De Valera's Irelands

by Dermot Keogh

  De Valera, assigned as adjutant to Commandant General Seán Moylan, had little success when he talked of peace to an intransigent, Liam Lynch.43He learned in early August of the death of Harry Boland. In his diary he recorded on 11 August: ‘Waiting in F[ermoy] barracks to leave. One of the most if not the most miserable day I ever spent. Thoughts! Thoughts!’44On the day that Arthur Griffith died in Dublin, de Valera was visiting the retired veteran member of the Irish Parliamentary Party, William O’Brien, at his home near Mallow. While there is an extensive account of their conversation in Bromage,45his diary recorded:

  He thought that not concentrating on Partition and later on breach by Collins of pact, we had the chance of bringing the country with us. He did not know how close my endeavours had been to his ideas. Had a ride with Hyde on ‘charger’. Slept at Kilpeadar House.46

  He learned of Griffith’s death the following day. Bromage records how a woman in the house where he was hiding found him sobbing when she brought him food. He had just read the news of his death in the paper.47De Valera left the house without eating anything. He recorded in his diary:

  Went for a walk in the fields – meditation. Any chance of winning? If there was any chance duty to hold on to secure it. If none duty to try to get the men to quit – for the present. The people must be won to the cause – before any successful fighting can be done. The men dead and gloomy – just holding on. How long will it last. Heard A. G. dead. He was I believe unselfishly patriotic – courageously. If only he had not stooped to the methods he employed to win.48

  The following day he asked the question in his diary: ‘I wish I could know his [Griffith’s] ideas when he signed that treaty – Did he think when it was signed I’d accept the fait accompli?’49

  These were not the thoughts of a man in battle command of the anti-Treatyite forces. He was a political leader being passed – at considerable risk to local anti-Treatyites – from one safe house to the next until he found himself in west Cork en route to Kerry. But de Valera changed his mind and made his way back towards Dublin. He made his way to Miss Barry’s of Ballylegan, near Glanworth. Crossing the ford there, he heard of the death of Collins. Taken to Dr Barry’s of Kilworth, he stayed the night of 23/24 August. He made his way through Callan and Fr Kelly of Rathoe, where he stayed from Saturday 26 to Monday 28 August.50Lynch, in a letter of 30 August, turned down the idea of a meeting of IRA commanders with de Valera.51The forces of the anti-Treatyites were not under de Valera’s control. According to Macardle, de Valera wanted the TDs who supported him to enter Dáil Éireann.52

  Part of de Valera’s problem was that a number of those most likely to exercise a moderating influence over the anti-Treatyite militants were in jail – Seán T. O’Kelly being among them. In Kilmainham, O’Kelly wrote that it would be far better ‘for the good of the country’ to try to end the hostilities. He prevailed upon Oscar Traynor and Tom Barry to contact the Provisional Government authorities.53Barry made the contact and Liam Tobin was sent to interview him. But the meeting ended ‘in hot words on both sides’, according to O’Kelly, after Tobin tried to ‘bully’ him and place obstacles in the way of the talks. He added:

  If they adopt bullying or hectoring manners and raise all sorts of petty quibbling points, such as that our people must write their notes only on paper headed ‘Provisional Government’, they are going the right road to secure a continuance of the war till the very last bit of ammunition of the republicans has been expended and the last of their men imprisoned or shot.54

  O’Kelly suggested that one of the bishops ought to be approached to act as a mediator. O’Kelly felt that Traynor and Barry were willing to go to talk with O’Connor and Liam Mellowes in Mountjoy. The rector of the Irish College, John Hagan, arrived in Dublin towards the end of August. He approached Mulcahy and put O’Kelly’s ideas to him. Mulcahy was not very enthusiastic but he sought to facilitate the monsignor. A letter from Mellowes and O’Connor to Hagan on 6 September 1922 demonstrated only intransigence. Both men joined in the ‘passionate longing’ that:

  the section of the countrymen now in arms against the Republic should end the senseless and criminal sterile and unite with us in its defence against the common enemy whose devilish machinations have, by the aid of the powerful and corrupt press in this country, stampeded them into continuing the war which the British forces hitherto failed to make effective.

  They promised Hagan, however, to hand on his letter to their superiors outside the prison. Hagan wrote that the communication did not show ‘anything like eagerness to arrive at an understanding’. He urged both O’Connor and Mellowes to meet the two men from Kilmainham (Barry and Traynor) as they would be ‘giving away no principles’. On 11 September, Mulcahy wrote to Hagan that he had given permission for the meeting. But in the meantime, Barry had escaped from jail while a note to Mellowes and O’Connor had gone unacknowledged.55It appeared that the minister’s instincts about the lack of will for peace were the more accurate.

  Hagan made one final bid to salvage the peace move by contacting de Valera. But the limitations on de Valera’s power to influence the military wing of the anti-Treatyites were evident in his reply. He suggested to the rector that he should see the prisoners first as ‘nothing will be gained by seeing us at the moment.’ He recommended that he see an unnamed friend in O’Connell Street who would be ‘able to give all necessary information from our point of view.’56

  The initiative foundered as had a peace move initiated by another clergyman who was working in San Francisco, Mgr John Rogers. De Valera had agreed to meet Richard Mulcahy in Dublin on 6 September. Both forces issued safe conducts to the other side. However, Mulcahy was advised by the anti-Treatyites to travel in civilian clothes.57Mulcahy was giving the anti-Treatyite leader a last chance before he set out on a definite course. Mulcahy took the meeting sufficiently seriously to issue an order which reduced routine raids as much as possible, limited the movement of troops and sought to avoid military activities. But the meeting with de Valera was not successful.

  Further peace efforts by the leader of the Labour Party, Tom Johnson, and the trade unionist, William O’Brien, did not meet with success. Dáil Éireann met on 9 September. Despite his personal wish to take part in the debate, de Valera and his associates were not present. Mulcahy requested the cabinet, in mid-September, to introduce emergency powers establishing military courts for soldiers or civilians found guilty of crimes ranging from armed attacks on the national forces to being in possession of arms or explosives or taking part in looting, arson and destruction of private property. Dáil Éireann approved the draconian proposals on 28 September by 48 votes to 18.

  Instead of calling off the futile struggle, de Valera and the anti-Treatyites attempted to regroup. A meeting of the army executive was held on 17 October and a decision was taken to set up an ‘Emergency Government’ of the ‘Republic’ with de Valera as President. Austin Stack was nominated Minister for Finance, P. J. Ruttledge was given Home Affairs, Seán T. O’Kelly got Local Government, Robert Barton was given Economic Affairs and the jailed Liam Mellowes was made Minister for Defence. It did not appear to the reasonable observer that de Valera and the anti-Treatyites were prepared to end hostilities at the earliest time.

  Convinced that de Valera was not going to sue for peace, the Executive Council met on 4 October 1922 and took a decision to approach the Roman Catholic hierarchy to secure a condemnation of the anti-Treatyites. The bishops did not disappoint. On 22 October a statement was published condemning the campaign of destruction which had resulted in murder and assassination and ‘wrecked Ireland from end to end’. Those involved were ‘guilty of the gravest sins, and may not be absolved in confession, nor admitted to holy communion, if they propose to persevere in such evil courses.’58

  Crestfallen, de Valera wrote apologetically to his friend, Archbishop Daniel Mannix of Melbourne, on 6 November 1922 that he had often wished ‘but had not the heart to write you.’ He said:

  The last pron
ouncement of the hierarchy here is most unfortunate. Never was charity of judgement so necessary, and apparently so disastrously absent. Ireland and the Church will, I fear, suffer in consequence.

  He spoke about the fait accompli of the Treaty agreement:

  The tactics subsequently resorted to were still more unworthy and made inevitable the existing situation which, once the document was signed, could have been averted only by the most delicate tact and rigorous straight dealing. I am convinced that the Free State Agreement must go. It has brought nothing but disaster so far, and promises nothing but disorder and chaos. It gives no hope whatever of ordered stable government. Human nature must be recast before those Irishmen and Irishwomen, who believe in the national right and the national destiny as in a religion, will consent to acquiesce in the selling of the national birthright for an ignoble mess of pottage, as they regard it. Think then of the prospects of a government which can only exist by outlawing the most unselfishly patriotic citizens of the state.

  He added that party feeling was ‘running rather too high now for calm dispassionate thinking, or for real statesmanship to have any opportunity.’ He held the IRB as being most responsible for the present situation but added:

  The people everywhere, young and old, are beginning to realise that the only salvation for the nation now is a return to the old Sinn Féin principle of cleaving to their own institutions, whilst ignoring the authority and the institutions which the foreigner has tried to impose.

  Returning to an old theme of his, de Valera wrote:

  I cannot but think of the hopes of this time a year ago – the almost certain prospect of a settlement which all could have accepted or at least acquiesced in, leaving us a united nation with a future to be freely moulded under God by ourselves. It is sad, but chastening to realise how rudely they were all blasted within a month … and I assure you of the affection and esteem of all who are striving now that the way may not be closed for those who may be destined to complete the work towards which the hopes of the nation have been set definitely since Easter 1916.59

  The Bishop of Galway, Thomas O’Doherty, expressed the anger of many when he wrote on 11 November to Mgr Hagan in Rome:

  Things are not very hopeful here. De Valera has allowed himself to be hoisted into the ‘Presidency’ on the remaining bayonets of Rory O’Connor’s squad. It is not a very dignified or comfortable position now. The Republic is out now for victory or extermination and the women are screaming or fasting.60

  The day before this letter was written, 10 November 1922, Erskine Childers was arrested at Annamore, County Wicklow, the home of his cousin, Robert Barton. He had been making his way to Dublin – probably at de Valera’s request – where, it was believed, he would be made secretary to the anti-Treatyite ‘government’.61Childers was sentenced to death on 18 November and he was executed by firing squad four days later.62The debate which followed the sentencing of Childers was marked by a certain Anglophobe vindictiveness on the part of a small number of government ministers.63De Valera must have silently blamed himself for what had befallen Childers.

  The grief of a number of prominent Irish bishops was revealed in their private correspondence. The auxiliary Bishop of Armagh, Patrick O’Donnell, wrote to Mgr Hagan:

  No event of recent years has saddened me in the same way as the execution of Erskine Childers. Since I heard of it I think of little else. I knew him some years ago and derived much friendly assistance from him during the Irish Convention [1917]. I think I was the first to suggest that his services would be sought at that time. So, much as I disliked intervening in any way, when I saw a few days ago that he was in jeopardy, I wrote to the Law Adviser suggesting that he should be spared. Plainly I had nothing for my pains. All the executions are deplorable especially that of poor Childers. I said mass for him today … Up to then the Irish government seemed to me to have done well on the whole and then, I can judge, wisdom left them. I trust it may soon return … Our cardinal and the Archbishop of Dublin are against the executions.64

  The Archbishop of Dublin, Edward Byrne, wrote in protest to Cosgrave. John Hagan wrote to say that he was glad to know that there was at least one voice raised on the side of mercy: ‘unfortunately deeds like this are bound to awaken distant echoes, and only one endowed with the gift of prophecy can venture to foretell where it is going to stop.’65

  De Valera had no control over the decision by Liam Lynch to issue an order on 27 November that all TDs who had voted for the ‘Murder Bill’ were to be shot on sight.66On 30 November, three other executions were carried out. Shortly after that a copy of an order, purporting to be signed by Tomás Derrig as ‘adjutant-general’ of the anti-Treaty forces, was found in the possession of a prisoner on his arrest. A copy was sent to Cahir Davitt who was in the Army’s Command Legal Staff. It provided for the ‘execution’ of all members of the Provisional Government, all members of the Dáil who had voted for the Army (Special Powers) Resolution, the members of the Army Council and most if not all of the Army’s Command Legal Staff. Davitt recorded: ‘We were generally sceptical as to whether this wholesale “execution” order was to be accepted at its face value when our doubts were tragically resolved on 7 December.’67Seán Hales, a distinguished west Cork military leader in the War of Independence, was shot dead leaving the Ormond Hotel in Dublin on his way to Leinster House. Another deputy, Padraic Ó Maille, who was travelling with him in the same sidecar, was seriously but not fatally wounded. This crisis completely eclipsed the formal coming into being of Saorstát Éireann (Irish Free State) on 6 December l922.

  Davitt was summoned to the adjutant-general’s office where the Army Council had been meeting on the evening of 7 December. Mulcahy told him that they had decided to set up a system of military committees to deal summarily with persons arrested in possession of arms, ammunition or explosives, while retaining the military courts to deal with cases other than those of persons caught red-handed. Any such person arrested would be brought as quickly as possible before a committee of officers. They were to investigate the circumstances of the arrest and report to the Army Council recommending a punishment. Mulcahy wanted Davitt to draft regulations for such a committee and have them ready that night. Davitt saw the committees as something in the nature of a drumhead court-martial. He said that they could have no judicial function since they could decide nothing but only make a recommendation. Each committee would have to include an officer from Davitt’s Command Legal Staff. He could ensure that the committee’s investigations were properly conducted and its report properly presented. But with regard to the un-judicial character of the proposed committees, Davitt said he would prefer that he should be requisitioned solely in his military capacity and that neither he nor any member of his staff would have responsibility for the military committees. He agreed to draft the communiqué which appeared under Mulcahy’s name the following day in the press.68

  At a meeting of the government that evening a decision was taken to execute four prisoners. The men were Rory O’Connor, Liam Mellowes, Dick Barrett and Joe McKelvey. Archbishop Byrne had spent a number of hours on the eve of the execution trying to persuade Cosgrave against taking the action. To compound the tragedy Rory O’Connor had stood as best man for Kevin O’Higgins. Mulcahy and Eoin MacNeill were believed to have proposed and seconded the motion for execution. Kevin O’Higgins accepted the decision with great reluctance. The following day the four men were executed in Mountjoy without due process as a ‘reprisal’ for the assassination of Hales and a ‘solemn warning’ to those associated with the four executed men who were ‘engaged in a conspiracy of assassination against the representatives of the Irish people.’ These were the terms used in the official communiqué.

  Archbishop Byrne wrote to Cosgrave on 10 December expressing his dismay that the term ‘reprisals’ had been used in the army communiqué announcing the executions:

  Now, the policy of reprisals seems to me to be not only unwise but entirely unjustifiable from the moral point
of view. That one man should be punished for another’s crime seems to me to be absolutely unjust. Moreover, such a policy is bound to alienate many friends of the government, and it requires all the sympathy it can get.69

  The superior general of the Calced Carmelites, Peter Magennis, wrote to John Hagan from the United States:

  I received the news of the shootings of four amongst which was dear friend Liam. That has given me a turn I am almost afraid to contemplate. I know those fellows [ministers] were contemptible curs, but it never occurred to me they were such vampires. Drunk with this sudden greatness their one idea is to revel in human blood.70

  The death of Seán Hales provided a good insight into what the tragedy of civil war had brought to many families. His brother Donal, who lived in Genoa, remained on the side of the anti-Treatyites. His sister Madge wrote to him:

  Our home is now a lonely one. Oh Dan it is heart-breaking to look back on poor Seán’s life and all he suffered for the cause of Ireland. I would give anything to know if the hearts of the men who took that noble life had one spark of pure love for their country. I am sorry Dan to say that there is more false passion on the Irregulars’ side than love of their country.71

  Saddened by his brother’s death, Donal nevertheless felt obliged to write to the Cork Examiner to protest over the ‘reprisal’ killings of the four anti-Treatyites in Mountjoy:

  Shocked at the violent death of my brother John I feel it however my duty to raise my voice in terrible protest against the cruel reprisal on the persons of the innocent prisoners shot by the authorities of the Free State in a Dublin prison, 8th Dec. l922. My brother would be the last to tolerate the inhuman act and in life affirmed the heads of the republican movement to be men of high and pure ideals, disinterested in purpose, without personal ambition and like himself struggling for the complete independence of their country.72