The Irish Question by Lawrence J. McCaffrey

Author:Lawrence J. McCaffrey [McCaffrey, Lawrence J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Europe, Ireland, Great Britain, General, Political Science, International Relations, Imperialism
ISBN: 9780813182704
Google: AUwgEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-05-11T22:10:32+00:00

7

The Rose Tree 1914–1922

There’s nothing but our own red blood

Can Make a right Rose Tree.

William Butler Yeats

“The Rose Tree”

John Redmond believed that Ireland’s participation in a moral crusade against German authoritarianism and militarism and in defense of the integrity of small nations such as Belgium would convince Britain that it deserved Home Rule and demonstrate its will and capacity for self-government. Redmond urged Irish Volunteers to enlist in the British army, but Sinn Féiners perceived the conflict between Britain and Germany as a power struggle for empire and not a contest between good and evil. They pointed out that it was Britain not Germany that conquered, occupied, and oppressed Ireland. And they told Irishmen to stay home and prepare to fight for Ireland’s cultural and political sovereignty.

In August 1914 only 12,000 of the 180,000 Irish Volunteers rejected Redmond’s view of the war. Those that accepted it took the name National Volunteers, and many enlisted in the British army. Eoin MacNeill, professor of early Irish history at University College, Dublin, remained chief of staff of the minority Irish Volunteers. He continued to be unaware of the strong IRB influence in the organization.

MacNeill intended the Irish Volunteers as a defensive rather than an offensive force, a reminder to Britain that Ireland was determined to have Home Rule. But shortly after the start of hostilities on the Continent, the Supreme Council of the IRB decided that it should take advantage of Britain’s preoccupation with the war, and created a Military Council to plan a rebellion. IRB leaders reasoned that even if an insurrection failed, there was a good chance that it would earn Ireland a voice in postwar peace talks. Patrick Pearse, IRB director of organizations, barrister by training, poet by inclination, and master of St. Enda’s, a school teaching all subjects in Irish, was the link between the Military Council and the Irish Volunteers.

The Clan na Gael joined the revolutionary scheming. John Devoy received a commitment from the German ambassador in Washington that his government would aid a rebellion in Ireland. Sir Roger Casement, reared in a strict Ulster Presbyterian setting, also entered the conspiracy. Before converting to Irish nationalism, Casement, as a member of the British foreign service, earned a knighthood for exposing the brutal treatment of natives in the Congo and South America. He was in the United States when the world war began, but he left for Germany to obtain material support for a rising and to recruit Irish prisoners of war for a brigade to fight the British. Germans did not take Casement seriously, and only a few Irish POWs joined the brigade. Other IRB envoys made more of an impression in Berlin and were able to obtain solid guarantees of guns and ammunition.

Pearse and two other poets in the IRB, Joseph Mary Plunkett and Thomas MacDonagh, did not consider victory the ultimate purpose or objective of the coming rebellion. In their poetry they spoke of Ireland’s need for a blood sacrifice to redeem Irish nationalism from the apathy, compromise ethic, and West Britonism of Home Rule politics.

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