DOING MY BIT FOR IRELAND
[Illustration: MARGARET SKINNIDER
School-teacher, suffragist, nationalist: wounded while fighting in the
uniform of the Irish Volunteers]
DOING MY BIT FOR IRELAND
BY
MARGARET SKINNIDER
ILLUSTRATED
[Illustration: Logo]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1917
Copyright, 1917, by
THE CENTURY CO.
_Published, June, 1917_
INTRODUCTION
When the revolt of a people that feels itself oppressed is successful,
it is written down in history as a revolution--as in this country in
1776. When it fails, it is called an insurrection--as in Ireland in
1916. Those who conquer usually write the history of the conquest. For
that reason the story of the "Dublin Insurrection" may become legendary
in Ireland, where it passes from mouth to mouth, and may remain quite
unknown throughout the rest of the world, unless those of us who were in
it and yet escaped execution, imprisonment, or deportation, write
truthfully of our personal part in the rising of Easter week.
It was in my own right name that I applied for a passport to come to
this country. When it was granted me after a long delay, I wondered if,
after all, the English authorities had known nothing of my activity in
the rising. But that can hardly be, for it was a Government detective
who came to arrest me at the hospital in Dublin where I was recovering
from wounds received during the fighting.
I was not allowed to stay in prison; the surgeon in charge of the
hospital insisted to the authorities at Dublin Castle that I was in no
condition to be locked up in a cell. But later they might have arrested
me, for I was in Dublin twice--once in August and again in November. On
both occasions detectives were following me. I have heard that three
days after I openly left my home in Glasgow to come to this country,
inquiries were made for me of my family and friends.
That there is some risk in publishing my story, I am well aware; but
that is the sort of risk which we who love Ireland must run, if we are
to bring to the knowledge of the world the truth of that heroic attempt
last spring to free Ireland and win for her a place as a small but
independent nation, entitled to the respect of all who love liberty. It
is to win that respect, even though we failed to gain our freedom, that
I tell what I know of the rising.
I find that here in America it is hard to imagine a successful Irish
revolt, but there was more than a fighting chance for us as our plans
were laid. Ireland can easily be defended by the population once they
are aroused, for the country is well suited to guerilla warfare, and the
mountains near the coast form a natural defense from attack by sea. Nor
do the people have to go outside for their food. They could easily live
for years in the interior on what the soil is capable of producing. And
there is plenty of ammunition in Ireland, too. If we had been able to
take the British as completely off guard in the country districts as we
did in Dublin--had there not been the delay of a day in carrying out
concerted action--we could have seized all the arms and ammunition of
the British arsenals on the island.
To-day it would be harder, for the British are not likely to be again
caught unaware of our plans. Besides, they are taking precautions.
Drilling of any sort is forbidden; foot-ball games are not allowed; all
excursions are prohibited. The people are not allowed to come together
in numbers on any occasion.
For a long time after the rising, I dreamed every night about it. The
dream was not as it actually took place, for the streets were different
and the strategic plans changed, while the outcome was always
successful. My awakening was a bitter disappointment, yet the memory of
our failure is a greater memory than many of us ever dared to hope.
In all the literature of the Celtic revival through which Ireland has
gained fresh recognition from the world, there is no finer passage nor
one that can mean so much to us, than that paragraph of the last
proclamation which Padraic Pearse wrote in the ruined Dublin post-office
when under shell and shrapnel fire. At a moment when he knew that the
rising had been defeated, that the end of his supreme attempt had come,
he wrote:
"For four days they (the men) have fought and toiled, almost without
cessation, almost without sleep; and in the intervals of fighting, they
have sung songs of the freedom of Ireland. No man has complained, no
man has asked 'why?'. Each individual has spent himself, happy to pour
out his strength for Ireland and for freedom. If they do not win this
fight, they will at least have deserved to win it. But win it they will,
although they may win it in death. Already they have won a great thing.
They have redeemed Dublin from many shames, and made her name splendid
among the names of cities."
[Illustration: Signature]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Margaret Skinnider _Frontispiece_
The Irish Cross Presented to the Author 2
Constance Gore-Booth, Countess de Markievicz 7
Margaret Skinnider wearing Boy's Clothes 21
A Fianna Boy 53
James Connolly 93
The Proclamation of the Irish Republic 107
Belt Buckle 135
Stamps issued by the Irish Republic 135
Pearse's Last Proclamation 151
The Order that made the Surrender of the
College of Surgeons Inevitable 160
The Pass Out of Ireland 196
DOING MY BIT FOR IRELAND
[Illustration: THE IRISH CROSS PRESENTED TO THE AUTHOR
The inscription reads: "The Cumman-na-mBan and Irish Volunteers,
Glasgow, present this to Margaret Skinnider for the work she did for
Ireland, Easter Week, 1916."]
DOING MY BIT FOR IRELAND
I
Just before Christmas a year ago, I accepted an invitation to visit some
friends in the north of Ireland, where, as a little girl, I had spent
many midsummer vacations. My father and mother are Irish, but have lived
almost all their lives in Scotland and much of that time in Glasgow.
Scotland is my home, but Ireland my country.
On those vacation visits to County Monaghan, Ulster, I had come to know
the beauty of the inland country, for I stayed nine miles from the town
of Monaghan. We used to go there in a jaunting-car and on the way
passed the fine places of the rich English people--the "Planter" people
we called them because they were of the stock that Cromwell brought over
from England and planted on Irish soil. We would pass, too, the small
and poor homes of the Irish, with their wee bit of ground. It was then I
began to feel resentment, though I was only a child.
In Scotland there were no such contrasts for me to see, but there were
the histories of Ireland,--not those the English have written but those
read by all the young Irish to-day after they finish studying the
Anglicized histories used in the schools. I did it the other way about,
for I was not more than twelve when a boy friend loaned me a big thick
book, printed in very small type, an Irish history of Ireland. Later I
read the school histories and the resentment I had felt in County
Monaghan grew hotter.
Then there were the old poems which we all learned. My favorite was,
"The Jackets Green," the song of a young girl whose lover died for
Ireland in the time of William III. The red coat and the green jacket!
All the differences between the British and Irish lay in the contrast
between those two colors. William III, too! Up to his reign the Irish
army had been a reality; Ireland had had a population of nine millions.
To-day there are only four millions of Irish in Ireland, a country that
could easily support five times that number in ease and comfort. The
history of my country after the time of William III seemed to me to be a
history of oppression which we should tell with tears if we did not tell
it with anger.
But I believed the time was at hand to do something. We _all_ believed
that; for an English war is always the signal for an Irish rising. Ever
since this war began, I had been hearing of vague plans. In Glasgow I
belonged to the Irish Volunteers and to the Cumman-na-mBan, an
organization of Irish girls and women. I had learned to shoot in one of
the rifle practice clubs which the British organized so that women could
help in the defense of the Empire. These clubs had sprung up like
mushrooms and died as quickly, but I kept on till I was a good marksman.
I believed the opportunity would soon come to defend my own country. And
now I was going over at Christmas to learn what hope there was of a
rising in the spring.
After all, I did not go to the quiet hills of Monaghan, but to Dublin at
the invitation of the most patriotic and revolutionary woman in all
Ireland. Constance Gore-Booth, who by her marriage with a member of the
Polish nobility became the Countess Markievicz, had heard of my work in
the Cumman-na-mBan and wanted to talk with me. She knew where all the
men and women who loved Ireland were working, and sooner or later met
them all, in spite of the fact that she was of Planter stock and by
birth of the English nobility in Ireland.
[Illustration: CONSTANCE GORE-BOOTH, COUNTESS DE MARKIEVICZ
One of the leaders of the rising. (Her death sentence was commuted to
life imprisonment)]
It was at night that I crossed the Irish Sea. All other passengers went
to their state-rooms, but I stayed on deck. Leaning back in a
steamer-chair, with my hat for a pillow, I dropped asleep. That I ever
awakened was a miracle. In my hat I was carrying to Ireland detonators
for bombs, and the wires were wrapped around me under my coat. That was
why I had not wanted to go to a state-room where I might run into a
hot-water pipe or an electric wire that would set them off. But
pressure, they told me when I reached Dublin, is just as dangerous, and
my head had been resting heavily on them all night!
It is hard now to think of that hospitable house in Leinster Road with
all the life gone out of it and its mistress in an English prison. Every
one coming to Dublin who was interested in plays, painting, the Gaelic
language, suffrage, labor, or Irish Nationalism, visited there. The
Countess Markievicz kept "open house" not only for her friends, but for
her friends' friends. As one of them has written: "Until she came down
to breakfast in the morning, she never knew what guests she had under
her roof. In order not to disturb her, they often climbed in through
the window late at night."
The place was full of books; you could not walk about without stumbling
over them. There were times, too, when the house looked like the
wardrobe in a theater. You would meet people coming down-stairs in all
manner of costume for their part in plays the count wrote and
"Madam"--as we called her--acted with the help of whoever were her
guests. These theatrical costumes were sometimes used for plays put on
at the Abbey Theater, near by. They served, too, as disguises for
suffragettes or labor leaders wanted by the police. The house was always
watched whenever there was any sort of agitation in Dublin.
I remember hearing of one labor leader whom the police hoped to arrest
before he could address a mass-meeting. He was known to visit Madam, so
the plainclothes men made for Surrey House at once. When they arrived
they found a fancy-dress ball going on to welcome the count back from
Poland. All windows were lighted, music for dancing could be heard, and
guests in carriages and motors were arriving. This was no likely haunt
for a labor agitator, so they went away. But caution brought them back
the next morning, for rumor still had it that their man was hiding
there. They waited about the house all that morning and afternoon. Many
persons came and went, among them an old man who walked with difficulty
and leaned upon the arm of a young woman. The police paid no more
attention to him than to the others, but it was the labor leader in one
of the disguises from the theatrical wardrobe. He made his speech that
night surrounded by such a crowd of loyal defenders that he could not
be arrested.
During the Transport Workers' strike in 1913, Madam threw open her house
as a place of refuge where strikers were sure to find something to eat
or a spot to sleep, if only on the drawing-room floor. In addition, she
sold her jewels to obtain money to establish soup-kitchens for their
families. Her energy and courage always led her where the conflict was
hottest. I do not think she knew what it was to be afraid, once she
decided upon a course of action. Although belonging to the most
privileged class in Ireland by birth and education, as a little girl she
had thrown herself into the Irish cause. She and her sister Eva used to
go to the stables, take horses without permission, and ride at a mad
pace to the big meetings. There they would hear the great Parnell or
the eloquent Michael Davitt tell the story of the wrongs done to
Ireland, and urge upon their hearers great courage and self-sacrifice
that these wrongs might be righted. If all those at such meetings had
heeded the speakers' words as did this little daughter of Lady
Gore-Booth; had they surrendered themselves as completely as she did, I
verily believe we would to-day be far along the road toward a free
Ireland.
As a child all the villagers on her father's estate loved Madam, for
they felt her sincerity. When she was sent away to school or went to
Paris to study painting, for which she had marked talent, they missed
her. It was while she was in Paris that she met and married another
artist, a member of the Polish nobility. Poland and Ireland! Two
countries which have had their great history and their great
humiliation now have their hope of freedom!
Neither the count nor countess were willing to permanently give up their
country of birth, so they decided to live part of the time in Dublin and
part of the time on his estates near Warsaw. It was while Madam was in
Poland that she learned some of the fine old Polish airs to which she
later put words for the Irish. Upon her return to Ireland she was at
last expected to take her place as a social leader in the Dublin Castle
set. Instead, she went more ardently than ever into all the different
movements that were working towards the freedom of Ireland.
About this time Baden-Powell was organizing his British Boy Scouts in
Ireland. He was so much impressed with the success Padraic Pearse was
having with Irish boys that he asked him to help him in the Boy Scout
movement. Pearse did not care to make potential British soldiers out of
Irish boys, however, and refused this invitation. The incident stirred
Madam to urge an Irish Boy Scout movement. She could not find any one to
take it up with energy, so she decided to do it herself with Pearse's
coöperation. Madam had never done work of this sort, but that did not
deter her. Since it must be an organization that would do something for
Irish spirit in Irish boys, she named it after the Fianna Fireann, a
military organization during the reign of Cormac MacAirt, one of the old
Irish heroes. Its story was one of daring and chivalry such as would
appeal to boys. With this name went instruction in Ireland's history in
the days of her independence and great deeds, as well as instruction in
scouting and shooting.
At Cullenswood House, where Padraic Pearse had his boys' school until it
outgrew these quarters, there is a fresco in the hall that pictures an
old Druid warning the boy hero, Cuchullain, that whoever takes up arms
on a certain day will become famous, but will die an early death. The
answer, which became a motto for the boys in that school and also a
prophecy of their teacher's death, is in old Irish beneath the fresco:
"I care not if my life has only the span of a night and a day if my
deeds be spoken of by the men of Ireland!"
It was in this spirit of devotion to Ireland that the Fianna boys were
drilled. The house in Leinster Road was always running over with them,
some as young as ten years. You would find them studying hard or, just
as likely, sliding down the fine old banisters. Madam never went
anywhere that they did not follow as a bodyguard. They loved her and
trusted her, a high compliment, since I have always found that boys are
keen judges of sincerity. If her work had been either pose or mere
hysterical enthusiasm, as some English "friends" in Dublin have sought
to make the world believe, these boys would have discovered it quickly
enough. As it was, they remained her friends, and two of the younger
men, executed after Easter Week, were volunteer officers who received
their first training under Madam in the Fianna.
The countess was one of the best shots in Ireland, and taught the boys
how to shoot. After the rising, when we all had surrendered, there still
was one house from which constant and effective firing went on for
three days. At last a considerable force of British took it by storm.
Imagine the surprise of the officer in command when he found that its
only occupants were three boys, all under sixteen!
"Who taught you to shoot like that?" he asked them.
"The Countess Markievicz," came the answer.
"How often did she drill you?"
"Only on Sundays," was the reply.
"And these great lumps of mine," exclaimed the officer in disgust, "are
drilled twice a day and don't yet know their left foot from their
right!"
Madam also took real interest in the personal problems of her boys.
While I was staying with her at Christmas, she was teaching a boy to
sing. He was slowly growing blind, and nothing could be done to save his
sight; but she determined that he should have a livelihood, and spent
hours of her crowded days in teaching him the words and music of all the
best patriotic songs and ballads. If she heard that any of the boys were
sick, she would have them brought over to Surrey House where she herself
could nurse and cheer them. Between times she would rouse their love of
country to a desire to study its history.
When I told Madam I could pass as a boy, even if it came to wrestling or
whistling, she tried me out by putting me into a boy's suit, a Fianna
uniform. She placed me under the care of one of her boys to whom she
explained I was a girl, but that, since it might be necessary some day
to disguise me as a boy, she wanted to find whether I could escape
detection. I was supposed to be one of the Glasgow Fianna. We went out,
joined the other Fianna, and walked about the streets whistling rebel
tunes. Whenever we passed a British soldier we made him take to the
gutter, telling him the streets of Dublin were no place "for the likes
of him."
[Illustration: MARGARET SKINNIDER
(wearing boy's clothes)]
The boys took me for one of themselves, and some began to tell me their
deeds of prowess in Dublin. Ever since the war began they had gone about
to recruiting meetings, putting speakers to rout and sometimes upsetting
the platforms. This sounds like rowdyism, but it is only by such tests
of courage and strength that the youth of a dominated race can acquire
the self-confidence needed later for the real struggle.
They sang for me Madam's "Anti-recruiting Song," which they always used
as an accompaniment to their attacks on recruiting-booths. Its first two
lines go thus:
The recruiters are raidin' old Dublin, boys!
It's them we'll have to be troublin', boys!
And the last two lines are:
From a Gael with a gun the Briton will run!
And we'll dance at the wake of the Empire, boys!
These disturbances by the Fianna were part of a campaign by which
Nationalists hoped to keep Irishmen out of the war and ready for their
own fight when the time came. Many were kept at home, but hundreds,
thrown out of work by their employers with the direct purpose of making
them enter the British army, had to enlist for the pitiful "king's
shilling." Nothing so illustrates the complete lack of humor of the
British as their method of arousing interest in the war. They declared
it was the part of England to "defend the honor and integrity of small
nations"!
Even before the war the countess had watched for any opportunity to
destroy militarist propaganda. Although England has won the world's
heart by explaining she never considered there was danger of war, and
for that reason the preparedness of her enemy was an unfair advantage,
still, we had heard of the German menace for a long time. It was
announced in Dublin that the play, "An Englishman's Home," which had had
a long run in London, where it pictured to thousands the invasion of
England by the Germans, was to open for an equally long run in the Irish
capital to stir us to take precautions against invasion.
Madam took her Fianna boys in full force to the opening night
performance. They occupied pit and gallery while the rest of the
theater was filled with British officers and their wives. The fine
uniforms and evening dress made a great showing, for Dublin is the most
heavily garrisoned city of its size in the world.
The play went on peacefully enough until the Germans appeared on the
stage. At their first appearance as the invading foe, the Fianna, in
green shirts and saffron kilts, stood up and sung in German "The Watch
on the Rhine," just as the countess had taught it to them.
Of course there was consternation, but after a moment an officer stood
up and began to sing "God Save the King." All the other officers and the
"ascendancy people," as we call our English upper class in Ireland, rose
and joined him. But you cannot safely sing "God Save the King" in
Dublin. Eggs and vegetables at once began to fly, and the curtain had
to be rung down. So ended the Dublin run of "An Englishman's Home"!
These things the Fianna boys told me on our way to the shooting-gallery
where they wanted to see the Glasgow "boy" shoot. I hit the bull's-eye
oftener than any of them, much to the delight of the boy who knew I was
a girl. He was not much surprised, however, for by her own skill Madam
had accustomed them to expect good marksmanship in a woman.
II
As this was my first visit to Dublin, Madam thought I might want to see
some of the sights. She took me to a museum and next suggested that we
visit an art gallery.
"What I really want to see," I told her, "is the poorest part of Dublin,
the very _poorest_ part."
This pleased her, for her heart is always there. She took me to Ash
Street. I do not believe there is a worse street in the world than Ash
Street. It lies in a hollow where sewage runs and refuse falls; it is
not paved and is full of holes. One might think it had been under
shell-fire. Some of the houses have fallen down,--from sheer weariness
it seems,--while others are shored up at the sides with beams. The
fallen houses look like corpses, the others like cripples leaning upon
crutches.
Dublin is full of such streets, lanes, and courts where houses, years
ago condemned by the authorities, are still tenanted. These houses are
symbolic of the downfall of Ireland. They were built by rich Irishmen
for their homes. To-day they are tenements for the poorest Irish people,
but they have not been remodeled for this purpose, and that is one
reason why them seem so appalling--the poor among the ruins of grandeur.
In one room, perhaps a drawing-room, you find four families, each in its
own corner, with sometimes not as much as the tattered curtains for
partitions. Above them may be a ceiling of wonderfully modeled and
painted figures, a form of decoration the art of which has been lost.
At the end of this room is a mantel of purest white marble over an
enormous fireplace long ago blocked up, except for a small opening in
which a few coals at a time may be burned. The doors of such a room are
often made of solid mahogany fifteen feet in height.
The gas company of Dublin refuses to furnish gas above the second floor,
and the little fireplaces can never give enough heat, even when fuel is
comparatively plentiful. As I write, coal is fifteen dollars a ton, and
is costing the poor, who buy in small quantities, from thirty to
forty-five per cent. more.
In Dublin there are more than twenty thousand such rooms in which one or
more families are living. That epidemics are not more deadly speaks well
for the fundamental health of those who live in them, for there are no
sanitary arrangements. Water is drawn from a single tap somewhere in the
backyard. The only toilet, to be used by all the people in any one of
these houses, is also in the backyard or, worse still, in a dark,
unventilated basement.
The head of a family in these one-time "mansions," which number several
thousand, seldom makes more than four or five dollars a week! Of this
amount, if they want the luxury of even a small room to themselves, they
must pay about a dollar. Is it any wonder that the word "rent" has a
fearful sound to the Irish? After this rent is paid, there is not much
left for food and clothes. Starvation, even in time of peace, is always
hovering near. Bread and tea for breakfast, but rarely butter; bread and
tea, and either herrings or potatoes, sometimes with cabbage, for their
midday meal; bread and tea for supper. Two fifths of the inhabitants of
Dublin live on this fare the year round. If they have beef or mutton
once a week they must eat it boiled or fried, since the fireplaces are
too primitive for roasting or baking. Neither will they permit baking of
bread or cakes.
Yet Ireland could raise fruit and vegetables and grain for twenty
million people! I have seen ships deep laden with food for need of which
the Irish are slowly starving--I contend undernourishment _is_
starvation--going in a steady stream to England. The reason was that the
English were able to pay better prices than the man at home. Food, since
the beginning of the war, has literally been drained out of the country.
Ireland to-day is in a state of famishment, if not of famine.
Here in Dublin, though the streets and lanes seem full of children, the
death-rate is tremendously high. The population of all Ireland has
decreased fifty per cent. in fifty years. In Poland, under the rule of
the Russian czar, the population increased. It is one thing to read
about Irish "grievances," it is another to be living where they go on
year after year.
"Grievance"--that is the way the British sum up our sense of wrong, and
with such effect that people the world over fancy our wrongs are not
wrongs but imagined grievances. The word itself counts against us in the
eyes of those who have never been to Ireland and seen for themselves the
conditions under which the great majority of the population must live.
To be sure, there are always complaints carried to Parliament and then a
"commission of inquiry," followed a little later by a "report upon
conditions." But the actual results seem small. It was disgust for this
sort of carrying out complaints in a basket and bringing back reports in
the very same basket that roused Arthur Griffith to write his pamphlet
on Hungary and her rebuilding from _within_. He felt that the Irish,
too, must set about saving themselves without political help from
parliamentarians. He even went so far as to say that, since Irishmen who
went to Parliament seemed so soon to forget their country except as it
served their political advancement, we ought not to send men to
Parliament. Ireland, he declared, should concentrate upon the economic
and industrial life possible to her--a life that could be developed
wonderfully if men set out to win Ireland for the Irish. This propaganda
of Griffith's--for it soon became such--stirred all the young men and
women who before had been hopeless. "Ireland for the Irish!" The
movement quickly became what is called the "Sinn Fein," which is Gaelic
for "Ourselves Alone."
That this organization should be considered in America as a sort of
"Black Hand," or anarchistic society, is evidence of the impression it
made upon the English as a powerful factor to be reckoned with. It had
come into being overnight, but its principles were as old as Ireland. It
sprang from a love of Ireland and not, as many believe, from hatred of
England. It could not have thrived as it did wherever it touched a young
heart and brain if it had merely been a protest. It had a national ideal
and goal. Every day was dedicated to it. To speak the Irish language; to
wear Irish-made clothes of Irish tweed; to think and feel, write,
paint, or work for the best interests of Ireland; to make every act,
personal or communal, count for the betterment of Ireland--all this was
animated by love of our country. The Sinn Fein was constantly inspired
by poems and essays which appeared in Arthur Griffith's weekly magazine.
That poetry to-day is known throughout civilization as the poetry of the
"Celtic Revival."
There was a gospel of "passive resistance," too, which led Irishmen to
refuse to pay taxes or take any part in the Anglicizing of Ireland. It
was this phase that soon won the disapproval of the party that stood for
parliamentary activity, and naturally it aroused dissatisfaction in
England.
From Ash Street the countess took me to Glasnevin Cemetery, where men
lie buried, who, having lived under conditions such as I had just looked
upon, spent their lives in protest against the same. Here was the grave
of O'Donovan Rossa and a score of others whom I felt were heroes. Here,
also, was the grave of Anne Devlin, that brave woman who refused to
betray Robert Emmet to the British officers seeking him after his
unsuccessful effort to oppose English rule in 1803. These graves and the
ruinous houses of Ash Street show patriotism and poverty working for
each other and, despite themselves, against each other.
A few months after my visit, there was fighting all about Glasnevin
Cemetery between the Royal Irish Constabulary and those who were to
carry on the traditions of the great struggle.
Not far from the home of Countess Markievicz stand the Portobello
barracks, while much farther off are the Beggar's Bush barracks. She
asked me one day if I thought I could make a plan of the latter from
observation that would be of use if at any time it was decided to
dynamite them. She gave no explanation, did not even tell me in what
part of Dublin the barracks were located nor that two officers of the
Irish Volunteers had already tried to make this plan and had failed. But
she knew that I had had experience in gaging distances and drawing maps.
I had just taken a course in calculus, and it was when telling her of my
love for mathematics that she set me this task.
There was a large map of Dublin on the wall of a study in her house. I
scrutinized this carefully, for I did not know my way alone about
Dublin. Then I started out and found the place without great difficulty.
It is in the southwestern outskirts of the city, a large, brick
structure filling in the right angle where two streets meet. From this
corner I walked very slowly along the front of the barracks, counting my
paces, gaging the height of the outer wall, and studying the building
itself for anything its secretive exterior might betray. I presently
noticed that the loopholes which appeared in the wall at regular
intervals stopped short a number of yards from the corner. They had been
filled in with bricks of a slightly different color than the rest of the
wall. At once I asked myself why this had been done and, to discover the
reason, if possible, crossed the street to where I could look over the
wall. I was able to see that within the right angle at the corner was a
small, circular building. It stood close to both the front and side
wall, yet did not touch either. There was room for a sentry to walk
around it, and all loopholes near it had been bricked up.
The conclusion I drew from this fact was that here was a powder
magazine. It was so placed as not to be too noticeable from the street,
easily guarded by a sentry, and conveniently near the loopholes in case
defense of the barracks became necessary.
I walked away, and next approached the barracks from another side. Here
I found that between the street and the main wall was a low outer wall
about my own height. When I reached the spot where I thought the
magazine ought to be, I took my handkerchief and let it
blow--accidentally, of course--over this outer wall. A passing boy
gallantly offered to get it for me. Being a woman and naturally curious,
I found it necessary to pull myself up on tiptoe to watch him as he
climbed over the wall. The ground between the two walls had not been
paved, but was of soft earth. I had seen enough. Thanking the boy, I put
my handkerchief carefully into my pocket so as not to trouble any one
else by making them climb about on Dublin walls, and went on my way.
Upon my return to Leinster Road, I gave the distances and heights I had
taken to Madam, describing the way a hole could be dug, under cover of a
dark night, between the two walls close to where the magazine stood. A
quantity of explosive could be placed in this hole, a long wire could be
attached to a detonator and laid along the outer wall for some distance,
and then, without being noticed, some one could touch the end of the
wire with the battery from a pocket flashlamp. The explosion that
followed, I felt sure, would blow up not only the inner wall, but the
wall of the magazine and set off the powder stored therein. Madam asked
me to write this all down. Later she showed what I had written to the
man who was to be Commander-in-chief of the Republican army in Dublin,
James Connolly. He knew Beggar's Bush barracks well enough to see that
my map was correct and believed the plan practicable enough to carry out
in case conscription should become a fact in Ireland despite all
promises to the contrary.
But the test I had been put to was, it seemed, not merely a test of my
ability to draw maps and figure distances. From that day I was taken
into the confidence of the leaders of the movement for making Ireland a
republic.
The situation, I learned from Mr. Connolly, was very hopeful, because
for the first time in hundreds of years those who were planning a
revolution to free Ireland had organized bodies of Irishmen who not only
were well trained in the use of firearms, but so full of the spirit of
the undertaking that they were ready at a moment's notice to mobilize.
There was the Irish Citizen Army which Mr. Connolly had organized after
the Transport Workers' strike to defend working-men from onslaughts by
the police. I do not believe any one who has not seen what we call a
"baton charge" of the Dublin police can quite comprehend the motives
which make for such ruthless methods.
In the first place, whenever the police are called out for strike duty
or to be on the lookout for rioting, they are given permission to drink
all they wish. At the station-houses are big barrels of porter from
which the police are expected to help themselves freely. Then the
saloon-keepers--we call them publicans--are not expected to refuse a
drink to any policeman who demands it, and are paid or not according to
the mood of the protector of the public peace. Add to this that the
police do not attack in order to disperse a crowd, but to kill. In a
public square where a crowd has gathered to hear a labor speech, the
police assemble on four sides and, upon a given signal, rush to the
center, pushing even innocent passers-by into the midst of the crowd
that, on the instant, has become a mob. Then the police use their batons
like shillalahs, swinging them around and around before bringing them
down upon the heads of the people.
Fearing one of these baton attacks in 1913, Madam, having come down to
the square in her car, had just stepped out upon the sidewalk when she
was struck full in the face by a policeman's club! On that same day,
too, the police rushed into the adjoining streets and clubbed every
person they met, even people several blocks from the square who, at the
moment, were coming out of church from vesper service.
Mr. Connolly found that in any strike in Ireland the interests of
England and of the employer were the same; that his strikers had to meet
the two members of the opposition without any defense. Therefore he had
organized the men who were fighting for better hours and wages into a
"Citizen Army." It is against the law for any one to bear arms in
Ireland, but in this case the authorities could do nothing because they
had not disarmed the men of Ulster when the latter armed and drilled to
defend themselves against Home Rule, should it become a fact. The
Ulster-men were openly planning insurrection under Sir Edward
Carson--insurrection against a law, a political measure desired by the
majority! It was an anarchistic outbreak that Carson had in mind. Mr.
Connolly, on the other hand, was organizing simply for defense against
police power that had grown unbridled in its activities. No one
interfered with him.
As always, this organization was under surveillance, and reports about
it were sent to the authorities. But there appeared to be no more than
three hundred members, a small body not dangerous to the police if it
should come into conflict with them. It was not known that there were
several times three hundred members, but that only this number was
allowed to drill or march at any one time. This drilling baffled the
police. Many a night the three hundred would be mobilized and quietly
march through Dublin out into the country, the police trailing wearily
and nervously after them, expecting some excitement along the line of
march. Nothing ever happened. Back to town in the wee, small hours the
police would come, only to see the men disperse as quietly as they had
assembled and go home to bed. After this had happened many times, it no
longer attracted official attention. Only perfunctory reports were made
of any mobilization of the Citizen Army, and thus it came about that on
Easter Sunday the mobilization was taken for nothing more than the usual
drill and not reported.
The second organization, the Irish Volunteers, was brought into being by
those in favor of Home Rule, and was a makeweight against the
Ulster-men. Since the Irish Volunteers were organized to protect law, to
uphold Home Rule should it become a fact as promised, nothing could be
done by the authorities when the volunteers began to arm themselves.
Besides, nothing had been done to prevent the Ulster-men from arming
themselves. The conservative press in England actually supported the
Ulster-men, and English army officers resigned rather than disarm them.
What, then, could they be expected to do to a body of men who stood for
law and order instead of opposing it as in Ulster? This situation made
possible a strategic position for the leaders of the Republican
movement.
Had not the authorities realized that now they would meet with armed
resistance if they broke their promise about conscription, we should
have had to send our brothers to France and Flanders early in the war.
But the Citizen Army and the Irish Volunteers had no intention of
allowing men to be carried off to fight England's battles when, for the
first time in many years, there was a chance of winning freedom for
Ireland. To keep this constantly in the public mind, Mr. Connolly had a
large sign hung over the main entrance to Liberty Hall, his
headquarters:
WE SERVE NEITHER KING NOR
KAISER, BUT IRELAND
III
The need of explosives was great, and I took part in a number of
expeditions to obtain them. One night we raided a ship lying in the
river. The sailors were drunk, and three or four of our men had no
trouble in getting into the hold. I was standing guard on the other side
of the embankment wall, holding one end of a string that served as a
telegraph between our outposts in the street and our men in the boat.
One jerk from me meant, "Some one coming"; two jerks, "Police"; three
jerks, "Clear out as best you can."
Suddenly I heard the outpost up the street whistling a patriotic tune.
This was a signal to me. It meant the police were coming. I gave two
jerks of the string and waited.
A policeman came slowly toward me. He had his dark-lantern and, catching
sight of me, flashed it in my face. He stared, but said nothing. No
doubt he was wondering what a decently dressed girl was doing in that
part of town at such an hour. I watched him as closely as he watched me.
If he caught sight of my string, I intended to give three jerks, and, at
the same moment, throw pepper in his face, my only weapon.
But he did not notice the string, and passed on. My heart had stopped
beating; now it began again, though I felt rather queer. Risks like this
have to be taken, however, when one is preparing a revolution and has
neither firearms nor ammunition, the people in power having put an
embargo upon them. It is all in the way of war. I can add that this
raid was as successful as usual.
One day the countess took several of us, including her dog Poppet, out
beyond Dundrum. Upon our return we could call this expedition "a little
shooting party." And it would be the truth, for Poppet, being an Irish
cocker, more interested in hunting than in revolts, joined himself to
two men who were intent on getting birds. He was of so great assistance
that these men, in recognition of his services, gave us a few of the
birds he brought in. We took them home as trophies.
[Illustration: A FIANNA BOY]
But the whole truth was that we had been out to test dynamite. We were
looking for some old wall to blow up, and found one on the side of a
hill. After the hunters had disappeared, two of us were posted with
field-glasses while Madam set off the explosive. It was a lonely place,
so we were not disturbed. The great stones flew into the air with dust
and thunder. Indeed, the country people round about, when they heard
that rumble and saw the cloud of smoke, must have wondered at the sudden
thunder-storm on the hill.
An Irishman told me once that, although he had hoped for a revolution
and worked for it, he had never felt it would be a reality until one
night when he and some friends, out cross-country walking in the
moonlight, came upon Madam and her Fianna boys bivouacked in the open.
They had come out for a drill. She was in uniform, with kneebreeches,
puttees, and officer's coat, and the whole scene was martial and
intense.
The Fianna were proud of the fact that they were the first military
organization in Ireland, four years older than either the Irish Citizen
Army or the Irish Volunteers. It was in 1909 that the countess heard of
Baden-Powell coming to Ireland to organize his British Boy Scouts, where
they might be useful later on to the empire. She tried to get people
interested in organizing the same way for Ireland, and finally made this
her own task, though she knew nothing of military tactics and as little
of boys. There was virtually no money or equipment like that in
Baden-Powell's organization, and naturally many blunders were made at
the outset. But she studied both boys and tactics, and finally came to
believe that to succeed, the spirit of old Ireland must be invoked. So
the organization was given the historic Gaelic name, Fianna, with its
flavor of romance and patriotic tradition. The boys saved up their money
for uniforms and equipment, and from the beginning were aware of
themselves as an independent, self-respecting body. They have stood
well the test of the revolution.
One of the most popular actresses at the Abbey Theater in Dublin was
Helen Maloney. Through her energy Mr. Connolly returned from America to
organize the working-men of Ireland, and thus met the countess. From the
friendship and coöperation of these three persons, you can judge how all
class distinction had gone down before the love of Ireland and the
determination to free her.
James Connolly was a very quiet man at the time I met him, quiet and
tense. He was short and thick-set, with a shrewd eye and determined
speech. He proved a genius at organization, and this was lucky, for in
Dublin there are no great factories, except Guinness's, to employ large
numbers of men, and this makes organization difficult. To have managed
such a strike as the Transport Workers' in 1913, after only half a dozen
years of organization, is proof of his great ability. And then to
organize a Citizen's Army!
Connolly is the answer to those who think the rising was the work of
dreamers and idealists. No one who knew him could doubt that when he led
his army of working-men into battle for the Irish Republic, he believed
there was a good fighting chance to establish such a republic. He was
practical, and had no wish to spill blood for the mere glory of it;
there was nothing melodramatic about him. A north of Ireland man,--he
originally came from the only part of Ireland I know well, County
Monaghan,--he had many times given proof of sound judgment and courage.
He was often at the house of the countess while I was visiting her, and
one evening, just before I left, Madam called my attention to the fact
that he was in better spirits than for a long time past. Word had come
to him from America that on or near Easter Sunday a shipful of arms and
ammunition would arrive in Ireland. This news determined the date of the
rising, for it was all that was needed from without to insure success.
We believed this then, and do still.
We were collecting and hiding what arms and ammunition we could. In
proportion to the amount of courage of those in the secret, so the
dynamite that they hid against the day soon to come grew and
accumulated. Though the house in Leinster Road was always watched, the
countess had it stocked like an arsenal. Bombs and rifles were hidden in
absurd places, for she had the skill to do it and escape detection. A
French journalist who visited Dublin shortly before the insurrection
possibly came upon some of this evidence, or perhaps it was only the
Fianna uniforms which impressed him, for he wrote:
"The salon of the Countess Markiewicz is not a salon. It is a military
headquarters."
Despite this martial ardor, Madam found time to write poetry and
"seditious" songs. This poetry would be in print now had not the house
of Mrs. Wise-Power, where she left it for safekeeping, been blown to
pieces by English gunners when they tried to find the range of the
post-office. Their marksmanship would not have been so poor, perhaps,
had they had the countess to teach them.
Many of the singers of our old and new lays are in prison, sentenced for
their part in stirring up insurrection, even though they had nothing to
do with the rising itself. The authorities seemed to take no notice of
these patriotic concerts while they were being given, but afterward they
paid this modern minstrelsy the tribute it deserved. For these concerts
were full of inspiration to every one who attended. Though all were in
the open, they were, as a matter of fact, "seditious," if that word
means stirring up rebellion against those who rule you against your
will.
One of the many things I recall gives a clear idea of the untiring and
never-ending enthusiasm of the countess. She realized one day that the
Christmas-cards usually sold in Ireland were "made in Germany," and
since the war was on, had been supplanted by cards "made in England."
She sat down at once to design Irish Christmas-cards for the holiday
season of 1916. But when that Christmas came around she was in prison,
and the cards were--no one can say where.
When I left Dublin to return to my teaching in Glasgow, they made me
promise that I would come back whenever they sent for me, probably just
before Easter.
IV
When I told my mother on my return of the plans for Easter, she shook
her head.
"There never was an Irish rising that some one didn't betray it," she
said. "It was so in '67, and before that in 1798."
But she did not appreciate the spirit I had found in Dublin. I told her
that all were united, rich and poor, dock-workers, school-teachers,
poets, and bar-tenders. They were working together; I believed they
would stand and fight together. And I was right.
It was not easy to go quietly back to teaching mathematics and hear only
now and then what was going on in Dublin. Fortunately, Glasgow is two
fifths Irish. Indeed, there are as many Irish there as in Dublin itself,
and the spirit among the younger generation is perhaps more intense
because we are a little to one side and thus afraid of becoming
outsiders.
In February, when conscription came to Scotland, there was nothing for
members of the Irish Volunteers in Glasgow to do but to disappear. I
knew one lad of seventeen whose parents, though Irish, wanted him to
volunteer in the service of the empire. He refused, telling them his
life belonged to Ireland. He went over to fight at the time of the
rising, and served a year in prison afterward.