John Redmond's Last Years Part 13

At the beginning of April I was gazetted to a lieutenancy in the 6th Connaught Rangers, and began to know the Division from another aspect.

Broadly speaking, the men with whom I had been sharing a hut were Nationalist by opinion and by tradition--though by no means all Catholics. There were Unionists, but they were few. In the society which I now joined--a joint mess of the Royal Irish and the Rangers--matters were different.

The personnel of the 6th Royal Irish was strongly characteristic of the old Army. The commanding officer, Curzon, was of Irish descent, but of little Irish a.s.sociation; his second in command was an Irish Protestant gentleman of a pleasant ordinary type. The senior company commander was an Englishman. As an offset, Willie Redmond had one company, and another was commanded by an ex-guardsman, who had been a chief personage in the Derry Volunteers, and brought so many of them with him that General Parsons gave him a captaincy straight off.

In my own battalion, no Catholic had then the rank of captain. The colonel and the adjutant belonged to well-known families in the North of Ireland, deeply involved in Covenanting politics. My own company commander was a very gallant little Dublin barrister, who, before the war, had exerted on English platforms against Home Rule the gift of racy eloquence which he now devoted to recruiting. Not half a dozen of the subalterns would have described themselves as Nationalists.

It is easy to see how all this could be represented, and was represented, to the outside public of Ireland. From the inside, one thing was clear. In our battalion every man desired the success of the Division, and more particularly of the Connaught Rangers, absolutely with a whole heart. Anything said or done that could have offended the men--practically all Catholic and Nationalist--would have drawn the most condign chastis.e.m.e.nt from our commanding officer. I never heard of any man or officer in the battalion who would have desired to change its colonel; we were fortunate, and we knew it. There was very little political discussion, and what there was turned chiefly on the question how far Redmond might be held to speak for Ireland. So far as Redmond himself was concerned, I think there were few, if any, who did not count it an honour to meet him--and some who had never been won to him before were won to him for his brother's sake.

Looking back on it all, it is clear to me that a change wrought itself in that society. I do not know one survivor of those men who does not desire that accomplishment should be given to the desire of those whom they led. In not a few cases one might put the change higher; some opinions as to what was good for Ireland were profoundly affected.

Yet this also is true. The atmosphere of the mess was one in which Willie Redmond found himself shy and a stranger. He had lived all his life in an intimate circle of Nationalist belief. Knowing the other side in the House of Commons, where many of his oldest friends and the men he liked best (Colonel Lockwood comes most readily to my mind) were political opponents, he had nevertheless always lived with people in agreement with his views; and you could not better describe the atmosphere of our mess than by saying that it was a society in which every one liked and respected Willie Redmond, but one in which he never really was himself. He was only himself with the men.

In short, so far as the officers were concerned, our Division was not a counterpart to the Ulster Division; it was not Irish in the sense that the other was Ulster. No attempt was made to make it so, and General Parsons would have quite definitely rejected any such ideal--though less fiercely than he would have repudiated the idea of handicapping a man for his opinions or his creed. Yet many persons without design, and some with a purpose, spread broadcast the belief that Catholics and Nationalists as such were relegated to a position of inferiority in the command of this Catholic and Nationalist Division.

The worst of our difficulties lay in the long inherited suspicions of the Irish mind. At a recruiting meeting one would argue in appealing to Nationalists that the Home Rule Act was a covenant on which we were in honour bound to act, and that every man who risked his life on the faith of that covenant set a seal upon it which would never be disregarded.

The listeners would applaud, but after the meeting one and another would come up privately and say: "Are you sure now they aren't fooling us again?" The Sinn Fein propaganda, always shrewdly conducted, did not fail to emphasize the p.r.o.nouncement of the Tory Press that there should be no Home Rule because Ireland had failed to come forward; or to point the moral of Mr. Bonar Law's excursion to Belfast, with its violent a.s.severation that Ulster should be backed without limit in opposition to control by an Irish Parliament. Ireland, always suspect, has learnt to be profoundly suspicious; and suspicion is the form of prophecy which has most tendency to fulfil itself.

In one part of the Irish race, however, this cold paralysis of distrust had no operation. The Irish in Great Britain, always outdoing all others in the keenness of their Nationalism, were nearer the main current of the war, and were more in touch with the truth about English feeling.

They had a double impulse, as Redmond had; they saw how to serve their own cause in serving Europe's freedom; and their response was magnificent. Mr. T.P. O'Connor probably raised more recruits by his personal appeal than any other man in England.

A great part of Redmond's correspondence in these months came from Irishmen in England who were joining as Irishmen, and who had great difficulty in making their way to our Division. Many thousands had already enlisted elsewhere; hundreds, at least, tried to join the Sixteenth Division, and failed to get there. But there was one instance to which attention should be directed. In Newcastle-on-Tyne a movement was set on foot to raise Tyneside battalions, including one of Irish.

Mr. O'Connor went down, and the upshot was that four Irish battalions were raised. They were in existence by January 1, 1915, when General Parsons was already writing that unless Irishmen could be found to fill up the Division, we must submit to the disgrace of having it made up by English recruits. The obvious answer was to annex the Tyneside Irish Brigade. Redmond, moreover, held that to bring over this brigade to train in Ireland, and to incorporate it bodily in the Sixteenth Division, would please the Tyneside men--for a tremendous welcome would have greeted them in their own country--and would have an excellent effect on Irish opinion generally. But the proposal was rigorously opposed by the War Office. It was argued that these men had enlisted technically as Northumberland Fusiliers and Northumberland Fusiliers they must remain. In reality, as far as one can judge, the War Office were penny wise and pound foolish. "We have got these men," they said, "and we have a promise from Redmond to fill a Division. Why relieve him of one-third of his task?"

Redmond knew, and we all knew, that the essential was to get our Division complete and into the field at the earliest possible moment. He had confidence that once they got to work they would make a name for themselves, which would be the best attraction for recruits. Let it be remembered that at this moment popular expectation put the end of the war about July. When I joined the Rangers in April 1915, our mess was full of young officers threatening to throw up their commissions and enlist in some battalion which would give them the chance of seeing a fight. We could not expect to move to France before August, and by that time all that we could hope would be to form part of the army of occupation. Rumour was rife, too, that the Division would be broken up and utilized for draft-finding, that it would never see France as a unit. All this talk came back to Redmond and increased his anxiety to make the work complete.

He held, and I think rightly, that the whole machinery of recruiting worked against us; that every officer had instructions to send no man to the Sixteenth Division who could be got into a draft-finding reserve battalion. Knowing what we know, I cannot blame them; but the game was not fairly played. A man would come in and say he wanted to join the Irish Brigade. "Which regiment?" Often he might not realize that a brigade was made up of regiments, but if he knew and answered, for instance, "The Dublins," he was more likely than not to be s.h.i.+pped off to the Curragh, where the reserve of the regular battalions was kept, instead of to b.u.t.tevant, where our Dublins were in training.

Still, with all our troubles, things were marching ahead in that April of 1915; recruits were coming in to the tune of 1,500 a week. Then came a political crisis and the formation of a Coalition Government. Redmond was asked to take a post in it. The letter in which the invitation was conveyed made it clear that the post could not be an Irish office.

Redmond refused. He said to me afterwards that under no conditions did he think he could have accepted. But he added, "If I had been Asquith and had wished to make it as difficult as possible to refuse, I should have offered a seat in the Cabinet without portfolio and without salary."

He was well aware how many and how unscrupulous were his enemies in Ireland; he was not prepared to give them the opportunity of saying that he had got his price for the blood of young Irishmen and the betrayal of his principles. Even apart from the question of salary, the tradition against acceptance of office under Government till Ireland's claim was satisfied would have been very hard to break. Yet Redmond saw fully how disastrous would be the effect on Irish opinion if he were not in the Government and Sir Edward Carson was.

Knowing Ireland as he did, he knew that the acceptance of Sir Edward Carson as a colleague would be taken in Ireland to imply that the Government had abandoned its support of Home Rule. Ireland would a.s.sume that the Ulster leader would not come in except on his own terms.

Redmond made the strongest representations that he could to the Prime Minister to exclude both Irish parties to the unresolved dispute. But Sir Edward Carson in those days was making himself very disagreeable in the House of Commons and Mr. Asquith, as usual, followed the line of least resistance.

The effect of the Coalition as formed was seen when recruiting in Ireland dropped from 6,000 in April-May to 3,000 in May-June. It stayed at the lower figure for several months, till it was raised again by efforts for which Redmond was chiefly responsible. I do not know whether Sir Edward Carson's presence in the Attorney-General's office, or his absence from the Opposition benches in debates, was worth ten thousand men; but that is a small measure of what was lost in Ireland by his inclusion.

IV

The formation of the Coalition Government marks the first stage in the history of Redmond's defeat and the victory of Sir Edward Carson and Sinn Fein.

Of what he felt upon this matter, Redmond at the time said not a word in public. Six months later, on November 2, 1915, when a debate on the naval and military situation was opened, he broke silence--and his first words were an explanation of his silence. He had not intervened, he said, in any debate on the war since its inception. "We thought a loyal and as far as possible silent support to the Government of the day was the best service we could render." This silence had been maintained "even after the formation of the Coalition"--when the Irish view had been roughly set aside, and when the personal tie to the Liberal Government with which he had been so long allied had been profoundly modified. He claimed the credit of this loyalty not merely for himself but for the whole of his country. "Since the war commenced the voice of party controversy has disappeared in Ireland."

This was pus.h.i.+ng generosity almost to a stretch of imagination, for the voice of party controversy had not been absent from the Belfast Press, nor had it spared him. But he was speaking then, and he desired that the House should feel that he spoke, as Ireland's spokesman; he claimed credit for North and South alike in the absence of all labour troubles in war supply. "The spectacle of industrial unrest in Great Britain, the determined and unceasing attacks in certain sections of the Press upon individual members of the Government and in a special way upon the Prime Minister, have aroused the greatest concern and the deepest indignation in Ireland," he said. "Mr. Asquith stands to-day, as before the war, high in the confidence of the Irish people." The "persistent pessimism"

had effected nothing except to help in some measure "that little fringe which exists in Ireland as in England, of men who would if they could interfere with the success of recruiting."

No doubt there was an element of policy, of a fencer's skill, in all this. Sir Edward Carson had not maintained silence and certainly had not spared the Prime Minister. But in essence Redmond was relying on the plain truth. He had pledged support and he gave it to the utmost of his power, even at his peril. Mr. Birrell in the posthumous "Appreciation"

which has been already quoted has this pa.s.sage:

"Although it was not always easy to do business with him, being very justly suspicious of English politicians, he could be trusted more implicitly than almost every other politician I have ever come in contact with. He was slow to pa.s.s his word, but when he had done so, you knew he would keep it to the very letter, and what was almost as important, his silence and discretion could be relied upon with certainty. He was const.i.tutionally incapable of giving anybody away who had trusted him."

Nothing but considerations of loyalty had kept him publicly silent in the months of this year when so much was done, and so much left undone, against his desire and his judgment. In June, the Sixteenth Division was within 1,000 of completion. The shortage existed in one brigade--the 49th--which had been formed of battalions having their recruiting areas in Ulster--two of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, one of the Inniskillings and one of the Royal Irish Rifles. The conception had undoubtedly been to provide for the Nationalists of Ulster. But, as it proved, these men vastly preferred to enlist in units which were not a.s.sociated with the avowedly Unionist Division, all of whose battalions belonged to one or other of these three regiments; and the 49th Brigade was not nearly up to strength. The Tenth Division was now on the point of readiness for the field; but when the final weeding out of unfit or half trained men was completed its ranks were 1,200 short. The War Office decided to draw, not on both the other Irish Divisions, but on the Sixteenth only, and only upon the deficient brigade. When the offer of immediate service was made, every man in its four battalions volunteered, and the Tenth Division was completed; but the Sixteenth was thrown back, and the discouraging rumour that it was to be only used as a reserve gained a great impetus. Redmond was very angry. He wrote to Mr. Tennant demanding that at least the Division's deficiency should at once be made up, by giving to us the full product of one or two weeks' recruiting in Ireland. Nothing of the kind was done to meet his request.

It was, however, some compensation to think that at least one of our purely Irish formations was going to take the field; and we hoped that its fortunes might remedy a complaint which began to be loudly made--that credit was withheld from the achievements of Irish troops.

The main source of this grievance was the publication of Admiral de Robeck's despatch concerning the first landing at Gallipoli. In the original doc.u.ment, a schedule was given showing the detail of troops told off to each of the separate landings; and the narrative, in which a sailor spoke with frank enthusiasm of the desperate valour shown by soldiers, was written with constant reference to the detail given. As some evil chance willed, the narrative mentioned by name several of the regiments engaged; but when it came to describe the forlorn hope at "V"

Beach, it dealt fully with the special difficulties, and said in brief but emphatic phrase, "Here the troops wrought miracles." The War Office, in editing the despatch for publication, suppressed the schedule, as likely to give information to the enemy, so that in this case it did not appear to whom the praise applied.

Certain things are unbelievable. No officer and no man that ever lived could from a partisan feeling against Ireland have sought to rob regiments who had done and suffered such things as the Dublins and Munsters did and suffered at "V" Beach of whatever credit could be given to them. Yet in such times as we were living in, the unbelievable is readily believed, and men saw malice in the suppression of what could not long be secret: Ireland had too many dead that day. What made the suggestion more incredible only gave a poignancy to resentment, for Admiral de Robeck was an Irishman, with his home some few miles from the regimental depot of the Dublins.

Two things, however, should be said. If only in fairness to Admiral de Robeck, the explanation should instantly have been given: it was never given in full until he came before the Dardanelles Commission, many months later, and it has not been officially published to this hour. And further, whoever edited the despatch was presumably a soldier, and knew how jealous soldiers are, and how jealous their friends are for them, of every word that goes to the recognition of such service. The effect of omitting the schedule ought to have been foreseen.

Even before the middle of August, when angry letters over this despatch were appearing in the Irish Press, other news began to come to Ireland, ill calculated to help recruiting. The Tenth Division had come into action, but under the unluckiest conditions. When the great attempt was made to cut across the peninsula by a renewed push from Anzac and by a new landing at Suvla Bay, the Irish were among the reinforcements told off for that surprise. But from lack of room on the island bases it was considered impossible to keep them together as a division, and one brigade, the 29th, lay so far off that it could not be brought into the concerted movement on Suvla. It was therefore sent separately to Anzac, and joined in with the Australians. Broken up by regiments and not operating as a unit, it furnished useful support; but no credit for what the men did could go to Ireland. The other two brigades, the 30th and 31st, were left under the command of their divisional general and were to attack on the left of the bay. But owing to some defect in exploration of the coast-line, the movement was not so carried out; six battalions out of the eight were landed on the south of the bay and were attached to the right-hand force. Thus, in the actual operations Sir Bryan Mahon had under his command only two battalions of his own men.

The remaining six operated under the command of the divisional general of the Eleventh Division, who delegated the conduct of the actual attack to one of his brigadiers. It is sufficient to say that immediately after the action both these officers were relieved of their commands. The same fate befell the corps commander under whose directions this wing of the concerted movement was placed.

In face of these facts it would be absurd to deny that the troops were badly handled. They suffered terribly from thirst, and the suffering was in large measure preventible. The attack was a failure. All the success achieved was the capture of Chocolate Hill, and the Irish claim that success. It is disputed by other regiments. This much is certain: the Irish were part of the troops who carried the hill, and at nightfall, when the rest were withdrawn to the beach, the Irish were left holding it.

But they had paid dearly, and in the days which followed many more were sacrificed in the hopeless effort to retrieve what had been lost when the surprise attack failed. The loss fell specially on a picked battalion, the 7th Dublins, which had grown up about a footballers'

company, the very flower of young Irish manhood. Grief and indignation were universal when tales of what had happened began to come through.

But of all this Redmond said no word in public. He threatened disclosure in debate at one period; yet on a strong representation from Mr.

Tennant--in whose friendliness, as in the Prime Minister's, he had confidence--he refrained. To this abstention he added the most practical proof of good will. Lord Wimborne, now Lord-Lieutenant, seriously concerned at the continued drop in recruiting, which had not shown any sign of recovery since the Coalition Government was formed, came to him with the proposal for a conference on the subject. In pursuance of this suggestion Redmond went to London, where an interview took place between him and Lord Kitchener, Mr. Birrell and Mr. Tennant a.s.sisting. Redmond put in a memorandum stating his complaints, and thrashed out the subject to satisfactory conclusions on all points that directly affected recruiting. The conference ultimately met at the Viceregal Lodge on October 15th. It included the Primate of All Ireland, Lord Londonderry, Lord Meath, Lord Powerscourt, Sir Nugent Everard, the O'Conor Don and Colonel Sharman Crawford, the Lord Mayors of Dublin, Belfast and Cork, and Redmond. The military were represented by Major-General Friend, commanding the troops in Ireland, with whom Redmond always had the most cordial relations.

Only those who understand something of Irish tradition will realize how great a departure from established usage it was for Parnell's lieutenant and successor to take part formally in a meeting at the Viceregal Lodge--or indeed to cross its threshold for any purpose. But Redmond always had the logic of his convictions. As part of a compact, he was helping to the best of his power the Government which must carry on till Home Rule could come into operation; and here as elsewhere he was ready to mark his conviction that the enactment of Home Rule had made possible a complete change in his att.i.tude.

Among his papers is a very full note of what pa.s.sed on this occasion. It is confidential, but one may note the extreme friendliness of att.i.tude as between Redmond and the Ulster representatives, and also the fact that the operative suggestions agreed on were proposed first by Redmond himself. They were the result of his interview with Lord Kitchener.

Recruiting in Ireland should no longer be left to voluntary effort, but a Department should be formed corresponding to that over which Lord Derby had been appointed to preside in Great Britain; and the Lord-Lieutenant himself should accept the position of its official head, and should appoint or nominate some man of known business capacity to preside over the detail of organization. Redmond pressed also that the country should be told definitely what Lord Wimborne had told the conference, that the need was for a total of about 1,100 recruits per week.

He insisted also very strongly on the publication of a letter which Lord Kitchener at his instance had written to the conference. Its last paragraph read:

"The Irish are ent.i.tled to their full share of the compliments paid to the rest of the United Kingdom for their hitherto magnificent response to the appeal for men: but if that response is to reap its due and only reward in victory, the supply must be continued."

Over 81,000 recruits had been raised in Ireland since the war started--a period of eighty-two weeks. Viewed in comparison with Lord Kitchener's original antic.i.p.ations, the result might well be called "magnificent."

But it was necessary to maintain the same weekly average, and for four months the figure had been much below this. The result of the new campaign was to raise nearly 7,500 men in seven weeks.

In the campaign thus launched, as Redmond so keenly desired, under the joint auspices of Ulstermen, Southern Unionists and Nationalists, one circ.u.mstance attracted attention. It was proposed to hold a great meeting at Newry, the frontier town where Ulster marches with the South--a centre in which recruiting had been singularly keen and successful. The scheme was to unite on one platform the Lord-Lieutenant, Redmond and Sir Edward Carson. Sir Edward Carson, however, "did not think the proposal would serve any useful purpose," and the meeting was held without him, in December 1915.

By this time the Sixteenth Division was under orders for France. We had been since September in training at Blackdown, near Aldershot; and here Redmond was one of several distinguished visitors who came to see us and address the troops. He came down also unofficially more than once, for his brother had a pleasant house among the pine-trees--where he guarded, or was guarded by, the brigade's mascot, the largest of three enormous wolfhounds which, through John Redmond, were presented to the Irish Division.

Towards the end of the year new rumours were afloat. The 49th Brigade had never been made up to strength, and there were stories that a non-Irish brigade was to be linked up with us. Letters from two commanding officers of the 49th Brigade ill.u.s.trate the extent to which Redmond had come by all ranks to be regarded as our tutelary genius; to him they appealed for redress, fearing that they would be turned into a reserve brigade. The matter was settled at last to his content and theirs by a decision that the two brigades which were ready should go out in advance, to be followed by the 49th; and we entrained accordingly on December 17th.

Sir Lawrence Parsons wrote to Mr. Birrell: "As the last train-load moved out of Farnborough station the senior Railway Staff Officer came up to me and said, 'Well, General, that is the soberest, quietest, most amenable and best disciplined Division that has left Aldershot, and I have seen them all go.'" The compliment was well paid to General Parsons, and it may have been some consolation for a sore heart: that keen spirit had to be content to be left behind. Major-General W.B.

Hickie, C.B., who had greatly distinguished himself in France, now took over command. It would be disingenuous to say that John Redmond was not content with this change; but his brother was deeply impressed by the hards.h.i.+p inflicted on a gallant soldier.

The Ulster Division had preceded us by three months. All three Irish Divisions were now in the field, and reserve brigades were established to feed them. Redmond could feel that in great measure his work was done, and that he could await the issue in confidence.

He wrote at this time, in a preface contributed to Mr. MacDonagh's book _The Irish at the Front_, a pa.s.sage of unusual emotion which tells what he thought and felt upon this matter.