O'Flaherty V.C.: Author's Preface

Author's Preface

It may surprise some people to learn that in 1915 this little
play was a recruiting poster in disguise. The British officer
seldom likes Irish soldiers; but he always tries to have a
certain proportion of them in his battalion, because, partly from
a want of common sense which leads them to value their lives less
than Englishmen do (lives are really less worth living in a poor
country), and partly because even the most cowardly Irishman
feels obliged to outdo an Englishman in bravery if possible, and
at least to set a perilous pace for him, Irish soldiers give
impetus to those military operations which require for their
spirited execution more devilment than prudence.

Unfortunately, Irish recruiting was badly bungled in 1915. The
Irish were for the most part Roman Catholics and loyal Irishmen,
which means that from the English point of view they were
heretics and rebels. But they were willing enough to go
soldiering on the side of France and see the world outside
Ireland, which is a dull place to live in. It was quite easy to
enlist them by approaching them from their own point of view. But
the War Office insisted on approaching them from the point of
view of Dublin Castle. They were discouraged and repulsed by
refusals to give commissions to Roman Catholic officers, or to
allow distinct Irish units to be formed. To attract them, the
walls were covered with placards headed REMEMBER BELGIUM. The
folly of asking an Irishman to remember anything when you want
him to fight for England was apparent to everyone outside the
Castle: FORGET AND FORGIVE would have been more to the point.
Remembering Belgium and its broken treaty led Irishmen to
remember Limerick and its broken treaty; and the recruiting ended
in a rebellion, in suppressing which the British artillery quite
unnecessarily reduced the centre of Dublin to ruins, and the
British commanders killed their leading prisoners of war in cold
blood morning after morning with an effect of long-drawn-out
ferocity. Really it was only the usual childish petulance in
which John Bull does things in a week that disgrace him for a
century, though he soon recovers his good humor, and cannot
understand why the survivors of his wrath do not feel as jolly
with him as he does with them. On the smouldering ruins of Dublin
the appeals to remember Louvain were presently supplemented by a
fresh appeal. IRISHMEN, DO YOU WISH TO HAVE THE HORRORS OF WAR
BROUGHT TO YOUR OWN HEARTHS AND HOMES? Dublin laughed sourly.

As for me I addressed myself quite simply to the business of
obtaining recruits. I knew by personal experience and observation
what anyone might have inferred from the records of Irish
emigration, that all an Irishman's hopes and ambitions turn on
his opportunities of getting out of Ireland. Stimulate his
loyalty, and he will stay in Ireland and die for her; for,
incomprehensible as it seems to an Englishman, Irish patriotism
does not take the form of devotion to England and England's king.
Appeal to his discontent, his deadly boredom, his thwarted
curiosity and desire for change and adventure, and, to escape
from Ireland, he will go abroad to risk his life for France, for
the Papal States, for secession in America, and even, if no
better may be, for England. Knowing that the ignorance and
insularity of the Irishman is a danger to himself and to his
neighbors, I had no scruple in making that appeal when there was
something for him to fight which the whole world had to fight
unless it meant to come under the jack boot of the German version
of Dublin Castle.

There was another consideration, unmentionable by the recruiting
sergeants and war orators, which must nevertheless have helped
them powerfully in procuring soldiers by voluntary enlistment.
The happy home of the idealist may become common under millennial
conditions. It is not common at present. No one will ever know
how many men joined the army in 1914 and 1915 to escape from
tyrants and taskmasters, termagants and shrews, none of whom are
any the less irksome when they happen by ill-luck to be also our
fathers, our mothers, our wives and our children. Even at their
amiablest, a holiday from them may be a tempting change for all
parties. That is why I did not endow O'Flaherty V.C. with an
ideal Irish colleen for his sweetheart, and gave him for his
mother a Volumnia of the potato patch rather than an affectionate
parent from whom he could not so easily have torn himself away.

I need hardly say that a play thus carefully adapted to its
purpose was voted utterly inadmissible; and in due course the
British Government, frightened out of its wits for the moment by
the rout of the Fifth Army, ordained Irish Conscription, and then
did not dare to go through with it. I still think my own line was
the more businesslike. But during the war everyone except the
soldiers at the front imagined that nothing but an extreme
assertion of our most passionate prejudices, without the smallest
regard to their effect on others, could win the war. Finally the
British blockade won the war; but the wonder is that the British
blockhead did not lose it. I suppose the enemy was no wiser. War
is not a sharpener of wits; and I am afraid I gave great offence
by keeping my head in this matter of Irish recruiting. What can I
do but apologize, and publish the play now that it can no longer
do any good?

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