SPARKS FROM THE ANVIL

Just as the great complex of misunderstandings and confusion so tragically developed in the story of Hamlet could not proceed but by a series of misfortunes and could end only in an avalanche of disaster, so it has seemed with Ireland. As an historian said of the British Isles in the thirteenth century "Wales was conquered, Scotland unconquered, Ireland half-conquered". With the anomalous situation growing out of this half conquest it is safe to say that the Irish problem began, and like the play it has become, through differences of temperament, recrimination, abuse of power; muddy thinking, stubbornness and sentimentalism more and more complex, increasingly confused. "At length, on December 4, 1922," says the chronicler, "Parliament passed the Irish Constitution Bill, and with a sigh of relief men closed that volume to look forward hopefully, if with some misgivings, to a more cheerful history." He may add, sadly or cynically, that men were mistaken, but we can read no further. We cannot judge.

All we know is that an old fight--the old fight the world has known and hated--is ended, and that with the approval of the English government Mr. Timothy Healy has been appointed Governor General of the Irish Free State with Mr. O'Higgins as minister of home affairs.

Mr. Lloyd George is reputed to have said that he would rather be known to history as the premier who settled the Irish question than as the one who defeated Germany. (Though it is fair to add that this statement was made after the war.) And there have been many men to whom an amicable peace between England and Ireland has seemed the "summum bonum". To Cromwell after the Irish had rejected (strange to say) the ideas he strove so eloquently to impress on them, it seemed that they were but devils and irreconcilable papists, and that it was his painful but obvious duty to crush them. Yet he was puzzled. So was William before Londonderry--and after. So have been many others, but always down the centuries will ring the names of those who have fought and thought for Ireland Spenser, his fine sensibilities hurt both by the brutality of the people and by the oppression they suffered, groped vainly for a solution. Swift's bitter but powerful satire, O'Connell's virile challenge, Parnell's lyric appeal, Gladstone's unexpert but well-meaning enthusiasm-- all have been heard, been registered, and until now it might have been said, forgotten.

But now it can perhaps be said that they all have had their effect. Lately there have been others. Redmond, vilified by the opposition, repudiated by his own party, gallantly fought for his ideal. Griffith sacrificed his life to his self-imposed task. Finally Michael Collins, treacherously surprised, died a victim to the anarchism that he tried to quell. But it will long be remembered how he kept "firing till his revolver was emptied" nor will his final great pronouncement that only forgiveness of his murderers would bring peace--a fitting "envol" to a splendid career--be soon forgotten.

In the moment of quiet between, the halves even those most biased can applaud the captains. In the attractive age of classic mythology these men would be heroes, eternally sung. In the age of the Church they would be ranked with the saintly, "cloud of witnesses". Neither conceptions have much appeal to this age which rather feels it is a question of ideas, an that the sparks from the anvils of many workers have at last lit a cleansing fire which promises to destroy the evils that they hated and leave the air unpolluted, undisturbed, as they would have had it.