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turn on us, but we was armed, and they cursed us instead. All the same, I believed the blighters was right. That night the lootenant spoke to us chaps. He was just a young chap, but he didna look it then. "Lads,' he said, "we've got to make Lerwick, and the only way is to keep the pumps goin'!" We gave him a cheer—he needed it-and we kept the crew at it till they dropped, and then kept oursel's at it till we near did the same. And when we was almost ready and willin' to let the old basket founder, we sighted the Shetlands. I was pumpin' at the time, and I fell down and kent nothin' for two days. 'Twas my bad health startin', I suppose. Now, what do ye think, sir?'

All his yarns end with that question. This time I do not answer it sincerely. He would be embarrassed, perhaps troubled, if I said he had done his bit well before he dropped.

Two days of haar, and the sun shines again. James comes with a globe of green glass held in stout netting, one of the numerous floats attached to the nets used by the drifters for the entangling of submarines. Sometimes the globes are cast ashore, and James has spent the morning searching, because I once expressed an idle wish to possess one.

He refuses a cigarette, saying: 'Not feelin' just so fine to-day . . . but I'll be all right in a month or so.'

I come back to the big volumes of Mr C. Ernest Fayle and Mr Archibald Hurd, and these jottings of mine seem vain. I have dared to touch only on the small craft and the men who manned them, but even so I have failed to give an inkling of that one portion of Mr Hurd's fine work, The Merchant Navy.' The episodes of the drifters and the adventure of the 'Salmon,' so crudely set forth by me, are told by Mr Hurd in detail and with far greater effect; yet their telling occupies but two or three pages out of near a thousand which, it is not extravagant to say, are alive with wonder, suspense, wrath, and pity. Here, too, are the stories of the larger craft-converted cruisers, liners, and carriers, armed or defenceless-and of the great northern blockaders, the unwinking watchers, the Tenth Cruiser Squadron. For the last named take the map

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one of the many illuminating maps in the volumesshowing the positions of the ships, and then, on the most violent and bitter day in winter, go look at the open sea, and marvel how the men won through. Of Mr Fayle's 'Seaborne Trade,' one can only wonder how he did it not the heaping up of material, mountains of facts and figures, but their ordering, assembling, and fitting together, so that we have a history, acceptable to the ordinary reader, invaluable to the student, of commercial shipping and its countless problems during the War.

It is only when one has read these books that one begins to comprehend how stupendous was the national task; and without reading them none need hope to imagine, in the paltriest measure, what sea warfare means to those who man the ships, to those on land who bear the burden and responsibility of direction, to those who toil against racing time, and to those who only sit and wait. Well, here is the whole truth, calmly yet not coldly told, with neither self-glorification nor belittling of the enemy. It is truth we ought all to learn. We know too little about the Royal Navy; we know less about the R.N.R. and R.N.V.R. But do we want to know more? With the normal pulse of peace-time we are a practical people, apt to forget things not entered in our ledgers, shy of what we call sentiment. Still, as a practical people, at present watching the British pound going to par, we might casually, and colloquially, ask one another the question: What price the British pound to-day had the merchant seamen failed Britain in her extremity ?'

J. J. BELL.

Art. 12.-MEDIEVAL IRELAND.

1. A History of Medieval Ireland from 1110-1513. By Edmund Curtis. Macmillan, 1923.

2. Ireland under the Anglo-Normans. Vols. III-IV. By Goddard H. Orpen. Clarendon Press, 1920.

3. Phases of Irish History. By Eoin MacNeill. Dublin: M. H. Gill, 1919.

4. Edward Bruce's Invasion of Ireland. By Olive Armstrong. Murray, 1923.

THE history of Medieval Ireland is a subject which, if we are not to flatter or wound the susceptibilities of the present generation of Irishmen, requires careful handling. For, trained as they have been to believe that the connexion with England has been the fons et origo of all their sorrows, they are inclined to resent any attempt to whitewash the character, actions, and institutions of their oppressors. They insist that if Ireland had only been allowed to develop her own civilisation on her own lines, she would have been not only a happier but a more prosperous country. We will not urge the dictum of an eminent German historian that a country that wilfully excludes herself from all extraneous influences, by giving practical expression to the doctrines of Sinn Féin, is in danger of political atrophy; but will content ourselves with remarking that, if England is responsible for the 'unmaking' of Ireland, Ireland has herself to blame in the first place for this result.

It is well known that, although, at the request of John of Salisbury, Pope Adrian IV granted Henry II permission to annex Ireland to the Crown of England, ten years elapsed before any attempt was made to take advantage of that donation, and then only at the instigation of Dermot MacMurrough, ex-King of Leinster. This Irishmen know so well that it is not good to speak to them about Dermot. But let us look a little closer at the matter. Dermot is the villain in the play; but that Dermot, though exiled, could return at his own sweet will and re-establish himself in his kingdom without foreign assistance, casts a curious sidelight on the

* Ed. Meyer, 'Gesch. d. Altertums,' 12 1. 76.

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condition of affairs in Ireland. The fact is, that what Dermot was after was not the recovery of his own, but the punishment of his personal enemy, O'Rourke. Personal motives count for far more in Irish affairs than some historians recognise. Prof. Curtis has much to tell of the introduction into Ireland of those famous galloglas, the MacSweenys, MacDonnells, and MacSheehys. Dermot, it seems to us, was merely in advance of his time in anticipating the action of O'Donnell, O'Neill, and the Earl of Desmond in this respect. To him Strongbow and his Cambro-Normans were merely a sort of condottieri, whom, when they had served his end, he intended to dismiss. True, he had to offer Strongbow a handsome reward in order to secure his assistance. But Dermot was not so naïve as Prof. Curtis would have us believe Irishmen generally were.* The promise of the hand of his daughter Eva and the succession to Leinster meant little or nothing to him at the time, and indeed would have amounted to nothing in the end had he not had the misfortune to die before Strongbow. True, he should have known better than to play with fire. His knowledge of Irish history, if he was really the educated man we are led to suppose, should have taught him that the employment by Cormac MacArt of those other famous mercenaries, the Fian, or Fenians, of whom Irishmen are so absurdly enamoured, was a risky game. But MacMurrough was careless of consequences provided he could revenge himself on O'Rourke.

Prof. Curtis is amazed at the indifference displayed in Ireland to Dermot's proceedings oversea, and well he may be. The obtuseness of Rory O'Conor to the danger that menaced him is even more remarkable than MacMurrough's slyness in circumventing him. It was MacMurrough's misfortune to die before he had effected his purpose. His death left Strongbow the virtual King of Leinster. But, says Prof. Curtis, this timid and respectable man lacked true audacity and was all too conscious of his anomalous position both in Brehon and in English law.' We do not know what Prof. Curtis would have wished him to do; but to us he seems, as the result

* Political craft, the heritage of Rome, had not entered into the ingenuous and undissembling Irish mind' (p. 4).

proves, to have acted with commendable sagacity. The situation was a difficult one for all concerned, and not least for Henry. As we have remarked, Henry had shown no desire to take advantage of Adrian's gift. He had accorded such of his subjects, as liked to do so, a general permission to assist Dermot to recover his own; but he had not dreamed that things would fall out as they had done. Ireland, as a country, did not interest him in the slightest; but he did not intend to allow one of his own subjects to repeat in that island the experiment so successfully performed by his ancestor, William the Conqueror, in England. His first step, therefore, was to prevent further supplies reaching Strongbow, by placing an embargo on all shipping to Ireland. Afterwards, under the pressure of events arising out of the murder of Archbishop Becket, he determined to go thither himself.

We agree with Prof. Curtis that Henry had no intention of conquering Ireland vi et armis; neither, we think, did he expect to find the Irish so submissive as they showed themselves. Apart from the general acknowledgment that he desired of his title as lord of Ireland, Henry had two objects before him—to regulate his relations with Strongbow and to come to terms with O'Conor. The first purpose was easily effected, but it required some time before O'Conor could be coaxed into submission. By the Treaty of Windsor (1175) O'Conor was secured in his possession of Connaught and the position of ardri, excepting over such portions of Ireland as had already fallen under the direct sway of the Crown of England, quamdiu se bene gesserit, and on condition of paying one hide out of every ten on all animals slaughtered on his own lands and those of his sub-reguli. We have no information whether O'Conor attempted to perform the latter stipulation; but the Treaty was inoperative from the beginning. Things might possibly have fallen out otherwise had O'Conor been the actual sovereign that his title of ardri implied, or had Henry been able to exercise a personal supervision over the course of events. O'Conor's authority, however, reached no further than his own province, and, as an absentee, Henry was unable to control the conduct of his English vassals in Ireland. Henry was not slow to

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