The officers met their ends in their beds, in their baths, at shaving.
One and all were shot in cold blood, and, extraordinary to relate, no
defence seems to have been made. In every case the victim was taken
unawares. This veritable Slaughter of the Innocents could only have
occurred to such a race as the British. These officers, on a par with
their behaviour in the hotels, went to bed in an enemy country with
unlocked doors and locked-up guns. That supreme British contempt for
the enemy--at once the making and the undoing of Britain--limited the
imagination of these people to such an extent that though they were
engaged upon what is allowed to be most dangerous work, they could not
conceive calamity falling upon themselves.
Some time afterwards I spoke to a Dutchman, and he held up his hands
and cried, “Here am I who would not go into a strange house without
making inquiries and locking my door; and these men come into an enemy
country and go openly about their work; and at night lock up their
guns and go to sleep with the door open. Ach!”
The Sunday death roll in no way represents the magnitude of the plan.
There were several escapes--people were not at home, wives tricked the
raiders; but more far-reaching than these things was the fact that
there seems to have been a serious miscarriage in the Sinn Fein plans.
One story goes to relate that a list of eighty victims was prepared,
and a number of Irish Volunteers gathered on Baggot Street Bridge, or
one of those bridges over the canal, waiting for guides who did not
turn up.
The men detailed to carry out the work of assassination took no more
risk than was essential to the undertaking. In every case they called
in overwhelming numbers on their victims.
The task was not glorious; but when one examines the circumstances,
what other means had Sinn Fein of getting rid of such dangerous
enemies? Man for man, an agent of the secret service should greatly
exceed the value of a soldier. His power lies in his secrecy.
The penalty of secrecy has always been death. An agent knows this, and
is reconciled to the law. It is just enough. But the men who carried
out the work of assassination wore no uniform, they too worked under a
civilian cloak. The pot came to destroy the kettle.
It was now towards the end of November, and getting dusk soon after the
middle of the afternoon.
There were long damp depressing evenings and interminable nights. That
extraordinary terror, which had been coming in puffs, was at last
sweeping through Ireland like a wind.
It is curious what one recalls looking back over a troubled time. It
is an atmosphere rather than events. There come back to me those early
darkening afternoons when people passed sullenly with bent heads, and
the paper-boys raced through the mire, bearing their printed aprons
which told of fresh ruin. I remember meeting on successive days three
carts fallen over on their sides because a wheel had run away.
I do not remember in any other city, great or small, this kind of
accident, and I asked myself were these errant wheels, which had run
away because somebody had forgotten to screw them up, a sign, a portent
that Ireland was not quite an adult nation?
On one of these evening walks, in Dawson Street I think it was, I saw a
horse that had jumped into an area, and was standing down there unhurt,
eating hay and oats, unable to be got out. For a minute or two I joined
the crowd, which was gaping through the railings at this accident. But
while we all gaped we were gloomy and suspicious of one another.
For with greater fury than before, the Crossley tenders, choked with
police, raced up and down the streets; searching, searching, searching
for those butchers, those bakers, those candlestick makers who laid
aside their aprons now and then when the hour was propitious and
grasped a pistol in their hands; those candlestick makers, those
bakers, those butchers who never seemed to leave their counters and
untie their aprons from their middles. By day, by night; in storm, in
calm, the flying wheels splashed through the mire. Knock, knock, knock.
“Open! The military!” Knock, knock knock. “In the King’s name!” Up
rattle windows. Out poke heads. “Open, open, or we break in the door.”
The butcher’s wife, the baker’s mother, the candlestick maker’s aunt
open the door as slowly as they dare, and the stream of police sweep
in like a tide--down into the cellar, out into the garden, up into the
attic, through the skylight, everywhere in an instant that the hunted
man may not escape; peering into grates for ashes of burned papers,
pulling out mantleshelves for hidden arms, examining picture frames for
secret documents; and when all is done clattering down from attic and
up from basement, pouring down the steps and climbing into the tender,
and then at breakneck speed to the next house on the list. Bang, bang,
bang! “Open! The military!”
In the week that followed the murders of the officers, the British
Government made the supreme effort of this tremendous police
hunt--operations in Ireland never assumed the proportions of a war--and
in three or four days the prisons were filled. The British Government
was altering its tactics, and finding a solution for dealing with
this will-o’-the-wisp enemy by arresting all suspects, in preparation
for lodging them in one or other of the internment camps under
construction. In Dublin the arrests of that week numbered hundreds, and
among the prisoners was Arthur Griffith, the father of Sinn Fein.
The funeral of the officers passed along the Liffey, and all the world
and his wife went down to the quays to see. Shops were shut, sometimes
after a little persuasion by mourning Black-and-Tans, and the streets
were left empty. The crowd was reverent; and cases of lack of feeling
were rectified by Black-and-Tans posted in lorries at points of
vantage. Hats that did not come off as the gun carriages went by were
helped off, and three young men who were disrespectful were thrown into
the Liffey.
A Mr. Goodbody, of Cork, who was jammed against me, said to a friend,
“Michael Collins himself is in the crowd. He do be a profitable man
to look at. Indade, and he would have made a good king in a sporty
country. But he is headstrong, headstrong.”
Said an old woman, striking me in the stomach with her elbow, to a
friend, “Och, ’tis a beautiful sight this, and sure it’s a pity they
had to kill those beautiful young men.”
“Indade,” said the friend, poking me over the appendix, “it’s our boys
I would like to see dressed out like this. Give me the military, I sez,
and not they Black-and-Tans. It will be a grey day for Ireland whan
she sees the last iv the military.”
“Sure,” said the first dame, “it is our boys will be all in green then,
and that’ll be a grander sight for ye.”
“Och!” exclaimed a second friend, making use of my toes to see better,
“the Black-and-Tans came to us the other day, and I was sitting over
the fire. ‘Who’s there?’ I sez at the bang on the door. ‘Open, the
military!’ sez they. ‘I will not,’ I sez. ‘We’ll have to break in,’ sez
they. ‘Break away,’ I sez, ‘I don’t have to pay for it,’ I sez. ‘It’s
the landlord as does,’ I sez.”
The funeral passed, the crowd dissolved; for some reason I wandered
about the streets without going home. In course of time I was surprised
to find it had got dark. I came across College Green, sauntered up
Grafton Street, which was crowded. The mud was shining as usual, and
the paper boys were shouting some catastrophe. I had come to the corner
of Wicklow Street when a man turned quickly into it from Grafton
Street. He was in the shadow, but I knew him anywhere. I overtook him
in a stride or two.
“Good night,” I said.
“I saw you,” 47 answered, “but I was in a hurry. Come my way a little.”
He slowed up.
The street was dark and nearly empty.
“They didn’t get you?”
“We saw no sign of them.”
“How’s your wife taking it?”
“She’s right enough. She’s been a bit jumpy because we’ve no arms.
I’m off to the Central Hotel now to see my ‘cousin.’ Most of our lot
have been called into the Central. My wife says she won’t stick it any
longer unless I have a gun, so I’m off to see about one.”
“I don’t wonder at her.”
He nodded. “The last few days have been pretty worrying.”
“You people aren’t going into the Central?”
“We’re banking on the chance we aren’t suspected. If we go into the
Central it won’t do us any good when we come out.”
“I see that.”
I think 47 was rattled that evening in spite of his matter-of-fact
words. At this time a man had to cope not only with his own fear, but
with the national fear that was suffocating everybody, so that each man
had to bear more than his own share. There was a touch of bitterness, a
touch of philosophy, and more than a touch of pathos in 47’s voice as
we walked along the gloomy street.
“We chaps last just as long as we are undiscovered. Discovery may take
place to-day, to-morrow. A man may make a slip; but if he makes a slip
he probably knows what he has done. But somebody else may have made the
slip. He may leave his Sinn Fein friends in smiles; he may go back to
cold faces. This state of things plays the devil with the nerves.
“A soldier, after the battle, lies down among his companions, safe,
secure, knowing no harm can come; but an agent is never safe, never
secure. This minute, next minute the ground may have opened under his
feet, his secret may be out, and he standing alone against a nation.
The curtain may hold an assassin, the street corner may conceal the
bullet. While he eats the foe may be drawing near; while he sleeps they
may be coming. Shall he take this road? Shall he take that?
“After some time in the service he becomes like a beast of the field.
Danger comes on the breeze, in the rustle of the grass, in the shadows
of the trees. While he eats he listens. While he sleeps he plans.”
I interrupted him. “I’ve got to get home now. Tell your wife we’ll be
along to see her to-night.”
“She’d like it,” he admitted.
“We’ll be there quite soon.”
“I don’t think it will matter. We haven’t been shadowed as far as I
know.”
“So long,” I said, pulling up.
“So long,” he said, going on.
I turned round and went back to Grafton Street.