Chapter XIV
Sedition in Ireland and Australia

Having already given an outline of the vast Asiatic plot which is aimed directly at the whole of Europe as well as the British Empire, we will now draw attention to the conspiracy which, each day growing in violence, is directed at "the Achilles's heel of England," Ireland. The immediate purposes of these intrigues are clear enough, and it is evident that they would fit perfectly into " the programme of violence and hypocrisy ' 1 which has been put forward in this book as the secret cause of world unrest.

The crimes which are Ireland's daily history cannot plead the excuse of hot-headed impulse or blind revenge. They are carried out in a spirit of cold, calculating brutality, and as a Roman Catholic priest wrote in a letter to the Dublin Daily Express, they are "the diabolical work of an organization."

Throughout the world the story is the same—murder, outrage, and disorders contrived and controlled by some invisible power of evil. In his Red Peril and Green, a book which is a mine of information on the Irish question, Mr. Dawson remarks that during the war "nothing was more astonishing or nerve-racking than the cobweb of intrigue, spun by a hidden hand, in which the nation was enmeshed, and in which it felt itself entangled at every crisis."

Even more astonishing and nerve-racking is the survival of this cobweb after the defeat of Germany. During the war at least we knew the identity of the spider which spun the web, but now the cause of all the trouble is obscure and mysterious, and the forces of civilization seem to be fighting in the dark.

The stability of the British Empire is the chief obstacle which those who aim at the overthrow of European civilization have to overcome, and Ireland is, according to Karl Marx and the modern Bolsheviks, the Empire's weakest point. Mrs. Webster, in her letter to the Morning Post published on July 18, 1920, quoted Karl Marx on Ireland, and his proposal to the International that they should, in order to prepare the way for revolution in England, support the Irish demand for independence.

This Marxian view is still accepted by the Internationalists, and the whole question has recently been discussed by Dr. Hermann Gorter, author of The World's Revolution, and described in the Bolshevist Press as a Professor at the Moscow University. He is connected with the Dutch Communists, and he writes frequently for the Bolshevist papers of this country. Writing in the Workers' Dreadnought, Miss Sylvia Pankhurst's paper, on "Ireland: the Achilles's Heel of England," Dr. Gorter states that the demand of small nations for independence can now be supported by Bolsheviks, because Imperialistic Capitalism is shaken, and "this independence now becomes a means to weaken the position of all the big capitalistic nations, and even to cause their downfall."

Developing the application of this idea, which is one of Lenin's, the Bolshevist professor writes:

"For no country is this more true than for Ireland. If Ireland should become independent, Great Britain would be struck to the very foundations. Now, therefore, it is the duty of all British Communists to demand the complete independence of Ireland, and to take all the measures required to bring it about, and for the entire Third International this is of the utmost importance. Again, England is the rock on which Capitalism is firmly rooted, the bulwark of world Capitalism, the hope of all counter-revolution and all reaction. But Ireland is the Achilles's heel of England. For the revolution on the European continent, therefore for the world revolution, it is a vital question that British Capital should be hit there."

Dr. Gorter states that "the gigantic genius of Marx saw all this long ago," and he quotes the following from Marx, which supplements Mrs. Webster's quotations:

"That country which makes entire nations into its proletarians, which encompasses the whole world in its gigantic arms, that once already has defrayed out of its own funds the cost of a European restoration, in the very heart of which the class-antitheses have developed into the most pronounced and shameless extreme: that England seems to be the rock against which all revolutionary waves are broken, and which starves the new society already in the maternal womb.

England dominates the world's market. A subversion of the national economic relations in any country of the European continent, or in the whole of the European continent, would be without England no more than a storm in a glass of water. The relations of industry and commerce within every nation are dominated by their intercourse with other nations, and depend on their relation to the world market. England, however, dominates the world market, and the bourgeoisie dominates England."

Dr. Gorter points out that the above "applies in almost a magic way to our own times." England's "gigantic transport fleet" is a menace to the Socialist order, and now that Germany is defeated, England practically dominates the markets of the world. "Now also Great Britain is the rock of Capitalism in Europe." He then quotes Marx on Ireland. Marx wrote:

"Ireland is the stronghold of English landed aristocracy. The exploitation of this country is not only the main source of the national wealth, it forms likewise England's greatest moral strength. It represents, in fact, the domination ot England over Ireland. Ireland, therefore, is the great expedient, by means of which the English aristocracy maintains its domination in England itself.

On the other hand, withdraw the English Army and police from Ireland tomorrow and you will straightway have an agrarian revolution in Ireland. The fall of the English aristocracy in Ireland, however, needs must imply and inevitably leads to their overthrow in England. Through this the primal condition for the proletarian revolution in England would be fulfilled."

The remainder of the quotation given by Hermann Gorter from Marx is the one given by Mrs. Webster. Commenting on these statements of Marx, Gorter says that while the conditions in Ireland today have changed since Marx wrote, what he said to the First International:

". . . applies still, and a hundred times more, to the Third. The Third International must strive by every possible means to promote the independence of Ireland."

"But in the hands of the British workers lies the fate of Ireland (concludes Dr. Gorter). They must follow the example given by Lenin and the Russian Bolsheviks, who, in order to make the revolution in the whole of Russia, demanded the independences of Finland and Poland and the Baltic States. The attitude of the British workers with regard to Ireland is the barometer for the British revolution." (From the Workers' Dreadnought. May 8, 1920.)

Since Trotsky, Lenin, and Hermann Gorter have paid so much attention to the need for breaking up the British Empire, the organs of Bolshevism and Revolution have followed this lead. The Socialist (Glasgow), the organ of the Socialist Labour Party, in its leading article on June 17, 1920, discussing the trouble in Ireland, remarks:

"L'affaire Irlandaise will yet prove the rock on which the British Empire, the greatest partnership of world-robbery and slaughter in history, will perish. The dissolution of the British Empire, the centre and stronghold of world-capitalism, is the necessary prelude to the success of the world revolution of the working class. We of the Socialist Labour Party of Great Britain are everywhere attempting to the best of our ability and resources to awaken British Labour to action in recognition of its duties and responsibilities to Ireland. . . . The success of the Irish working class is our success."

During the last decade a great and striking change has come over Irish aims and methods. The struggle against the British Empire is being controlled by far more dangerous and subtle brains, and one is forced to the conclusion that the real directing force regards Irish independence not as an end in itself, but as a means towards the accomplishment of world-wide anarchy. In the past Ireland complained of English misgovernment, and at least admitted a solution of the problem which would have left it within the Empire. Today Ireland will have no part or parcel in the British Empire, and seeks in the pursuit of its independence the destruction of the social order.

The time of sporadic rebellion has passed with the period of Parliamentary agitation. Sinn Fein, once an intellectual movement, has been swept away and finds itself united with organized Irish Labour and the Social Revolutionaries pledged to the cause of Bolshevism and Anarchy throughout the world.

It is a suggestive study to trace the means by which this vital change was brought about. The principal agent was James Connolly, who introduced into the politics of Irish disaffection the philosophy of Social Revolution. From 1903 to 1911, Connolly was in America, and there, as Mr. Dawson points out in the book quoted above, he came under the influence of Leon, who counted Lenin among his disciples. It was Connolly's work that enabled Mr. de Blacam to make the proud boast that Bolshevism was born in Ireland, and Lenin himself admitted that he owed much to the Irish rebel who was executed after the rebellion of 1916.

Here we have incontrovertible proof of the unity of control and direction that underlies disorders in every part of the world. Long before Germany had fallen and could no longer provide Ireland with the sinews of war, the Irish movement had come into contact with the High Priest of Bolshevism and was ready to play its part in the world conspiracy. Connolly was one of the organizers of the 'Industrial Workers of the World' in America, and as such had every reason to become acquainted with many of those who brought about the Russian Revolution. There he must have learnt the doctrines that the "formidable sect" was spreading through the world for its own purposes.

A direct link between the great Asiatic conspiracy and the Irish plot is apparently to be found in the person of Liam Mellowes, who played a leading part in America in bringing about the open alliance between the Sinn Fein organization and Russian Bolshevism. In the rebellion of 1916, this Mellowes commanded a rebel force in County Galway, and after its collapse he escaped from Ireland, probably to Germany. Later, he is to be found in New York working with a German agent. His main object on this occasion was to organize another revolution in Ireland in the spring of 1918, an attempt that failed but another of his enterprises was from our point of view very significant, since it consisted in forwarding money to the Turks and establishing a mysterious Turkish organization in America.

It would be interesting to know whether this organization which thus came into existence after the United States had entered the war has disappeared, or whether it maybe anyway responsible for the perpetual flow of subversive propaganda that finds its way into Asia from America.

Of the part played by Sinn Fein during the war there is no need to speak at length. It is a matter of public knowledge that German money was poured into Ireland to encourage rebellion, and the sinister figure of Casement serves as a perpetual reminder of the treachery that was at work. So far as the world conspiracy was concerned, Ireland had long ago shown that it possessed good material on which the promoters of disorder could reckon. What better ally could the "formidable sect" desire than the Ribbonmen of 1850, who wore a ribbon on their sleeves and in their hearts carried the words of the Ribbon Oath:

"In the presence of Almighty God, and this my brother, I do swear that I will suffer my right hand to be cut from my body and laid at the gaol door before I will waylay or betray a brother, and I will persevere and not spare from the cradle to the crutch and the crutch to the cradle; that I will not hear the moans or groans of infancy or old age, but that I will wade knee-deep in Orangeman's blood and do as King James did."

Such an oath might well find its place in the Protocols of the "Elders of Zion," and Mr. Dawson, when he describes the Ribbon Society as "unrivalled for the purpose of social revolution, unscrupulous, mysterious, pitiless, 'deaf to the moans of infancy or age," wrote a phrase that could equally well be applied to the world-wide secret societies with which we have been dealing.

When Germany fell and rebellious Ireland could hope for no more aid from that quarter, it was natural that Sinn Fein should seek alliance with Bolshevist Russia. The negotiations were carried on in America by Mellowes, of whose activities we have already spoken, and Dr. McCartan, Sinn Fein "ambassador" to the United States. The Bolsheviks sent over a Mr. Martens, and an offensive alliance was concluded. Dr. McCartan proclaimed to the world:

"The four million people of the Republic of Ireland, in their struggle to free themselves from military subjugation, want and welcome the aid of the free men of the Russian Socialist Federated Soviet Republic. Between the Russians and the Irish, isolated in their struggle against British armies of occupation to found securely the Republic of Ireland, there can exist only the sense of brotherhood which a common experience, endured for a common purpose, alone can induce."

That the programme of Sinn Fein as at present constituted is practically identical with that of the Moscow International, founded to enforce the dictatorship of the proletariat, the abolition of all existing forms of government, and the expropriation of all property, is shown by the following parallel passages quoted by the Duke of Northumberland in a speech made at a meeting of members of the Houses of Lords and Commons on July 7, 1920.

The Third International

Immediate universal dictatorship of the proletariat, involving the seizure of governmental power to replace it by the apparatus of proletarian power. This implies the setting up of working-class institutions as ruling power, and the principle of all rights to workers and no rights to any but workers, and is to be effected by the displacement of all bourgeois judges and establishment of all proletarian courts, the elimination of control by Government officials, and substitution of new organs of management of proletariat.

The disarming of the bourgeoisie and the general arming of the proletariat in order to make revolution secure.

The dictatorship of the proletariat should be the lever of the immediate expropriation of capital and the suppression of the right of private property in the means of production which should be transformed into the property of the whole nation.

The fundamental principle is to subordinate the interest of the movement in each country to the general interests of the international revolution as a whole.

Sinn Fein, 1918 and 1919

The enrolment of all workers in the Union, the Transport Union forming an organized proletariat. The establishment of Dail Eircann, a council of duly elected representatives of the Irish people to constitute de facto as well as de jure a National Government. The establishment of Republican Courts and the compulsory withdrawal of litigants from British Courts. The formation (promised but not yet accomplished) of a board responsible for local government to take the place of the Local Government Board.

With the Irish Volunteers and formation of the Irish Republican Army the latter part of this ordinance may be said to have been carried out in Ireland.

To recover for the Nation complete possession of all the natural physical sources of wealth of the country. To win for workers of Ireland the ownership and control of the whole produce of their labour. To abolish all powers and privileges, social and political, based on property not granted or confirmed by the freely expressed will of the Irish people.

To assist in the efforts of the working class of all Nations in their struggle for emancipation.

This adoption of the Bolshevist programme has meant wealth for Sinn Fein. Seven years ago it was almost bankrupt; today it runs newspapers, keeps up an army, and even equips its assassins with motor-cars. A Helsingfors despatch of April, 1919, gives the key to this sudden accession of riches.

"The Council of People's Commissaries . . . have voted the sum of 500,000,000 roubles monthly for the bureau of foreign propaganda. The first payment of 500,000,000 roubles for the month of February was sent to the Sinn Peiners in Ireland."

Naturally enough, the Bolsheviks in England stretched out a helping hand across the Irish Channel to aid a movement that is admirably organized, well furnished with the sinews of war, and in all respects congenial to them. Mr. Smillie, who was so honourably mentioned in Lenin's despatches, sought to tempt Sinn Fein to the "accursed reactionary chamber" by the bright prospect of finding there an array of Labour members pledged, like them, to the world conspiracy, and suggested: "Your fight is our fight; come over and help us." The cry was promptly taken up by the Bolshevist Press in this country, and the following quotations show how close is the alliance sworn between British Bolsheviks and Irish Sinn Feiners:

"In the fight of the world proletariat for the overthrow of Capitalism, every conscious section realizes that the British Government typifies reaction in its worst form. It is Britain which fights the war against Russia, Britain is behind Horthy in Hungary, Britain is behind the German Junkers. Generally speaking, the overthrowing of the British Government will be a tremendous impetus to world revolt, and any people or class which is helping to fight British reaction is deserving of support. Ireland, the nearest country to Britain, is in revolt, and in spite of every cruelty and repression, is more than holding her own." (The Socialist, organ of the Socialist Labour Party, and affiliated to the Moscow International, July 8, 1920.)

The British Socialist Party (London) published in the Call of April 22, 1920, the following manifesto:

"You wish to set up an Irish Republic. So be it. The workers of Britain have no real quarrel with your demand. Only the British ruling caste, drunk with imperialism, and sodden with prosperity, denies your claim—as it denies the similar claims of the peoples of Egypt and India. The B.S.P. condemns the brutal methods employed by the British Government in Ireland . . . and pledges the B.S.P. to assist by all means in its power the endeavours of the Irish people to national self-determination."

The Worker, the organ of the Scottish Workers' Committees, also affiliated to the Moscow International, printed on July 17, 1920, an appeal from a Sinn Feiner to Irish people in Britain:

"In the future you must view the industrial centres in Britain as it were from a military point of view and the outposts of our fighting front. Realize the importance of your position and your power to its full significance as a cog in the machinery that produces and distributes the means of existence for Britain. You can help in changing the control of the machinery, or if needs be, destroy it—Thiggin Thu. Therefore, your place is in the Workers' Committees."

The Call, June 10, 1920, in a leading article on Mr. J. H. Thomas and the Irish railwaymen, says:

"Consider the Irish situation! The vilest and most despicable tyranny of modern times has driven the Irish people into open rebellion. They hold Ireland against their English masters. They are desperately reckless, unscrupulous, if you will, in their fight for the independence which has been their dream for centuries. But they are right. . . . All that Austria, Russia, Spain, the tyrannies of the past stood for, England stands for now. By the sword, and by the sword alone, she holds Ireland. The Irish railwaymen are bound to refuse to carry troops, etc. They would be craven curs if they did less, and it is the duty of every decent Englishman to support them to the utmost limit of his power."

Equally explicit is a leading article in the Worker of April 24, 1920:

"Come, fellow workers, stir yourselves. We have to go through it yet, for until we do Ireland cannot be free, nor can we ourselves be free. Not until we have attempted to cleanse the earth of this foul garbage of Capitalist Militarism can we be called men. So long as we make no move to prevent these atrocities, we ourselves are participants in them. Down tools and let Britain rot until Ireland's wrongs are removed."

Tom Quelch, of the B.S.P. Executive, in an open letter to a young comrade printed in the Call of April 29, 1920, bids him:

"Think of the men of '48; think of the Communards, think of the Chicago martyrs, think of Marx, of Bebel, of Jaures, of William Liebknecht, of William Morris, of Jim Connolly, of Debs, of Lenin, of Karl Liebknecht, of Rosa Luxembourg, of Bela Kun—think of all who have given so much for the solidarity and happiness of the human race—and work, and strive, and, if needs be, fight in the service of the World Socialist Republic."

Space will not permit more than a brief outline of the activities of the Bolshevist conspirators in South Africa, Australia, and Canada. In Johannesburg and Capetown, two Russians preached the world revolution, and as they spoke in Russian to their own compatriots the meaning of their propaganda was not as first realized by the authorities. The result of their efforts was displayed in a strike at Johannesburg, which the leaders proclaimed as the herald of general revolution.

M. Miliukov, in his Bolshevism, An International Danger, tells how when they were sailing from Mozambique at the request of the authorities, who had discovered their mission, one of them, named Lapinsky, told the revolutionaries who had come to see them off that the Russian Bolsheviks were the advance guard of the world revolution, and that some day he would return in triumph.

Very characteristic of the world conspiracy were the means used for spreading revolutionary ideas in Australia. A secret society organized in small groups was at work preaching the Bolshevist doctrine. It will have been noted that there is an invariable tendency in this conspiracy in every part of the world to use pseudonyms, partly no doubt for security's sake, but also to enhance the mystery that is not without its effect on the imagination of the public and to conceal too obvious traces of racial origin. Thus, as we have shown, many of the secret leaders of the French Revolution chose their own names, and it is the exception to find a Russian Bolshevik who is not known by a name that is intended not to define, but to hide his family and race.

In Australia we find the same system. The members of the secret society concealed their identities under false names, and carried on their propaganda by unsigned typewritten pamphlets. Their activities resulted in a violent demonstration at Brisbane, which eventually ended in the discomfiture of the Bolsheviks at the hands of returned soldiers, and it is reasonable to see their hand in the industrial unrest that followed this affair.

Better known to the public are the results of "the programme of violence and hypocrisy" in Canada, where the movement is very closely connected with the powerful revolutionary organizations of the United States. Toronto could boast three Bolshevist societies, of which the members were ninety percent foreign and seventy-five percent Russian. The riots at Winnipeg, which were ended by the vigorous action of the Northwest Mounted Police, a force that knows how to use force when force is necessary, and by the arming of loyal citizens, proved that Bolshevist propaganda had made its impression in the West, though the revolutionaries would never have attained the temporary success they enjoyed had it not been that the war veterans were carrying on a demonstration of their own for an entirely different purpose.

Among the Canadian Bolshevist leaders there are many Russian and Jewish names, and the gospel preached is the now familiar demand for the overthrow of the "damnable trinity of Religion, Government, and Capitalism". It would be difficult to find a better summary of the doctrines set out in the protocols to be preached to all peoples in order that the "formidable sect" may, when the moment comes, grasp from the midst of world anarchy universal dominion.