North and South in Ferment (1920)

Chapter XLIV

North and South in Ferment (1920)

Rioting was now rife in the North. I wrote Maurice:

Chapelizod,

27th July, 1920.

Lord French has been in effect superseded here by General Macready, who is against what is called Martial Law, and has told the Government they will require many more troops if it is to be made effective. These forces Winston Churchill wants in Russia or elsewhere! Yet he, with P. E. Smith and Long, are the opponents of larger Irish measures, while Balfour, Curzon, Bonar Law and Chamberlain are ready to back Lloyd George if he drops the Partition Biil for a better one.

The Ulster riots were got up to prevent this. Belfasters did not originally desire their city to be disturbed, for business reasons, so they set on the Derry lot to attack Catholics. There, the Orangemen having rifles, for four days carried all before them; but the Sinns got in a machine-gun, and under the leadership of a labourer named O’Friel, knocked them to bits. Next the Belfasters thought to start to help Derry. British soldiers coalesced with the Orangemen.

When the rioting ceased in Derry they had got wind of what was in store for them when the Catholic concentration was organized. The Orangemen then had all the roads to Dublin blocked for the 12th July. Motors were searched to prevent arms being conveyed to Belfast for the Catholics, in expectation that the pogrom would take place. It was postponed, because Carson was speaking that day in Belfast. If it were not for outside opinion and the Irish in America, ‘98 tactics would be in full blast. The Executive in Dublin means General Macready.”

By this letter no reflection on General Macready is intended. He was in an impossible position between the London Government and the extremists. Long before this, Orangemen in Beliast tried to mob him and he can have had no prejudice in their favour. I wrote:

Chapelizod,

4th August, 1920.

“The clearances of the Catholics in Belfast are terrible. They are deemed lean provender, and all will go, if the slaughter proceeds.

The new Coercion Act can accomplish nothing. I told you how the Cabinet is divided. Lord Chancellor Birkenhead, Walter Long and Winston Churchill are against concessions. Bonar Law is prepared to support Lloyd George, with Balfour and the more responsible Tories.

I met Bonar Law, who was very fierce against Ireland, and he outlined that the new Bill would hang half a hundred of the Sinn Feiners. I hinted that, if so, he should ward Downing Street until he caught them. We parted “unfriends.""

This quarrel was for me more than unpleasant. I knew Bonar Law’s stubborn character and made up my mind that I would never speak to him again. Lord Beaverbrook was our host, and I told him this. His beautiful wife (now no more) interposed and asked me not to take Bonar’s words to heart. For her sake a reconciliation was brought about. I wrote Maurice:

Chapelizod,

10th August, 1920.

“The Archbishop Mannix hold-up on a liner will prove a score for the Sinns. The absence of Irish criticism in the Commons leads the Government to one idiocy after another.

The Labour victory in South Norfolk helps to close the Liberal chapter. Asquith has not figured since his return to the House, and his Party is done for. He is too indolent for an Opposition leader.

You and I helped to smash a gang who ruined the Irish Parliamentary movement and did endless mischief for 20 years. Their Sinn successors may do better. I was impressed with a remark of T. D. Sullivan long ago when the Party were at their zenith. “What a pity,” said he, “that A. M. Sullivan and now myself and you should seem to have cut athwart the lines of the majority.” Take this to heart, now that we are old. Our enemies are in the dust. Let us not needlessly make new ones when it can do no good.

I read last week in London, Dimock’s preface to the State Paper edition of Giraldus Cambrensis. A fairer analysis or disquisition I never read. Dimock was a Yorkshire parson, and although Brewer, the editor of the State Papers, was his superior in the task, and tried to set up Cambrensis, every line Dimock wrote was dead against him, except where, by contrast, he praises Barry’s accurate knowledge of animal history and birds. His appreciation of Cambrensis’s abilities, the account of the dangers he ran on his visit to Rome to get made a bishop, his fight with the Archbishop of Canterbury, and his friendly chats with the Pope, are extraordinarily vivid. He has also a sound estimate of Irish contemporary scholarship, to which he pays a dignified tribute.”

This history was far away from the deeds of 1920. On returning to Ireland I got back to current topics, and informed my brother:

Chapelizod,

16th August, 1920.

“Wylie, K.C., has behaved pluckily over the new Coercion Act and resigned. Yet the Government desire to keep him, and that will explain any statement that may be made in the House to-day. The Freeman announcement of this was unpatriotic, and may stop its being issued.

I heard a police code was found on Lord Mayor MacSwiney, and that when he has been sentenced he is to be allowed to die on hunger strike.

The Government in London don’t wish such vengeance, but they are powerless. Sir H. Greenwood has no control over the soldiers here. Their conduct in Dublin has been unprovoked,

Lord Curzon told the Cabinet that the state of things in Ireland is most injurious to the Empire, and demands a settlement. Austen Chamberlain, to facilitate this, said the Treasury would not insist on any contribution from Ireland and would give up Customs and Excise, but Lloyd George sticks to his two Parliaments for Ireland and says, “If Dublin is to be free from English taxation, why not Belfast?”

Father Madden stayed here on Friday, and got me to write to Dr. Mannix (in London). I found afterwards the Archbishop had consulted Holman Gregory, K.C., who advised that he had no case. True, he has an action for assault and false imprisonment, for being removed from the ship, but what use is that under “Dora”?

Lloyd George descried Dillon in the Distinguished Strangers’ Gallery last week and drew Bonar Law’s attention to him, saying “There’s Dillon, as saturnine and melancholy as ever!""

Then came the heroic protest of the Lord Mayor of Cork (Terence MacSwiney), whose mother was English. When arrested he was engaged in holding an arbitration between Irish and English litigants. An R.I.C. telegraph code was found in his possession, and his hostility to the Black-and-Tans was unappeasable. I wrote Maurice:

Chapelizod,

17th August, 1920.

“The plucky stand of your Lord Mayor (MacSwiney) wins general admiration, but he will die.

Enclosed from William O’Brien may interest you.”

The enclosure crisps up the situation of that time:

Bellevue,

Mallow, Co. Cork,

14th August, 1920.

My Dear Tim, -

“I am in agreement with almost every word of your apercu in the Express.

Even on the Anglo-Saxon hide your scorn cannot fail to “raise the three blisters of disgrace” which were the master-achievements of the old Gaelic Satirists. So far from the years blunting your intellectual weapons, they do but make them more effective than ever, in tempering them.

The “boys” deserve whatever cordials we of the “back billets” can give them in their most gallant stand. Articles like yours must go to their heads like draughts of sparkling wine “of the good years.”

The overthrow of Lloyd George is, of course, Article 1 in any conceivable treaty of peace. Thanks to Asquith and the Molly statesmen, he is bound to Carson by unbreakable bonds. His attempts to get the Cork and other Southern deputations to “organize the sane and moderate elements” that they may “come and speak to him” are a traitorous plot (probably concocted with Dillon, Bishop O’Donnell & Co.) to take the command of the situation out of the hands of Sinn Fein and so prepare the way for a further betrayal. The A B C of the situation is that L.G. must go to the Sinn Feiners, and not the Sinn Feiners to him. If there is a spark of honesty in him, he would pledge himself unequivocally to New Zealand Home Rule, without reservations, and then put it to a plebiscite. Until he does so Sinn Fein is absolutely wise in ruthlessly ignoring him.”

Sincerely yours,

William O’Brien

Turning to the Sunday Express article (8th August, 1920) which O’Brien cites, I find it gave figures concerning “Black-and-Tan” methods which have never been gainsaid. They were: 7,684 arrests; 2,412 deportations; 26,602 raids (often accompanied by looting); 682 armed assaults by soldiers and police; 2,205 sentences; 532 Courts-Martial; 75 deaths; 53 suppressions of newspapers, and the burning of towns, hotels, creameries, places of recreation, Carnegie libraries, and business premises.

No “Great War” excuse for these excesses could be pleaded, as the Germans had surrendered in November, 1918. I wrote my brother:

Chapelizod,

19th August, 1920.

“Curzon insists that an Irish settlement is essential from an American standpoint. The Statute Book is not the sole harvest-barn, and time must be allowed to the new men. We limped 40 years at Westminster, yet you are not leisurely inclined toward our successors! They have collected enough money in America to place the Irish Cause beyond anxiety, which alone is a great achievement.

I remember Captain Kirwan saying at Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1877 that the salvation of Ireland would be a fund of £100,000. He added that he had just pawned his watch to pay his fare from Manchester to our meeting!

Our sons risked their lives in the British Army, and I could have nerved myself to their deaths for sake of the Irish Cause. Certainly I should shed fewer tears than if they fell for Belgium. No political movement can be a “sure thing,” and must have an element of chance. What did the Right Honble. Alex. Carlisle achieve by his outcry against Coercion in the House of Lords? Yet did we not think the better of him as a Belfast Protestant?

I cannot tell what accretion is brought to the foundations of liberty by each tiny addition. Let everything go into the mash-tub. The downfall of the Parnellites is now in remote perspective, and does not weigh in my judgment. Something has been lost no doubt to-day in the loss of an honest Irish parliamentary representation in the House of Commons, but it is so far balanced by gain. I confess I should prefer both the Rapparee organization in Ireland and the Parliamentary one at Westminster to shake the nerves of the Cabinet; but the Sinns are young, and the stench of Mollyism with the corruption of the Party is too great.

I don’t think the R.I.C. can in future exist as an Irish force. The murder of the Lord Mayor, the destruction of creameries, town halls and Carnegie libraries by the “Black-and-Tans” finishes them, Attacks will bring about resignations, and non-recruitment,

The Government have placed a British officer in the Castle, who is apparently superior to the Inspector-General to co-ordinate (blessed word) with the police and military forces. The result is that there is detestation of him amongst the police. A Protestant Conservative told me this. In our village the barrack is evacuated, and so is Clondalkin, which was burned, although Chapelizod was saved. Before evacuating Chapelizod the police set up a system of wireless with a telephone, and strengthened their defence with sandbags. Then they withdrew!

The D.M.P. across the Liffey remain in working order, and move about without anxiety. The fact that they are not provided with rifles leaves them immune.

Looking at the operations on both sides, tactical and strategic, as if they were in Poland or Russia, I must say that the Government are badly served, and that the Sinn Feiners outwit and out-general them daily. The British Army has no soldiers to spare, thanks to Churchill’s proceedings in Mesopotamia and elsewhere. Movings to and fro are staged performances.

General Macready warned the Cabinet that he had not enough men for the work cut out for him.

Lord French, as appears from the letter of Sir Thomas Stafford which the Sinns captured, is adverse to the policy he is ordered to enforce. Wylie’s resignation may appear at any moment as he kicks at giving further assistance at Courts-Martial.

The soldiers will then have to fall back on Wynne and Greenwood for civil assistance. James Campbell is sick of this regime.”

William Wylie (now Judge) won the esteem of the Sinn Feiners by the fairness with which he conducted their prosecutions in 1916. He was one of the Officers’ Training Corps during the War. British Army head-quarters required that he should, for the wage of a captain (probably 6s. 8d. a day), prosecute Pearse and his companions after the Rebellion of 1916.

The Captain Kirwan referred to was Barry’s organizer of the Home Rule Confederation of Great Britain. His regiment in New Zealand overcame the gallantry of the Maories in the ‘sixties. Kirwan joined the French Foreign Legion in the war of 1870, and won fame.

The Freeman came under spirited management in 1920, so its new owners and editor were imprisoned for exposing the excesses of martial law. The “Black-and-Tans” raided its premises frequently and imperilled the lives of the staff by bombs and petrol fires.

When, a couple of months later, further murders of Catholics took place in the North, I wrote Maurice:

Chapelizod,

8th October, 1920.

“I was in Belfast for two days last week at Courts-Martial, but did not go into the destroyed districts. The treatment of the Catholics in Banbridge, with which I was concerned, was brutal. Yet no one was punished.

I met a man from Dundalk who said the police chauffeur shot there was killed by the police for looting, and stuff was found on him and his chum. What surprised me was the story that the house of a Protestant, Craig, was set fire to by British soldiers. I had attributed it to “reprisals “for the burning of the Catholic houses in Lisburn and Banbridge.

Dr. William Murphy applied to the Castle for protection against the “Black-and-Tans” who threatened the Independent. The Government sent eight soldiers! This prevented his effecting a “civil commotion insurance” at Lloyd’s, as the London Star published the fact. Whence came the Star’s information?”

After the death of the Lord Mayor of Cork on hunger strike, Bonar Law informed me that the prisoner could have walked out of Brixton Jail at any moment without objection from the Government. He was kept alive for weeks by a device of which I told my brother:

14th October, 1920.

“The Home Office have some plan by which they introduce into the drink of the hunger-strikers an imperceptible sustenance (glucose). Yet English people think the prisoners are being fed by their families and friends, and so are solid behind the Government. MacSwiney’s survival so long is due to glucose.”

Assured that the “Black-and-Tans” would cow the people, Lloyd George gave them free scope. The waste of money at that date on Irish appointments was lamentable. Sir Joseph Byrne, head of the Police, who has been since twice Colonial Governor, was “suspect” because he was a Catholic, and was sent off on sick-leave while in robust health for a year on full pay to allow the “Black-and-Tans” free scope. Few Crown officials in Ireland trusted one another.

I wrote Maurice:

Chapelizod,

4th November, 1920.

“It was thought that “reprisals” would frighten the Sinn Feiners, but those who said this no longer hold that opinion. John MacLoughlin described to me with great feeling how his son was driven from home through terror, and his brother, who served through all the years of the Great War, was handcuffed by the military, and his wife frightened away to England by their threats. His house has been inscribed with a notice that he will be shot. Yet he went home, on hearing this by telephone, last Saturday.

The military intend to close down the railways, forgetting that the roads will be torn up to prevent their lorries working. The Government appointments are bottomed on jobbery. First they drive out Catholics like General Byrne, and then Byrne’s successor “resigns” to make way for an English General.”

Of a murder in Co. Longford, I wrote:

Chapelizod,

9th November, 1920.

“I hear that Kelleher, the police inspector, who was killed in Granard, was not a victim of the Sinn Feiners, but of the Crown forces. He was popular in Granard, and was resorting to a Nationalist hotel to meet men friendly to the Sinns.

The Roscommon Herald has two versions of the inquest. They show that Paul Cusack, who was with the murdered man, and had been on the run in 1916, objected to the presence of the Press at the inquest who were then excluded. That evening Cusack was arrested, and taken away in a military lorry. This leads me to speculate that he accused the Crown forces of killing Kelleher.

The parish priest assured the military that the people were innocent of the crime, and was promised no reprisals. Yet the town was speedily in a blaze, The dead inspector’s father is a doctor in Macroom, and I should like to know to what he attributes his son’s death. He attended the inquest, and heard all the gossip of the town. There is no quieter place than Granard, and the murdered man wrote to Eddie Magner that he had been given a “quiet post.”

O’Keeffe (solicitor), Chicago, has asked me to send him MacDonagh’s Home Rule Movement. I did so, and found it written from a Parnellite point of view - the earlier portion inspired by O’Connor Power. I never knew the genesis of the lie that we turned Parnell out of his seat after the Split, which MacDonagh, I am sure, did not invent. He assigns it to the occasion when you replied to Parnell months later, on the Sunday Closing debate, and reminded him that he shirked his challenge that you should both resign and stand again for Cork.

It is suggested that after the division in 1891 we hooted Parnell, and drove him to sit amongst the Liberals. No such incident occurred, as you know. The Liberals were on the same benches with us then, and the proceedings ended with the division. Moreover, the original lie was published a couple of days after the Split, and months before the debate on “Sunday Closing.""

Chit-chat about trifles may relieve a gloomy chapter. Smoking achieved its hold at Westminster in the following way. The inner library of the Lords was regarded as a sanctum sanctorum. Few Commoners ventured to intrude on it, The thought of smoking there would have been sacrilegious. A commission on horse-breeding, over which the Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward VII) presided, met in the inner library, and the Prince, after some hours’ work, produced a cigar. No peer dared object, and this led to a revolution, both in Lords and Commons. First the Commons subtracted a fine room from the Lords as a smoking-room. Then they demanded a third smoking-room, which was provided by an encroachment on the library where maps were a feature. After that, smoking was allowed in two other rooms of the Commons library. I saw cigarettes lit in the corridors before I left Parliament in October, 1918. Customs had greatly changed.

The House sat late, and we often met “casuals” on our way home. My brother and I found one night, in the rain, on the steps of our lodgings in Pimlico, a poor chap whistling “The Blackbird” - loveliest of Gaelic melodies. Maurice asked him, “where did you learn that? ” Quoth he, “From the Hirish, sir, in the Heast Hend.” Another night, near Oxford Street, we came on a wretch who had been disturbed on a seat in his sleep by a policeman telling him to “move on.” He exclaimed, as we gave him the price of a bed, “And this is Merry England!”

Maurice disliked “charity organization,” holding that it was better for the giver to be imposed on than to inquire into the merits of the recipient. “Charity rewardeth the giver,” he used to say, irrespective of the deserts of the receiver. Shakespeare had much the same notion. Sir Julian Goldsmith, M.P., 20 years before, presiding over a meeting of London cabmen, declared, “There is no truer form of charity than an extra sixpence to a cabman.”

The late Harry Furniss, the artist of Punch, was a constant lobbyist. Born in Wexford, his father, manager of the local gas-works, married the governess to the children of a landlord, Mr. Cliffe. Furniss, in 1869, as a boy in knickerbockers, used to bring A. M. Sullivan cartoons for the Weekly News - marvellous for one so young. He illustrated the Dublin “Zozimus” in 1870. In the Shamrock, owned by Dick Pigott, he made sketches for the story of “Mick McQuaid,” by Captain Lynam.

I told Sir Frank Burnand, editor of Punch, of Furniss’s earlier efforts, and he asked me to obtain copies of the sketches drawn for Pigott, as Furniss denied any connection with Ireland. Donnelly, the foreman printer for William O’Brien (who took over Pigott’s papers), got me the “Mick McQuaid” sketches. They were unsigned, and I never met Burnand again to learn the effect on Furniss of their resurrection.

A bull invented by the” Gallery ” pressmen for a Kerry member was a good bit of journalistic craft. The M.P. was said to have declared of a local landlord, “so rapacious is he that if you placed him on an uninhabited island, within half an hour he would have his hands in the pockets of the naked savages!”

I sat once within earshot of an English bull of high pedigree. The Honble. Evelyn Cecil, speaking on foreign policy, claimed that he “had crucified the Government on the horns of a dilemma!”

In a divorce case, Bishop V. Bishop, in which James Campbell (now Lord Glenavy) led for the plaintiff-husband, it appeared that the couple lived together up to the day the writ was issued. On the previous Sunnday they went to church with their little daughter.

I asked the wife in consultation before the trial, “Do Protestants say family prayers at night?” “Yes,” she replied. “Is a prayer-book used? ” “Yes, I have it at home.” “Was your little child present and awake when prayers were read?” “Yes, she was.” I asked her to bring the book to the consultation room.

On her return I searched the prayer-book, and found a touching invocation for peace and concord in the domestic circle in a night-prayer. Next day I cross-examined the husband, and asked whether, with these prayers on his lips on Sunday, he went to a solicitor on Monday to issue a writ. He confessed he did, and this finished him with the jury.

Other legal recollections may be worth recall.

In the early days of aeroplanes an adventurous flier was drowned trying to reach Dublin from England. He had sold to a London picture-dealer a painting of a lady by Gainsborough, and after his death it was alleged this had been abstracted from Burton Hall, Carlow. F. E. Smith, now Lord Birkenhead, produced, amongst other witnesses, the village carpenter, who was brought to London to prove that he saw the picture in Burton Hall. In his testimony he tried to invoke his mother’s opinion to the same effect. This led to the usual objection against hearsay evidence, and after legal argument Judge Darling ruled against admitting it. “Well,” said F. E., “I suppose we must only produce the woman herself.” Her son in the box had remained motionless, like a grenadier beside a catafalque, during the discussion, while appreciating every point. At length F. E. asked, “What is her address?” The reluctant reply came, “She’s dead, sir.”

Duke, now Lord Merrivale, was counsel with me, and whispered, “A great race yours!”

The defence proved that the picture had hung in the study of a Protestant clergyman in Co. Cork, whose son boyishly fired an arrow or a pistol at it, Judge Darling caused the painting to be placed on the bench, and the mended hole appeared in the canvas. So defendants won.

When the Great War began, an Antrim barrister informed me that, in anxiety for news, he used to meet the post on the road and snatch the newspaper from the postman. Then he went to his gate-keeper’s cottage to scan it. When Rheims Cathedral was bombarded he read an account of this with indignation to the gate-keeper’s wife. She asked, “Was yon a popish church?

“Oh, yes,” he answered, “and a building of great beauty and antiquity.” “Oh, Mr. William,” she snapped, “thon should never have been built I”

Sir James Dougherty, late Under-Secretary for Ireland, had been a Presbyterian clergyman, and was the Liberal candidate for North Tyrone in Gladstonian days. I was M.P. for South Derry in 1885-6, and he narrated that his first “call” after ordination came from the chief town in my constituency Magherafelt. He had to preach two “trial” sermons to secure the approval of the congregation. After the first service, while unrobing in the vestry, filled with doubts of his oratorical or theological success, an elder came to him, saying, “Sir, might an old man be allowed to give you a bit of advice for your second sermon the nicht, as I liked your doctrine weel?”

“Certainly,” said the candidate. “Weel, sir, it’s this. Ye have a papish nam - Dougherty. Some of them are suspicious, so when you’re preaching the nicht, if I was you, I wad just tak’ a wee birl at the Pope!”

The late Thomas Lough, M.P., narrated that, coming to an Ulster town on the 15th August (a Catholic holiday) when crowds were pouring from a church, he asked the car-driver what it meant. The answer was, “I don’t know, sir, It’s papish, and I believe the Virgin Mary is implicated in it.”

Some of the Jesuit Fathers occasionally supplied priests at the holiday season, and if they were of a sporting turn, selected a parish where fish were to be hooked, or grouse shot. In a Galway area the altar boy came to one of them with the news that there was a salmon in Poul Gurm. With rod, line, basket and gaff, the Jesuit set out to the river. There he hooked a gallant salmon, which he played for nearly an hour before it was exhausted. Then he handed Patsy (the altar boy) the gaff, telling him to be most cautious. Patsy in his excitement cut the gut with the gaff, and away went the salmon. Jesuits are an Order trained to restraint, so without saying a word the priest gloomily reeled up his line and handed the rod to the lad. He discerned the priest’s disappointment, and kept well behind him on the way back. For mile after mile this gap was maintained until they reached a stile near the village. Then, gathering up courage, the boy said, “Father!” The Jesuit answered, “what is it?” “Well,” said he, “some of them Protestants, sir, that come here sporting are very well reared.” “Indeed!” said the priest. “Yes, Father,” said he, “they never blaspheme when they lose a fish!”

My brother, having to make the will of an old Cork priest, stayed with him for the night. Maurice was a teetotaller, and to make up for his failure to drink punch, started theological topics to entertain his host. As the night sped on, the conversation flagged and as a last resort Maurice asked him why in the Cork Diocese there were no Jesuits. The old man paused, and having mused a moment solemnly said, “I attribute that, Mr. Healy, to the power of prayer.

A story of Lord Dudley’s, who, in 1924, with Lady Dudley and Miss Edna May, paid me a visit, was that during his Vice-royalty in 1903 King Edward came to Ireland. An hour after his arrival the King’s Irish terrier was found dead in the grounds. His German staff surgeon came crying, “Der hund ist todt” (the dog is dead). Lord Dudley, to make amends for the loss, promised that he would replace the terrier with another, which - to employ the words of Deputy Chichester to Cecil in 1611-would be “the fairest this island can afford.”

The new dog was “Caesar,” which afterwards followed the remains of Edward VII to the grave. Caesar, on arriving at the Lodge, was locked into a room where lay the Field-Marshal’s uniform in which His Majesty meant to review his troops next day in the Phoenix Park. Morning came, and when Caesar’s door was opened it was found that he had eaten the Field-Marshal’s boots! The King laughed, and reviewed his army in the uniform of an Admiral of the Fleet!

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