GRIFFITH, ARTHUR ,1_72-1922), Irish politician, was born in Dublin on March 31, 1872 and began his working life as a printer. When the Irish party was divided over the Parnell case, Griffith, like Dublin artisans in general, sided with Parnell and against the clergy. But the rancorous quarrels which then disfig ured Irish politics disgusted young men and led them to despair of success along constitutional lines. New organizations came into existence in Dublin, the most important being the Gaelic League for the revival of the Irish language. Griffith joined this move ment, but his main activities were with the Celtic Literary Society, the leading figure of which was William Rooney. Over and above all these minor groups there existed the Irish Republican Brother hood or Fenian Society, of which Griffith became a member. He went to South Africa in 1896, owing to lack of employment in Dublin, but home-sickness brought him back to Ireland in 1898. In 1899 The United Irishman, a weekly paper, was established.
At first Rooney counted for more in the new movement than Griffith, for he possessed that per sonal magnetism in which Griffith was lacking; yet after his death in 1901, the paper strengthened rather than weakened. No such journalism had appeared in Dublin since the time of Young Ire land. It was savagely political ; but its politics had an idealism which was foreign to the agrarian revolution. Griffith cared pas sionately for the things of the mind ; his own writing had the beauty of trenchant steel ; and he welcomed contributions from the best writers in Ireland, W. B. Yeats, "A. E." and the rest. No contributor expected to be paid, for all knew that Griffith himself lived on a pittance.
Griffith's aim was both destructive and constructive. He sought first to divert his countrymen from the attempt to win self-gov ernment through parliamentary action at Westminster, and sec ondly to persuade them to work for it in their own country. Al though all his intimate associates were Fenians, he recognized that the majority of Irish Nationalists did not think separation from Britain possible. He therefore resigned membership of the I.R.B., and aimed at winning over the separatists to work for a parliament in Ireland united to that of England only by the link of the Crown. As a means to this end, he proposed passive resistance and an appeal to moral force. Payment of taxes was to be re fused. Members elected to parliament were to absent themselves from Westminster, and to sit in Ireland as a council and govern only by the assent of the nation. Tribunals were to be set up to which cases should be brought.
This policy was first publicly announced at a meeting in Dublin in Oct. 1902. The body which met called itself Cumann no nGaedheal or "Society of the Geals." But the name chosen to represent their policy was Sinn Fein, "Ourselves" —Irish words which in their proverbial use mean roughly "Stand together." The name was soon transferred from the policy to its adherents. Candidates were put forward at municipal elec tions and by 1906 there were 14 Sinn Feiners on the Dublin cor poration. But Griffith's propaganda was mainly confined to the capital; and in 1907 a member of the Irish party, who resigning his seat, stood for re-election as a Sinn Feiner, was defeated.
The new policy at first did not make much headway. Resist ance to taxation proved difficult because all taxation except income tax was indirect, and a large proportion of income tax payers were unionists. The only effective forces were the personality and the pen of Arthur Griffith. His paper changed its name in 1906 when damages for libel were awarded against the United Irishman. That journal disappeared, and re-emerged as Sznn Fein. In 1907, when the Parliamentary party had suffered a reverse, Sinn Fein appeared as a daily paper, but this experiment soon had to be abandoned, and after another bankruptcy Eire became its name. Griffith wrote no books: but he published in 1905 a pamphlet called The Resurrection of Hungary which described how an almost vanished language had been restored to national use, and how the elected deputies of an ancient nation, through a policy of abstention from the Austrian Assembly, gained full freedom under a dual monarchy.
Griffith, during these years, taught the rising generation to despise and distrust not only the methods but the character of those who were then leading the main national movement and he was not too scrupulous in his modes of attack. Yet when it became clear in 1911 that a Home Rule Bill was seriously intended, he announced his intention not to hamper Redmond. But the measure proposed was wholly unlike his ideal and he condemned it root and branch, his most furious opposition being directed against that partition of Ireland which he was later constrained to accept. In the shaping of events, neither he nor his paper counted for much till the growth of the Ulster Volunteers revived the hopes of the physical force party. Griffith supported the counter-organization of the Irish Volun teers by word and deed. He was one of those who received the rifles landed at Howth in July 1914. At the outbreak of the World War the Volunteers split, nine-tenths of them adhering to Red mond in support of the British cause but the remainder, active and determined, remained in Ireland; and Griffith's paper was their main organ. The censorship attacked it, but instead of Eire, there came out Scissors and Paste, a journal consisting of extracts from war news arranged to give an impression very unfavourable to the Allies. It was only one of many journals. Griffith had founded a school, a "mosquito press" and had set the example of tenacity and courage.
The Easter Rising of 1916 was a surprise to the majority of Irishmen. Griffith took no part in it, and thereby lost influence with the extremists. But the British au thorities remedied this by putting him into Frongoch, the deten tion camp in Wales, which became a crowded academy of Sinn Fein. Yet when, in July 1917, the prisoners were released, de Valera was chosen as their leader. Griffith proposed this election at the convention of Sinn Fein, while he himself returned to his desk, re-issuing his paper as Nationality; this also was suppressed and re-appeared as Eire Og. He was again put in gaol in 1918. At the general election after the armistice, Sinn Fein swept the board outside Ulster, and Griffith's policy was put into force. The elected members (such as were not in prison) assembled as Dail Eireann, the Irish parliament. But, going beyond Griffith's plan, they declared for an Irish republic, electing de Valera as president and Griffith as vice-president. Both these men were then prison ers ; but after some months the president escaped and Griffith was liberated.
During de Valera's absence in America, from June 1919 to the close of 1920, Griffith acted as head of the "Irish Republic." His policy now was carried out in its entirety. The elected bodies, county councils and municipalities refused to take orders from the British authorities in Dublin Castle; Sinn Fein courts were set up and functioned with notable success; in come tax was withheld. But these forms of passive resistance were effective only because active resistance was in progress. Griffith neither launched nor controlled the guerilla war, to the pressure of which England finally yielded. During that struggle, power rested with Collins and other young men. Yet Griffith had still a great part to play. When the truce was proclaimed and negotia tions were opened in July 1921, de Valera refused to accept the responsibility of abating the full separatist demand. Griffith there upon undertook the leadership of the delegation which finally se cured the inclusion in the treaty of the substance of Sinn Fein's original demand.
Many of those who supported him would not accept the full consequences of the treaty; and when Mr. de Valera resigned, Grif fith was elected president, not of the Free State, but of the repub lic, and the army continued to be in theory the republican army. To meet the difficulty, Griffith set up a provisional government with Michael Collins as chairman to carry on till a general election should have ratified the treaty. This resulted in an illogical divi sion of authority, and as months passed Griffith's public utterances as president were of tett contradicted by the action or inaction of the provisional government. During the final discussions with the British governmeat in June 1922, concerning the treaty, he interviewed the leading Irish unionists and pledged himself to secure them full representation in the public life of the Free State. His conception of Ireland was less narrowly Gaelic than that of Sinn Fein in general. After the elections on June 16, when a plain verdict was given for acceptance of the treaty, the government was at last forced to take action against the mutinous section of the army. Civil war began on June 27. In July the main bodies of the Irregulars were everywhere decisively beaten, and on Aug. II a force sent round by sea occupied Cork, the last important town to be regained. On the morning of Aug. 12 Griffith fell dead suddenly on the way to his office in Dublin. The strain had killed him, and the completion of his life work was left to a younger generation. Essentially he must rank as a publicist, an educator, an inspirer of action. Few men in history have accomplished more for their country than he by his unpaid pen. (S. G.)
