I Signed My Death Warrant

by Ryle T. Dwyer

  ‘If you elect me and do it by a majority,’ he said, ‘I will throw out that Treaty.’ This was a naked attempt to turn the whole Treaty issue into a personal vote of confidence. ‘It looked like a last effort to reach the hearts of the deputies and obscure their judgment in a storm of emotion, passion, and personal attachment – in a word, anything but the consideration of the Treaty on plain, matter-of-fact lines,’ the political correspondent of the Freeman’s Journal wrote. ‘The Strangers Gallery was left gasping. Everything considered, it was a sensation of the first magnitude.

  ‘Even in his happiest moments Mr de Valera has scarcely surpassed himself in declaratory power,’ the report continued. ‘His address last evening claimed devoted attention. Coolness, calmness and solemnity; passion, emotion and that fire that outsteps passion, characterised his remarkable speech.’

  His tactics provoked so much criticism that he felt compelled to withdraw his resignation, but not before making some self-righteous remarks. It was then proposed and seconded that the standing orders should be suspended to discuss the crisis caused by the president’s resignation. Collins was enraged.

  ‘The other side may say what they like, and they may put in any motion they like, and they may take any action they like, but we must not criticise them. That is the position that we have been put into,’ he declared. ‘We will have no Tammany Hall methods here. Whether you are for the Treaty or whether you are against it, fight without Tammany Hall methods. We will not have them.’ He went on to complain that the backbench initiative to avoid a division had been frustrated by ‘three or four bullies’.

  De Valera objected to the use of the term bullies and the speaker asked Collins to withdraw the remark. There followed an uneasy silence. Collins seemed to seek inspiration from the papers in front of him. Almost a minute passed before he responded.

  ‘I can withdraw the term,’ he said slowly and deliberately, ‘but the spoken word cannot be recalled. Is that right, sir?’

  A showdown with the speaker had been averted. Deputies laughed and the gathering applauded. But Brugha, who felt that he was one of those alluded to as a bully, was unhappy with the way the remark was withdrawn.

  ‘I don’t know to whom he referred when he mentioned this word “bullies”,’ Brugha said. ‘Possibly he may have referred to me as being one of them. In the ordinary way I would take exception and take offence at such a term being applied to me, but the amount of offence that I would take at it would be measured by the respect or esteem that I had for the character of the person who made the charge. In this particular instance I take no offence whatever.’

  If the standing orders were suspended, however, Brugha said that Collins and the others should be free to discuss Document No. 2.

  ‘In that case I am satisfied,’ Collins replied.

  But Griffith was not. He accused the president of violating the agreed procedure. ‘He agreed that I should wind up the discussion,’ Griffith explained. ‘I have listened here for days – during all that time – to arguments and attacks on my honour and the honour of my fellow-delegates and I have said nothing. I have waited to wind up this discussion.

  ‘Why we should be stopped in the middle of this discussion and a vote taken on the personality of President de Valera I don’t understand,’ Griffith continued. ‘And I don’t think my countrymen will understand it.’

  ‘I am sick and tired of politics,’ de Valera responded, ‘so sick that no matter what happens I would go back to private life. I have only seen politics within the last three weeks or a month. It is the first time I have seen them and I am sick to the heart of them.’ Depicting himself as straight and honest in the face of the twisted dishonesty of his opponents, he continued. ‘It is because I am straight that I meet crookedness with straight dealing always,’ he said. ‘Truth will always stand no matter from what direction it is attacked.’

  Of course, it was disingenuous of de Valera to feign inn­ocence about the seamier side of politics. He had been up to his neck in such politics while in the United States and, arguably, he had more political experience than anyone else in the Dáil. In fact, he refuted his assertion of innocence in the same speech by referring to his American experiences.

  ‘I detest trickery,’ de Valera said. ‘What has sickened me most is that I got in this House the same sort of dealing that I was accustomed to over in America from other people of a similar kind.’ It was particularly significant he should compare his critics in the Dáil with his opponents in the United States, because there was a remarkable similarity between his attitude towards the Treaty and his actions during the Republican Party’s National Convention at Chicago in June 1920.

  ‘It was a case of Cohalan and his machine over again,’ de Valera wrote to McGarrity.

  ‘Insinuations about me have hurt me,’ he told the Dáil. ‘I am straight with everybody and I am not a person for political trickery; and I don’t want to pull a red herring across. If there is a straight vote in this House I will be quite satisfied if it is within forty-eight hours.’

  ‘One of the most irritating features of Mr de Valera’s be­haviour at the this time,’ Piaras Beaslaí wrote, ‘was that, having used every device of a practical politician to gain his point, having shown himself relentless and unscrupulous in taking every advantage of generous opponents, he would adopt a tone of injured innocence when his shots failed, and assume the pose of a simple sensitive man, too guileless and gentle for this rough world of politics.’

  Maybe Collins would have been willing to allow the debate to be diverted, but Griffith was not about to allow it. It was a political ploy to defeat the Treaty by turning it into a personal vote of confidence in de Valera.

  Just as he knew there was no realistic chance of securing diplomatic recognition in the United States in 1920, he had already admitted to the Dáil that no British politician would now be prepared to accept his alternative proposals in Document No. 2.

  For the Dáil to have accepted the president’s suggestion that the Treaty be rejected and Document No. 2 presented to the British instead would have been as foolhardy as he was naive if he really believed that the propaganda campaign advocated by him had any more chance of success than the pathetic failure of his comparatively similar effort to win over the American electorate in 1920.

  A successful campaign in 1922 would have needed the sympathetic understanding of at least some sections of the press, and there was little chance of securing this, seeing that the only organs which opposed the Treaty had done so on the grounds that the agreement was too generous towards Sinn Féin. Not one Irish daily newspaper supported de Valera’s position. A total of 328 statutory public bodies – county councils, urban councils, rural councils, and borough corporations – had already voted openly in favour of the Treaty, while only five came out against it. Moreover, there was little prospect of getting international support because even American opinion was strongly in favour of the settlement.

  Next day the New York Times carried an editorial that was highly critical of de Valera:

  Apparently he essayed a Napoleonic or Cromwellian stroke in resigning, at the same time that he demanded re-election with all power placed in his hands; but when this failed, he talked and acted like a hysterical schoolgirl. Whatever happens in Ireland, de Valera seems to have hopelessly discredited himself as a leader. Narrow, obstinate, visionary and obviously vain, he has now, in his representative capacity, wrought immense harm to the Ireland of his professed entire devotion.

  Harry Boland admitted that ‘the great public opinion of America is on the side of this Treaty.’ Indeed, he added, the American press had adopted ‘a unanimous attitude in favour’ of it. There was even strong support among some of de Valera’s supporters in the United States.

  The president of American Association for Recognition of the Irish Republic had, for instance, come out in favour of the agreement. Boland had done so also, but he told the Dáil on 7 January that he had issued his statement before the Treaty wa
s published in the United States. He said that he had made the mistake of assuming the Treaty would be favourable because de Valera had assured him nothing less than External Association would be acceptable. But this did not explain why, after the terms were published, he actually denounced Cohalan and Diarmuid Lynch, the secretary of the Friends of Irish Freedom, for criticising the agreement. The latter pair of them had, ironically, been among the first to denounce the Treaty, but they subsequently supported it after they learned de Valera was opposed to it. Such vicissitudes certainly lent credence to the idea that personalities figured largely in the controversy.

  At one point during his address Boland turned to Collins. ‘Is this, in your opinion a final settlement of the question between England and Ireland?

  ‘It is not,’ Collins replied.

  After Boland finished, Joe McGrath spoke and told how Boland had told him back in August that he was going to America on de Valera’s behalf ‘to prepare the American people for something short of a Republic.’

  De Valera objected that what he meant was that instead of ‘an isolated Republic’ that External Association would have to be accepted. ‘It was because I was honest and wanted to be honest with the American people that I said that an isolated Republic would have to be changed into some sort of association,’ he added.

  Stripped of its polemical distortions and insinuations, the debate centred on bizarre irrelevancies. Despite the national significance and momentous implications of the Treaty, it was painfully obvious that personalities were playing an inordinate role in determining how people were lining up on the issue. On the one side people were backing de Valera, while on the other side they were gathering behind Collins.

  It was the personality of Collins, which loomed largest during the closing speeches. Winding up the debate on the anti-Treaty side, Cathal Brugha delivered a speech that quickly turned into a tirade against the Big Fellow, whom he described as ‘merely a subordinate in the Department of Defence’.

  ‘Brugha is a little man, with a slight limp and a singularly immobile face,’ The Irish Times reported. ‘He speaks quietly weighing every word before he utters it, and makes little or no attempt to secure rhetorical efforts. But his speech was saturated with bitterness. He heaped scorn Cosgrave, Duggan and most of all Collins.’

  Amid cries of ‘Shame’ and ‘Get on with the Treaty,’ Brugha complained that Collins had originated the stories that there was a price on his head, and the press had built him into ‘a romantic figure’ and ‘a mysterious character’ which he was not. But it was Griffith’s reference to Collins as ‘the man who won the war’ that was most irritating to Brugha, who actually questioned whether Collins ‘had ever fired a shot at any enemy of Ireland’.

  Shortly after Brugha had finished Arthur Griffith wound up the debate. He made no apology for his earlier reference to Collins: ‘I said it and I say it again; he was the man that made the situation; he was the man, and nobody knows better than I do how, during a year and a half, he worked from six in the morning until two next morning. He was the man whose matchless energy, whose indomitable will carried Ireland through the terrible crisis; and although I have not now, and never had, an ambition about either political affairs or history, if my name is to go down in history I want it associated with the name of Michael Collins. Michael Collins was the man who fought the Black and Tan terror for twelve months until England was forced to offer terms.’

  The Dáil erupted with a roar of approval and thunderous applause. It was without doubt the most emotional response of the whole debate. Having listened to Brugha’s invective in embarrassed silence, deputies jumped at the opportunity of disassociate themselves from those bitter remarks.

  Griffith speech, which was described by The Irish Times as ‘by far the most statesmanlike utterance that has been made in the Dáil.’ He made some telling points in favour of the Treaty.

  ‘The principle I have stood for all my life is the principle of Ire­land for the Irish people. If I can get that with a Republic, I will have a Republic; if I can get that with a monarchy, I will have a monarchy. I will not sacrifice my country for a form of government,’ he concluded. ‘I say now to the people of Ireland that it is their right to see that this Treaty is carried into oper­ation, when they get for the first time in seven centuries, a chance to live their lives in their own country and take their place among the nations of Europe.’

  As the proposer of the resolution calling for the Dáil’s ap­proval of the Treaty, Griffith was supposed to have the last word before the vote was taken, but de Valera again violated the procedure.

  ‘Before you take a vote,’ he said, ‘I want to enter my last protest - that document will rise in judgment against the men who say there is only a shadow of difference’. He was obviously calling on deputies to reject the Treaty in favour of his own Doc­ument No. 2.

  ‘Let the Irish nation judge us now and for future years,’ cried Collins.

  The clerk of the Dáil began calling the role in the order of constituencies. Having been elected from Armagh, it fell to Collins to cast the first vote. With a faint smile he rose, paused momentarily, and answered slowly ‘Is toil.’

  The clerk continued through the other names, with deputies voting either ‘Is toil,’ or ‘Ní toil.’

  When the names of the deputies from Cork were reached, Collins was again called upon to vote, but he declined to do so on the grounds that he had voted already. Likewise, when de Valera was called upon to vote for his second constituency, he declined, by shaking his head slowly and smiling across at Collins. But Griffith protested against the disenfranchisement of his second constituency.

  It took about ten minutes to complete the voting and another couple of minutes before the announcement was made that the Treaty had been approved by sixty-four votes to fifty-seven. There was no real demonstration within the hall, but when news filtered outside there was a wave of enthusiastic cheering in the street, where a crowd of some hundreds had gathered. The cheering con­tinued for some minutes and seemed to stir those inside the chamber.

  ‘It will, of course, be my duty to resign my office as Chief Executive,’ de Valera said. ‘I do not know that I should do it just now.’

  ‘No,’ cried Collins.

  ‘There is one thing I want to say,’ the president continued. ‘I want it to go to the country and to the world, and it is this: the Irish people established a Republic. This is simply approval of a certain resolution. The Republic can only be disestablished by the Irish people. Therefore, until such time as the Irish people in regular manner disestablish it, this Republic goes on.’

  Collins called for a committee of public safety to be set up by both sides of the Dáil to preserve order. Some people thought de Valera was going to respond favourably until Mary MacSwiney intervened to denounce the vote just taken ‘as the grossest act of betrayal that Ireland ever endured’.

  ‘There can be no union between representatives of the Irish Republic and the so-called Free State,’ she declared.

  De Valera announced he would like to meet ‘all those who voted on the side of the established Republic’ the following afternoon, and Collins repeated his appeal for ‘some kind of understanding’ between the two factions ‘to preserve the present order in the country’.

  ‘I would like my last word here to be this,’ de Valera res­ponded. ‘We have had a glorious record for four years, it has been four years of magnificent discipline in our nation. The world is looking at us now’

  At this point he broke down, buried his head in his hands, and collapsed sobbing into his chair. It was a very emotional scene. Women were weeping openly, and Harry Boland was seen with tears running down his cheeks, while other men were visibly trying to restrain their tears.

  Aftermath - ‘Amidst the ruins’

  Following the Dáil’s acceptance of the Treaty, Collins sought to implement it as quickly as possible as a means of enlisting popular support. Convinced of the Treaty’s enormous possibilities,
he believed he could win over sceptics by demonstrating that the agreement could be used as a stepping-stone to complete independence.

  At every step, however, he was confronted by the determination of his opponents. De Valera had first stated that the Treaty was a matter for the cabinet, but when the cabinet approved it, he said it was a matter for the Dáil, and when it became apparent that the Dáil would approve it, he contended that only the Irish people could ratify it.

  ‘The resolution recommending the ratification of a certain treaty is not a legal action,’ he told the meeting of anti-Treaty deputies at the Mansion House on 8 January 1922. ‘That will not be completed until the Irish people have disestablished the Republic which they set up of their own free will.’ Of course, it was the Dáil, which proclaimed the Irish Republic.

  De Valera announced his resignation as president, but said he intended to run again on a platform of no co-operation in implementing the Treaty. While some journalists may have taken his earlier threat to retire from politics seriously, J. L. Garvin of The Observer refused to believe it. In a widely circulated article that was reprinted in the New York Times, he described the president as ‘a Robespierre who would send the dearest of his former friends to the guillotine for a formula and eat his dinner afterwards with self-righteousness.’

  Collins called for a committee of public safety, made up of representatives from both sides of Sinn Féin, to replace the president until a general election could be held, but de Valera rejected this as unconstitutional. ‘This assembly must choose its executive according to its constitution,’ he insisted.