CHAPTER XV
Babberly is in some ways a singularly unlucky man. A place for him, and that a high one, ought to have been quite secure in the next Unionist Cabinet. Now he will never hold office under any government, and yet no one can say that his collapse was in any way his own fault.
On the very day on which the Chancellor of the Exchequer received Godfrey’s letter, Babberly announced his intention of holding another Unionist demonstration in Belfast. He did not mean any harm by this. He intended nothing worse than another eloquent speech and expected nothing more serious than the usual cheers. He regards demonstrations very much as my nephew Godfrey does garden-parties. They are troublesome functions, requiring a good deal of labour and care for their successful accomplishment, but they are necessary. People expect something of the kind from time to time; and—if I do not give garden-parties, I should not, so Godfrey says, keep up my position in the county. If Babberly did not, so to speak, give demonstrations he would lose his position in the political world. Babberly’s position is, of course, vastly more important than mine.
Moyne, goaded on I suppose by Lady Moyne, wrote a letter to the papers—perhaps I should say published a manifesto—urging the extreme importance of Babberly’s demonstration. This was necessary because McNeice and O’Donovan, in The Loyalist, had lately adopted a sneering tone about demonstrations. And The Loyalist was becoming an effective force in the guidance of Ulster opinion. Thanks to the exertions of Crossan, Malcolmson and some others the paper was very widely circulated and wherever it went it was read. Lady Moyne, I knew, disliked The Loyalist and was uneasy about the tone of its articles. She felt it necessary to stimulate the popular taste for demonstrations, and wrote Moyne’s manifesto for him. It was a very good manifesto, full of weighty words about the present crisis and the necessity of standing shoulder to shoulder against the iniquitous plot of the Government for the dismemberment of the Empire.
Very much to my surprise, and I am sure to Lady Moyne’s, The Loyalist printed a strong article in support of the proposed demonstration. Nothing could have been more flattering than its reference to Babberly and Lord Moyne; nothing better calculated to insure the success of the performance than the way in which it urged all Unionists to attend it. “Assemble in your Thousands” was the phrase used four times over in the course of the article. There was only one sentence in it which could cause any one the slightest uneasiness.
“Previous demonstrations,” so the article concluded, “have served their purpose as expressions of our unalterable convictions. This one must do something more. It must convince the world that we mean what we say.”
That, of course, was nothing more than Babberly had proclaimed a dozen times in far more eloquent language. Nor was the fact that McNeice printed the last sentence in italics particularly startling. Babberly had emphasized the same statement with all the violence possible. But, so tense was the public mind at this time, everybody was vaguely anxious and excited. We felt that McNeice attached more meaning to the words than Babberly did.
A member of the Cabinet happened to be speaking two days later at a large public meeting in Croydon. He was supposed to be explaining the advantages of the new Insurance Act to the mistresses and servants of the smaller middle-class households. There were, I believe, very few people with sufficient faith in his power of apology to go to hear him; but, of course, there were plenty of newspaper reporters. The Cabinet Minister addressed them, and, ignoring for the time the grievances of the British house-and-parlourmaid, he announced that the Government was going to stand no nonsense from Ulster.
“The leaders,” he said, “of the unfortunate dupes who are to assemble next week in Belfast, must understand once for all that in a democratically governed country the will of the majority must prevail, and His Majesty’s Government is fully determined to see that it does prevail, at any cost.”
This, again, was nothing more than the usual thing. Only the last three words conveyed anything in the nature of a threat, and many papers did not report the last three words. Babberly, I think, was quite justified in supposing that the Cabinet Minister was saying no more than, according to the rules of the game, he was bound to say; that he was, in fact, giving a garden-party of his own to keep up his position in the county. At all events Babberly replied to the Government’s pronouncement with a defiance of the boldest possible kind. The Loyalist, in a special number, published in the middle of the week, patted Babberly on the back, and said that the men of Ulster would, if necessary, assert their right of public meeting with rifles in their hands.
This was not going much further than Babberly himself had often gone in earlier stages of the controversy. It is true that he had always spoken of “arms” which is a vague word and might mean nothing worse than the familiar paving stones. The Loyalist specified the kind of arms, mentioned rifles, which are very lethal weapons. Still, viewed from a reasonable standpoint, there was nothing very alarming in the word rifles.
Two days later Moyne motored over to my house. He seemed greatly disturbed, so I took him into my study and gave him tea. While we were drinking it he told me what was the matter with him.
“Look here, Kilmore,” he said, “do you know anything about a rumour that’s flying about?”
“There are so many,” I said.
“About the importation of arms into this country.”
I had my suspicions, rather more than suspicions, for I had been thinking over the somewhat remarkable performances of Bob Power and the Finola. I did not, however, want to say anything definite until I knew how much information Moyne had. After all Bob Power had now arranged to be my son-in-law. I do not know what the law does to people who import arms into a peaceful country; but the penalty is sure to be severe, and I did not want Marion’s wedding-day to be blighted by the arrest of the bridegroom.
“They say,” said Moyne, “that some of the cargoes have been landed here under your windows.”
“I can only assure you,” I said, “that I have never in my life imported so much as a pocket pistol.”
“I had a long letter from Babberly this morning,” said Moyne. “He had an interview with the Prime Minister yesterday. It appears that the Government has some information.”
“Why doesn’t the Government act upon it then?”
“They are acting. They want me and Babberly to come out and denounce this kind of thing, to discountenance definitely—”
“That’s all well enough,” I said, “but I don’t see why you and Babberly should be expected to get the Government out of a hole. In fact it’s your business to keep them in any holes they fall into.”
“Under ordinary circumstances,” said Moyne, “we shouldn’t, of course, stir hand or foot. We’d let them stew in their own juice. And I may tell you that’s the line Babberly thinks we ought to take. But I don’t know. If there’s any truth in these rumours, and there may be, you know, it seems to me that we are face to face with a very serious business. Party politics are all right, of course; and I’m just as keen as any man to turn out this wretched Government. They’ve done mischief enough, but—well, if there’s any truth in what they say, it isn’t exactly a question of ordinary politics, and I think that every loyal man ought to stand by—”
“If there’s any truth in the rumours—” I said.
“The country’s in a queer state,” said Moyne. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“If the people have got rifles,” I said, “they’re not likely to give them up because you and Babberly tell them to.”
“Babberly says there’s nothing in it,” said Moyne, doubtfully, “and her ladyship agrees with him. She thinks it’s simply a dodge of the Government to spike our guns.”
It is curious that Moyne cannot help talking about guns, even when he’s afraid that somebody or other may really have one. He might, under the circumstances, have been expected to use some other metaphor. “Cook our goose,” for instance, would have expressed his meaning quite well, and there would have been no suggestion of gunpowder about the words.
“I don’t see,” I said, “how you can very well do anything when both Lady Moyne and Babberly are against you.”
“I can’t—I can’t, of course. And yet, don’t you know, Kilmore, I don’t know—”
I quite appreciated Moyne’s condition of mind. I myself did not know. I felt nearly certain that Bob Power had been importing arms in the Finola. I suspected that Crossan and others had been distributing them. And yet it seemed impossible to suppose that ordinary people, the men I lunched with in the club, like Malcolmson, the men who touched their hats to me on the road, like Rose’s freckly-faced lover, the quiet-looking people whom I saw at railway stations, that those people actually meant to shoot off bullets out of guns with the intention of killing other people. Of course, long ago, this sort of killing was done, but then, long ago, men believed things which we do not believe now. Perhaps I ought to say which I do not believe now. Malcolmson may still believe in what he calls “civil and religious liberty.” Crossan certainly applies his favourite epithet to the “Papishes.” He may conceivably think that they would put him on a rack if they got the chance. If he believed that he might fight. And yet the absurdity of the thing prevents serious consideration.
The fact is that our minds are so thoroughly attuned to the commonplace that we have lost the faculty of imaginative vision of unusual things. Commonplace men—I, for instance, or Babberly—can imagine a defeat of the Liberal Government or a Unionist victory at the General Election, because Liberal Governments have been defeated and Unionist victories have been won within our own memories. We cannot imagine that Malcolmson and Crossan and our large Dean would march out and kill people, because we have never known any one who did such things. Men with prophetic minds can contemplate such possibilities, because they have the power of launching themselves into the unseen. We cannot. This is the reason why cataclysms, things like the Flood recorded in the Book of Genesis, and the French Revolution, always come upon societies unprepared for them. The prophets foretell them, but the common man has not the amount of imagination which would make it possible for him to believe the prophets. “They eat and drink, marry, and are given in marriage,” until the day when the thing happens.
Looking back now and considering, in the light of what actually happened, my own frame of mind while I was talking to Moyne, I can only suppose that it was my lack of imagination which prevented my realizing the meaning of what was going on around me.
The next event which I find it necessary to chronicle is Conroy’s visit to Germany. I heard about it from Marion. She got a letter almost every day from Bob Power, and it was understood that he was to pay us a short visit at the end of that week. He explained, much to Marion’s disappointment and mine, that this visit must be postponed.
“The chief,” it was thus he wrote of Conroy, “has gone over to Germany. He’s always going over to Germany. I fancy he must have property there. But it doesn’t generally matter to me whether he goes or not. This time—worse luck—he has taken it into his head to have the yacht to meet him at Kiel. I have to go at once.”
At the moment I attached no importance whatever to Conroy’s visit to Germany. Now I have come to think that he went there on a very serious business indeed. His immense financial interests not only kept him in touch with all the money markets of the world. They also gave him a knowledge of what was being done everywhere by the great manufacturers and the inventors. Moreover Conroy’s immense wealth, when he chose to use it, enabled him to get things done for him very quietly. He could secure the delivery of goods which he ordered in unconventional ways, in unusual places. He could, for instance, by means of lavish expenditure and personal interviews, arrange to have guns put unobtrusively into innocent looking tramp steamers and transhipped from them in lonely places to the hold of the Finola. Whether the German Government had any idea of what was going on I do not know. Foreign governments are supposed to be well supplied with information about the manufacture and destination of munitions of war. The English Government, I am sure, had not up to the last moment any definite information. Its suspicions were of the very vaguest kind before the Chancellor of the Exchequer received Godfrey’s letter.
The Belfast demonstration—Babberly’s defiance of the Government’s warning—was fixed for the first Monday in September. On the 24th of August, ten days before the demonstration, The Loyalist became a daily instead of a weekly paper. Its circulation increased immediately. It was on sale everywhere in the north of Ireland, and it was delivered with striking regularity in out of the way places in which it was almost impossible to get any other daily paper. It continued to press upon its readers the necessity of attending Babberly’s demonstration in Belfast. It said, several times over, that the demonstration was to be one of armed men. Parliament was sitting late, debating wearily the amendments proposed by Unionists to the Home Rule Bill. A Nationalist member arrived at Westminster one day with a copy of The Loyalist in his pocket. He called the attention of the Chief Secretary for Ireland to the language used in one of the leading articles, and asked what steps were being taken to prevent a breach of the peace in Belfast on the first Monday in September. Before the Chief Secretary could answer Babberly burst in with another question.
“Is it not a fact,” he asked, “that the paper in question is edited by a notorious Nationalist, a physical force man, a declared rebel, one of the chosen associates of the honourable gentleman opposite?”
The Chief Secretary replied that he had no knowledge of the political opinions of the editor in question further than as they obtained expression in his paper. He appeared to be a strong Unionist.
Considering that O’Donovan had been in prison three times, and that papers edited by him had been twice suppressed by the Government, the Chief Secretary must have meant that he had no official knowledge of O’Donovan’s opinions. The distinction between knowledge and official knowledge is one of the most valuable things in political life.
Babberly displayed the greatest indignation at this answer to his question.
“Is the fair fame of the men of Ulster,” he asked, “to be traduced, is their unswerving loyalty to the Crown and Constitution to be impeached, on the strength of irresponsible scribblings emanating from a Dublin slum?”
The office of The Loyalist is in a slum. So far Babberly was well informed. He cannot have known that the “scribblings” were by the pen of an eminent fellow of Trinity College, or that the money which paid for printing and circulation was Conroy’s.
The Nationalist member pressed for a reply to his original question. He said that he desired nothing except that the Government should perform the elementary duty of preserving law and order.
That particular Nationalist member had, in the days past, been put into prison with the utmost regularity whenever a government undertook to perform the elementary duty he now desired to see undertaken. And no government ever, in old times, undertook such work except when goaded to desperation by Babberly. The seething of a kid in its mother’s milk is forbidden by the law of Moses, which shows that it must be a tempting thing to do. That Nationalist member felt the temptation strongly. He evidently had hopes of sacrificing Babberly on the altar of the twin gods so long worshipped by the Ulster members, incarcerating him in the sacred names of law and order. But the Chief Secretary did not see his way to make Babberly the hero of a state trial. He replied that the Government was fully alive to the duty of preserving order in Belfast, and refused to commit himself to any definite plan for dealing with Babberly.
The newspapers made the most of the incident, and O’Donovan’s record was scrutinized by both parties. A lively discussion ensued as to whether a “Hill-sider”—some one discovered that picturesque description of O’Donovan—could become a militant Unionist. The text from the prophet Jeremiah about the spots on the leopard was quoted several times with great effect.
McNeice’s name was not mentioned, nor was Conroy’s. We may suppose that his connection with the University saved McNeice. Trinity College has, of late years, displayed such a capacity for vigorous self-defence, that the boldest politician hesitates to attack it or any one under its immediate protection. Conroy escaped because no one, not even an Irish member, cares to ride atilt against a millionaire. We respect little else in heaven or earth, but we do, all of us, respect money.