Whether the Irish Republic ever existed has been disputed not only by jurists and not only
with words. For the Irish people the Republic was, for a few tense years, a living reality
which dominated every aspect of their lives. Its existence was a fact of human history, if
not of logic or of law.
When Dáil Éireann, the government of the Republic, was constituted by the elected
representatives of the majority of the Irish people, in January 1919, a State came into
being which inspired a loyality as profound as any that the history of States can show.
Its existence was of a kind very baffling to its enemies for the Republic was an invisible
within a visible, an intangible within a tangible State.
The weighty machinery of British Administration continued to operate uncertainly and with
violence, while, in its midst, there functioned another government, which commanded the
allegiance of the people and whose decrees produced immediate results. More than forty
thousand British troops with war equipment occupied Ireland, ignored, tricked and mocked at
by the populace, while an unpaid Republican Army was devotedly abetted by young and old.
Republican Courts of justice, held secretly in barns and cellars, issued judgments which
were obeyed, while in whole provinces the Courts of the Crown remained vacant, treated with
frank contempt.
To strangers, observing the duel, the Irish attempt seemed, at first, a dreamer's game of
make-believe; but it was, in fact, Revolution.
The belief that informed it was the faith that moves mountains; the dream took on
sustenance and grew to an actuality which all the cunning as well as all the strength of
its opponents were exercised to destroy.
About twelve hundred men and women took part in the Rising in Dublin in 1916, and in the
country a few hundred more. It is not strange that the Rising was interpreted in England as
the irresponsible act of a group of fanatics who in no way represented the nation's mind.
Even the leaders themselves, going to execution or to penal servitude, could not foretell
what the immediate reaction in Ireland would be. Before three years had passed, however,
the people had given their answer in the polling booths, and the portraits of these leaders
were hanging on the cottage walls beside those of Emmet and Wolfe Tone. They had been
recognised as the heirs of the insurgents of '98, of '48, and '67 - of all who, since the
invasion, had struck for freedom. They had fought in a cause not yet despaired of by their
people and expressed a longing not yet appeased.
It was a sequel which surprized the friend's and enemies of Ireland alike. No one who knew
the meaning of nationality found it difficult to understand that the Irish had, in past
centuries, resisted conquest and absorption by another race; what caused astonishment,
whether hostile or sympathetic, was the passion and tenacity with which the resistance had
been maintained.
The explanation of that resistance, continued through centuries, lies in instincts so
simple that political sophists overlook them at times - the instincts of race, of religion
and of a people's right to its land.
Three facts gave the Irish struggle its enduring force; the fact that an ancient Gaelic
people was resisting a race whose civilisation was antipathetic to its own, that a Catholic
nation was defending its faith against the forces of Protestantism, and that, under George
the Fifth, as under Elizabeth, English rule meant dispossession and humiliation for the
Irish on their own soil.© Searc's Web Guide 1997-2007
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