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George Bernard Shaw >> O\'Flaherty V. C.
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O'FLAHERTY V.C.: A RECRUITING PAMPHLET
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
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 a 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?
O'FLAHERTY V.C.
At the door of an Irish country house in a park. Fine, summer
weather; the summer of 1916. The porch, painted white, projects
into the drive: but the door is at the side and the front has a
window. The porch faces east: and the door is in the north side
of it. On the south side is a tree in which a thrush is singing.
Under the window is a garden seat with an iron chair at each end
of it.
The last four bars of God Save the King are heard in the
distance, followed by three cheers. Then the band strikes up It's
a Long Way to Tipperary and recedes until it is out of hearing.
Private O'Flaherty V.C. comes wearily southward along the drive,
and falls exhausted into the garden seat. The thrush utters a
note of alarm and flies away. The tramp of a horse is heard.
A GENTLEMAN'S VOICE. Tim! Hi! Tim! [He is heard dismounting.]
A LABORER'S VOICE. Yes, your honor.
THE GENTLEMAN'S VOICE. Take this horse to the stables, will you?
A LABORER'S VOICE. Right, your honor. Yup there. Gwan now. Gwan.
[The horse is led away.]
General Sir Pearce Madigan, an elderly baronet in khaki, beaming
with enthusiasm, arrives. O'Flaherty rises and stands at
attention.
SIR PEARCE. No, no, O'Flaherty: none of that now. You're off
duty. Remember that though I am a general of forty years service,
that little Cross of yours gives you a higher rank in the roll of
glory than I can pretend to.
O'FLAHERTY [relaxing]. I'm thankful to you, Sir Pearce; but I
wouldn't have anyone think that the baronet of my native place
would let a common soldier like me sit down in his presence
without leave.
SIR PEARCE. Well, you're not a common soldier, O'Flaherty: you're
a very uncommon one; and I'm proud to have you for my guest here
today.
O'FLAHERTY. Sure I know, sir. You have to put up with a lot from
the like of me for the sake of the recruiting. All the quality
shakes hands with me and says they're proud to know me, just the
way the king said when he pinned the Cross on me. And it's as
true as I'm standing here, sir, the queen said to me: "I hear you
were born on the estate of General Madigan," she says; "and the
General himself tells me you were always a fine young fellow."
"Bedad, Mam," I says to her, "if the General knew all the rabbits
I snared on him, and all the salmon I snatched on him, and all
the cows I milked on him, he'd think me the finest ornament for
the county jail he ever sent there for poaching."
SIR PEARCE [Laughing]. You're welcome to them all, my lad. Come
[he makes him sit down again on the garden seat]! sit down and
enjoy your holiday [he sits down on one of the iron chairs; the
one at the doorless side of the porch.]
O'FLAHERTY. Holiday, is it? I'd give five shillings to be back in
the trenches for the sake of a little rest and quiet. I never
knew what hard work was till I took to recruiting. What with the
standing on my legs all day, and the shaking hands, and the
making speeches, and--what's worse--the listening to them
and the calling for cheers for king and country, and the saluting
the flag till I'm stiff with it, and the listening to them
playing God Save the King and Tipperary, and the trying to make
my eyes look moist like a man in a picture book, I'm that bet
that I hardly get a wink of sleep. I give you my word, Sir
Pearce, that I never heard the tune of Tipperary in my life till
I came back from Flanders; and already it's drove me to that
pitch of tiredness of it that when a poor little innocent slip of
a boy in the street the other night drew himself up and saluted
and began whistling it at me, I clouted his head for him, God
forgive me.
SIR PEARCE [soothingly]. Yes, yes: I know. I know. One does get
fed up with it: I've been dog tired myself on parade many a time.
But still, you know, there's a gratifying side to it, too. After
all, he is our king; and it's our own country, isn't it?
O'FLAHERTY. Well, sir, to you that have an estate in it, it would
feel like your country. But the divil a perch of it ever I owned.
And as to the king: God help him, my mother would have taken the
skin off my back if I'd ever let on to have any other king than
Parnell.
SIR PEARCE [rising, painfully shocked]. Your mother! What are you
dreaming about, O'Flaherty? A most loyal woman. Always most
loyal. Whenever there is an illness in the Royal Family, she asks
me every time we meet about the health of the patient as
anxiously as if it were yourself, her only son.
O'FLAHERTY. Well, she's my mother; and I won't utter a word agen
her. But I'm not saying a word of lie when I tell you that that
old woman is the biggest kanatt from here to the cross of
Monasterboice. Sure she's the wildest Fenian and rebel, and
always has been, that ever taught a poor innocent lad like myself
to pray night and morning to St Patrick to clear the English out
of Ireland the same as he cleared the snakes. You'll be surprised
at my telling you that now, maybe, Sir Pearce?
SIR PEARCE [unable to keep still, walking away from O'Flaherty].
Surprised! I'm more than surprised, O'Flaherty. I'm overwhelmed.
[Turning and facing him.] Are you--are you joking?
O'FLAHERTY. If you'd been brought up by my mother, sir, you'd
know better than to joke about her. What I'm telling you is the
truth; and I wouldn't tell it to you if I could see my way to get
out of the fix I'll be in when my mother comes here this day to
see her boy in his glory, and she after thinking all the time it
was against the English I was fighting.
SIR PEARCE. Do you mean to say you told her such a monstrous
falsehood as that you were fighting in the German army?
O'FLAHERTY. I never told her one word that wasn't the truth and
nothing but the truth. I told her I was going to fight for the
French and for the Russians; and sure who ever heard of the
French or the Russians doing anything to the English but fighting
them? That was how it was, sir. And sure the poor woman kissed me
and went about the house singing in her old cracky voice that the
French was on the sea, and they'd be here without delay, and the
Orange will decay, says the Shan Van Vocht.
SIR PEARCE [sitting down again, exhausted by his feelings]. Well,
I never could have believed this. Never. What do you suppose will
happen when she finds out?
O'FLAHERTY. She mustn't find out. It's not that she'd half kill
me, as big as I am and as brave as I am. It's that I'm fond of
her, and can't bring myself to break the heart in her. You may
think it queer that a man should be fond of his mother, sir, and
she having bet him from the time he could feel to the time she
was too slow to ketch him; but I'm fond of her; and I'm not
ashamed of it. Besides, didn't she win the Cross for me?
SIR PEARCE. Your mother! How?
O'FLAHERTY. By bringing me up to be more afraid of running away
than of fighting. I was timid by nature; and when the other boys
hurted me, I'd want to run away and cry. But she whaled me for
disgracing the blood of the O'Flahertys until I'd have fought the
divil himself sooner than face her after funking a fight. That
was how I got to know that fighting was easier than it looked,
and that the others was as much afeard of me as I was of them,
and that if I only held out long enough they'd lose heart and
give rip. That's the way I came to be so courageous. I tell you,
Sir Pearce, if the German army had been brought up by my mother,
the Kaiser would be dining in the banqueting hall at Buckingham
Palace this day, and King George polishing his jack boots for him
in the scullery.
SIR PEARCE. But I don't like this, O'Flaherty. You can't go on
deceiving your mother, you know. It's not right.
O'FLAHERTY. Can't go on deceiving her, can't I? It's little you
know what a son's love can do, sir. Did you ever notice what a
ready liar I am?
SIR PEARCE. Well, in recruiting a man gets carried away. I
stretch it a bit occasionally myself. After all, it's for king
and country. But if you won't mind my saying it, O'Flaherty, I
think that story about your fighting the Kaiser and the twelve
giants of the Prussian guard singlehanded would be the better for
a little toning down. I don't ask you to drop it, you know; for
it's popular, undoubtedly; but still, the truth is the truth.
Don't you think it would fetch in almost as many recruits if you
reduced the number of guardsmen to six?
O'FLAHERTY. You're not used to telling lies like I am, sir. I got
great practice at home with my mother. What with saving my skin
when I was young and thoughtless, and sparing her feelings when I
was old enough to understand them, I've hardly told my mother the
truth twice a year since I was born; and would you have me turn
round on her and tell it now, when she's looking to have some
peace and quiet in her old age?
SIR PEARCE (troubled in his conscience]. Well, it's not my
affair, of course, O'Flaherty. But hadn't you better talk to
Father Quinlan about it?
O'FLAHERTY. Talk to Father Quinlan, is it! Do you know what
Father Quinlan says to me this very morning?
SIR PEARCE. Oh, you've seen him already, have you? What did he
say?
O'FLAHERTY. He says "You know, don't you," he says, "that it's
your duty, as a Christian and a good son of the Holy Church, to
love your enemies?" he says. "I know it's my juty as a soldier to
kill them," I says. "That's right, Dinny," he says: "quite right.
But," says he, "you can kill them and do them a good turn
afterward to show your love for them" he says; "and it's your
duty to have a mass said for the souls of the hundreds of Germans
you say you killed," says he; "for many and many of them were
Bavarians and good Catholics," he says. "Is it me that must pay
for masses for the souls of the Boshes?" I says. "Let the King of
England pay for them," I says; "for it was his quarrel and not
mine."
SIR PEARCE [warmly]. It is the quarrel of every honest man and
true patriot, O'Flaherty. Your mother must see that as clearly as
I do. After all, she is a reasonable, well disposed woman, quite
capable of understanding the right and the wrong of the war. Why
can't you explain to her what the war is about?
O'FLAHERTY. Arra, sir, how the divil do I know what the war is
about?
SIR PEARCE (rising again and standing over him]. What!
O'Flaherty: do you know what you are saying? You sit there
wearing the Victoria Cross for having killed God knows how many
Germans; and you tell me you don't know why you did it!
O'FLAHERTY. Asking your pardon, Sir Pearce, I tell you no such
thing. I know quite well why I kilt them, because I was afeard
that, if I didn't, they'd kill me.
SIR PEARCE (giving it up, and sitting down again]. Yes, yes, of
course; but have you no knowledge of the causes of the war? of
the interests at stake? of the importance--I may almost say--in
fact I will say--the sacred right for which we are fighting?
Don't you read the papers?
O'FLAHERTY. I do when I can get them. There's not many newsboys
crying the evening paper in the trenches. They do say, Sir
Pearce, that we shall never beat the Boshes until we make Horatio
Bottomley Lord Leftnant of England. Do you think that's true,
sir?
SIR PEARCE. Rubbish, man! there's no Lord Lieutenant in England:
the king is Lord Lieutenant. It's a simple question of
patriotism. Does patriotism mean nothing to you?
O'FLAHERTY. It means different to me than what it would to you,
sir. It means England and England's king to you. To me and the
like of me, it means talking about the English just the way the
English papers talk about the Boshes. And what good has it ever
done here in Ireland? It's kept me ignorant because it filled up
my mother's mind, and she thought it ought to fill up mine too.
It's kept Ireland poor, because instead of trying to better
ourselves we thought we was the fine fellows of patriots when we
were speaking evil of Englishmen that was as poor as ourselves
and maybe as good as ourselves. The Boshes I kilt was more
knowledgable men than me; and what better am I now that I've kilt
them? What better is anybody?
SIR PEARCE [huffed, turning a cold shoulder to him]. I am sorry
the terrible experience of this war--the greatest war ever fought
--has taught you no better, O'Flaherty.
O'FLAHERTY [preserving his dignity]. I don't know about it's
being a great war, sir. It's a big war; but that's not the same
thing. Father Quinlan's new church is a big church: you might
take the little old chapel out of the middle of it and not miss
it. But my mother says there was more true religion in the old
chapel. And the war has taught me that maybe she was right.
SIR PEARCE [grunts sulkily]!!
O'FLAHERTY [respectfully but doggedly]. And there's another thing
it's taught me too, sir, that concerns you and me, if I may make
bold to tell it to you.
SIR PEARCE [still sulky]. I hope it's nothing you oughtn't to say
to me, O'Flaherty.
O'FLAHERTY. It's this, sir: that I'm able to sit here now and
talk to you without humbugging you; and that's what not one of
your tenants or your tenants' childer ever did to you before in
all your long life. It's a true respect I'm showing you at last,
sir. Maybe you'd rather have me humbug you and tell you lies as I
used, just as the boys here, God help them, would rather have me
tell them how I fought the Kaiser, that all the world knows I
never saw in my life, than tell them the truth. But I can't take
advantage of you the way I used, not even if I seem to be wanting
in respect to you and cocked up by winning the Cross.
SIR PEARCE [touched]. Not at all, O'Flaherty. Not at all.
O'FLAHERTY. Sure what's the Cross to me, barring the little
pension it carries? Do you think I don't know that there's
hundreds of men as brave as me that never had the luck to get
anything for their bravery but a curse from the sergeant, and the
blame for the faults of them that ought to have been their
betters? I've learnt more than you'd think, sir; for how would a
gentleman like you know what a poor ignorant conceited creature I
was when I went from here into the wide world as a soldier? What
use is all the lying, and pretending, and humbugging, and letting
on, when the day comes to you that your comrade is killed in the
trench beside you, and you don't as much as look round at him
until you trip over his poor body, and then all you say is to ask
why the hell the stretcher-bearers don't take it out of the way.
Why should I read the papers to be humbugged and lied to by them
that had the cunning to stay at home and send me to fight for
them? Don't talk to me or to any soldier of the war being right.
No war is right; and all the holy water that Father Quinlan ever
blessed couldn't make one right. There, sir! Now you know what
O'Flaherty V.C. thinks; and you're wiser so than the others that
only knows what he done.
SIR PEARCE [making the best of it, and turning goodhumoredly to
him again]. Well, what you did was brave and manly, anyhow.
O'FLAHERTY. God knows whether it was or not, better than you nor
me, General. I hope He won't be too hard on me for it, anyhow.
SIR PEARCE [sympathetically]. Oh yes: we all have to think
seriously sometimes, especially when we're a little run down. I'm
afraid we've been overworking you a bit over these recruiting
meetings. However, we can knock off for the rest of the day; and
tomorrow's Sunday. I've had about as much as I can stand myself.
[He looks at his watch.] It's teatime. I wonder what's keeping
your mother.
O'FLAHERTY. It's nicely cocked up the old woman will be having
tea at the same table as you, sir, instead of in the kitchen.
She'll be after dressing in the heighth of grandeur; and stop she
will at every house on the way to show herself off and tell them
where she's going, and fill the whole parish with spite and envy.
But sure, she shouldn't keep you waiting, sir.
SIR PEARCE. Oh, that's all right: she must be indulged on an
occasion like this. I'm sorry my wife is in London: she'd have
been glad to welcome your mother.
O'FLAHERTY. Sure, I know she would, sir. She was always a kind
friend to the poor. Little her ladyship knew, God help her, the
depth of divilment that was in us: we were like a play to her.
You see, sir, she was English: that was how it was. We was to her
what the Pathans and Senegalese was to me when I first seen them:
I couldn't think, somehow, that they were liars, and thieves, and
backbiters, and drunkards, just like ourselves or any other
Christians. Oh, her ladyship never knew all that was going on
behind her back: how would she? When I was a weeshy child, she
gave me the first penny I ever had in my hand; and I wanted to
pray for her conversion that night the same as my mother made me
pray for yours; and--
SIR PEARCE [scandalized]. Do you mean to say that your mother
made you pray for MY conversion?
O'FLAHERTY. Sure and she wouldn't want to see a gentleman like
you going to hell after she nursing your own son and bringing up
my sister Annie on the bottle. That was how it was, sir. She'd
rob you; and she'd lie to you; and she'd call down all the
blessings of God on your head when she was selling you your own
three geese that you thought had been ate by the fox the day
after you'd finished fattening them, sir; and all the time you
were like a bit of her own flesh and blood to her. Often has she
said she'd live to see you a good Catholic yet, leading
victorious armies against the English and wearing the collar of
gold that Malachi won from the proud invader. Oh, she's the
romantic woman is my mother, and no mistake.
SIR PEARCE [in great perturbation]. I really can't believe this,
O'Flaherty. I could have sworn your mother was as honest a woman
as ever breathed.
O'FLAHERTY. And so she is, sir. She's as honest as the day.
SIR PEARCE. Do you call it honest to steal my geese?
O'FLAHERTY. She didn't steal them, sir. It was me that stole
them.
SIR PEARCE. Oh! And why the devil did you steal them?
O'FLAHERTY. Sure we needed them, sir. Often and often we had to
sell our own geese to pay you the rent to satisfy your needs; and
why shouldn't we sell your geese to satisfy ours?
SIR PEARCE. Well, damn me!
O'FLAHERTY [sweetly]. Sure you had to get what you could out of
us; and we had to get what we could out of you. God forgive us
both!
SIR PEARCE. Really, O'Flaherty, the war seems to have upset you a
little.
O'FLAHERTY. It's set me thinking, sir; and I'm not used to it.
It's like the patriotism of the English. They never thought of
being patriotic until the war broke out; and now the patriotism
has took them so sudden and come so strange to them that they run
about like frightened chickens, uttering all manner of nonsense.
But please God they'll forget all about it when the war's over.
They're getting tired of it already.
SIR PEARCE. No, no: it has uplifted us all in a wonderful way.
The world will never be the same again, O'Flaherty. Not after a
war like this.
O'FLAHERTY. So they all say, sir. I see no great differ myself.
It's all the fright and the excitement; and when that quiets down
they'll go back to their natural divilment and be the same as
ever. It's like the vermin: it'll wash off after a while.
SIR PEARCE [rising and planting himself firmly behind the garden
seat]. Well, the long and the short of it is, O'Flaherty, I must
decline to be a party to any attempt to deceive your mother. I
thoroughly disapprove of this feeling against the English,
especially at a moment like the present. Even if your mother's
political sympathies are really what you represent them to be, I
should think that her gratitude to Gladstone ought to cure her of
such disloyal prejudices.