Uploaded April 2016 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Here's a virtual movie of the great George Bernard Shaw reading from his 1934 essay 1916 Rising John Bull’s Other Island which gave a critical appraisal of the Easter Rising of 1916 . The voice of George Bernard Shaw on this video was recorded by the late celebrated Australian/Irish actor and historian Peter O'shaughnessy (1923 - 2013).
"1916 Rising (Appendix to Preface of John Bull’s Other Island [1906], 1929): ‘[T]he sequel to these events confirmed my unheeded warning with a sanguinary completely of which I had no prevision. At Easter 1916 a handful of Irishmen seized the Dublin Post Office and proclaimed an Irish Republic, with one of their number, a schoolmaster named Pearse, as President. If all Ireland had risen at this gesture it would have been a serious matter for England, then up to her neck in the war against the Central Empires. But there was no response: the gesture was a complete failure. All that was necessary was to blockade the Post Office until its microcosmic republic was starved out and made ridiculous. What actually happened would be incredible if there were not so many living witnesses of it. […] Thus by fire and bullet, murder and torture and devastation, a situation was produced in which the British Government [470] had either to capitulate at the cost of a far more complete concession of self-government to Ireland than that decreed by the repudiated Home Rule Act, or to let loose the military strength of England in a Cromwellian reconquest, massacre, and replantation which it knew that public opinion in England and America would not tolerate; for some of the most conspicuous English champions of Ulster warned the Government that they could stand no more of the Black and Tan terrorism. And so we settled the Irish Question, not as civilised and reasonable men should have settled it, but as dogs settle a dispute over a bone.’ (Complete Prefaces, London 1934, pp.470-71.)"
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved onn this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2016
Here's a virtual movie of the great George Bernard Shaw reading from his 1934 essay 1916 Rising John Bull’s Other Island which gave a critical appraisal of the Easter Rising of 1916 . The voice of George Bernard Shaw on this video was recorded by the late celebrated Australian/Irish actor and historian Peter O'shaughnessy (1923 - 2013).
"1916 Rising (Appendix to Preface of John Bull’s Other Island [1906], 1929): ‘[T]he sequel to these events confirmed my unheeded warning with a sanguinary completely of which I had no prevision. At Easter 1916 a handful of Irishmen seized the Dublin Post Office and proclaimed an Irish Republic, with one of their number, a schoolmaster named Pearse, as President. If all Ireland had risen at this gesture it would have been a serious matter for England, then up to her neck in the war against the Central Empires. But there was no response: the gesture was a complete failure. All that was necessary was to blockade the Post Office until its microcosmic republic was starved out and made ridiculous. What actually happened would be incredible if there were not so many living witnesses of it. […] Thus by fire and bullet, murder and torture and devastation, a situation was produced in which the British Government [470] had either to capitulate at the cost of a far more complete concession of self-government to Ireland than that decreed by the repudiated Home Rule Act, or to let loose the military strength of England in a Cromwellian reconquest, massacre, and replantation which it knew that public opinion in England and America would not tolerate; for some of the most conspicuous English champions of Ulster warned the Government that they could stand no more of the Black and Tan terrorism. And so we settled the Irish Question, not as civilised and reasonable men should have settled it, but as dogs settle a dispute over a bone.’ (Complete Prefaces, London 1934, pp.470-71.)"
Kind Regards
Jim Clark
All rights are reserved onn this video recording copyright Jim Clark 2016
