"Eamonn De Valera, the President of the Irish Republic, who has been in
hiding since his escape from Lincoln jail, will be welcomed back to Dublin
by a public reception. Tomorrow evening at seven o'clock he will be met at
the Mount street bridge by Lawrence O'Neill, Lord Mayor of Dublin...."
The news note was in the morning papers. In small type it was hidden on the
back pages--the Irish papers have a curious habit of six-pointing articles
in which the people are vitally interested and putting three-column heads
on such stuff as: "Do Dublin Girls Rouge?" That day the concern of the
people was unquestionably not rouge but republics. For the question that
sibilated in Grafton street cafes and at the tram change at Nelson pillar
was: "Will Dublin Castle permit?"
Orders and gun enforcement. The empire did not deviate from the usual
program of empires--action without discussion. In the crises that are
always occurring between organized revolt and the empire, there is never
any consideration of the physical agony that goads the people to revolt.
There wasn't now. By early afternoon, the answer, on great, black-lettered
posters, was swabbed to the sides of buildings all over town:
"DE VALERA RECEPTION FORBIDDEN!"
That was the headline, and after instructions warning the people not to
take part in the ceremony, the government order ended:
"GOD SAVE THE KING!"
How would the revolutionaries reply? Rumors ran riot. The Sinn Fein
volunteers would pit themselves against His Majesty's troops. The streets
would be red again. The belief that the meeting would be held in spite of
the proclamation was supported by a statement on green-lettered posters
that appeared later next the British dictum:
"LORD MAYOR REQUESTS GOOD ORDER AT RECEPTION!"
This plea was followed by a paragraph asking that the people attending the
reception would not allow themselves to be provoked into disorder by the
British military. Then there was the concluding exclamation:
"GOD SAVE IRELAND!"
On my way to the Sinn Fein headquarters in Harcourt street, I passed the
Mansion House of the Lord Mayor and found two long-coated Dublin Military
Police stripping the new wet poster from the yellow walls. When I arrived
at Number 6, Harcourt street, I saw black-clad Mrs. Sheehy-Sheffington, in
somewhat agitated absorption of thought, coming down the worn steps of the
old Georgian house. In the upper back room, earnest young secretaries
worked in swift silence. One of them, a curly-haired girl with her mouth
o-ed about a cigarette, puffed unceasingly. At last Harry Boland, secretary
of Sinn Fein, entered.
"The council decides tonight," he admitted. His eyes were bright and
faraway like one whose mind is on a coming crisis. When I told him I would
drop in again to hear the decision, he protested that they would be at it
till late. On my counter protest that time made no difference to me, he
promised that if I would not come he would send me word at eleven that
night. "But I think," he added, "we won't know till morning."
At ten that night, Boots knocked at my door. I concluded that there had
been a stampeded decision. But on going out I discovered the Associated
Press correspondent there. He told me that he heard that I was to receive
the news and that he did not believe that there was any necessity of
bothering the Sinn Feiners twice for the same decision.
"I think the reception is quite likely," he volunteered. "This afternoon a
good many of the Sinn Fein army were at University chapel at confession. At
the girls' hostels of National University--which is regarded as a sort of
adolescent Sinn Fein headquarters--there have been strict orders that the
girls are to remain indoors tomorrow night."
When the messenger arrived at eleven to say that no decision had been
reached, I made an appointment for an interview on the following day with
DeValera.
Electricity was in the air by morning. There were all sorts of sparks.
Young men in civilian clothes ran for trams with their hands over their hip
pockets. A delightful girl whom I had met, boarded my car with a heavy
parcel in her hands. As the British officer next me rose to give her his
seat, her cheeks became very pink. Sometime later she told me that, like
the rest of the Sinn Fein volunteers, she had received her mobilization
orders, and that the parcel the officer had relented for was--her rifle.
At that time, her division of the woman's section of the Sinn Fein
volunteers was pressing a plan for the holding of the reception. In order,
however, that no needed fighters would be killed, the girls had asked that
they should be first to meet the president. Then, when the machine guns
commenced, "only girls" would fall.
Into College Green a brute of a tank had cruised. The man in charge was
inviting people to have a look. Inside there were red-lipped munition
boxes, provender cases, and through the skewer-sized sight-holes next the
jutting guns, there were glimpses of shoppers emerging from Grafton street
into the Green. Over the city, against the silver-rimmed, Irish gray
clouds, aeroplanes--there were sixteen in one formation--buzzed
insistently. Between the little stone columns of the roof railing of
Trinity College, machine guns poked out their cold snouts.
"Smoke bombs were dropped over Mount street bridge today," said Harry
Boland with a shrug of his shoulders when I arrived at Sinn Fein
headquarters to ask if the reception would still be held. "What can we do
against a force like theirs?"
But there was a strained feeling at headquarters as if the decision had
been made after a hard fight. Alderman Thomas Kelly, one of the oldest of
the Sinn Feiners, told me that he had backed DeValera in his refusal to
countenance a needless loss of life, and that it was only after a good
struggle that their point had won.
"DeValera's just beyond the town," whispered Harry Boland to me when he
decided that we would leave to see the president at seven--the hour the
executive was due to appear at the bridge. "They're searching all the cars
that cross the canal bridges. If there is any trouble as we pass just say
that you are an American citizen--that'd get you through anywhere."
Knots of still expectant people were gathered at the Mount street bridge.
Squads of long-coated military police patrolled the place. Children called
at games. The starlight dripped into the canal. At Portobello bridge we
made our crossing. Nothing happened. The constables did not even punch the
cushions of our car as they did with others to see if munitions were
concealed therein. We swooped down curving roads between white walls hung
with masses of dark laurel. We stopped dead on a road arched with trees. We
got out, clicked the car door softly shut, turned a corner, and walked some
distance in the cool night. As we walked I made I forget what request in
regard to the interview from young Mr. Boland, and with the reverent regard
and complete obedience to DeValera's wishes that is characteristic in the
young Sinn Feiners--a state of mind that does not, however, prevent calling
the president "Dev"--he said simply: "But I must do what he tells me." At
the door of a modestly comfortable home whose steps we mounted, a thick-set
man blocked my way for a moment.
"You won't," he asked, "say where you came?"
"I'm sure," I returned, "I haven't an idea where I am."
DeValera was giving rapid, almost breathless, orders in Irish to some one
as I entered his room. His thin frame towered above a dark plush-covered
table. A fire behind him surrounded him with a soft yellow aura. His white,
ascetic, young--he is thirty-seven--face was lined with determination.
Doors and windows were hung with thick, dark-red portières, and the walls
were almost as white as DeValera's face.
"Pardon us for speaking Irish," he apologized. "We forget. Now first of
all, we will go over the questions you sent me. I have written the answers.
They must appear as I have put them down. That is the condition on which
the interview takes place."
Did Sinn Fein plan immediate revolution? The president ran a fountain pen
under the small, finely written lines as he remarked in an aside that he
was not a writer but a mathematician. No. The sudden set of the president's
jaw indicated that this man who had fought in the 1916 rebellion till even
his enemies had praised him, was the man who had decided there would be no
reception at the bridge. No. There would be no armed revolt till all
peaceable methods had failed.
If Sinn Fein succeeded in getting separation, would it establish a
bolshevistic government? DeValera returned that he was not sure what
bolshevism is. As far as he understood bolshevism, Sinn Fein was not
bolshevistic. But perhaps, by the way, bolshevism had been as
misrepresented in the American press as Sinn Fein. Right there, I took
exception and said that from his own point of view I did not see what good
slurring the American press would do his cause. Immediately he answered as
if only the principal phase of the matter had occurred to him: "But it's
true." Then he continued: The worker is unfairly treated. Whether it is
bolshevistic or not, Sinn Fein hopes to bring about a government in which
there will be juster conditions for the laboring classes.