bill unless there were substantial agreement between the parties. This meant the collapse of the whole effort, Mr. Lloyd George asserting that it was impossible to bring the Act into operation during the war except on the terms announced by the Prime Minister. Mr. Redmond, for his part, pointed out the " de- plorable effects in Ireland " of the failure of the down'of Government to carry out the terms of the agreement, tne^Nezo- a failure which was bound to increase Irish suspicion nations. o f their good faith, and ended by announcing that, while he would continue to support the war, he would henceforth hold himself free to criticize the conduct of the Government.
The temper of the Nationalists was not improved by Mr. Asquith's announcement on July 31 that Mr. (afterwards Sir Henry) Duke, a Unionist, had been appointed to succeed Mr. Birrell as Chief Secretary, and by the further appointment of Mr. (afterwards Sir) James Campbell, junior member for Trinity College and Sir Edward Carson's lieutenant in the Ulster movement, as Irish Attorney-General. This " restora- tion of the Castle regime, with a Unionist executive " was, in Mr. Redmond's language, another insult to Ireland, and on Aug. i a Nationalist meeting in Dublin protested against it.
The only gainers by Mr. Asquith's unfortunate attempts at a settlement by compromise were the Sinn Feiners, who from this moment never allowed the Irish people to Decline of forget that Mr. Redmond and his party had con- OTon^rs" sented to the " partition of Ireland." Mr. Redmond influence, did his best to undo these disastrous effects of his moderation. When, in the autumn, the question of extending the Military Service Act to Ireland was again raised, and its extension strongly supported by Irish Unionists, he threw himself into violent opposition. To his constituents at Waterford, on Oct. 6, he said that " conscription " was the most fatal thing that could happen to Ireland, and on the i8th, two days after the publication of the report of the Royal Com- mission on the shooting of Mr. Sheehy-Skefnngton, 1 he moved a resolution in the House of Commons practically amounting to a vote of censure; charged the Government with maintaining in Ireland a system of administration inconsistent with the principles for which the Allies were fighting; demanded the recall of Gen. Maxwell and the abrogation of martial law; asked for the release of 500 untried prisoners, and the treatment of the rest as prisoners of war; and ended by adjuring the Govern- ment to show its trust of the Irish people by putting the Home Rule Act into immediate operation.
To all this Mr. Asquith replied, with perfect accuracy, that
though martial law existed in Ireland, it was not in operation, 2
the occasional suspensions of the right to trial by
"i!aw "'/n J ury being under the Defence of the Realm Act. Mr.
Ireland. Duke, the Chief Secretary, said with equal truth that
the real obstacle to Home Rule was the disagreement
among Irishmen, and that the only chance of obtaining it was
for them to present an agreed scheme to Parliament. As for
1 Mr. Sheehy-Skeffington, with two others, had been captured in the streets by a small party of soldiers under Capt. Bowen Coul- thurst and taken as prisoner to Portobello Barracks. All three were subsequently shot by order of Bowen Coulthurst. This officer was tried by court-martial and was adjudged to be insane; his mind had been affected at the front, he had been sent to Dublin to " rest," and it was held that the horror and excitement at the outbreak of the rebellion had developed what the evidence showed to be religious mania. The Royal Commission found that Mr. Skeffington had no connexion with the rebellion, that he was in principle a " pacifist," and that he had been engaged in making an appeal to prevent looting and violence. He belonged, however, to the Sinn Fein organization, had taken an active part in the Republican propaganda, and had lectured in the United States against the cause of the Allies. In view of the fact that Mrs. Sheehy-Skeffington, during her lecture tour in America, denounced the " cruel English eyes " of the un- fortunate young officer who killed her husband, it is necessary to add that he was not English, but belonged to a very old Irish family.
2 The present writer was in Dublin during this year and is able to vouch for the truth of this. The life of the ordinary citizen, after the removal of the curfew and other restrictions which immediately followed the rebellion, was absolutely uninterfered with. The powers under martial law were merely held in reserve to be used in case of
" martial law," peaceful Irish subjects must be protected, and there were men still free in Ireland who were ready at the first opportunity to repeat the proceedings of Easter week.
That this was true, and that these men were still looking for help to Germany, is proved by the intercepted correspondence of Count Bernstorff, the German ambassador in Washington. " No parades of volunteers are allowed," wrote an anonymous correspondent to him on June 30 1916, " the organization is supposed to be dead, but they are keeping in touch with each other and their spirit is excellent. Very few arms have been given up in the country and no munitions. . . . Though many arms are hidden safely there are not sufficient for future offence, unless supplemented. . . . Our present position is this: There is not a leader left. The men are there and the women too, full of spirit, but all the real brains of the organization are dead or locked up. Anyone who could voice the desires of the coun- try to be represented at the Peace Conference is not here to do it. ... What we need now is to get into touch with America if possible. . . . Teh 1 John Devoy and the Clan-na-Gael that our hearts are full of courage, but that we count on them to help us." The fear that a measure of Home Rule might be granted and that John Redmond might go to the Peace Conference as Ireland's representative torments the writer: " Better martial law and Gen. Maxwell." 3
There was in fact no martial law in Ireland; for martial law implies the entire supersession of the ordinary law, of which Mr. Duke, the new Chief Secretary, was a meticu- lously jealous guardian. The result of the consequent R* vlval friction between the civil and military authorities sinn Fein. presently became apparent ; on Nov. 5 Gen. Maxwell was recalled, under pressure from the Nationalist members in Parliament; and Sinn Fein, which had fallen silent during the months succeeding the rebellion, gathered courage to revive its active propaganda.
On Dec. 9 The Irishman explained the policy of Sinn Fein to be " a combination of passive resistance to foreign aggression and of a coordinated development of national resources, together with the fostering of national characteristics. It rejects Parliamentarism and other such methods, and seeks in a National Council a lever to upset the whole foreign administration of the country." 4 On the 3Oth New Ireland appeared with an article deploring the life-long imprisonment of Eoin MacNeill, who "saw in the Irish Volunteers the only protection against the armed violence of the Primrose League and its dupes," another entitled " Ireland's Revenge " ascribing the refusal of conscription in Australia to the effect of the Easter week rebellion, and yet another (" What will Ireland do?") in which a Catholic curate argued that it was not to Ireland's inter- est to help to " put down Germany " and compared the lot of Ireland under the British unfavourably with that of Belgium or Poland under the Germans.
Early in 1917 the police reported that the seditious press was becoming very daring and that its influence was probably increasing. On Feb. 17 a new Sinn Fein weekly, the Irish World, made its appearance, and on the same day Mr. Arthur Griffith resumed the publication of Nationality with an article in which he denounced Mr. Redmond for his speech of May 3 1916, in which he had spoken of the " guilt " of the instigators and promoters of the rebellion. All this, in the language of the police reports, was " a bold renewal of the campaign carried out before the rebellion," and both Gen. Sir Brian Mahon, who had succeeded Gen. Maxwell in the Irish command, and the heads of the police pressed the Chief Secretary to take strong measures. Mr. Duke, however, declined to direct the seizure of these papers, and the seditious propaganda, as in Mr. Birrell's day, went on practically unchecked.
absolute necessity. An extraordinary latitude, not to say licence, was allowed to the seditious press, and even to seditious action so long as it kept within certain limits and did not threaten to lead to breaches of the peace.
3 Documents relative to the Sinn Fein Movement (Cmd. 1108), p. 17.
4 Note that, with the exception of the Chief Secretary, the whole administration of the country was at that time in the hands of Irishmen. The " Castle " is the name given to the whole group of buildings occupying the site of the old royal castle in Dublin, in- cluding the Lord Lieutenant's town residence and the Irish Gov- ernment offices.
