George A. Birmingham

“ 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. ”

“ I do not like novels which aim at a reform of the marriage laws; but that is only because sex problems bore me horribly. I enjoy novels written with any other purpose. I hate parties, such as those which Godfrey instigates me to give, which have no object except that of merely being parties, the bare collection together of human beings in their best clothes. I was, therefore, greatly pleased when I discovered that my original guess was right and that Lady Moyne’s party was definitely political. I found this out when I arrived in the drawing-room before dinner. ”

“ He had the spirit of the true adventurer, the man who pursues novelty and danger for their own sakes. Every story he told us illustrated and was meant to illustrate this side of his character. He despised the rest of us, especially me perhaps. We, Cahoon, the Dean, even Malcolmson, though he was a bristly fighting man, certainly Moyne who had gone quietly to bed—we were tame barndoor fowls, eating the sordid messes spread for us by that old henwife, civilized society. Conroy was a free bird of the wild. ”

“ Here and there, scattered among the military and Bob’s irregular troops, were black uniformed policemen, rosy-faced young men, fresh from a healthy life among the cattle ranches of Roscommon, drafted to their own immense bewilderment into this strange city of Belfast, where no one regarded them with any reverence, or treated them with the smallest respect. The motor car started, creeping at a walking pace through the mingled crowd of armed men who thronged the entrance to the station. ”

“ Soldiers were shooting off guns in Belfast, and the people they fired at—or as we knew, fired over—were working-men. There was occasion for a strong and eloquent appeal to the sentiment of the solidarity of labour. Babberly was just the man to make it with the utmost possible effectiveness. I pictured him perched on the head of one of the British lions which give its quite peculiar dignity to Trafalgar Square, beseeching a crowd of confused but very angry men not to allow the beast to open its mouth or show its teeth. ”

“ It is on the men who enjoy risk, who love struggle, who face death with a laugh, the men of Bob Power’s reckless temperament, that the world must rely when it wants fighting done. Hitherto men of this kind have been plentiful. Whether our advancing civilization is going to destroy the breed is a question which, I am pleased to say, need not be answered by my generation. There are enough Bob Powers alive to last my time. ”

“ Clithering sat next but one to Lady Moyne. Malcolmson was between them. It was a curious alliance. The emissary of the Government, which had passed measures which all good aristocrats disliked intensely, joined hands for the moment with the lady whose skill as a political hostess had frequently been troublesome to Clithering’s friends. I do not suppose that such an alliance could possibly last long. Those whom misfortune, according to the old proverb, forces into bed together, always struggle out again at opposite sides when the clouds cease to be threatening. ”

“ It was quite plain that nothing I could say would influence the meeting in the least.
“Gentlemen,” said Moyne, “are we to attempt to hold our meeting to-morrow? Those who are in favour of doing so say ‘Aye.’”
Cahoon, McNeice, Malcolmson, the Dean and Conroy voted “aye.”
“The ‘ayes’ have it,” said Moyne.
“Before we part,” said Babberly, “I wish to say that I leave Belfast to-night—”
Malcolmson muttered something. Babberly held up his hand.
“No,” he said. “You are wrong. I’m not afraid. I’m not taking care of my own skin. But I have lived a loyal man and I mean to die a loyal man. ”

“ The Nationalist leaders—“those fellows” as McNeice called them—issued a kind of manifesto. It was a document which breathed the spirit of moderate constitutionalism, and spoke the words of grave, serious patriotism. It made a strong appeal to the people of Belfast not to injure the cause of liberty, law and order by rash and ill-considered action. It said that no Nationalist wanted to see Babberly and Lord Moyne put into prison; but that most Nationalists had been made to sleep on plank beds for utterances much less seditious than this advertisement of a review. ”

“ Women fight sometimes in citizen armies when such things have been called into existence. But it is not their fighting power which makes them important. That is, probably, always quite inconsiderable. What makes them a force to be reckoned with in war is their faculty for hating. They hate with more concentration and intensity than men do. These women were mindful, perhaps, of the girl with the baby whom Clithering had seen shot. They realized, perhaps, the menace for husbands, lovers, and sons which lay in the guns of the black ironclad parading sluggishly before their eyes. ”

“ One of them, the editor of which was in close touch with Babberly, said plainly that dear as the right of free speech was to the Unionist leaders they would cheerfully postpone the Belfast demonstration rather than run the smallest risk of causing a riot in the streets. Political principles, it is said, were sacred things, but the life of the humblest citizen was far more sacred than any principle, and the world could confidently rely on Babberly’s being guided in his momentous decision by considerations of the loftiest patriotism. ”

“ It would be difficult to find a man who crams more work into what are supposed to be his leisure hours. He has, of course, little time for reading and he never travels. His devotion to good works leaves him no opportunity for culture, and accounts for the fact that he believes the things which Babberly says on platforms. He would, I did not actually try him with the subject, but I have no doubt he would, have brushed the philosophy of Emmanuel Kant into the world’s waste-basket with his unvarying formula: It wouldn’t do in Belfast. They are business men there. ”

“ On the afternoon of my garden-party I happened to be standing close beside Lady Moyne when she was saying good-bye to the Dean. Her final remark was addressed quite as much to him as to me.
“What we have got to do,” she said, “is to make use of this virile democracy of ours; to mould it into an instrument for the preservation of social order. The introduction of the Home Rule Bill gives us just about the chance we want.”
I found myself wondering, while the diatribe against the bishops was in full swing, whether Lady Moyne would succeed in moulding McNeice into a weapon for her hand. ”

“ What’s the use of your arguing on about every little point?”
“But,” said Clithering, “the collection of the revenue! Between ourselves now, Lord Kilmore, do you think there would be any risk of your imposing a tariff on—”
“Certain to,” I said. “It will be one of the first things we do.”
“We can’t agree to that,” said Clithering. “Free Trade is a principle, a sacred principle with us. You can’t expect—We are a Free Trade Government. Our consciences—”
“Very well,” I said. “Go on with the war. Bombard Belfast. Kill another woman. ”

“ Nor could I suppose that I had been brought to Castle Affey in order to convert people like Malcolmson to pacific ways of thought. In the first place, Lady Moyne did not want him converted. He and his like were a valuable asset to the Conservative party. And even if she had wanted them converted I was not the man to do it. I am mildly reasonable in my outlook upon life. To reason with Malcolmson is much the same as if a man, meaning well, were to offer a Seidlitz powder to an enraged hippopotamus. ”

“ A gentleman displays a dignified superiority to the vice of curiosity. For the historian curiosity is a virtue. I am, I find, more of an historian than a gentleman. I wanted very much to find out how Conroy would take the offer of a peerage. I also wanted to understand thoroughly why the offer was made.
Some weeks were to pass before I learned the Government’s real reason for wanting to detach Conroy from the Unionist cause; but luck favoured me in the matter of sounding Conroy himself. ”

“ I have since had reason to suppose that the Government knew more than I did about the way Conroy was spending his money, and was nervous about something more important than Babberly’s occasional demonstrations.
My first impulse was to burn the letter and tell my correspondent that I was not a politician of any sort, and did not care for doing this kind of work. Then my curiosity got the better of my sense of honour. A man cannot, I think, be both an historian and a gentleman. It is an essential part of the character of a gentleman that he should dislike prying into other people’s secrets. ”

“ If I do I hope I shall be found fighting against some properly organized army, the men and officers of which have taken up the business of killing in a lofty professional spirit. I cannot imagine anything more likely to shatter my nerve than to be pitted against men like McConkey, who neither drink nor smoke, but save and spend their savings on machine guns. The regular soldier has his guns bought for him with other people’s money. He does not mind much if no gory dividend is earned. ”

“ I must say that Babberly at this crisis displayed immense energy and something like political genius. Having been all his life a strong Conservative, and a supporter of force as a remedy for every kind of social unpleasantness, he turned a most effective somersault and appealed suddenly to the anti-militarist feelings of the Labour Party. He succeeded—I cannot even imagine how—in organizing a mass meeting in Trafalgar Square to protest against the murder of the working-men of Belfast in the streets of their own city, by the hired mercenaries of the capitalist classes. ”

“ THE RED HAND OF ULSTER CHAPTER I It was in 1908 that Joseph Peterson Conroy burst upon London in the full magnificence of his astounding wealth. English society was, and had been for many years, accustomed to the irruption of millionaires, American or South African. Our aristocracy has learnt to pay these potentates the respect which is their due. Well-born men and women trot along Park Lane in obedience to the hooting calls of motor horns. No one considers himself degraded by grovelling before a plutocrat. ”

“ The police were the hardest to get rid of. They were no doubt soured by the treatment they received in Belfast. Accustomed to be regarded with awe by rural malefactors and denounced in flaming periods, of a kind highly gratifying to their self-importance, by political leaders, they could not understand a people who did not mention them in speeches but threatened their lives with paving stones. This had been their previous experience of Belfast and they were naturally suspicious of any stray wayfarers whom they met. They were not impressed when Bland said he was a newspaper reporter. ”

“ Lady Moyne is invariably exquisite, a small woman with dainty ways and great vivacity. The Dean is an ecclesiastic as different as possible from the suave dignitaries who lead lives of scholarly leisure in cathedral closes. We picture the ideal dean, a slender man, slightly stooped, thin-lipped, with a suggestion of mild asceticism in his face. ”

“ I got hold of a waiter, the only one left in the club, and made him bring us a whisky and soda. Bland squirted the syphon into Clithering’s face, and I poured small quantities of whisky into his mouth. Clithering is a rigid teetotaller, and has for years been supporting every Bill for the suppression of public houses which has been brought before Parliament. The whisky which he swallowed revived him in the most amazing way.
“Have they gone?” he asked.
“If you mean the soldiers,” said Bland, “they have. I can’t imagine why, but they have.” ”

“ McNeice also supplied brains and enthusiasm. His intelligence was narrower than Conroy’s, but more intensely concentrated. He knew the men with whom he intended to deal. By birth and early education he belonged to that north Irish democracy which is probably less imaginative and less reasonable but more virile than any other in the world. He believed, as his fathers had believed before him and his relations believed along with him, that the Belfast man has a natural right to govern the world, and only refrains from doing so because he has more important matters to attend to. ”

“ Most men who have made fortunes enjoy talking about how they made them. But their stories are nearly always most uninteresting. My impression is that they do not themselves understand how they came to be rich. But Conroy understood, or at all events thought he understood, his own success. He believed that he was rich because he had, more than other men, a love of the excitement which comes with risk. ”