: «Ciò che in Inghilterra è un paradosso, in Irlanda è un luogo comune». Il mio monologo vero e proprio, tuttavia, trattava soltanto della testimonianza resa dalla poesia a una certa dignità nel senso umano dei possessi privati, che non è certo né volgare ostentazione né volgare avidità. Il poeta francese della Pléiade ricorda le tegole del proprio tetto quasi come se potesse contarle; e il signor W. B. Yeats, nella più sfrenata visione di una solitudine remota e irresponsabile, ha cura di far capire che sa quante file di fagioli facciano nove. Naturalmente nel teatro c’era gente di tutti i partiti, sfrenati sinnfeiniani e convenzionali unionisti, ma tutti ascoltarono le mie osservazioni con la stessa naturalezza con cui avrebbero potuto ascoltare una conferenza altrettanto incompetente sulle Scimmie o sui Monti della Luna. Non vi era una parola di politica, tanto meno di politica di partito, in quel particolare discorso; esso riguardava una tradizione dell’arte, o tutt’al più dell’etica astratta. Ma l’unica cosa divertente che mi fa ricordare l’intero episodio fu questa: che, quando ebbi finito, un robusto, cordiale e corpulento gentiluomo di legge, un ben noto giudice irlandese a quanto pare, ebbe la cortesia di proporre un voto di ringraziamento per me. E ciò che mi divertì di lui fu questo: che, mentre io, che sono un Radicale in simpatia con la leggenda rivoluzionaria, avevo tenuto un mite saggio sui poeti minori a un pubblico placido se non annoiato, il giudice, che era un pilastro del Castello e un Conservatore giurato alla legge e all’ordine, si mise con la massima energia e gioia a suscitare un tumulto. Sfidò i sinnfeiniani e li provocò a farsi avanti; si trascinò il cappotto per terra, se mai un uomo lo fece a questo mondo; glorificò l’Inghilterra; non gli Alleati, ma l’Inghilterra; la splendida Inghilterra, la sublime Inghilterra (il tutto nel più marcato accento irlandese), la giusta, saggia e misericordiosa Inghilterra, e così via, sventolando ciò che non era nemmeno la bandiera del proprio paese, e una cosa che non aveva la più remota attinenza con l’argomento in questione, non più della Grande Muraglia cinese. Non occorre dire che il teatro fu presto in un fragore di proteste e di battute; il che, suppongo, era ciò che egli voleva. Era un allegro vecchio gentiluomo; e mi piaceva. Ma ciò che m’interessava di lui era questo; ed è di una certa importanza per la comprensione della sua nazionalità. Quel tipo d’uomo esiste in Inghilterra; ne conosco e ne apprezzo a decine. Spesso è un maggiore; spesso uno squire; talvolta un giudice; assai di rado un decano. Un uomo simile pronuncia le più ridicole assurdità reazionarie in modo apoplettico davanti al proprio porto; e occasionalmente, in maniera un po’ ansimante, a un’assemblea dichiaratamente politica. Ma proprio ciò che il gentiluomo inglese non farebbe, e che il gentiluomo irlandese fece, sarebbe fare una scenata in un’occasione non politica; quando tutto ciò che doveva fare era proporre un formale voto di ringraziamento a un perfetto sconosciuto che parlava di Itaca e di Innisfree. Un Conservatore inglese sarebbe meno propenso a farlo di un Radicale inglese. La stessa cosa che lo rende convenzionalmente politico lo renderebbe convenzionalmente apolitico. Detesterebbe fare un discorso troppo serio in un’occasione troppo mondana, così come detesterebbe indossare l’abito da giorno quando tutti gli altri sono in abito da sera. E qualunque cappotto indossasse, di certo non se lo trascinerebbe per terra al solo scopo di provocare un disordine, come fece quell’allegro giudice irlandese. Egli mi insegnò che l’irlandese non è mai tanto irlandese come quando è inglese. Somigliava moltissimo ad alcuni dei sinnfeiniani che lo zittirono con le urla; e sarebbe lieto di sapere che mi aiutò a comprenderli con maggior simpatia. Mi sono allontanato dall’argomento parlando di questa inezia, ritenendo che valesse la pena di notare la qualità positiva e provocatoria di ogni opinione irlandese; ma mio intento era soltanto menzionare questa piccola disputa come introduzione a un’altra. Ebbi qualche altra conversazione su poesia e proprietà col signor Yeats all’Arts Club di Dublino; e anche qui sono tentato da questioni irrilevanti, ma per me interessanti. Poiché sono consapevole, per tutto il tempo, di dire meno di quanto vorrei di mille cose, la cui omissione non è del tutto sbadata, e tanto meno ingrata. Vi sono stati e vi saranno ritratti migliori del mio di tutta quella attraente società, il paradosso di un’intellighenzia che è intelligente. Potrei scrivere moltissimo, non solo su coloro che stimo come miei amici, quali Katherine Tynan o Stephen Gwynn, ma su uomini con cui il mio incontro fu fin troppo momentaneo; sull’energia elfica trasmessa dal signor James Stephens; sulla grandezza sociale del dottor Gogarty, che era come una leggenda letteraria del Settecento; sull’ineguagliabile universalismo di A. E., che ha qualcosa della presenza di William Morris, e un tipo più trascendentale dell’ospitalità spirituale di Walt Whitman. Ma in questo rozzo abbozzo non sto cercando di dire agli irlandesi ciò che già sanno, bensì di dire agli inglesi alcune delle cose grandi e semplici che essi non sanno. La grande questione qui in causa è il Lavoro; e mi sono soffermato sugli altri punti soltanto perché essi furono i gradini che casualmente mi condussero al mio primo incontro con questa grande forza. E non per questo fu meno un fatto a sostegno della mia tesi, per il fatto d’essere in parte uno scherzo a mie spese. Nell’occasione che ho menzionato, una serata quanto mai esilarante all’Arts Club, il signor Yeats mi chiese di aprire un dibattito all’Abbey Theatre, difendendo la proprietà sul suo versante più puramente politico. Il mio avversario era uno dei più abili tra i capi di Liberty Hall, la famosa roccaforte della politica operaia a Dublino, il signor Johnson, un inglese come me, ma meritatamente popolare presso il proletariato irlandese. Tenne un discorso quanto mai ammirevole, al quale non intendo recare alcun discredito dicendo che, a mio avviso, la sua popolarità personale ebbe ancor più peso della sua eloquenza personale. Il mio argomento si limitava al particolare valore della piccola proprietà come arma di democrazia militante; e si fondava sull’idea che il cittadino che resiste all’ingiustizia non potesse trovare alcun sostituto della proprietà privata, poiché ogni altro potere impersonale, per quanto democratico in teoria, dev’essere burocratico nella forma. Dissi, come frivola figura retorica, che affidare la proprietà a un qualsiasi funzionario, anche a funzionari corporativi, era come dover lasciare le proprie gambe al guardaroba insieme al bastone o all’ombrello. Il punto è che un uomo può volere le proprie gambe da un momento all’altro, per prendere a calci un uomo o per ballare con una signora; e il ricuperarle può essere rinviato da un qualsiasi intoppo, dalla perdita dello scontrino alla fuga criminale del funzionario. Così, in una crisi sociale, come uno sciopero, un uomo dev’essere pronto ad agire senza funzionari che possano intralciarlo o tradirlo; e domandai se non sarebbero riusciti molti più scioperi, se ogni scioperante avesse posseduto anche solo un orto per aiutarsi a vivere. Il mio avversario replicò d’essere sempre stato favorevole a una simile riserva di proprietà proletaria, ma di preferirla comunitaria anziché individuale; il che mi pare lasci il mio argomento dov’era; poiché ciò che è comunitario dev’essere ufficiale, a meno che non debba essere caotico. Due scherzi minori, in parte a mie spese, mi restano nella memoria; pare che io abbia suscitato una certa ilarità temperando una matita con un grandissimo coltello spagnolo, al quale tengo (per combinazione) come al dono di un prete irlandese che mi è amico, e che si può perciò considerare anche un’arma simbolica, una sorta di spada dello spirito. Se il pubblico pensasse che stessi per amputarmi le gambe a illustrazione della mia stessa metafora, o che stessi per tagliare la gola al signor Johnson, furibondo per non trovare risposta ai suoi argomenti, non lo so. L’altra cosa che mi parve buffa fu un’eccellente battuta dello stesso signor Johnson, che aveva detto qualcosa sullo spreco di proprietà in fucili, e che interruppe la mia osservazione secondo cui non vi sarebbe mai stata una buona rivoluzione senza fucili, gridando scherzosamente: «Tradimento». Come gli dissi in seguito, poche scene sarebbero più artistiche di quella di un inglese, mandato là ad arruolare per l’esercito britannico, afferrato per il bavero e consegnato alla giustizia (o all’ingiustizia) da un Pacifista di Liberty Hall. Ma per tutto lo svolgimento fui consapevole, come dico, di un sentimento popolare quanto mai reale che sosteneva la semplice personalità del mio avversario; come nell’ovazione che ricevette prima ancora di parlare, o negli applausi tributati a numerose sue battute d’attualità, allusioni che non sempre riuscivo a capire. Dopo l’incontro un illustre unionista del Sud, che per caso possiede terre fuori Dublino, mi disse: «Naturalmente, Johnson ha appena avuto un enorme successo nel suo lavoro qui. Liberty Hall ha appena fatto qualcosa che davvero non era mai stato fatto prima in tutto il movimento delle Trade Union. È riuscito davvero a fondare una Trade Union per i braccianti agricoli. Lo so, perché ho dovuto far fronte alle loro richieste. Sai quanto sia sempre stato del tutto impossibile fondare davvero un sindacato di braccianti agricoli in Inghilterra». Lo sapevo bene; e sapevo anche perché fosse stato possibile fondarne uno in Irlanda. Era stato possibile proprio per la ragione che avevo sostenuto per tutta la sera; che dietro il proletariato irlandese vi era stata la tradizione di una contadinanza irlandese. Nelle loro famiglie, se non in loro stessi, vi era stata una qualche memoria dell’amore personale per la terra. Ma mi parve un’ironia interessante che perfino la mia stessa sconfitta fosse un esempio della mia stessa dottrina; e che la verità dalla mia parte fosse provata dalla popolarità della parte avversa. La corporazione agricola era dovuta a un vento di libertà che penetrava in quella cupa città da campi lontanissimi; e alla verità che perfino queste pietre rotolanti di un proletariato senza casa erano state da così poco staccate dalle radici stesse delle montagne. In Irlanda persino l’industrialismo non è industriale. Questo è ciò che intendo dicendo che il Lavoro irlandese è l’eccezione che conferma la regola. Ecco perché esso non contraddice la mia precedente generalizzazione, secondo cui la nostra crisi capitalista sta sul lato inglese della strada. I braccianti agricoli irlandesi possono diventare membri di una corporazione perché vorrebbero diventare contadini. Pensano ai ricchi e ai poveri nel modo che è antico quanto il mondo; il modo di Acab e di Nabot. Poco importa, in una società contadina, se Acab prenda la vigna privatamente come Acab, o ufficialmente come Re d’Israele. Importerà altrettanto poco, alla lunga, persino nell’altro tipo di società, se Nabot abbia un salario per lavorare nella vigna, o un voto che si suppone influisca in qualche modo sulla vigna. Ciò che egli desidera avere è la vigna; e non con apologetico cinismo o con volgari sotterfugi del tipo che gli affari sono affari, ma con voce di tuono, come da un trono segreto giunge la voce tremenda dalla vigna; la voce di questa specie d’uomo in ogni epoca e nazione: «Mi guardi il Signore dal darti l’eredità dei miei padri».
V. The Englishman in Ireland
With no desire to decorate my travels with too tall a traveller’s tale, I must record the fact that I found one point upon which all Irishmen were agreed. It was the fact that, for some reason or other, there had been a very hopeful beginning of Irish volunteering at the beginning of the war; and that, for some reason or other, this had failed in the course of the war. The reasons alleged differed widely with the moods of men; some had regarded the beginnings with hope and some with suspicion; some had lived to regard the failure with a bitter pleasure, and some with a generous pain. The different factions gave different explanations of why the thing had stopped; but they all agreed that it had begun. The Sinn Feiner said that the people soon found they had been lured into a Saxon trap, set for them by smooth, subservient Saxons like Mr. Devlin and Mr. Tim Healy. The Belfast citizen suggested that the Popish priest had terrorised the peasants when they tried to enlist, producing a thumbscrew from his pocket and a portable rack from his handbag. The Parliamentary Nationalist blamed both Sinn Fein and the persecution of Sinn Fein. The British Government officials, if they did not exactly blame themselves, at least blamed each other. The ordinary Southern Unionist (who played many parts of a more or less sensible sort, including that of a Home Ruler) generally agreed with the ordinary Nationalist that the Government’s recruiting methods had been as bad as its cause was good. But it is manifest that multitudes at the beginning of the war thought it really had a very good cause; and moreover a very good chance. The extraordinary story of how that chance was lost may find mention on a later page. I will begin by touching on the first incident that befell me personally in connection with the same enterprise. I went to Ireland at the request of Irish friends who were working warmly for the Allied cause, and who conceived (I fear in far too flattering a spirit) that I might at least be useful as an Englishman who had always sympathised as warmly with the Irish cause. I am under no illusions that I should ever be efficient at such work in any case; and under the circumstances I had no great hopes of doing much, where men like Sir Horace Plunkett and Captain Stephen Gwynne, far more competent, more self-sacrificing, and more well-informed than I, could already do comparatively little. It was too late. A hundredth part of the brilliant constancy and tragic labours of these men might easily, at the beginning of the war, have given us a great Irish army. I need not explain the motives that made me do the little I could do; they were the same that at that moment made millions of better men do masses of better work. Physical accident prevented my being useful in France, and a sort of psychological accident seemed to suggest that I might possibly be useful in Ireland; but I did not see myself as a very serious figure in either field. Nothing could be serious in such a case except perhaps a conviction; and at least my conviction about the great war has never wavered by a hair. Delenda est—and it is typical of the power of Berlin that one must break off for want of a Latin name for it. Being an Englishman, I hoped primarily to help England; but not being a congenital idiot, I did not primarily ask an Irishman to help England. There was obviously something much more reasonable to ask him to do. I hope I should in any case have done my best for my own country. But the cause was more than any country; in a sense it was too good for any country. The Allies were more right than they realised. Nay, they hardly had a right to be so right as they were. The modern Babylon of capitalistic states was hardly worthy to go on such a crusade against the heathen; as perhaps decadent Byzantium was hardly worthy to defend the Cross against the Crescent. But we are glad that it did defend the Cross against the Crescent. Nobody is sorry that Sobieski relieved Vienna; nobody wishes that Alfred had not won in Wessex. The cause that conquered is the only cause that survived. We see now that its enemy was not a cause but a chaos; and that is what history will say of the strange and recent boiling up of barbaric imperialism, a whirlpool whose hollow centre was Berlin. This is where the extreme Irish were really wrong; perhaps really wrong for the first time. I entirely sympathise with their being in revolt against the British Government. I am in revolt in most ways against the British Government myself. But politics are a fugitive thing in the face of history. Does anybody want to be fixed for ever on the wrong side at the Battle of Marathon, through a quarrel with some Archon whose very name is forgotten? Does anybody want to be remembered as a friend of Attila, through a breach of friendship with Aetius? In any case, it was with a profound conviction that if Prussia won, Europe must perish, and that if Europe perished England and Ireland must perish together, that I went to Dublin in those dark days of the last year of the war; and it so happened that the first occasion when I was called upon for any expression of opinion was at a very pleasant luncheon party given to the representatives of the British Dominions, who were then on an official tour in the country inspecting its conditions. What I said is of no importance except as leading up to later events; but it may be noted that though I was speaking perhaps indirectly to Irishmen, I was speaking directly, if not to Englishmen, at least to men in the more English tradition of the majority of the Colonies. I was speaking, if not to Unionists, at least largely to Imperialists. Now I have forgotten, I am happy to say, the particular speech that I made, but I can repeat the upshot of it here, not only as part of the argument, but as part of the story. The line I took generally in Ireland was an appeal to the Irish principle, yet the reverse of a mere approval of the Irish action, or inaction. It postulated that while the English had missed a great opportunity of justifying themselves to the Irish, the Irish had also missed a similar opportunity of justifying themselves to the English. But it specially emphasised this; that what had been lost was not primarily a justification against England, but a joke against England. I pointed out that an Irishman missing a joke against an Englishman was a tragedy, like a lost battle. And there was one thing, and one thing only, which had stopped the Irishman from laughing, and saved the Englishman from being laughable. The one and only thing that rescued England from ridicule was Sinn Fein. Or, at any rate, that element in Sinn Fein which was pro-German, or refused to be anti-German. Nothing imaginable under the stars except a pro-German Irishman could at that moment have saved the face of a (very recently) pro-German Englishman. The reason for this is obvious enough. England in 1914 encountered or discovered a colossal crime of Prussianised Germany. But England could not discover the German crime without discovering the English blunder. The blunder was, of course, a perfectly plain historical fact; that England made Prussia. England was the historic, highly civilised western state, with Roman foundations and chivalric memories; Prussia was originally a petty and boorish principality used by England and Austria in the long struggle against the greatness of France. Now in that long struggle Ireland had always been on the side of France. She had only to go on being on the side of France, and the Latin tradition generally, to behold her own truth triumph over her own enemies. In a word, it was not a question of whether Ireland should become anti-German, but merely of whether she should continue to be anti-German. It was a question of whether she should suddenly become pro-German, at the moment when most other pro-Germans were discovering that she had been justified all along. But England, at the beginning of her last and most lamentable quarrel with Ireland, was by no means in so strong a controversial position. England was right; but she could only prove she was right by proving she was wrong. In one sense, and with all respect to her right action in the matter, she had to be ridiculous in order to be right. But the joke against the English was even more obvious and topical. And as mine was only meant for a light speech after a friendly lunch, I took the joke in its lightest and most fanciful form, and touched chiefly on the fantastic theory of the Teuton as the master of the Celt. For the supreme joke was this: that the Englishman has not only boasted of being an Englishman; he has actually boasted of being a German. As the modern mind began to doubt the superiority of Calvinism to Catholicism, all English books, papers, and speeches were filled more and more with a Teutonism which substituted a racial for a religious superiority. It was felt to be a more modern and even a more progressive principle of distinction, to insist on ethnology rather than theology; for ethnology was supposed to be a science. Unionism was simply founded on Teutonism. Hence the ordinary honest, patriotic Unionist was in a highly humorous fix, when he had suddenly to begin denouncing Teutonism as mere terrorism. If all superiority belonged to the Teuton, the supreme superiority must clearly belong to the most Teutonic Teuton. If I claim the right to kick Mr. Bernard Shaw on the specific ground that I am fatter than he is, it is obvious that I look rather a fool if I am suddenly kicked by somebody who is fatter still. When the earth shakes under the advancing form of one coming against me out of the east who is fatter than I (for I called upon the Irish imagination to embrace so monstrous a vision), it is clear that whatever my relations to the rest of the world, in my relations to Mr. Bernard Shaw I am rather at a disadvantage. Mr. Shaw, at any rate, is rather in a position to make game of me; of which it is not inconceivable that he might avail himself. I might have accumulated a vast mass of learned sophistries and journalistic catchwords, which had always seemed to me to justify the connection between waxing fat and kicking. I might have proved from history that the leaders had always been fat men, like William the Conqueror, St. Thomas Aquinas, and Charles Fox. I might have proved from physiology that fatness is a proof of the power of organic assimilation and digestion; or from comparative zoology that the elephant is the wisest of the beasts. In short, I might be able to adduce many arguments in favour of my position. Only, unfortunately, they would now all become arguments against my position. Everything I had ever urged against my old enemy could be urged much more forcibly against me by my new enemy. And my position touching the great adipose theory would be exactly like England’s position touching the equally sensible Teutonic theory. If Teutonism was creative culture, then on our own showing the German was better than the Englishman. If Teutonism was barbarism, then on our own showing the Englishman was more barbaric than the Irishman. The real answer, of course, is that we were not Teutons but only the dupes of Teutonism; but some were so wholly duped that they would do anything rather than own themselves dupes. These unfortunates, while they are already ashamed of being Teutons, are still proud of not being Celts. There is only one thing that could save my dignity in such an undignified fix as I have fancied here. It is that Mr. Bernard Shaw himself should come to my rescue. It is that Mr. Bernard Shaw himself should declare in favour of the corpulent conqueror from the east; that he should take seriously all the fads and fallacies of that fat-headed superman. That, and that alone, would ensure all my own fads and fallacies being not only forgotten but forgiven. There is present to my imagination, I regret to say, a wild possibility that this is what Mr. Bernard Shaw might really do. Anyhow, this is what a certain number of his countrymen really did. It will be apparent, I think, from these pages that I do not believe in the stage Irishman. I am under no delusion that the Irishman is soft-headed and sentimental, or even illogical and inconsequent. Nine times out of ten, the Irishman is not only more clear-headed, but even more cool-headed than the Englishman. But I think it is true, as Mr. Max Beerbohm once suggested to me in connection with Mr. Shaw himself, that there is a residual perversity in the Irishman, which comes after and not before the analysis of a question. There is at the last moment a cold impatience in the intellect, an irony which returns on itself and rends itself; the subtlety of a suicide. However this may be, some of the lean men, instead of making a fool of the fat man, did begin almost to make a hero of the fatter man; to admire his vast curves as almost cosmic lines of development. I have seen Irish-American pamphlets which took quite seriously (or, I prefer to think, pretended to take quite seriously) the ridiculous romance about the Teutonic tribes having revived and refreshed civilisation after the fall of the Roman Empire. They revived civilisation very much as they restored Louvain or reconstructed the Lusitania. It was a romance which the English for a short time adopted as a convenience, but from which the Irish have continually suffered as from a curse. It was a suicidal perversity that they themselves, in their turn, should perpetuate their permanent curse as a temporary convenience. That was the worst error of the Irish, or of some of the best of the Irish. That is why the Easter Rising was really a black and insane blunder. It was not because it involved the Irish in a military defeat; it was because it lost the Irish a great controversial victory. The rebel deliberately let the tyrant out of a trap; out of the grinning jaws of the gigantic trap of a joke. Many of the most extreme Nationalists knew this well; it was what Kettle probably meant when he suggested an Anglo-Irish history called “The Two Fools”; and of course I do not mean that. I said all this in my very casual and rambling speech. But it was based on this idea, that men had missed the joke against England, and that now unfortunately the joke was rather against Ireland. It was Ireland that was now missing a great historical opportunity for lack of humour and imagination, as England had missed it a moment before. If the Irish would laugh at the English and help the English, they would win all along the line. In the real history of the German problem, they would inherit all the advantages of having been right from the first. It was now not so much a question of Ireland consenting to follow England’s lead as of England being obliged to follow Ireland’s lead. These are the principles, which I thought, and still think, the only possible principles to form the basis of a recruiting appeal in Ireland. But on the particular occasion in question I naturally took the matter much more lightly; hoping that the two jokes might, as it were, cancel out, and leave the two countries quits and in a better humour. And I devoted nearly all my remarks to testifying that the English had really, in the mass, shed the cruder Teutonism that had excused the cruelties of the past. I said that Englishmen were anything but proud of the past government of Ireland; that the mass of men of all parties were far more modest and humane in their view of Ireland than most Irishmen seem to suppose. And I ended with words which I only quote here from memory, because they happen to be the text of the curious incident which followed: “This is no place for us to boast. We stand here in the valley of our humiliation, where the flag we love has done very little that was not evil; and where its victories have been far more disastrous than defeats;” and I concluded with some general expression of the hope (which I still entertain) that two lands so much loved, by those who know them best, are not meant to hate each other for ever. A day or two afterwards a distinguished historian who is a professor at Trinity College, Mr. Alison Phillips, wrote an indignant letter to the Irish Times. He announced that he was not in the valley of humiliation; and warmly contradicted the report that he was, as he expressed it, “sitting in sackcloth and ashes.” He remarked, if I remember right, that I was middle-class, which is profoundly true; and he generally resented my suggestions as a shameful attack upon my fellow Englishmen. This both amused and puzzled me; for of course I had not been attacking Englishmen, but defending them; I had merely been assuring the Irish that the English were not so black, or so red, as they were painted in the vision of “England’s cruel red.” I had not said there what I have said here, about the anomaly and absurdity of England in Ireland; I had only said that Ireland had suffered rather from the Teutonic theory than the English temper; and that the English temper, experienced at close quarters, was really quite ready for a reconciliation with Ireland. Nor indeed did Mr. Alison Phillips really complain especially of my denouncing the English, but rather of my way of defending them. He did not so much mind being charged with the vice of arrogance. What he could not bear was being charged with the virtue of humility. What worried him was not so much the supposition of our doing wrong, as that anybody should conceive it possible that we were sorry for doing wrong. After all, he probably reasoned, it may not be easy for an eminent historical scholar actually to deny that certain tortures have taken place, or certain perjuries been proved; but there is really no reason why he should admit that the memory of using torture or perjury has so morbid an effect on the mind. Therefore he naturally desired to correct any impression that might arise, to the effect that he had been seen in the valley of humiliation, like a man called Christian. But there was one fancy that lingered in the mind over and above the fun of the thing; and threw a sort of random ray of conjecture upon all that long international misunderstanding which it is so hard to understand. Was it possible, I thought, that this had happened before, and that I was caught in the treadmill of recurrence? It may be that whenever, throughout the centuries, a roughly representative and fairly good-humoured Englishman has spoken to the Irish as thousands of such Englishmen feel about them, some other Englishman on the spot has hastened to explain that the English are not going in for sackcloth and ashes, but only for phylacteries and the blowing of their own trumpets before them. Perhaps whenever one Englishman said that the English were not so black as they were painted in the past, another Englishman always rushed forward to prove that the English were not so white as they were painted on the present occasion. And after all it was only Englishman against Englishman, one word against another; and there were many superiorities on the side which refused to believe in English sympathy or self-criticism. And very few of the Irish, I fear, understood the simple fact of the matter, or the real spiritual excuses of the party thus praising spiritual pride. Few understood that I represented large numbers of amiable Englishmen in England, while Mr. Phillips necessarily represented a small number of naturally irritable Englishmen in Ireland. Few, I fancy, sympathised with him so much as I do; for I know very well that he was not merely feeling as an Englishman, but as an exile.
V. L’inglese in Irlanda
Senza alcun desiderio di ornare i miei viaggi con un racconto da viaggiatore troppo grosso, devo registrare il fatto che trovai un punto sul quale tutti gli irlandesi erano d’accordo. Era il fatto che, per una ragione o per l’altra, vi era stato un inizio assai promettente di arruolamento volontario irlandese al principio della guerra; e che, per una ragione o per l’altra, questo era venuto meno nel corso della guerra. Le ragioni addotte differivano largamente secondo gli umori degli uomini; alcuni avevano guardato agli inizi con speranza e altri con sospetto; alcuni erano vissuti fino a guardare al fallimento con un amaro piacere, e altri con un generoso dolore. Le diverse fazioni davano diverse spiegazioni del perché la cosa si fosse fermata; ma tutte concordavano che era cominciata. Il sinnfeiniano diceva che il popolo aveva presto scoperto d’essere stato adescato in una trappola sassone, tesa per loro da untuosi e servili sassoni come il signor Devlin e il signor Tim Healy. Il cittadino di Belfast insinuava che il prete papista avesse terrorizzato i contadini quando tentavano di arruolarsi, estraendo uno schiacciapollici dalla tasca e un cavalletto di tortura portatile dalla borsa. Il nazionalista parlamentare incolpava tanto il Sinn Fein quanto la persecuzione del Sinn Fein. I funzionari del Governo britannico, se non incolpavano proprio sé stessi, incolpavano quanto meno l’un l’altro. L’ordinario unionista del Sud (che recitava molte parti di genere più o meno assennato, compresa quella di un Home Ruler) generalmente concordava con l’ordinario nazionalista che i metodi di reclutamento del Governo erano stati tanto pessimi quanto buona era la sua causa. Ma è manifesto che moltitudini, al principio della guerra, ritenevano che essa avesse davvero un’ottima causa; e per giunta un’ottima possibilità. La straordinaria storia di come quella possibilità andò perduta troverà forse menzione in una pagina successiva. Comincerò col toccare il primo episodio che mi capitò personalmente in relazione alla medesima impresa. Andai in Irlanda su richiesta di amici irlandesi che lavoravano con ardore per la causa alleata, e che concepirono (in uno spirito, temo, fin troppo lusinghiero) che potessi quanto meno essere utile come un inglese che aveva sempre simpatizzato con altrettanto ardore per la causa irlandese. Non mi faccio illusioni di poter mai essere efficiente in un simile lavoro, in ogni caso; e date le circostanze non avevo grandi speranze di far molto, là dove uomini come Sir Horace Plunkett e il capitano Stephen Gwynne, assai più competenti, più inclini all’abnegazione e più bene informati di me, potevano già fare relativamente poco. Era troppo tardi. Una centesima parte della brillante costanza e delle tragiche fatiche di questi uomini avrebbe potuto agevolmente, al principio della guerra, darci un grande esercito irlandese. Non occorre che spieghi i motivi che mi spinsero a fare il poco che potevo fare; erano gli stessi che in quel momento spingevano milioni di uomini migliori a compiere mucchi di opere migliori. Un accidente fisico m’impedì d’essere utile in Francia, e una sorta di accidente psicologico pareva suggerire che potessi forse essere utile in Irlanda; ma non mi vedevo come una figura molto seria in nessuno dei due campi. Nulla poteva essere serio in un simile caso, se non forse una convinzione; e almeno la mia convinzione riguardo alla grande guerra non ha mai vacillato di un capello. Delenda est… ed è tipico del potere di Berlino che ci si debba interrompere per mancanza di un nome latino con cui designarla. Essendo inglese, speravo in primo luogo di aiutare l’Inghilterra; ma non essendo un idiota congenito, non chiedevo in primo luogo a un irlandese di aiutare l’Inghilterra. Vi era ovviamente qualcosa di assai più ragionevole da chiedergli di fare. Spero che in ogni caso avrei fatto del mio meglio per il mio paese. Ma la causa era più di qualsiasi paese; in un certo senso era troppo buona per qualsiasi paese. Gli Alleati avevano più ragione di quanto si rendessero conto. Anzi, avevano a stento il diritto d’avere così tanta ragione quanta ne avevano. La moderna Babilonia degli Stati capitalisti era ben poco degna di muovere a una simile crociata contro i pagani; come forse la decadente Bisanzio era ben poco degna di difendere la Croce contro la Mezzaluna. Ma siamo lieti che essa difendesse la Croce contro la Mezzaluna. Nessuno si rammarica che Sobieski liberasse Vienna; nessuno vorrebbe che Alfredo non avesse vinto nel Wessex. La causa che vinse è l’unica causa che sopravvisse. Vediamo ora che il suo nemico non era una causa ma un caos; ed è ciò che la storia dirà dello strano e recente ribollire dell’imperialismo barbarico, un gorgo il cui centro vuoto era Berlino. È qui che gli irlandesi estremisti ebbero davvero torto; forse davvero torto per la prima volta. Simpatizzo pienamente col loro essere in rivolta contro il Governo britannico. Io stesso sono in rivolta, in quasi ogni modo, contro il Governo britannico. Ma la politica è cosa fuggevole di fronte alla storia. C’è forse qualcuno che vuole essere fissato per sempre dalla parte sbagliata alla battaglia di Maratona, per una lite con qualche Arconte il cui nome stesso è dimenticato? C’è forse qualcuno che vuole essere ricordato come amico di Attila, per una rottura d’amicizia con Ezio? In ogni caso, fu con la profonda convinzione che, se la Prussia avesse vinto, l’Europa dovesse perire, e che se l’Europa periva l’Inghilterra e l’Irlanda dovessero perire insieme, che andai a Dublino in quei giorni oscuri dell’ultimo anno di guerra; e si diede il caso che la prima occasione in cui fui chiamato a una qualche espressione d’opinione fosse a un assai piacevole pranzo offerto ai rappresentanti dei Dominî britannici, i quali erano allora in un giro ufficiale per il paese a ispezionarne le condizioni. Ciò che dissi non ha alcuna importanza, se non come introduzione a eventi successivi; ma si può notare che, benché parlassi forse indirettamente a degli irlandesi, parlavo direttamente, se non a degli inglesi, quanto meno a uomini della più inglese tradizione della maggioranza delle Colonie. Parlavo, se non a unionisti, quanto meno in gran parte a imperialisti. Ora, ho dimenticato, felice di poterlo dire, il particolare discorso che tenni, ma posso ripeterne qui la sostanza, non solo come parte dell’argomentazione, ma come parte del racconto. La linea che generalmente adottai in Irlanda era un appello al principio irlandese, e tuttavia il contrario di una mera approvazione dell’azione, o inazione, irlandese. Postulava che, mentre gli inglesi avevano mancato una grande occasione di giustificarsi agli occhi degli irlandesi, anche gli irlandesi avevano mancato una simile occasione di giustificarsi agli occhi degli inglesi. Ma sottolineava specialmente questo: che ciò che era stato perduto non era in primo luogo una giustificazione contro l’Inghilterra, ma una beffa contro l’Inghilterra. Feci notare che un irlandese che si lasciasse sfuggire una beffa contro un inglese era una tragedia, come una battaglia perduta. E vi era una cosa, e una cosa soltanto, che aveva impedito all’irlandese di ridere, e salvato l’inglese dall’essere ridicolo. L’unica e sola cosa che riscattò l’Inghilterra dal ridicolo fu il Sinn Fein. O, quanto meno, quell’elemento del Sinn Fein che era filotedesco, o che si rifiutava d’essere antitedesco. Nulla d’immaginabile sotto le stelle, se non un irlandese filotedesco, avrebbe potuto in quel momento salvare la faccia a un inglese (fino a pochissimo tempo prima) filotedesco. La ragione di ciò è abbastanza ovvia. L’Inghilterra nel 1914 incontrò, o scoprì, un colossale crimine della Germania prussianizzata. Ma l’Inghilterra non poteva scoprire il crimine tedesco senza scoprire l’abbaglio inglese. L’abbaglio era, naturalmente, un fatto storico del tutto lampante: che l’Inghilterra fece la Prussia. L’Inghilterra era lo storico, altamente civile Stato occidentale, con fondamenta romane e memorie cavalleresche; la Prussia era in origine un meschino e rozzo principato adoperato dall’Inghilterra e dall’Austria nella lunga lotta contro la grandezza della Francia. Ora, in quella lunga lotta l’Irlanda era sempre stata dalla parte della Francia. Le bastava continuare a stare dalla parte della Francia, e della tradizione latina in generale, per vedere la propria verità trionfare sui propri nemici. In una parola, non era questione se l’Irlanda dovesse diventare antitedesca, ma soltanto se dovesse continuare a essere antitedesca. Era questione se dovesse improvvisamente diventare filotedesca, nel momento in cui la maggior parte degli altri filotedeschi scopriva che essa aveva avuto ragione fin dal principio. Ma l’Inghilterra, all’inizio della sua ultima e più deplorevole lite con l’Irlanda, non era affatto in una posizione polemica altrettanto forte. L’Inghilterra aveva ragione; ma poteva provare d’aver ragione soltanto provando d’aver torto. In un certo senso, e con tutto il rispetto per la sua giusta azione nella faccenda, doveva essere ridicola per aver ragione. Ma la beffa contro gli inglesi era ancor più ovvia e attuale. E poiché il mio voleva essere soltanto un discorso leggero dopo un amichevole pranzo, presi la beffa nella sua forma più leggera e fantasiosa, e toccai soprattutto la fantastica teoria del Teutone come padrone del Celta. Poiché la beffa suprema era questa: che l’inglese non solo si è vantato d’essere inglese; si è addirittura vantato d’essere tedesco. Man mano che la mente moderna cominciava a dubitare della superiorità del Calvinismo sul Cattolicesimo, tutti i libri, i giornali e i discorsi inglesi si riempivano sempre più di un Teutonismo che sostituiva a una superiorità religiosa una superiorità razziale. Si sentiva che era un principio di distinzione più moderno e persino più progressista insistere sull’etnologia piuttosto che sulla teologia; poiché l’etnologia si riteneva fosse una scienza. L’Unionismo si fondava semplicemente sul Teutonismo. Di qui l’ordinario, onesto e patriottico unionista si trovava in un impiccio quanto mai comico, quando doveva improvvisamente cominciare a denunciare il Teutonismo come mero terrorismo. Se ogni superiorità apparteneva al Teutone, la superiorità suprema doveva chiaramente appartenere al più teutonico dei Teutoni. Se rivendico il diritto di prendere a calci il signor Bernard Shaw sulla specifica base che io sono più grasso di lui, è ovvio che faccio piuttosto la figura dello sciocco se vengo improvvisamente preso a calci da qualcuno che è ancor più grasso. Quando la terra trema sotto la forma avanzante di uno che, venendomi incontro da oriente, è più grasso di me (poiché feci appello all’immaginazione irlandese perché abbracciasse una visione così mostruosa), è chiaro che, quali che siano i miei rapporti col resto del mondo, nei miei rapporti col signor Bernard Shaw mi trovo piuttosto in svantaggio. Il signor Shaw, quanto meno, è piuttosto in condizione di farsi beffe di me; e non è inconcepibile che possa avvalersene. Avrei potuto accumulare una vasta massa di dotti sofismi e di slogan giornalistici, che mi erano sempre parsi giustificare il nesso tra l’ingrassare e lo sferrare calci. Avrei potuto provare, con la storia, che i capi erano sempre stati uomini grassi, come Guglielmo il Conquistatore, san Tommaso d’Aquino e Charles Fox. Avrei potuto provare, con la fisiologia, che la pinguedine è una prova della potenza di assimilazione e digestione organica; o, con la zoologia comparata, che l’elefante è la più saggia delle bestie. In breve, potrei essere in grado di addurre molti argomenti a favore della mia posizione. Solo che, sfortunatamente, essi diverrebbero ora tutti argomenti contro la mia posizione. Tutto ciò che avessi mai sostenuto contro il mio vecchio nemico potrebbe essere sostenuto con assai maggior forza contro di me dal mio nuovo nemico. E la mia posizione riguardo alla grande teoria adiposa sarebbe esattamente come la posizione dell’Inghilterra riguardo alla teoria teutonica, altrettanto sensata. Se il Teutonismo era cultura creatrice, allora, per nostra stessa ammissione, il tedesco era migliore dell’inglese. Se il Teutonismo era barbarie, allora, per nostra stessa ammissione, l’inglese era più barbaro dell’irlandese. La vera risposta, naturalmente, è che noi non eravamo Teutoni, ma soltanto gli zimbelli del Teutonismo; ma alcuni erano stati raggirati tanto completamente che avrebbero fatto qualsiasi cosa piuttosto che riconoscersi zimbelli. Questi sventurati, mentre già si vergognano d’essere Teutoni, sono ancora fieri di non essere Celti. Vi è una sola cosa che potrebbe salvare la mia dignità in un impiccio così poco dignitoso come quello che ho qui immaginato. È che il signor Bernard Shaw in persona venga in mio soccorso. È che il signor Bernard Shaw in persona si dichiari a favore del corpulento conquistatore dell’oriente; che prenda sul serio tutte le fisime e le fallacie di quel superuomo dalla testa grassa. Ciò, e ciò soltanto, garantirebbe che tutte le mie fisime e fallacie fossero non solo dimenticate ma perdonate. È presente alla mia immaginazione, mi rincresce dirlo, la sfrenata possibilità che questo sia proprio ciò che il signor Bernard Shaw potrebbe davvero fare. Comunque, questo è ciò che un certo numero dei suoi connazionali fece davvero. Risulterà evidente, credo, da queste pagine, che io non credo nell’irlandese da palcoscenico. Non m’illudo affatto che l’irlandese sia molle di testa e sentimentale, e neppure illogico e inconseguente. Nove volte su dieci, l’irlandese non solo ha le idee più chiare, ma ha persino la testa più fredda dell’inglese. Ma credo sia vero, come una volta mi suggerì il signor Max Beerbohm a proposito dello stesso signor Shaw, che vi è una perversità residua nell’irlandese, la quale viene dopo e non prima dell’analisi di una questione. Vi è, all’ultimo istante, una fredda impazienza nell’intelletto, un’ironia che ritorna su sé stessa e si dilania; la sottigliezza di un suicida. Comunque stiano le cose, alcuni degli uomini magri, invece di fare dell’uomo grasso uno zimbello, cominciarono quasi a fare dell’uomo più grasso un eroe; ad ammirare le sue vaste curve come linee di sviluppo quasi cosmiche. Ho visto opuscoli irlando-americani che prendevano del tutto sul serio (o, preferisco pensare, fingevano di prendere del tutto sul serio) la ridicola favola secondo cui le tribù teutoniche avrebbero ravvivato e rinfrescato la civiltà dopo la caduta dell’Impero romano. Ravvivarono la civiltà press’a poco come restaurarono Lovanio o ricostruirono il Lusitania. Era una favola che gli inglesi per un breve tempo adottarono per comodità, ma di cui gli irlandesi hanno continuamente sofferto come di una maledizione. Era una perversità suicida che essi stessi, a loro volta, perpetuassero la loro maledizione permanente come una comodità temporanea. Quello fu il peggior errore degli irlandesi, o di alcuni dei migliori tra gli irlandesi. Ecco perché l’Insurrezione di Pasqua fu davvero un nero e folle abbaglio. Non perché coinvolgesse gli irlandesi in una sconfitta militare; ma perché fece perdere agli irlandesi una grande vittoria polemica. Il ribelle deliberatamente lasciò uscire il tiranno da una trappola; dalle fauci ghignanti della gigantesca trappola di una beffa. Molti dei nazionalisti più estremi lo sapevano bene; era ciò che Kettle probabilmente intendeva quando propose una storia anglo-irlandese intitolata «I due sciocchi»; e naturalmente io non intendo questo. Dissi tutto ciò nel mio discorso quanto mai disinvolto e sconnesso. Ma esso si fondava su questa idea, che gli uomini avessero mancato la beffa contro l’Inghilterra, e che ora, sfortunatamente, la beffa fosse piuttosto contro l’Irlanda. Era l’Irlanda che ora mancava una grande occasione storica per difetto di umorismo e di immaginazione, come l’Inghilterra l’aveva mancata un momento prima. Se gli irlandesi ridessero degli inglesi e aiutassero gli inglesi, vincerebbero su tutta la linea. Nella vera storia del problema tedesco, erediterebbero tutti i vantaggi dell’aver avuto ragione fin dal principio. Non era ormai tanto questione che l’Irlanda acconsentisse a seguire la guida dell’Inghilterra, quanto che l’Inghilterra fosse obbligata a seguire la guida dell’Irlanda. Questi sono i principî che ritenevo, e tuttora ritengo, gli unici principî possibili per formare la base di un appello al reclutamento in Irlanda. Ma nella particolare occasione in questione presi naturalmente la cosa assai più alla leggera; sperando che le due beffe potessero, per così dire, annullarsi a vicenda, e lasciare i due paesi pari e di umore migliore. E dedicai quasi tutte le mie osservazioni a testimoniare che gli inglesi si erano davvero, nella massa, spogliati del più rozzo Teutonismo che aveva scusato le crudeltà del passato. Dissi che gli inglesi erano tutt’altro che fieri del passato governo dell’Irlanda; che la massa degli uomini di tutti i partiti era assai più modesta e umana nella sua veduta dell’Irlanda di quanto la maggior parte degli irlandesi sembra supporre. E conclusi con parole che qui cito soltanto a memoria, perché si dà il caso che siano il testo del curioso episodio che seguì: «Questo non è luogo per noi in cui vantarci. Stiamo qui nella valle della nostra umiliazione, dove la bandiera che amiamo ha fatto ben poco che non fosse male; e dove le sue vittorie sono state assai più disastrose delle sconfitte»; e conclusi con qualche generica espressione della speranza (che tuttora nutro) che due terre tanto amate, da coloro che meglio le conoscono, non siano destinate a odiarsi per sempre. Un giorno o due dopo, un illustre storico che è professore al Trinity College, il signor Alison Phillips, scrisse una lettera indignata all’Irish Times. Annunciava di non trovarsi nella valle dell’umiliazione; e smentiva con calore la notizia che egli sedesse, come si espresse, «in sacco e cenere». Osservava, se ben ricordo, che io ero di classe media, il che è profondamente vero; e in generale mal sopportava le mie insinuazioni come un vergognoso attacco ai miei compatrioti inglesi. Ciò insieme mi divertì e mi lasciò perplesso; poiché, naturalmente, non avevo attaccato gli inglesi, ma li avevo difesi; mi ero limitato ad assicurare agli irlandesi che gli inglesi non erano così neri, o così rossi, come venivano dipinti nella visione del «crudele rosso d’Inghilterra». Non avevo detto là ciò che ho detto qui, sull’anomalia e l’assurdità dell’Inghilterra in Irlanda; avevo detto soltanto che l’Irlanda aveva sofferto più per la teoria teutonica che per il carattere inglese; e che il carattere inglese, sperimentato da vicino, era in realtà del tutto pronto a una riconciliazione con l’Irlanda. Né, in verità, il signor Alison Phillips si lamentava propriamente in special modo del mio denunciare gli inglesi, ma piuttosto del mio modo di difenderli. Non gli importava tanto d’essere accusato del vizio dell’arroganza. Ciò che non poteva sopportare era d’essere accusato della virtù dell’umiltà. Ciò che lo turbava non era tanto la supposizione che noi facessimo del male, quanto che qualcuno concepisse possibile che noi ci pentissimo d’aver fatto del male. Dopo tutto, ragionava probabilmente, può non essere facile per un eminente studioso di storia negare addirittura che certe torture siano avvenute, o che certi spergiuri siano stati provati; ma non v’è proprio ragione per cui egli debba ammettere che la memoria d’aver fatto uso della tortura o dello spergiuro abbia un effetto tanto morboso sull’animo. Perciò desiderava naturalmente correggere ogni impressione che potesse sorgere, secondo cui egli fosse stato visto nella valle dell’umiliazione, come un uomo chiamato Cristiano. Ma vi era una fantasticheria che indugiava nella mente al di là del lato buffo della cosa; e gettava una sorta di raggio casuale di congettura su tutto quel lungo malinteso internazionale che è così difficile comprendere. Era possibile, pensai, che questo fosse già accaduto in passato, e che io fossi preso nel mulino del ripetersi? Può darsi che ogni volta che, nel corso dei secoli, un inglese all’incirca rappresentativo e di umore abbastanza buono ha parlato agli irlandesi come migliaia di simili inglesi sentono nei loro confronti, qualche altro inglese sul posto si sia affrettato a spiegare che gli inglesi non si dedicano al sacco e alla cenere, ma soltanto ai filatteri e al soffiare nelle proprie trombe dinanzi a sé. Forse, ogni volta che un inglese diceva che gli inglesi non erano così neri come venivano dipinti nel passato, un altro inglese si precipitava sempre a dimostrare che gli inglesi non erano così bianchi come venivano dipinti nell’occasione presente. E dopo tutto era soltanto inglese contro inglese, una parola contro un’altra; e vi erano molte superiorità dalla parte che si rifiutava di credere nella simpatia o nell’autocritica inglese. E ben pochi tra gli irlandesi, temo, compresero il semplice nocciolo della faccenda, o le vere scuse spirituali della parte che così esaltava l’orgoglio spirituale. Pochi compresero che io rappresentavo grandi masse di amabili inglesi in Inghilterra, mentre il signor Phillips rappresentava necessariamente un piccolo numero di inglesi naturalmente irritabili in Irlanda. Pochi, immagino, simpatizzarono con lui quanto me; poiché so molto bene che egli non sentiva soltanto da inglese, ma da esule.
VI. The Mistake of England
I met one hearty Unionist, not to say Coercionist in Ireland, in such a manner as to talk to him at some length; one quite genial and genuine Irish gentleman, who was solidly on the side of the system of British government in Ireland. This gentleman had been shot through the body by the British troops in their efforts to suppress the Easter Rebellion. The matter just missed being tragic; but since it did, I cannot help feeling it as slightly comic. He assured me with great earnestness that the rebels had been guilty of the most calculated cruelties; and that they must have done their bloody deeds in the coldest blood. But since he is himself a solid and (I am happy to say) a living demonstration that the firing even on his own side must have been rather wild, I am inclined to give the benefit of the doubt also to the less elaborately educated marksmen. When disciplined troops destroy people so much at random, it would seem unreasonable to deny that rioters may possibly have been riotous. I hardly think he was, or even professed to be, a person of judicial impartiality; and it is entirely to his honour that he was, on principle, so much more indignant with the rioters who did not shoot him than with the other rioters who did. But I venture to introduce him here not so much as an individual as an allegory. The incident seems to me to set forth, in a pointed, lucid, and picturesque form, exactly what the British military government really succeeded in doing in Ireland. It succeeded in half-killing its friends, and affording an intelligent but somewhat inhumane amusement to all its enemies. The fire-eater held his fire-arm in so contorted a posture as to give the wondering spectator a simple impression of suicide. Let it be understood that I speak here, not of tyranny thwarting Irish desires, but solely of our own stupidity in thwarting our own desires. I shall discuss elsewhere the alleged presence or absence of practical oppression in Ireland; here I am only continuing from the last chapter my experiences of the recruiting campaign. I am concerned now, as I was concerned then, with the simple business matter of getting a big levy of soldiers from Ireland. I think it was Sir Francis Vane, one of the few really valuable public servants in the matter (I need not say he was dismissed for having been proved right), who said that the mere sight of some representative Belgian priests and nuns might have produced something like a crusade. The matter seems to have been mostly left to elderly English landlords; and it would be cruel to record their adventures. It will be enough that I found, for a positive fact, that these unhappy gentlemen had displayed throughout Ireland a poster consisting only of the Union Jack and the appeal, “Is not this your flag? Come and fight for it!” It faintly recalls something we all learnt in the Latin grammar about questions that expect the answer no. These remarkable recruiting-sergeants did not realise, I suppose, what an extraordinary thing this was, not merely in Irish opinion, but generally in international opinion. Over a great part of the globe, it would sound like a story that the Turks had placarded Armenia with the Crescent of Islam, and asked all the Christians who were not yet massacred whether they did not love the flag. I really do not believe that the Turks would be so stupid as to do it. Of course it may be said that such an impression or association is mere slander and sedition, that there is no reason to be tender to such treasonable emotions at all, that men ought to do their duty to that flag whatever is put upon that poster; in short, that it is the duty of an Irishman to be a patriotic Englishman, or whatever it is that he is expected to be. But this view, however logical and clear, can only be used logically and clearly as an argument for conscription. It is simply muddle-headed to apply it to any appeal for volunteers anywhere, in Ireland or England. The whole object of a recruiting poster, or any poster, is to be attractive; it is picked out in words or colours to be picturesquely and pointedly attractive. If it lowers you to make an attractive offer, do not make it; but do not deliberately make it, and deliberately make it repulsive. If a certain medicine is so mortally necessary and so mortally nasty, that it must be forced on everybody by the policeman, call the policeman. But do not call an advertisement agent to push it like a patent medicine, solely by means of “publicity” and “suggestion,” and then confine him strictly to telling the public how nasty it is. But the British blunder in Ireland was a much deeper and more destructive thing. It can be summed up in one sentence; that whether or no we were as black as we were painted, we actually painted ourselves much blacker than we were. Bad as we were, we managed to look much worse than we were. In a horrible unconsciousness we re-enacted history through sheer ignorance of history. We were foolish enough to dress up, and to play up, to the part of a villain in a very old tragedy. We clothed ourselves almost carelessly in fire and sword; and if the fire had been literally stage-fire or the sword a wooden sword, the merely artistic blunder would have been quite as bad. For instance, I soon came on the traces of a quarrel about some silly veto in the schools, against Irish children wearing green rosettes. Anybody with a streak of historical imagination would have avoided a quarrel in that particular case about that particular colour. It is touching the talisman, it is naming the name, it is striking the note of another relation in which we were in the wrong, to the confusion of a new relation in which we were in the right. Anybody of common sense, considering any other case, can see the almost magic force of these material coincidences. If the English armies in France in 1914 considered themselves justified for some reason in executing some Frenchwoman, they would perhaps be indiscreet if they killed her (however logically) tied to a stake in the market-place of Rouen. If the people of Paris rose in the most righteous revolt against the most corrupt conspiracy of some group of the wealthy French Protestants, I should strongly advise them not to fix the date for the vigil of St. Bartholomew, or to go to work with white scarfs tied round their arms. Many of us hope to see a Jewish commonwealth reconstituted in Palestine; and we could easily imagine some quarrel in which the government of Jerusalem was impelled to punish some Greek or Latin pilgrim or monk. The Jews might even be right in the quarrel and the Christian wrong. But it may be hinted that the Jews would be ill-advised if they actually crowned him with thorns, and killed him on a hill just outside Jerusalem. Now we must know by this time, or the sooner we know it the better, that the whole mind of that European society which we have helped to save, and in which we have henceforth a part right of control, regards the Anglo-Irish story as one of these black and white stories in a history book. It sees the tragedy of Ireland as simply and clearly as the tragedy of Christ or Joan of Arc. There may have been more to be said on the coercive side than the culture of the Continent understands. So there was a great deal more than is usually admitted, to be said on the side of the patriotic democracy which condemned Socrates; and a very great deal to be said on the side of the imperial aristocracy which would have crushed Washington. But these disputes will not take Socrates from his niche among the pagan saints, or Washington from his pedestal among the republican heroes. After a certain testing time, substantial justice is always done to the men who stood in some unmistakable manner for liberty and light, against contemporary caprice and fashionable force and brutality. In this intellectual sense, in the only competent intellectual courts, there is already justice to Ireland. In the wide daylight of this world-wide fact, we or our representatives must get into a quarrel with children, of all people, and about the colour green, of all things in the world. It is an exact working model of the mistake I mean. It is the more brutal because it is not strictly cruel; and yet instantly revives the memories of cruelty. There need be nothing wrong with it in the abstract, or in a less tragic atmosphere where the symbols were not talismans. A schoolmaster in the prosperous and enlightened town of Eatanswill might not unpardonably protest against the school-children parading in class the Buff and Blue favours of Mr. Simpkin and Mr. Slumkey. But who but a madman would not see that to say that word, or make that sign, in Ireland, was like giving a signal for keening, and the lament over lost justice that is lifted in the burden of the noblest of national songs; that to point to that rag of that colour was to bring back all the responsibilities and realities of that reign of terror when we were, quite literally, hanging men and women too for wearing of the green? We were not literally hanging these children. As a matter of mere utility, we should have been more sensible if we had been. But the same fact took an even more fantastic form. We not only dressed up as our ancestors, but we actually dressed up as our enemies. I need hardly state my own conviction that the Pacifist trick of lumping the abuses of one side along with the abominations of the other, was a shallow pedantry come of sheer ignorance of the history of Europe and the barbarians. It was quite false that the English evil was exactly the same as the German. It was quite false; but the English in Ireland laboured long and devotedly to prove it was quite true. They were not content with borrowing old uniforms from the Hessians of 1798, they borrowed the newest and neatest uniforms from the Prussians of 1914. I will give only one story that I was told, out of many, to show what I mean. There was a sort of village musical festival at a place called Cullen in County Cork, at which there were naturally national songs and very possibly national speeches. That there was a sort of social atmosphere, which its critics would call Sinn Fein, is exceedingly likely; for that now exists all over Ireland, and especially that part of Ireland. If we wish to prevent it being expressed at all, we must not only forbid all public meetings, but all private meetings, and even the meeting of husband and wife in their own house. Still there might have been a case, on coercionist lines, for forbidding this public meeting. There might be a case, on coercionist lines, for imprisoning all the people who attended it; or a still clearer case, on those lines, for imprisoning all the people in Ireland. But the coercionist authorities did not merely forbid the meeting; which would mean something. They did not arrest the people at the meeting; which would mean something. They did not blow the whole meeting to hell with big guns; which would also mean something. What they did was this. They caused a military aeroplane to jerk itself backwards and forwards in a staggering fashion just over the heads of the people, making as much noise as possible to drown the music, and dropping flare rockets and fire in various somewhat dangerous forms in the neighbourhood of any men, women, and children who happened to be listening to the music. The reader will note with what exquisite art, and fine fastidious selection, the strategist has here contrived to look as Prussian as possible without securing any of the advantages of Prussianism. There was a certain amount of real danger to the children; but not very much. There was about as much as there generally has been when boys have been flogged for playing the fool with fireworks. But by laboriously climbing hundreds of feet into the air, in an enormous military machine, these ingenious people managed to make themselves a meteor in heaven and a spectacle to all the earth; the English raining fire on women and children just as the Germans did. I repeat that they did not actually destroy children, though they did endanger them; for playing with fireworks is always playing with fire. And I repeat that, as a mere matter of business, it would have been more sensible if they had destroyed children. That would at least have had the human meaning that has run through a hundred massacres: “wolf-cubs who would grow into wolves.” It might at least have the execrable excuse of decreasing the number of rebels. What they did would quite certainly increase it. An artless Member of Parliament, whose name I forget, attempted an apology for this half-witted performance. He interposed in the Unionist interests, when the Nationalists were asking questions about the matter; and said with much heat, “May I ask whether honest and loyal subjects have anything to fear from British aeroplanes?” I have often wondered what he meant. It seems possible that he was in the mood of that mediaeval fanatic who cried, “God will know his own”; and that he himself would fling any sort of flaming bolts about anywhere, believing that they would always be miraculously directed towards the heads harbouring, at that moment, the most incorrect political opinions. Or perhaps he meant that loyal subjects are so superbly loyal that they do not mind being accidentally burnt alive, so long as they are assured that the fire was dropped on them by government officials out of a government apparatus. But my purpose here is not to fathom such a mystery, but merely to fix the dominant fact of the whole situation; that the government copied the theatricality of Potsdam even more than the tyranny of Potsdam. In that incident, the English laboriously reproduced all the artificial accessories of the most notorious crimes of Germany; the flying men, the flame, the selection of a mixed crowd, the selection of a popular festival. They had every part of it, except the point of it. It was as if the whole British army in Ireland had dressed up in spiked helmets and spectacles, merely that they might look like Prussians. It was even more as if a man had walked across Ireland on three gigantic stilts, taller than the trees and visible from the most distant village, solely that he might look like one of those unhuman monsters from Mars, striding about on their iron tripods in the great nightmare of Mr. Wells. Such was our educational efficiency, that, before the end, multitudes of simple Irish people really had about the English invasion the same particular psychological reaction that multitudes of simple English people had about the German invasion. I mean that it seemed to come not only from outside the nation, but from outside the world. It was unearthly in the strict sense in which a comet is unearthly. It was the more appallingly alien for coming close; it was the more outlandish the farther it went inland. These Christian peasants have seen coming westward out of England what we saw coming westward out of Germany. They saw science in arms; which turns the very heavens into hells. I have purposely put these fragmentary and secondary impressions before any general survey of Anglo-Irish policy in the war. I do so, first, because I think a record of the real things, that seemed to bulk biggest to any real observer at any real moment, is often more useful than the setting forth of theories he may have made up before he saw any realities at all. But I do it in the second place because the more general summaries of our statesmanship, or lack of statesmanship, are so much more likely to be found elsewhere. But if we wish to comprehend the queer cross-purposes, it will be well to keep always in mind a historical fact I have mentioned already; the reality of the old Franco-Irish Entente. It lingers alive in Ireland; and especially the most Irish parts of Ireland. In the fiercely Fenian city of Cork, walking round the Young Ireland monument that seems to give revolt the majesty of an institution, a man told me that German bands had been hooted and pelted in those streets out of an indignant memory of 1870. And an eminent scholar in the same town, referring to the events of the same “terrible year,” said to me: “In 1870 Ireland sympathised with France and England with Germany; and as usual, Ireland was right!” But if they were right when we were wrong, they only began to be wrong when we were right. A sort of play or parable might be written to show that this apparent paradox is a very genuine piece of human psychology. Suppose there are two partners named John and James; that James has always been urging the establishment of a branch of the business in Paris. Long ago John quarrelled with this furiously as a foreign fad; but he has since forgotten all about it; for the letters from James bored him so much that he has not opened any of them for years. One fine day John, finding himself in Paris, conceives the original idea of a Paris branch; but he is conscious in a confused way of having quarrelled with his partner, and vaguely feels that his partner would be an obstacle to anything. John remembers that James was always cantankerous, and forgets that he was cantankerous in favour of this project, and not against it. John therefore sends James a telegram, of a brevity amounting to brutality, simply telling him to come in with no nonsense about it; and when he has no instant reply, sends a solicitor’s letter to be followed by a writ. How James will take it depends very much on James. How he will hail this happy confirmation of his own early opinions will depend on whether James is an unusually patient and charitable person. And James is not. He is unfortunately the very man, of all men in the world, to drop his own original agreement and everything else into the black abyss of disdain, which now divides him from the man who has the impudence to agree with him. He is the very man to say he will have nothing to do with his own original notion, because it is now the belated notion of a fool. Such a character could easily be analysed in any good novel; such conduct would readily be believed in any good play. It could not be believed when it happened in real life. And it did happen in real life; the Paris project was the sense of the safety of Paris as the pivot of human history; the abrupt telegram was the recruiting campaign, and the writ was conscription. As to what Irish conscription was, or rather would have been, I cannot understand any visitor in Ireland having the faintest doubt, unless (as is often the case) his tour was so carefully planned as to permit him to visit everything in Ireland except the Irish. Irish conscription was a piece of rank raving madness which was fortunately stopped, with other bad things, by the blow of Foch at the second battle of the Marne. It could not possibly produce at the last moment allies on whom we could depend; and it would have lost us the whole sympathy of the allies on whom we at that moment depended. I do not mean that American soldiers would have mutinied; though Irish soldiers might have done so; I mean something much worse. I mean that the whole mood of America would have altered, and there would have been some kind of compromise with German tyranny, in sheer disgust at a long exhibition of English tyranny. Things would have happened in Ireland, week after week, and month after month, such as the modern imagination has not seen except where Prussia has established hell. We should have butchered women and children; they would have made us butcher them. We should have killed priests, and probably the best priests. It could not be better stated than in the words of an Irishman, as he stood with me in a high terraced garden outside Dublin, looking towards that unhappy city, who shook his head and said sadly, “They will shoot the wrong bishop.” Of the meaning of this huge furnace of defiance I shall write when I write of the national idea itself. I am concerned here not for their nation but for mine; and especially with its peril from Prussia and its help from America. And it is simply a question of considering what these real things are really like. Remember that the American Republic is practically founded on the fact, or fancy, that England is a tyrant. Remember that it was being ceaselessly swept with new waves of immigrant Irishry telling tales (too many of them true, though not all,) of the particular cases in which England had been a tyrant. It would be hard to find a parallel to explain to Englishmen the effect of awakening traditions so truly American by a prolonged display of England as the tyrant in Ireland. A faint approximation might be found if we imagined the survivors of Victorian England, steeped in the tradition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, watching the American troops march through London. Suppose they noted that the negro troops alone had to march in chains, with a white man in a broad-brimmed hat walking beside them and flourishing a whip. Scenes far worse than that would have followed Irish conscription; but the only purpose of this chapter is to show that scenes quite as stupid marked every stage of Irish recruitment. For it certainly would not have reassured the traditional sympathisers with Uncle Tom to be told that the chains were only a part of the uniform, or that the niggers moved not at the touch of the whip, but only at the crack of it. Such was our practical policy; and the single and sufficient comment on it can be found in a horrible whisper which can scarcely now be stilled. It is said, with a dreadful plausibility, that the Unionists were deliberately trying to prevent a large Irish recruitment, which would certainly have meant reconciliation and reform. In plain words, it is said, that they were willing to be traitors to England, if they could only still be tyrants to Ireland. Only too many facts can be made to fit in with this; but for me it is still too hideous to be easily believed. But whatever our motives in doing it, there is simply no doubt whatever about what we did, in this matter of the Pro-Germans in Ireland. We did not crush the Pro-Germans; we did not convert them or coerce them; or educate them or exterminate them or massacre them. We manufactured them; we turned them out patiently, steadily, and systematically as if from a factory; we made them exactly as we made munitions. It needed no little social science to produce in any kind of Irishman, any kind of sympathy with Prussia; but we were equal to the task. What concerns me here, however, is that we were busy at the same work among the Irish-Americans, and ultimately among all the Americans. And that would have meant, as I have already noted, the thing that I always feared; the dilution of the policy of the Allies. Anything that looked like a prolonged Prussianism in Ireland would have meant a compromise; that is, a perpetuated Prussianism in Europe. I know that some who agree with me in other matters disagree with me in this; but I should indeed be ashamed if, having to say so often where I think my country was wrong, I did not say as plainly where I think she was right. The notion of a compromise was founded on the coincidence of recent national wars which were only about the terms of peace, not about the type of civilisation. But there do recur, at longer historic intervals, universal wars of religion, not concerned with what one nation shall do, but with what all nations shall be. They recommence until they are finished, in things like the fall of Carthage or the rout of Attila. It is quite true that history is for the most part a plain road, which the tribes of men must travel side by side, bargaining at the same markets or worshipping at the same shrines, fighting and making friends again; and wisely making friends quickly. But we need only see the road stretch but a little farther, from a hill but a little higher, to see that sooner or later it comes always to another place, where stands a winged image of Victory; and the ways divide.
VI. L’errore dell’Inghilterra
Incontrai un cordiale unionista, per non dire coercizionista, in Irlanda, in modo tale da poter parlare con lui a lungo; un gentiluomo irlandese quanto mai gioviale e genuino, che stava solidamente dalla parte del sistema del governo britannico in Irlanda. Questo gentiluomo era stato trapassato nel corpo da un colpo delle truppe britanniche, nei loro sforzi di reprimere la Rivolta di Pasqua. La cosa mancò di poco d’essere tragica; ma poiché la mancò, non posso fare a meno di sentirla come lievemente comica. Mi assicurò con gran fervore che i ribelli si erano resi colpevoli delle più calcolate crudeltà; e che dovevano aver compiuto le loro sanguinose gesta col più freddo sangue. Ma poiché egli stesso è una solida e (felice di dirlo) vivente dimostrazione che il fuoco, persino della propria parte, doveva essere piuttosto avventato, sono incline a concedere il beneficio del dubbio anche ai tiratori meno accuratamente istruiti. Quando truppe disciplinate distruggono la gente tanto a casaccio, parrebbe irragionevole negare che i rivoltosi possano forse essere stati turbolenti. Non credo affatto che egli fosse, né che pretendesse d’essere, una persona di giudiziale imparzialità; ed è interamente a suo onore che fosse, per principio, tanto più indignato coi rivoltosi che non gli spararono che con gli altri rivoltosi che gli spararono. Ma mi arrischio a presentarlo qui non tanto come un individuo quanto come un’allegoria. L’episodio mi pare esporre, in forma acuta, lucida e pittoresca, esattamente ciò che il governo militare britannico riuscì realmente a fare in Irlanda. Riuscì a mezzo uccidere i propri amici, e a offrire un divertimento intelligente ma alquanto inumano a tutti i propri nemici. Lo sputafuoco teneva la sua arma da fuoco in una posa così contorta da dare allo spettatore stupito la semplice impressione di un suicidio. S’intenda bene che qui non parlo di tirannia che contrasta i desideri irlandesi, ma soltanto della nostra stessa stupidità nel contrastare i nostri stessi desideri. Discuterò altrove la presunta presenza o assenza di un’oppressione pratica in Irlanda; qui continuo soltanto, dal capitolo precedente, le mie esperienze della campagna di reclutamento. Mi occupo ora, come me ne occupavo allora, della semplice questione pratica di ottenere una grande leva di soldati dall’Irlanda. Credo fosse Sir Francis Vane, uno dei pochi funzionari davvero preziosi nella faccenda (non occorre dire che fu licenziato per aver avuto ragione), a dire che la sola vista di alcuni rappresentativi preti e suore belgi avrebbe potuto produrre qualcosa di simile a una crociata. La faccenda pare sia stata per lo più lasciata ad anziani proprietari terrieri inglesi; e sarebbe crudele registrare le loro avventure. Basterà dire che scoprii, per fatto positivo, che questi infelici gentiluomini avevano esposto per tutta l’Irlanda un manifesto consistente soltanto nella Union Jack e nell’appello: «Non è questa la vostra bandiera? Venite a combattere per essa!». Ricorda vagamente qualcosa che tutti imparammo nella grammatica latina, a proposito delle domande che si aspettano la risposta «no». Questi notevoli sergenti reclutatori non si rendevano conto, suppongo, di quale straordinaria cosa fosse questa, non soltanto nell’opinione irlandese, ma in generale nell’opinione internazionale. In gran parte del globo, suonerebbe come la storia che i Turchi avessero tappezzato l’Armenia con la Mezzaluna dell’Islam, e domandato a tutti i cristiani non ancora massacrati se non amassero la bandiera. Davvero non credo che i Turchi sarebbero tanto stupidi da farlo. Naturalmente si può dire che una simile impressione o associazione sia mera calunnia e sedizione, che non vi sia alcuna ragione di aver riguardo per tali emozioni traditrici, che gli uomini debbano fare il proprio dovere verso quella bandiera qualunque cosa sia posta su quel manifesto; in breve, che sia dovere di un irlandese essere un patriottico inglese, o qualunque cosa ci si aspetti che egli sia. Ma questa veduta, per quanto logica e chiara, può essere usata logicamente e chiaramente soltanto come argomento a favore della coscrizione. È semplicemente da confusionari applicarla a un qualsiasi appello per volontari in qualsiasi luogo, in Irlanda o in Inghilterra. L’intero scopo di un manifesto di reclutamento, o di qualsiasi manifesto, è d’essere attraente; è messo in risalto con parole o colori per essere pittorescamente e acutamente attraente. Se ti abbassa fare un’offerta attraente, non farla; ma non farla deliberatamente, e deliberatamente renderla repellente. Se una certa medicina è così mortalmente necessaria e così mortalmente disgustosa da doversi imporre a tutti per mezzo del poliziotto, chiamate il poliziotto. Ma non chiamate un agente pubblicitario a spingerla come un farmaco brevettato, unicamente per mezzo della «pubblicità» e della «suggestione», per poi limitarlo strettamente a dire al pubblico quanto sia disgustosa. Ma l’abbaglio britannico in Irlanda fu una cosa assai più profonda e distruttiva. Lo si può riassumere in una frase: che, fossimo o no neri come venivamo dipinti, noi in realtà ci dipingemmo assai più neri di quanto fossimo. Per quanto cattivi fossimo, riuscimmo ad apparire assai peggiori di quanto fossimo. In un’orribile incoscienza rimettemmo in scena la storia per pura ignoranza della storia. Fummo tanto sciocchi da agghindarci, e da recitare, per la parte del malvagio in una vecchissima tragedia. Ci ammantammo quasi con noncuranza di fuoco e spada; e se il fuoco fosse stato letteralmente fuoco di scena, o la spada una spada di legno, l’abbaglio meramente artistico sarebbe stato altrettanto grave. Per esempio, m’imbattei presto nelle tracce di una lite intorno a qualche sciocco veto nelle scuole, contro i bambini irlandesi che portavano coccarde verdi. Chiunque avesse una vena d’immaginazione storica avrebbe evitato una lite, in quel particolare caso, intorno a quel particolare colore. È toccare il talismano, è pronunciare il nome, è battere la nota di un altro rapporto in cui avevamo torto, a scapito di un nuovo rapporto in cui avevamo ragione. Chiunque abbia buon senso, considerando un qualsiasi altro caso, può vedere la forza quasi magica di queste coincidenze materiali. Se gli eserciti inglesi in Francia nel 1914 si fossero ritenuti giustificati, per una qualche ragione, nel giustiziare una qualche francese, sarebbero forse stati indiscreti se l’avessero uccisa (per quanto logicamente) legata a un palo nella piazza del mercato di Rouen. Se il popolo di Parigi insorgesse nella più giusta rivolta contro la più corrotta congiura di qualche gruppo di ricchi protestanti francesi, consiglierei loro caldamente di non fissare la data alla vigilia di San Bartolomeo, o di non mettersi all’opera con sciarpe bianche legate attorno alle braccia. Molti di noi sperano di vedere una comunità ebraica ricostituita in Palestina; e potremmo facilmente immaginare qualche lite in cui il governo di Gerusalemme fosse spinto a punire qualche pellegrino o monaco greco o latino. Gli ebrei potrebbero anche aver ragione nella lite, e il cristiano torto. Ma si può insinuare che gli ebrei sarebbero mal consigliati se lo incoronassero davvero di spine, e lo uccidessero su una collina appena fuori Gerusalemme. Ora, dobbiamo a quest’ora sapere, o prima lo sappiamo meglio è, che l’intera mente di quella società europea che abbiamo contribuito a salvare, e nella quale abbiamo d’ora innanzi un parziale diritto di controllo, considera la vicenda anglo-irlandese come una di quelle storie in bianco e nero di un libro di storia. Vede la tragedia dell’Irlanda con la stessa semplicità e chiarezza della tragedia di Cristo o di Giovanna d’Arco. Vi era forse più da dire dalla parte coercizionista di quanto la cultura del Continente comprenda. Così vi era assai più di quanto si ammetta di solito da dire dalla parte della patriottica democrazia che condannò Socrate; e moltissimo da dire dalla parte dell’aristocrazia imperiale che avrebbe schiacciato Washington. Ma queste dispute non toglieranno Socrate dalla sua nicchia tra i santi pagani, né Washington dal suo piedistallo tra gli eroi repubblicani. Dopo un certo tempo di prova, si rende sempre sostanziale giustizia agli uomini che si schierarono, in modo inequivocabile, per la libertà e la luce, contro il capriccio contemporaneo e la forza e la brutalità di moda. In questo senso intellettuale, negli unici tribunali intellettuali competenti, è già stata resa giustizia all’Irlanda. Nell’ampia luce del giorno di questo fatto mondiale, noi, o i nostri rappresentanti, dovevamo proprio metterci a litigare con dei bambini, fra tutte le persone, e a proposito del colore verde, fra tutte le cose del mondo. È un esatto modello funzionante dell’errore che intendo. È tanto più brutale in quanto non è propriamente crudele; e tuttavia ravviva all’istante i ricordi della crudeltà. Non vi sarebbe nulla di male in ciò in astratto, o in un’atmosfera meno tragica in cui i simboli non fossero talismani. Un maestro di scuola nella prospera e illuminata cittadina di Eatanswill potrebbe, non imperdonabilmente, protestare contro gli scolari che sfoggiano in classe le coccarde Camoscio e Azzurro del signor Simpkin e del signor Slumkey. Ma chi, se non un pazzo, non vedrebbe che pronunciare quella parola, o fare quel segno, in Irlanda, era come dare il segnale del lamento funebre, e del compianto sulla giustizia perduta che si leva nel ritornello dei più nobili canti nazionali; che additare quel cencio di quel colore significava richiamare tutte le responsabilità e le realtà di quel regno del terrore in cui, alla lettera, impiccavamo uomini e anche donne per il portare del verde? Non stavamo, alla lettera, impiccando questi bambini. Come pura questione di utilità, saremmo stati più assennati se lo avessimo fatto. Ma il medesimo fatto assunse una forma ancor più fantastica. Non solo ci travestimmo da nostri antenati, ma addirittura ci travestimmo da nostri nemici. Non occorre che esponga la mia convinzione che il trucco pacifista di ammassare gli abusi di una parte insieme alle abominazioni dell’altra fosse una superficiale pedanteria, nata da pura ignoranza della storia dell’Europa e dei barbari. Era del tutto falso che il male inglese fosse esattamente lo stesso di quello tedesco. Era del tutto falso; ma gli inglesi in Irlanda si adoperarono a lungo e con dedizione per provare che era del tutto vero. Non contenti di prendere a prestito vecchie uniformi dagli Assiani del 1798, presero a prestito le più nuove e lustre uniformi dai Prussiani del 1914. Racconterò una sola storia, fra le molte che mi furono narrate, per mostrare ciò che intendo. Vi fu una sorta di festival musicale di paese in un luogo chiamato Cullen, nella contea di Cork, in cui vi furono naturalmente canti nazionali e assai probabilmente discorsi nazionali. Che vi fosse una sorta di atmosfera sociale, che i suoi critici chiamerebbero Sinn Fein, è oltremodo probabile; poiché essa esiste ora in tutta l’Irlanda, e specialmente in quella parte dell’Irlanda. Se vogliamo impedire che essa si esprima affatto, dobbiamo vietare non solo tutte le riunioni pubbliche, ma tutte le riunioni private, e persino l’incontro di marito e moglie nella loro propria casa. Vi sarebbe pur potuto essere un argomento, su linee coercizioniste, per vietare questa riunione pubblica. Vi potrebbe essere un argomento, su linee coercizioniste, per imprigionare tutte le persone che vi parteciparono; o un argomento ancor più chiaro, su quelle linee, per imprigionare tutte le persone dell’Irlanda. Ma le autorità coercizioniste non si limitarono a vietare la riunione; il che significherebbe qualcosa. Non arrestarono le persone presenti alla riunione; il che significherebbe qualcosa. Non spedirono l’intera riunione all’inferno coi cannoni; il che pure significherebbe qualcosa. Ciò che fecero fu questo. Fecero sì che un aeroplano militare si sballottasse avanti e indietro in modo vacillante proprio sopra le teste della gente, facendo quanto più rumore possibile per coprire la musica, e lasciando cadere razzi luminosi e fuoco in varie forme alquanto pericolose nei pressi di qualsiasi uomo, donna o bambino che si trovasse ad ascoltare la musica. Il lettore noterà con quale squisita arte, e fine e schizzinosa scelta, lo stratega sia qui riuscito ad apparire quanto più prussiano possibile senza assicurarsi alcuno dei vantaggi del prussianesimo. Vi era una certa dose di reale pericolo per i bambini; ma non molta. Ve n’era press’a poco quanta ve n’è stata di solito quando i ragazzi sono stati frustati per aver fatto lo sciocco coi fuochi d’artificio. Ma, arrampicandosi faticosamente per centinaia di piedi nell’aria, in un’enorme macchina militare, questa gente ingegnosa riuscì a farsi meteora in cielo e spettacolo a tutta la terra; gli inglesi che facevano piovere fuoco su donne e bambini proprio come facevano i tedeschi. Ripeto che non distrussero realmente dei bambini, benché li mettessero in pericolo; poiché giocare coi fuochi d’artificio è sempre giocare col fuoco. E ripeto che, come pura questione pratica, sarebbe stato più assennato se avessero distrutto dei bambini. Ciò avrebbe avuto almeno il significato umano che ha percorso cento massacri: «lupacchiotti che sarebbero diventati lupi». Avrebbe almeno l’esecrabile scusa di diminuire il numero dei ribelli. Ciò che fecero l’avrebbe quasi certamente accresciuto. Un ingenuo membro del Parlamento, di cui dimentico il nome, tentò di scusare questa prestazione da mezzo scemo. S’intromise nell’interesse unionista, quando i nazionalisti facevano domande sulla faccenda; e disse con molto calore: «Posso chiedere se i sudditi onesti e leali abbiano qualcosa da temere dagli aeroplani britannici?». Mi sono spesso chiesto che cosa intendesse. Sembra possibile che fosse nello stato d’animo di quel fanatico medievale che gridò: «Dio riconoscerà i suoi»; e che egli stesso avrebbe scagliato ogni sorta di dardi fiammeggianti dovunque, credendo che sarebbero stati sempre miracolosamente diretti verso le teste che ospitavano, in quel momento, le opinioni politiche più scorrette. O forse intendeva che i sudditi leali sono così superbamente leali da non curarsi d’essere accidentalmente bruciati vivi, purché sia loro assicurato che il fuoco è stato fatto cadere su di loro da funzionari del governo fuori da un apparecchio del governo. Ma il mio scopo qui non è di scandagliare un simile mistero, bensì soltanto di fissare il fatto dominante dell’intera situazione; che il governo copiò la teatralità di Potsdam ancor più della tirannia di Potsdam. In quell’episodio, gli inglesi riprodussero faticosamente tutti gli accessori artificiali dei più famigerati crimini della Germania: gli uomini volanti, la fiamma, la scelta di una folla eterogenea, la scelta di una festa popolare. Ne avevano ogni parte, tranne il senso. Era come se l’intero esercito britannico in Irlanda si fosse agghindato con elmi chiodati e occhiali, unicamente per sembrare prussiano. Era ancor più come se un uomo avesse attraversato l’Irlanda su tre giganteschi trampoli, più alti degli alberi e visibili dal villaggio più lontano, al solo scopo di sembrare uno di quei mostri disumani venuti da Marte, che incedono sui loro tripodi di ferro nel grande incubo del signor Wells. Tale era la nostra efficacia educativa che, prima della fine, moltitudini di semplici irlandesi ebbero davvero, riguardo all’invasione inglese, la stessa particolare reazione psicologica che moltitudini di semplici inglesi ebbero riguardo all’invasione tedesca. Intendo che essa pareva venire non solo da fuori della nazione, ma da fuori del mondo. Era ultraterrena nel senso stretto in cui è ultraterrena una cometa. Era tanto più spaventosamente estranea per il suo avvicinarsi; era tanto più stramba quanto più penetrava nell’entroterra. Questi contadini cristiani hanno visto venire verso occidente, dall’Inghilterra, ciò che noi vedemmo venire verso occidente dalla Germania. Videro la scienza in armi; che tramuta i cieli stessi in inferni. Ho deliberatamente posto queste impressioni frammentarie e secondarie prima di ogni panoramica generale della politica anglo-irlandese nella guerra. Lo faccio, in primo luogo, perché credo che un resoconto delle cose reali, che parvero campeggiare più grandi a ogni reale osservatore in ogni reale momento, sia spesso più utile dell’esposizione di teorie che egli può aver costruito prima ancora d’aver visto una qualsiasi realtà. Ma lo faccio, in secondo luogo, perché è assai più probabile che i riassunti più generali della nostra arte di governo, o mancanza d’arte di governo, si trovino altrove. Ma se vogliamo comprendere gli strani malintesi, sarà bene tenere sempre a mente un fatto storico che ho già menzionato: la realtà della vecchia Intesa franco-irlandese. Essa perdura viva in Irlanda; e specialmente nelle parti più irlandesi dell’Irlanda. Nella ferocemente feniana città di Cork, girando attorno al monumento della Giovane Irlanda che sembra conferire alla rivolta la maestà di un’istituzione, un uomo mi raccontò che bande tedesche erano state fischiate e prese a sassate in quelle strade, per un’indignata memoria del 1870. E un eminente studioso nella stessa città, riferendosi agli eventi del medesimo «anno terribile», mi disse: «Nel 1870 l’Irlanda simpatizzò con la Francia e l’Inghilterra con la Germania; e, come al solito, l’Irlanda aveva ragione!». Ma se essi ebbero ragione quando noi avevamo torto, cominciarono ad aver torto soltanto quando noi avemmo ragione. Si potrebbe scrivere una sorta di commedia o parabola per mostrare che questo apparente paradosso è un tratto quanto mai genuino della psicologia umana. Si supponga che vi siano due soci di nome John e James; che James abbia sempre premuto per l’apertura di una filiale dell’azienda a Parigi. Molto tempo fa John avversò furiosamente la cosa come una fisima straniera; ma da allora l’ha del tutto dimenticata; poiché le lettere di James lo annoiavano tanto che da anni non ne apre più alcuna. Un bel giorno John, trovandosi a Parigi, concepisce l’originale idea di una filiale a Parigi; ma è consapevole, in modo confuso, d’aver litigato col suo socio, e sente vagamente che il suo socio sarebbe un ostacolo a qualsiasi cosa. John ricorda che James era sempre stato attaccabrighe, e dimentica che era attaccabrighe a favore di questo progetto, e non contro di esso. John perciò invia a James un telegramma, di una brevità che rasenta la brutalità, dicendogli semplicemente di aderire senza tante storie; e, non avendo risposta immediata, invia una lettera di un legale, cui deve seguire una citazione in giudizio. Come James la prenderà dipende moltissimo da James. Come egli saluterà questa felice conferma delle proprie antiche opinioni dipenderà dal fatto se James sia una persona insolitamente paziente e caritatevole. E James non lo è. È sfortunatamente proprio l’uomo, fra tutti gli uomini del mondo, capace di gettare il proprio originario accordo e ogni altra cosa nel nero abisso del disdegno, che ora lo divide dall’uomo che ha la sfrontatezza d’essere d’accordo con lui. È proprio l’uomo capace di dire che non vuole aver nulla a che fare con la propria idea originaria, perché essa è ormai la tardiva idea di uno sciocco. Un simile personaggio potrebbe facilmente essere analizzato in un qualsiasi buon romanzo; una simile condotta sarebbe prontamente creduta in una qualsiasi buona commedia. Non poté essere creduta quando accadde nella vita reale. E accadde davvero nella vita reale; il progetto di Parigi era il senso della salvezza di Parigi come perno della storia umana; il brusco telegramma era la campagna di reclutamento, e la citazione in giudizio era la coscrizione. Quanto a ciò che la coscrizione irlandese fu, o meglio sarebbe stata, non riesco a capire che un qualsiasi visitatore in Irlanda potesse averne il più lieve dubbio, a meno che (come spesso accade) il suo giro non fosse stato pianificato con tale cura da permettergli di visitare ogni cosa in Irlanda tranne gli irlandesi. La coscrizione irlandese fu un atto di schietta e delirante follia, che fu fortunatamente arrestato, insieme ad altre cose cattive, dal colpo di Foch nella seconda battaglia della Marna. Non poteva in alcun modo produrre all’ultimo momento alleati su cui potessimo contare; e ci avrebbe fatto perdere tutta la simpatia degli alleati sui quali in quel momento contavamo. Non intendo che i soldati americani si sarebbero ammutinati; benché i soldati irlandesi avrebbero potuto farlo; intendo qualcosa di assai peggiore. Intendo che l’intero stato d’animo dell’America sarebbe mutato, e vi sarebbe stato un qualche compromesso con la tirannia tedesca, per puro disgusto di fronte a una lunga esibizione di tirannia inglese. In Irlanda sarebbero accadute cose, settimana dopo settimana e mese dopo mese, quali la moderna immaginazione non ha visto se non là dove la Prussia ha instaurato l’inferno. Avremmo macellato donne e bambini; essi ci avrebbero costretti a macellarli. Avremmo ucciso preti, e probabilmente i preti migliori. Non si potrebbe dire meglio che con le parole di un irlandese, mentre stava con me in un alto giardino a terrazze fuori Dublino, guardando verso quell’infelice città, il quale scosse il capo e disse tristemente: «Fucileranno il vescovo sbagliato». Del significato di questa immensa fornace di sfida scriverò quando scriverò dell’idea nazionale stessa. Qui mi occupo non della loro nazione ma della mia; e specialmente del suo pericolo che viene dalla Prussia e del suo aiuto che viene dall’America. Ed è semplicemente questione di considerare come siano realmente queste cose reali. Si ricordi che la Repubblica americana è praticamente fondata sul fatto, o sulla fantasia, che l’Inghilterra sia un tiranno. Si ricordi che essa era incessantemente investita da nuove ondate di immigrati irlandesi che narravano storie (troppe delle quali vere, benché non tutte) dei casi particolari in cui l’Inghilterra era stata un tiranno. Sarebbe difficile trovare un parallelo per spiegare agli inglesi l’effetto di ridestare tradizioni tanto autenticamente americane con una prolungata esibizione dell’Inghilterra come tiranno in Irlanda. Un pallido accostamento si potrebbe trovare se immaginassimo i superstiti dell’Inghilterra vittoriana, imbevuti della tradizione della Capanna dello zio Tom, mentre osservano le truppe americane sfilare per Londra. Si supponga che notassero come le truppe negre soltanto dovessero marciare in catene, con un bianco dal cappello a larghe tese che camminava al loro fianco brandendo una frusta. Scene assai peggiori di quella sarebbero seguite alla coscrizione irlandese; ma l’unico scopo di questo capitolo è mostrare che scene altrettanto stupide segnarono ogni fase del reclutamento irlandese. Poiché di certo non avrebbe rassicurato i tradizionali simpatizzanti dello zio Tom sentirsi dire che le catene erano soltanto una parte dell’uniforme, o che i negri si muovevano non al tocco della frusta, ma soltanto al suo schiocco. Tale era la nostra politica pratica; e l’unico e sufficiente commento a essa si può trovare in un orribile bisbiglio che ormai a stento si può far tacere. Si dice, con una spaventosa verosimiglianza, che gli unionisti tentassero deliberatamente d’impedire un grande reclutamento irlandese, che avrebbe certamente significato riconciliazione e riforma. In parole povere, si dice, che essi erano disposti a essere traditori dell’Inghilterra, purché potessero pur sempre essere tiranni dell’Irlanda. Fin troppi fatti si possono far quadrare con questo; ma per me è ancora troppo mostruoso per essere facilmente creduto. Ma quali che fossero i nostri motivi nel farlo, non v’è semplicemente alcun dubbio su ciò che facemmo, in questa faccenda dei filotedeschi in Irlanda. Non schiacciammo i filotedeschi; non li convertimmo né li costringemmo; né li educammo né li sterminammo né li massacrammo. Li fabbricammo; li sfornammo pazientemente, costantemente e sistematicamente come da una fabbrica; li facemmo esattamente come facevamo le munizioni. Non ci volle poca scienza sociale per produrre in un qualsiasi tipo d’irlandese una qualsiasi simpatia per la Prussia; ma fummo all’altezza del compito. Ciò che qui mi riguarda, tuttavia, è che eravamo impegnati nella medesima opera tra gli irlando-americani, e in ultimo tra tutti gli americani. E ciò avrebbe significato, come ho già notato, la cosa che sempre temetti: l’annacquamento della politica degli Alleati. Qualsiasi cosa somigliasse a un prolungato prussianesimo in Irlanda avrebbe significato un compromesso; vale a dire, un prussianesimo perpetuato in Europa. So che alcuni, i quali concordano con me in altre cose, dissentono da me in questa; ma proverei davvero vergogna se, dovendo dire tanto spesso dove ritengo che il mio paese avesse torto, non dicessi con altrettanta chiarezza dove ritengo che avesse ragione. La nozione di un compromesso si fondava sulla coincidenza di recenti guerre nazionali che riguardavano soltanto i termini della pace, non il tipo di civiltà. Ma ricorrono, a più lunghi intervalli storici, guerre universali di religione, che non riguardano ciò che una nazione debba fare, ma ciò che tutte le nazioni debbano essere. Ricominciano finché non sono concluse, in cose come la caduta di Cartagine o la disfatta di Attila. È verissimo che la storia è per la maggior parte una piana strada, che le tribù degli uomini devono percorrere fianco a fianco, contrattando ai medesimi mercati o pregando ai medesimi santuari, litigando e tornando amici; e saggiamente tornando amici in fretta. Ma ci basta vedere la strada estendersi anche solo un poco più in là, da una collina anche solo un poco più alta, per vedere che presto o tardi essa giunge sempre a un altro luogo, dove sorge un’immagine alata della Vittoria; e le vie si dividono.
VII. The Mistake of Ireland
There is one phrase which certain Irishmen sometimes use in conversation, which indicates the real mistake that they sometimes make in controversy. When the more bitter sort of Irishman is at last convinced of the existence of the less bitter sort of Englishman, who does realise that he ought not to rule a Christian people by alternations of broken heads and broken promises, the Irishman has sometimes a way of saying, “I am sure you must have Irish blood in your veins.” Several people told me so when I denounced Irish conscription, a thing ruinous to the whole cause of the Alliance. Some told me so even when I re-called the vile story of ‘98; a thing damned by the whole opinion of the world. I assured them in vain that I did not need to have Irish blood in my veins in order to object to having Irish blood on my hands. So far as I know, I have not one single drop of Irish blood in my veins. I have some Scottish blood; and some which, judging merely by a name in the family, must once have been French blood. But the determining part of it is purely English, and I believe East Anglian, at the flattest and farthest extreme from the Celtic fringe. But I am here concerned, not with whether it is true, but with why they should want to prove it is true. One would think they would want to prove precisely the opposite. Even if they were exaggerative and unscrupulous, they should surely seek to show that an Englishman was forced to condemn England, rather than that an Irishman was inclined to support Ireland. As it is, they are labouring to destroy the impartiality and even the independence of their own witness. It does not support, but rather surrenders Irish rights, to say that only the Irish can see that there are Irish wrongs. It is confessing that Ireland is a Celtic dream and delusion, a cloud of sunset mistaken for an island. It is admitting that such a nation is only a notion, and a nonsensical notion; but in reality it is this notion about Irish blood that is nonsensical. Ireland is not an illusion; and her wrongs are not the subjective fancies of the Irish. Irishmen did not dream that they were evicted out of house and home by the ruthless application of a land law no man now dares to defend. It was not a nightmare that dragged them from their beds; nor were they sleepwalkers when they wandered as far as America. Skeffington did not have a delusion that he was being shot for keeping the peace; the shooting was objective, as the Prussian professors would say; as objective as the Prussian militarists could desire. The delusions were admittedly peculiar to the British official whom the British Government selected to direct operations on so important an occasion. I could understand it if the Imperialists took refuge in the Celtic cloud, conceived Colthurst as full of a mystic frenzy like the chieftain who fought with the sea, pleaded that Piggott was a poet whose pen ran away with him, or that Sergeant Sheridan romanced like a real stage Irishman. I could understand it if they declared that it was merely in the elvish ecstasy described by Mr. Yeats that Sir Edward Carson, that famous First Lord of the Admiralty, rode on the top of the dishevelled wave; and Mr. Walter Long, that great Agricultural Minister, danced upon the mountains like a flame. It is far more absurd to suggest that no man can see the green flag unless he has some green in his eye. In truth this association between an Irish sympathy and an Irish ancestry, is just as insulting as the old jibe of Buckingham, about an Irish interest or an Irish understanding. It may seem fanciful to say of the Irish nationalists that they are sometimes too Irish to be national. Yet this is really the case in those who would turn nationality from a sanctity to a secret. That is, they are turning it from something which every one else ought to respect, to something which no one else can understand. Nationalism is a nobler thing even than patriotism; for nationalism appeals to a law of nations; it implies that a nation is a normal thing, and therefore one of a number of normal things. It is impossible to have a nation without Christendom; as it is impossible to have a citizen without a city. Now normally speaking this is better understood in Ireland than in England; but the Irish have an opposite exaggeration and error; and tend in some cases to the cult of real insularity. In this sense it is true to say that the error is indicated in the very name of Sinn Fein. But I think it is even more encouraged, in a cloudier and therefore more perilous fashion, by much that is otherwise valuable in the cult of the Celts and the study of the old Irish language. It is a great mistake for a man to defend himself as a Celt when he might defend himself as an Irishman. For the former defence will turn on some tricky question of temperament, while the latter will turn on the central pivot of morals. Celticism, by itself, might lead to all the racial extravagances which have lately led more barbaric races a dance. Celts also might come to claim, not that their nation is a normal thing, but that their race is a unique thing. Celts also might end by arguing not for an equality founded on the respect for boundaries, but for an aristocracy founded on the ramification of blood. Celts also might come to pitting the prehistoric against the historic, the heathen against the Christian, and in that sense the barbaric against the civilised. In that sense I confess I do not care about Celts; they are too like Teutons. Now of course every one knows that there is practically no such danger of Celtic Imperialism. Mr. Lloyd George will not attempt to annex Brittany as a natural part of Britain. No Tories, however antiquated, will extend their empire in the name of the Buff and Blue of the Ancient Britons. Nor is there the least likelihood that the Irish will overrun Scotland on the plea of an Irish origin for the old name of the Scots; or that they will set up an Irish capital at Stratford-on-Avon merely because avon is the Celtic word for water. That is the sort of thing that Teutonic ethnologists do; but Celts are not quite so stupid as that, even when they are ethnologists. It may be suggested that this is because even prehistoric Celts seem to have been rather more civilised than historic Teutons. And indeed I have seen ornaments and utensils in the admirable Dublin museum, suggestive of a society of immense antiquity, and much more advanced in the arts of life than the Prussians were, only a few centuries ago. For instance, there was actually what appeared to be a safety razor. I doubt if the godlike Goths had much use for a razor; or if they had, if it was altogether safe. Nor am I so dull as not to be stirred to an imaginative sympathy with the instinct of modern Irish poetry to praise this primordial and mysterious order, even as a sort of pagan paradise; and that not as regarding a legend as a sort of lie, but a tradition as a sort of truth. It is but another hint of a suggestion, huge, yet hidden; that civilisation is older than barbarism; and that the further we go back into pagan origins, the nearer we come to the great Christian origin of the Fall. But whatever credit or sympathy be due to the cult of Celtic origins in its proper place, it is none of these things that really prevents Celticism from being a barbarous imperialism like Teutonism. The thing that prevents imperialism is nationalism. It was exactly because Germany was not a nation that it desired more and more to be an empire. For a patriot is a sort of lover, and a lover is a sort of artist; and the artist will always love a shape too much to wish it to grow shapeless, even in order to grow large. A group of Teutonic tribes will not care how many other tribes they destroy or absorb; and Celtic tribes when they were heathen may have acted, for all I know, in the same way. But the civilised Irish nation, a part and product of Christendom, has certainly no desire to be entangled with other tribes or to have its outlines blurred with great blots like Liverpool and Glasgow, as well as Belfast. In that sense it is far too self-conscious to be selfish. Its individuality may, as I shall suggest, make it too insular; it will not make it too imperial. This is a merit in nationalism too little noted; that even what is called its narrowness is not merely a barrier to invasion, but a barrier to expansion. Therefore, with all respect to the prehistoric Celts, I feel more at home with the good if sometimes mad Christian gentleman of the Young Ireland movement, or even the Easter Rebellion. I should feel more safe with Meagher of the Sword than with the primitive Celt of the safety razor. The microscopic meanness of the Mid-Victorian English writers, when they wrote about Irish patriots, could see nothing but a very small joke in modern rebels thinking themselves worthy to take the titles of antique kings; but the only doubt I should have, if I had any, is whether the heathen kings were worthy of the Christian rebels. I am much more sure of the heroism of the modern Fenians than of the ancient ones. Of the artistic side of the cult of the Celts I do not especially speak here. And indeed its importance, especially to the Irish, may easily be exaggerated. Mr. W. B. Yeats long ago dissociated himself from a merely racial theory of Irish poetry; and Mr. W. B. Yeats thinks as hard as he talks. I often entirely disagree with him; but I disagree far more with the people who find him a poetical opiate, where I always find him a logical stimulant. For the rest, Celticism in some aspects is largely a conspiracy for leading the Englishman a dance, if it be a fairy dance. I suspect that many names and announcements are printed in Gaelic, not because Irishmen can read them, but because Englishmen can’t. The other great modern mystic in Dublin, “A. E.,” entertained us first by telling an English lady present that she would never resist the Celtic atmosphere, struggle how she might, but would soon be wandering in the mountain mists with a fillet round her head; which fate had apparently overtaken the son or nephew of an Anglican bishop who had strayed into those parts. The English lady, whom I happen to know rather well, made the characteristic announcement that she would go to Paris when she felt it coming on. But it seemed to me that such drastic action was hardly necessary, and that there was comparatively little cause for alarm; seeing that the mountain mists certainly had not had that effect on the people who happen to live in the mountains. I knew that A. E. knew, even better than I did, that Irish peasants do not wander about in fillets, or indeed wander about at all, having plenty of much better work to do. And since the Celtic atmosphere had no perceptible effect on the Celts, I felt no alarm about its effect on the Saxons. But the only thing involved, by way of an effect on the Saxons, was a practical joke on the Saxons; which may, however, have lasted longer in the case of the bishop’s nephew than it did in mine. Anyhow, I continued to move about (like Atalanta in Calydon) with unchapleted hair, with unfilleted cheek; and found a sufficient number of Irish people in the same condition to prevent me from feeling shy. In a word, all that sort of thing is simply Mr. Russell’s humour, especially his good humour, which is of a golden and godlike sort. And a man would be very much misled by the practical joke if he does not realise that the joker is a practical man. On the desk in front of him as he spoke were business papers of reports and statistics, much more concerned with fillets of veal than fillets of vision. That is the essential fact about all this side of such men in Ireland. We may think the Celtic ghost a turnip ghost; but we can only doubt the reality of the ghost; there is no doubt of the reality of the turnip. But if the Celtic pose be a piece of the Celtic ornament, the spirit that produced it does also produce some more serious tendencies to the segregation of Ireland, one might almost say the secretion of Ireland. In this sense, it is true that there is too much separatism in Ireland. I do not speak of separation from England; which, as I have said, happened long ago in the only serious sense, and is a condition to be assumed, not a conclusion to be avoided. Nor do I mean separation from a federation of free states unfortunately known as the British Empire; for that is a conclusion that could still be avoided with a little common sense and common honesty in our own politics. I mean separation from Europe, from the common Christian civilisation by whose law the nations live. I would be understood as speaking here of exceptions rather than the rule; for the rule is rather the other way. The Catholic religion, the most fundamental fact in Ireland, is itself a permanent communication with the Continent. So, as I have said, is the free peasantry which is so often the economic expression of the same faith. Mr. James Stephens, himself a spiritually detached man of genius, told me with great humour a story which is also at least a symbol. A Catholic priest, after a convivial conversation and plenty of good wine, said to him confidentially: “You ought to be a Catholic. You can be saved without being a Catholic; but you can’t be Irish without being a Catholic.” Nevertheless, the exceptions are large enough to be dangers; and twice lately, I think, they have brought Ireland into danger. This is the age of minorities; of groups that rule rather than represent. And the two largest parties in Ireland, though more representative than most parties in England, were too much affected, I fancy, by the modern fashion, expressed in the world of fads by being Celtic rather than Catholic. They were just a little too insular to accept the old unconscious wave of Christendom; the Crusade. But the case was more extraordinary than that. They were even too insular to appreciate, not so much their own international needs, as their own international importance. It may seem a strange paradox to say that both nationalist parties underrated Ireland as a nation. It may seem a more startling paradox to say that in this the most nationalist was the least national. Yet I think I can explain, however roughly, what I mean by saying that this is so. It is primarily Sinn Fein, or the extreme national party, which thus relatively failed to realise that Ireland is a nation. At least it failed in nationalism exactly so far as it failed to intervene in the war of the nations against Prussian imperialism. For its argument involved, unconsciously, the proposition that Ireland is not a nation; that Ireland is a tribe or a settlement, or a chance sprinkling of aborigines. If the Irish were savages oppressed by the British Empire, they might well be indifferent to the fate of the British Empire; but as they were civilised men, they could not be indifferent to the fate of civilisation. The Kaffirs might conceivably be better off if the whole system of white colonisation, Boer and British, broke down and disappeared altogether. The Irish might sympathise with the Kaffirs; but they would not like to be classed with the Kaffirs. Hottentots might have a sort of Hottentot happiness if the last European city had fallen in ruins, or the last European had died in torments. But the Irish would never be Hottentots, even if they were Pro-Hottentots. In other words, if the Irish were what Cromwell thought they were, they might well confine their attention to Hell and Connaught; and have no sympathy to spare for France. But if the Irish are what Wolfe Tone thought they were, they must be interested in France, as he was interested in France. In short, if the Irish are barbarians, they need not trouble about other barbarians sacking the cities of the world; but if they are citizens, they must trouble about the cities that are sacked. This is the deep and real reason why their alienation from the Allied cause was a disaster for their own national cause. It was not because it gave fools a chance of complaining that they were Anti-English. It was because it gave much cleverer people the chance of complaining that they were Anti-European. I entirely agree that the alienation was chiefly the fault of the English Government; I even agree that it required an abnormal imaginative magnanimity for an Irishman to do his duty to Ireland, in spite of being so insolently told to do it. But it is none the less true that Ireland to-day would be ten thousand miles nearer her deliverance if the Irishman could have made that effort; if he had realised that the thing ought to be done, not because such rulers wanted it, but rather although they wanted it. But the much more curious fact is this. There were any number of Irishmen, and those among the most Irish, who did realise this; who realised it with so sublime a sincerity as to fight for their own enemies against the world’s enemies; and consent at once to be insulted by the English and killed by the Germans. The Redmonds and the old Nationalist party, if they have indeed failed, have the right to be reckoned among the most heroic of all the heroic failures of Ireland. If theirs is a lost cause, it is wholly worthy of a land where lost causes are never lost. But the old guard of Redmond did also in its time, I fancy, fall into the same particular and curious error; but in a more subtle way and on a seemingly remote subject. They also, whose motives like those of the Sinn Feiners were entirely noble, did in one sense fail to be national, in the sense of appreciating the international importance of a nation. In their case it was a matter of English and not European politics; and as their case was much more complicated, I speak with much less confidence about it. But I think there was a highly determining time in politics when certain Irishmen got on to the wrong side in English politics, as other Irishmen afterwards got on to the wrong side in European politics. And by the wrong side, in both cases, I not only mean the side that was not consistent with the truth, but the side that was not really congenial to the Irish. A man may act against the body, even the main body, of his nation; but if he acts against the soul of his nation, even to save it, he and his nation suffer. I can best explain what I mean by reaffirming the reality which an English visitor really found in Irish politics, towards the end of the war. It may seem odd to say that the most hopeful fact I found, for Anglo-Irish relations, was the fury with which the Irish were all accusing the English of perjury and treason. Yet this was my solid and sincere impression; the happiest omen was the hatred aroused by the disappointment over Home Rule. For men are not furious unless they are disappointed of something they really want; and men are not disappointed except about something they were really ready to accept. If Ireland had been entirely in favour of entire separation, the loss of Home Rule would not be felt as a loss, but if anything as an escape. But it is felt bitterly and savagely as a loss; to that at least I can testify with entire certainty. I may or may not be right in the belief I build on it; but I believe it would still be felt as a gain; that Dominion Home Rule would in the long run satisfy Ireland. But it would satisfy her if it were given to her, not if it were promised to her. As it is, the Irish regard our government simply as a liar who has broken his word; I cannot express how big and black that simple idea bulks in the landscape and blocks up the road. And without professing to regard it as quite so simple, I regard it as substantially true. It is, upon any argument, an astounding thing the King, Lords, and Commons of a great nation should record on its statute-book that a law exists, and then illegally reverse it in answer to the pressure of private persons. It is, and must be, for the people benefited by the law, an act of treason. The Irish were not wrong in thinking it an act of treason, even in the sense of treachery and trickery. Where they were wrong, I regret to say, was in talking of it as if it were the one supreme solitary example of such trickery; when the whole of our politics were full of such tricks. In short, the loss of justice for Ireland was simply a part of the loss of justice in England; the loss of all moral authority in government, the loss of the popularity of Parliament, the secret plutocracy which makes it easy to take a bribe or break a pledge, the corruption that can pass unpopular laws or promote discredited men. The lawgiver cannot enforce his law because, whether or no the law be popular, the lawgiver is wholly unpopular, and is perpetually passing wholly unpopular laws. Intrigue has been substituted for government; and the public man cannot appeal to the public because all the most important part of his policy is conducted in private. The modern politician conducts his public life in private. He sometimes condescends to make up for it by affecting to conduct his private life in public. He will put his baby or his birthday book into the illustrated papers; it is his dealings with the colossal millions of the cosmopolitan millionaires that he puts in his pocket or his private safe. We are allowed to know all about his dogs and cats; but not about those larger and more dangerous animals, his bulls and bears. Now there was a moment when England had an opportunity of breaking down this Parliamentary evil, as Europe afterwards had an opportunity (which it fortunately took) of breaking down the Prussian evil. The corruption was common to both parties; but the chance of exposing it happened to occur under the rule of a Home Rule party; which the Nationalists supported solely for the sake of Home Rule. In the Marconi Case they consented to whitewash the tricks of Jew jobbers whom they must have despised; just as some of the Sinn Feiners afterwards consented to whitewash the wickedness of Prussian bullies whom they also must have despised. In both cases the motive was wholly disinterested and even idealistic. It was the practicality that was unpractical. I was one of a small group which protested against the hushing up of the Marconi affair, but we always did justice to the patriotic intentions of the Irish who allowed it. But we based our criticism of their strategy on the principle of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. The man who will cheat you about one thing will cheat you about another. The men who will lie to you about Marconi, will lie to you about Home Rule. The political conventions that allow of dealing in Marconis at one price for the party, and another price for oneself, are conventions that also allow of telling one story to Mr. John Redmond and another to Sir Edward Carson. The man who will imply one state of things when talking at large in Parliament, and another state of things when put into a witness-box in court, is the same sort of man who will promise an Irish settlement in the hope that it may fail; and then withdraw it for fear it should succeed. Among the many muddle-headed modern attempts to coerce the Christian poor to the Moslem dogma about wine and beer, one was concerned with abuse by loafers or tipplers of the privilege of the Sunday traveller. It was suggested that the travellers’ claims were in every sense travellers’ tales. It was therefore proposed that the limit of three miles should be extended to six; as if it were any harder for a liar to say he had walked six miles than three. The politicians might be as ready to promise to walk the six miles to an Irish Republic as the three miles to an Irish Parliament. But Sinn Fein is mistaken in supposing that any change of theoretic claim meets the problem of corruption. Those who would break their word to Redmond would certainly break it to De Valera. We urged all these things on the Nationalists whose national cause we supported; we asked them to follow their larger popular instincts, break down a corrupt oligarchy, and let a real popular parliament in England give a real popular parliament to Ireland. With entirely honourable motives, they adhered to the narrower conception of their national duty. They sacrificed everything for Home Rule; even their own profoundly national emotion of contempt. For the sake of Home Rule, or the solemn promise of Home Rule, they kept such men in power; and for their reward they found that such men were still in power; and Home Rule was gone. What I mean about the Nationalist Party, and what may be called its prophetic shadow of the Sinn Fein mistake, may well be symbolised in one of the noblest figures of that party or any party. An Irish poet, talking to me about the pointed diction of the Irish peasant, said he had recently rejoiced in the society of a drunken Kerry farmer, whose conversation was a litany of questions about everything in heaven and earth, each ending with a sort of chorus of “Will ye tell me that now?” And at the end of all he said abruptly, “Did ye know Tom Kettle?” and on my friend the poet assenting, the farmer said, as if in triumph, “And why are so many people alive that ought to be dead, and so many people dead that ought to be alive? Will ye tell me that now?” That is not unworthy of an old heroic poem, and therefore not unworthy of the hero and poet of whom it was spoken. “Patroclus died, who was a better man than you.” Thomas Michael Kettle was perhaps the greatest example of that greatness of spirit which was so ill rewarded on both sides of the channel and of the quarrel, which marked Redmond’s brother and so many of Redmond’s followers. He was a wit, a scholar, an orator, a man ambitious in all the arts of peace; and he fell fighting the barbarians because he was too good a European to use the barbarians against England, as England a hundred years before had used the barbarians against Ireland. There is nothing to be said of such things except what the drunken farmer said, unless it be a verse from a familiar ballad on a very remote topic, which happens to express my own most immediate feelings about politics and reconstruction after the decimation of the great war. “The many men so beautiful And they all dead did lie And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on, and so did I.” It is not a reflection that adds any inordinate self-satisfaction to the fact of one’s own survival. In turning over a collection of Kettle’s extraordinary varied and vigorous writings, which contain some of the most pointed and piercing criticisms of materialism, of modern capitalism and mental and moral anarchism generally, I came on a very interesting criticism of myself and my friends in our Marconi agitation; a suggestion, on a note of genial cynicism, that we were asking for an impossible political purity; a suggestion which, knowing it to be patriotic, I will venture to call pathetic. I will not now return on such disagreements, a man with whom I so universally agree; but it will not be unfair to find here an exact illustration of what I mean by saying that the national leaders, so far from merely failing as wild Irishmen, only failed when they were not instinctive enough, that is, not Irish enough. Kettle was a patriot whose impulse was practical and whose policy was impolitic. Here also the Nationalist underrated the importance of the intervention of his own nationality. Kettle left a fine and even terrible poem, asking if his sacrifices were in vain, and whether he and his people were again being betrayed. I think nobody can deny that he was betrayed; and it was not by the English soldiers with whom he marched to war, but by those very English politicians with whom he sacrificed so much to remain at peace. No man will ever dare to say his death in battle was in vain, not only because in the highest sense it could never be, but because even in the lowest sense it was not. He hated the icy insolence of Prussia; and that ice is broken, and already as weak as water. As Carlyle said of a far lesser thing, that at least will never through unending ages insult the face of the sun any more. The point is here that if any part of his fine work was in vain, it was certainly not the reckless romantic part; it was precisely the plodding parliamentary part. None can say that the weary marching and counter-marching in France was a thing thrown away; not only in the sense which consecrates all footprints along such a via crucis, or highway of the army of martyrs; but also in the perfectly practical sense, that the army was going somewhere, and that it got there. But it might possibly be said that the weary marching and counter-marching at Westminster, in and out of a division lobby, belonged to what the French call the salle des pas perdus. If anything was practical it was the visionary adventure; if anything was unpractical it was the practical compromise. He and his friends were betrayed by the men whose corruptions they had contemptuously condoned, far more than by the men whose bigotries they had indignantly denounced. There darkened about them treason and disappointment, and he that was the happiest died in battle; and one who knew and loved him spoke to me for a million others in saying: “And now we will not give you a dead dog until you keep your word.”
VIII. An Example and a Question
We all had occasion to rejoice at the return of Sherlock Holmes when he was supposed to be dead; and I presume we may soon rejoice in his return even when he is really dead. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in his widespread new campaign in favour of Spiritualism, ought at least to delight us with the comedy of Holmes as a control and Watson as a medium. But I have for the moment a use for the great detective not concerned with the psychical side of the question. Of that I will only say, in passing, that in this as in many other cases, I find myself in agreement with an authority about where the line is drawn between good and bad, but have the misfortune to think his good bad, and his bad good. Sir Arthur explains that he would lift Spiritualism to a graver and more elevated plane of idealism; and that he quite agrees with his critics that the mere tricks with tables and chairs are grotesque and vulgar. I think this quite true if turned upside down, like the table. I do not mind the grotesque and vulgar part of Spiritualism; what I object to is the grave and elevating part. After all, a miracle is a miracle and means something; it means that Materialism is nonsense. But it is not true that a message is always a message; and it sometimes only means that Spiritualism is also nonsense. If the table at which I am now writing takes to itself wings and flies out of the window, perhaps carrying me along with it, the incident will arouse in me a real intelligent interest, verging on surprise. But if the pen with which I am writing begins to scrawl all by itself, the sort of things I have seen in spirit writing; if it begins to say that all things are aspects of universal purity and peace, and so on, why, then I shall not only be annoyed, but also bored. If a great man like the late Sir William Crookes says a table went walking upstairs, I am impressed by the news; but not by news from nowhere to the effect that all men are perpetually going upstairs, up a spiritual staircase which seems to be as mechanical and labour-saving as a moving staircase at Charing Cross. Moreover, even a benevolent spirit might conceivably throw the furniture about merely for fun; whereas I doubt if anything but a devil from hell would say that all things are aspects of purity and peace. But I am here taking from the Spiritualistic articles a text that has nothing to do with Spiritualism. In a recent contribution to Nash’s Magazine, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle remarks very truly that the modern world is weary and wicked and in need of a religion; and he gives examples of its more typical and terrible corruptions. It is perhaps natural that he should revert to the case of the Congo, and talk of it in the torrid fashion which recalls the days when Morel and Casement had some credit in English politics. We have since had an opportunity of judging the real attitude of a man like Morel in the plainest case of black and white injustice that the world has ever seen. It was at once a replica and a reversal of the position expressed in the Pious Editor’s Creed; and might roughly be rendered in similar language. “I do believe in Freedom’s cause Ez fur away ez tropics are; But Belgians caught in Prussia’s claws To me less tempting topics are. It’s wal agin a foreign king To rouse the chapel’s rigours; But Liberty’s a kind of thing We only owe to niggers.” He had of course a lurid denunciation of the late King Leopold, of which I will only say that, uttered by a Belgian about the Belgian king in his own land and lifetime, it would be highly courageous and largely correct; but that the parallel test is how much truth was told by British journalists about British Kings in their own land and lifetime; and that until we can pass that test, such denunciations do us very little good. But what interests me in the matter at the moment is this. Sir Arthur feels it right to say something about British corruptions, and passes from the Congo to Putumayo, touching a little more lightly; for even the most honest Britons have an unconscious trick of touching more lightly on the case of British capitalists. He says that our capitalists were not guilty of direct cruelty, but of an attitude careless and even callous. But what strikes me is that Sir Arthur, with his taste for such protests and inquiries, need not have wandered quite so far from his own home as the forests of South America. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is an Irishman; and in his own country, within my own memory there occurred a staggering and almost incredible crime, or series of crimes, which were worthier than anything in the world of the attention of Sherlock Holmes in fiction, or Conan Doyle in reality. It always will be a tribute to the author of Sherlock Holmes that he did, about the same time, do such good work in reality. He made an admirable plea for Adolf Beck and Oscar Slater; he was also connected, I remember, with the reversal of a miscarriage of justice in a case of cattle-mutilation. And all this, while altogether to his credit, makes it seem all the more strange that his talents could not be used for, and in, his own home and native country, in a mystery that had the dimensions of a monstrosity, and which did involve, if I remember right, a question of cattle-maiming. Anyhow, it was concerned with moonlighters and the charges made against them, such as the common one of cutting off the tails of cows. I can imagine Sherlock Holmes on such a quest, keen-eyed and relentless, finding the cloven hoof of some sinister and suspected cow. I can imagine Dr. Watson, like the cow’s tail, always behind. I can imagine Sherlock Holmes remarking, in a light allusive fashion, that he himself had written a little monograph on the subject of cows’ tails; with diagrams and tables solving the great traditional problem of how many cows’ tails would reach the moon; a subject of extraordinary interest to moonlighters. And I can still more easily imagine him saying afterwards, having resumed the pipe and dressing-gown of Baker Street, “A remarkable little problem, Watson. In some of its features it was perhaps more singular than any you have been good enough to report. I do not think that even the Tooting Trouser-Stretching Mystery, or the singular little affair of the Radium Toothpick, offered more strange and sensational developments.” For if the celebrated pair had really tracked out the Irish crime I have in mind, they would have found a story which, considered merely as a detective story, is by far the most dramatic and dreadful of modern times. Like nearly all such sensational stories, it traced the crime to somebody far higher in station and responsibility than any of those suspected. Like many of the most sensational of them, it actually traced the crime to the detective who was investigating it. For if they had really crawled about with a magnifying glass, studying the supposed footprints of the peasants incriminated, they would have found they were made by the boots of the policeman. And the boots of a policeman, one feels, are things that even Watson might recognise. I have told the astounding story of Sergeant Sheridan before; and I shall often tell it again. Hardly any English people know it; and I shall go on telling it in the hope that all English people may know it some day. It ought to be first in every collection of causes celebres, in every book about criminals, in every book of historical mysteries; and on its merits it would be. It is not in any of them. It is not there because there is a motive, in all modern British plutocracy, against finding the big British miscarriages of justice where they are really to be found; and that is a great deal nearer than Putumayo. It is a place far more appropriate to the exploits of the family of the Doyles. It is called Ireland; and in that place a powerful British official named Sheridan had been highly successful in the imperial service by convicting a series of poor Irishmen of agrarian crimes. It was afterwards discovered that the British official had carefully committed every one of the crimes himself; and then, with equal foresight, perjured himself to imprison innocent men, one of whom lost his reason. Any one who does not know the story will naturally ask what punishment was held adequate for such a Neronian monster; I will tell him. He was bowed out of the country like a distinguished stranger, his expenses politely paid; as if he had been delivering a series of instructive lectures; and he is now probably smoking a cigar in an American hotel, and much more comfortable than any poor policeman who has done his duty. I defy anybody to deny him a place in our literature about great criminals. Charles Peace escaped many times before conviction; Sheridan escaped altogether after conviction. Jack the Ripper was safe because he was undiscovered; Sheridan was discovered and was still safe. But I only repeat the matter here for two reasons. First, we may call our rule in Ireland what we like; we may call it the Union when there is no union; we may call it Protestant ascendancy when we are no longer Protestants; or Teutonic lordship when we could only be ashamed of being Teutons. But this is what it is; and everything else is waste of words. And second, because an Irish investigator of cattle-maiming, so oblivious of the Irish cow, is in some danger of figuring as an Irish bull. Anyhow, that is the real and remarkable story of Sergeant Sheridan, and I put it first because it is the most practical test of the practical question of whether Ireland is misgoverned. It is strictly a fair test; for it is a test by the minimum and an argument a fortiori. A British official in Ireland can run a career of crime, punishing innocent people for his own felonies; and when he is found out, he is found to be above the law. This may seem like putting things at the worst, but it is really putting them at the best. This story was not told us on the word of a wild Irish Fenian, or even a responsible Irish Nationalist. It was told, word for word as I have told it, by the Unionist Minister in charge of the matter and reporting it, with regret and shame, to Parliament. He was not one of the worst Irish Secretaries, who might be responsible for the worst regime; on the contrary, he was by far the best. If even he could only partially restrain or reveal such things, there can be no deduction in common sense except that in the ordinary way such things go on gaily in the dark, with nobody to reveal and nobody to restrain them. It was not something done in those dark days of torture and terrorism, which happened in Ireland a hundred years ago; and which Englishmen talk of as having happened a million years ago. It was something that happened quite recently, in my own mature manhood, about the time that the better things like the Land Acts were already before the world. I remember writing to the Westminster Gazette to emphasise it when it occurred; but it seems to have passed out of memory in an almost half-witted fashion. But that peephole into hell has afforded me, ever since a horrible amusement, when I hear the Irish softly rebuked for remembering old unhappy, far-off things and wrongs done in the Dark Ages. Thus I was especially amused to find the Rev. R. J. Campbell saying that “Ireland has been petted and coddled more than any other part of the British Isles”; because Mr. Campbell was chiefly famous for a comfortable creed himself, for saying that evil is only “a shadow where light should be”; and there is no doubt here of his throwing a very black shadow where light is very much required. I will conceive the policeman at the corner of the street in which Mr. Campbell resides, as in the habit of killing a crossing-sweeper every now and then for his private entertainment, burgling the houses of Mr. Campbell’s neighbours, cutting off the tails of their carriage horses, and otherwise disporting himself by moonlight a fairy. It is his custom to visit the consequences of each of these crimes upon the Rev. R. J. Campbell, whom he arrests at intervals, successfully convicts by perjury, and proceeds to coddle in penal servitude. But I have another reason for mentioning Mr. Campbell, a gentleman whom I heartily respect in many other aspects; and the reason is connected with his name, as it occurs in another connection on another page. It shows how in anything, but especially in anything coming from Ireland, the old facts of family and faith outweigh a million modern philosophies. The words in Who’s Who?—“Ulster Protestant of Scottish ancestry”— give the really Irish and the really honourable reason for Mr. Campbell’s extraordinary remark. A man may preach for years, with radiant universalism, that many waters cannot quench love; but Boyne Water can. Mr. Campbell appears very promptly with what Kettle called “a bucketful of Boyne, to put the sunrise out.” I will not take the opportunity of saying, like the Ulsterman, that there never was treason yet but a Campbell was at the bottom of it. But I will say that there never was Modernism yet, but a Calvinist was at the bottom of it. The Old Theology is much livelier than the New Theology. Many other such true tales could be told; but what we need here is a sort of test. This tale is a test; because it is the best that could be said, about the best that could be done, by the best Englishman ruling Ireland, in face of the English system established there; and it is the best, or at any rate the most, that we can know about that system. Another truth which might also serve as a test, is this: to note among the responsible English not only their testimony against each other, but their testimony against themselves. I mean the consideration of how very rapidly we realise that our own conduct in Ireland has been infamous, not in the remote past, but in the very recent past. I have lived just long enough to see the wheel come full circle inside one generation; when I was a schoolboy, the sort of Kensington middle class, to which I belong, was nearly solidly resisting, not only the first Home Rule Bill, but any suggestion that the Land League had a leg to stand on, or that the landlords need do anything but get their rents or kick out their tenants. The whole Unionist Press, which was three-quarters of the Press, simply supported Clanricarde, and charged any one who did not do so with supporting the Clan-na-Gael. Mr. Balfour was simply admired for enforcing the system, which it is his real apologia to have tried to end, or at least to have allowed Wyndham to end. I am not yet far gone in senile decay; but already I have lived to hear my countrymen talk about their own blind policy in the time of the Land League, exactly as they talked before of their blind policy in the time of the Limerick Treaty. The shadow on our past shifts forward as we advance into the future; and always seems to end just behind us. I was told in my youth that the age-long misgovernment of Ireland lasted down to about 1870; it is now agreed among all intelligent people that it lasted at least down to about 1890. A little common sense, after a hint like the Sheridan Case, will lead one to suspect the simple explanation that it is going on still. Now I heard scores of such stories as the Sheridan story in Ireland, many of which I mention elsewhere; but I do not mention them here because they cannot be publicly tested; and that for a very simple reason. We must accept all the advantages and disadvantages of a rule of absolute and iron militarism. We cannot impose silence and then sift stories; we cannot forbid argument and then ask for proof; we cannot destroy rights and then discover wrongs. I say this quite impartially in the matter of militarism itself. I am far from certain that soldiers are worse rulers than lawyers and merchants; and I am quite certain that a nation has a right to give abnormal power to its soldiers in time of war. I only say that a soldier, if he is a sensible soldier, will know what he is doing and therefore what he cannot do; that he cannot gag a man and then cross-examine him, any more than he can blow out his brains and then convince his intelligence. There may be—humanly speaking, there must be—a mass of injustices in the militaristic government of Ireland. The militarism itself may be the least of them; but it must involve the concealment of all the rest. It has been remarked above that establishing militarism is a thing which a nation had a right to do, and (what is not at all the same thing) which it may be right in doing. But with that very phrase “a nation,” we collide of course with the whole real question; the alleged abstract wrong about which the Irish talk much more than about their concrete wrongs. I have put first the matters mentioned above, because I wish to make clear, as a matter of common sense, the impression of any reasonable outsider that they certainly have concrete wrongs. But even those who doubt it, and say that the Irish have no concrete grievance but only a sentiment of Nationalism, fall into a final and very serious error about the nature of the thing called Nationalism, and even the meaning of the word “concrete.” For the truth is that, in dealing with a nation, the grievance which is most abstract of all is also the one which is most concrete of all. Not only is patriotism a part of practical politics, but it is more practical than any politics. To neglect it, and ask only for grievances, is like counting the clouds and forgetting the climate. To neglect it, and think only of laws, is like seeing the landmarks and never seeing the landscape. It will be found that the denial of nationality is much more of a daily nuisance than the denial of votes or the denial of juries. Nationality is the most practical thing, because so many things are national without being political, or without being legal. A man in a conquered country feels it when he goes to market or even goes to church, which may be more often than he goes to law; and the harvest is more general than the General Election. Altering the flag on the roof is like altering the sun in the sky; the very chimney-pots and lamp-posts look different. Nay, after a certain interval of occupation, they are different. As a man would know he was in a land of strangers before he knew it was a land of savages, so he knows a rule is alien long before he knows it is oppressive. It is not necessary for it to add injury to insult. For instance, when I first walked about Dublin, I was disposed to smile at the names of the streets being gravely inscribed in Gaelic as well as English. I will not here discuss the question of what is called the Irish language, the only arguable case against which is that it is not the Irish language. But at any rate it is not the English language, and I have come to appreciate more imaginatively the importance of that fact. It may be used rather as a weapon than a tool; but it is a national weapon if it is not a national tool. I see the significance of having something which the eye commonly encounters, as it does a chimney-pot or a lamp-post; but which is like a chimney reared above an Irish hearth or a lamp to light an Irish road. I see the point of having a solid object in the street to remind an Irishman that he is in Ireland, as a red pillar-box reminds an Englishman that he is in England. But there must be a thousand things as practical as pillar-boxes which remind an Irishman that, if he is in his country, it is not yet a free country; everything connected with the principal seat of government reminds him of it perpetually. It may not be easy for an Englishman to imagine how many of such daily details there are. But there is, after all, one very simple effort of the fancy, which would fix the fact for him for ever. He has only to imagine that the Germans have conquered London. A brilliant writer who has earned the name of a Pacifist, and even a Pro-German, once propounded to me his highly personal and even perverse type of internationalism by saying, as a sort of unanswerable challenge, “Wouldn’t you rather be ruled by Goethe than by Walter Long?” I replied that words could not express the wild love and loyalty I should feel for Mr. Walter Long, if the only alternative were Goethe. I could not have put my own national case in a clearer or more compact form. I might occasionally feel inclined to kill Mr. Long; but under the approaching shadow of Goethe, I should feel more inclined to kill myself. That is the deathly element in denationalisation; that it poisons life, itself, the most real of all realities. But perhaps the best way of putting the point conversationally is to say that Goethe would certainly put up a monument to Shakespeare. I would sooner die than walk past it every day of my life. And in the other case of the street inscriptions, it is well to remember that these things, which we also walk past every day, are exactly the sort of things that always have, in a nameless fashion, the national note. If the Germans conquered London, they would not need to massacre me or even enslave me, in order to annoy me; it would be quite enough that their notices were in a German style, if not in a German language. Suppose I looked up in an English railway carriage, and saw these words written in English exactly as I have seen them in a German railway carriage written in German: “The outleaning of the body from the window of the carriage is because of the therewith bound up life’s danger strictly prohibited.” It is not rude. It would certainly be impossible to complain that it is curt. I should not be annoyed by its brutality and brevity; but on the contrary by its elaborateness and even its laxity. But if it does not exactly shine in lucidity, it gives a reason; which after all is a very reasonable thing to do. By every cosmopolitan test, it is more polite than the sentence I have read in my childhood: “Wait until the train stops.” This is curt; this might be called rude; but it never annoyed me in the least. The nearest I can get to defining my sentiment is to say that I can sympathise with the Englishman who wrote the English notice. Having a rude thing to write, he wrote it as quickly as he could, and went home to his tea; or preferably to his beer. But what is too much for me, an overpowering vision, is the thought of that German calmly sitting down to compose that sentence like a sort of essay. It is the thought of him serenely waving away the one important word till the very end of the sentence, like the Day of Judgment to the end of the world. It is perhaps the mere thought that he did not break down in the middle of it, but endured to the end; or that he could afterwards calmly review it, and see that sentence go marching by, like the whole German army. In short, I do not object to it because it is dictatorial or despotic or bureaucratic or anything of the kind; but simply because it is German. Because it is German I do not object to it in Germany. Because it is German I should violently revolt against it in England. I do not revolt against the command to wait until the train stops, not because it is less rude, but because it is the kind of rudeness I can understand. The official may be treating me casually, but at least he is not treating himself seriously. And so, in return, I can treat him and his notice not seriously but casually. I can neglect to wait until the train stops, and fall down on the platform; as I did on the platform of Wolverhampton, to the permanent damage of that fine structure. I can, by a stroke of satiric genius, truly national and traditional, the dexterous elimination of a single letter, alter the maxim to “Wait until the rain stops.” It is a jest as profoundly English as the weather to which it refers. Nobody would be tempted to take such a liberty with the German sentence; not only because he would be instantly imprisoned in a fortress, but because he would not know at which end to begin. Now this is the truth which is expressed, though perhaps very imperfectly, in things like the Gaelic lettering on streets in Dublin. It will be wholesome for us who are English to realise that there is almost certainly an English way of putting things, even the most harmless things, which appears to an Irishman quite as ungainly, unnatural, and ludicrous as that German sentence appears to me. As the famous Frenchman did not know when he was talking prose, the official Englishman does not know when he is talking English. He unconsciously assumes that he is talking Esperanto. Imperialism is not an insanity of patriotism; it is merely an illusion of cosmopolitanism. For the national note of the Irish language is not peculiar to what used to be called the Erse language. The whole nation used the tongue common to both nations with a difference far beyond a dialect. It is not a difference of accent, but a difference of style; which is generally a difference of soul. The emphasis, the elision, the short cuts and sharp endings of speech, show a variety which may be almost unnoticeable but is none the less untranslatable. It may be only a little more weight on a word, or an inversion allowable in English but abounding in Irish; but we can no more copy it than copy the compactness of the French on or the Latin ablative absolute. The commonest case of what I mean, for instance, is the locution that lingers in my mind with an agreeable phrase from one of Mr. Yeats’s stories: “Whom I shall yet see upon the hob of hell, and them screeching.” It is an idiom that gives the effect of a pointed postscript, a parting kick or sting in the tail of the sentence, which is unfathomably national. It is noteworthy and even curious that quite a crowd of Irishmen, who quoted to me with just admiration the noble ending of Kathleen-na-Hulahan, where the newcomer is asked if he has seen the old woman who is the tragic type of Ireland going out, quoted his answer in that form, “I did not. But I saw a young woman; and she walking like a queen.” I say it is curious; because I have since been told that in the actual book (which I cannot lay my hand on at the moment) a more classic English idiom is used. It would generally be most unwise to alter the diction of such a master of style as Mr. Yeats: though indeed it is possible that he altered it himself, as he has sometimes done, and not always, I think, for the better. But whether this form came from himself or from his countrymen, it was very redolent of his country. And there was something inspiring in thus seeing, as it were before one’s eyes, literature becoming legend. But a hundred other examples could be given, even from my own short experience, of such fine turns of language, nor are the finest necessarily to be found in literature. It is perfectly true, though prigs may overwork and snobs underrate the truth, that in a country like this the peasants can talk like poets. When I was on the wild coast of Donegal, an old unhappy woman who had starved through the famines and the evictions, was telling a lady the tales of those times; and she mentioned quite naturally one that might have come straight out of times so mystical that we should call them mythical; that some travellers had met a poor wandering woman with a baby in those great gray rocky wastes, and asked her who she was. And she answered, “I am the Mother of God, and this is Himself; and He is the boy you will all be wanting at the last.” There is more in that story than can be put into any book, even on a matter in which its meaning plays so deep a part; and it seems almost profane to analyse it however sympathetically. But if any one wishes to know what I mean by the untranslatable truth which makes a language national, it will be worth while to look at the mere diction of that speech, and note how its whole effect turns on certain phrases and customs which happen to be peculiar to the nation. It is well known that in Ireland the husband or head of the house is always called “himself”; nor is it peculiar to the peasantry, but adopted, if partly in jest, by the gentry. A distinguished Dublin publicist, a landlord and leader among the more national aristocracy, always called me “himself” when he was talking to my wife. It will be noted how a sort of shadow of that common meaning mingles with the more shining significance of its position in a sentence where it is also strictly logical, in the sense of theological. All literary style, especially national style, is made up of such coincidences; which are a spiritual sort of puns. That is why style is untranslatable; because it is possible to render the meaning, but not the double meaning. There is even a faint differentiation in the half-humorous possibilities of the word “boy”; another wholly national nuance. Say instead, “And He is the child” and it is something perhaps stiffer, and certainly quite different. Take away, “This is Himself” and simply substitute “This is He”; and it is a piece of pedantry ten thousand miles from the original. But above all it has lost its note of something national, because it has lost its note of something domestic. All roads in Ireland, of fact or folk-lore, of theology or grammar, lead us back to that door and hearth of the household, that fortress of the family which is the key-fortress of the whole strategy of the island. The Irish Catholics, like other Christians, admit a mystery in the Holy Trinity, but they may almost be said to admit an experience in the Holy Family. Their historical experience, alas, has made it seem to them not unnatural that the Holy Family should be a homeless family. They also have found that there was no room for them at the inn, or anywhere but in the jail; they also have dragged their new-born babes out of their cradles, and trailed in despair along the road to Egypt, or at least along the road to exile. They also have heard in the dark and the distance behind them, the noise of the horsemen of Herod. Now it is this sensation of stemming a stream, of ten thousand things all pouring one way, labels, titles, monuments, metaphors, modes of address, assumptions in controversy, that make an Englishman in Ireland know that he is in a strange land. Nor is he merely bewildered, as among a medley of strange things. On the contrary, if he has any sense, he soon finds them unified and simplified to a single impression; as if he were talking to a strange person. He cannot define it because nobody can define a person; and nobody can define a nation. He can only see it, smell it, hear it, handle it, bump into it, fall over it, kill it, be killed for it, or be damned for doing it wrong. He must be content with these mere hints of its existence; but he cannot define it, because it is like a person; and no book of logic will undertake to define Aunt Jane or Uncle William. We can only say, with more or less mournful conviction, that if Aunt Jane is not a person, there is no such thing as a person, and I say with equal conviction that if Ireland is not a nation, there is no such thing as a nation. France is not a nation, England is not a nation; there is no such thing as patriotism on this planet. Any Englishman, of any party, with any proposal, may well clear his mind of cant about that preliminary question. If we free Ireland, we must free it to be a nation; if we go on repressing Ireland, we are repressing a nation; if we are right to repress Ireland, we are right to repress a nation. After that we may consider what can be done, according to our opinions about the respect due to patriotism, the reality of cosmopolitan and imperial alternatives, and so on. I will debate with the man who does not want mankind divided into nations at all; I can imagine a case for the man who wants specially to restrain one particular nation, as I would restrain anti-national Prussia. But I will not argue with a man about whether Ireland is a nation, or about the yet more awful question of whether it is an island. I know there is a sceptical philosophy which suggests that all ultimate ideas are only penultimate ideas; and therefore perhaps that all islands are really peninsulars. But I will claim to know what I mean by an island and what I mean by an individual; and when I think suddenly of my experience in the island in question, the impression is a single one; the voices mingle in a human voice which I should know if I heard it again, calling in the distance; the crowds dwindle into a single figure whom I have seen long ago upon a strange hill-side, and she walking like a queen.
VIII. Un esempio e una domanda
Tutti avemmo occasione di rallegrarci per il ritorno di Sherlock Holmes quando lo si credeva morto; e presumo che presto potremo rallegrarci del suo ritorno anche quando sarà morto davvero. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, nella sua nuova e vasta campagna in favore dello Spiritismo, dovrebbe almeno deliziarci con la commedia di Holmes nel ruolo di spirito-guida e di Watson in quello di medium. Ma per il momento ho bisogno del grande investigatore per una ragione che nulla ha a che vedere col lato psichico della faccenda. Di quello dirò soltanto, di sfuggita, che in questo come in molti altri casi mi trovo d’accordo con un’autorità su dove passi la linea che separa il bene dal male, ma ho la sventura di ritenere cattivo il suo bene, e buono il suo male. Sir Arthur spiega che vorrebbe innalzare lo Spiritismo a un piano più grave ed elevato di idealismo; e che concorda pienamente con i suoi critici sul fatto che i meri trucchi con tavoli e sedie siano grotteschi e volgari. Ritengo la cosa perfettamente vera se rovesciata sottosopra, come il tavolo. Non mi disturba la parte grottesca e volgare dello Spiritismo; ciò a cui mi oppongo è la parte grave ed edificante. In fondo, un miracolo è un miracolo e significa qualcosa; significa che il Materialismo è un’assurdità. Ma non è vero che un messaggio sia sempre un messaggio; e talvolta significa soltanto che anche lo Spiritismo è un’assurdità. Se il tavolo al quale ora scrivo mettesse le ali e volasse fuori dalla finestra, portandomi forse con sé, l’episodio susciterebbe in me un interesse davvero intelligente, che rasenta la sorpresa. Ma se la penna con cui scrivo cominciasse a scarabocchiare da sola quel genere di cose che ho visto nella scrittura spiritica; se cominciasse a dire che tutte le cose sono aspetti della purezza e della pace universali, e così via, ebbene, allora non solo sarei infastidito, ma anche annoiato. Se un grand’uomo come il compianto Sir William Crookes dice che un tavolo se n’è andato su per le scale, la notizia mi impressiona; ma non mi impressiona una notizia venuta dal nulla secondo cui tutti gli uomini salgono perpetuamente le scale, su per una scala spirituale che pare tanto meccanica e comoda quanto una scala mobile a Charing Cross. Inoltre, persino uno spirito benevolo potrebbe magari scaraventare in giro i mobili per puro divertimento; mentre dubito che qualcosa di diverso da un diavolo dell’inferno direbbe che tutte le cose sono aspetti della purezza e della pace. Ma qui prendo dagli articoli spiritistici un testo che non ha nulla a che fare con lo Spiritismo. In un recente contributo a Nash’s Magazine, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle osserva con molta verità che il mondo moderno è stanco e malvagio e ha bisogno di una religione; e ne fornisce esempi tra le sue corruzioni più tipiche e terribili. È forse naturale che egli ritorni al caso del Congo, e ne parli in quel modo torrido che ricorda i giorni in cui Morel e Casement godevano di un certo credito nella politica inglese. Da allora abbiamo avuto occasione di giudicare il vero atteggiamento di un uomo come Morel nel più lampante caso di ingiustizia in bianco e nero che il mondo abbia mai visto. Fu al tempo stesso una replica e un rovesciamento della posizione espressa nel Credo del Pio Direttore; e potrebbe rendersi grossolanamente in un linguaggio simile. «Credo davvero alla causa della Libertà lontana quanto lo sono i tropici; ma i Belgi presi negli artigli di Prussia son per me argomenti meno allettanti. Sta bene, contro un re straniero, destare i rigori della cappella; ma la Libertà è una di quelle cose che dobbiamo soltanto ai negri.» Aveva naturalmente una fosca denuncia del defunto re Leopoldo, della quale dirò soltanto che, pronunciata da un Belga a proposito del re belga nel suo stesso paese e nel corso della sua vita, sarebbe assai coraggiosa e in gran parte esatta; ma che la prova parallela consiste nel misurare quanta verità sia stata detta dai giornalisti britannici sui re britannici nel loro stesso paese e nel corso della loro vita; e che finché non riusciamo a superare quella prova, simili denunce ci giovano assai poco. Ma ciò che al momento mi interessa nella faccenda è questo. Sir Arthur ritiene giusto dire qualcosa sulle corruzioni britanniche, e passa dal Congo al Putumayo, toccando la cosa un po’ più alla leggera; giacché persino i Britanni più onesti hanno l’inconscia abitudine di sfiorare più lievemente il caso dei capitalisti britannici. Dice che i nostri capitalisti non furono colpevoli di crudeltà diretta, ma di un atteggiamento negligente e persino insensibile. Ma ciò che mi colpisce è che Sir Arthur, col suo gusto per simili proteste e inchieste, non avrebbe avuto bisogno di allontanarsi da casa sua tanto quanto le foreste del Sud America. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle è un irlandese; e nel suo stesso paese, entro la mia stessa memoria, si verificò un crimine sconvolgente e quasi incredibile, o una serie di crimini, più degni di ogni altra cosa al mondo dell’attenzione di Sherlock Holmes nella finzione, o di Conan Doyle nella realtà. Sarà sempre un tributo all’autore di Sherlock Holmes l’aver compiuto, all’incirca nello stesso tempo, un così buon lavoro nella realtà. Perorò in modo mirabile la causa di Adolf Beck e di Oscar Slater; fu inoltre coinvolto, ricordo, nel ribaltamento di un errore giudiziario in un caso di mutilazione di bestiame. E tutto ciò, pur essendo interamente a suo onore, fa apparire tanto più strano che i suoi talenti non potessero essere impiegati per, e in, la sua stessa patria e terra natale, in un mistero che aveva le dimensioni di una mostruosità, e che riguardava, se ben ricordo, una questione di mutilazione di bestiame. Comunque, riguardava i moonlighters e le accuse mosse contro di loro, come quella comune di tagliare le code alle mucche. Posso immaginare Sherlock Holmes in una simile impresa, dall’occhio acuto e implacabile, scoprire lo zoccolo fesso di qualche sinistra e sospetta mucca. Posso immaginare il dottor Watson, come la coda della mucca, sempre indietro. Posso immaginare Sherlock Holmes osservare, con tono leggermente allusivo, di aver egli stesso scritto una piccola monografia sul tema delle code di mucca; con diagrammi e tabelle che risolvono il grande problema tradizionale di quante code di mucca occorrerebbero per raggiungere la luna; argomento di straordinario interesse per i moonlighters. E posso immaginarlo ancor più facilmente dire in seguito, ripresi la pipa e la vestaglia di Baker Street: «Un piccolo problema notevole, Watson. In alcuni suoi tratti fu forse più singolare di qualunque altro lei abbia avuto la bontà di riferire. Non credo che neppure il Mistero dello Stira-pantaloni di Tooting, o la singolare faccenduola dello Stuzzicadenti al Radio, abbiano offerto sviluppi più strani e sensazionali». Perché se la celebre coppia avesse davvero rintracciato il crimine irlandese che ho in mente, avrebbe trovato una storia che, considerata semplicemente come storia poliziesca, è di gran lunga la più drammatica e spaventosa dei tempi moderni. Come quasi tutte le storie sensazionali di questo genere, essa risaliva col crimine a qualcuno di ben più alta condizione e responsabilità di chiunque fosse sospettato. Come molte fra le più sensazionali di esse, risaliva in effetti col crimine all’investigatore che lo stava indagando. Perché se si fossero davvero trascinati carponi con una lente d’ingrandimento, studiando le presunte impronte dei contadini incriminati, avrebbero scoperto che erano lasciate dagli stivali del poliziotto. E gli stivali di un poliziotto, vien da pensare, sono cose che persino Watson saprebbe riconoscere. Ho già raccontato altrove la sbalorditiva storia del sergente Sheridan; e la racconterò ancora spesso. Quasi nessun inglese la conosce; e continuerò a raccontarla nella speranza che tutti gli inglesi un giorno la conoscano. Dovrebbe stare al primo posto in ogni raccolta di cause célèbres, in ogni libro sui criminali, in ogni libro di misteri storici; e per i suoi meriti vi starebbe. Non è in nessuno di essi. Non vi è perché esiste un motivo, in tutta la moderna plutocrazia britannica, per non andare a cercare i grandi errori giudiziari britannici là dove davvero si trovano; e ciò è assai più vicino del Putumayo. È un luogo assai più appropriato alle imprese della famiglia dei Doyle. Si chiama Irlanda; e in quel luogo un potente funzionario britannico di nome Sheridan aveva mietuto grandi successi nel servizio imperiale facendo condannare una serie di poveri irlandesi per crimini agrari. Si scoprì in seguito che il funzionario britannico aveva accuratamente commesso di persona ognuno di quei crimini; e poi, con pari accortezza, aveva spergiurato per far imprigionare uomini innocenti, uno dei quali perse la ragione. Chiunque non conosca la storia domanderà naturalmente quale pena fu ritenuta adeguata per un simile mostro neroniano; glielo dirò. Fu accompagnato fuori dal paese con inchini, come un illustre forestiero, con le spese cortesemente saldate; come se avesse tenuto una serie di istruttive conferenze; e ora fuma probabilmente un sigaro in qualche albergo americano, assai più comodo di qualsiasi povero poliziotto che abbia fatto il proprio dovere. Sfido chiunque a negargli un posto nella nostra letteratura sui grandi criminali. Charles Peace sfuggì molte volte prima della condanna; Sheridan sfuggì del tutto dopo la condanna. Jack lo Squartatore era al sicuro perché non era stato scoperto; Sheridan fu scoperto e restò ugualmente al sicuro. Ma qui ripeto la faccenda solo per due ragioni. Primo, possiamo chiamare il nostro dominio in Irlanda come ci pare; possiamo chiamarlo l’Unione quando non c’è alcuna unione; possiamo chiamarlo supremazia protestante quando non siamo più protestanti; o signoria teutonica quando dell’essere teutoni potremmo solo vergognarci. Ma questo è ciò che esso è; e tutto il resto è spreco di parole. E secondo, perché un investigatore irlandese di mutilazioni di bestiame, così immemore della mucca irlandese, corre un certo rischio di fare la figura di un toro irlandese. Comunque, questa è la vera e notevole storia del sergente Sheridan, e la metto al primo posto perché è la prova più pratica della pratica questione se l’Irlanda sia malgovernata. È rigorosamente una prova equa; poiché è una prova per il minimo e un argomento a fortiori. Un funzionario britannico in Irlanda può condurre una carriera di crimini, punendo persone innocenti per i propri misfatti; e quando viene scoperto, lo si trova al di sopra della legge. Questo può sembrare mettere le cose nella luce peggiore, ma in realtà è metterle nella migliore. Questa storia non ci fu raccontata sulla parola di uno scatenato feniano irlandese, né tantomeno di un responsabile nazionalista irlandese. Fu raccontata, parola per parola come l’ho raccontata io, dal ministro unionista incaricato della faccenda, che ne riferiva, con rammarico e vergogna, al Parlamento. Non era uno dei peggiori Segretari per l’Irlanda, che avrebbero potuto essere responsabili del peggiore regime; al contrario, era di gran lunga il migliore. Se persino lui poteva solo in parte frenare o svelare tali cose, non c’è deduzione di buon senso possibile se non che, nella normalità, tali cose proseguono allegramente nel buio, senza nessuno che le sveli e nessuno che le freni. Non era cosa fatta in quei giorni bui di tortura e terrorismo, avvenuti in Irlanda cent’anni fa; e dei quali gli inglesi parlano come se fossero avvenuti un milione di anni fa. Era cosa avvenuta assai di recente, nella mia stessa matura virilità, all’incirca nel tempo in cui cose migliori come i Land Acts erano già all’attenzione del mondo. Ricordo di aver scritto alla Westminster Gazette per sottolinearlo quando accadde; ma pare essere uscito dalla memoria in una maniera quasi ebete. Ma quello spiraglio sull’inferno mi ha procurato, da allora, un orribile divertimento, ogni volta che sento gli irlandesi rimproverati con dolcezza per il fatto di ricordare vecchie cose infelici e lontane e torti commessi nei Secoli Bui. Così mi divertì particolarmente scoprire il reverendo R. J. Campbell affermare che «l’Irlanda è stata vezzeggiata e coccolata più di ogni altra parte delle Isole Britanniche»; perché il signor Campbell era famoso soprattutto per un credo di tutto comodo, per aver detto che il male è solo «un’ombra là dove dovrebbe esserci luce»; e non c’è alcun dubbio, qui, che egli getti un’ombra assai nera là dove di luce ci sarebbe gran bisogno. Immaginerò il poliziotto all’angolo della via in cui risiede il signor Campbell come dedito all’abitudine di uccidere di tanto in tanto uno spazzino d’incrocio per suo privato diletto, di svaligiare le case dei vicini del signor Campbell, di tagliare le code ai loro cavalli da carrozza, e di spassarsela altrimenti al chiaro di luna come una fata. Ha per costume di far ricadere le conseguenze di ciascuno di questi crimini sul reverendo R. J. Campbell, che a intervalli arresta, fa condannare con successo mediante spergiuro, e procede a coccolare ai lavori forzati. Ma ho un’altra ragione per menzionare il signor Campbell, un gentiluomo che sotto molti altri aspetti rispetto di cuore; e la ragione è legata al suo nome, come compare in altro contesto in un’altra pagina. Mostra come in qualunque cosa, ma specialmente in qualunque cosa provenga dall’Irlanda, i vecchi fatti della famiglia e della fede pesino più di un milione di filosofie moderne. Le parole nel Who’s Who? — «protestante dell’Ulster di ascendenza scozzese» — danno la ragione davvero irlandese e davvero onorevole della straordinaria osservazione del signor Campbell. Un uomo può predicare per anni, con radioso universalismo, che molte acque non possono spegnere l’amore; ma le acque del Boyne sì. Il signor Campbell compare assai prontamente con quello che Kettle chiamò «un secchio d’acqua del Boyne, per spegnere l’aurora». Non coglierò l’occasione per dire, come l’uomo dell’Ulster, che non ci fu mai tradimento senza che un Campbell ne fosse in fondo. Ma dirò che non ci fu mai Modernismo senza che un calvinista ne fosse in fondo. La Vecchia Teologia è assai più vivace della Nuova Teologia. Molti altri racconti veri di questo genere potrebbero raccontarsi; ma ciò che qui ci occorre è una sorta di prova. Questo racconto è una prova; perché è il meglio che si potesse dire, sul meglio che si potesse fare, dal migliore degli inglesi che governasse l’Irlanda, di fronte al sistema inglese colà stabilito; ed è il meglio, o quantomeno il massimo, che possiamo sapere di quel sistema. Un’altra verità che potrebbe anch’essa servire da prova è questa: notare, tra gli inglesi responsabili, non solo la loro testimonianza gli uni contro gli altri, ma la loro testimonianza contro sé stessi. Intendo la considerazione di quanto rapidamente ci rendiamo conto che la nostra stessa condotta in Irlanda è stata infame, non nel remoto passato, ma nel passato recentissimo. Ho vissuto quel tanto che basta per vedere la ruota compiere il giro completo nell’arco di una sola generazione; quand’ero uno scolaretto, quel ceto medio di Kensington cui appartengo resisteva quasi compatto non solo al primo Home Rule Bill, ma a qualsiasi insinuazione che la Land League avesse un solo appiglio su cui reggersi, o che i proprietari terrieri dovessero fare altro che riscuotere i loro affitti o cacciare i loro affittuari. L’intera stampa unionista, che era tre quarti della stampa, sosteneva semplicemente Clanricarde, e accusava chiunque non lo facesse di sostenere il Clan-na-Gael. Il signor Balfour era semplicemente ammirato per aver imposto il sistema, che è sua vera apologia aver tentato di porre fine, o almeno aver lasciato che Wyndham vi ponesse fine. Non sono ancora molto avanti nel decadimento senile; ma già ho vissuto abbastanza da sentire i miei connazionali parlare della loro cieca politica al tempo della Land League, esattamente come parlavano prima della loro cieca politica al tempo del Trattato di Limerick. L’ombra sul nostro passato si sposta in avanti man mano che avanziamo nel futuro; e sembra sempre terminare appena dietro di noi. Mi si diceva in gioventù che il secolare malgoverno dell’Irlanda durò fino al 1870 circa; ora è opinione condivisa tra tutte le persone intelligenti che durò almeno fino al 1890 circa. Un po’ di buon senso, dopo un indizio come il Caso Sheridan, porterà a sospettare la semplice spiegazione che esso continui tuttora. Ora, ho udito in Irlanda decine di storie come quella di Sheridan, molte delle quali menziono altrove; ma non le menziono qui perché non possono essere pubblicamente verificate; e ciò per una ragione assai semplice. Dobbiamo accettare tutti i vantaggi e gli svantaggi di un governo di assoluto e ferreo militarismo. Non possiamo imporre il silenzio e poi vagliare le storie; non possiamo vietare la discussione e poi chiedere prove; non possiamo distruggere i diritti e poi scoprire i torti. Dico questo in tutta imparzialità riguardo al militarismo stesso. Sono ben lungi dall’esser certo che i soldati siano governanti peggiori degli avvocati e dei mercanti; e sono del tutto certo che una nazione ha il diritto di concedere un potere abnorme ai propri soldati in tempo di guerra. Dico soltanto che un soldato, se è un soldato assennato, saprà ciò che sta facendo e dunque ciò che non può fare; che non può imbavagliare un uomo e poi controinterrogarlo, non più di quanto possa fargli saltare le cervella e poi convincerne l’intelligenza. Vi può essere — umanamente parlando, vi deve essere — una massa di ingiustizie nel governo militaristico dell’Irlanda. Il militarismo stesso può esserne la minore; ma deve comportare l’occultamento di tutto il resto. Si è osservato sopra che instaurare il militarismo è cosa che una nazione aveva il diritto di fare, e (il che non è affatto la stessa cosa) nel fare la quale può avere ragione. Ma proprio con quella frase, «una nazione», ci scontriamo naturalmente con l’intera questione reale; il presunto torto astratto di cui gli irlandesi parlano assai più che dei loro torti concreti. Ho posto per primi gli argomenti sopra menzionati, perché desidero rendere chiara, come questione di buon senso, l’impressione di ogni ragionevole estraneo che essi abbiano certamente torti concreti. Ma persino coloro che ne dubitano, e dicono che gli irlandesi non hanno alcuna doglianza concreta ma solo un sentimento di Nazionalismo, cadono in un errore ultimo e assai grave circa la natura della cosa chiamata Nazionalismo, e persino circa il significato della parola «concreto». Poiché la verità è che, trattando con una nazione, la doglianza più astratta di tutte è anche quella più concreta di tutte. Il patriottismo non solo è parte della politica pratica, ma è più pratico di qualsiasi politica. Trascurarlo, e chiedere soltanto doglianze, è come contare le nuvole dimenticando il clima. Trascurarlo, e pensare soltanto alle leggi, è come vedere i punti di riferimento senza mai vedere il paesaggio. Si troverà che la negazione della nazionalità è un fastidio quotidiano assai maggiore della negazione del voto o della negazione delle giurie. La nazionalità è la cosa più pratica, perché tante cose sono nazionali senza essere politiche, o senza essere legali. Un uomo in un paese conquistato la avverte quando va al mercato o persino quando va in chiesa, cosa che può accadergli più spesso che non l’andare in tribunale; e il raccolto è più generale delle Elezioni Generali. Mutare la bandiera sul tetto è come mutare il sole nel cielo; persino i comignoli e i lampioni appaiono diversi. Anzi, dopo un certo intervallo di occupazione, sono diversi. Come un uomo saprebbe di trovarsi in una terra di stranieri prima ancora di sapere che è una terra di selvaggi, così egli sa che un governo è straniero assai prima di sapere che è oppressivo. Non è necessario che esso aggiunga il danno alla beffa. Per esempio, quando la prima volta girai per Dublino, ero incline a sorridere del fatto che i nomi delle strade fossero gravemente incisi in gaelico oltre che in inglese. Non discuterò qui la questione di ciò che si chiama la lingua irlandese, contro la quale il solo argomento sostenibile è che non è la lingua irlandese. Ma in ogni caso non è la lingua inglese, e sono giunto ad apprezzare con più immaginazione l’importanza di quel fatto. Può essere usata più come un’arma che come uno strumento; ma è un’arma nazionale se non è uno strumento nazionale. Vedo il significato dell’avere qualcosa che l’occhio comunemente incontra, come incontra un comignolo o un lampione; ma che è come un camino eretto sopra un focolare irlandese o una lampada per illuminare una strada irlandese. Vedo il senso dell’avere nella via un oggetto solido che rammenti a un irlandese di trovarsi in Irlanda, come una rossa cassetta delle lettere rammenta a un inglese di trovarsi in Inghilterra. Ma vi devono essere mille cose pratiche quanto le cassette delle lettere che rammentano a un irlandese che, se è nel suo paese, esso non è ancora un paese libero; tutto ciò che è connesso con la principale sede del governo glielo rammenta perpetuamente. Può non essere facile per un inglese immaginare quanti siano simili dettagli quotidiani. Ma c’è, dopotutto, uno sforzo dell’immaginazione assai semplice che fisserebbe per lui il fatto per sempre. Non deve far altro che immaginare che i tedeschi abbiano conquistato Londra. Un brillante scrittore che si è guadagnato il nome di pacifista, e persino di germanofilo, un giorno mi espose il suo tipo assai personale e perfino perverso di internazionalismo dicendomi, come una sorta di sfida senza replica: «Non preferirebbe essere governato da Goethe piuttosto che da Walter Long?». Risposi che le parole non potrebbero esprimere lo sfrenato amore e la lealtà che proverei per il signor Walter Long, se l’unica alternativa fosse Goethe. Non avrei potuto esporre il mio proprio caso nazionale in forma più chiara o più compatta. Potrei di quando in quando sentirmi propenso a uccidere il signor Long; ma sotto l’incombente ombra di Goethe, mi sentirei più propenso a uccidere me stesso. Questo è l’elemento mortifero nella snazionalizzazione: che avvelena la vita stessa, la più reale di tutte le realtà. Ma forse il modo migliore di esprimere il punto in conversazione è dire che Goethe erigerebbe certamente un monumento a Shakespeare. Preferirei morire piuttosto che passarci davanti ogni giorno della mia vita. E nell’altro caso delle iscrizioni stradali, è bene ricordare che queste cose, cui pure passiamo davanti ogni giorno, sono esattamente il genere di cose che sempre recano, in modo indefinibile, la nota nazionale. Se i tedeschi conquistassero Londra, non avrebbero bisogno di massacrarmi o persino di ridurmi in schiavitù, per infastidirmi; basterebbe che i loro avvisi fossero in stile tedesco, se non in lingua tedesca. Supponiamo che alzassi lo sguardo in una carrozza ferroviaria inglese, e vedessi queste parole scritte in inglese esattamente come le ho viste in una carrozza ferroviaria tedesca scritte in tedesco: «Lo sporgersi del corpo dal finestrino della carrozza è a causa del con ciò connesso pericolo di vita rigorosamente proibito». Non è scortese. Sarebbe certamente impossibile lamentarsi che sia brusco. Non sarei infastidito dalla sua brutalità e brevità; ma al contrario dalla sua elaboratezza e persino dalla sua prolissità. Ma se non brilla esattamente per lucidità, esso fornisce una ragione; il che, dopotutto, è una cosa assai ragionevole da fare. Secondo ogni criterio cosmopolita, è più cortese della frase che ho letto nella mia fanciullezza: «Wait until the train stops» («Attendere l’arresto del treno»). Questa è brusca; la si potrebbe dire scortese; ma non mi ha mai infastidito minimamente. Il più vicino che riesco ad arrivare nel definire il mio sentimento è dire che io riesco a simpatizzare con l’inglese che scrisse l’avviso inglese. Avendo da scrivere una cosa sgarbata, la scrisse il più in fretta possibile, e se ne andò a casa a prendere il tè; o preferibilmente la birra. Ma ciò che è troppo per me, una visione soverchiante, è il pensiero di quel tedesco che si siede placidamente a comporre quella frase come una sorta di saggio. È il pensiero di lui che serenamente rimanda l’unica parola importante fino alla fine della frase, come il Giorno del Giudizio alla fine del mondo. È forse il puro pensiero che egli non crollò a metà, ma resistette fino in fondo; o che poté in seguito riesaminarla con calma, e vedere quella frase sfilare, come l’intero esercito tedesco. In breve, non vi mi oppongo perché essa sia dittatoriale o dispotica o burocratica o cosa del genere; ma semplicemente perché è tedesca. Perché è tedesca non vi mi oppongo in Germania. Perché è tedesca mi rivolterei violentemente contro di essa in Inghilterra. Non mi rivolto contro l’ordine di attendere l’arresto del treno, non perché sia meno sgarbato, ma perché è il genere di sgarbo che posso comprendere. Il funzionario può trattarmi con noncuranza, ma almeno non prende sul serio sé stesso. E così, in cambio, posso trattare lui e il suo avviso non sul serio ma con noncuranza. Posso trascurare di attendere l’arresto del treno, e cadere lungo disteso sulla banchina; come feci sulla banchina di Wolverhampton, a permanente danno di quella bella struttura. Posso, con un colpo di genio satirico, autenticamente nazionale e tradizionale, la destra eliminazione di una sola lettera, mutare la massima in «Wait until the rain stops» («Attendere che smetta la pioggia»). È uno scherzo profondamente inglese quanto il tempo cui si riferisce. Nessuno sarebbe tentato di prendersi una simile libertà con la frase tedesca; non solo perché verrebbe all’istante imprigionato in una fortezza, ma perché non saprebbe da quale capo cominciare. Ora, questa è la verità che si esprime, sia pure forse assai imperfettamente, in cose come le scritte gaeliche sulle strade di Dublino. Sarà salutare per noi che siamo inglesi renderci conto che esiste quasi certamente un modo inglese di dire le cose, anche le più innocue, che a un irlandese appare goffo, innaturale e ridicolo esattamente quanto quella frase tedesca appare a me. Come il famoso francese non sapeva quando parlava in prosa, così l’inglese ufficiale non sa quando parla inglese. Assume inconsciamente di parlare esperanto. L’imperialismo non è una follia del patriottismo; è soltanto un’ illusione del cosmopolitismo. Poiché la nota nazionale della lingua irlandese non è propria soltanto di ciò che si era soliti chiamare la lingua erse. L’intera nazione usava la lingua comune a entrambe le nazioni con una differenza che va ben oltre un dialetto. Non è una differenza d’accento, ma una differenza di stile; che è generalmente una differenza d’anima. L’enfasi, l’elisione, le scorciatoie e le brusche chiuse del discorso mostrano una varietà che può essere quasi impercettibile ma non per questo meno intraducibile. Può trattarsi solo di un po’ più di peso su una parola, o di un’inversione ammissibile in inglese ma abbondante nell’irlandese; ma non possiamo copiarla più di quanto possiamo copiare la compattezza del on francese o dell’ablativo assoluto latino. Il caso più comune di ciò che intendo è, per esempio, la locuzione che mi indugia nella mente con una gradevole frase di uno dei racconti del signor Yeats: «Che ancora vedrò sulla graticola dell’inferno, e loro a strillare». È un idiotismo che dà l’effetto di un poscritto puntuto, di un calcio o di un pungiglione d’addio nella coda della frase, che è insondabilmente nazionale. È notevole e persino curioso che tutta una folla di irlandesi, che mi citavano con giusta ammirazione la nobile chiusa di Kathleen-na-Hulahan, dove al nuovo venuto si chiede se abbia visto uscire la vecchia che è il tragico simbolo dell’Irlanda, ne citassero la risposta in quella forma: «No. Ma ho visto una giovane donna; e lei che camminava come una regina». Dico che è curioso; perché mi è stato detto in seguito che nel libro effettivo (che al momento non riesco a mettere le mani sopra) si usa un idiotismo inglese più classico. Sarebbe in generale quanto mai imprudente alterare la dizione di un tal maestro di stile come il signor Yeats: benché in verità sia possibile che l’abbia alterata egli stesso, come talora ha fatto, e non sempre, credo, in meglio. Ma sia che questa forma provenisse da lui o dai suoi connazionali, essa era assai olezzante del suo paese. E c’era qualcosa di ispirante nel vedere così, quasi sotto i propri occhi, la letteratura farsi leggenda. Ma cento altri esempi potrebbero darsi, anche dalla mia breve esperienza, di simili felici giri di lingua, né i più belli si trovano necessariamente nella letteratura. È perfettamente vero, per quanto i pedanti possano abusarne e gli snob sottovalutarla, questa verità: che in un paese come questo i contadini sanno parlare come poeti. Quando mi trovavo sulla selvaggia costa del Donegal, una vecchia infelice che aveva patito la fame durante le carestie e gli sfratti raccontava a una signora le storie di quei tempi; e ne accennò con tutta naturalezza una che avrebbe potuto uscire dritta da tempi così mistici che dovremmo dirli mitici; che alcuni viandanti avevano incontrato una povera donna errante con un bimbo in quelle grandi grigie lande rocciose, e le avevano chiesto chi fosse. E lei rispose: «Sono la Madre di Dio, e questi è Lui stesso; ed è il ragazzo che tutti quanti vorrete alla fine». C’è in quella storia più di quanto si possa mettere in qualsiasi libro, anche a proposito di una materia in cui il suo significato ha parte così profonda; e pare quasi profano analizzarla, per quanto con simpatia. Ma se qualcuno desidera sapere cosa intendo per quella verità intraducibile che rende nazionale una lingua, varrà la pena di guardare alla mera dizione di quel discorso, e notare come il suo intero effetto poggi su certe frasi e consuetudini che si dànno a essere proprie della nazione. È ben noto che in Irlanda il marito o capo di casa è sempre chiamato «himself», «lui stesso»; né ciò è proprio soltanto dei contadini, ma adottato, sia pure in parte per scherzo, anche dalla piccola nobiltà. Un illustre pubblicista dublinese, proprietario terriero e figura di spicco tra l’aristocrazia più nazionale, mi chiamava sempre «himself» quando parlava con mia moglie. Si noterà come una sorta di ombra di quel significato comune si mescoli col più splendente significato della sua posizione in una frase dove esso è anche rigorosamente logico, nel senso di teologico. Ogni stile letterario, e specialmente lo stile nazionale, è fatto di simili coincidenze; che sono una sorta spirituale di giochi di parole. Ecco perché lo stile è intraducibile; perché è possibile rendere il significato, ma non il doppio significato. Vi è persino una lieve differenziazione nelle possibilità semischerzose della parola «boy», «ragazzo»; un’altra sfumatura del tutto nazionale. Dite invece «Ed è il bambino» e diventa qualcosa forse di più rigido, e certamente assai diverso. Togliete «Questi è Lui stesso» e sostituite semplicemente «Questi è Egli»; e diventa un pezzo di pedanteria a diecimila miglia dall’originale. Ma soprattutto ha perduto la sua nota di qualcosa di nazionale, perché essa ha perduto la sua nota di qualcosa di domestico. Tutte le strade in Irlanda, di fatto o di folklore, di teologia o di grammatica, ci riconducono a quella porta e a quel focolare della casa, a quella fortezza della famiglia che è la fortezza-chiave dell’intera strategia dell’isola. I cattolici irlandesi, come gli altri cristiani, ammettono un mistero nella Santissima Trinità, ma di essi si può quasi dire che ammettano un’esperienza nella Sacra Famiglia. La loro esperienza storica, ahimè, ha fatto loro apparire non innaturale che la Sacra Famiglia sia una famiglia senza tetto. Anch’essi hanno trovato che non c’era posto per loro alla locanda, né in alcun altro luogo se non nella prigione; anch’essi hanno strappato i loro neonati dalle culle, e si sono trascinati nella disperazione lungo la strada per l’Egitto, o almeno lungo la strada dell’esilio. Anch’essi hanno udito nel buio e nella lontananza alle loro spalle, il rumore dei cavalieri di Erode. Ora, è questa sensazione di risalire una corrente, di diecimila cose che si riversano tutte nella stessa direzione — etichette, titoli, monumenti, metafore, formule di indirizzo, presupposti nelle controversie — che fa sapere a un inglese in Irlanda di trovarsi in una terra straniera. Né egli è semplicemente sconcertato, come in mezzo a un guazzabuglio di cose strane. Al contrario, se ha un po’ di senno, le trova ben presto unificate e semplificate in un’unica impressione; come se stesse parlando con una persona sconosciuta. Non riesce a definirla perché nessuno può definire una persona; e nessuno può definire una nazione. Può soltanto vederla, fiutarla, udirla, maneggiarla, urtarvi contro, inciamparvi, ucciderla, esserne ucciso, o essere dannato per averle fatto torto. Deve accontentarsi di questi meri indizi della sua esistenza; ma non può definirla, perché è come una persona; e nessun libro di logica si assumerà l’impegno di definire la zia Jane o lo zio William. Possiamo solo dire, con più o meno mesta convinzione, che se la zia Jane non è una persona, allora la cosa chiamata persona non esiste, e io dico con pari convinzione che se l’Irlanda non è una nazione, allora la cosa chiamata nazione non esiste. La Francia non è una nazione, l’Inghilterra non è una nazione; il patriottismo non esiste su questo pianeta. Qualsiasi inglese, di qualsiasi partito, con qualsiasi proposta, farà bene a sgombrare la mente da ipocrisie riguardo a quella questione preliminare. Se liberiamo l’Irlanda, dobbiamo liberarla perché sia una nazione; se continuiamo a reprimere l’Irlanda, stiamo reprimendo una nazione; se abbiamo ragione di reprimere l’Irlanda, abbiamo ragione di reprimere una nazione. Dopo di ciò potremo considerare cosa si possa fare, secondo le nostre opinioni sul rispetto dovuto al patriottismo, sulla realtà delle alternative cosmopolite e imperiali, e così via. Discuterò volentieri con l’uomo che non vuole affatto l’umanità divisa in nazioni; posso immaginare una tesi a favore dell’uomo che vuole specialmente frenare una particolare nazione, come io frenerei l’antinazionale Prussia. Ma non discuterò con un uomo se l’Irlanda sia una nazione, o sull’ancor più tremenda questione se sia un’isola. So che esiste una filosofia scettica la quale suggerisce che tutte le idee ultime sono solo idee penultime; e dunque forse che tutte le isole sono in realtà penisole. Ma pretenderò di sapere cosa intendo per isola e cosa intendo per individuo; e quando penso all’improvviso alla mia esperienza nell’isola in questione, l’impressione è una sola; le voci si fondono in una voce umana che riconoscerei se la udissi di nuovo, chiamare in lontananza; le folle si riducono a una sola figura che vidi tanto tempo fa sopra uno strano fianco di collina, e lei che incedeva come una regina.
IX. Belfast and the Religious Problem
Of that cloud of dream which seems to drift over so many Irish poems and impressions, I felt very little in Ireland. There is a real meaning in this suggestion of a mystic sleep; but it does not mean what most of us imagine, and is not to be found where we expect it. On the contrary, I think the most vivid impression the nation left on me, was that it was almost unnaturally wide awake. I might almost say that Ireland suffers from insomnia. This is not only literally true, of those tremendous talks, the prolonged activities of rich and restless intellects, that can burn up the nights from darkness to daybreak. It is true on the doubtful as well as the delightful side; and the temperament has something of the morbid vigilance and even of the irritability of insomnia. Its lucidity is not only superhuman, but it is sometimes in the true sense inhuman. Its intellectual clarity cannot resist the temptation to intellectual cruelty. If I had to sum up in a sentence the one fault really to be found with the Irish, I could do it simply enough. I should say it saddened me that I liked them all so much better than they liked each other. But it is our supreme stupidity that this is always taken as meaning that Ireland is a sort of Donnybrook Fair. It is really quite the reverse of a merely rowdy and irresponsible quarrel. So far from fighting with shillelaghs, they fight far too much with rapiers; their temptation is in the very nicety and even delicacy of the thrust. Of course there are multitudes who make no such deadly use of the national irony; but it is sufficiently common for even these to suffer from it; and after a time I began to understand a little that burden about bitterness of speech, which recurs so often in the songs of Mr. Yeats and other Irish poets. “Though hope fall from you and love decay Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.” But there is nothing dreamy about the bitterness; the worst part of it is the fact that the criticisms always have a very lucid and logical touch of truth. It is not for us to lecture the Irish about forgiveness, who have given them so much to forgive. But if some one who had not lost the right to preach to them, if St. Patrick were to return to preach, he would find that nothing had failed, through all those ages of agony, of faith and honour and endurance; but I think he might possibly say, what I have no right to say, a word about charity. There is indeed one decisive sense in which the Irish are very poetical; in that of giving a special and serious social recognition to poetry. I have sometimes expressed the fancy that men in the Golden Age might spontaneously talk in verse; and it is really true that half the Irish talk is in verse. Quotation becomes recitation. But it is much too rhythmic to resemble our own theatrical recitations. This is one of my own strongest and most sympathetic memories, and one of my most definable reasons for having felt extraordinarily happy in Dublin. It was a paradise of poets, in which a man who may feel inclined to mention a book or two of Paradise Lost, or illustrate his meaning with the complete ballad of the Ancient Mariner, feels he will be better understood than elsewhere. But the more this very national quality is noted, the less it will be mistaken for anything merely irresponsible, or even merely emotional. The shortest way of stating the truth is to say that poetry plays the part of music. It is in every sense of the phrase a social function. A poetical evening is as natural as a musical evening; and being as natural it becomes what is called artificial. As in some circles “Do you play?” is rather “Don’t you play?” these Irish circles would be surprised because a man did not recite rather than because he did. A hostile critic, especially an Irish critic, might possibly say that the Irish are poetical because they are not sufficiently musical. I can imagine Mr. Bernard Shaw saying something of the sort. But it might well be retorted that they are not merely musical because they will not consent to be merely emotional. It is far truer to say that they give a reasonable place to poetry, than that they permit any particular poetic interference with reason. “But I, whose virtues are the definitions of the analytical mind,” says Mr. Yeats, and any one who has been in the atmosphere will know what he means. In so far as such things stray from reason, they tend rather to ritual than to riot. Poetry is in Ireland what humour is in America; it is an institution. The Englishman, who is always for good and evil the amateur, takes both in a more occasional and even accidental fashion. It must always be remembered here that the ancient Irish civilisation had a high order of poetry, which was not merely mystical, but rather mathematical. Like Celtic ornament, Celtic verse tended too much to geometrical patterns. If this was irrational, it was not by excess of emotion. It might rather be described as irrational by excess of reason. The antique hierarchy of minstrels, each grade with its own complicated metre, suggests that there was something Chinese about a thing so unhumanly civilised. Yet all this vanished etiquette is somehow in the air in Ireland; and men and women move to it, as to the steps of a lost dance. Thus, whether we consider the sense in which the Irish are really quarrelsome, or the sense in which they are really poetical, we find that both lead us back to a condition of clarity which seems the very reverse of a mere dream. In both cases Ireland is critical, and even self-critical. The bitterness I have ventured to lament is not Irish bitterness against the English; that I should assume as not only inevitable, but substantially justifiable. It is Irish bitterness against the Irish; the remarks of one honest Nationalist about another honest Nationalist. Similarly, while they are fond of poetry, they are not always fond of poets; and there is plenty of satire in their conversation on the subject. I have said that half the talk may consist of poetry; I might almost say that the other half may consist of parody. All these things amount to an excess of vigilance and realism; the mass of the people watch and pray, but even those who never pray never cease to watch. If they idealise sleep, it is as the sleepless do; it might almost be said that they can only dream of dreaming. If a dream haunts them, it is rather as something that escapes them; and indeed some of their finest poetry is rather about seeking fairyland than about finding it. Granted all this, I may say that there was one place in Ireland where I did seem to find it, and not merely to seek it. There was one spot where I seemed to see the dream itself in possession; as one might see from afar a cloud resting on a single hill. There a dream, at once a desire and a delusion, brooded above a whole city. That place was Belfast. The description could be justified even literally and in detail. A man told me in northeast Ulster that he had heard a mother warning her children away from some pond, or similar place of danger, by saying, “Don’t you go there; there are wee popes there.” A country where that could be said is like Elfland as compared to England. If not exactly a land of fairies, it is at least a land of goblins. There is something charming in the fancy of a pool full of these peculiar elves, like so many efts, each with his tiny triple crown or crossed keys complete. That is the difference between this manufacturing district and an English manufacturing district, like that of Manchester. There are numbers of sturdy Nonconformists in Manchester; and doubtless they direct some of their educational warnings against the system represented by the Archbishop of Canterbury. But nobody in Manchester, however Nonconformist, tells even a child that a puddle is a sort of breeding place for Archbishops of Canterbury, little goblins in gaiters and aprons. It may be said that it is a very stagnant pool that breeds that sort of efts. But whatever view we take of it, it remains true, to begin with, that the paradox could be proved merely from superficial things like superstitions. Protestant Ulster reeks of superstition; it is the strong smell that really comes like a blast out of Belfast, as distinct from Birmingham or Brixton. But to me there is always something human and almost humanising about superstition; and I really think that such lingering legends about the Pope, as a being as distant and dehumanised as the King of the Cannibal Islands, have served as a sort of negative folk-lore. And the same may be said, in so far as it is true that the commercial province has retained a theology as well as a mythology. Wherever men are still theological there is still some chance of their being logical. And in this the Calvinist Ulsterman may be more of a Catholic Irishman than is commonly realised, especially by himself. Attacks and apologies abound about the matter of Belfast bigotry; but bigotry is by no means the worst thing in Belfast. I rather think it is the best. Nor is it the strongest example of what I mean, when I say that Belfast does really live in a dream. The other and more remarkable fault of the society has indeed a religious root; for nearly everything in history has a religious root, and especially nearly everything in Irish history. Of that theoretical origin in theology I may say something in a moment; it will be enough to say here that what has produced the more prominent and practical evil is ultimately the theology itself, but not the habit of being theological. It is the creed; but not the faith. In so far as the Ulster Protestant really has a faith, he is really a fine fellow; though perhaps not quite so fine a fellow as he thinks himself. And that is the chasm; and can be most shortly stated as I have often stated it in such debates, by saying that the Protestant generally says, “I am a good Protestant,” while the Catholic always says, “I am a bad Catholic.” When I say that Belfast is dominated by a dream, I mean it in the strict psychological sense; that something inside the mind is stronger than everything outside it. Nonsense is not only stronger than sense, but stronger than the senses. The idea in a man’s head can eclipse the eyes in his head. Very worthy and kindly merchants told me there was no poverty in Belfast. They did not say there was less poverty than was commonly alleged, or less poverty than there had been, or less than there was in similar places elsewhere. They said there was none. As a remark about the Earthly Paradise or the New Jerusalem, it would be arresting. As a remark about the streets, through which they and I had both passed a few moments before, it was simply a triumph of the sheer madness of the imagination of man. These eminent citizens of Belfast received me in the kindest and most courteous fashion; and I would not willingly say anything in criticism of them beyond what is necessary for the practical needs of their country and mine. But indeed I think the greatest criticism of them is that they would not understand what the criticism means. I will therefore clothe it in a parable, which is none the worse for having also been a real incident. When told there was no poverty in Belfast, I had remarked mildly that the people must have a singular taste in dress. I was gravely assured that they had indeed a most singular taste in dress. I was left with the general impression that wearing shirts or trousers decorated with large holes at irregular intervals was a pardonable form of foppery or fashionable extravagance. And it will always be a deep indwelling delight, in the memories of my life, that just as these city fathers and I came out on to the steps of the hotel, there appeared before us one of the raggedest of the ragged little boys I had seen, asking for a penny. I gave him a penny, whereon this group of merchants was suddenly transfigured into a sort of mob, vociferating, “Against the law! Against the law!” and bundled him away. I hope it is not unamiable to be so much entertained by that vision of a mob of magistrates, so earnestly shooing away a solitary child like a cat. Anyhow, they knew not what they did; and, what is worse, knew not that they knew not. And they would not understand, if I told them, what legend might have been made about that child, in the Christian ages of the world. The point is here that the evil in the delusion does not consist in bigotry, but in vanity. It is not that such a Belfast man thinks he is right; for any honest man has a right to think he is right. It is that he does think he is good, not to say great; and no honest man can reach that comfortable conviction without a course of intellectual dishonesty. What cuts this spirit off from Christian common sense is the fact that the delusion, like most insane delusions, is merely egotistical. It is simply the pleasure of thinking extravagantly well of oneself; and unlimited indulgence in that pleasure is far more weakening than any indulgence in drink or dissipation. But so completely does it construct an unreal cosmos round the ego, that the criticism of the world cannot be felt even for worldly purposes. I could give many examples of this element in Belfast, as compared even with Birmingham or Manchester. The Lord Mayor of Manchester may not happen to know much about pictures; but he knows men who know about them. But the Belfast authorities will exhibit a maniacally bad picture as a masterpiece, merely because it glorifies Belfast. No man dare put up such a picture in Manchester, within a stone’s-throw of Mr. Charles Rowley. I care comparatively little about the case of aesthetics; but the case is even clearer in ethics. So wholly are these people sundered from more Christian traditions that their very boasts lower them; and. they abase themselves when they mean to exalt themselves. It never occurs to them that their strange inside standards do not always impress outsiders. A great employer introduced me to several of his very intelligent employees; and I can readily bear witness to the sincerity of the great Belfast delusion even among many of the poorer men of Belfast. But the sincere efforts of them and their master, to convince me that a union with the Catholic majority under Home Rule was intolerable to them, all went to one tune, which recurred with a kind of chorus, “We won’t have the likes of them making laws for the likes of us.” It never seemed to cross their minds that this is not a high example of any human morality; that judged by pagan verecundia or Christian humility or modern democratic brotherhood, it is simply the remark of a snob. The man in question is quite innocent of all this; he has no notion of modesty, or even of mock modesty; he is not only superior, but he thinks it a superiority to claim superiority. It is here that we cannot avoid theology, because, we cannot avoid theory. For the point is that even in theory the one religious atmosphere now differs from the other. That the difference had historically a religious root is really unquestionable; but anyhow it is very deeply rooted. The essence of Calvinism was certainty about salvation; the essence of Catholicism is uncertainty about salvation. The modern and materialised form of that certainty is superiority; the belief of a man in a fixed moral aristocracy of men like himself. But the truth concerned here is that, by this time at any rate, the superiority has become a doctrine as well as an indulgence. I doubt if this extreme school of Protestants believe in Christian humility even as an ideal. I doubt whether the more honest of them would even profess to believe in it. This can be clearly seen by comparing it with other Christian virtues; of which this decayed Calvinism offers at least a version, even to those who think it a perversion. Puritanism is a version of purity; if we think it a parody of purity. Philanthropy is a version of charity; if we think it a parody of charity. But in all this commercial Protestantism there is no version of humility; there is not even a parody of humility. Humility is not an ideal. Humility is not even a hypocrisy. There is no institution, no commandment, no common form of words, no popular pattern or traditional tale, to tell anybody in any fashion that there is any such thing as a peril of spiritual pride. In short, there is here a school of thought and sentiment that does definitely regard self-satisfaction as a strength; as against the strong Christian tradition in the rest of the country that does as definitely regard it as a weakness. That is the real moral issue in the modern struggle in Ireland; nor is it confined to Ireland. England has been deeply infected with this pharisaical weakness; but as I have said, England takes things vaguely where Ireland takes them vividly. The men of Belfast offer that city as something supreme, unique and unrivalled; and they are very nearly right. There is nothing exactly like it in the industrialism of this country; but for all that, the fight against its religion of arrogance has been fought out elsewhere and on a larger field. There is another centre and citadel from which this theory, of strength in a self-hypnotised superiority, has despised Christendom. There has been a rival city to Belfast; and its name was Berlin. Historians of all religions and no religion may yet come to regard it as a historical fact, I fancy, that the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century (at least in the form it actually took) was a barbaric breakdown, like that Prussianism which was the ultimate product of the Protestantism. But however this may be, historians will always be interested to note that it produced certain curious and characteristic things; which are worth studying whether we like or dislike them. And one of its features, I fancy, has been this; that it has had the power of producing certain institutions which progressed very rapidly to great wealth and power; which the world regarded at a certain moment as invincible; and which the world, at the next moment, suddenly discovered to be intolerable. It was so with the whole of that Calvinist theology, of which Belfast is now left as the lonely missionary. It was so, even in our own time, with the whole of that industrial capitalism of which Belfast is now the besieged and almost deserted outpost. And it was so with Berlin as it was with Belfast; and a subtle Prussian might almost complain of a kind of treachery, in the abruptness with which the world woke up and found it wanting; in the suddenness of the reaction that struck it impotent, so soon after it had been counted on omnipotent. These things seem to hold all the future; and in one flash they are things of the past. Belfast is an antiquated novelty. Such a thing is still being excused for seeming parvenu when it is discovered to be passe. For instance, it is only by coming in touch with some of the controversies surrounding the Convention, that an Englishman could realise how much the mentality of the Belfast leader is not so much that of a remote seventeenth century Whig, as that of a recent nineteenth century Radical. His conventionality seemed to be that of a Victorian rather than a Williamite; and to be less limited by the Orange Brotherhood than by the Cobden Club. This is a fact most successfully painted and pasted over by the big brushes of our own Party System, which has the art of hiding so many glaring facts. This Unionist Party in Ireland is very largely concerned to resist the main reform advocated by the Unionist Party in England. A political humorist, who understood the Cobden tradition of Belfast and the Chamberlain tradition of Birmingham, could have a huge amount of fun appealing from one to the other; congratulating Belfast on the bold Protectionist doctrines prevalent in Ireland; adjuring Mr. Bonar Law and the Tariff Reformers never to forget the fight made by Belfast for the sacred principles of Free Trade. But the fact that the Belfast school is merely the Manchester school is only one aspect of this general truth about the abrupt collapse into antiquity; a sudden superannuation. The whole march of that Manchester industrialism is not only halted but turned; the whole position is outflanked by new forces coming from new directions; the wealth of the peasantries blocks the road in front of it; the general strike has risen menacing its rear. That strange cloud of self-protecting vanity may still permit Belfast to believe in Belfast, but Britain does not really believe in Belfast. Philosophical forces far wider and deeper than politics have undermined the conception of progressive Protestantism in Ireland. I should say myself that mere English ascendancy in that island became intellectually impossible on the day when Shaftesbury introduced the first Factory Act, and on the day when Newman published the first pages of the Apologia. Both men were certainly Tories and probably Unionists. Neither were connected with the subject or with each other; the one hated the Pope and the other the Liberator. But industrialism was never again self-evidently superior after the first event, or Protestantism self-evidently superior after the other. And it needed a towering and self-evident superiority to excuse the English rule in Ireland. It is only on the ground of unquestionably doing good that men can do so much evil as that. Some Orangemen before the war indulged in a fine rhetorical comparison between William of Prussia and William of Orange; and openly suggested that the new Protestant Deliverer from the north would come from North Germany. I was assured by my more moderate hosts in Belfast that such Orangemen could not be regarded as representative or even responsible. On that I cannot pronounce. The Orangemen may not have been representative; they may not have been responsible; but I am quite sure they were right. I am quite sure those poor fanatics were far nearer the nerve of historical truth than professional politicians like Sir Edward Carson or industrial capitalists like Sir George Clark. If ever there was a natural alliance in the world, it would have been the alliance between Belfast and Berlin. The fanatics may be fools, but they have here the light by which the foolish things can confound the wise. It is the brightest spot in Belfast, bigotry, for if the light in its body be darkness, it is still brighter than the darkness. By the vision that goes everywhere with the virility and greatness of religion, these men have indeed pierced to the Protestant secret and the meaning of four hundred years. Their Protestantism is Prussianism, not as a term of abuse, but as a term of abstract and impartial ethical science. Belfast and Berlin are on the same side in the deepest of all the spiritual issues involved in the war. And that is the simple issue of whether pride is a sin, and therefore a weakness. Modern mentality, or great masses of it, has seriously advanced the view that it is a weakness to disarm criticism by self-criticism, and a strength to disdain criticism through self-confidence. That is the thesis for which Berlin gave battle to the older civilisation in Europe; and that for which Belfast gave battle to the older civilisation in Ireland. It may be, as I suggested, that such Protestant pride is the old Calvinism, with its fixed election of the few. It may be that the Protestantism is merely Paganism, with its brutish gods and giants lingering in corners of the more savage north. It may be that the Calvinism was itself a recurrence of the Paganism. But in any case, I am sure that this superiority, which can master men like a nightmare, can also vanish like a nightmare. And I strongly suspect that in this matter also, as in the matter of property as viewed by a peasantry, the older civilisation will prove to be the real civilisation; and that a healthier society will return to regarding pride as a pestilence, as the Socialists have already returned to regarding avarice as a pestilence. The old tradition of Christendom was that the highest form of faith was a doubt. It was the doubt of a man about his soul. It was admirably expressed to me by Mr. Yeats, who is now champion of Catholic orthodoxy, in stating his preference for mediaeval Catholicism as compared with modern humanitarianism; “Men were thinking then about their own sins, and now they are always thinking about other people’s.” And even by the Protestant test of progress, pride is seen to be arrested by a premature paralysis. Progress is superiority to oneself; and it is stopped dead by superiority to others. The case is even clearer by the test of poetry, which is much more solid and permanent than progress. The Superman may have been a sort of poem; but he could never be any sort of poet. The more we attempt to analyse that strange element of wonder, which is the soul of all the arts, the more we shall see that it must depend on some subordination of the self to a glory existing beyond it, and even in spite of it. Man always feels as a creature when he acts as a creator. When he carves a cathedral it is to make a monster that can swallow him. But the Nietzschean nightmare of swallowing the world is only a sort of yawning. When the evolutionary anarch has broken all links and laws and is at last free to speak, he finds he has nothing to say. So German songs under the imperial eagle fell silent like songbirds under a hawk; and it is but rarely, and here and there, that a Belfast merchant liberates his soul in a lyric. He has to get Mr. Kipling to write a Belfast poem, in a style technically attuned to the Belfast pictures. There is the true Tara of the silent harp, and the throne and habitation of the dream; and it is there that the Celtic pessimists should weep in silence for the end of song. Blowing one’s own trumpet has not proved a good musical education. In logic a wise man will always put the cart before the horse. That is to say, he will always put the end before the means; when he is considering the question as a whole. He does not construct a cart in order to exercise a horse. He employs a horse to draw a cart, and whatever is in the cart. In all modern reasoning there is a tendency to make the mere political beast of burden more important than the chariot of man it is meant to draw. This had led to a dismissal of all such spiritual questions in favour of what are called social questions; and this to a too facile treatment of things like the religious question in Belfast. There is a religious question; and it will not have an irreligious answer. It will not be met by the limitation of Christian faith, but rather by the extension of Christian charity. But if a man says that there is no difference between a Protestant and a Catholic, and that both can act in an identical fashion everywhere but in a church or chapel, he is madly driving the cart-horse when he has forgotten the cart. A religion is not the church a man goes to but the cosmos he lives in; and if any sceptic forgets it, the maddest fanatic beating an Orange drum about the Battle of the Boyne is a better philosopher than he. Many uneducated and some educated people in Belfast, quite sincerely believe that Roman priests are fiends, only waiting to rekindle the fires of the Inquisition. For two simple reasons, however, I declined to take this fact as evidence of anything except their sincerity. First, because the stories, when reduced to their rudiment of truth, generally resolved themselves into the riddle of poor Roman Catholics giving money to their own religion; and seemed to deplore not so much a dependence on priests as an independence of employers. And second for a reason drawn from my own experience, as well as common knowledge, concerning the Protestant gentry in the south of Ireland. The southern Unionists spoke quite without this special horror of Catholic priests or peasants. They grumbled at them or laughed at them as a man grumbles or laughs at his neighbours; but obviously they no more dreamed that the priest would burn them than that he would eat them. If the priests were as black as the black Protestants painted them, they would be at their worst where they are with the majority; and would be known at their worst by the minority. It was clear that Belfast held the more bigoted tradition, not because it knew more of priests, but because it knew less of them; not because it was on the spot, but because the spot was barred. An even more general delusion was the idea that all the southern Irish dreamed and did no work. I pointed out that this also was inconsistent with concrete experience; since all over the world a man who makes a small farm pay has to work very hard indeed. In historic fact, the old notion that the Irish peasant did no work, but only dreamed, had a simple explanation. It merely meant that he did no work for a capitalist’s profit; but dreamed of some day doing work for his own profit. But there may also have been this distorted truth in the tradition; that a free peasant, while he extends his own work, creates his own holidays. He is not idle all day, but he may be idle at any time of the day; he does not dream whenever he feels inclined, but he does dream whenever he chooses. A famous Belfast manufacturer, a man of capacity, but one who shook his head over the unaccountable prevalence of priests, assured me that he had seen peasants in the south doing nothing, at all sorts of odd times; and this is doubtless the difference between the farm and the factory. The same gentleman showed me over the colossal shipping of the great harbour, with all machinery and transport leading up to it. No man of any imagination would be insensible to such titanic experiments of his race; or deny the dark poetry of those furnaces fit for Vulcan or those hammers worthy of Thor. But as I stood on the dock I said to my guide: “Have you ever asked what all this is for?” He was an intelligent man, an exile from metaphysical Scotland, and he knew what I meant. “I don’t know,” he said, “perhaps we are only insects building a coral reef. I don’t know what is the good of the coral reef.” “Perhaps,” I said, “that is what the peasant dreams about, and, why he listens to the priest.” For there seems to be a fashionable fallacy to the effect that religious equality is something to be done and done with, that we may go on to the real matter of political equality. In philosophy it is the flat contrary that is true. Political equality is something to be done and done with, that we may go on to the much more real matter of religion. At the Abbey Theatre I saw a forcible play by Mr. St. John Ervine, called The Mixed Marriage; which I should remember if it were only for the beautiful acting of Miss Maire O’Neill. But the play moved me very much as a play; yet I felt that the presence of this fallacy falsified it in some measure. The dramatist seemed to resent a schism merely because it interfered with a strike. But the only object of striking is liberty; and the only object of liberty is life: a thing wholly spiritual. It is economic liberty that should be dismissed as these people dismiss theology. We only get it, to forget it. It is right that men should have houses, right that they should have land, right that they should have laws to protect the land; but all these things are only machinery to make leisure for the labouring soul. The house is only a stage set up by stage carpenters for the acting of what Mr. J. B. Yeats has called “the drama of the home.” All the most dramatic things happen at home, from being born to being dead. What a man thinks about these things is his life; and to substitute for them a bustle of electioneering and legislation is to wander about among screens and pulleys on the wrong side of pasteboard scenery; and never to act the play. And that play is always a miracle play; and the name of its hero is Everyman. When I came back from the desolate splendour of the Donegal sea and shore, and saw again the square garden and the statue outside the Dublin hotel, I did not know I was returning to something that might well be called more desolate. For it was when I entered the hotel that I first found that it was full of the awful tragedy of the Leinster. I had often seen death in a home, but never death decimating a vast hostelry; and there was something strangely shocking about the empty seats of men and women with whom I had talked so idly a few days before. It was almost as if there was more tragedy in the cutting short of such trivial talk than in the sundering of life-long ties. But there was all the dignity as well as the tragedy of man; and I was glad, before I left Ireland, to have seen the nobler side of the Anglo-Irish garrison; and to have known men of my own blood, however mistaken, so enduring the end of things. With the bad news from the sea came better news from the war; Mangin had struck the sensational blow that cut off the Germans as they marched upon Chalons; and with all the emotions of an exile, however temporary, I knew that my own land was secure. Somehow, the bad and good news together turned my mind more and more towards England; and all the inner humour and insular geniality which even the Irish may some day be allowed to understand. As I went homewards on the next boat that started from the Irish port, and the Wicklow hills receded in a rainy and broken sunlight, it was with all the simplest of those ancient appetites with which a man should come back to his own country. Only there clung to me, not to be denied, one sentiment about Ireland, one sentiment that I could not transfer to England; which called me like an elfland of so many happy figures, from Puck to Pickwick. As I looked at those rainy hills, I knew at least that I was looking, perhaps for the last time, on something rooted in the Christian faith. There at least the Christian ideal was something more than an ideal; it was in a special sense real. It was so real that it appeared even in statistics. It was so self-evident as to be seen even by sociologists. It was a land where our religion had made even its vision visible. It had made even its unpopular virtues popular. It must be, in the times to come, a final testing-place, of whether a people that will take that name seriously, and even solidly, is fated to suffer or to succeed. As the long line of the mountain coast unfolded before me I had an optical illusion; it may be that many have had it before. As new lengths of coast and lines of heights were unfolded, I had the fancy that the whole land was not receding but advancing, like something spreading out its arms to the world. A chance shred of sunshine rested, like a riven banner, on the hill which I believe is called in Irish the Mountain of the Golden Spears; and I could have imagined that the spears and the banner were coming on. And in that flash I remembered that the men of this island had once gone forth, not the torches of conquerors or destroyers; but as missionaries in the very midnight of the Dark Ages, like a multitude of moving candles, that were the light of the world. The End
IX. Belfast e il problema religioso
Di quella nube di sogno che sembra aleggiare su tante poesie e impressioni irlandesi, ben poco avvertii in Irlanda. C’è un senso reale in questa suggestione di un sonno mistico; ma non significa ciò che la maggior parte di noi immagina, né si trova dove ce l’aspettiamo. Al contrario, credo che l’impressione più viva che quella nazione mi lasciò fu di essere quasi innaturalmente desta. Direi quasi che l’Irlanda soffre d’insonnia. E ciò è vero non solo alla lettera, a proposito di quelle conversazioni formidabili, le prolungate attività di intelletti ricchi e irrequieti, capaci di bruciare le notti dall’oscurità all’alba. È vero sul versante dubbio come su quello delizioso; e quel temperamento ha qualcosa della vigilanza morbosa e perfino dell’irritabilità dell’insonnia. La sua lucidità non è soltanto sovrumana, ma talvolta, nel senso vero, disumana. La sua chiarezza intellettuale non sa resistere alla tentazione della crudeltà intellettuale. Se dovessi riassumere in una frase l’unico difetto davvero imputabile agli irlandesi, potrei farlo con semplicità. Direi che mi rattristava vederli tutti tanto più simpatici a me di quanto lo fossero l’uno all’altro. Ma è la nostra suprema stoltezza intendere sempre questo come se l’Irlanda fosse una sorta di Fiera di Donnybrook. È in realtà tutto il contrario di una rissa meramente turbolenta e irresponsabile. Lungi dal battersi coi randelli, si battono fin troppo di fioretto; la loro tentazione sta proprio nella finezza e perfino nella delicatezza dell’affondo. Certo vi sono moltitudini che non fanno un uso così letale dell’ironia nazionale; ma essa è tanto diffusa che perfino costoro ne soffrono; e dopo un po’ cominciai a capire un poco quel ritornello sull’amarezza del parlare, che ricorre così spesso nei canti del signor Yeats e di altri poeti irlandesi. «Benché la speranza ti abbandoni e l’amore s’estingua, / ardendo nei fuochi di una lingua calunniosa.» Ma non c’è nulla di sognante in quell’amarezza; il peggio è che le critiche hanno sempre un tocco lucidissimo e logico di verità. Non spetta a noi fare prediche agli irlandesi sul perdono, noi che abbiamo dato loro tanto da perdonare. Ma se qualcuno che non avesse perduto il diritto di predicare loro, se san Patrizio tornasse a predicare, troverebbe che nulla è venuto meno, per tutte quelle ere di agonia, quanto a fede, onore ed sopportazione; ma credo che potrebbe forse dire, ciò che io non ho diritto di dire, una parola sulla carità. C’è invero un senso decisivo in cui gli irlandesi sono assai poetici: quello di accordare alla poesia un riconoscimento sociale speciale e serio. Ho talora espresso la fantasia che gli uomini dell’Età dell’Oro parlassero spontaneamente in versi; ed è davvero vero che metà del discorrere irlandese è in versi. La citazione diventa recitazione. Ma è troppo ritmico per somigliare alle nostre recitazioni teatrali. È uno dei miei ricordi più forti e più cari, e una delle ragioni più precise per cui mi sentii straordinariamente felice a Dublino. Era un paradiso di poeti, in cui chi si sentisse incline a citare un libro o due del Paradise Lost, o a illustrare il proprio pensiero con l’intera ballata dell’Ancient Mariner, sente che sarà compreso meglio che altrove. Ma più si osserva questa qualità così nazionale, meno la si scambierà per qualcosa di meramente irresponsabile, o persino meramente emotivo. Il modo più breve di enunciare la verità è dire che la poesia fa la parte della musica. È, in ogni senso dell’espressione, una funzione sociale. Una serata poetica è naturale quanto una serata musicale; ed essendo altrettanto naturale diventa ciò che si dice artificiale. Come in certi ambienti «Suona lei?» è piuttosto «Non suona?», così questi ambienti irlandesi si stupirebbero perché un uomo non recita, anziché perché recita. Un critico ostile, e specialmente un critico irlandese, potrebbe magari dire che gli irlandesi sono poetici perché non sono sufficientemente musicali. Posso immaginare il signor Bernard Shaw dire qualcosa del genere. Ma si potrebbe ben ribattere che non sono soltanto musicali perché non acconsentono a essere soltanto emotivi. È assai più vero dire che assegnano alla poesia un posto ragionevole, che non dire che permettano una qualche particolare interferenza poetica con la ragione. «Ma io, le cui virtù sono le definizioni della mente analitica», dice il signor Yeats, e chiunque abbia respirato quell’atmosfera saprà cosa intende. Nella misura in cui simili cose si allontanano dalla ragione, tendono più al rito che al tumulto. La poesia è in Irlanda ciò che l’umorismo è in America: un’istituzione. L’inglese, che è sempre, nel bene e nel male, il dilettante, prende entrambi in modo più occasionale e perfino accidentale. Occorre sempre ricordare qui che l’antica civiltà irlandese aveva una poesia di alto ordine, che non era meramente mistica, ma piuttosto matematica. Come l’ornamento celtico, il verso celtico tendeva troppo a schemi geometrici. Se ciò era irrazionale, non lo era per eccesso di emozione. Lo si potrebbe piuttosto definire irrazionale per eccesso di ragione. L’antica gerarchia dei menestrelli, ogni grado col proprio metro complicato, suggerisce che vi fosse qualcosa di cinese in una cosa così disumanamente civile. Eppure tutta questa etichetta svanita è in qualche modo nell’aria in Irlanda; e uomini e donne vi si muovono, come ai passi di una danza perduta. Così, sia che consideriamo il senso in cui gli irlandesi sono davvero litigiosi, sia il senso in cui sono davvero poetici, troviamo che entrambi ci riconducono a una condizione di chiarezza che sembra l’esatto contrario di un semplice sogno. In entrambi i casi l’Irlanda è critica, e perfino critica verso sé stessa. L’amarezza che ho osato deplorare non è l’amarezza irlandese contro gli inglesi; quella la darei per non solo inevitabile, ma sostanzialmente giustificabile. È l’amarezza irlandese contro gli irlandesi; le osservazioni di un onesto nazionalista su un altro onesto nazionalista. Similmente, per quanto amino la poesia, non sempre amano i poeti; e c’è abbondanza di satira nelle loro conversazioni in proposito. Ho detto che metà del discorrere può consistere in poesia; direi quasi che l’altra metà può consistere in parodia. Tutte queste cose si riducono a un eccesso di vigilanza e realismo; la massa del popolo veglia e prega, ma perfino coloro che non pregano mai non cessano mai di vegliare. Se idealizzano il sonno, lo fanno come chi non dorme; si potrebbe quasi dire che sanno solo sognare di sognare. Se un sogno li perseguita, è piuttosto come qualcosa che sfugge loro; e infatti parte della loro poesia più bella parla piuttosto del cercare il paese delle fate che del trovarlo. Ciò ammesso, posso dire che vi fu un luogo in Irlanda dove mi parve davvero di trovarlo, e non soltanto di cercarlo. Vi fu un punto in cui mi parve di vedere il sogno stesso in possesso del luogo; come si potrebbe scorgere da lontano una nube posata su un solo colle. Là un sogno, insieme desiderio e illusione, incombeva su un’intera città. Quel luogo era Belfast. La descrizione potrebbe giustificarsi anche alla lettera e nei dettagli. Un uomo mi raccontò, nell’Ulster nordorientale, di aver udito una madre allontanare i figli da uno stagno, o simile luogo di pericolo, dicendo: «Non andate là; ci sono dei piccoli papi, là». Un paese dove si può dire una cosa simile è, rispetto all’Inghilterra, come il paese degli elfi. Se non proprio una terra di fate, è quantomeno una terra di folletti. C’è qualcosa di delizioso nella fantasia di uno stagno pieno di questi elfi peculiari, come tanti tritoni, ciascuno completo della sua minuscola triplice corona o delle chiavi incrociate. Questa è la differenza tra questo distretto manifatturiero e un distretto manifatturiero inglese, come quello di Manchester. A Manchester ci sono numerosi robusti anticonformisti; e senza dubbio dirigono qualcuna delle loro ammonizioni educative contro il sistema rappresentato dall’arcivescovo di Canterbury. Ma nessuno a Manchester, per quanto anticonformista, dice a un bambino che una pozzanghera è una sorta di vivaio per arcivescovi di Canterbury, piccoli folletti in ghette e grembiule. Si potrà dire che è uno stagno assai stagnante quello che genera simili tritoni. Ma qualunque veduta ne prendiamo, resta vero, tanto per cominciare, che il paradosso si potrebbe dimostrare anche solo con cose superficiali come le superstizioni. L’Ulster protestante puzza di superstizione; è l’odore forte che davvero irrompe come una folata da Belfast, a differenza di Birmingham o Brixton. Ma per me c’è sempre qualcosa di umano e quasi umanizzante nella superstizione; e credo davvero che simili leggende persistenti sul Papa, essere tanto remoto e disumanizzato quanto il Re delle Isole dei Cannibali, abbiano funzionato come una sorta di folclore negativo. E lo stesso si può dire, nella misura in cui è vero che la provincia commerciale ha conservato una teologia oltre che una mitologia. Dovunque gli uomini siano ancora teologici, c’è ancora qualche possibilità che siano logici. E in ciò l’ulsteriano calvinista può essere più irlandese cattolico di quanto comunemente si creda, specialmente da lui stesso. Attacchi e difese abbondano sulla questione del bigottismo di Belfast; ma il bigottismo non è affatto la cosa peggiore di Belfast. Anzi credo sia la migliore. Né è l’esempio più forte di ciò che intendo quando dico che Belfast vive davvero in un sogno. L’altro, più notevole difetto di quella società ha invero una radice religiosa; poiché quasi tutto nella storia ha una radice religiosa, e specialmente quasi tutto nella storia irlandese. Di quella origine teorica nella teologia dirò qualcosa tra un momento; qui basterà dire che ciò che ha prodotto il male più evidente e pratico è, in ultima analisi, la teologia stessa, ma non l’abitudine a essere teologici. È il credo; ma non la fede. Nella misura in cui il protestante dell’Ulster ha davvero una fede, è davvero un bravo tipo; benché forse non così bravo come si crede. E questo è l’abisso; e lo si può enunciare nel modo più breve, come spesso l’ho enunciato in simili dibattiti, dicendo che il protestante di solito dice: «Sono un buon protestante», mentre il cattolico dice sempre: «Sono un cattivo cattolico». Quando dico che Belfast è dominata da un sogno, lo intendo nel senso psicologico stretto; che qualcosa dentro la mente è più forte di tutto ciò che le sta fuori. L’assurdo non è solo più forte del senno, ma più forte dei sensi. L’idea nella testa di un uomo può eclissare gli occhi nella sua testa. Mercanti degnissimi e gentilissimi mi dissero che a Belfast non c’era povertà. Non dissero che c’era meno povertà di quanto comunemente si affermasse, o meno povertà di prima, o meno che in luoghi simili altrove. Dissero che non ce n’era affatto. Come osservazione sul Paradiso Terrestre o sulla Nuova Gerusalemme, sarebbe impressionante. Come osservazione sulle strade, per cui loro ed io eravamo entrambi passati pochi istanti prima, era semplicemente un trionfo della pura follia dell’immaginazione dell’uomo. Questi eminenti cittadini di Belfast mi accolsero nel modo più gentile e cortese; e non direi volentieri nulla a loro critica al di là di ciò che è necessario per le esigenze pratiche del loro paese e del mio. Ma in verità credo che la critica più grande che si possa muover loro sia che non capirebbero cosa la critica significhi. La rivestirò dunque in una parabola, che non è men buona per essere stata anche un fatto reale. Quando mi si disse che a Belfast non c’era povertà, osservai mitemente che la gente doveva avere un gusto singolare nel vestire. Mi fu gravemente assicurato che avevano davvero un gusto singolarissimo nel vestire. Ne trassi l’impressione generale che portare camicie o pantaloni decorati di larghi buchi a intervalli irregolari fosse una forma scusabile di civetteria o di stravaganza alla moda. E sarà sempre una gioia profonda e intima, nei ricordi della mia vita, che proprio mentre questi padri della città ed io uscivamo sui gradini dell’albergo, comparve davanti a noi uno dei più cenciosi ragazzini cenciosi che avessi visto, a chiedere un penny. Gli diedi un penny, al che questo gruppo di mercanti si trasfigurò d’un tratto in una sorta di plebaglia, vociferando: «Contro la legge! Contro la legge!», e lo cacciarono via in fretta. Spero non sia poco amabile essermi tanto divertito a quella visione di una folla di magistrati che scacciava con tanto zelo un bambino solitario come un gatto. Comunque sia, non sapevano quel che facevano; e, quel che è peggio, non sapevano di non saperlo. E non capirebbero, se glielo dicessi, quale leggenda si sarebbe potuta comporre attorno a quel bambino, nelle età cristiane del mondo. Il punto è qui che il male dell’illusione non consiste nel bigottismo, ma nella vanità. Non è che un tale uomo di Belfast si creda nel giusto; ché ogni uomo onesto ha il diritto di credersi nel giusto. È che si crede buono, per non dire grande; e nessun uomo onesto può giungere a quella comoda convinzione senza un percorso di disonestà intellettuale. Ciò che separa questo spirito dal buon senso cristiano è il fatto che l’illusione, come la maggior parte delle illusioni insane, è meramente egoistica. È semplicemente il piacere di pensare stravagantemente bene di sé; e l’illimitato abbandonarsi a quel piacere fiacca assai più di qualsiasi abbandono al bere o alla dissipazione. Ma esso costruisce così completamente un cosmo irreale attorno all’io, che la critica del mondo non può essere avvertita neppure a fini mondani. Potrei dare molti esempi di questo elemento a Belfast, anche a paragone di Birmingham o Manchester. Il sindaco di Manchester può darsi non s’intenda molto di quadri; ma conosce uomini che se ne intendono. Ma le autorità di Belfast esporranno un quadro maniacalmente brutto come un capolavoro, solo perché glorifica Belfast. Nessuno oserebbe appendere un quadro simile a Manchester, a un tiro di sasso dal signor Charles Rowley. M’importa relativamente poco del caso dell’estetica; ma il caso è ancor più chiaro nell’etica. Tanto interamente questa gente è divisa dalle tradizioni più cristiane, che i loro stessi vanti li abbassano; e si degradano quando intendono esaltarsi. Non viene loro mai in mente che i loro strani criteri interni non sempre impressionano gli estranei. Un grande datore di lavoro mi presentò diversi dei suoi impiegati assai intelligenti; e posso volentieri testimoniare la sincerità della grande illusione di Belfast anche fra molti degli uomini più poveri di Belfast. Ma i sinceri sforzi loro e del loro padrone, per convincermi che un’unione con la maggioranza cattolica sotto il Home Rule era per loro intollerabile, andavano tutti sulla stessa aria, che tornava come una specie di ritornello: «Non lasceremo che gente come loro faccia leggi per gente come noi». Non sembrava mai sfiorare loro la mente che questo non sia un alto esempio di alcuna moralità umana; che, giudicato dalla verecundia pagana o dall’umiltà cristiana o dalla moderna fratellanza democratica, è semplicemente l’osservazione di uno snob. L’uomo in questione è del tutto innocente di tutto ciò; non ha nozione della modestia, e nemmeno della falsa modestia; non solo è superiore, ma ritiene una superiorità rivendicare la superiorità. È qui che non possiamo evitare la teologia, perché non possiamo evitare la teoria. Poiché il punto è che perfino in teoria l’una atmosfera religiosa ora differisce dall’altra. Che la differenza abbia storicamente una radice religiosa è davvero indiscutibile; ma comunque è radicata profondissimamente. L’essenza del calvinismo era la certezza della salvezza; l’essenza del cattolicesimo è l’incertezza della salvezza. La forma moderna e materializzata di quella certezza è la superiorità; la fede di un uomo in una fissa aristocrazia morale di uomini come lui. Ma la verità che qui ci riguarda è che, ormai a questo punto quantomeno, la superiorità è diventata una dottrina oltre che un vezzo. Dubito che questa scuola estrema di protestanti creda nell’umiltà cristiana anche solo come ideale. Dubito che i più onesti fra loro professerebbero anche solo di crederci. Lo si può vedere chiaramente confrontandola con altre virtù cristiane; delle quali questo calvinismo decaduto offre almeno una versione, anche a chi la ritiene una perversione. Il Puritanesimo è una versione della purezza; anche se lo riteniamo una parodia della purezza. La filantropia è una versione della carità; anche se la riteniamo una parodia della carità. Ma in tutto questo protestantesimo commerciale non c’è alcuna versione dell’umiltà; non c’è nemmeno una parodia dell’umiltà. L’Umiltà non è un ideale. L’Umiltà non è nemmeno un’ipocrisia. Non c’è istituzione, né comandamento, né formula comune di parole, né modello popolare o racconto tradizionale, che dica ad alcuno, in qualsivoglia modo, che esista una cosa come il pericolo dell’orgoglio spirituale. In breve, c’è qui una scuola di pensiero e di sentimento che considera decisamente la soddisfazione di sé una forza; contro la forte tradizione cristiana del resto del paese, che altrettanto decisamente la considera una debolezza. Questo è il vero nodo morale nella lotta moderna in Irlanda; né è confinato all’Irlanda. L’Inghilterra è stata profondamente contagiata da questa debolezza farisaica; ma, come ho detto, l’Inghilterra prende le cose vagamente là dove l’Irlanda le prende vividamente. Gli uomini di Belfast offrono quella città come qualcosa di supremo, unico e senza rivali; e hanno quasi ragione. Non c’è nulla di esattamente simile nell’industrialismo di questo paese; ma nondimeno, la lotta contro la sua religione dell’arroganza è stata combattuta fino in fondo altrove e su un campo più vasto. C’è un altro centro e cittadella da cui questa teoria, della forza in una superiorità autoipnotica, ha disprezzato la cristianità. C’è stata una città rivale di Belfast; e il suo nome era Berlino. Storici di tutte le religioni e di nessuna religione potranno un giorno considerare un fatto storico, immagino, che la Riforma protestante del Cinquecento (almeno nella forma che effettivamente assunse) fu un crollo barbarico, come quel prussianesimo che fu il prodotto ultimo del protestantesimo. Ma comunque sia, gli storici avranno sempre interesse a notare che esso produsse certe cose curiose e caratteristiche; che val la pena studiare, che ci piacciano o no. E uno dei suoi tratti, immagino, è stato questo: che ha avuto il potere di produrre certe istituzioni le quali progredirono assai rapidamente verso grande ricchezza e potere; che il mondo in un certo momento reputò invincibili; e che il mondo, l’attimo dopo, scoprì d’un tratto intollerabili. Così fu di tutta quella teologia calvinista, di cui Belfast resta ora il solitario missionario. Così fu, perfino ai nostri giorni, di tutto quel capitalismo industriale di cui Belfast è ora l’avamposto assediato e quasi deserto. E così fu di Berlino come di Belfast; e un sottile prussiano potrebbe quasi lamentare una sorta di tradimento, nella bruschezza con cui il mondo si destò e la trovò mancante; nella subitaneità della reazione che la colpì impotente, così poco dopo che era stata reputata onnipotente. Queste cose sembrano racchiudere tutto l’avvenire; e in un lampo sono cose del passato. Belfast è una novità antiquata. Una cosa simile viene ancora scusata per il suo apparire parvenu quando la si scopre passé. Per esempio, è solo venendo a contatto con alcune delle controversie attorno alla Convention che un inglese potrebbe rendersi conto di quanto la mentalità del capo di Belfast sia non tanto quella di un remoto Whig del Seicento, quanto quella di un recente Radicale dell’Ottocento. Il suo conformismo pareva quello di un vittoriano più che di un guglielmita; e pareva meno circoscritto dalla Confraternita Orangista che dal Cobden Club. È un fatto assai efficacemente ricoperto e imbrattato dai grossi pennelli del nostro Sistema dei Partiti, che ha l’arte di nascondere tanti fatti lampanti. Questo Partito Unionista in Irlanda è in larghissima parte inteso a resistere alla principale riforma propugnata dal Partito Unionista in Inghilterra. Un umorista politico, che comprendesse la tradizione cobdeniana di Belfast e la tradizione chamberlainiana di Birmingham, potrebbe divertirsi immensamente appellandosi dall’una all’altra; congratulandosi con Belfast per le audaci dottrine protezioniste prevalenti in Irlanda; scongiurando il signor Bonar Law e i riformatori delle tariffe di non dimenticare mai la battaglia condotta da Belfast per i sacri principii del Libero Scambio. Ma il fatto che la scuola di Belfast sia semplicemente la scuola di Manchester è solo un aspetto di questa verità generale sul brusco crollo nell’antichità; un’improvvisa messa in pensione. L’intera marcia di quell’industrialismo di Manchester non è solo arrestata ma rovesciata; l’intera posizione è aggirata da nuove forze che giungono da nuove direzioni; la ricchezza dei contadini le blocca la strada davanti; lo sciopero generale s’è levato a minacciarle le spalle. Quella strana nube di vanità che protegge sé stessa può ancora permettere a Belfast di credere in Belfast, ma la Gran Bretagna non crede davvero in Belfast. Forze filosofiche assai più ampie e profonde della politica hanno minato la concezione di un protestantesimo progressista in Irlanda. Direi io stesso che la mera ascendenza inglese in quell’isola divenne intellettualmente impossibile il giorno in cui Shaftesbury introdusse il primo Factory Act, e il giorno in cui Newman pubblicò le prime pagine dell’Apologia. Entrambi erano certamente Tory e probabilmente unionisti. Nessuno dei due era legato all’argomento né l’uno all’altro; l’uno odiava il Papa e l’altro il Liberatore. Ma l’industrialismo non fu mai più autoevidentemente superiore dopo il primo evento, né il protestantesimo autoevidentemente superiore dopo l’altro. E occorreva una superiorità torreggiante e autoevidente per scusare il dominio inglese in Irlanda. È solo sul terreno del fare indiscutibilmente il bene che gli uomini possono fare tanto male quanto quello. Alcuni orangisti prima della guerra si concedettero un bel paragone retorico tra Guglielmo di Prussia e Guglielmo d’Orange; e apertamente suggerirono che il nuovo Liberatore protestante del nord sarebbe venuto dalla Germania settentrionale. I miei ospiti più moderati a Belfast mi assicurarono che tali orangisti non potevano considerarsi rappresentativi né tantomeno responsabili. Su ciò non posso pronunciarmi. Gli orangisti potevano non essere rappresentativi; potevano non essere responsabili; ma sono ben certo che avevano ragione. Sono ben certo che quei poveri fanatici erano assai più vicini al nervo della verità storica che non politicanti di professione come Sir Edward Carson o capitalisti industriali come Sir George Clark. Se mai vi fu al mondo un’alleanza naturale, sarebbe stata l’alleanza tra Belfast e Berlino. I fanatici saranno pure sciocchi, ma hanno qui la luce per cui le cose stolte possono confondere i sapienti. È il punto più luminoso di Belfast, il bigottismo, poiché se la luce nel suo corpo è tenebra, è pur sempre più luminosa della tenebra. Per quella visione che accompagna ovunque la virilità e la grandezza della religione, questi uomini hanno davvero penetrato il segreto protestante e il significato di quattrocento anni. Il loro protestantesimo è prussianesimo, non come termine ingiurioso, ma come termine di astratta e imparziale scienza etica. Belfast e Berlino stanno dalla stessa parte nella più profonda di tutte le questioni spirituali implicate nella guerra. E questa è la semplice questione se l’orgoglio sia un peccato, e dunque una debolezza. La mentalità moderna, o gran parte di essa, ha seriamente sostenuto l’idea che sia una debolezza disarmare la critica con l’autocritica, e una forza sdegnare la critica per mezzo della fiducia in sé. Questa è la tesi per cui Berlino diede battaglia alla civiltà più antica in Europa; e quella per cui Belfast diede battaglia alla civiltà più antica in Irlanda. Può darsi, come ho suggerito, che tale orgoglio protestante sia il vecchio calvinismo, con la sua fissa elezione dei pochi. Può darsi che il protestantesimo sia semplicemente paganesimo, coi suoi dèi bestiali e i giganti attardati negli angoli del nord più selvaggio. Può darsi che il calvinismo fosse esso stesso un riaffiorare del paganesimo. Ma in ogni caso, sono certo che questa superiorità, che può dominare gli uomini come un incubo, può anche svanire come un incubo. E sospetto fortemente che anche in questa materia, come nella materia della proprietà vista da un popolo di contadini, la civiltà più antica si rivelerà la vera civiltà; e che una società più sana tornerà a considerare l’orgoglio una pestilenza, come i socialisti sono già tornati a considerare l’avarizia una pestilenza. L’antica tradizione della cristianità voleva che la forma più alta di fede fosse un dubbio. Era il dubbio di un uomo sulla propria anima. Me lo espresse mirabilmente il signor Yeats, ora campione dell’ortodossia cattolica, nel dichiarare la sua preferenza per il cattolicesimo medievale a paragone del moderno umanitarismo: «Gli uomini pensavano allora ai propri peccati, e ora pensano sempre a quelli altrui». E perfino secondo il criterio protestante del progresso, l’orgoglio si rivela arrestato da una paralisi prematura. Il progresso è superiorità su sé stessi; ed è fermato di netto dalla superiorità sugli altri. Il caso è ancor più chiaro alla prova della poesia, che è assai più solida e permanente del progresso. Il Superuomo sarà stato una sorta di poema; ma non poté mai essere una sorta di poeta. Più tentiamo di analizzare quello strano elemento della meraviglia, che è l’anima di tutte le arti, più vedremo che esso deve dipendere da una certa subordinazione dell’io a una gloria che esiste al di là di esso, e perfino a suo dispetto. L’uomo si sente sempre creatura quando agisce da creatore. Quando scolpisce una cattedrale è per fare un mostro capace di inghiottirlo. Ma l’incubo nietzschiano di inghiottire il mondo non è che una specie di sbadiglio. Quando l’anarca evoluzionista ha spezzato tutti i legami e le leggi ed è finalmente libero di parlare, scopre di non aver nulla da dire. Così i canti tedeschi sotto l’aquila imperiale ammutolirono come uccelli canori sotto uno sparviero; ed è solo di rado, qua e là, che un mercante di Belfast libera la propria anima in una lirica. Deve farsi scrivere dal signor Kipling una poesia su Belfast, in uno stile tecnicamente intonato ai quadri di Belfast. Ecco la vera Tara dell’arpa silenziosa, e il trono e la dimora del sogno; ed è là che i pessimisti celtici dovrebbero piangere in silenzio la fine del canto. Suonare la propria tromba non s’è rivelato una buona educazione musicale. In logica un uomo saggio metterà sempre il carro davanti al cavallo. Vale a dire, metterà sempre il fine davanti ai mezzi; quando considera la questione nel suo insieme. Non costruisce un carro allo scopo di far esercitare un cavallo. Impiega un cavallo per tirare un carro, e qualunque cosa vi sia nel carro. In tutto il ragionare moderno c’è la tendenza a rendere la mera bestia da soma politica più importante del cocchio dell’uomo che essa deve trainare. Ciò ha portato a liquidare tutte queste questioni spirituali in favore di ciò che si chiamano questioni sociali; e questo a un trattamento troppo facile di cose come la questione religiosa a Belfast. C’è una questione religiosa; e non avrà una risposta irreligiosa. Non le si farà fronte con la limitazione della fede cristiana, ma piuttosto con l’estensione della carità cristiana. Ma se un uomo dice che non c’è differenza tra un protestante e un cattolico, e che entrambi possono agire in modo identico dovunque tranne che in una chiesa o cappella, sta guidando follemente il cavallo da tiro avendo dimenticato il carro. Una religione non è la chiesa in cui un uomo va, ma il cosmo in cui vive; e se qualche scettico lo dimentica, il più forsennato fanatico che batte un tamburo orangista sulla Battaglia del Boyne è un filosofo migliore di lui. Molte persone incolte e alcune colte a Belfast credono, in tutta sincerità, che i preti romani siano demoni, in attesa solo di riaccendere i fuochi dell’Inquisizione. Per due semplici ragioni, tuttavia, mi rifiutai di prendere questo fatto come prova di alcunché, se non della loro sincerità. Primo, perché le storie, ridotte al loro rudimento di verità, si risolvevano in genere nell’enigma di poveri cattolici romani che davano denaro alla propria religione; e parevano deplorare non tanto una dipendenza dai preti quanto un’indipendenza dai datori di lavoro. E secondo, per una ragione tratta dalla mia esperienza, oltre che dal sapere comune, riguardo alla gentry protestante del sud dell’Irlanda. Gli unionisti del sud parlavano del tutto privi di questo speciale orrore verso i preti o i contadini cattolici. Brontolavano contro di loro o ne ridevano come un uomo brontola o ride dei propri vicini; ma evidentemente non sognavano che il prete li bruciasse più di quanto sognassero che li mangiasse. Se i preti fossero neri come li dipingevano i neri protestanti, sarebbero al loro peggio là dove sono in maggioranza; e sarebbero conosciuti al loro peggio dalla minoranza. Era chiaro che Belfast serbava la tradizione più bigotta, non perché conoscesse di più i preti, ma perché ne conosceva di meno; non perché fosse sul posto, ma perché il posto le era precluso. Un’illusione ancor più generale era l’idea che tutti gli irlandesi del sud sognassero e non lavorassero. Feci notare che anche questo era incoerente con l’esperienza concreta; giacché in tutto il mondo chi fa rendere una piccola fattoria deve lavorare davvero durissimo. In realtà storica, la vecchia nozione che il contadino irlandese non lavorasse, ma solo sognasse, aveva una spiegazione semplice. Significava soltanto che non lavorava per il profitto di un capitalista; ma sognava di lavorare un giorno per il proprio profitto. Ma nella tradizione può esserci stata anche questa verità distorta; che un contadino libero, mentre estende il proprio lavoro, si crea le proprie feste. Non è ozioso tutto il giorno, ma può essere ozioso in qualunque momento del giorno; non sogna ogni volta che ne ha voglia, ma sogna ogni volta che lo decide. Un famoso industriale di Belfast, uomo di capacità, ma che scuoteva il capo davanti all’inspiegabile prevalenza dei preti, mi assicurò di aver visto contadini nel sud non far nulla, alle ore più disparate; e questa è senza dubbio la differenza tra la fattoria e la fabbrica. Lo stesso signore mi fece visitare il colossale naviglio del grande porto, con tutti i macchinari e i trasporti che vi conducevano. Nessun uomo dotato di immaginazione resterebbe insensibile a simili esperimenti titanici della propria razza; o negherebbe la cupa poesia di quelle fornaci degne di Vulcano o di quei magli degni di Thor. Ma mentre stavo sulla banchina dissi alla mia guida: «Vi siete mai chiesto a che serva tutto questo?» Era un uomo intelligente, un esule dalla metafisica Scozia, e capì cosa intendevo. «Non lo so», disse, «forse siamo solo insetti che costruiscono una barriera corallina. Non so a che serva la barriera corallina.» «Forse», dissi, «è di questo che il contadino sogna, ed è per questo che ascolta il prete.» Poiché sembra esserci una fallacia alla moda secondo cui l’uguaglianza religiosa è qualcosa da sbrigare e liquidare, per poter passare alla vera faccenda dell’uguaglianza politica. In filosofia è vero l’esatto contrario. L’uguaglianza politica è qualcosa da sbrigare e liquidare, per poter passare alla ben più reale faccenda della religione. All’Abbey Theatre vidi un vigoroso dramma del signor St. John Ervine, intitolato The Mixed Marriage; che ricorderei se non altro per la bella interpretazione della signorina Maire O’Neill. Ma il dramma mi commosse moltissimo come dramma; eppure sentii che la presenza di questa fallacia lo falsificava in qualche misura. Il drammaturgo pareva risentirsi di uno scisma solo perché interferiva con uno sciopero. Ma l’unico scopo dello scioperare è la libertà; e l’unico scopo della libertà è la vita: cosa interamente spirituale. È la libertà economica che andrebbe liquidata come questa gente liquida la teologia. La otteniamo solo per dimenticarla. È giusto che gli uomini abbiano case, giusto che abbiano terra, giusto che abbiano leggi a protezione della terra; ma tutte queste cose sono solo macchinari per procurare ozio all’anima che lavora. La casa è solo un palcoscenico allestito dai macchinisti per la recita di ciò che il signor J. B. Yeats ha chiamato «il dramma del focolare». Tutte le cose più drammatiche accadono in casa, dal nascere al morire. Ciò che un uomo pensa di queste cose è la sua vita; e sostituirvi un affaccendarsi di campagne elettorali e legislazione è aggirarsi tra quinte e carrucole sul lato sbagliato di scenari di cartone; e non recitare mai il dramma. E quel dramma è sempre una sacra rappresentazione; e il nome del suo eroe è Everyman. Quando tornai dallo splendore desolato del mare e della costa del Donegal, e rividi il giardino quadrato e la statua fuori dall’albergo di Dublino, non sapevo di tornare a qualcosa che si sarebbe ben potuto dire ancor più desolato. Poiché fu quando entrai nell’albergo che per la prima volta scoprii che era colmo dell’orribile tragedia del Leinster. Avevo visto spesso la morte in una casa, ma mai la morte che decimava una vasta locanda; e c’era qualcosa di stranamente sconvolgente nei posti vuoti di uomini e donne con cui avevo chiacchierato tanto oziosamente pochi giorni prima. Era quasi come se vi fosse più tragedia nel troncare di simili chiacchiere insignificanti che nel recidere legami di una vita intera. Ma c’era tutta la dignità oltre che la tragedia dell’uomo; e fui lieto, prima di lasciare l’Irlanda, di aver visto il lato più nobile della guarnigione anglo-irlandese; e di aver conosciuto uomini del mio stesso sangue, per quanto in errore, sopportare così la fine delle cose. Con le cattive notizie dal mare giunsero notizie migliori dalla guerra; Mangin aveva sferrato il colpo clamoroso che tagliò fuori i tedeschi mentre marciavano su Châlons; e con tutte le emozioni di un esule, per quanto temporaneo, seppi che la mia terra era al sicuro. In qualche modo, le cattive e le buone notizie insieme volsero la mia mente sempre più verso l’Inghilterra; e verso tutto l’umorismo intimo e la geniale bonarietà insulare che perfino agli irlandesi un giorno sarà forse concesso di comprendere. Mentre volgevo verso casa sul primo battello che partì dal porto irlandese, e le colline di Wicklow arretravano in una luce piovosa e spezzata, era con i più semplici di quegli antichi appetiti con cui un uomo dovrebbe tornare al proprio paese. Solo che mi si aggrappava, innegabile, un sentimento riguardo all’Irlanda, un sentimento che non potevo trasferire all’Inghilterra; che mi chiamava come un paese degli elfi di tante figure liete, da Puck a Pickwick. Guardando quelle colline piovose, sapevo almeno che stavo guardando, forse per l’ultima volta, qualcosa di radicato nella fede cristiana. Là almeno l’ideale cristiano era qualcosa di più di un ideale; era, in un senso speciale, reale. Era tanto reale da comparire perfino nelle statistiche. Era tanto autoevidente da essere visto perfino dai sociologi. Era una terra dove la nostra religione aveva reso visibile perfino la propria visione. Aveva reso popolari perfino le proprie virtù impopolari. Dovrà essere, nei tempi a venire, un banco di prova ultimo, per stabilire se un popolo che prenderà quel nome sul serio, e perfino solidamente, sia destinato a soffrire o a riuscire. Mentre la lunga linea della costa montuosa si dispiegava davanti a me ebbi un’illusione ottica; può darsi che molti l’abbiano avuta prima. Man mano che nuovi tratti di costa e linee di alture si dispiegavano, ebbi la fantasia che l’intera terra non arretrasse ma avanzasse, come qualcosa che spalanca le braccia al mondo. Un casuale brandello di sole si posava, come uno stendardo lacerato, sul colle che credo si chiami in irlandese la Montagna delle Lance d’Oro; e avrei potuto immaginare che le lance e lo stendardo stessero avanzando. E in quel lampo ricordai che gli uomini di quest’isola erano un tempo usciti, non come torce di conquistatori o distruttori; ma come missionari nella piena mezzanotte dei Secoli Bui, come una moltitudine di candele in cammino, che furono la luce del mondo. Fine