Dividing Ireland: World War I and Partition

THE GREAT WAR AND NATIONAL IDENTITY 111
J.H.Bernard, the Church of Ireland Bishop of Ossory, echoed similar
elements, in September 1915, when he looked to the post-war
Irish situation. Although no one could predict what the political
situation would be, Bernard supposed that no reasonable man
would be unaffected by the fact that the ‘best of Ireland’s blood’
had been poured out in the common cause of King and Country.
Bernard drew no distinction between Unionists and Nationalists,
Roman Catholics, Presbyterians or Churchmen, for the ‘same grass
grew over their graves in far-off fields’. In Kilkenny, where he
spoke, Bernard had noticed a coming together in a common
sorrow of the unionist and nationalist communities, and he did not
forget that the first Irish chaplain killed at the front was a Roman
Catholic chaplain to the Royal Dublin Fusiliers. Bernard hoped that
the memory of these things might soften the bitterness of political
antagonism, although he stressed that this did not mean that one
side or the other should abandon old convictions; but it was now
unthinkable, he thought, that Irishmen would draw the sword
against Irishmen after the war, although he realised that it would
not be easy to compose these differences, demanding as it would,
patience and the absence of old party shibboleths. 126
Such sentiments were welcomed by supporters of the Irish Party,
but outraged many Ulster Unionists. So, whereas in 1915 the
Freeman’s Journal found J.H. Bernard’s comments ‘remarkable’,
seeing in them a common theme enunciated in Redmond’s
speeches, 127 and a recognition that the ‘community of sacrifice
and grief is established’ among nationalists and unionists, 128 the
response of the Belfast News-Letter to the speech was to inquire
as to what was meant by ‘old party shibboleths’. Certainly, the
Union was not a shibboleth, and perhaps Nationalists, were
Bernard to inquire, would tell him that home rule and ‘Ireland a
nation’ were not either. What then was to be abandoned? asked
the News-Letter. The Kaiser thought Belgian neutrality was a
shibboleth, but Asquith and his colleagues thought it was worth
fighting for; like-wise Ulstermen believed that the British
Constitution’s maintenance was a duty no less sacred than
Belgium’s neutrality. 129 The Northern Whig claimed that Redmond
and home rule could not be credited with the presence of so many
Irish soldiers at the front, for it could not be forgotten that in
previous wars, when there was no home rule scheme, Irishmen
were to be found fighting for the Empire. 130 Indeed, the Whig
claimed that the 10th (Irish) Division had hundreds of Englishmen
in it, while the 16th (Irish) Division was minus a whole brigade, and
its reserve battalions were also full of Englishmen. 131 The Whig
attacked the Irish Party’s claim to political ownership of the 10th