audacity was attempted in the case of France. Ireland was adjured to fight for France because France had of old helped Ireland—against England! Another cry was, "The brutal Germans are the descendants of those Hessian troops who helped to put down the rising of 1798." But who brought the Hessians to Ireland and paid them? The English Government. In this fashion has every recruiting argument proved a boomerang. Despite the subsidizing of the daily and the suppression of the weekly press; despite the pressure exerted by all the political machines and all the influence of social and economic resources; despite the prosecution, under the Defense of the Realm Act, of any who venture to advise an opposite course; despite military law, suspension of trial by jury, arbitrary imprisonment, and deportation, the Irish people have stood fast. Four hundred thousand Irishmen of military age have stood their ground quietly and tenaciously, and have refused to be stampeded into a war in which they have no concern.[1]
For it is the essence of the Irish case that Ireland has no concern in this war. The pretense that it was being waged in behalf of Belgium and of the principle of small nationalities imposed on a few, but not for long; the frank declaration of the London "Times" on March 8 that England is in this war for her own interests and for the preservation of her dominance over the seas, is generally recognized as stating the position accurately. Even if Belgium were the cause of the war instead of an incident in it, there would still be no reason why Ireland, of all countries, should plunge into the fray. Ireland is the most depopulated and impoverished country in Europe, thanks to the beneficent English rule of the last century, and has no blood or money to spare; and if Holland and Denmark and Sweden and Switzerland, all richer and more densely populated than Ireland, still feel that it is their duty to keep out of the war, a fortiori it is the duty of Irish statesmen to use every effort to keep their people out of it. Ireland's highest need is peace and the peaceful development of her resources; not a man can be spared for any chivalric adventure. Belgium, hard pressed as it is, has not yet suffered a tithe of what has been endured by Ireland at the hands of England, and
- ↑ Note.—In the autumn of 1917, two years after this article was written, it still remained true that approximately this number of Irishmen of military age have refused to join in a war for democracy, as the issue has now come to be defined, while England continues to refuse democracy to Ireland, and governs there, as she always has, by conquest and without "the consent of the governed."
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