THE WOMAN OF KNOCKALOE
The publishers wish it to be understood that nothing in this book isintended to refer to real-life persons in the Isle of Man or elsewhere.
THE WOMAN
OF KNOCKALOE
A Parable
By
HALL CAINE
“Love is strong as death; jealousy
is cruel as the grave;... Many
waters cannot quench love, neither
can the floods drown it.”
TORONTO
THE RYERSON PRESS
1923
Copyright, 1923,
By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY
BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK
EDITORIAL NOTE
“The Woman of Knockaloe” is first of all a love story. In our opinionit is a charming and natural love story, beautiful in its purity,and irresistible in its human appeal; so simple in its incidentsthat it might be a nursery tale, so stark in its telling that itmight be a Saga, so inevitable in the march of its scenes, from itsalmost breathless beginning to its tremendous end, that it might be aGreek tragedy. In this character alone I think it calls for seriousconsideration.
But it is more than a love story. It is a Parable, carrying anunmistakable message, an ostensible argument. Readers all overthe world will so interpret it. They will see that it has specialapplication to the times, that it is directed against War as thefirst author of the racial hatred, the material ruin, the sorrow andsuffering, the poverty and want, which are now threatening the worldwith destruction; that it is a plea for universal peace, for speedy anduniversal disarmament, as the only alternative to universal anarchy.
The story is laid in a little backwater of the war—a backwaterwhich has never before, perhaps, been explored in literature—butnevertheless it is not in the[Pg vi] ordinary sense a war story. The lateGreat War does not enter it at all, except as an evil wind which blowsover a mile and a half by half a mile of land in a small island in theIrish Sea, an Internment Camp, wherein twenty-five thousand men andone woman, cut off from life, pass four and a half years within anenclosure of barbed wire.
This narrow space of blackened earth is intended to stand for the worldin little, from 1914 to the present year, and the few incidents of thesimple yet poignant tale are meant to illustrate the effect of the latewar on the heart of humanity, to describe at very close quarters theconsequences of what we call The Peace on the condition of the worldand the soul of mankind, and to point to what the author believes to bethe only hope of saving both from the spiritual and material suicide towhich they are hurrying on. It is neither pro-British nor pro-Germanin sympathy, but purely pro-human. War itself is the only enemy theParable is intended to attack.
The battlefield the author has chosen is dangerous ground, but thepublic will not question his