I took the tram back to College Green, and found the paper boys raising
a great clamour there. The first of the Cork hunger strikers had died.
As I left the tram and threaded through the crowd towards Grafton
Street, I felt that, like myself, all these people I was rubbing
shoulders with were fearful this was an augury of more terrible events.
For more than two months the incredible fast of fifty Irishmen had been
capturing the public imagination, and, according to the Nationalist
Press, the imagination of half the world. Interest in the fasting men
had lasted through eight weeks of fierce events--violent deed followed
daily by violent reprisal.
On August 12th, Terence MacSwiney, who had succeeded to the office of
Lord Mayor of Cork on the assassination of Lord Mayor MacCurtain, was
arrested, and with other prisoners to the number of fifty-one, went on
hunger strike.
This represented a definite battle--it had a beginning, it had an
end--between the British Government and Sinn Fein; and as the Cabinet
acted with a consistency it had seldom shown before and was not often
to show after, Sinn Fein suffered a defeat. There had been many
previous hunger strikes; and the authorities had invariably given way
at the eleventh hour.
It is curious to look over Dublin newspapers of that date and see the
black headlines, which announced, morning after morning, the straits
of the Irish “martyrs.” Back come those gloomy weeks when days were
shortening and cold and damp were returning to the land again.
I find what seems to be one of the first entries. “Lord Mayor, Terence
MacSwiney, arrested Thursday night in the City Hall. The (Republican)
Arbitration Courts were sitting, and about fifteen persons were
arrested with the Lord Mayor.”
At his trial the Lord Mayor, as chief magistrate of the city, declared
illegal a court martial which sat to try him in Cork, and those taking
part in it were liable to arrest under the laws of the Irish Republic.
He was charged with (_a_) having a police cypher under his control;
(_b_) having in his possession a document likely to cause disaffection;
(_c_) having made a seditious speech on the occasion of his election as
successor to the late Lord Mayor MacCurtain.
“A perfectly innocent man!” as Mrs. Slaney had declared.
Throughout his trial the Lord Mayor behaved with dignity, and at
the end said, “I wish to state that I will put a limit to any term
of imprisonment you may impose. I have taken no food since Thursday,
therefore I shall be free in a month. I shall be free, dead or alive,
within a month.”
But the Lord Mayor was to be alive two months after that.
The National Press began a campaign for the release of the hunger
strikers. Before the fast was many days old the following headlines had
appeared:--
“Lord Mayor unable to speak. Signs of the end. Deathbed message.”
“Sinking very rapidly.” In smaller type, “Cork captives dying.” “Just
fading away. Deathbed scenes.”
But to the embarrassment of the Press, which as usual lacked restraint,
the strikers delayed dying, and week after week passed, until all
fasting records were broken. Little by little the fury of the Press
abated, and presently the “martyrs” were shifted from the leading
columns to less important places.
A cloud gathered over the affair. Then threats were tried. The Medical
Officer at Cork Prison received the following letter:--
“As your professional attendance upon the eleven hunger strikers
in Cork Jail gives a tinge of legality to the slow murder being
perpetrated upon them, you are hereby ordered to leave the jail at
once, and the country within twenty-four hours of this date--3 p.m.
6th Sept. ’20.
“Failure to comply with this order will incur drastic punishment.
“O.C. No. 1 Brigade, I.R.A.”
With the majority of the nation the strikers remained national heroes,
“martyr” was the word most commonly used in connection with them; but
as the fast became more and more incredible, a section of the public
began to experience doubt. All sorts of rumours were afloat--that
the Lord Mayor could not return to Cork owing to the rage of his
friends--that the Catholic Church was troubled and divided whether
this decision to starve should be considered as suicide or not. In
the meantime prayers were offered for the strikers in thousands of
homes, and tears stole down thousands of cheeks at thought of the men
suffering for Ireland.
“One of God’s miracles!” frequently declared Mrs. Slaney, as the fast
passed from fifty days to sixty days, and went on towards seventy. And
this belief in Divine intervention was common to many hearts.
What would happen if the Lord Mayor died? It was hinted there would be
some terrible reply from the Irish Volunteers.
Now, when the strikers were becoming legendary, one of them had died,
and crisis had returned like a thunderbolt.
“Monstrous!” Mrs. Slaney exclaimed, meeting me at the top of the
stairs. “Monstrous! So at last they have murdered that splendid young
Irishman! They’ll murder the others before they have finished their
bloody work!”
The British Government murdered two others, or two others decided to
murder themselves, according to one’s politics, and it looked as though
the British Government had the strength of mind to murder the lot; but
before this could be done Sinn Fein gave up the battle, and Arthur
Griffith, the acting President, called off the strikers. Victory went
to the British Government, and there were no more hunger strikes.
Did these men, who had suffered a long illness and a painful death, die
for nothing? No. In spite of doubts as to the strictness of the fast,
the sacrifice made by them helped in the hardening process the nation
was undergoing.
It had been intended to bring the dead Lord Mayor to Dublin; but this
was forbidden, and the coffin was taken by ship to Cork. Sinn Fein
replied by ordering a day of mourning, and presented Dublin with the
shadow of a funeral, flowers taking the place of the coffin in the
hearse. Citizens were ordered to close their shops, and those whom
sentiment for the Lord Mayor did not persuade to renounce a day’s
trade, put up their shutters upon warnings that they would be wise to
show visible marks of respect.
I went down to O’Connell Bridge to see this funeral without a corpse.
The day had turned into a Sunday, and the streets were filled with the
proletariat. The Mass, which I had listened to at the pro-cathedral,
had been a stupendous experience. Every inch of the stone pavement of
the great church had been covered with kneeling humanity crying out
dolorous Latin cries to the chanting of the priests, and fingering
countless rosaries. The flood of feeling flowed this way and that
like waves heaving in a sea. I did not know whether to marvel at this
spectacle or to sneer at it. Were we in this mourning church wrapped in
a flame of sorrow, which was going to weld the nation into a metal out
of which an everlasting sword could be forged: or more truly were a few
tricksters playing on the easily wrought feelings of a not quite adult
nation, which, childlike, weeps as easily as it laughs? Labour and
Capital over again! Look right, look left--who here was not drawn from
the working or shop assistant classes? As I heard these people calling
out the sounding Latin phrases, I shook my head.
The press upon O’Connell Bridge was tremendous, and presently the
hearse came round a corner. It was filled with flowers. After it rolled
a Dublin funeral, only there went by a greater line of shabby carriages
than even Dublin usually gets together. One looked and looked, and
still more horses came round the distant corner.
In the following of this funeral marched Irish Volunteers and Cumann na
mBan. They left no impression on me other than being dusty and riding
on the top of a wave of emotion, which might set them down as quickly
as it had lifted them up. Again it was Labour _versus_ Capital, the
servant against the master. These people were the same as the kneeling
congregation, and the majority of them were growing up.
But this demonstration was a manifestation of that resolution which was
affecting the nation as new blood poured into the veins of an anæmic
man. Whether the exaltation was enduring enough to carry the nation
to a renaissance, to a splendid rebirth, or whether it was sufficient
and no more to take this people through a struggle with Britain, was
a matter for a prophet. A temporary state or a lasting state, its
existence could not be denied.
One of these nights a man started signalling from a house which looked
upon the back of our own. We watched him from our beds. He had a lamp,
and lived in a top story. The signalling continued at intervals over a
period of several weeks, and what came of it all I do not know; but it
made these nights more mysterious watching this lonely man and his lamp
high up in the attic.
Then, one evening, Mrs. Slaney started to act in a peculiar manner.
About ten o’clock she began fluttering up and down the stairs, and when
I suggested locking the front door as usual, she said she would do it.
A quarter of an hour later I caught her fluttering on the stairs, and
this time she was unable to contain herself. She took me into the half
dark of one of the landings.
“I am putting up a friend for a night or two,” she said, avoiding my
glance. “He’s a Sinn Feiner, and he doesn’t want to go home. I’m giving
him the little spare room at the top of the house. He has to come after
dark, as he doesn’t want it known where he is. I don’t want a word said
to anybody.”
“Is he on the run?” I asked brutally.
“Well, not exactly that; but he has a little work on hand, and he
doesn’t want to be disturbed. He thought it was safer to come round
here in case they should think of raiding his flat during the next day
or two. Ah!”
A gentle knock had come to the front door. Mrs. Slaney fluttered down
to the hall, where, as usual, no light was burning.
She managed successfully to manœuvre our mysterious caller into the
upper reaches of the house; I heard no more of them, and nobody seemed
to have noticed his incoming or his out-going next morning. But the
following night Mrs. Slaney, who made the journey to the hall shorter
by drifting into our rooms early in the evening, began to fidget as
soon as the clock had turned ten. The gentle knock came at last, and
she bustled down to the hall.
Somebody had to make the visitor’s bed, and on the morrow Mrs. O’Grady,
on her knees on a piece of newspaper raking out our fire, sniffed, and
said, “Terrible times!”
“What’s up, Mrs. O’Grady?” we inquired.
“Ah,” said Mrs. O’Grady, sniffing again, “the woman upstairs is always
up to something or other. She’s always after keeping in with somebody.”
“Who’s it now?”
“God forgive her for having a man like that in the house these times.
Risking us all! There’s my man downstairs, he says the Black-and-Tans
have only got to know there’s some one here, and they’ll come and take
every man in the house off to the Castle, and perhaps burn the house
down.”
“If that’s the case, Mrs. O’Grady, these do indeed be terrible times.”
“That woman doesn’t know how to treat decent people when she do get
them in the house,” went on Mrs. O’Grady, passing over my wit. “Now,
what right has she got to have a man like that with you here? Now
you’re what I call class. I said to himself downstairs, I said those
new people that have taken the drawing-room flat, they’re class.
They’re the nicest lady and gentleman we’ve ever had here. They’re
class.”
We changed the conversation.
But I was in some part to solve the mystery that evening, for this
time Mrs. Slaney had arranged to leave the hall door on the latch.
Our visitor must have come in unheard and gone upstairs. Mrs. Slaney,
strangely enough, was spending the evening in our rooms, and had
brought down, as far as I remember, a tray with coffee things on. When
she proposed retiring, I carried this up for her, and going ahead into
the sitting-room, found there, in a corner by the fire as if he had
been warming his hands at it, and still with his overcoat on, the
mysterious visitor. He looked round like an animal caught in a trap,
and then he said good night in answer to my good night. I was only a
moment putting the tray down and going.
I tell this story because this man’s advent was to be my downfall later
on. I did not then know who he was; but his identity leaked out in time.
He bore the most picturesque name in Ireland--Darrel Figgis--and he
wore the most romantic beard. He looked like some mediæval personage
stepped out of a picture. He was a novelist, a poet, a dramatic critic,
and other things. Not very long before he had been nearly hanged at a
drumhead court-martial held by some irresponsible, and it was whispered
among the philistines that he went about the country afterwards
selling pieces of the true rope. He was not one of the recognised Sinn
Fein leaders; but he had been fairly prominent in the cause, doing
propaganda work, and he had been imprisoned. There was only one such
beard as his in Dublin--his own--and it was said he refused to part
with it, even when he went on the run, although by so doing he added
materially to the chances of capture.
He visited us three or four nights, and then departed as
unostentatiously as he came.
So every day brought its new event, and the weeks stalked by in grim
procession.
Early in November, the execution of Kevin Barry caused another of
those demonstrations, which revealed the national temper. On the
bleak morning a vast crowd gathered in the yard of Mountjoy Prison and
recited the Rosary, standing and kneeling together some time before the
execution, and continuing in prayer until the hour of execution was
passed, when they quietly withdrew.
Since his capture in the skirmish outside the King Street bakery,
Kevin Barry, who was a medical student, eighteen years old, had joined
the number of national heroes. He was young, he was a soldier of the
Republic, it was repeated everywhere that he had been tortured by the
British military authorities, and in spite of his treatment he had
refused to speak. The nation set itself with a will to the making of
this new hero.
“Splendid!” declared Mrs. Slaney, returning from her baby club. “You
should have been there this afternoon to hear those mites singing of
Kevin Barry. We all helped to teach them, and they picked up music
and words at once. Where, but in Ireland, would you find such quick
children?”
Poor little devils! Taught their prejudices before they know what they
are doing. As soon as they can stand put into the strait-jacket of a
narrow national patriotism--that thing which has had its uses, but now
should be out of date.
There is every reason to suppose that Kevin Barry met his death as a
soldier would wish to meet it; but that is no reason why one should
not look sternly at the facts of the case. The scrimmage outside the
bakery was not a glorious affair. The Irish Volunteers, guns in their
pockets, posed as civilians until the chosen moment, and Kevin Barry
alone did not make good his escape. A woman said, in my hearing, “Was
there ever a country like Ireland for the number of patriots and
martyrs? Look at Kevin Barry--a boy of eighteen!”
What of the two British soldiers who were killed in that skirmish, one
of whom was said to be sixteen? Did they not give their lives for their
country as surely as did Kevin Barry? What of the men who have perished
in every corner of the Empire for generations back? Their numbers must
be as the sands of the seashore. But some peoples use words more easily
than others, and those who work for the inarticulate must expect their
epitaph short and sharp.
Before the anguish of that tragedy was over there came a new shout from
the Nationalist Press: “Expectant Mother Shot Dead.”
A countrywoman was killed at her cottage door by a stray bullet fired
from a lorry passing along the road. “Expectant Mother Shot Dead!” The
headlines struck one like a blow in the face.
And all this while increasing ruin and arrest. Tales of girls’ hair cut
off because they talked to the police. Tales of the police stripping
men, beating them, and sending them home naked. Tales of men tied to
chairs and thrown into the river. Tales of men who waited in ambush
hour after hour for their quarry to come round the curve with an
insatiable lust of hate. Tales of ferocious reprisals when homes were
looted and the inhabitants driven into the fields to couch with fox and
hare. Who dare give the story in detail: one would never be done. Deed
of terror replied to by deed of terror, and never an attempt by the
partisans of one side or other to reach the truth, and give that exact
truth to the world, and tell that exact truth to themselves.
Three furious November weeks passed away.