During our first months, September, October, and November, Ireland
passed into a state of war. The country had been going there step by
step, by way of raid and arrest on the one hand, and hedge and ditch
shooting on the other; but the walk turned to a run and the run to a
slide when the system of reprisals began. As summer turned into autumn,
and autumn wore out, the hate and terror engendered by the deeds of
either side were to beget the shameful happenings of the winter, so
that Ireland, like a woman frightened during her time, produced a
monster when her hour came.
The three months saw the mellow sunshine of an Indian summer exchanged
for dreary autumn skies, saw the tender mauves and lavenders of the
flowers in Phœnix Park--flowers which for delicacy of hue I have not
seen exceeded in any part of the world--decay and change for hardier
blooms; witnessed the soft starlight nights become the early evenings
and the discourteous hours when, through the curfew--at this time from
twelve to three--wind swept the desolate streets. The months witnessed
the fear, which had been gathering over the land in clouds, come down
upon the country in rain.
To what page shall one turn in the book of history, on what paragraph
shall one put a finger and say--“Here was the beginning! Here ended
Ireland’s golden age.”
Was it fifty years ago, was it a hundred years ago, was the beginning
made when Strongbow and his knights crossed the Irish Sea? Centuries
before an English foot had trodden Irish soil, Irish kings had been
perishing as soon as the crown was settled on their brows. Then who
shall place a finger upon any page? There is no place; there was no
clean cut beginning.
Never have the gods been kind enough to Ireland to give her a united
national opinion, which might have knit her together; nor has Ireland
succeeded in absorbing her successive waves of invaders and making them
one people. The Celt with his hoary tradition passes through the mists
of long ago, driving westward before him the Firbolg, the inarticulate
aboriginal of the country. In turn follow other more masculine peoples,
sweeping after the Celt, sweeping to the west and the south the
melancholy Celt with his age-long memory.
You must go south and west to find the Celt, and to-day you are not
likely to find him pure anywhere. But his mark is in many places. This
Celtic blood, when blended with other more masculine bloods, makes a
rich mixture.
As a result Ireland has become a house with three tenants who are
constantly calling upon the landlord--the first to tell him that he
requires no repairs to the house and is willing for it to be left as
it is; the second declaring that the house is in sad disrepair and
that something must be done; the third announcing he will have nothing
more to do with such a shameful landlord. Thus the Unionists, the
Nationalists, and the Republicans.
The landlord all this while, hearing several opinions and pleading
inability to distinguish the right one, does what is easiest and suits
him best, and leaves things as they are. It is small excuse that
Britain should have been so tardy with justice; but it is probable that
she would have been swifter righting Ireland’s wrongs had she heard a
united voice in place of many.
The illustration of landlord and tenant suits better than any other;
but it smacks unpleasantly of possessor and possessed. Let us be clear.
The landlord of Ireland is that single people made out of the four
separate peoples of the British Isles.
Let us turn to a more profitable question. When were the beginnings of
Sinn Fein?
Who shall say so late in the day what might have checked the growth of
this movement? May Sinn Fein have been a distemper which, contracted,
must be gone through with? May it have been something altogether
different, a coming to rebirth of a people, as the nearly drowned man
is brought back to life with pain and tears? Is it that the gods
decide such and such a thing shall befall and determine when it shall
take place? The Gaelic League went before Sinn Fein like John of old.
“After me shall come another mightier than I.” It is sufficient that
the movement had a beginning, and like an avalanche gained way as it
moved.
First, in 1893, the language movement and talk of a Celtic revival. A
Dublin professor becomes inspired, and disciples gather about him to
master an antique tongue. Dr. Douglas Hyde, in everyday life a pleasant
sociable man, is touched with the geist when he pleads for the Gaelic
tongue. The movement grows, pen and pencil are snatched up, and the
remotest country-side is explored for folklore and fairy tales. There
arrives the Celtic illuminator with his paintbrush and his parchment,
and the Celtic jeweller, hammering out his brooches old fashioned a
thousand years ago. The prophets awaken--the seers of visions, the
dreamers of dreams. One dreams of the avatar that is to come, and sees
a phantom drummer drumming about the land. A second, reading a telegram
of the Russo-Japanese war, receives the intuition that Japan is the
masculine pole of the earth and Ireland is the feminine pole, and that
some mystic union of the two peoples will bring order into disorder. A
third, on Howth Hill, sees bloody giant figures moving across the sky.
A fourth, on the top of a tram, sees letters of fire in the heavens.
The national fire burning more brightly and more steadily. All the
while Arthur Griffith’s paper, _The United Irishman_, calling to the
nation to come together.
Then, about 1906, the birth of Sinn Fein, in those days not a thing of
the sword; but a mild and respectable movement claiming Ireland’s right
to develop along her own lines to nationhood. Half a dozen years and
this movement making little headway, then 1914, Ulster thwarting Home
Rule and the Citizen Army getting itself together; next 1916 and the
Easter Week rising. A thousand romantic men strike at Britain in her
extremity and rouse her at last.
Was that week which followed the Easter rising the time when a pitiless
policy might have brought this movement to an end? The general who
could ably have struck the blow was in Ireland at the time. The
movement was not yet a national matter. A thousand men had stood
together in what they believed was a splendid burst of chivalry;
but the nation was still impatient of them, thought them a little
ridiculous. A hammer was at hand to be used. Had the blow fallen, would
this live thing called Sinn Fein have been killed outright?
The hammer did not fall; it gave a tap or two. Sixteen men were
executed, and numerous restrictions followed; restrictions which did
not affect considerably the law-abiding citizen, but were intended
to fetter the growth of a distinctively national spirit. Once again
Britain was loth to cripple, discovering a quality for which her
enemies refuse her credit; but for which she may receive credit some
day when national bitternesses have gone out of fashion. She tapped
here, she tapped there; and she succeeded in rousing to a renewed
courage that live thing, Sinn Fein.
Two years of repression, and the Irish Republican Party coming to life
again like the Phœnix under the flag of Sinn Fein. Here a policeman
shot, there a house burned. The British Government replying with a
new repressive measure. Other houses levelled, and in answer sterner
repressive measures; other policemen murdered, and still sterner
repressive measures. So the descent into war.
It is understandable that the youth of Ireland, represented by the
Irish Republican Army and the Cumann na mBan, should throw in their lot
with a movement which had a gentle beginning as a Celtic revival. First
of all the great European war had passed most of Ireland by; and the
spirit of combat and sacrifice, which had bred giants on the Continent,
must have trailed the fringe of its garments into all corners of the
British Isles. There was the great Capital and Labour unrest, which
must have rippled across the Irish Sea in course of time. The Irish
peasant boy, with his plough and his pigs as a horizon, with America
as an ultimate limit of vision, was in a state to welcome any change
in the procession of his days; and along comes the patriot with his
splendid story.
The unprejudiced person admits that the British Government passed by
first challenges and insults, and in the beginning the task of Irish
Volunteer was more exhilarating than onerous. It presented itself to
the gaping ploughboy as a great adventure at little cost. Here was
opportunity to defy authority, to expand into something more eloquent
than a cowherd. So a beginning was made.
But in time the duties of a volunteer spelt more than an inspiring
game. They called ever and anon for a man’s whole courage. But there
was come a new thing to take the place of the bait of splendour which
had sufficed in the beginning. The flame of a national being had burst
alight. The prize of sacrifice for an ideal was now offered to the
dazzled feeder of swine.
This burst of nationalism, which had been lighted and fanned quite
falsely by the first enthusiasts, penetrated from the cities to the
villages; and the laggard to join the I.R.A. became inspired by
example. Thus the army swelled its ranks, thus the national spirit
was fanned as if by a bellows. And a third agent went to work in
intimidation. The village lout who hesitated to enlist found it the
worse for him. That youths joined the I.R.A. in haste to repent at
leisure is borne out by orders issued by Republican authorities
concerning deserters. But every wide movement of necessity gathers a
certain scum, and there is no denying this national awakening was to
turn many a village clown into a staunch soldier of the Irish Republic.
A fact to be examined at this point is the surprising absence of
people of breeding in the ranks of Sinn Fein. The rank and file of the
movement was drawn from the working classes, while the leaders for the
most part belonged to the lower middle classes. It would seem as if the
Sinn Fein movement was a peculiar national expression of the world-wide
conflict between servant and master. Europe as a whole, the world
indeed, was in the throes of the Capital _versus_ Labour question, and
the Sinn Fein movement was Ireland’s personal expression of the revolt
of the humble person against authority.
There was, of course, a sprinkling of gentry in the movement.
The Dublin universities illustrated how opinion and class went
together. The students of Trinity as a rule are gentlemen of birth, and
as a body they were loyal to the Crown; the students of the National
University, who are drawn from the middle classes, to a man declared
for Sinn Fein.
I have tried to be free of prejudice as I tramped the Dublin streets,
yet I say out of my heart if one met a prosperous person, a spruce
person, such person, nine times out of ten, proved a loyalist.
After a month in Ireland I could pick out the Irish Volunteer. He wore
a dirty velour hat, a shabby raincoat, and generally had his hands
in his pockets. There was a youthful, cheeky type, belonging to the
National University, and there was a dirtier, rather more prepossessing
type, drawn from the errand boy and working classes. There was a
better type still, which came from the country.
One had only to notice the Republican Volunteer rubbing shoulders
in the street with the British officer, to comprehend these people
belonged to two poles, which could never meet. Barriers of class,
education, and standards were between them--it was Capital and Labour
over again. The British officer, from his stupendous height, regarded
the Sinn Feiner through the big end of the telescope, classed all
connected with Sinn Fein as “Shinners” and valued them as such.
The Irish struggle did not develop along the lines of an ordinary war.
It was not the late European war on a smaller scale. It was the case of
an immensely powerful man fighting the shadow of a man.
The Republican Army had no uniform, or more correctly found it
impolitic to wear uniform, and the volunteers were on and off active
service as a man puts on and off a coat according to the change in
weather. Your butcher, your baker, the man who cleaned your boots
might be an Irish Volunteer, and when orders came, and opportunity,
might make an end of you. A _franc-tireur_ I understand this type of
soldier to be; but in reality the I.R.A. had many of the strengths and
weaknesses of a numerous and hastily built up secret service.
The British Government had to contend with another difficulty--it could
not make a straight ahead attack, it could not level every house in a
row. The Government had the power to do this; but not the opportunity.
They were fighting only the shadow of a man. In every row half the
houses might be friendly ones, and who could say which were which? For
it was only in the winter of 1920-21 that the nation became welded, and
that one could count on most people in the street being followers of
Sinn Fein.
On the one point of uniform the British Government was able to
stigmatise the Irish Volunteers as murderers, and this stand it took
up, applying the phrase “murder gang” to them. The Irish Volunteers
had to pay the penalty of being termed murderers, of being hanged as
murderers when caught red-handed instead of getting the treatment of
prisoners of war; but more than balancing these disadvantages was the
boon of becoming this shadowy foe, which could not be brought to bay.
Unless the country was flooded with troops and artillery--and such a
plan had many difficulties in the peculiar circumstances--the affair
was likely to be long drawn out. A long-drawn-out campaign was all to
the advantage of Sinn Fein. In the first place the world must gradually
come to notice the Irish resistance, and the “murder gang” cry of the
British Government would hardly ring true if operations were drawn out
to the length of a war. Again, time was to the advantage of Sinn Fein
in recruiting its strength. As, month after month, raid and arrest went
on, and the cities and country places were patrolled by troops not of
the country, and wrongs and injustices followed one upon another--wrong
houses were raided, wrong arrests were made--friend after friend,
neutral after neutral became foe. The impartial observer could see the
nation laid on an anvil as it were and welded into a blade of defence.
The shoot-and-run murders continued in the country places, from the
country murder found its way into the cities; and the phantom enemy
continued to move round and about but would not come into the open. I
heard an exasperated soldier cry out, “Let us give them ten days to get
uniform and then declare war properly. Let us treat every man taken in
uniform as a prisoner of war, and let us shoot out of hand every armed
man caught out of uniform. Their war, as they call it, will be over in
a week.”
There was truth in this. As a fighting machine the I.R.A. was
outnumbered and so ill equipped that had pitched battles taken place,
it would not have existed on the seventh day. Consequently the
disadvantages of no uniform were far outweighed by the advantages.
I have no doubt the Republican leaders weighed up things and decided
on the course of action they considered most profitable, and though
for propaganda purposes an outcry was made when a volunteer, caught
red-handed, was hanged, yet I believe the Irish leaders saw the logic
of this, and looked upon the event as one of the misfortunes of war.
I have always found the leaders to take a more professional view of
things and to be less emotional than the follower on the skirts of the
movement.
As matters went from bad to worse the British Government proceeded
to wage the war in the only way that was possible. In the beginning,
increasing difficulties had been met by arming the established police,
and by drafting more troops into the country. The police of the cities
took to carrying revolvers on duty; but these very arms were to prove
a source of danger. One gun or ten guns were equally useless to a man
standing up all day as a target. What use are arms to a man when any
person in a crowd may step up to him and shoot him? The man who shoots
first lives longest in this type of struggle.
The I.R.A. was, on the whole, systematic in its plan of aggression. It
dealt with its avowed enemies and did not meddle with those who left
it alone. It regarded such people as the Dublin Metropolitan Police as
passive rather than active enemies, until the constables came on duty
armed.
The police perceived their new danger and presently petitioned the
authorities to relieve them of their arms, which petition was granted.
The city police did not show up in a courageous light; but undoubtedly
their position was a difficult one. A certain sympathy for their own
countrymen may have been at work; but in the main the negative attitude
they adopted came from an appreciation of the British Government’s
inability to protect them.
The situation during the winter of 1920-21 was a striking illustration
of the manner in which a small organised body can intimidate a far
larger disorganised body. The fear created in the country by this
struggle below the surface was incredible; the boldest seemed numbed.
A man might have been murdered in broad day in the Dublin streets, and
not a policeman have lifted a finger. The uniformed men on point duty
would have gone on waving the traffic this way and that.
The attitude of the police was reasonable. While they stayed neutral
they were safe; as soon as they interfered they became marked men. And
once they were marked men they stood up in the streets as a target
until somebody stepped out of the crowd and shot them dead.
A similar spell had fallen upon the civilian population. Most people
desired nothing better than to be let go about their business in
peace. They might have loyalist sympathies, they might have Sinn Fein
sympathies; they kept their sympathies to themselves and such friends
as they were sure of.
And nobody was sure of anybody.
Thus it was the British Government could get no support in Ireland.
The following illustrates the condition of affairs.
A stone flew through a Dublin shop window, and the shopkeeper came
running out and demanded what the stone thrower meant. The man retorted
he had thrown the stone because he felt like it, that he was a Sinn
Feiner, and he defied the shopkeeper to touch him. He demanded for his
services a cigarette, which he was given. A policeman on point duty
was close by, a crowd was looking on, and nobody moved in the matter.
The shopkeeper returned to his shop. The stone thrower was unlikely
to have been an Irish Volunteer, probably he was a hooligan; but the
announcement was sufficient to place everybody under a spell.
As matters went from bad to worse the British Government found it
necessary to supplement the troops in the country, and an auxiliary
body of police was recruited to reinforce the country police, who were
dotted about in isolated barracks. The recruits, many of whom were
Irishmen and ex-service men, wore black uniforms and tan bandoliers and
so earned the name of Black-and-Tans. They were armed with rifles, they
rode in lorries, and they swept about the roads at breakneck speed.
In addition to the Black-and-Tans, the Government recruited a second
auxiliary police force, which came to be known as the Auxiliary Cadets.
The recruits were all ex-officers and wore a most dashing uniform,
which culminated in a Balmoral bonnet perched at a jaunty angle. These
people were also armed with rifles, and rode in lorries. They were more
in evidence in the cities than the Black-and-Tans.
These reinforcements were to assist the search for active members of
the I.R.A. and to raid suspected houses for arms and documents. But
before you can arrest your man it is necessary to know his whereabouts
and if he be guilty or not. This work could not be undertaken by such
military and police forces as were in commission, and the British
Government met the situation by extending the operations of the secret
service. The Sinn Fein organisation was one gigantic secret service,
and only another secret service could cope with it.
This strange situation of an immensely powerful man fighting the shadow
of a man continued. Justice was ready with the prison and the hangman;
but there was no murderer for the scaffold. But the secret service
was bringing in all the time little bits of information--that Paddy
Murphy was responsible for this, that Denny Burke had done that. It was
useless to arrest Paddy or Denny as there was no concrete proof, for no
witness would come forward because of intimidation or out of sympathy,
and until the courts martial sat, should a man be brought to trial, no
civil jury would convict for like reasons.
The police were scattered through the countryside in isolated
barracks. In course of time these barracks were roughly fortified
with barbed wire and sandbags. In the undisturbed districts as often
as not the police found themselves cut off from social amenities
through the villagers regarding them with suspicion and fearing to
hold communication with them lest they fell under suspicion of being
sympathisers and informers. The police waited month after month, never
venturing far from barracks, in a state of siege by an invisible enemy.
In the disturbed areas the life of the Crown forces was unbearable.
Not a man, woman, or child but had been taught to look on them with
contempt and hatred. They found themselves picked off as opportunity
availed, and they were powerless to say whose hand had pulled the
trigger, though probably every villager knew, and knew the road the
gunman had taken.
They were out in all weathers patrolling the roads and scouring the
country for the phantom army, which never materialised, though it
left frequent marks of its presence in trenches dug at the turn of
roads, in trees felled across the path, and in walls torn down for an
obstruction. Indeed, at any hour, at any favourable spot, it might
materialise, round a sudden corner, over the shoulder of a hill, from
some wooded height above the road. A volley of shots would pour down,
and the gunmen would make away across country, of which they knew every
inch of ground. The nerves of the police must have been stretched to
the breaking point during those patrols, so that hate was breeding in
them like maggots in meat.
The recognised policy of the I.R.A. was to harass the Government forces
continuously; orders were issued to that effect, and in cases of
isolated barracks it was the practice to fire occasional shots at the
windows night after night with the idea of keeping the inmates on the
qui vive for an attack, which was never to take place. Occasionally, if
sufficient volunteers were in the neighbourhood, a barracks would be
attacked, the attackers bringing with them the materials for setting
the place on fire, and so forcing the garrison to capitulate. When it
is borne in mind that the attackers frequently arrived in force, it is
strange they met so seldom with success; but the hit and run policy
must have been on the whole demoralising to the volunteers. I do not
think, when their number and equipment are taken into account, any
other policy could have been adopted, nor do I wish to suggest that the
volunteers had a lesser share of courage than other men. They are part
of the British nation, and many fine soldiers have come from Ireland.
But when a soldier goes to battle in the belief that in nine chances
out of ten he will come away without a scratch, in fact that all he
will be asked to do will be to fire one or two shots and then away, he
gets that sense of safety before all which is likely to be fatal to his
daring.
The phantom enemy continued to fail to materialise; but little by
little Government agents, swimming up and down in the sea of Sinn
Fein, found out who were the responsible Republican leaders in their
districts, captured documents gave further evidence, and the police
came to know in time whether the butcher standing politely behind his
counter was always a butcher; whether the baker gave up kneading bread
on occasion and produced a gun from under the floor, and so on. They
came to know whether the grocer held meetings at the back of his shop
after the shutters were up.
Then one day some constable--in most cases a marked man who had been
shifted from another part of the country--strolling through the village
to buy a stick of tobacco, would get fired on by half a dozen men round
a corner. The chances were the assassins belonged to another district,
as it was a policy to send volunteers to work in a district where they
were not known. The men who fired the shots were gone when the police
arrived to their murdered comrade; but the butcher, the baker, and the
grocer were behind their counters like worthy tradesmen. These very
men, guiltless of this crime, had possibly done similar work in another
neighbourhood; it was known they were members of the detested phantom
army. The police, filled with hate, fear, and worn out with weeks of
vigil, turned upon these people and their shops for their just revenge.
Up went the town.
These were the circumstances which brought about the reprisals.