Douglas Hyde Papers : Memoir and Postcards

Although when the Gaelic League was started I did all in my power to make and keep it non-political, yet I thought all along that a time would one day come when it would itself take part in politics. However after running it some years upon non-political lines it got to be so firmly established on a non-political basis that, for some years at least, I doubt if it would have been in anyone's power to have switched it on to politics. I remember saying that it just showed the power of repetition and suggestion, for even those people who would gladly have dragged it into politics looked upon its non-political constitution as something inevitable, and even something

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to be respected, something at any rate that it was no use trying to change. This was the case for 12 or 15 years or more.

By keeping the League strictly and sternly non-political we drew into it, or rather we earned the good will and kind words of such different people as Forde of the Irish World, Devoy of the Irish American, Cardinal Logue and Horace Plunkett. Horace Plunketts kind words of appreciation were worth any money to the League, though few people recognized this, for with his support and the unanimity of every one else it became impossible for the Irish Government to send out the "hard word" to the Intermediate & Nat'l Boards

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and to kill off the language ^{so far as it would be killed} by rules and regulations, as I have no doubt at all that it would have done from the very first if it had [turned?] the least tendency towards ^anti-English politics. I feel quite satisfied in my own mind that the rigid non-political attitude was the one thing that saved the League during the first dozen years for everyone had a good word to say of it and nobody spoke against it. The members of Parliament alone, or at least a considerable number of them, were always suspicious of the movement, but a few like John Boland and Stephen Gwynn took it up warmly, and this was sufficient to neutralise any furtive hostility on the part of the rest.

At an early period I had to tackle the

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the whole question, because Patrick Forde of the Irish World challenged me upon it ^{in a private letter} and wanted to know why I did not take up politics & make the League an adjunct to the Irish Parliamentary party - My answer was perhaps the best paper I ever wrote. I showed how the bulk of the branches were run by officers & secretaries who were largely either National Teachers or Customs and Excise officers, how these men were precluded by rigid rules from taking part in anything pol-itical, how many of them were full of national feeling of the best type but could find no outlet for it. How we provided an outlet and let loose a lot of energy for the good of Ireland

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which would otherwise have been lost. I said a great deal more and so effectually that I had no further trouble in that quarter, and Forde raised £300 in his paper for us ^{the League}, at a time when even that small sum meant everything to us. I was very proud of my letter to Forde and carefully kept a copy but on looking it up the other day I found the mice had eaten it, and it alone out of a number of papers in a drawer into which they had bored a hole. This I regretted ^{for the matter had far reaching consequences,} for having won Forde over there was no possibility of the Members of Parliament turning upon us and rending us, or ^at least of their openly dis-paraging us, once their own chief American

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ally had taken us up and given us his blessing. This was a distant milestone in the early progress of the League.

There was never any trouble about keeping "national" politics as expounded by the members of Parliament out of the League, and I never heard even a mention of evicted tenants. The trouble was to keep out politics of the Wolf Tone or Ferrian type. These growing stronger by degrees came on with a rush in 1914 & 1915 and ended by capturing the League, its officers its machinery & its money. I suppose the fulness of the time for such capture had come. But I at least had consistently held out against

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anything but a pure language movement, and had reiterated to the public over and over again that the League was only a language movement, and that so long as I was in it I would never consent to its being made anything else. It was on the strength of this attitude that we won over men like Sir Horace Plunkett ^{and Cardinal Logue} & won over the schools or at least made much way on in them. But I myself was pledged before the country, pledged to the very teeth, to keep the League out of politics, and I had absolutely no choice whatever left but to retire from it when I thought it was becoming political. I accordingly com-mitted Hari-Kari with as good a grace as

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possible, although I am not at all sure that the League did not do the right thing for the language in practically throwing me over. I did not see this at the time however, for I did not foresee the utter ^{and [swift?]} debacle of the Win Parliamentary party and the apothesis of Sinn Fein. The only reason I had for keeping politics out was the desire to offend nobody and get help from every party, which I did. But when Sinn Fein swallowed up all parties except the Unionists, this was no longer necessary in the same way, because when all the country was one party and that a friendly one we could lose nothing by embracing it, except a certain amount of Unionist assistance which did not amount to very much now, though it had

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been so invaluable to us when we were growing. But I think we I think we had won over the best of the Unionists who were inclined that way, and I doubt that many more would have come in to us. If any such came over and got into any touch with the Dublin League they would have soon detected the Larkenite democratic trend of it, which marked its last years so strongly, and have been warned off or deterred by the new atmosphere.