Through an Ulsterman's Eyes: The Birth of the Irish Free State

I

WHEN England put its pen to the Treaty with Ireland, a chorus of thanksgiving rose to heaven from, three fourths of the English people. They thanked heaven because it seemed that they were at long last relieved from the care of a thankless and profitless charge, which cost much money, clogged the wheels of Parliament and crowded out the consideration of many much needed reforms affecting Great Britain alone. It was clearly impossible for an officially controlled Press to jubilate on such base lines as these, so the real cause of national joy was hidden behind an affectation of sympathy with the Irish people. The United States, France, and indeed all civilized mankind applauded the action.

In one quarter alone was there an ominous silence. The child itself, which for three hundred years had been spitting on its English feeding-bottle and screaming for its mother’s milk, refused to smile now that the natural food was at its mouth. This was perhaps intelligible. The poison of the bottle, it was said, was bound to remain in the system for a time even though the noxious thing itself had been flung back across the wet ditch on the far side of which lay all that was foul and repugnant. It was confidently felt that under the soothing influence of its mother’s milk the child would quickly settle down.

Alas and alack! it was not to be. The milk must have lacked some quality, for the child grew worse and worse.

A sage and poet once observed truthfully that, —

That realization is too often a fraud is a commonplace truth, but in Ireland the realization of self-government turned to gall before it was even tasted. In the dish proffered there was in fact one bitter morsel which poisoned all the rest. Twenty-six out of thirty-two counties had been handed over to the official representatives of the Irish people to do as they would with, but six counties in the Northeast, in which were a majority of Protestants, had — at their own earnest request — been withheld and established as a separate and independent community. Here was an obvious grievance; a flaw in the perfect happiness of the Irish people. Much had been given by or, rather, wrested from the British by the prosecution of certain traditional methods, but there still remained something which had not been given and which could have been given. It was only reasonable to suppose that a continuance of the same methods would add this vineyard to the rest.

In this sanguine mood the Free State Executive — as it was called — mustered its new levies and, having equipped them with arms and ammunition, confidingly handed over (for a widely different purpose) by the British Government, marched them northward in hostile array against the Ulster border. The immediate object of this expedition was not the conquest of Ulster but the annexation — through forcible occupation — of certain outlying portions of the six counties adjacent to the Free State.

The scheme did not quite work out according to plan. An immense amount of ammunition (English) was expended in firing across the border at any mark that presented itself; the two salients of Belleek and Pettigo, where in each case Ulster juts out temptingly into the Free State, were forcibly seized and the loyalist residents ejected. Further acquisitive inroads were, however, checked by the unexpected attitude of the British troops in Ulster. The Free State Executive, in fact, in formulating its plans, had made the grave mistake of forgetting that, with the advance of the twenty-six counties to the status of a colony, the supervision of its affairs, together with the control of the British troops in Ulster, had naturally drifted into the province of the Colonial Secretary, Mr. Winston Churchill — a man of very different fibre from the majority of his colleagues in the Cabinet, as events now proved. He advanced two regiments, under a heavy fire, against the captured salients and saluted the invaders with six rounds from a fieldpiece. Several casualties resulted from this discharge and the remainder of the invading army withdrew precipitately over the border. Loud-voiced was the indignation of the Free Staters over this incident. It was an outrageous thing, they protested, and wholly contrary to precedent, for British troops to return a fire directed at them in the interests of patriotism. Efforts were made to excite the sympathy of the House of Commons, but there was a lukewarm response and they were wisely dropped.

In this serio comic way ended the threatened invasion of Ulster; but guerrilla warfare on the old familiar lines of midnight visitings, firings, and shootings continued to be directed against such of the Ulster agriculturists as an unkind fate had domiciled on the Free State border. The object aimed at was to intimidate these into abandoning their homes so as to facilitate a gradual encroachment from the South.

The Free State Government disclaimed all responsibility for t hese outrages, — and indeed for similar outrages in other parts of Ireland, — all of which they, rightly or wrongly, laid at the door of their own deadly enemies, the Republicans. So complex had the situation in Ireland now become that it was impossible to gauge the truth or falsity of this disclaimer. It is, however, a significant fact that, although hundreds of murders have been committed in Ireland since she assumed control of her own affairs, not one single murderer has been brought to justice and executed by the Free State Government.

In Belfast itself the state of affairs, for some time after the signing of the Treaty, was deplorable in the extreme. Every effort within the scope of rifle, revolver, bomb or torch was made to render government impossible and life unendurable in the Northern city, with the idea that, in despair, the Union Jack might be hauled down by the trembling citizens and the green-whiteand-gold tricolor hoisted in its place. The attempt failed, as everyone with a knowledge of the Ulster character must have known from the first that it would fail. The Orangemen were neither cowed nor shifted from their purpose by the death and destruction dealt among them, but they were unfortunately goaded into reprisals which, in point of ferocity, fell but little short of the original crimes. Either as the result of these, or as the result of increased police activity, there was a sudden slump in murder and arson, and at the moment of writing Belfast is at peace. Outrages have ceased and the pulse of the city is once more even and slow. Out in the six counties, under the constant tutelage of its magnificent constabulary, Ulster has resumed its normal tranquillity and the farmers sleep secure.

With Anglo-Saxon Ulster basking in prosaic peace or, at all events, in something so near peace as to cheat the eye of the spectator, the focus-point of interest shifts with a jerk to Anglo-Irish Leinster, where the Free State confederates, baulked of their Northern prey, have turned fiercely on one another.

It may be said at once, in reviewing recent happenings in and around Dublin, that, though these can be described, they cannot be explained except by the doctrine of atavistic tendencies. There is no logical explanation of them, but in Ireland such things have always been.

In December, 1921, the long-sought and much discussed Treaty was signed. Through it Ireland gained what she had been struggling for year after year and generation after generation; one might almost say, century after century. In many ways she had gained more than had been hoped for or even asked for; but, on the other hand, the six counties had been withheld. This was a defect and, as already described, active measures to remedy that defect were taken — and failed. The shells of the 18pounders had shown clearly that, with the relinquishment of the twenty-six counties, the limits of British complacency had been reached.

With the Northern door thus closed to martial and political enterprise, the activities of the newly enfranchised people had to find another outlet. It was found in what may broadly be described as intertribal feuds. Collins, Griffith, and Valera, the hybrid triumvirate whose united efforts had achieved Ireland’s independence, found themselves no longer able to walk abreast. A triumvirate obviously cannot split into two equal parts and, in the split which followed, Valera had to face a majority of two to one. Undismayed, he launched his attack in the threefold formation made sacred by usage — first, impassioned appeal; then, hot vituperation; and finally, blows. The hot vituperation and the blows were returned with interest.

What it was all about no one knew and no one knows to-day. Nominally the cause of dispute is that Valera wants emancipated Ireland to be called a Republic, while Griffith and Collins want it to be called a Free State. To the interested observer, watching the scrimmage in the cockpit, there seems no difference. Collins has repeatedly proclaimed in public that the Free State is in effect a Republic masquerading under a more expedient name. When the psychological moment arrives, he assures his supporters, the true label will be attached. In the meanwhile, the observations of the dispassionate onlooker tend to confirm Collins’s claim. The Free State does not fly the Union Jack, as do all the other colonies of the Empire. On the contrary it flies the Republican tricolor. Its armed forces are known as the I.R.A. What more can Valera or any hot-souled Republican want? Where is the point of dissension ? No adequate answer can be found, for the dissentients themselves cannot furnish it. The martial spirit of each side is kept alive by the assurance that it is fighting England. Valera denounces Collins as the myrmidon of England’s intriguing politicians. Collins denounces Valera as England’s secret agent deliberately engineering a turmoil which will force the hereditary foe to a reconquest of Ireland.

In the meanwhile the whole structure of Ireland’s civilization is crumbling to Iberian dust. In eight short months she has slipped back to the tribal conditions of Tudor days, before the imposition of the English rules of society so bitterly resented and now so successfully shaken off. With names changed, a page out of the Annals of the Four Masters would read like a column of to-day’s Morning Post. What are Collins and Valera fighting about? No one knows. What did the O’Neils and the O’Donnells fight about four hundred years ago? No one knows. For centuries the two great Northern clans systematically wasted and ravaged each other’s lands with fire and sword for no adequate and tangible reason. Then, as now, the great majority of victims were noncombatants and then, as now, hatred of England was made the excuse for torturing Ireland. Con Bacagh, the O’Neil of Henry the Eighth’s day, as a protest against the use of English ploughs, burned all the corn crops in his dominions and so produced a famine from which thousands died. On his deathbed he invoked a curse against any and every man in Ireland who used a plough, built a stone house, or spoke English. Was the curse effective? Are four centuries of intermittent misery traceable to the effect of Con Bacagh’s dying invective? It would almost seem so, and it would almost seem as though efforts were being made to-day to rescind the curse. Land is going out of cultivation, the use of Erse is being enforced by statute, and all the noblest stone structures in Ireland are being destroyed by Irish hands. The splendid Customs House went first, burned by the Irish under the wild belief that they were thereby in some way injuring England. Now the magnificent Four Courts and many parts of Sackville Street have followed — battered to pieces by Collins with his new artillery toy, because they were in occupation of Valera’s men. The finest buildings in Limerick and Waterford have met the same fate. Why? Would the English batter down St. Paul’s or the Americans the Capitol at Washington if they were held by a handful of insurgents? No, but then perhaps the curse of Con Bacagh has not reached so far.

The Valerites are even more mad in their iconoclasm than their opponents. Wherever they extend their patriotic movements, they leave behind a trail of desolation. Bridges, canals, railways, and public buildings are ruthlessly destroyed. Trade is at a standstill; brigandage and highway robbery are the common sports of the people. Every man does that which is right in his own, and wrong in other people’s, eyes. Law Courts have not been suspended, but they have ceased to function, for the popular eye views them with repugnance. Restrictive authority in any shape has always been the bane of the Irish people. So long as England was the official representative of law and order, revolt against, restrictive authority became a popular form of patriotism. Now that restrictive authority is native, it has been made dismally clear — even in eight short months — that it is not the uniform in which it comes but the thing itself which is abhorrent. The brehon law would be tolerated and we may yet see this superseding the reasoned logic of judicial tribunals. Con Bacagh knew no other law.

II

After prolonged absence from Ireland, due, perhaps, to threatening letters, articles in the Morning Post, and other deterrents, I landed at Rosslare Harbor in the small hours of an April morning, 1922. All seemed normal. That portion of the ‘Cork Express’ advertised for Waterford took precedence after the engine, while cars destined for the terminus had hitched themselves on behind. Six Roman Catholic nuns occupied the only compartment labeled ‘smoking,’ and the window blinds of the remainder had been lowered according to custom by travelers requiring ‘seven feet by two’ on which to extend their limbs. I opened a door and peered within, to meet the scowl of a bluechinned vendor of store cattle innocently engaged in recharging an automatic pistol. As he did not appear to like my looks, I told him to cheer up, closed the door and then crept silently to roost in the breakfast car, isolated by forethought of a ticket-collector from other portions of the train.

Poached eggs and bacon, Limerick butter, and a rising sun dispelled the after effects of a bad crossing. I sat up and looked around. Golden gorse, limpid streams, blue-gray mountains at the back of beyond, and all things bright and beautiful in the shape of scampering pigs, children playing in the muck, and ‘herself ’ hanging the family wash on the line. Surely a ‘Die-Hard’ press had lied! Then the train slowed down to a station, and I knew. The Ireland to which I had returned was not the Ireland I had quitted eighteen months before. The stationmaster, a jolly acquaintance of bygone days, had neither time nor inclination, it seemed, to greet me. The irresponsible frivolity of the red-headed porter was a thing of the past. The stalwart Royal Irish Constable was no longer on his beat, having been relieved by a pair of armed and furtive corner-boys; and there was something uncanny, something almost terrifying, in the shifty silence of the watching crowd. . . .

The Black and Tans had certainly left, their mark on one side of Patrick Street, Cork City. From amid charred beams, bricks, and rubble, rose wooden huts bearing the names of ruined tradesmen and offering nothing in particular for sale. On a pole in the window of a burned-out shop was exposed a ‘ Cap of Liberty’ with tricolored rosette, and attached to it a card inscribed with a large note of interrogation. That was all. They told me at the railway station that the five o’clock train might leave then, — or thereabouts, — but that, as the bridges were down, it would not get anywhere to speak of. Past experience had taught me, however, that Irish trains generally get there somehow; and, although it was Friday, I decided to chance it and selected a compartment in which were seated a Roman Catholic priest and a patriot who had ‘drink taken.’ The former sought spiritual comfort from a small black book, while the latter emitted loud and prolonged snores.

I had extracted all available amusement from the Cork Constitution (since suppressed) and from the Cork Examiner now censored by Miss McSwiney, — affectionately known to her admirers as ‘Bloody Mary,’— when the priest closed his book, lifted his eyes to the hills, and directed my attention to some barbed-wire entanglement surrounding a derelict-police station. A snore broke off in the middle, and a husky voice remarked that ‘the sanguinary Father might go to Hell, and mind his own business.’ At the next station the priest changed compartments, after which the patriot resumed his beauty sleep.

Our train came to a standstill in a railway cutting about 9.40 P. M., and remained there for no particular reason all through the night. At early dawn I shared a packet of sandwiches with my traveling companion, who in return showed me how to load a Service revolver, and then went off to get a drink from the engine. We reached a common destination shortly before noon.

Ballymuck, our happy home, was in full enjoyment of the ‘Second Terror,’a thoughtful British Government having that morning withdrawn two companies of enemy infantry on receipt of information to the effect that one hundred Republican gunmen, fresh from New York, were coming to massacre the entire community. Leading citizens had ’phoned an S.O.S. message to the English general, for which act of treason they had, very properly, been condemned to death, their graves having already been dug. I was distressed to learn their whispered names, but relieved when those about to die saluted me on my doorstep and consented to remain to lunch.

There was no massacre. It was — ‘postponed’! The hundred gunmen, reduced by wastage of war to a score of Republican Kerry boys, arrived to take over the coastguards station on behalf of the Free State Government from an unsuspecting British naval officer, and, as a finishing triumph, the two companies of enemy infantry returned at 10 P.M. by a special train, to be received with shouts of welcome from a dense crowd collected and inspired by representatives of local tradesmen who had had the honor in past years of supplying His Majesty’s forces with meat and bread.

I spent my Sunday at home, grubbing up weeds within the four walls of my garden, or stretched in a hammock listening to the love call of wood pigeons, the ‘caw-caw’ of the rooks and reading Poems of Power by Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

Down by the docks a machine gun peppered at intervals while church bells of various denominations competed one against the other. After tea arrived the news that a child of ten had shot and killed the parish priest, and a second report followed to the effect that she had only missed the curate.

But I had not crossed to Ireland in order to collect rumors and listen to church bells; I had come to get at the truth. Therefore, on the second day of the week, a ‘Ford’ was hired (my own car having been ‘borrowed’), and I and another set forth. The first thing noticeable, after a wealth of primroses and gorse, was the fact that all along the road my appearance was greeted by signs of consternation and alarm. Ass carts backed into ditches; farm carts bolted up bohreens, whilst no man looked my way until after I had passed. The lad alongside of me knew why, and told me later. I was wearing a rain coat, black necktie, gray cloth cap, and leather leggings — the undress uniform of the I.R.A.! It was my purpose to run through the counties of Cork, Kerry, Limerick, Tipperary, King’s County, and thence to Dublin, pausing at places where bad work was alleged to have been done, visiting such friends as were still clinging to their properties, and allowing my leg to be pulled by publicans and sinners. The average individual who could be stimulated to talk politics was, of course, the soul of loyalty to the British Empire, and so on; but now and again the truth slipped out. The conviction grew upon me by degrees that the people as a whole were simply terrified — not so much at the trend of political events, but at the spirit of anarchy growing, as they said, in every district but their own. Bad men were here to-day and gone to-morrow, leaving a trail of blood and grief, or as an Irish lady of ninety years put it, ‘The Divil is trapsing about like a roaring lion. God help us!’

A movement in favor of ridding the twenty-six counties of Loyalists in general, and of disbanded members of the Royal Irish Constabulary in particular, was then being pushed from Dublin for all the extremist section was worth. The R. I. C. had concentrated at various centres and awaited transportation to England, while the ‘Castle’ authorities thought good to discourage the removal of wives and children, deeming them safe from interference. But those who had held the fort knew better. Sinister rumors of outrage on unprotected women were gaining credence, and it followed that many a gallant man took the law into his own hands and, without permission, went off to join the wife. A number were murdered straightaway. Others escaped in the clothing in which they stood or ran, to watch from afar the destruction of their homes. As I motored north small pitiful groups of wounded men, distracted mothers, and exhausted children were making their way toward the eastern ports. How they managed, one cannot say; for to offer them bed and board was to court death at the hands of local gunmen, and the majority were penniless. At that time ‘the Army’ had not decided which portion of itself should sing the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ and which should flaunt the Free State flag; but the Press, needing copy, had anticipated events. ‘Three days and a night under machine-gun fire’—‘Murphy’s Hotel goes up in smoke’ — ‘Death before dishonor, boys’ — ‘Desperate hand-to-hand fighting.’ Casualties: one Brigadier-General wounded in the toe, one cow shot in a field.

While ‘the Army’ was thus lightly engaged, the most dreadful atrocities were being committeed by the dregs of the population. In every case of outrage and murder those responsible were known, but no one dared to whisper a name. Death was always very near. Bands of ruffians moved from place to place killing for killing’s sake. One gang operating in the Macroom district boasted of having poured petrol over victims and then set them alight. Bodies were often mutilated and outrages on women and children were becoming more frequent.

By the end of my tour I had investigated forty-one instances of murder, arson, outrage, and so forth, and I give one case of violence as typical—that of a residential landowner of King’s County. I reproduce her statement written at a time when the full horror of her experiences was upon her.

I was alone with maids and an old manservant when I heard the Reds coming. It was about 2 A. M. and very dark, with sleet showers. I went down and a body of eight or ten men rushed at me like wild beasts; one struck me full in the face with his clenched fist; they all struck me and kicked me down like madmen. They tried to break my neck holding me by my hair which they tore half out. Then one man, in the midst of yells of ‘Let me at her,’ ‘Where are the guns?’ said something and the moment he said it, two men who had beaten me with the sticks of the Pampas grass from vases, helped me and dragged me up, shouting to stop it, and saying, ‘For God’s sake get up, ma’am.’
I am very strong and tall and four times I got up and was kicked and beaten down again. Somehow I got to the dark stairs, the men dragging on to me (these sort of people can’t get up stairs) and got up two flights. They had flash lamps. They went on to my room on another landing which they searched and wrecked. I got to another staircase, and through a window into the woods, and then across fields to one of the Sinn Fein magistrates who had known me for years. These people helped me. I was wet to the knees and part of my foot broken. When I got back, the beautiful old Georgian house was wrecked.
Since then we have had to keep, at our expense, a guard of farmers in the place; it costs quite £400 a year. The gang who attacked me are perfectly well known to all. Three of the men I had done every possible kindness to — nursed when ill, and so on. After the attack on me, they were all caught by the local people at once, with some of the things they had stolen from me. At once the Provisional Government let them out. I went to Dublin and remonstrated. Later there was a trial, and a Sinn Fein Judge told every stealer of money and cattle that they ‘had good honest faces and had spoken the truth.’ And so he let off all! When he came to me and I recounted the attack on me, the rabble, the criminals, and the jury laughed aloud. I was told Id ‘deserved all I got’ as I had brought in military and police and had got people put in prison in 1920. In 1920 a mob of four hundred attacked me to make me sign away my property. I had to give in, as they were going to burn my poor father alive and drown me unless I gave in. Amidst shouts of ’Beat her down, beat her down, drown her,’ I gave in and signed. When I explained this the Judge told me ‘not to make a speech.’ I was alone in the Court without a friend and as I walked out through the mob outside they jeered and shouted, ‘Where are your Black and Tans now? Up the Republic!’ I hope I looked the contempt I felt. I’d have liked to say, ‘If I had six men of any kind, you’d all be cringing.’ All my criminals, of course, the Judge let off without any punishment. That night they attacked me again and I ran out into the woods. My farmers’ guard was too strong and fired and I was able to return. Later the same gang robbed the local Bank. They were caught by the farmers and again let out by the Provisional Government. I can get no letters. One is surrounded by triumphant murderers. And yet I am indeed fortunate in comparison to those who served the British Government. They have endured and are enduring, if caught, such horrors and such tortures as would disgrace any barbarians in the most terrible times.

How will it all end? End is a big word to which no man’s eyes can strain, but even weak eyes can see that, before she is better, Ireland must be worse and far worse. In any community in which armed idleness preys systematically on peaceful industry, the evil must continually roll up; for it is always easier and pleasanter to do no work and rob than to work and be robbed. So the ranks of the robbers are continually finding recruits among their victims.

Where, under such conditions, can we look for the first beginnings of salvation? Can we look for any among a people who light-heartedly efface all the country’s monuments of civilization because they are England’s handiwork? This is elemental and, in coping with it, twentieth-century appeals beat the air. The Provisional Government would beyond doubt like to see order restored, for only so can they hope to tap the coffers of England. But the task is beyond them. They are themselves too deeply tainted with that which they are now up against. And they have not the courage. Their tribunals dare not punish. That, sooner or later, England will be implored to come across to set things straight, again is tolerably certain and, such is her quixotic imbecility, she will probably do as she is asked. But the task will be neither grateful nor profitable.