ABSTRACT

On Saturday 6 November 1915 angry scenes occurred outside the Cunard Line offices in Liverpool when an estimated 600 men from Ireland were prevented from boarding the ocean liner RMS Saxonia for her voyage to the USA. They were surrounded by a crowd asking them to “show a bit of pluck” and deriding them as cowards. The incident was discussed in Great Britain and Ireland from Liverpool to Kerry at a period when the war was moving against all expectation, into its second year, and the emigration of large cohorts of young men of military age and fit for service was shocking to patriotic observers across the British Isles. This article explores the wider implications of this incident and the narrative it provoked in terms of perceptions of masculinity and the assumed contract of males with the state when the security of the state was under threat from an outside force. It discusses the emotive conflation of political and national identity and perceptions of heroism and cowardice with hegemonic or subversive masculinities at that time in the war when Ireland had not yet divorced itself from the metropole, and long in advance of the Irish conscription crisis of 1918.

摘要

1915年11月6日，星期六，利物浦库纳德防线办公室外发生了愤怒的场面，当时估计有600名爱尔兰人被阻止登上萨克斯尼亚号邮轮。为她前往美国的旅程。他们被一群人包围，要求他们“表现出一点点采摘”，并把他们当成co夫。战争在第二年发生，战争从始料未及的第二年开始，在英国和爱尔兰从利物浦到凯里进行了讨论。不列颠群岛的观察员。本文探讨了这一事件的更广泛含义及其从男性气质的看法以及当国家安全受到外界力量威胁时男性与国家的假定契约方面所引起的叙述。