I Signed My Death Warrant

by Ryle T. Dwyer

  While Childers observed that Collins said virtually nothing during the ‘long and hot argument’, Barton described him as ‘morose and violent by turns’.

  ‘Up to this moment it had never occurred to us that Collins intended to follow the lead of Griffith but we had hardly started talking when he declared that it was his intention to sign also and Duggan, of course, followed suit,’ according to Barton. ‘It was as if the world fell in pieces around us. All three then turned upon Duffy and me.’

  ‘Collins insisted that we knew nothing about the extremity the country was in or the exhaustion of the Volunteers,’ Barton continued. ‘I remember his stating that he was not going to throw the 2,000 volunteers who had done all the work back into war in which they would be slaughtered whilst the rest look on. Duggan asserted that he would be false to all those who died beside him at the barricades in 1916 if he refused such terms as were offered contrasted with those that we had proposed and which had been turned down.

  ‘Collins was a member of the IRB, the watchdog of the Republican tradition,’ Barton noted. ‘His brilliant system had been rendered helpless by elimination of its key men. He knew that physical resistance, if resumed, would collapse and he was not going to be the leader of a forlorn hope. He intended to live to fight again.

  ‘We had the most frightful battle in the delegation, among ourselves at which the most terrific things were said to Gavan Duffy and to me by Collins and Griffith and Duggan,’ according to Barton.

  ‘Barton,’ said Duggan, ‘you will be hanged from a lamp post in the streets of Dublin if your refusal to sign causes a new war in Ireland.’

  Barton was shaken. He did not place any store in Duggan’s opinions, but he did feel that ‘Collins was in a better position to appraise our military position than anyone else’.

  At different times Griffith, Collins and Duggan were on the point of proceeding to sign without the others but Barton stalled them. The argument went on for so long that the delegation was still at Han’s Place more than an hour after the time limit set by Lloyd George had expired.

  ‘Three times they put on their hats and took their coats to go without us,’ Barton recalled. ‘The English had given us until 10 o’clock to decide.’

  When eleven o’clock passed without any sign of the Irish rep­res­entatives returning, the British became uneasy. ‘We had doubts as to whether we would see them again,’ the prime min­ister recalled afterwards. He realised that much depended on Collins. ‘If only Michael Collins has as much moral courage as he has physical courage,’ Lloyd George said to his colleagues, ‘we shall get a settlement. But moral courage is a much higher qua­lity than physical courage, and it is a quality that brave men often lack.’

  Barton’s signature was crucial. He had provided de Valera with the opportunity to use his own vote to exclude himself from the delegation, and without Barton’s support it was possible that the cabinet could undermine any agreement. ‘My dilemma was that whilst I knew the Cabinet and Ireland would face war under united leadership. I had no idea of what they would do when three of the principal leaders had “ratted”’, Barton wrote. ‘I was acting in a public capacity not a private one.’ After some two hours of argument, Barton began to wilt.

  ‘When three including Collins, whom I had always looked upon as the pivot in our army, had agreed what would the rest do when faced with war under divided leadership. Had I known Dev, Brugha and Stack better I would not have signed it.’ His problem was that he did not know if de Valera would support him if he decided not to sign. He therefore asked to be allowed to consult privately with Childers.

  As they left the room, did Collins just go down stairs to wait for the others? This could have been the scene that Kathleen McKenna witnessed of Collins asleep in the chair, while Childers and Barton talked together on a landing. Barton asked for the advice of his cousin. ‘He seemed to be in great torture of mind,’ Childers wrote to his wife Molly some hours later. ‘I said I believed he should stick to principle,’ Childers said, adding, ‘Molly will be with us.’

  This suddenly heaped even more pressure on Barton, because he thought that the women of Ireland who had already suffered so much, were being given no say. He decided to sign in order that the Dáil would have a chance to consider the agreement.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I suppose I must sign.’

  ‘At least stipulate that you sign under duress,’ Childers said.

  ‘We went in and he began with this which was contested by the others,’ Childers continued. ‘Then he hesitated and said he would sign sans phrase.’ Gavan Duffy had been holding out, but he said he could not hold out if the other four agreed to sign. ‘I cannot write more,’ Childers concluded his letter to his wife. ‘I feel as if my heart would burst.’

  Barton privately told Childers some hours later that his ‘allusion to Molly’s support for refusal to sign’ had been the ‘deciding element’ in his decision to sign.

  ‘Strange reason,’ Childers exclaimed. He did not seem to understand that what Barton meant was that the allusion to Molly reminded him of all the women at home who would have no say at all unless he signed the Treaty. Childers was still convinced the main factor in Barton’s decision was his ‘belief that war was really imminent and inevitable - real war.’ In other words, the remark about Molly Childers was just the last straw!

  ‘What was perhaps the determining factor with me was that I had no idea whether having refused to sign and thereby flung the country lads into war,’ Barton explained, ‘I should not have been told when I returned that I had no justification for committing the country to war under divided leadership. This was an eventuality never dreamed of.’

  ‘None of us even thought of using the telephone to try to resolve the difficulty,’ Barton admitted. Griffith and Collins stressed that they were plenipotentiaries and they ‘would pos­sibly have resented the idea’ of contacting Dublin.

  Barton also admitted that they did not think of their in­structions. ‘Not one of us, not even Erskine Childers thought of the instructions that had been given us before we left Dub­lin for the first time that the final draft or the document about to be signed must be brought home for confirmation,’ Barton explained. ‘If Duffy, Childers or I had stumbled upon that fact in our memories we could have found justification for our refusal and the Articles of Agreement would have had at most three signatures only, if any. Nobody thought of the instructions.’

  There were suggestions later that Hazel Lavery persuaded Collins to sign the Treaty that night. If Collins met her that evening, it had to be sometime after eight-thirty and before nine o’clock. Some believed that she not only persuaded Collins to sign but also drove him back to Downing Street night. This was apparently based on Sir John Lavery’s memoirs. He wrote that: ‘Michael Collins stood firm to the last minute. He seemed to have lost his temper. Even I, whose head was never really out of the paint-pot, could see that he who loses his temper in argument is lost, and told him so, but I failed to convince him. Eventually, after hours of persuasion, Hazel prevailed. She took him to Downing Street in her car that last evening, and he gave in.’

  But he did not have even half an hour in which she could have persuaded him and anyway, he returned to Downing Street with Griffith and Barton that night. The suggestion made was that Hazel blackmailed him by supposedly threatening to divulge that Collins was the father of Moya Llewelyn-Davies son, Richard. No evidence was ever produced to support the theory. If Hazel had blackmailed him in such a manner, would he likely have retained the friendship with her afterwards? The way Collins operated he would have been much more likely to have had her shot. Collins signed the Treaty because it was a compromise that provided the means to achieve what he desired. At the last cabinet meeting in Dublin, the only objection that he raised to the Treaty was the oath, which had since been substituted with one that he had submitted. He had been so annoyed over the attempt to press for External Association the previous day that he refused to go to Downing Stree
t, and it was he who had first suggested a Boundary Commission to redraw the border, if the north refused to come within a united Ireland. There was no argument that night about the Ulster clauses, because they believed the Boundary Commission would undermine Northern Ireland. ‘If the North refuses to come in, we will have a boundary commission, and they will lose half their territory, and they cannot stay out!’ Griffith had repeatedly proclaimed, according to Barton. ‘Over and over again he made that statement.’

  ‘We agreed that islands, such as West Belfast, would vote themselves into Southern Ireland, and we agreed that it would be administratively impossible,’ Barton added. ‘Voting in or out would have to be by contiguous areas.’ They had badly mis­calculated but they did not realise it at the time. Collins was satisfied that he had got the compromises that he desired on the major issues. On what grounds would he have refused to sign?

  If it had been so important that all of them sign that night, however, why did Duggan and Gavan Duffy not sign that night? They were not even at Downing Street. Having everybody sign the document was clearly not that important.

  When Collins signed around 2:20 in the morning of 6 December, he was aware of the likely consequences for himself. Immediately after the signing, Birkenhead turned to Collins. ‘I may have signed my political death-warrant tonight,’ he said.

  ‘And I may have signed my actual death-warrant,’ Collins replied.

  Somewhat distraught Childers was waiting outside in the lobby. ‘My chief recollection of these inexpressible, miserable hours,’ he wrote, ‘was that of Churchill in evening dress, moving up and down the lobby with his loping step and long strides and a huge cigar, like a bowspit, his coarse heavy jowls making him a very type of brutal militarism.’

  Within minutes the Irish delegates emerged from Number 10 Downing Street looking very tired and grave.

  ‘Have you anything to say?’ a reporter asked Collins.

  ‘Not a word,’ he replied sharply.

  17 - ‘The first real step?’

  ‘Think – what have I got for Ireland?’ Michael Collins wrote just hours after signing the Treaty. ‘Something which she has wanted these past seven hundred years. Will anyone be satisfied at the bargain? Will anyone? I tell you this early this morning I signed my death warrant. I thought at the time how odd, how ridiculous - a bullet may just as well have done the job five years ago.

  ‘I believe Birkenhead may have said an end to his political life,’ Collins continued. ‘With him it has been my honour to work. These signatures are the first real step for Ireland. If people will only remember that – the first real step.’

  ‘In the creation of the Irish Free State we have laid a founda­tion on which may be built a new world order,’ Collins told an Associated Press correspondent that day. This, of course, was pure hyperbole.

  Just because Ireland was supposedly being accorded the de facto status of the Dominions was hardly grounds for thinking that the British commonwealth would become a League of Free Nations in which even the United States would participate. This showed little understanding of American politics. Yet Collins now declared that ‘Ireland would be a link to join America and Britain. And with America in this League of Free Nations, what country would wish to stay outside?’

  Gavan Duffy did not sign until many hours later, and Duggan never signed the British copy. He returned to Dublin with the Irish copy of the Treaty and it was necessary to cut his signature from a dinner menu he had autographed. It was then attached to a document before it was photographed by the media. The affixed signature is obvious in the photograph. The whole thing was so hurried that they had not given the Treaty its intended title. The copies initially signed has merely described it ‘Articles of Agreement.’

  ‘We noticed the following day that this document didn’t bear the words “Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland”. We immediately arranged for it to be put in.’ The title of the document was therefore altered to read. ‘Treaty between Great Britain and Ireland’ as the title and ‘Articles of Agreement’ the sub-title on the second line.

  Harry Boland issued a particularly positive statement in the United States. ‘ After centuries of conflict the Irish nation and the British have compromised their difference,’ he announced. ‘A treaty of peace has been signed and an agreement reached between the representatives of the Irish nation and the representatives of the British Empire, an agreement which restores Ireland to the comity of nations.’

  Boland later claimed that the actual terms of the Treaty had not been published when he issued that statement, but they had been published on 8 December when he issued a further statement attacking Cohalan and Diarmuid Lynch of the Friends of Irish Freedom for criticising the Treaty. Of course, de Valera’s views were not known, but when they did become known, all of them changed sides.

  De Valera was in Limerick when he first heard that the Treaty had been signed. His initial reaction was one of delight, according to himself. Because of Griffith’s promise not to sign the draft treaty the previous Saturday, the president assumed the British must have capitulated.

  ‘I never thought that they would give in so soon,’ he re­marked to those with him.

  It was only that evening as he was about to attend a cultural gathering in Dublin that Eamon Duggan and Desmond Fitz­gerald arrived from London with a copy of the Treaty, which Duggan handed to the president. When de Valera showed no interest in the document, Duggan asked him to read it.

  ‘What should I read it for?’ de Valera asked.

  ‘It is arranged that the thing be published in London and Dublin simultaneously at eight o’clock and it is near that hour now,’ replied Duggan.

  ‘What,’ said the president, ‘to be published whether I have seen it or not?’

  ‘Oh well, that’s the arrangement.’

  Having read the terms of the Treaty de Valera summoned a meeting of the available members of the cabinet. ‘I am going to pronounce against the Treaty,’ he declared. He added that he intended to demand the resignations of Griffith, Collins and Barton from his government upon their return. Stack and Brugha agreed with him, but Cosgrave objected.

  ‘I don’t agree with that,’ declared Cosgrave, insisting that the plenipotentiaries should be allowed to explain what had happened, before any pronouncement was made. ‘I saw a look of peace and satisfaction pass over de Valera’s face,’ Cosgrave noted, convinced that the president welcomed the objection that allowed him to hold his hand until the whole cabinet could meet.

  A full meeting was called for 8 December, 1921, and a press release was prepared. ‘In view of the nature of the proposed treaty with Great Britain,’ it read, ‘President de Valera has sent an urgent summons to members of the cabinet in London to report at once so that a full cabinet decision may be taken.’

  Desmond Fitzgerald, the minister for publicity, was surprised at the tone of the release. ‘This might be altered Mr President,’ he said entering the cabinet room. ‘It reads as if you were opposed to the settlement.’

  And that is the way I intended it to read,’ de Valera said. ‘Publish it as it is.’

  Fitzgerald was amazed. ‘I did not think he was against this kind of settlement before we went over to London,’ he whispered to Stack.

  ‘He is dead against it now anyway,’ replied Stack. ‘That’s enough.’

  It was like a cry of triumph. Fitzgerald thought Stack was gloating that he and Brugha had persuaded the president to abandon his more moderate views while the delegation was in London.

  Michael Staines said that he appealed to de Valera in the presence of both Brugha and Stack not to issue the statement. ‘I said it was for the Dáil to decide that; that it was not the Dáil cabinet sent them to London and I said that the Dáil Cabinet should not have asked them to report to the Dáil Cabinet at all but that they should have reported to the Dáil itself.’

  Many people though de Valera would be in favour of the terms of the Treaty, in view of his moderate pronouncements
during the summer when he made it clear that he was no doctrinaire republican. Before the London conference de Valera had repeatedly called for ‘the status of a dominion’, and the plenipotentiaries had returned with essentially ‘dominion status’. Thus they had a right to expect the president’s support, but Collins knew it would not be forthcoming.

  If Fitzgerald had doubts that de Valera would have been in favour of such terms beforehand, these were probably dispelled the following week when the president indicated that he would have rejected the Treaty if he had been consulted in advance. ‘I would have said, “No”,’ he explained, ‘though I might not have said “No” before. I would said “No” in the circumstances because I felt I could have said “No” with advantage to the nation.’

  On arriving in Dublin on the day after the signing, Collins asked Tom Cullen how his own men viewed the Treaty.

  ‘Tom, what are our fellows saying?’ he asked.

  ‘What is good enough for you is good enough for them,’ Cullen replied.

  Although this represented the attitude of many people, there were already ominous signs. The previous evening in London the delegation had been given a tumultuous send off by Irish exiles. Childers actually noted that he was ‘nearly crushed to death’ by the enthusiastic crowd. So Collins found it ‘in a sense prophetic’ that there was no welcoming crowd and ‘no signs of jubilation’ on reaching Dublin next morning. Instead, the few people about ‘seemed strangely apathetic’.

  ‘This lack of jubilation among the people was dispiriting enough,’ Collins continued, ‘but it was nothing compared with the open hostility we faced in the cabinet drawing-room of the Mansion House.’ De Valera was waiting there, looking gaunt and depressed, while Stack was in a blazing mood and Brugha was ‘the personification of venom’.