^ ,.5~ imp- MOnce- RMum or raiMW •■ Ubrary MMwtaW Th» •MhLoMBook is $80X0. The person charging this material is responsible for its return to the library from which it was withdrawn on or before the Latest Date stamped below. iiMiif imiwoon, ana uncMnHNng oi book * w nwy Action ond msy f#sutt in dismisssl from II To ronow caN TWophono CoMm; 333-6400 UNIVERSITY OF ILUNOIS UBRARY AT URBANA-CHAIUIRMQN Nfoi ^9*51 lie <^ifatriets: "Take a typical night in Dublin. As the citizens ^o to bed the barracks spring to life. Lorries, tanks and armored searchlight cars muster in fleets, lists of 'obTectivea' are distributed, and when the midnight cur- few order has emptied the streets^— pitch-dark streets — ^the strange cavalcades issue forth to the attack. . . . "A thunder of knocks; no time to driaa (even for a woman alone) or the door will crash in. On open- ing, in charge the soldiers — ^literally charge — with fixed bayonets and in full war-ldt . . . ." The world made a great outcry about the deportation of Belgian citizens by Germans. England's record in Ireland in the past four years is approximately 2,200 deportations. In one instance the effrontery shown, the injustice effected, and the colossal lying util- ized to condone the act surpasses any story of international deportation in civilized history. It could be paralleled only in the cave-period, and then it would have been free of one despicable aspect — the Ijdng. The men who conceived the plot had not only estimated the helpless condition of the Irish Nation at the time, but coolly reckoned upon a paucity of intelligence and a dulled sense of international honor in the world to which they trtunpeted their weird story. On May 18th and 19th, 1918, ninety-one (91) Irish men and women were seized in their homes, placed on English war-ships and deported to England. Against none of them was any real charge made. They were all citizens of the highest character and they oc- cupied the most honorable positions in the gift of the Irish people — leaders in their new national movement. While still lying untried in English prisons thirty-three (33) of the deportees were elected by sweeping majorities to seats in the National Parliament of Ireland at the General Elections of December, 1918. Two of them died as a result of prison treatment. Eamon de Valera and four others escaped. After ten months 84 of them — ^all who remained in prison — were released without explanation, apology or any attempt at a charge or trial ! Many of them are to-day — ^it is, feared permanently — broken in health as a consequence of their imprisonment. FALSE STORY OF GERMAN INTRIGUE. The story given the world was that some few Irish had been discovered in communica- tion with Germany, and that the whole 91 were arrested to prevent them doing likewise. The evidence upon which any kind of an intrigue was supposed to be based was an Irish soldier said to have arrived off the Irish Coast in a collapsible boat, presumably from a German submarine. Even after Lord Wimbome, an honorable Welshman, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland up to the time of the intrigue, had declared in the House of Lords that there was no evidence of such an intrigue, even when the supposedly German boat turned out to be one made by Ford for the British admiralty, and the soldier an ex-British constable and army* vet- eran, who hurried to the nearest police barracks as soon as he landed — even then British statesmen asked the world to believe their story. Were it not for the tragedy of broken lives and lost lives and the long imprisonment, the plot would have been as merry a farce as Gilbertian opera. The plain truth — ^and one that will damn in history the reputation of every Britisher that had to do with it — is that the Sinn Fein National party was giving every evidence of sweeping the country at the approaching General Elections. In an effort to destroy their campaign, to frustrate the wUl of the Irish people, to intimidate them into voting against their jailed leaders, every outstanding leader in the country but three, three successive election campaign directors, and every county organizer of the party was kid- napped and victimized in this farcically hideous plot. The story was cabled to America with great gusto, for America was then at war with Germany, and the lying farce served the side-purpose of stampieding uninformed American opinion against the Irish Republic party! This is not a tale of rival Abysinnian tribes or the fulfilment of a ukase by an outlawed Cossack hetman. It was deliberately plotted by officials of the British Government in 14 the Twentieth Century, and all who had part in it or connived at it when done, — and they are well known to the Irish intelligence agents — ^have forfeited their political reputa- tion in history. DEPORTING ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES. The number of deportations of Irish citizens by British armed forces from May 1, 1916 to March 1, 1920, was 2,162, a number which has increased by some hundreds within two months. In May, 1918, Diarmuid Lynch, T.D., Sinn* Fein Food Director, was imprisoned and subsequently deported for taking steps to regulate exports and ensure a sufficiency of food for the Irish people. In 1920 before and after the Municipal Elections, Irishmen elected or about to be elected were kidnapped from their beds at night and hurried under military guards to England. The Lord Mayor of Dublin and William Cosgrave, Chairman of the Civic Finances, were among those deported. "Heads of himdreds of families have been jailed or deported, leaving dependent women and children without means of subsistence and rendered objects of public charity," was stated in the Report on conditions in Ireland with demand for Investigation by the American Commission on Irish Independence, p. 9. This statement was one of those categorically denied by Chief Secretary MacPherson — one of his official duties in Ireland being to coerce or deny at the convenience of the British Government. He performed these duties with a flexibility that suggests the ofl&cial reason for his appointment to the office previously held by him — ^an unnamed office which can only be described as the Director of the Red Light District behind the British Army in France. i 15 III-(c). ARMED ASSAULTS; BATON AND BAYONET CHARGES— <309. "Our jails filled with political prisoners — Innocent men are stabbed and shot to death. Bachelors' Wsilk and Mitchelstown are repeated in Kerry and Clare, and we are to fight for 'freedom' everywhere else — but for the enduring rule here of the bludgeon, the bayonet and the bullet. . . ." — Letter from President de Valera to an Australian sympathizer, February, 1918. During the war much indignation was roused in America by provocatory displays of German militarism in occupied Belgium, and ruthless acts of soldiery in dispelling little groups or assemblies of Belgians. Has even a fraction of the American people yet heard the truth of nightly parades of British military with armored cars, tanks or army lorries in Dublin, Limerick, Cork and other Irish cities? How many have heard of the wrecking of Fermoy and Thurles and the "shooting up" of Cork by British soldiery? ^ Doctors must answer sick-caUs even if night and a British Curfew Law are on the land. They, like others, have been fired at by the apned police without being first challenged, and one was seriously wounded. This is the treatment meted out to an Englishman who held high office during the war, and who was mistaken for a time in Dublin of the crime of being an Irishman: "I walked* abroad in a dead and silent city three hundred miles from London ^ and saw law in action of a kind recalling Warsaw under the Russians. Si:p- posing the position were reversed? Supposing the Irish were running London and I was held up in Kensington High Street for daring to roam abroad? "I was, of course, held up — ^by an officer with a squad of cyclists. They ap- proached me warily in semi-circular formation, and on a pre-arranged plan. They closed in and at the revolver-point continued pourparlers. This in a city three hundred miles from London. For daring to walk abroad in the night. "It is darkest, they say, before the dawn. Here in Ireland to-day things could not be darker. The position here to-day, the forced government of people without the consent of the governed, is the direct negation of anything and every- thing the English fought for at Ypres and on the Somme. I know. I was a Staff Officer at Ypres under the man who has made Dublin dark." From letter of this English visitor in "Freeman's Journal," February 25, 1920. Had he been proved to be "mere Irish," this is how he probably would have been treated: "Mr. Phillip Maher, Turtulla, was held up by armed police on his way home. It was dark at the time. He gave his name when asked, and was immediately struck by a policeman with the butt of a rifle in the jaw. He reeled and fell, and when he rose he was struck again. He was then ordered home. ..." "Three men named Callanan, Burke and McCarthy, while proceeding on Saturday night to their own homes in Lough, Thurles, Co. Tipperary, were fired at when passing near the workhouse. It was about 11.45 p.m. at the time, and they were on foot. Three volleys, they state, rang out, apparently from rifles. 4, None of the men were struck, though the escapes were narrow enough. The men assert they were not halted or challenged, and did not see any one. A police patrol was seen proceeding out on the road leading to the workhouse shortly after 11 p.m." p^.^^^^ ^^^ uj^^^j^ Independent," February 21, 1920. Or he would have been struck on his head by the butt end of a rifle and wounded as Mrs. Sheehy Skeffington was, when a Police Inspector arrived to prevent her holding an open-air meeting that had not been proclaimed. As Mrs. Skeffington continued to speak, the police rushed the platform, flinging the speakers to the ground, charged the crowds with fixed bayonets, knocking senseless an old woman of seventy, and several men and boys. Or again, had this British Staff Officer been guilty of the crime of being an Irishman, this is what he might expect: April 29, 1919:-;— "When Matthew Brady and William McNally were returning home from an Irish festival at Granard, Co. Longford, they were savagely set upon by a police patrol who fired four shots into the prostrate body of Brady 16 t after he had been felled by a blow. Brady is still in hospital, ten months after the event. No provocation was given to the police, and there has been no public enquiry into the outrage." (This news-item was suppressed by Censor.) BRUTAL ASSAULT ON AGED MAN. If he were the head of an Irish household, who objected to an illegal notice being served on him, this might be his fate: June 14th, 1919 — "Mr. Martin Rice and his father, Michael Rice, a man nearly 60 years and the father of eleven children, were shot by police at Ardatacola, Queen's County. The police came at one o'clock in the morning to Rice's house, 'protecting' process servers who brought (prestmiably) a notice of ejectment. The father, refused to admit the process servers. Sergeant Mattheson ordered Rice to take the ejectment order. 'Take it,' he said, 'or I'll shoot you.' Rice refused, and in the effort to prevent them coming into his house he was knocked down, beaten with the poUcemen's batons and the process servers' loaded ash- plants. Martin Rice, the son of the assaulted man, declaring that he could not see his father being murdered, was rushing to his father's aid, when his mother called to him: 'They'll shoot you.' Martin turned round to speak to his mother, when he was shot in the back by the poUce and fell unconscious into her arms. The old man who at the time was lying on the groimd half tmconscious from his beating was shot immediately afterwards. No action has been taken by the Gov- ernment against the poUce engaged in this dastardly assault. The English Censor refused to permit the publication of the full facts of the incident." BRITISH SOLDIERS CHARGE WITH BAYONETS. There were up to March 1, 1920, 609 cases of these armed assaults on unarmed persons by British police and soldiers in Ireland. Some of these were but outstanding incidents in charges made by the police to break up various assemblages — ^hurling matches, agri- cultural fairs, and GaeUc language festivals of song and dance, as well as political meet- ings — which had been arranged and announced, then allowed to proceed until the last moment, when people begin to gather. Police or soldiers with bayonets and rifles then arrive and proclaim the assemblage illegal. As former Governor Dunne, of Illinois, wrote in his account of Ireland: "The Irish people are proverbially inteUigent and high-spirited, and these out- rageous interferences with their social and athletic gatherings naturally provoke them, and at times so irritate them that conflicts take place between them and the police, in which most of the time the people suffer death or injury, — and which, in some cases bring injury and even death to the official riot-pro vokers.* "When such injury or fatality occurs to a policeman it is heralded throughout the world as an instance of Irish terrorism, but when a Republican citizen is shot down in cold blood by a policeman and a coroner's jury finds the assailant guilty of murder, the murderer is neither indicted nor placed on trial." IRISH LANGUAGE PROHIBITED. On June 16, 1919, the annual Language Movement Festival of Kilmallock was proclaimed. Police and military fully armed and accompanied by machine guns and armored cars in- vaded the town and occupied the main streets. The meeting was not field, but a crowd which gathered in the streets that evening was savagely set upon by the police, who maimed and wounded several. Among those injured were many women and children. One woman complained to a constable about the injuries inflicted by the police upon her brother, who had served four years against the Germans, and was herself batoned for remonstrating with hjm. An American Army Chaplain who was a witness of this incident said he had not be- lieved it possible so unjustifiable an attack could be made upon peaceful citizens by Brit- ish soldiery. •Word recently received in America states that: American Veteran of War Wounded: Late in April, 1820, country people of Clare lit a bonfire the night prisoners in Mountjoy Jail were released, rejoicing over the return of their friends as soon as they were strong enough to travel. The police charged on the happy group about the bonfire, killing three and wounding several others, one of the last an American veteran visiting his old home. 17 ■■•-'-" -°" TT^T T- AEROPLANES RAID QUIET GLEN. On the same day 3,000 soldiers and police invaded South Tipperary with machine guns, armored cars and aeroplanes. In the Glen of Aherlo around two o'clock in the morning every house was entered and searched. In some cases the occupants were stripped naked and turned out of their beds. While the aeroplanes manoeuvred overhead, armored cars and motor lorries went up into the Tipperary hills and brought down the men who were minding the cattle there and searched them. There were many humiliating and uncalled for incidents in this night-long raid, and the Censor felt compelled to suppress the full facts. A few days earlier Dundalk, a town in the North of Ireland, was occupied by a large military force. Barricades were built in the street, numerous houses raided, all traffic challenged and Matthew Murphy, a commercial traveller driving into the town, was fired upon by the soldiers and shot without warning. ASSAULT ABOUT WHICH MacPHERSON LIED: On June 6, 1919, a Dublin concert was "proclaimed" by British officialdom in Ireland. Sufficient warning was not given and many people gathered thinking the concert was going to be held. These a strong force of police dispersed with most violent methods. They fired on the crowd wounding two men, and a police sergeant shot a girl of twenty in the thigh. Some of the crowd retaliated and four policemen were wounded. W. J. McCann, formerly Inspector of United States Mihtary Police in the Philippines, was an eyewitness of this assault and stated in a press interview, which the British Censor suppressed : "The action of the police in firing upon the crowd was unjustifiable." The British Chief Secretary MacPherson refers to this in his supposed reply to the Report made by the American Commission, The Americans reported: "(47) With a ferocity tmparalleled even in this history of modern warfare, within the past few days men and women have been shot down in the streets of Dublin." To which MacPherson replied: "Unfortunately, four policemen and a girl have been shot in the streets of Dublin within the past few days by a number of Sinn Feiners, who rescued a Sinn Fein prisoner from the police. The police fired no shots." Not only were the police barracks which dot Ireland turned into sand-bagged arid forti- fied forts during "the last couple of years, but the British officers of "law and order" in Ireland took courses in bombing and bayonet practice from military instructors. They made frequent occasions to use the last upon the Irish people; for charging upon crowds with fixed bayonets has become a common form of military intimidation in Ireland. "Men, women and even children are beaten down in the public streets by an armed military police force organized not for the preservation of internal peace but for the forcible sustainment of the English usurpation. Some are even killed in these unlicensed attacks upon the general body of the people." (Two Years of English Atrocities in Ireland, p. 4.) 'ENGLISH EDITOR SHAMED. Austin Harrison, Editor of the "English Review," and an Englishman, in his magazine for September 1917 describes a night he spent in Dublin shortly before. He saw a crowd of young people gather near the station to welcome Cosgrave, just elected to parliament for Kilkenny. Cosgrave did not arrive, and the crowd, writes Harrison — "... sing songs and grradually dwindle; then later there is a baton charge. For no special reason. A young man Ties on the pavement, senseless . . . knocked out .... The Cossack method. Again I won- der whether the emotional Welsh Prime Minister knows of our i>olice government in Ireland. 1 have seen Cossacks do that in Petrograd. I am puzzled. There was no riot. There was no reason for any violence ... To knock a man out and leave him lie like a dog in the street seems a queer way in the Empire of Lib- erty. I never saw the Berlin police do that. I go to bed that night ashamed." In the past few years of terrorism baton and bayonet charges have actually been made in public halls where there is no way of escape for the people attacked. It was in this way Thomas Russell, the young Kerry teacher, was killed. On April 9, 1918, the police batoned the people of Dtmgarvan in the local courthouse, where they were attending the trial of a political prisoner. 18 ENGLISH LABOUR DELEGATION SHOCKED. "Speaking of the condition of Thurles, Co. Tipperary, after the English armed forces had sacked a portion of the town, Messrs. Arthur Henderson, M.P., ex- Cabinet Minister and Wm. Adamson, M. P., Chairman of the EngUsh Labour Party, said to our reporter that what they had seen reminded them of a section of Argonne in the war zone when they were on a visit to the front in France." Dublin Evening Telegraph, January 22, 1920. "On January 21, 1920, the police and military in Thurles took possession of the streets at 11:15 p. m. and fired with rifles and hand grenades on the houses of the citizens for nearly an hour and a half. They wrecked twelve houses in the main street alone, and prominent citizens made public statements of their cer- tainty that the police fired their rifles with murderous intent for they fired delib- erately into the houses of sixteen families, causing much destruction, though no one was killed." j^-^j^ Bulletin, January 22, 1920. Toward the end of last year English soldiers in barracks near Fermoy twice wrecked and looted the principal shops of the town. Among the five Munster towns victimized in this way was Cork, where the military display at night included armored cars as well as the usual lorries. "I am informed that the rioting was caused by the troops who acted in a wild reckless and disgraceful manner." This was the statement of the Lord Mayor of Cork in reference to the action of the soldiers belonging to the Shropshire Regi- ment, who wrecked a section of that City on the night of November 10, 1919. The soldiers smashed shop windows and looted the shops. When the citizens endeavored to stop the looting they were charged and dis- persed by the police who used the butt ends of their rifles on the people. This is the same regiment which was removed from Fermoy for wrecking the town. The Corporation of Cork demanded the removal of the Shropshire Regiment from that city. There was however, neither a public enquiry nor punishments of the offending military by their oflEicers. Irish Bulletin. FIRED 145 ROUNDS ON PEOPLE. At Limerick, in one of their more recent displays of night frightfulness, the indiscrimi- nate firing of the "patrol" (as these night rajders call themselves) caused the death of Richard O'Dwyer, an esteemed merchant, who was sitting in his own closed shop and of Lena Johnston, a young woman returning from her work at a theatre. Two other citizens, equally inoffensive, were seriously wounded. In this case an inquest was held. The military and police admitted that they had fired 145 rounds of rifle and revolver ammunition at the people. They claimed that they had also been fired upon, but reliable citizens held that their story of an attack on themselves was deliberately manufactured. One soldier admitted he had lost control of himself, thought he was on the battlefield and ran through the streets shouting: "Come on, the Welsh!" This is a tragic picture of armed forces running amuck in a quiet city, firing in a reckless, cowardly manner. Nor was it in Belgium. When they had fatally shot two citizens and wounded two others they marched back to barracks, with noisy cheers singing — ^not "Die Wacht am Rhine." It was "Rule Brittania" they sang: "* * * The nations not so blegsed as thee. Shall in their turn to tyrants fall. . . . — Rule, Britannia, rule the waves * * * ," This she does by holding Ireland, Gibraltar, Malta, the Suez Canal, India and a few other comers of the world recently acquired against the will of their rightful owners. Meanwhile there is a newer Imperial cbant, that of Elgar and Benson sung with great gusto in the opening years of the war. In view of Britain's diplomatic shuffling of war- spoils, by which she gained control of over 2,500,000 additional square miles of territory, and to-day rules over one-third of the world; it is felt to be indiscreet to shout the motif of the chant in the ears of the world just now — ^for it sounds very much like the wartime newspapers' translation of "Deutschland Uber Alles:" "Thou, who hast made her (England) mighty, Make her mightier yet." 19 Ill-(d). RAIDS: 19,423.* "Raids on private dwellings are a common occurrence. To be found in pos- session of political leaflets means immediate arrest. A gathering of three or more persons is an illegal assembly. Fairs and markets, which are an essential part of the machinery of Irish trade, are prohibited; trade-union meetings, even na- tional games and pastimes, are forbidden; musical festivals and literary and debating societies of the most harmless character are regarded as conspiracies." From Report of British Parliamentary Labour Party. The night-raids made at times upon individual Irish homes, but usually upon a large number of houses in one zone or another, are specially intended to strike the terror of ' British might into the hearts of the people. The military raid made in the Glen of Aherlo, with motor lorries, machine guns, and aeroplanes referred to earlier is the custom rather than the exception in Ireland, as is obvious from the total number of raids up to March 1 — 19,423 — admitted by the military, I and reported in the Press. These raids, like the "patrols" that degenerate into bands for assault, are largely parades of military force to induce provocation and intimidation. The London Daily News of March 10, 1920, reporting Irish conditions indicates that there are innumerable "personal raids," if they may be so termed, of which no figures are kept: "Armored cars, motor lorries and bodies of cyclists nightly accost civilians and it is no uncommon thing ^or a man to be held up three or four times within a few hvmdred yards. Revolvers are thrust into their faces; they are told to hold up their hands above their heads, and even if they have permits are often questioned at length about their business and their pockets searched." On November 6, 1919, in the English House of Commons, Mr. McLean asked how many raids had been made by police and military upon private houses in Ireland during the last twelve months. The Attorney General said the Chief Secretary had endeavored to get the information, but found it would impose such an amount of work on the police that he could not ask them to undertake the detailed investigations that would be necessary. (Hansard, Col. 641.) These figures are readily available in Dublin Castle records, but the information would not be edifying, so was withheld. During the first nine months of 1919, there were 5,588 of these raids, nominally to discover arms or "seditious" literature or Irish patriots. In two "military drives," alone, unreported in the press, over 4,000 Tipperary homes were searched, their residents were not only searched, but numbers of them stripped naked by the brutal soldiery. AMERICAN ARMY OFFICER DISGUSTED. A typical raid — one in which 700 men of England's forces were engaged — was described by Capt. Thomas Kissane, a young American Army Officer on his return from France. The story, reproduced in the London Daily Herald, October 18, 1919, tells us: After serving in France, Captain Kissane had leave of absence to visit his old | home in County Clare. British officers there, he said, boasted that Great Brit- %; ain has a right to interfere anywhere on earth, provided it has the strength to sub- stantiate that interference. He saw soldiers everywhere in full panoply of war, and backed by light artillery, armoured cars and whippet tanks. "When you want to go from one village to another, you must have a pass from a British officer," said Captain Kissane. "In County Clare, business is dead, because the people are not allowed to congregate or buy or sell goods. "Arrests are wholesale. For absolutely no reason, several young fellows were arrested in my own village and sent to prison without trial. "My brother and another young fellow were arrested for soliciting in their native village subscriptions to buy a set of band instruments. My brother had received no money, so he went free, but the other man went to prison for eight months. • This total of 19,423 raids does not include any since March 1, 1920. In March and April the list of raids was increased by more than 3,000. In one week of April, ending April 4, there were 1,113 raids. On one day alone. April 3, 613 raids were made. On April 30 over 500 houses were raided in various counties. 20 i GIRLS mSULTED. "My sister, who is examiner in French for the Board of Education for Ireland, was staying at a girl friend's house in Cork, with seven other girl teachers. "On the night of last August 14th, 400 British troops and 300 constabulary or- dered them out of the house in light attire and then plunged their bayonets into the bedclothes, tore down curtains, smashed the chinaware, threw the girls' per- sonal effects out of the window, and left the house a wreck. "Meanwhile on the roadside troops surrounded the girls and hurled at them every conceivable abuse and insult." OLD LADY ABUSED. Age is not respected by Ireland's army of occupation any more than modesty. The house in Courtown Harbour of Mrs. Etchingham, mother of Sean Etdiingham, member of the Irish Parliament for East Wicklow, was raided by the Gorey police under District-Inspector I^e Wilson. Both the District-Inspector and the Sergeant were in- toxicated. The hour was between two and three in the morning. The police invaded Mrs. Etchingham's bedroom and forced her at the points of their revolvers to leave her bed which they then tossed up and thoroughly searched. Mrs. Etchingham is over 80 years of age; her house has been raided many times by the police under the same officer. Nothing found in it has ever been of sufficient im- portance to cause a single arrest. Mrs. Etchingham has almost invariably fainted in the course of previous raids — a fact well known to the police. She and her daughter and two grandsons, aged about 15 and 17, were the only people in the house, at the last raid. When the elder boy asked the police not to molest his grandmother, he was threatened with arrest and forced to leave the room. EVEN PRO-ENGLISH ROUSED. Recently Mr. Farrell, a former Lord Mayor of Dublin, wrote to the public press that Ireland is being governed either by a madman or a fool to-day. As a proof that he is a friend of England he recalls the fact he was the principal guest at a state dinner given by the King of England in 1911, and that subsequently he had a long private audience with His Majesty. Yet on the morning of February 10th between 4 and 5 o'clock, he was aroused from his bed by English soldiers in full war equipment, who forced their way into his manor house at the point of the revolver and ransacked the house from cellar to at- tic. He adds: "I was kept between two soldiers with fixed bayonets, and an officer carried a revolver all the time when visiting the rooms where my children and the maids were." The troops left empty handed. Mr. O'Farrell is even given to harboring "seditious" literature. LORD MAYOR AND BRITISH OFFICER. The residence of the Lord Mayor of Dublin — ^the historic Mansion House — has been searched upon more than one occasion — even the apartments belonging to his wife. A British officer, resident in Dublin and decorated in the late war for distinguished service, was also subjected to a raid recently — the raiders arriving in a tank — a preposterous con- veyance frequently used, for intimidation likely. This officer. Major Childers, asked for and received an apology from the Commanding Officer for the hardened insolence of his raiders to his own person, and the dangerous possibilities of their bayonets-flashing and rifle-parading before a sensitive child roused in the middle of the night for purposes of their search. SINISTER REASON FOR BANK RAIDS. The Sinn Feig Co-operative People's Bank, opened ten years ago in Ireland, was twice ordered closed and finally seized. On the last occasion all books and papers and over J40,000 were seized by the military and the house closed to business. "The bank was established ten years ago by a limited company to carry on the banking business — to assist in the development of Irish industries and for the promotion of popular credit. It is described as the 'Sinn Fein' Co-operative People's Bank, and it is governed by a Committee of Management elected annually from its members. A Council of Supervision is similarly elected. Apart from the fact that a number of Sinn Feiners, in addition to people of other shades of political opinion, deposit savings there and the majority of the shareholders are Sinn Feiners, the bank has no connection with Sinn Fein." — Irish Bulletin, February, 1920. 21 The real offence of this Bank and The New Ireland Assurance Society, which was also seized and ordered closed, is that their policy is directed to the upbuilding of Irish credit and of Irish interests first. The Assurance Society was founded with the avowed object of stopping the flow of Irish money abroad to England or elsewhere for insurance, and to create a truly Irish insurance company. Since its inception in 1916 it had made remarkable progress and was firmly establi^ed throughout the country at the time of the seizure. DELIBERATE KIDNAPPING OF ELECTED COUNCILLORS. In 1918 the Irish people retiuTied over two-thirds of the members for an Irish Republic. As a punishment for this expression of self-determination on their part militant terrorism increased and most of the members who were not kidnapped before the Elections were arrested afterward. Similarly, after the municipal and urban elections of January, 1920, raids grew in num- ber and ferocity. In one week in February there were over 1100 of these raids in Ireland. In one night 90 men were seized, many of them prominent men among the newly elected officials and members of the Irish Congress. In one of these raids the police seized Mr. Cosgrave, who has been for years in charge of the finances of the Dublin Corporation and was this year re-elected on the Republican ticket. The Lord Mayor of Dublin, seized and deported before his election, was imprisoned, without trial, in Ixindon, and finally released in broken health. In another more recent raid 200 more Irishmen were seized by a large party of soldiers who entered their homes with fixed bayonets, making their rounds in armored cars and tanks. In many cases they battered in the doors with rifles, herded the women and children into rooms together and there at the point of the bayonet threatened to kill them if they would not tell where their menfolk were. (Leading men in the Irish movement do not always live at home now, because of these raids.) The men seized in this raid were carried off to a British warship in the harbor and taken to England, with an aeroplane manoeuvring over the ship droning into them as it went, its story of England grown "mightier yet," and of her plans to secure the mastery of the air as of the sea and the world's oil-fields. RAID ON OLD HOME OF PROMINENT AMERICAN CITIZENS. A letter from the aged mother of Bishop Cantwell of Los Angeles, to her son and his three brothers who are like himself prominent citizens of California, tells its own story of a recent raid in Fethard, Tipperary. When the letter was received the news it contained was sent by wireless to the Bishop in midocean on his way to Europe. The letter is eloquent in its motherly appeal and the writer's approval of her boy's patriotic stafid. "Prison nor death itself can crush the spirit of Walter and the brave men of Ireland. They have established the Irish Republic ..." It is of just such aged Irish mothers, too often left desolate, who have given of their best — the fruit of their womb — to America; it is of these the Englishman Begbie wrote — "... But something of their hearts and their souls are woven indestructibly into the destinies of America." "My dear James," writes the mother — "My boy Walter was arrested yesterday morning at 4.30 o'clock. As we slept the the door of oiu- home was battered in and the military and police overran the house, destroying everything before them. They asked for Walter. They dragged him from his bed. They offered no warrant or explanation. "Your dear brother was taken away from me, under a heavy guard, with fixed bayonets. They took him to Cork on an English gunboat. He is "now in Belfast prison, without any charge lodged against him. You well know that Walter is guilty of no crime, imless it be a crime to love Ireland, his country. "Cannot you men in America put a stop to this terrible treatment of our boys in Ireland? Prison nor death itself can crush the spirit of Walter and the brave men of Ireland. They have estabUshed the Irish Republic and they will accept nothing from England but that she get out of their country. "After Walter's arrest the military returned to the house and ransacked every room, doing much damage. They seized and read my letters from you, John, Arthtu- and William. I was ill when they came before dawn. It was very cold. They refused to let us light the fire. The military surrounded the house for hours while others ransacked each room. They got nothing that could connect Walter with any crime other than loyalty to Ireland. "Please pray and work for the safe return of my boy Walter. ..." 22 i III.-(e). ARRESTS: 6,157. IMPRISONMENT AND HUNGER STRIKES. "I could bomb a crowd from an aeroplane with a better conscience than engage in this cold blooded systematic condemnation of respectable peoples to the rigors and ignominies of Jail life — to loss of health, loss of business and career, too often to loss of life; not for breaking the moral law, but in very truth for obeying that universal law which impels all men worthy of the name of men to become free." — Major Erskine Childers, D.S.C, R.N.P.C, in London Daily Herald, May 26, 1919. Since May 1, 1916 there have been over 6,157 arrests in Ireland of political prisoners. Their "crime" was variously expressed by them, but it was always one — demanding Ire- land's inalienable right to govern itself. It was the crime of Washington and Franklin in '76, the crime that brought Colonel Ethan Allen in irons from Quebec to England in 1775. In one contemporary work — "Two Years of English Atrocities in Ireland" — there are 53 pages of closely printed records setting out briefly such violations of Irish personal liberty and property, as have been admitted by the English Censor. Those not so ad- mitted, though known to the Irish people, are not included in the totals given in this com- pilation either. Bald statements of the vast number of arrests can convey nothing of the hardships these entailed, but some idea is had from these paragraphs in the American Commis- sion's "Report on Conditions in Ireland" — statements which are borne out by documents submitted to the compiler of this pamphlet: "(2) Hundreds of men and women have been confined for months in the vilest prisons without any charge being preferred against them. "(3) At least five men have died as the result of atrocities perpetrated upon them while in prison. ♦ * * "(4) Prisoners are confined in narrow cells with hands handcuflFed behind them day and night. In this condition they are fed by jail attendants. They are permitted no opportunity of answering the calls of nature, and are compelled to lie in their clothing, befouled by human excrement for days at a time. • "(5) Persons are confined in cells which are not big enough for one man. They are not provided with beds or bunks, but are compelled to sleep upon the bare floors. There are no toilet facilities or receptacles to contain hvunan oflEal, which necessarily accumulated upon the floors where men are compelled to sleep in the filth night after night. * * * "(10) Solitary confinement in most horrible form is generally practised. Numbers of prisoners have been taken directly from jails to insane asylums, ren- dered maniacs by their treatment." WOMEN AND CHILDREN SEIZED BY POLICE. In making these arrests the British police usually seize the political prisoners in their beds at night. The arrests include men and women. Thej'' even include children, for last year the police kidnapped a child of eleven (young Connors of Tipperary) and for close to two months even his parents were not permitted to know why he had been seized or where he was held. Following that, a boy of thirteen was seized and also held hidden for weeks without any word to his parents. Men over seventy — ^including Laurence Ginnell, for years a member of Parliament at Westminster and a scholarly barrister, — have been held for months without trial, and submitted to exceptionally harsh treatment. A sister of Grace Gifford, the gifted young artist of whom Orpen painted a striking portrait symbolic of "The New Ireland," was held in solitary confinement for weeks. Seventeen (17) women and girls, including Louise Gavan Duffy, daughter of Mitchel's comrade who later was elected Premier of Australia, Mrs. Sheehy-SkeffingtMi, Miss French- Mullen, were arrested — most of them for speaking Irish or collecting for memorials to Irish patriots. Saeve Trench, granddaughter of the great Protestant Primate, Arch- bishop Trench, was in jail also for months in 1916. PAT McCABE, of Clones, was imprisoned for one month for "whistling derisively at the police," American artists idealized brave Belgian youngsters for this same act of irreve- rence to Germany's Army of Occupation. 23 THOMAS O'REILLY, who is a director of the Cavan and Leitrim railway, with two companions, was imprisoned for one month for singing the "Soldiers' Song." Girls have been sentenced to prison for singing national songs: one man was sentenced to two years with hard labour for the same "crime." MARY McMANTTS, of Athlone, was arrested and heavily fined for selling a song pub- lished in Ireland several years before the war. JOHN DORAN sinned against England by leading a procession of pipers without first obtaining the gracious permit of the British police. He was arrested and fined $25. So the crowded record of 53 pages run ("Two years of English Atrocities in Ireland.") Men who were suspected of being Irish Volunteers received sentences of one, two and five years of hard labour. DENY JURISDICTION OF ENGLISH COURTS OVER THEM. In the majority of cases the term of imprisonment is doubled or greatly increased by the refusal of the prisoners — as soldiers and citizens of the Irish Republic — to acknowledge that the British court in which they were tried had any jurisdiction over them. Even in small details the action of the Irish political prisoners challenges admiration, for their endurance, their consistency and determined stand as citizens of the Irish Republic. Seized usually without charge, going to an unknown destination in England or Ireland, facing the possibility of a death from harshness like Ashe, or one from criminal neglect like McCan, Ireland's more than 6,000 political prisoners since 1916 have endured many times what American patriots did in Britain's ghastly prison-ships. They will continue to endure until Ireland is free. Chief Secretary MacPherson denied categorically the statements of the American Com- mission about the ill-treatment of Irish prisoners. An American paper, controlled at the time by Rodman Wanamaker, was at pains to bolster up in lengthy articles MacPherson's denial — but the London Times admitted his statements were halting and evasive. More liberal English papers— the News, the Guardian, the Daily Herald — conceded his state- ments contained shameful admissions of British misgovemment in Ireland. But there is no need of other evidence to show the true condition of the jails than the following statement by a policeman of what he regarded as quite ordinary and humane treatment. REVELATION OF PRISON HARDSHIPS. The Belfast Daily Telegraph of May 28, 1917, reports the trial of a schoolteacher, James Joseph Layng. He had been courtmartialed at Dundalk for possessing a revolver, and MacManus in his "Ireland's Case" quotes the following from the cross-examination of Police-Sergeant Graham: "Attorney — ^You brought the prisoner to the barracks at Castle Bellingham and put him in the lock-up there? "Sergeant — Yes. "Attorney — Am I right in saying that that room is nine feet by three feet six inches? "Sergeant — I cannot say that you are far astray, but it is more than three feet six inches. "Attorney — It has a stone floor without any windows. "Sergeant — There is a small open slit. "Attorney — Isn't it devoid of any comfort? "Sergeant- — ^There is a big wooden plank in it. "Attorney — There are no sanitary conveniences in it. "Sergeant — None. "Attorney — Was the accused put in that night? "Sergeant — He was. "Attorney — ^And kept there for five days and five nights. ' 'Sergeant — ^Yes. "Attorney — During that time was he ever taken out for any exercise? "Sergeant — No. "Attorney — ^Was there any bed there? "Sergeant — No. This evidence, which was a portrayal of jail conditions so usual that it aroused little comment in Ireland, is an exact verification of paragraph 5 of the American Commission's charges quoted earlier (see p. 23) and which was denied by Chief Secretary MacPherson and Wanamaker's official journalistic whitewasher of British officials in Ireland.' BELFAST JAIL OUTRAGES. Paragraph 4 of the same Report was directly borne out by the sworn statements of a 24 & i young Dublin man released from Belfast jail, and which, while prohibited by the British Censor, were given wide publicity in Ireland and America in 1918. These statements were given to the public by Lord Mayor O'Neill of Dublin and other prominent Irisl^en. Further statements by one of these prisoners, a yotmg lawyer who on his release escaped to America, are now under the hands of the compiler of this pamphlet. They verify the charges of unbelievable brutality made repeatedly against prison officials, but categorically denied by the British Chief Secretary MacPherson in a statement given the widest pub- licity by the press of America. Here is one statement concerning a large group of political prisoners from all parts of Ireland — ^farmers, lawyers, editors, merchants, members of the Irish Congress — ^who were imprisoned in Belfast jail for openly demanding the freedom of Ireland. They were being treated as criminals instead of political prisoners contrary to the pledge of British officials given in Dublin in 1917. On their refusal to be classed as criminals trouble began. A portion of the statement follows: "Word was passed along the windows of the top landing in Belfast Gaol that the wardens were forcibly dragging the prisoners down to the cells on the ground floor. "Now there was an understanding between the prisoners and the Governor that we were not to be placed in the bottom cells as they were very badly venti- lated and in other ways violated the most ordinary principles of hygiene. This agreement we were extremely anxious should be kept at that particular time, as the influenza was raging. We accordingly decided to remain where we were as long as possible. We barricaded oiu* doors and forced the wardens to break them in to get us down. My door was one of the first attacked, and after battering at it for about five minutes with mallets and crowbars the wardens succeeded in getting in. As the wardens were aware that I was a barrister and understood my legal rights they were afraid to indulge in any excessive brutality and con- tented themselves with giving me a few shoves. I was then dragged down along the iron stairways to a cell on the bottom floor. "From out the spy -hole of my cell I saw the other prisoners brought down. They were dragged and kicked and punched and otherwise brutally maltreated. After about half an hour some 200 police were drafted into the gallery and a de- tachment of soldiers was brought into the prison. The police dashed up with the wardens and started to force open the prison cells. The din now became deafening, the prodding of mallets, the clash of crowbars against the iron doors, the savage roars of the police and wardens, the agonizing cries of wounded and tortured prisoners and the dull thud of bodies dropping from step to step along the iron stairway, all created such a pandemonium as to make one's head swim. AH the prisoners who were now being dragged down were handcuffed, most of them with thin bands behind their back, which in itself is a form of excruciating torture. BAD TREATMENT OF COUNCILLOR. "Every form of brutality was indtilged in while bringing the prisoners down. I saw Mr. McKenna, the Chairman of the Kerry County Council, one of the wealthiest, most influential and respected gentlemen in the south of Ireland, with his hands manacled behind his back, a policeman brutally dragging him along by the necktie, which he had twisted so tight that his victim's face was all purple, his tongue was hanging out, and the eyes bulging out of his head, while another policeman was kicking him along from behind. I saw Mr. Corry, a respected farmer in County Cork, bleeding profusely out of the nose, his hands manacled behind his back, with one policeman dragging him along by one ear and another by the other ear, and a third kicking him from behind. "I saw Mr. N , from Clare, pumping blood from a three inch gash in his head, his hands handcuffed behind his backj being dragged about in a most 25 diabolical fashion. Many more such instances came before my notice. A hose was then brought into the wing and was turned on some of the remaining prison- ers who were left to lie all night in their wet clothes, with their hands ^anacled behind their backs-^and the deadly influenza raging in the city! "When all the prisoners were down, the police entered our cells on the ground floor, removed all the furniture except tho bed board and manacled those of us who had not been so restrained before. We were left in this condition for three days, when some of us succeeded in removing oiu" handcu£Fs. Others were so restrained, some with muffs in addition, for six days. In this state we had to attend divine service and on Sunday morning the vast majority of the prisoners received the Blessed Sacrament with hands manacled, and in a filthy condition, because their restraint prevented them from conforming to the usages of civilized beings. "We were then sentenced to 14 days' solitary confinement on bread and water and our conditions were not ameliorated until the public opinion of the world was so thoroughly aroused by the facts (which had to be published surreptitiously in pamphlets, and for the distribution of which a young boy of 13 was thrown into gaol) as to compel the prison authorities to give heed to the most ordinary dictates of common humanity." BEATEN IN CELL BY WARDERS. (Suppressed by Censor.) Synopsis of statement by Mr. T. E. Hardy, FuUyard House, Armagh; a university man who had graduated with a high record. "I was arrested and imprisoned in May, 1918, for an alleged seditious speech. The Offense, if any, was political and, accordingly, should have qualified me for treatment as a political prisoner. Nevertheless, I was forced to associate with the vilest criminals in Belfast gaol, with bigamists, wife-beaters, drunkards, thieves and murderers. Later I was sent to Sligo Gaol and was there treated as a criminal. "On November 18th, when I was now suffering from cold and hunger, when my cell was without sanitary utensils, I asked six times in the course of the morn- ing to be allowed to go to the lavatory. Each time I was refused. At 2.30 I again demanded. While speaking I walked toward the door. Immediately five warders rushed towards me, knocked me down and while on the ground, with the middle of my back on a broken bed plank, a warder, whose name I can give, put his hand on my throat and his knees on my chest and pummelled me with the hand that was free. For some hours after I lay there, unable to move. That night I fainted and in falling injured my elbow and tore the skin of my left arm. "On January 21st, 1919, I was put in solitary confinement in Belfast gaol. For five weeks I was locked in a cell, most of the time with my hands handcuffed behind my back. In the cell there was no window — ^most of the time no utensils of any kind, sometimes nothing but the four bare walls. It was nothing strange to have the warders and police enter the cells and knock us down and beat us. The police used their batons freely on me while I lay on the floor. They caught me by the hair and bumped my head against the cement floor of the cell, while they called me filthy names. "On the back of my head is a lump which I shall carry to my grave, and my left arm is at times useless, as the pain in my left shoulder is excruciating. It was while I was in handcuffs in Belfast gaol that my left arm \ as injured. "I am prepared to swear to these facts before any tribunal." CRUELTY TO SICK MEN Extracts from a statement made by Mr. John G. Sheehan, with reference to conditions in Belfast Gaol on June 19th, 1919. This statement was suppressed by the British Censor, "I make the following specific charges which I invite Mr, MacPherson to refute if he can. These within my own knowledge (the major part of them) I 26 am willing to support on oath. The others are made on information 'supplied to me by fellow-prisoners on whom I can rely and whose names I am willing to give. I have used initials to avoid giving pain to many persons, but shall willingly give full names to anybody interested. "(1) During the influenza epidemic, sick men were locked in their cells in the early evening and left there all night with nothing but water to drink. Many men were too weak to attend to themselves or to get out of bed to ring for help. P. M., as a result of getting out of bed, fell and cut his leg badly. He lay all night partly on the floor and partly in the bed, lost a considerable quantity of blood, was on the verge of death and given Extreme Unction. He was ultimately released on medical grounds. "(2) The attendance was insufficient; J. H. was extremely ill with influenza. Pedlar and I were called to his cell to stop his continuous bleeding from the nose, although neither of us pretend to medical knowledge. His shirt and bedding were soaked in blood, indeed caked with it, — the result of two or three days' continual bleeding. Blood stains were on the wall and on the floor. His face was smeared with dry blood. He was getting ordinary prison diet, which was lying in the cell untouched. "We did what we could for him. Later in the evening a priest came to admin- ister Extreme Unction to another patient. We brought him to J. H.'s cell and pointed out the state of things. On seeing the man, the priest at once admin- istered the last sacrament. J. H. was then removed to hospital. "(3) The blankets and bedding of the sick men (about 120) reeking as th^y were with their excessive perspiration and full of influenza germs, were never taken away, but were left with them on recovery, and for aught anyone knows, were subsequently used by other prisoners. SLOWLY BREAKING HEALTH OF PRISONERS. "(4) Eighty men in Belfast Gaol were deprived of their poUtical status on January 21st, 1919. They were placed in .solitary confinement then and were so kept until (a) the expiration of their sentences, or (b) their discharge in broken health, or (c) as to 10 of them, until deportation recently to Manchester, and the balance of them — 5 in number — are still in the same condition. That is, for five months now those men have never left their cells or hospital except to go to the lavatory or to chapel. With one exception, they have all been handcuffed for long periods. Their only exercise consists in pacing a cell about 18 feet square. When I was there 6 patients had to sleep in it. They are never out of it day or night, except as before stated. "(5) Whereas on January 20th there were only three or fotir political prisoners in hospital, since that date 53 out of a specific 74 had to receive medical attention — roughly 75% — and that of thirty-six (that is 50%) their health was so bad that the Government dared not risk keeping them in prison any longer. "(6) J. M., thrown down by police, pummelled and gripped so violently in the abdomen that a portion of his trousers were torn off. "(7) T- M. L., thrown down and severelv pummelled bv the police. "(8) E. G. The like. "(9) M. R. The like. "(10) J. M. Pepper thrown into his cell through the spy hole by wardens and police. He banged at the door to demand an explanation. It was opened and he was thrown down and handcuffed. KNOCKED DOWN— BRUTALLY TREATED. "(11) J. M., a constitutionally weak man, was suffering from an injured arm fpr which he had undergone a severe operation. He had his name down on Sunday morning to see the doctor. Instead, although he had committed no of- fense, his cell was entered by a number of men who proceeded to remove his plank bed. On his remonstrating, he was knocked down, his eye badly black- ened, his weak arm severely wrenched, and he was handcuffed. "On the intervention of the Chaplain he was brought to hospital in the evening in a state of collapse, was seized with violent vomiting fits and the doctors had to be called urgently and gave him special treatment. Ultimately discharged broken in health. "(12) Our cells were stripped eventually of even the bell handles and the window frames. Nothing was left but the fw^Us^ roof and floor, the bed clothes, 27 a slop basin, two mugs and a horn spoon. Our food was served on the floor. The cell floors were never washed, but were often damp and the mattress became wet, "The hot water pipes — the only means of keeping the cell partly warm — were out of order during the coldest spells of the year. BUILD UP FOR RENEWED PERSECUTION. Statement by Padraigh na Dalaigh, North Strand, Dublin. "In Mountjoy at present there are forty political prisoners. Nineteen are receiving political treatment. Twenty-one are treated worse than criminals. Among those who are treated worse than criminals are Mr. Laurence Ginnell, Representative of Westmeath, Dr. Higgins, John Cotter and Mr. W. Sears, Rep- resentative for Sligo. The latter is now released. Pearse Beasley, Representa- tive of Kerry, and D. P. Walsh are deported to England. Messrs. O'Kelly, Sloane, Rogers, Mallory and eight companions were in close confinement on pun- ishment diet for two months. • "They were handcuffed night and day and stripped by the wardens. The J handcuffs were not removed even when they wanted to attend to the course of nature. When the men broke down, they were carried to hospital, some in a dying condition, only to be built up again for more punishment. These men are > in for purely political offenses." In concluding a summary of the prison experiences buried in the pages of "Two Years of English Atrocities in Ireland," the official compilers affirm: "Not even when they have been thus tyrannously torn from their homes and cast into prison are these Irish victims of alien aggre.ssions free from further indig- nity. Irish political prisoners, instead of enjoying a treatment more humane than that accorded criminals, are in fact the victims of a special prison regime that can only be termed barbaric. Exaggeration though it may seem to be, it has nevertheless been proved that into the Irish prisons police have been frequently introduced who have batoned these helpless men in their cells. Prisoners are put into irons on the slightest pretext. At the moment of writing political prisoners in Belfast Jail have been in handcuffs for live weeks. In Belfast Prison also men have, by order of the Governor, been drenched by a fire hose and then left to lie in their wet clothes all night — manacled and unable to assist themselves. In Mount- joy Prison, Dublin, prisoners were also hosed, and it was in that place that one of the worst of the Irish prison tragedies occurred." (The reference here is to the slow murder of Thomas Ashe.) HUNGER STRIKES TO SECURE POLITICAL TREATMENT. The hunger-strike of some scores of political prisoners in Wormwood Scrubbs, London, and in Mountjoy Jail this month (April, 1920) went on until many of the men were prac- tically dying of starvation, and were removed to the hospital on stretchers. This protest (which is the one protest all Irish political prisoners must make out of respect for their national movement) is equivalent to the assertion that patriotism and the demand for national freedom is no crime and must not be treated as such — nor an imprisoned patriot be degraded to the class of a criminal. This last notable hunger-strike ended successfully, being strengthened at the last by a general strike of organized labour in Ireland. Preparations were under way by British railwaymen to strike in sympathy and Irish farmers were organizing to withhold from ^ English buyers their farm products A^hich are so essential for Britain's food supply. The first of the Irish prisoners' hunger-strikes is memorable for the death of Thomas Ashe. It was described on their release by some of the other prisoners to the "Clare Champion" (November 3, 1917). The realistic narrative quite imconsciously gives an * idea of the heroic quality of the rank and file of Ireland's patriots to-day: " * * * On Thursday morning bed, bedding and all cell furniture were removed * * * Shivering with cold, without food, without sleep, without air or exercise, in their naked cells the prisoners lay * * * But the lusty voices of the Claremen rang out through the halls and corridors of the gloomy prison shouting — 'No Sur- render. Victory or Death,' and in snatches of song they recalled the deeds of bygone times, the glories of the past or sang of the bright hopes of the future. HORRORS OF FORCIBLE FEEDING. "Then the inhuman forcible feeding began, as cold, weakened from want of sleep and food, they were dragged out by brute force and strapped and gagged, subjected — every fibre of their Ixnlies in violent protest — to this horrible indignity. 28 The scene at the first operation was heartrending. Clare prisoners were the first to be fed, and from them came active resistance to this brutal operation. Violently resisting — the struggles and moans, the chokings and retchings of the helpless victims, bound and gagged, are too horrible to be described in detail. ' Many of them were carried away insensible and flung like dogs on bare and frosty floors to live or die as the mercy of a Just God might decree; and some of them were thrown into undergrotmd dimgeons — damp and foul — so that Eng- land's 'Might' and England's 'Justice' should be vindicated at all costs. Day by day the fight went on, the men growing gradually weaker and collapsing. * * * ' * * * It was the practice, in order to cheer and hearten each other, to sing patriotic songs through the cell-doors. At one of these impromptu concerts poor Tom Ashe sang 'The Dead in Arbor Hill,' a song of his own composition. And a few nights after, when he had 'carried Ireland's Cross,' and his pure soul had gone to its Maker it was the voice of a Clareman — Michael Brennan — that siun moned his fellows to their barred and bolted doors to offer up with broken voices the Rosary in Irish for the loved companion who had died — that they might be spared to work and strive for Roisin Dhu * * * " (Roisin Dhu — the Little Dark Rose or Dark Rosaleen — ^has been through centuries the hidden name of Ireland's rebel patriots for their coimtry.). LADS OF SIXTEEN VICTIMIZED. After a hvmger-strike of five days forty- three tried and untried political prisoners in Cork Jail secured ameUorative treatment for those of their number whom the authorities sought to class and treat as criminals. One of these "criminal" prisoners was a boy named Hogan tinder sixteen years of age, while other political prisoners in Cork Jail include two other boys under seventeen years of age. The Government permitted the hunger-strike to continue until these youths had been removed to hospital in an utterly collapsed con- dition, and the remaining forty prisoners were too weak to leave their beds. The con- cessions demanded by the prisoners in the first instance were then granted. This was the twelfth hunger-strike which has taken place in Irish prisons since the beginning of 1919. It has proved to be the only weapon by which these convicted of poUtical offenses in Ireland can force from the British Government a differentiation between the condi- tions of their imprisonment and that of the criminal classes. Yet in September of 1917 at Dublin and in January of 1919 at Belfast, British Officials — one of them the English Chief Secretary for Ireland — definitely undertook to give full political treatment to eSl political "offenders" in Ireland Glancing at the total of thousands of arrests, persons who have not met and talked with Irish political prisoners can scarcely comprehend how harrowing their experiences have been. Men, women and children alike — seized from their homes at night, thrust into cells too often not fit for human habitation, they have been neglected during the serious epidemic of influensia, frequently released in broken health, some like Patridge and Ward and others released to die — ^all to know every humiliation that British oflScialdom in Ireland could put on them. But in spite of these facts, and their knowledge of what open support of the Republic would entail, this generation of Irish patriots have gone in an imending stream into these jails rather than yield for an hour in their determination to be forever free of England's yoke. They have adapted themselves to a life of constant alarms and hardships with a quiet determination that is heroic. It was with full knowledge of conditions and happemngs in Irish Jails that a distin- guished Englishman — Major Erskine Childers, R. N. F. C, who won the Distinguished Service Order for his valor during the war, made the frank admission about the imprison- ment of Irish patriots in the London Daily Herald, May 26, 1919, which we quoted at the beginning of this section. THE ESCAPE FROM MOUNTJOY. The heartrending litany of agonies endured by those brave victims of English bru- tality and militarism has- been occasionally reUeved by a physical triiunph over their heartless jailors. There have been several escapes of Irish Volunteers from prisons, but the manner in which some of them were effected must for the present remain unchron- icled. The details of the escape of twenty Irish Republican prisoners from Motmtjoy Jail, however, on March 29, 1919, are described in a booklet now in course of publication by the Friends of Irish Freedom, which also relates the unique hunger-striking and prison- breaking experiences of Padraic Fleming, under whose leadership the Moimtjoy men baffled their keepers and scaled the prison walls — to friends and liberty. (See page 64.) 29 Ill (f). SENTENCES: 2,107. Of 6,157 men, women and children arrested in Ireland for political offences, only 2,107 were tried and sentenced. Their sentencsg^an from one month to penal servitude for life. Upon pressvire from all sides the life sentences were remitted. In the majority of these cases, whether sentenced for singing a National song, for having a rifle, or buying a rifle, for selling the flag of the Irish Republic or similar "crimes," the sentences read " months hard labour and months additional in default of bail." This serves to illustrate an interesting feature of the Irish struggle. The Irish political prisoner dragged into a British court is consistently Sinn Fein, whether he is a mature man trained as a barrister or a coxmtry lad still in his teens. He will neither give bail — thereby admitting himself guilty of some offence and willing to give security for his "good behaviour" — ^nor will he recognize the British court into whidi he is summoned. His attitude is — "I do not recognize this Court nor consider that it has any jvuisdiction over me. I am a citizen of the Irish Republic, and I recognize no court in Ireland but one evolved from the will of the Irish people." He is then thrown back into prison with a sentence of " months and months additional in default of bail." The sliding scale of British court sentences in Ireland would be, like moist other British things there, farcical if it were not for the tragedy lying behind it all. A saloon-keeper and owner of a questionable resort was convicted of murdering his barmaid in a particu- larly brutal way. He was sentenced by the notorious Judge Dodd, the pj0&cial White- water of Dublm Castle and its prison system in Irelan4 to four montihs imprisonment in the "first division." INEQUALITY OF SENTENCE. The Judge explained that this light sentence was given the man because he had helped recruit men for the English army during the war. On the other hand an Irishman of the highest character, and one of position, was given two years hard labovu* for singing a National song, and another a similar sentence for trying to save from an^t his brother who had committed no other "crime" than being a supporter of the Irish Republic. So it runs through the wearisome long lists of thousands of political prisoners: barristers, magistrates, members of Congress, farmers, aldermen, labourers, landowners, professors, poets, editors, merchants — men of every class and creed in Ireland "have come under the lash of the English knout," as one of these thousands has put it. 30 ni-(g). SUPPRESSIONS AND PROCLAMATIONS: 389. The only proclamation of which we know much in this happier New World is the Thanks- giving Day proclamation. In Ireland a British proclamation is as sinister an event as edicts were to foreign peoples seized by the Roman Empire or as the ukase of the Russian Czars. Last year Lord French, as British Viceroy in Ireland, reached a state of mind which can only be described as "proclamation-frenzy." Each new brain-storm produced a proclamation or suppression of something or somebody. 335 in one year — ^almost one a day. A Nero, a Caligula — ^might well be satisfied with such a record. The audacity of British coercion policy in Ireland — the complacent assurance of its officials that, controlling the cables as they do, they can get the ear of the world for any story they care to "put over" — were strikingly indicated in 1918. After the unpardonable kidnapping of 91 Irish leaders in May in an effort to break up the new National party they came to realize the truth of the defiance flung at them in the little Ulster town of Cootehill the morning after the kidnapping: "You can kill our leaders, but you cannot kill Sinn Fein," — cried out banners hung acrass the streets of Cootehill. It was the superb challenge of the rank and file of Ireland's patriots: "You can kill the few you hold helpless in your prisons, but you cannot to-day slaughter a nation, and while an Irishman exists on Irish soil he will stand for a free Ireland." Dublin Castle soon began to realize this. But if they could not slaughter a nation, they could with proclamations penalize and suppress it. So on July 4, 1918, when the United States were celebrating the anniversary of their escape from the British Lion, British officialdom in Ireland prodlaim.ed and outlawed over four-fifths of the Irish Nation — ^making illegal all public assemblies and all membership in all the great national so- cieties of Ireland, including Sinn Fein which has scores of branches in every county in Ireland. With the grim humour of their kind they selected Independence Day as a fitting one to demonstrate that there was still a green comer of the earth that could be made to squirm under the Lion's paw. A PROCLAMATION EVERY DAY. In 1918 there were only 32 proclamations. In 1919 there were 335. How Ireland fared under the last may be realized from a calm account of what it endured in 1918. Last year is really indescribable in this regard. "Not even a semblance of free speech is allowed to exist in Ireland. In this same year of 1918 as many as thirty-two proclamations were issued declaring unlawful national activity of every kind and culminating on July 4, 1918, in an official declaration that every assembly of the Irish people in any part of Ireland was from that date illegal and criminal. Men who, denying the right of any alien government so to proclaim, spoke publicly after that date were tried by courts- martial and were for that act alone — ^and without any relation to the words spoken, in many cases given the atrocious sentence of two years' hard labour. . . . Per- sons who were known to have been listeners to these speeches were arrested, tried by enemy army officers . . . and actually sent to a. criminal jail for three months." Irishmen continued, of course, to speak, and Irish men and women continued to listen and British Jails grew crowded. For whatever the individual might suffer, they were de- termined the Nation should be free. SUPPRESSIONS IN 1920. It might be supposed that after 1919 nothing was left in Ireland that could be suppressed. But the Irish are irrepressible. The Irish Congress, itself under a British proclamation — but holding its regular sessions in spacious cellars, in lonely mansions, in a variety of 31 places— was still functioning. It established an Irish Industrial Commission to do for Ireland's trade at home what their Consuls were doing abroad. This, too, was sup- pressed. For it is as true to-day of British policy as it was in 1907, when Arthur Chamberlain, brother of the Imperialist Statesman, and Chairman of Kynoch's, stated in Dublin "that it was a definite part of English policy to prevent any serious industrial or commercial development in Ireland; that he was convinced that policy was wrong, but that it was equally held and practised by Tories and Liberals." (Interview of Arthur Chamberlain with Arthur GriflSth in July, 1907, at Dublin, and reported by the latter in his paper, "Nationality.") This suppression then was only a consistent following out of an old policy. The fol- lowing despatch describing the suppression is from Ireland on January 21, 1920: The sittings at Cork of the Irish Industrial Commission set up by Dail Eireann, the Republican Parliament of Ireland and representing over 75 per cent of the Irish people, were suppressed by force yesterday. Police armed with rifles raided and occupied the City Hall in which the sittings of the Commission were to have been held. The Commission moved to the Municipal Art Gallery, Cork, where evidence was heard for a few hours, when that place was also raided by the police and the Commission ejected. The Irish Industrial Commission is solely concerned with an enquiry into the industrial resources of Ireland and has no connection whatever with any political movement. The Irish daily and other papers have been warned that if they publish any of the evidence given before the Commission, they will be suppressed. The members of the Com- mission and the witnesses who have been called before it have been drawn from all parties and are acknowledged experts in the various industrial questions with which the Commission deals. These members and witnesses include: — Mr. George Russell (AE); Professor O'Rahilly, M. A.; Col. Moore; Mr. T. John- son, treasurer of the Irish Trade Union Congress; Mr. R. N. Tweedy, a noted engineering expert; Professor Wibberley; Mr. E. E. Lysaght; Mr. Smith Gor- don, Member of the I. A. O. S.; Sir Henry Grattan-Bellew ; Professor Ryan; Mr. A. Robb, Ulster Linen Manufacturer, etc.. etc. 1 32 Ill— (h). SUPPRESSION OF 53 NEWSPAPERS. In addition to this determined effort to destroy free speech in Ireland and to quiet even verbal protest against the ruthlessness of her militarism in Ireland. England's oflBcials have suppressed 53 Irish newspapers since early 1916 — have prohibited the foreign cir- culation of 28 others, and in 1919, as in 1916, prohibited the circulation of American papers in Ireland. Behind her barricades of tanks, machine guns and soldiery — behind a passport cordon which could be passed only by England's friends (which included the professional thugs and burglars who have been let in from England to Ireland in the past six months) — behind the controlled cables and with the genuinely Irish press denied to the outer world — England has tried to keep from the world all real knowledge of her ruthless regime in Ireland. At the same time her agencies were diligently spreading her official "unofficial" stories about her gagged victim — and Ireland was traduced in every comer of the world where modem journalism penetrates. Acts by Irishmen springing from her own terrible provocation — acts committed by her own criminals introduced into Ireland — were given out as evidence of the Irish people's lawlessness and their "intrigues" with foreign governments. The following papers have been suppressed during the period mentioned: "Ballina Herald," Ballina. "Belfast Evening Telegraph," Belfast. "Bottom Dog," Limerick. "Cork Examiner," Cork. "Cork Weekly Examiner, 'I^Cork. "Cork Evening Echo," Cork. "Clare Champion," Ennis. "Enniscorthy Echo," Enniscorthy. "Evening Herald," Dublin. "Fainne an Lae," Dublin. "The Factionist," Limerick. "Irish Freedom," Dublin. "Galway Express," Galway. "The Gael," Dublin. "Honesty," Dublin. "The Irishman," Dublin. "Irish World," Dublin. "Irish Worker," Dublin. "Irish Volunteer," Dublin. "Ireland," Dublin. "Kilkenny People," Kilkenny. "Kenyman," Tralee. "Killamey Echo," Killamey. ' In April, 1918, twenty-eight papers Government. "Kerry Weekly Reporter," Tralee. "Kerry News," Kerrv "The Leader," Dublin. "Limerick Leader," Limerick. "Limerick Echo," Limerick. "Liberator," Tralee. "Mayo News," Westport. "Munster News," Limerick. "Meath Chronicle," Navan. "Nationality," Dublin. "Newcastle West Observer," Newcastle West. "New Ireland," Dublin. "The Republic," Dublin. "The Spark," DubUn. "Scissors and Paste," Dublin. "Sligo Nationalist," Sligo. "Sinn Fein," Dublin. "Southern Star," Skibbereen. "The Voice of Labour," Dublin. "Waterford News," Waterford. "Southern Democrat," Charleville. "Westmeath Independent," Athlone. "The Worker," Dublin. "The Workers' Republic," Dublin. were denied foreign circulation by the British 33 Ill-(i). COURTS-MARTIAL: 519. "I have seen some of these courts-martial. They deliver savage sentences for the most trivial offences. . . . The prisoner does not plead or cross-examine. Nobody cross-examines. ..." Major Erskine Childers, D.S.O., English Veteran of the Great War. Irish trials, Judges and Juries are traditionally a joke in legal circles within the British Empire. It was from Irish Courts that Alfred the Great introduced into England the Trial-by-Jury, but since the Brehon Laws of Ireland have been suspended and British law in operation there, trial by jury in Ireland has mostly been a solemn farce. The Judges are necessarily partisan, or they would not secure their appointments. In every generation the names of certain British Judges in Ireland have reeked in the nostrils of decent men. And Norbury and Sadlier and "Peter the Packer" have their prototypes always. The jiuies have been selected and stimmoned by the police, the omni- present, always active agents of British "law and order" in Ireland. To-day when the police find it increasingly difficult to secure any man willing to take their viewpoint, Dublin Castle has had to drop even the hypocrisy of trials by jury, and finds itself better served by "Courts-Martial" — "Crimes Court" — or Jedburgh Justice, which is no trial at all. The "Crimes Court" consists of one or more magistrates especially selected by the English Viceroy. They are frequently ex-officers of the British army of occupation and must necessarily hold British ideas of Irish politics. They act without a Jury, and their jurisdiction extends over the whole Island. "In other words," says "Two Years of English Atrocities in Ireland," "the Ix)rd-Lieu- tenant having discovered two or more willing tools, can and does send them to any part of Ireland where the conviction and imprisonment of certain men and women are desired. In actuality the "Crimes Court" is a sort of ambulatory coiu-t-martial made the meaner by its effort to masquerade as an evidence of democratic Justice," The Courts-Martial, which have been held with increasing frequency in Ireland, are composed of officers of the English army. "They sit to 'try' alleged political offences under a Special Code designed to substitute for trial by jury the summary Justice of the army of occixpation; the Judges who are necessarily steeped in political prejudice, have no legal experience or knowledge, and it is only in very rare cases that they have the help of a competent and impartial legal adviser to guide them; they are generally left to the safer guidance of their own instincts." (Ibid.) , PROTESTANT LANDOWNER COURT-MARTIALLED. One of the most notable of the Irish patriots who is now serving a sentence imposed by court-martial is Robert Barton, T.D., a rich Protestant landowner of Wicklow, Min- ister of Agriculture in President de Valera's Cabinet, and who was himself in 1916 as a Volunteer Officer in the British army detailed to help put down the Easter Rising. What he learned then changed all the British views in which he had been bred, and when he could secure his discharge from the English army he entered upon the Sinn Fein political campaign of 1918. Arrested and court-martialled after one of his speeches, he escaped from jail on St. Patrick's Day, 1919, and for ten months was "on the run" — which means an outlaw in British parlance, but the honored guest in every Irish home where he might find himself. The daring of an Irishman "on the run" was well exemplified to the members of the Ameri- can Commission during their visit to Ireland, for Barton not only entertained them in his own manor house by historic Glendalough, but he attended one session of the Irish Con- gress, and joined them as a guest at the Lord Mayor's reception for the Americans. It was true that a cordon of soldiers and machine-guns surrounded the Mansion House for hours before the reception, and Barton was one of the men they sought as they ran- 34 ^cked the Mansion House— but after the soldiers withdrew, Barton with his comrade "outlaw,' O'Kelly, appeared in the receiving-line in evening-dress with every evidence of a calm and- imhurri«i toilet. Early in this year (1920), however, Barton was again seized by the police, as they raided a house hoping to find other patriots. He was court-martialled, and is now serving a three-year sentence. His arrest and sentence are outrages against human liberty. So are other daily occurrences in Ireland, yet the Irish people are going ahead in their con- test with a grim, quiet heroism that is too near yet to be fully appreciated. Clement Shorter, an English Journalist of note, stated in a recent interview in Dublin: . "I see a militarism to-day (in Ireland) which is unparalleled in Europe, with machine guns and tanks and armored cars everywhere." "• . . — and Young Ireland is not dismayed." (London Daily Mail, Dec. 11, 1919.) 35 IV, MISCELLANEOUS OUTRAGES. "The fact is, Castle Government in Ireland is infamous. Men are spirited away without charge or trial, children are arrested for selling flags or whistling derisively at the police, fairs or markets on which the whole agricultural population depend for their livelihood are stupidly suppressed without cause. "This fatuous reign of ineffective coercion brings its inevitable train of crime and outrage, and the criminals appear to be about the only persons who escape Mr. MacPherson's clutches." Capt. Wedgwood Benn, English M.P., in letter to Edinburgh Evening News, quoted in Dublin,- Evening Telegraph of August 1, 1919. KIDNAPPING CHILDREN. The details of the kidnapping of the Connors child were suppressed by the British censor in Ireland, but are given here in a statement by the mother of the child, who was only 11 years old: "On Monday, February 10, 1919, my boy, Timothy, as he was leaving school at Greenvant, was stopped by a body of police, who asked his name; then the District Inspector asked him some questions and he was lifted into a motor wagon surrounded by soldiers and police and driven off crying to Tipperary bar- racks. His father happened to be on the road near at hand and saw him taken away, but the police refused to answer him as to why he was taken or where he was to go. "We both went to Tipperary barracks to see him, but though we waited there over two hours we were told nothing, except that he would be all right and we were not allowed to see him. No one was allowed to see him and no account of why he was kept was given to anybody. I next heard from rny neighbors that he was seen at Limerick Junction on Friday, 14th, with a big coat over his head and , crying bitterly as he was put into the Dublin train accompanied by four police- men. At Thurles Station he was also seen crying. His father and I came to Tipperary to find out about him, but were given no information. He was kept in Dublin eight weeks and three days, and we had no knowledge where he was and I was very troubled because he was not strong but a nervous child. "While he was in Dublin he was examined every second day at Dublin Castle and questioned about a thing he knew nothing about. He was promised money and clothes and that he would have a good time, if he would tell that such and such a person shot the police. During all his stay in the police barracks a police- man with a rifle and revolver was constantly with him day and night; he was never allowed to go to Church, nor to stop anybody outside of the police and authorities. "My other son, aged 18 years, was arrested at the house where he worked, on February 12th, and had to endure a similar ordeal, being kept in close confine- ment, without bed, or change of clothes, exercise or company for seventeen days, and was then dismissed without explanation or apology." Statement of Johanna Connors, of Greenvant, Tipperary. HARSH TREATMENT FOR WOMEN. "The allegation that women of respectability and refinement are arrested without warrant, transported to distant parts and badly treated, is quite true. It happened to my wife after her arrest. She was arrested in CrossmoHna and ultimately taken to Castlebar to be handed over to the military. They refused to receive her. She was then kept in the police barracks there and in the end turned adrift in a strange town and refused her fare back home, or even her hotel expenses for the night. Altogether she was ten days in custody, during which time she had no sleeping accommodation or other accommodation fit or proper for a woman. . . ." Extract from statement of John C. Sheehan, June 19, 1919. 36 POLICE DESTROYED WOMEN'S SHOP. "The Misses Sharkey of Strokestown, County Roscommon, who were twice imprisoned for selling 'seditious' literature, which had been passed by the English Press Censor in Ireland, had all their goods to the value of jl7,250 coi5iscated by armed poUce on May 22nd, 1919. The goods consisted of stationery, books and general drapery goods. As a result, these two girls were forced into bankruptcy. The goods have now, after six months, been restored, but in such a condition that they realized only M25 in an auction sale." Irish Despatch, Nov., 1919. JAIL FOR SINGING SONGS. At a special Crimes Court, held recently in Castlebar, Martin Thornton, Irish teacher, and Patrick Hoban, were sent to jail for two months under heavy escort, the former for reciting a "seditious" recitation and the latter for singing a song called "The Dublin Brigade" at a local concert. Michael Costello, Drumsna, was at Cavan sentenced to fourteen days' imprisonment for singing a song when passing a police patrol. IRISH REGIMENTS HURRIED AWAY. "Iri.shmen in London who take no part in politics, looking from a distance at the sore plight of their coimtry, cannot help corelating with recent untoward events there the fact — of sinister portent — ^that out of seven regiments ordered to remote Eastern stations, no less than four are Irish regiments. Why, they ask, this anxiety to get these Irish regiments out of the way?" London Correspondent, Irish Independent, January 12, 1920. History gives the answer. In the years before the prematurely provoked Irish Rising of 1798 all the Irish regiments were hurried away from Ireland and the country gradually planted with British soldiery. At the same time with 18th century tactics (more cruel but not more effective than those related here of 1920) the country was being driven to despair and torture. Half-hangings, pitch-tar caps on head, whippings to death and other such practices impelled Sir John Moore, the gallant hero of Corunna, to resign his command in Ireland as a protest against the outrages. Even General Abercrombie, Chief-in-command, also declined to remain in Ireland when he learned, as he 6flBcially reported, that — "Every cruelty and crime that could be committed by Cossacks or Calmucks had been committed in Ireland by the army and with the sanction of those in high office." Abercrombie and Moore, as British officers and gentlemen, would have protested in 1920 against the assassination of Lord Mayor MacCurtain, and the kidnapping of Lord Mayor O'Kelly. No British official in Ireland is known to have protested to-day. MILITARY RULE AND COST OF LIVING. The English Jli>IIT*nW»i"'-- thousands of other acres has been decreased, the mean temperature of the coun- try has been reduced, and tubercular disease has doubled its percentage . . ." "In 110 years ten 'Commissions' appointed by that Government have reported these facts — and all reported on simple schemes by which this periodical devas- tation could be prevented. In every .case the reports have been ignored. A hundred years ago, an expenditure of fifty thousand pounds would have pre- served the dwellers by the Shannon, the Barrow, and the Bann from these inunda- tions. It would have saved the people of the country millions of money — but that money would not be permitted to be expended by those who imposed, gathered and enjoyed the taxes of the Irish people." COUNTY COUNCILS* OFFER REJECTED. "A few years ago the English Government ordered an 'Official Inquiry' to '' find out what ten Commissions and Inquiries had already reported — the cause and remedy for these inundations. The Inqtiiry reported as usual, and the County Councils of the affected areas offered to supply part of the cost of a proper system of arterial drainage. What happened? The English Government re- fused to permit any of the proceeds of that Irish taxation which it sent to its Treasiuy to be applied to the work. "And so again thousands of people are suffering destitution and misery, hun- dreds of farms are under water, and the produce which should supply food for the people is being destroyed — because Ireland's money will not be permitted to be used to serve Ireland's interests." SUPPRESSING IRISH LOAN AND PROGRAMME. "On Tuesday, September 9th, 1919, a Proclamation was issued by Lord French and the Privy Council of Ireland suppressing Dail Eireann, the National Assembly elected by the people of Ireland in December, 1918. It is interesting to note that no such move was made by the English Government until Dail Eireann had framed and published a constructive programme for Ireland. Consvds had been appointed in foreign countries to watch Ireland's trade and industrial interests; the maintenance and development of the Irish Fishing industry had been decreed, and a large sum of money authorized to be used for this purpose; a National Com- mission of Enquiry into the Resources and Industries of Ireland had been ap- pointed; and a National Loan floated to aid these and other purposes of National importance." Irish Despatch, September 10, 1919. The Consuls proceeded to their posts abroad; but the Commission into the Resources and Industries of Ireland was harried and hunted in its sessions and finally suppressed, newspapers being previously prohibited from reporting its progress. The Irish National Loan is being subscribed abroad and in a remarkable degree in Ireland — considering the handicaps placed upon it there. For publishing the prospectus of the Loan the entire National Press of Ireland was closed down. Hundreds of houses were raided by military and police in search of lit- erature advocating the Loan. Mr. Alex MacCabe, Member of ParUament for South Sligo was sent to prison for three months and Mr. W. M. Swanton, prominent townsman and merchant of Castletownbere, County Cork, was sentenced to five months imprisonment, the former for speaking publicly in favour of the Loan, the latter for exhibiting the Loan prospectus in the window of his business premises. A man from Cork has been sent to prison for two months for carrying a Loan prospectus in his pocket. Warrants have been issued for the arrest of many other men who spoke in favour of. the Loan and the latest reports from Ireland state that the English Govern- ment's campaign against the Loan "is being continued with a vigour amounting almost to ferocity." HEAVY FINES ON IRISH PEOPLE. The Recorder of Galway — an English appointed magistrate — ^has awarded 1,200 pounds compensation to a police sergeant who lost an eye whilst endeavotuing to arrest a lunatic who "held the police at bay with a shot gtm and ultimately perished in the flames of his own cottage." The amotmt is to be levied off the rate payers of Galway district as if they were responsible for the madman's actions. This decision has been given under the Mali«ious Injuries Act by which the Irish people have been mulcted in fines amounting to many hundreds of thousands of pounds for crimes with which they have no connec- tion and no sympathy. This system is the same as that pursued by the Germans in in- vaded Belgium. 40 TREATMENT OFjJIRISH MEMBERS. In December 1918 — 73 out of 105 Irish members were retiimed by constituencies au- thorizing them to establish an Irish RepubUc Government. Sixty-three (63) of these have been imprisoned by the English Government — many of them more than once. Thirty-eight (38) of these were imprisoned without trial of any kind for periods from three to eighteen months. Twenty-five (25) were tried by courts-martial or "removable" magistrates. They comprise representatives of the Episcopalian and Presbyterian churches, which two churches together constitute over 90 per cent of the Protestant population of Ireland, as well as of the Catholic Church. They include Barristers, Landlords, Farmers, Jour- nalists, Doctors, Professors, Mantifactiorers, Labor Unionists, Merchants and Public Officials. Last autumn the British Chief Secretary in Ireland stated that a number of these mem- bers of the Irish Congress had been arrested on charges of inciting to murder. Arthur Griffith, Acting President of Ireland, made a counter-statement that not one charge of that kind had been made against the Irish members arrested and the Chief Secretary's statement was consequently a false statement. CIVILIAN POLICE ARRESTED. As the regular police force in Ireland has been for the past five years more than ever utilized for purely political purposes, when the back-wash of Europe's post-war crime- wave reached Ireland last year, Irish farmers in ntunerous districts established their own Vigilance Committees. In this work begun at Abbej^eale, County Limerick, civil- ians organized patrols for the night, and they soon caused the district to return to its normal quiet. They were praised for their efficiency by correspondents of London papers in the country, and numerous districts followed their example. T sn — perhaps because they were keeping order, perhaps because they were Sinn Fein — the British armed con- stabulary gathered these civilian police into military lorries — practically encouraging the petty robberies to continue. ATROCITIES OF BRITISH PRISONS. The London Daily News of June 12, 1919, states: "The account given of the barbarities inflicted on political prisoners in Mount- joy is probably only too accurate in the main, and we do not doubt that the story will do good service in forcing the full facts into the light." Under the heading of "Arrests" some space has been given to the miseries imposed on poUtical prisoners in Belfast gaol (see page 25), but there are certain hardships common to all British jails in Ireland, where political prisoners are treated as criminals. * The diet, however sufficient it might be for a physique broken with crime, has been utterly inadequate for the healthy young men imprisoned for political reasons. In a group of over 60 in one jail, each lost from twenty to forty pounds in a month. Not alone was the food insufficient, but it was particularly bad owing to deterioration of war-supplies. When the ventilation was too bad and insufficient the prisoners broke the windows and let in the air. On one occasion to punish the protesting prisoners, the windows were screwed down so that not a breath of air could enter. A seemingly guileless young American protagonist of the British jailers cited as an indication of leniency the songs and shouts of the prisoners in Belfast jail audible in the street below. A statement by one of these prisoners, a yoimg baftister, is now before the compiler — ^and there is that in it which provokes to smiles — and to tears. For the young men had evidently accepted the prison life and its rigors to be as much a part of the strug- gle for freedom as everyday home-life was their rule in times of peace. THE ONENESS OF IRISH PATRIOTS. The simple words suggest the oneness of the political prisoners in this and all jails. It hints at the fierce stubborn determination steeling young men, some of whom had pre- viously been regarded as all gentleness. They have schooled themselves to endure prison life, but they will not, even at the risk of greater hardships, submit to the treatment of criminals which tacitly would slur their cause, their Republic, their country — their own honor. * See page 64. 41 This simple statement will bear pondering: "In singing and talking to each other out of the windows (from one locked little cell to another) we had only been exercising a right which we had won by- agitations and hunger-strikes innumerable . . . and if those people (in Belfast jail) objected to us exercising our prerogative it was no reason why we should forego it to make matters easy for those who had sent us there expressly to in- tensify our pxmishment," A "SINN FEIN OUTRAGE." When Lawrence Kennedy was shot one night after Christmas in Phoenix Park, the cables announced his death as "another Sinn Fein outrage," stating that he was one of a party of raiders attempting Ix)rd French's life. Like many of the other killings ascribed to Sinn Fein it was done by a British night patrol. The inquest proved — "... that the three young supposed raiders arrested in the Park after the oc- currence were perfectly entitled to be there, that they were returning from a dance at a friend's house, and that they were surrounded by a military patrol, bayonets placed against their throats and chests, and it was only by the mercy of Providence that a police inspector turned up and saved them. They were re- leased after twelve hours. "The other supposed raider who was killed with the military officer was a poor man who had been spending Christmas with friends and who was on his way home through the Park when he was killed on the main road far removed from the Viceregal lodge. He was surrounded and shot. The patrol went away. They returned, and seeing some sign of life in the unfortunate man, they plugged more shots into him. The sign of life might be that the poor fellow raised him- self, calling, perhaps for a drink of water, or for mercy, and yet as the evidence at the inquest showed, more shots were put into his body 'to finish him.' "The military officer supposed to be killed by the raiders was killed by his own men." (Summary of testimony at Inquest, at which the murder was definitely admitted by the Military.) "FREEDOM" IN IRELAND. Last November Lord French issued a request to the local authorities jn Ireland that all activities should be suspended for two minutes at 11 A.M. on the anniversary of the Armis- tice, so that all might reverently meditate on "Right and Freedom." At 11.20 A.M. on that morning Lord French ordered his military and police to burst in the door of the premises occupied by the elected representatives of Ireland and to "ar- rest all on the premises." Three members of the Irish Congress, elected by large majorities, together with the members of the office staff, were placed in a military motor lorry surrounded by soldiers with fixed bayonets, and driven to prison to meditate on England's conception of "Right and Freedom." IRISH LANGUAGE FORBIDDEN. "Little more than a month ago the 'London Times' described the Gaelic lan- guage of Ireland as among the 'world's rich inheritances,' for its light on social life and history in prehistoric Europe, for its fine expansion of romance and its early — the earhest — cultivation of poetry in rhyme. The movement to preserve that 'world's rich inheritance' is proscribed, and all England from Cornwall to John O'Groats is tinmoved. Its members are arrested or expelled from their meeting-rooms; ladies of position and education who collected for its funds have been flung into police cells and refused food for fourteen hours, and the monies they collected confiscated. The Gaelic festivals are prohibited and dispersed by force of arms. The Prime Minister of England attends and speaks in Welsh at the Eisteddfod, in Wales. The Chief Secretary for Ireland aJBFects an interest in the Comunn Gaidhealach of Scotland. Turn to Ireland — and the Gaelic tongue, the mother speech of Celtic nations, is proscribed." Dublin Evening Telegraph, January 21, 1920. IRISH EXHIBITION SUPPRESSED. "The Aonach na Nodlaig or Christmas Exhibition of Irish made goods, held annually in the Mansion House, Dublin, for the past twelve years, was suppressed by the English Government, who occupied with troops and police the Exhibition 42 premises. Thougli the Aonach had been announced for some weeks the notice proclaiming it was served on the Lord Mayor only a few hours before the opening of the Exhibition, and after hundreds of traders from all parts of Ireland had been put to the expense of erecting stalls and conveying goods and commercial staffs to Dublin." j^.^j^ Despatch, December, 1919. The suppression of the Aonach particularly hurt the several groups of women and girls in Ireland who earn their livelihood by the manufacture of art-craft objects and other luxuries fo^ which there is a large sale at the Christmas season and for which they pre- pare all year. CARSON'S "STRONGHOLD" SHAKEN— AND BRITAIN'S FIERCE PUNISHMENT. It is a subtler form of outrage by which this news of the Irish elections was blurred to the outside world. Up in Northeast Ulster is a distinctive small area adjacent to Belfast, which city was 300 years ago (and for almost 2,000 years before that) a fishing-village on the estates of the O'Neills. This comer alone out of Ireland's 32 counties might be described as the zone of British influence in Ireland, and it is a notable fact that the Irish municipal elec- tions of January have shattered all delusions about its being a Carsonite stronghold. The elections were fought on the basis of Proportional Representation which gave every possible advantage to Carson's British "loyalist" followers, yet — "Deny went Siim Fein. "In Lisbum a Sinn Fein led the roll. "In Liu-gan a 'Loyalist' majority of yesterday is now a minority of 4, opposed to 9 Labor and 2 Nationalists. "In Dungannon, where the Carsonite 'Loyalists' were 14 to 7 they have now only a majority of one. "In Cookstown, once all Carsonite 'Loyalists,' the retvims give 7 Unionists to 5 Nationalists. Says the Dublin Evening Telegraph of January 21, 1920. This paper pointed out that — "All over the area which Mr. Lloyd George proposes to stake out as the new State of Carsonia, the same revolt has manifested itself. Lurgan, Dungannon, Carrickfergus, Lame, Limavady, Cookstown, Lisbum — ^towns which to good Covenanters were what the holy places of Arabia are to good Moslems — ^have rejected Carson nominees in shoals, and set in their place Labour men and Na- tionalists. ..." In "this upheaval the Carsonites of Ulster have taken their first long step toward Sinn Fein and its gospel of a free Ireland — which was also the gospel of their own grandfathers in the days of Orr and Hope and Porter and Tone. INTIMIDATION AND SUPPRESSION. England's officials in Ireland did everything possible to prevent a free expression of the people's will at the polls. The following is a list with dates of the acts of aggression committed by the English Government in an effort to disorganize the Sinn Fein pre- parations for these Mimicipal Elections and to intimidate the supporters of the RepubUcan Party in Ireland: — Sept ^20, 1919. Entire Republican Press in Ireland suppressed. Oct ^15, 1919. Sinn Fein and all Republican organizations in Dublin suppressed. Oct 21, 1919. Weekly meetings of Sinn Fein Central Club suppressed. Nov. 12, 1919. Military and police raid headquarters of Republican Government and arrest and imprison the staff. Nov. 27. 1919. Sinn Fein and all Republican organizations suppressed throughout the whole of Ireland. Dec. 10, 1919. Sinn Fein and Republican Headquarters ordered to be closed. Dec. 12, 1919. Sinn Fein leaders arrested in Dublin and Provinces including the Secre- tary of the Sinn Fein Organization, and deported without trial. Re- publican Headquarters again raided and literature confiscated. Jan. 6, 1920. James J. Hoey, election candidate, arrested at Bray and deported. Jan. 7, 1920 Head Offices of Sinn Fein Organization, including offices of Election Department raided and closed by military and police. 43 Jan. 9, 1920. Motor permit .strikers' offer of reasonable settlement rejected by Gov- ernment, thus preventing use of cars to bring electors to the poll. Jan. 10, 1920. Kingstown Election rooms raided; literature confiscated. Jan.1-15, 1920. Sinn Fein candidates election manifestoes suppressed all over Ireland. Jan. 15, 1920. No letters delivered at Election Dept. at Sinn Fein Headquarters. Jan. 15, 1920. Sinn Fein election posters torn down by police all over Ireland. Jan. 15, 1920. President de Valera's cabled advice to Irish voters held up in transit and not delivered. Jan. 15, 1920. Sinn Fein voters in Cork City attacked by organized bodies of ex-soldiers. Lord-Mayor-elect of Dublin, Thomas O'Kelly, seized and deported. BRITISH THREATS IN JANUARY. The following English papers under the dates mentioned threatened the Irish people with intensified military repression if Sinn Fein carried a majority at the Election: Manchester Guardian - - Jan. 7, 1920 Daily Mail - - - - Jan. 12,1920 Daily News - - - - Jan. 14, 1920 Daily Mail - - - - Jan. 15, 1920 Notwithstanding these threats the Irish people steeled themselves for this second defi- nite constitutional rejection of British government, fully aware that in doing so they would bring on themselves increased military terrorism. IRELAND'S REPLY TO THREATS. In Belfast the anti-Carsonite minority jumped from 8 to 23 out of a total of 57. In Ulster as a whole — that Ulster advertised by Sir Edward Carson and the British Government as a province solid for the continuance of British domination in Ireland, the Municipal Elections resulted in only 255 Unionist members being retttmed on the Ulster Urban Councils out of a total of 573 leaving the non-Unionist representatives with 318 seats or a majority of 63. In all Ireland the returns are: Of the 1 1 municipal, corporations — 9 are Republican (Sinn Fein) 1 is Republican and Home Rule 1 is Unionist (Carsonite) 11 Of the 118 Urban Councils: 64 are Republican (Sinn Fein) 26 are Republican and Home Rule 26 are Unionist (Carsonite) 2 are Labour 118 FULFILMENT OF ENGLISH THREATS. After the election returns were annoimced the military storm broke — raids — over 1,170 in one week— --arrests — assaults — assassin9,tions! Previous chapters give a faint outline of the military "f rightfulness" in Ireland since then. The Lord Mayor of Cork who had made a vigorous beginning in assuming the duties of his office was assassinated in his own home by British Government police, in an attempt to intimidate other mimicipal officials planning to carry on the work for which the people elected them. Then still — with British jails filled with Irish political prisoners — with Dublin's Lord Mayor a prisoner in England — and Cork's Lord Mayor dying from the assassin's bullets, while his wife heroically solaced him: "You are dying for Ireland; die like a soldier" — the Irish nation stood outraged, sorrow-stricken, grievously woimded, but still unbroken and determined to be free — like Brian's wounded veterans who had themselves tied to stakes at Clontarf. And so she stands to-day, with but one question — " "How long, O Lord, how long?" 44 V. it CRIMES ATTRIBUTED TO SINN FEIN. M REVELATION OF POLICE METHODS IN IRELAND. "Patriots of Ireland! Champions of liberty in all lands — ^be strong in hope! Your cause is identical with mine. You are calumniated in your day! I was mis- represented by the loyalists of my day. Had I failed the scaffold would be my doom. But now my enemies pay me honor. ..." George Washington, at Mt. Vernon, 1788. It has already been noted with condemnation, and it will pass into history, that as soon as a truce of peace was signed in Europe, and England's forces could be withdrawn from France — a Reign of Terror began in Ireland. This statement is not one impelled by any bias in the mind of the writer. It is fully borne out by statements made by Englishmen and reproduced in Chapter IV. Up to this time — through 1916, 1917 and 1918 — the Irish people endured much coercion, martial law, interferences with trade and food supply and individual outrages that were reported in the censored press to the number of 8,928. They did not retaliate quickly. They endured in a way that will make the word Irish as synonymous with endurance as Spartan now is. But after the armistice was signed and England began a fresh war in Ireland— in defiance of the Irish Nation's self-determina- tion at the polls in December, 1918 — then Ireland's endurance broke. Since that time England accuses Irishmen of the acts of retaliation set out in Table A : COMPARATIVE TABLES. Table A. Table B. Outrages alleged to have been com- mitted by Sinn Fein from May 1st, 1916 to December 31st, 1919. Outrages committed by the armed forces of the English Government in Ireland from May 1st, 1916 to December 31st, 1919. Murders 20 Murders 59 Firing at the person 77 Firing at the Person 117 Assaults 63 Armed assaults 364 Injviry to property 279 Raids on private houses in which in - jury was frequently done to prop - erty 12,888 Firing into dwellings 41 Arrests 6,655 Raids for arms 589 Deportations 2,086 Incendiary fires 70 Sentences 2,181 Threatening letters 180 Proclamations and Suppressions 398 Miscellaneous offences 210 Suppression of newspapers 54 Courts martial 567 Total 1,529 24,359 On a careful analysis this Table A resolves itself into — (a) — 20 murders. (b) — 77 firing at the person. (c), (d), (e) and (f) — Assaults, Injury to Property, Firing into Dwellings, Raids for Arms — can all be grouped together under the total given for Raids for Arms and attacks on barracks of Britain's Royal and Armed Constabulary. These items illustrate Taylor's dishonest system of duplicating charges. (See p. 46.) 45 (g), (h) and (i) — Most of the Incendiary Fires and Miscellaneous Offences are not political offences by Irish Republicans but offences against order such as occur in any country. The "threatening letters" do not permit of this classification as ordinary, for they are largely the work pf the British police forces. So common in times of coercion and provocation in Ireland were these "threatening letters" during the past century that the "planting" of threatening notices by the con- stabulary in Ireland has for years been referred to as jocularly in the British Empire ?.s Canada's passion for signing petitions. The first, in itself a siu-vival of the land- war, is known to provide the constables with enUvening incidents according to their general instructions as agents provocateurs: the second is held to be a useful means of filling up long quiet winter seasons. Since the completion of that Table A (January 1, 1920) England has accused the Irish people of fourteen more killings, while the Irish press reported six, in each of which the jury's verdict definitely fotmd that members of the British armed forces had committed the crimes. These include the barbarous assassination of the Lord Mayor of Cork, the miu-der of Milholland of Dundalk and other leaders in the Republican movement. ATTEMPT ON LORD FRENCH'S LIFE. A few months ago an attempt upon the life of Lord French, British Viceroy in Ireland, was announced. A sage comment on this affair was made by George Bernard Shaw, writ- ing on January 3, 1920,. in Sir Horace Plunkett's paper, the "Irish Statesman:" "When such incidents used to occur in Russia before any considerable invest- ments of French or British capital had taken place there, the English newspapers, notably 'The Times,' used simply to ask the Tsardom what it expected if it sup- pressed every popular liberty . . . There is absolutely no remedy except the cessation of the present political relations between the two cotmtries, which are simply criminal relations, incapable of breeding anything outside their own kind." The whole world was again informed of the "cold, heartless and savage" murder of Magistrate Alan Bell, aged 70, on March 26, by Irishmen who dragged him from an electric car in daylight and shot him. SORDID HISTORY OF BELL. But the cables that told of the murder of this old man refrained from telling the world that, as a member of the British garrison in Ireland, he had filled his years from his cadet days to old age with acts of violence to the Irish people and their national rights. He began his career as a protege of the infamous detective-chief, James Ellis French, after- wards convicted of felony. In the Land League days of Pamell's and Davitt's leadership and ever since, Bell carried on actively the work of the British garrison against Irish nation- hood. He became notorious after the murder of Peter Dougherty, near Croughwell, years ago, when in spite of every possible police effort, his subordinates were found guilty of the murder — ^and reprieved! Expert employer of agents provocateurs and the despised "G men" (secret service detectives, Britain's spies in Ireland), he spent his last years resident in Dublin Castle in a web of malignant alien intrigues against Ireland — colleague and collaborator with French, Taylor and MacPherson. OFFICIAL STATEMENTS— NEW METHODS OF TAYLOR. This official White Paper list of "Crimes attributed to Sinn Fein" is a new method of attack upon the Irish people and their leaders devised by Sir John Taylor, who has been Lord French's most active aide in Dublin Castle since French arrived there. This is shrewder, safer and less expensive than the methods employed in Pamell's day, when Taylor, a secret service agent under Arthur Balfotu- at Dublin Castle, was brought to London to collaborate with Piggott (known in history as the "Times" forger), with Houston and Loames, the "Times" solicitor. With the last Taylor was at work daily, and was liberally paid for his services both by the English Government and the "Times.' That earlier system of Taylor and his colleagues was as crude as it was daring, and in its exposure overwhelmed its makers instead of victimizing Pamell as intended. In the "White Paper" system of official statements Dublin Castle can always claim "privilege" as a bar to any action such as Pamell took against the "Times." In this wiy English officialdom can slander its political antagonists in Ireland in the press at home and abroad — with impunity. 46 METHOD OF DUPLICATING CRIME. Taylor has a unique system of classification, by which three or four outrages are evolved from one ofifence. For example, a raid upon a police barracks or a house for arms appears under these various headings: (a) Assault on dwelling. (b) Biurglary. (c) Firing at the person. (d) Assault endangering the person of — (e) Injury to property. Having regard to the enormous provocation — the manifold injuries and outrages in- flicted upon the Irish people, as indicated by the list of 24,359 (to-day over 32,000) out- rages admitted by British officials — ^it is to a New World mind almost beyond compre- hension, that Ireland's retaliation has only been what it has. HEROIC RESTRAINT THAT WILL BECOME HISTORIC. Through 1916-17 and 19185ithe great majority of the Irish people continued to protest their allegiance to the Irish Republic, their right to possess arms, to drill men, to speak the Irish language, to wave and sell the flag of the Irish Republic, but they made no re- taliation on the British forces. Nothing perhaps so well expresses the spirit of the Irish men during those years of heroic restraint as the Song of the Red Hanrahan, an early hero in Ireland's cause against England: "Angers like noisy clouds have set our hearts abeat, But we have all bent low and low — And kissed the quiet feet Of Cathleen, the daughter of Houlahain." They did not try to work out the satisfaction of their own passions; they only asked how to serve Erin best. For the inspiration of the Motherland — mystic Cathleen — dark Roisin, tragic Banba — ^and their unquestioning, self-sacrificing devotion to her is as po- tent to-day as ever it was in the hearts of Irishmen. HOW ENGLAND'S REIGN OF TERROR IS DIRECTED. A question frequently put to Ireland's friends in America by people honestly seeking information is this: "Are the Irish people responsible for the Reign of Terror there last winter and spring? The cables frequently suggest they are. If they are not, why is England making them suffer?" The actual facts can not be obtained by reading cable despatches to America, for great and rich and strong as this country is — the strongest and richest in the worlgl to-day — America does not control a single cable terminal in Europe, and all American cables con- cerning Ireland come through British mediums. Setting aside for a moment the necessary details, the Facts may be stunmarized: Since the Easter insurrection of 1916 Ireland has been held under British military law. Since the armistice was signed in November, 1918, and England's forces of repression could be utilized more freely a period of military Terrorism has existed in Ireland. This has not been a period of general and indiscriminate slaughter as in the days of Elizabeth and Cromwell, but a system of "official anarchy" and outrage, more severe than Germany's military rule in Belgium during the occupation of that country. Conditions in Ireland now are only comparable to a similar period of official anarchy in Ireland immediately preceding 1798, and which at that time impelled General Abercrombie in protest to resign from his command of the British forces and Sir John Moore to retire from his. Whether this system of firm government was evolved in the quiet of Downing Street, at the seat of British Empire, or within the grim walls of its Imperial outpost, Dublin Castle, the plan has been approved by both — while its immediate prosecution lay with three men. These three men are — (1) Lord French, Viceroy, who was for very grave reasons politely cashiered out of the chief command of the British forces in France, and who in the autumn of 1918, "swore a mighty oath to end all this damned nonsense ... 'I will crush the vermin underfoot,' " he vowed. {Freeman's Journal, December 15, 1919.) 47 (2) Sir Ian MacPherson, who found shelter in Dublin when London was becoming unpleasantly vocal about the ignoble post he had previously filled, and which cannot con- veniently be described otherwise than as Lord High Supervisor of the Red Light District behind the British forces in France. (3) Sir John Taylor, British Under-Secretary, a self-confessed aide, during the Balfour regime at Dublin Castle, of the Dublin Castle-London Times plot of forgery against Pamell, and one who has grown hoary in British secret service and Castle misrule in Ireland. It is this man who has invented a more subtle method to-day for defaming the Irish people and their leaders in his Government Statements of "Crimes attributed to Sinn Fein." All three officials have been the direct exponents of the coercion and miUtarism (or as it is called in England, "firm government") which has provoked Irishmen in the past year to retaliate. As the British Labor Party's delegation reported, there were no murders of policemen by young Irishmen, until the police began their numerous acts of violence. ARE THESE CRIMES BY SINN FEIN? One of the mvu-ders charged against Sinn Fein was that of a resident magistrate in West- port. It became known in time that the murder grew out of a love-intrigue — the magis- trate being shot, not by a Sinn Fein member, but by an officer of the Constabulary. In KUlamey on February 3 there was another case of the mortal wounding of a con- stable, shot in the panic following a bayonet-charge, when the police had fired upon an Irish crowd. The wounded man first declared that the civilians had shot him — then learn- ing that he was dying he admitted that a brother-constable had accidentally shot him when firing on the crowd but for fear of htirting his comrade's standing he had blamed it on the civilians. When the boy Francis Murphy was shot in his home as he sat studying one night, British sympathizers spread the tale that the lad must have been a member of some secret society or was killed in a private feud! The inquest very clearly laid the guilt upon the shoulders of the military. It is not alone with regard to murders that men in Ireland's national party refuse to be saddled with the long list of crimes compiled by Taylor. Several men convicted of crime in Ireland during the past year were ex-soldiers, and more than two were war- veterans aspiring to join the constabulary. At Galway in January two of these veterans were sentenced for an attack upon the police barracks at Roundstone, but at the time of the attack it was cabled to this country as a "Sinn Fein outrage." The London Daily Herald for January 28th reports a meeting of the Ballinasloe CouncU, which refused to pay for extra police because acts of violence previously committed in the Banagher and Birr districts were done by a gang of ex-soldiers who had the protection of the pplice. "I was present at a fair in King's County (Banagher Fair), said the Chairman, and saw these ruffians assault people in the presence of the Royal Irish Constabu- lary, and all the while the police were laughing and looking on at the whole thing." ENGLISH PROFESSIONAL CRIMINALS IN IRELAND. "In February Messrs. Grace and Co., Jewellers of Talbot Street, Dublin, as a result of their premises having been burglarized four times in twelve months, pub- Ushed their decision 'to discontinue business until proper police regulations are forthcoming.' Although Ireland is the most heavily policed country in Europe, the police in Ireland are used almost solely either as spies upon the National Movement or as the armed suppressors of it. As a consequence, many gangs of criminals, seizing this opportunity have come to Ireland from Great Britain, and are allowed a free hand even in the principal Dublin Streets. "The Irish daily press has published details of two burglaries in Amiens Street — a principal Dublin thoroughfare — during which the burglars were disturbed by the owner of one of the premises. They declared in strong Cockney accents that they were 'Sinn Feiners.' Their mispronounciation of the term — 'Sin Fitters' — was conclusive evidence that they were not Irishmen and that they had not been in Ireland long enough to learn the correct pronounciation." Irish Bulletin, February, 1920. At a court held in Dublin in January in three out of five convictions for crime the offen- ders were professional English crooks, who could gain admission to Ireland although Irishmen of high character resident abroad are often denied that privilege. 48 A COUNTRY FREE OF SERIOUS CRIME. It is traditional of Nationalist Ireland — except during periods of political agitation and coercion, as in Pamell's Land- War and to-day — ^that the country is practically free of serious crime. Even this year the Recorder's report at the Criminal Sessions showed only six criminal cases, four of which were larcencies. In Donegal and Derry, two other Sinn Fein centres, the Judges received white gloves. In 1916 Sir John Maxwell stated to John A. Murphy, of Buffalo, N. Y. "Ireland is crimeless except for sedition." And it must also be noted that no killing was rightly or wrongly charged to Sinn Fein until after the close of 1918 — ^imtil after 49 admitted murders had been perpetrated by British Armed forces upon the Irish. WHY IRELAND HATES THE "POLICE." Sir Horace Plunkett writing of the Irish police force and British rule there says: "This monstrous substitute for statesmanship is super-imposed upon the largest police force in proportion to population in the world." Ex-Sergeant F. I. McElligott, a former member of this force writes of them: "The police are not to blame: they are the best disciplined, and in one sense the most efficient police force in the world. But the system — a. nationalized, armed and political force, employed in maintaining a brutal and indefensible sys- tem of police government — is wholly responsible for the outrages and murders of to-day. "Ireland has long enjoyed the 'privilege' of a nationalized police force, i. e. a semi-military organization officered by a class ascendancy and controlled, not by Local Authorities, but by the Crown, as a substitute for peace officers. Unlike all others policemen the R. I. C. are. equipped in military fashion with rifles, bayonets and bombs and their barracks (not stations) are now converted into fortresses. They are political inasmuch as they are employed to maintain 'the party in power,' to persecute, prosecute and coerce all who do not hold views in agreement with Dublin Castle, to prohibit and suppress the rights and opinions of the majority and to permit and (as in Lame gtm running and Belfast drilling) to encourage offences by the minority. Hence the R. I. C. have earned the title 'enemies of their country' and unfortimately they are socially ostracised even by their own kith and kin. Such is the situation as seen from without. Seen from within it is much more serious." TERRIBLE INDICTMENT OF SYSTEM BY AN EX-SERGEANT. "... With over 11 years experience in the R. I. C. (half that time a Sergeant) I say that the inner system is based on this principle, that it is necessary to per- petuate and maintain ill feeling between police and people — whilst waiting for an 'atmosphere' favourable for a settlement. This is both easy and simple under . the same military system where the police are not under the control of local authori- ties or even Chief Magistrate of a City. In Ireland a policemen cannot be sta- tioned in his native county, in any county adjoining it, or in any coimty where himself or his wife have any relations. 'Familiarity with the public' is an offence against police regulations punishable with transfer. Hence it is ordained that the poHoe force must be 'ahenated from the people' from top to bottom ..." "Physical coercion is applied openly and secretly by Dublin Castle. It is . applied openly where force is wron^ully and vmreasonably used in order to create ill feeling between the people and the police. It is applied secretly by many 'secret orders' which goad and drive the people into violence, retaliation and rebellion, ..." POLICE ARE OBLIGED TO BE VIOLENT. "Dublin Castle says — 'Remember it is essential that the people shall he roughly handled." "The proportion of police to population cannot be justified even on 'military grounds. Scotland with roughly the same area and population as Ireland has less than 6,000 police; Ireland has a fixed quota of over 12,000. As the country is over policed and the police over-officered, there is an 'authority' for every 3.1 men and a Sergeant for every 3.88 constables, 49 "Even under the Act of Union the police system in Ireland is brutal, obsolete, uneconomical and indefensible. The present deplorable condition of our unhappy country, and above all the spectacle of a fine police force murdered and ground down without mercy or consideration between those who are determined by all means and at all costs to maintain 'law and order' and those who by any means and at any cost are determined to make the present government of Ireland im- possible, force against force is the remedy and 'damn the consequences.' As a resvdt of this policy the police force has broken down, barracks have been closed all over the country and the people left without any police protection. Even so, the police are powerless to protect others by force, powerless to protect them- selves." PLAIN SPEECH ABOUT GOVERNMENT USE OF POLICE. "The Army of Occupation is for the protection of semi-military police and to help them in maintaining law and order. It has failed. Increase the army by 500,000 men, put a guard or garrison in every city, town or village, or scatter them like sheep on the mountams, and it will make no difference. Take them all away and a 'state of war' still exists. In other words, force wiU not prevent the Irish people from demanding self-determination, and unforttmately the Govern- ment are employing the poUce to suppress this demand in the most provocative manner possible. "The deficiency is in moral force, and the police themselves are convinced that moral force never tried will succeed where military and semi-military force have ,been tried and failed. By immediately disarming the R. I. C, 'raids' on bar- racks will be prevented and all police stations throughout Ireland will be safe from attack as the D. M. P. stations are at present. In the outskirts of the city of Dublin, in the village of Chapelizod there are two police stations within 100 yards of each other — one R. I. C. and one D. M .P. The former is locked, barred and bolted and the men are confined within a fortress of sandbags and wire, armed with rifles, bombs and rockets. The latter is even more open than Bishopgate Police Station in London and less likely to be 'raided.' "The police question then goes to the root of the Irish Question itself. One cannot be settled without the other." Mr. MacPherson, the British Chief Secretary for Ireland, alleges that the shooting of policemen is the excuse for the present regime of rigorous repression in Ireland. The Report of the English Labour Delegation which visited Ireland lately contains the fol- lowing : "No evidence was forthcoming to prove that the shooting of policemen pre- ceded the application of the policy of rigorous repression." MANUFACTURING CRIME IN IRELAND. This Continent has not been without instances — though rare fortunately — of manu- factured crime. The most appropriate for use here, because of its related origin, was the dynamiting (in a mild fashion) of a summer-home owned by the Imperialist Lord Athelston in Montreal in 1917. This was done by a small group oi very young French-Canadians, two of whom had been sentenced for larceny. Months later evidence was given in Court to show that the crime had been done on the instigation and with the physical aid of a special agent of the Department of Justice at Ottawa, who while gaining the friendship of these lads and suggesting to them a series of outrages, was actually drawing a salary from the Canadian Goremment, and reporting his "progress" each week. This was Canada's first notorious agent provocateur — the first introduction of British police methods of manufacturing crime and announcing it as done for poUtical reasons. It Was a most sinister incident, and one that made thoughtful Canadians very grave. The political complications arising out of the war had given the occasion for this despicable innovation of British secret-service tricks. In Ireland they are as old as the "Royal Irish" Constabulary, established by England after the so-called Union. WHOSE CRIME IS THIS? With what has been quoted here from Sergeant McElligott's statement, it is easy to understand how a boy's jeer or the cheering of political prisoners being driven by, has frequently caused in Ireland baton and bayonet-charges upon defenseless citizens. The crowd in retaliation wounds or kills a policeman — and the incident is blazoned to the world as another Irish outrage! Whose crime is this? 50 One eflfort to manufacture Irish outrages was frustrated on January 28, 1919, by the alertness of American Army watchmen in their aerodrome at Middleton, Cork County. An attempt to burglarize the place resulted in the Americans capturing two of the rob- bers. When their disguises were removed they stood revealed as members of England's armed forces in Ireland — Constables Cadogan and Rogers! They received only a few months' imprisonment, though young Irish lads are sentenced to two years with hard labour for singing patriotic songs. Had the constables escaped, this attack on American property would have been wired to every comer of America as a Sinn Fein outrage. In fact, this was done with a very similar happening, when the American steamer Pensacola was "raided for arms" last auttmin at Cork by men masked as Rogers and Cadogan were, — men who were not Sinn Fein supporters. It was only an unusual circumstance and a partial exposure by his comrades in crime that revealed the guilt of the infamous Sergeant-Constable of the "eighties," whose per- jured testimony had sent hundreds of innocent Irishmen to British prisons. Usually with the people helpless and the British government shielding the criminal constable, the latter goes on his way "making crime," unharmed and unhampered. Even when the constable or soldier does not make special individual eflfort to injure the Irish people and win money rewards or promotions, his very presence and the system under which he works provokes the Irish men to rid their country of this alien excrescence. ENGLISH GOVERNMENT SUBORNS PERJURY. The following despatch from Ireland arrived just before going to press: The suborning of perjury by the Headquarters of the English Military Government in Ireland and by the Chief ofificials of the Royal Irish Constabulary has just been exposed in the Dublin Law Courts. Mr. John Madden of Gortaha, County Tipperary, was arrested on September 3rd, 1919, on a charge of having murdered at Lorrha in the same county. Sergeant Brady of the Royal Irish Constabulary. Having passed through a series of preliminary investigations he was returned for trial before a "Special Jtiry" in County Dublin. The venue was selected because the Special Jurors of County Dublin are hostile in politics, and in the majority of cases, in race, to the mass of the Irish people. A conviction could, the English Law Officers in Ireland believed, be more easily secured there than anywhere else in Ire- land. On April 22nd, 1920, the trial of Madden before this Jtuy began. On April 23rd, 1920, the case concluded. From the list of Special Jurors the Crown picked twelve gentle- men who were known to be particularly amenable to their direction. The Crown Coimsel opening his statement laid special stress upon the importance of the evidence of two Crown witnesses — Constable Foley, Royal Irish Constabulary, and John Gilligan — ^and repre- sented that in calling these witnesses the Crown was acting in the name of the Irish people for the protection of law and order. The evidence of Constable Foley was that the night of the murder was a bright moon- light night and that in the two or three seconds before he hiriiself was shot he saw clearly John Joseph Madden firing at and killing the sergeant. In cross-examination he said there was no doubt whatever that Madden was the man who fired. When he was reminded that there could be no moonlight on the night in question, as a new moon two days old had set an hoiu: before the murder occurred, he still held it was a bright moonlight night. In further cross-examination he admitted that he had taken at least eight pints of porter ^ before going on patrol. John Gilligan swore that he was one of the gang that Madden led out to murder Ser- geant Brady. He described the circvunstances of the murder in full detail. A gun was • given him. He took his orders from Madden. He saw Madden fire and after the mur- der saw him hide the gtm in his house. But when cross-examined he admitted that he had made previous depositions concerning the miurder which were totally at variance with the evidence he was now giving. He achnitted further that at the time he was preparing his evidenop he was living at the Headquarters in Dublin of the Royal Irish Constabu- lary and had visited Dublin Castle, the Headquarters in Dublin of the English Govern- ment. As the cross-examination proceeded he broke down so completely that the Crown Counsel threw him overboard and denounced the witness they had previously praised as a "degenerate informer." Several reputable witnesses, including a doctor, proved that the night of the murder was a particidarly dark night, and witnesses of as gcxxi standing gave evidence that Madden was in his own home at the hoiu: of the mttrder. The packed jury, after 25 minutes' retirement, brought in a verdict of "not guilty," and Madden was discharged. 51 From the hearing of the case and the verdict, it was clear that not only had Gilligan and Constable Foley perjured themselves, but had obviously been coached as to the evi- dence they should give, by the Chief Officials at the Depot of the Royal Irish Constabu- lary and by Dublin Castle as well. Neither Foley nor Gilligan has been arrested for his perjury I The London "Daily Herald" in an editorial in its issue of April 26th commenting on this trial says: "It shows also that there is procurable in Ireland 'evidence' upon which the lives and liberties of Sinn Feiners can be sworn away by perjurers, prestimably for a consideration. And it would seem to be in the interest of some