to transfer his activities to the United States, which he suc-
ceeded in reaching in disguise. The agitation conducted by
him in the United States belongs to the history of Ireland only
in so far as it reacted upon it. The reaction was, of course,
great. Sinn Fein was encouraged by the sympathy with its
views manifested by large sections of the American people,
culminating in the amazing action of the Foreign Relations
Committee of the Senate in adopting the isth reservation to
the Covenant of the League of Nations, which would have
committed the United States not only to the support of Irish
independence but to that of the principle of self-determination
generally. It was helped in yet more practical fashion by the
response to the invitation issued in Sept. by Dail Eireann to
subscribe to a loan guaranteed by the Irish Republic.
The organization of the terror in Ireland proceeded apace during the year 1919. The Irish Republican army (I. R. A.)
was supplied with arms, partly by numerous raids " g on private houses, partly by the overwhelming of Terror. small parties of police and soldiers, and increasingly
as time went on by shipments from the United States and elsewhere, which on a coast so wild and indented as that of Ireland there was little difficulty in smuggling in. Illegal drilling continued, and occasionally led to fights with the police, as at Kilrush, in W. Clare, on April 15. But the most effective weapon was the boycott. It had early been applied against those who had dared to vote against Mr. De Valera in E. Clare; at the " President's " request it was now to be applied univer- sally to the police. Before Sinn Fein brought its blessings to Ireland, the Royal Irish Constabulary had been friends of every one. The service was exceedingly popular, there being often a hundred applications for one vacancy in the ranks. It was an armed and disciplined force, it is true, but in so wild and lawless a country as much of Ireland is, this was as necessary as the arming of the sheriffs in the western states of America. The force, moreover, was wholly manned by Irishmen, drawn for the most part from the ranks of the Catholic peasantry. These men very rarely used their arms. Their main duties consisted in checking ordinary crime, in preventing the illegal distillation of potheen, in protecting boycotted persons, and in saving the tails of " unpopular " farmers' cattle from the knives of their neighbours. They were debarred from voting or taking any other part in politics. Their functions in this respect were limi- ted to trying to keep the peace between the contending factions, and they never intervened in debates until the champions of rival ideals had exhausted their armoury of abuse and, as is the way in Ireland, continued the argument with weapons more or less lethal. These men, whose courage and faithfulness to their trust had been so often proved, were now to be treated as pariahs and outcasts. On April 26 the executive committee of Cumann na mBan, the quasi-military Sinn Fein women's organization, issued instructions to its members not to be in company with nor to speak to a policeman, not even to occupy the same bench in church. 1 This might have been borne with philosophy; but an economic was added to a social boycott, and in many districts no tradesman or farmer dared to supply the police or their families with the very necessaries of life. In view of this, and of the campaign of wholesale murder to which they were presently subjected, it is perhaps not surprising that, after many months, the discipline of the force suffered, and its members occasionally took the law into their own hands. 2 The first "reprisals," however, were the work not of the police but of
The following diatribe against the police was circulated at the same time. It was headed " Aceldama " (the field of blood).
For money their hands are dipped in the blood of their people . . .
They are the eyes and ears of the enemy.
Let those eyes and ears know no friendship.
Let them be outcasts in their own land.
The blood of the martyrs shall be on them and their children's children, and they shall curse the mothers that bring them forth.
(Copy this out accurately four times, and send it to four of your friends.)
- During 1919 II policemen were murdered, in addition to many
seriously wounded.
soldiers. On Sept. 7 at Fermoy, in Cork, a small party of soldiers leaving Mass were attacked by armed men on the steps of the church, one being killed and three wounded, the assailants making off in a motor with their rifles. The coroner's jury returned an open verdict, which so enraged the soldiers that in the evening they paraded the town and wrecked the shops of the tradesmen who had acted on the jury.
Speaking at Glasgow on Sept. i Mr. Joseph Devlin said that Ireland had never "been more prosperous." 3 It had also rarely been more disturbed; and at Belfast on Sept. n Lord French declared that to restore order the Government would, if necessary, use the most drastic means. On the following day Dail Eireann was at last proclaimed as a dangerous association, and extensive military raids on Sinn Fein centres were carried out everywhere, in a systematic search for arms and seditious literature. During the month, also, a considerable number of Sinn F'ein newspapers were suppressed in Dublin and the provinces. On the 22nd the seriousness of the situation was advertised by the arming of the constabulary with hand-grenades. Outrages, however, including several brutal murders, 4 continued and were followed by further proclamations and arrests. The arrests were followed in their turn by hunger strikes, and the prisoners continued to be released. Matters became worse in Nov.; systematic attacks on police barracks now became frequent; raids for arms continued, including one on the Ameri- can steamship " Pensacola " at Cork (Nov. 5); on the roth and nth there were serious riots in Cork city; and on the igth a new precedent was set by the burning down of the petty sessions court at Liscarroll, county Cork. In these circum- stances the Government found it necessary to take additional powers. On Oct. 16 the city and county of Dublin had been proclaimed under the Crimes Act; on Nov. 13 the proclamation was extended to considerable areas of the country; on the 24th the Government announced in Parliament that hunger strikers would no longer be released, but must, " if they would not take their food, take the consequences "; and on the zyth the Sinn Fein organization, the Sinn Fein clubs, Cumann na mBan, etc., which had been proclaimed in Dublin on Oct. 16, were banned by proclamation in all Ireland.
Meanwhile abortive efforts had been made to arrive at an accommodation, Lord Southborough's 5 offer of his services to this end (Oct. 30) being contemptuously rejected by Mr. Arthur Griffith in the name of Sinn Fein. e
The situation was not improved by the issue (Nov. s/nn p ela 20) of the report of the Irish Dominion League, Terror. which advertised the tendency of the " moderate " elements towards Sinn Fein; by the declaration of Sir Horace Plunkett that " civil management must be substituted for Prussian militarism"; 6 and by his denunciation of the proc- lamation of Sinn Fein. The endorsement of this attitude by an influential section of the British press merely persuaded the Sinn Feiners that their policy of violence was on the eve of success, and that it only needed to be accentuated to make success certain. The month of Dec. accordingly saw a great increase in the number of outrages, which gave evidence also of increasing organization. All Dublin was horror-stricken by the murder on Dec. i of Detective-Sergeant Barton, a very pop- ular officer, which was carried out in a populous thoroughfare in the heart of the city. It was the beginning of the terror which was to dominate the country during many months to come. The nature of this terror may be understood by the fact that when, on the igth, a school-teacher named Blanchfield was murdered near Kinsale, the body lay for hours where it fell, as none of the villagers dared to touch it. 7 On the zoth a murderous attack was made on Lord French, the Lord Lieu-
Writing in The Times (Nov. 4) Prof. A. L. P. Dennis, of Wis- consin University, described Ireland as " a land of plenty."
4 In Clare, on Oct. 21, a farmer was murdered, and his wife kicked and beaten, by masked men.
6 Secretary to the Irish Convention (see above).
6 At the National Liberal Club, Oct. 30.
7 Policemen, mortally wounded, sometimes lay unattended in crowded streets, no one daring to give them a drink of water.
