similarity of the remarks of Faherty and Brogan when the bodies of the
cur dog and the dark peasant were dug up, and that night he dreamt that
he was opening an endless row of graves, and never knew whether he would
dig up a cur dog or a dark peasant, and all the time he was hoping to
find Drake’s body. At last he came to a grave where he was positive he
would find Drake, and started to dig like mad, only to wake up and find
his own red setter on his bed.
Blake now determined to renew his efforts to find Drake. He ordered the
Head Constable to round up the same six Volunteers, and as soon as this
was done set off once more for the bog cemetery. Making their way to
Moran’s house, they learnt from his wife that the previous evening her
husband had been removed by masked men with shovel hats and wearing
black mackintoshes. The wife, noticing the black mackintoshes, accused
the police.
Borrowing a couple of spades, the police then went to the graveyard, and
as soon as the dark man’s grave could be found, Blake ordered the
Volunteers to open it again, and at the same time watched Brogan’s face
carefully. On the way out to the cemetery, Brogan had been laughing and
sneering as on the former occasion, but directly he heard Blake’s order
he went as white as a sheet, and began to tremble, and a look of terror
leapt into his eyes.
Blake knew that at last he was on the right track.
None of the Volunteers moved, waiting for Brogan to give a lead, and
Blake had to repeat his order, calling on Brogan by name to start
digging. Pulling himself together with a great effort, the Volunteer
commenced slowly to throw the earth out of the grave, the sweat, though
it was a cold day, pouring down his face.
The lower Brogan dug the slower he dug, until at last, when he had
excavated about two feet of soil, he suddenly fainted and collapsed into
the shallow grave.
The police were by now strung up to the highest pitch of excitement, and
a huge sergeant, who had been a great favourite with Drake, suddenly
gave a hoarse shout, and, jumping into the grave threw Brogan out, and
started digging like a madman, while the rest began to fidget with the
triggers of their rifles and look ominously at the uneasy Volunteers.
Suddenly the sergeant’s spade met a soft resistance, and in a few
seconds he had uncovered and opened a sack, to find, as Blake expected,
the body of poor Drake with a huge expanding bullet hole through his
forehead.
The next five minutes will always be to Blake a nightmare: the police
went stark mad,—when highly-disciplined troops break they are far worse
to handle than any undisciplined crowd,—and with a howl of rage made for
the cowering Volunteers, ignoring Blake’s shouts; and to this day Blake
has no idea of how he kept his men from taking revenge on the
Volunteers.
Probably he would have failed but for the lucky chance of noticing that
Brogan, who had come to, was trying to escape. The diversion of chasing
Brogan brought the police back to their senses, and by the time he had
been captured and brought back, discipline was completely restored.
Before they left the cemetery, Brogan made a complete confession of all
he knew about the tragedy. He told Blake that information had been given
to the G.H.Q. of the I.R.A. in Dublin that Drake was on the point of
taking command of a company of Auxiliaries who were to be stationed in
his own house, the idea being to use Drake’s local knowledge, which
Blake knew to be quite untrue. On the Sunday two gunmen arrived from
Dublin with orders to shoot Drake and burn his house. Finding out that
Drake intended to go to Dublin the following day by the mail train, they
commandeered a Ford in Ballybor, taking Brogan with them as a guide, and
took him out of the train at Knockshinnagh; and after the murder they
returned to Ballybor, superintended the burning of Drake’s house, and
then disappeared into the night on stolen bicycles.
Shortly afterwards Brogan heard a rumour that Drake had been murdered
and buried in the bog cemetery, and he became very uneasy. That night he
and three of the Volunteers received orders to take part in a police
ambush on the far side of the Slievenamoe Mountains, which order they
obeyed, going in a Ford.
In the ambush a strange gunman—none of the local Volunteers knew who he
was or where he came from—was killed, and when some argument arose as to
how to dispose of his body, Brogan at once volunteered to take the body
back with him and bury it in the bog cemetery, his intention being to
bury the gunman on top of Drake, so that if by chance the police opened
the grave they would find the body of the gunman and be put off the
scent. After the first visit of the police the Volunteers had removed
Moran to a Sinn Fein detention prison, fearing that he might break down
and give information.
XVIII.
A JEW IN GAELIC CLOTHING.
“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but
inwardly they are ravening wolves.”—St. Matt. vii. 15.
Probably very few people in England have the remotest idea to what
extent anarchy was rife throughout the south and west of Ireland, even
in parts of loyal Ulster, during the year 1920.
Most of the Irish members of Parliament, seventy-three to be exact,
swore allegiance to Dail Eireann. Of these, seven lived abroad, and the
remainder spent most of their time in prison.
At the beginning of the year Sinn Fein captured practically every County
Council, Rural Council, and Poor Law Guardian’s Board in twenty-seven
counties; nearly all these Boards defied the Local Government Board, and
took their orders from Dail Eireann direct.
Next came the burning of County and Civil Courts, police barracks and
Petty Sessions Courts, followed by murderous attacks on police and
Loyalists throughout the south and west, though chiefly in the south at
first.
In many parts Loyalists were forced under the jurisdiction of Sinn Fein
Land, Arbitration, and Civil Courts. Solicitors had their choice of
practising in these Courts or not practising at all, and a solicitor
must live as well as another man.
The police had no power outside their barracks, and in many districts a
policeman was never seen for weeks on end, whole districts being policed
by civilian Volunteers.
A large national loan was raised openly in defiance of the British
Government, its avowed purpose being to carry on war against England and
to break up the British Army. Sinn Fein banks and insurance societies
were floated, the money obtained being used for the same purposes. Sinn
Fein laws were passed and enforced, and a large army organised and built
up, drilled and armed.
At this time the British Prime Minister repeatedly assured the country
that there never could and never would be an Irish Republic; while Lloyd
George talked De Valera acted, and the Republic came into being while
Lloyd George was still talking.
During the summer of 1919 a very ordinary and at first uninteresting
strike of shop assistants took place in Ballybor for higher wages and
shorter hours, and the shopkeepers managed to carry on with the aid of
their families, and few of the public suffered any inconvenience from
the strike.
Good relations still existed between master and employee in nearly every
shop in the town, and the shopkeepers were just on the point of an
amicable settlement with their assistants when a Transport Union
agitator, or, as he called himself, a Gaelic organiser, appeared on the
scene, and in a few hours the whole situation was changed. The local
secretary of the Transport Union, to which the shop assistants belonged,
at once broke off all negotiations with the shopkeepers, and before
night several acts of sabotage had been committed in the town.
The next morning saw the strike begin afresh in deadly earnest. Every
street was picketed by strikers, who refused to allow any one,
townspeople or country people, to purchase any foodstuffs until the
shopkeepers had given in to their impossible demands. Doubtless the idea
was that the starving people would bring such pressure to bear on the
shopkeepers that they would be forced to give in and grant practically
any terms to the shop assistants. In a word, the old game of blackmail.
Several unfortunate old country-women, who had managed to evade the
pickets and to purchase provisions, were caught on their way home by the
strikers and their purchases trodden into the mud of the streets. One
old clergyman, who lived several miles from Ballybor in an isolated
district, managed not only to dodge the pickets and buy much-needed
food, but to get two miles on his way home. However, a picket of
shop-boys, mounted on bicycles, overtook him, threw all his provisions
into a bog-hole, beat him severely, turned his pony loose in the bog,
and left him by the roadside.
At first the shopkeepers were bewildered and at a complete loss to
understand the sudden change in the attitude of their assistants, but on
hearing Paidraig O’Kelly, the so-called Gaelic organiser, make his first
public speech, they knew at once what they were up against.
In 1914, before the war broke out, all thinking Irishmen knew that the
coming and growing danger in Ireland was the Transport Union, formed
originally for the perfectly legitimate object of raising the status and
wages of the working classes (quite apart from the small farmer class)
by combined action. But in a very short time this Union became the
instrument of Bolshevism in Ireland under the able command of James
Connelly, a disciple of Lenin’s long before the latter had risen to
power.
And so thoroughly and well had Connelly made out his plans for the
future that in every town and village the complete machinery of Soviet
Government had been prepared, ready to start working the instant the
revolution should break out. Men had been appointed to every public
office, and the houses of the well-to-do allotted to the different
Commissioners and officers of each local Soviet.
Luckily for Ireland, the rebellion of 1916 saw the end of James
Connelly, probably the most dangerous and one of the cleverest men of
modern times in Ireland.
With the death of Connelly and the disappearance of Larkin to America,
the Transport Union fell into the hands of less able men, but still
carried on successfully with agrarian agitation, though marking time as
regards revolution.
After the war the Union found itself up against Sinn Fein, and for a
time it looked as though the two parties would come to blows and so
nullify each other’s efforts. Unfortunately both parties saw that their
only chance of success was to co-operate; doubtless the Transport Union
thought that if the rebellion was successful their chance would come in
the general confusion, and that they would be able to get their Soviet
Government working before the Sinn Feiners could get going.
During 1919 and 1920 Sinn Fein and the Transport Union nearly came to
blows on several occasions in the west over agrarian trouble. The
Transport Union wanted to take advantage of the absence of law and order
to hunt every landlord and big farmer out of the country and divide
their lands amongst the landless members of the Union, while Sinn Fein
policy was to wait until the Republic had been set up, when, so they
declared, there would be an equitable division made.
The Ballybor strike collapsed as suddenly as it had started with the
disappearance of Paidraig O’Kelly. The previous day a public meeting on
the town fair green had been held by the Transport Union, and all the
young men and girls of the town and countryside had attended. At first
the local firebrands addressed the meeting with their usual grievance,
and then O’Kelly spoke for a full hour. At first he confined himself to
the strike, and carried his audience with him when he painted a vivid
picture of the different lives led by the shopkeepers and their
“slaves,” how the former and their families lived on the fat of the
land, the latter in the gutter.
The crowd had now had all they wanted and were prepared to go home to
tea, but O’Kelly had a good deal more to tell them. Suddenly and without
any warning he began to unfold the doctrine of Lenin, to show them how
the world and all the good things in it ought really to belong to them,
and that these good things would never be theirs until the ruling
classes were forced to disgorge them, and that the only way to make the
swine disgorge was to kill them one and all—gentry, business men, and
shopkeepers.
The man could really speak, and held his audience spellbound while he
unfolded the Irish Eldorado of the future; but through all his speech
ran the one idea to kill, always to kill those in a higher station of
life than his listeners. To finish with he called upon them to start
with the police, to shoot them like the dogs they were, and when they
were gone the rest would be easy.
Sergeant M’Grath had been detailed to attend the meeting to take down in
shorthand any speeches which might require explaining afterwards, but
until O’Kelly started to preach the doctrine of Lenin he had not opened
his notebook.
The sergeant had served in most parts of Ireland, but O’Kelly’s speech
and brogue puzzled him: the man spoke like an Englishman trying to
imitate the Irish brogue, but with a thickness of speech which the
sergeant could not place. Nor could he place the shape of O’Kelly’s
head, a round bullet-shaped one with a high narrow forehead and coarse
black hair.
He duly reported O’Kelly’s speech to the D.I., who endeavoured to find
out where the man came from, but failed to get any definite information.
One rumour said that O’Kelly came from Cork, another from America, and
yet a third that he was a native of Castleport. So the only thing to do
was to arrest the man and then try to identify him; but O’Kelly had
completely disappeared.
Nothing further appears to have been heard of O’Kelly in Ireland during
1919, but the following year an itinerant lecturer on beekeeping turned
up in Co. Donegal, who bore a strong resemblance to Lenin’s disciple.
This man’s practice was to give a short lecture on bees in
school-houses, and then to launch forth into pure Bolshevism—a complete
waste of time on the average Donegal peasant. Next he was heard of in
Belfast, where he was lucky to escape a violent death at the hands of
some infuriated shipyard workers.
In May 1920 the Transport Union in Ballybor began suddenly to give Blake
a lot of trouble—cases of men being dragged out of their beds at night
and forced with a loaded gun at their heads to join the Union steadily
increased.
Several landlords who employed a good many men were threatened that, if
they did not pay a higher wage than the maximum laid down by law, all
their men would be called out and that they would in addition be
boycotted. And any who refused at once had their hayricks burnt and
their cattle injured.
Rumours came to Blake’s ears of a man making extraordinary speeches at
night in the different country school-houses throughout the district to
audiences of young men and girls, speeches which apparently combined
Sinn Fein aims with red revolution.
During 1920 Sergeant M’Grath had been sent to Grouse Lodge as
sergeant-in-charge, and thinking that he recognised O’Kelly in the
revolutionary lecturer who was touring the district, he kept a careful
watch on the Cloonalla school-house, and within a week had surprised and
captured the man, who turned out to be O’Kelly.
O’Kelly was brought up before the R.M. in Ballybor Barracks, charged
with inciting the people to murder the police during the strike of 1919,
and pleaded not guilty.
The R.M., who looked upon the man as a harmless lunatic (he had not
heard him haranguing a crowd), offered to let him go provided he entered
into a recognisance to be of good behaviour and could find two sureties
in fairly substantial sums. O’Kelly replied that he dared not enter into
a recognisance to be of good behaviour, and further, that if he was
released he would continue to preach revolution. Whereupon the R.M. gave
him three months and left the barracks.
Blake then saw O’Kelly alone, and endeavoured to find out who and what
he was. It was obvious that the man was not an Irishman, nor did he
appear to be English. O’Kelly refused to give him any information
regarding himself.
While this interview was going on an Auxiliary, whose home was in
Scotland, and who commanded a section of Cadets on temporary duty in
Ballybor, looked in to see Blake and found him with O’Kelly.
After O’Kelly had left the room the Auxiliary told Blake that he knew
the man well, and had often seen him in Glasgow, where, previous to
1919, the man had lived for two years working as a Jewish Bolshevik
agent, and that he had suddenly disappeared from Glasgow when the police
began to get unpleasantly attentive.
XIX.
MOUNTAIN WARFARE.
The movements of the flying columns of the I.R.A.—gangs of armed
ruffians, usually numbering about forty, but sometimes more, sometimes
less, and led by men with military experience (ex-soldiers and even
ex-officers, to their everlasting shame)—have always corresponded
accurately to the amount of police and military pressure brought to bear
on them, which pressure has continually fluctuated in agreement to the
whims and brain-waves of the politicians in power.
Figuratively speaking, these same politicians have kept the police and
military with one hand tied behind their back, and sometimes when the
screams of the mob politicians in the House have been loudest, have very
nearly tied up both their hands. If a chart had been kept during the
Irish war showing the relative intensity of the politicians’ screams and
the activities of the I.R.A., the reading of it would be highly
interesting and instructive.
Extra pressure, more rigid enforcement of existing restrictions on
movement, and increased military activity have always resulted in a
general stampede of flying columns to the mountains of the west, where
the gunmen could rest in comparative safety, and swagger about among the
simple and ignorant mountain-folk to their hearts’ content.
Here they would stay until the politicians, frightened by inspired
questions in the House, would practically confine the military and
police to barracks. The gunmen would then, with great reluctance, leave
the safety of the mountains, and return to the southern front, to carry
on once more the good work of political murder.
And so the game of seesaw went on. Every time that the Crown forces saw
victory in sight the politicians would drag them back again to start all
afresh. The wonder is that the Crown forces stuck it so long with every
hand against them, and their worst abuse coming from a cowardly section
of their own countrymen in England.
Early in 1921 the Crown forces in the south of Ireland suddenly gave
forth signs that a determined effort was to be made to deal effectively,
once and for all, with the gangs of armed murderers and robbers roaming
the country, masquerading as soldiers of the Irish Republic; and again
the flying columns fled in haste to their mountain retreats in the west,
a part of the country where the majority of the inhabitants have always
done their best to keep out of the trouble, with a few isolated
exceptions.
This time they stayed longer; in fact, each time it became harder to
induce the gunmen to forsake the peace of the mountains for the war in
the south. After a time they started to vary the monotony by carrying
out punitive expeditions against the police and the unfortunate
Loyalists in the surrounding lowlands, but always to fly back to the
mountains at the first sight of a force of police or soldiers.
Ex-soldiers were the chief game at this period. A district would be
chosen where there were no troops and few police. A list of all
ex-soldiers living in this district would be made out, and guides
provided by the local I.R.A. commandant. Each ex-soldier would be
visited in turn during a night, given his choice of active service with
the I.R.A. or a sudden death. Those who remained loyal to the King would
be led out and butchered like sheep, though possibly the murderers would
not take the trouble to remove their victims, but would fire a volley
into them as they lay in bed, and leave them there. Truly a brave army!
Transport presented no difficulty to the gunmen. The British Government
took practically no steps to control the movements of motors, motor
bicycles, or push-bicycles, except the motor-permit farce, which greatly
inconvenienced Loyalists only. All they had to do was to commandeer as
many cars or bicycles as they wanted, where, when, and how they liked.
However, this was not all the work which the Sinn Fein leaders intended
their flying columns to carry out, and in order to induce the gunmen to
return to duty the usual noisy peace squeal was started in England, so
that conditions might be made pleasanter for the gunmen in the south.
The murdering of ex-soldiers and helpless Loyalists could be easily
carried out by local Volunteers under a well-seasoned murderer—an
excellent method of initiating raw recruits into the methods of the Sinn
Fein idea of warfare. The British Government, always great judges of
Irish character, thought that the Sinn Fein leaders were coming to their
senses at last, took off the pressure, and the gunmen duly returned to
duty.
* * * * *
At length there came a time when these columns really got the wind up,
stampeded to the western mountains, and this time refused point-blank to
return to duty.
In the late spring of 1921 Blake was suddenly called over to England on
private business in London, and afterwards went down to the country to
spend a few days with the parents of a man with whom he had served in
France.
The day after his arrival Blake’s host told him that a Black and Tan, a
native of the place, had been murdered in Ireland a few days previously,
and was to be buried that day in the parish graveyard, and asked Blake
if he would accompany him to the funeral.
When passing through Dublin on his way to England, Blake had seen in the
Castle the account of how this unfortunate Black and Tan had met his
death—shot in the back when walking in the streets of a small western
town with a girl; and not content with that, the murderers had fired a
volley at him as he lay wounded on the ground, and even fired several
shots after the girl as she fled shrieking up the street. So terrified
were the townspeople that, though there were many in the streets at the
time, not one dared to even approach the dying constable, and it was not
until a full hour afterwards that a passing police patrol found him
lying dead in a great pool of blood. Incidentally, the murderers had by
then put sixteen miles behind them by means of stolen bicycles.
Blake accepted, expecting to see a large funeral to do honour to the
murdered policeman, but to his great surprise and indignation found that
only the near relations of the murdered man were present.
Returning from the funeral, Blake happened to see the local police
inspector in the main street of the little town, and at once tackled him
about the funeral, wanting to know why the local police had not been
present as a last mark of respect to a man who had died for his country.
The inspector seemed greatly surprised and rather taken aback, and
replied that he could hardly be expected to turn his men out to attend
the funeral of a murderer.
For a moment Blake saw red, and but for a natural horror of making a
scene in a public place, would probably have knocked the inspector down.
Then, thinking that there must be a bad blunder somewhere, he asked whom
the Black and Tan had murdered, and how he had met his death. The
inspector admitted that the Black and Tan had been murdered, he
believed, and then opened out on the crimes and atrocities which the
Black and Tans had committed in Ireland—murder, rape, and highway
robbery,—in fact, the usual list of atrocities which is generally to be
read in the Sinn Fein propaganda pamphlets.