MICHAEL COLLINS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3141, 30 October 1922, Page 7

MICHAEL COLLINS.

(By One Who Knew Him). In Michael Collins the new Ireland has lost its right arm. just as in Arthur Griffith it lost its brain. The one was the Free State's man of action ; the other its man of policy. Both, above all other men. were its creators. The loss of these two men almost simultaneously at such a moment is the most grievous blow of Fortune that has ever been dealt at a young State. That of Collins will be "felt all the more in Ireland because, far more than Griffith even more than any other Irish leader in history, he had become the national hero.

His popularity was so boundless; the stories of his daring, his exploits, his hair-breadth escapes, his laughing coolness in danger and his boyish comradeship are so numerous' and well authenticated that even in this age his memory is bound to develop into a legend as permanently and deeply etched into the Irish imagination as that of Robin Hood in the minds of succeeding generations of English boyhood.

Seven years ago an obscure clerk in a London office; yesterday, the Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the newly-founded Irish State. Surely never, even in the history of national ist_ revolutions, has there been so swift an emergence into fame and power! Yet this contrast, striking as it is, pales before the contrast between the Irish guerilla chief who not many months ago was fighting the forces of the Crown, with a heavy price upon his head, and the man who is to-day sincerely mourned by the Government and sister people against whom be fought. No truer reflex of the change that has been wrought in the relations between the two countries could be found than in this simple fact. But the change was not in Collins. He I ought for Irish freedom. Having won it, he was ready to fight for an enduring peace. His career is briefly fold. Born 33 years ago, the son of an Irish peasant in Clonakilty in'the wild of County Cork, ho worked like nmnv other intelligent Irish boys, for ' the minor Civil Service, and eventually became a clerk in the London Post Office. Later be sat at a desk in a London insurance office.

At the outbreak of war Jio recros?cd to Ireland, took a minor part in the Luster rebellion, and slowly won leadership m the I.R.A. Even now it is not fully known what exactly his rank and 1 unction was during the years of guerilla Avar. His enemies have said that his rank was a subordinate one. That he was merely one commandant among many. In fact, he seems to have been a chief organiser of the very wonderful Sinn Fein intelligence service. Irish leaders for three-quarters of a century have been harsh, grim, unsmiling men. Parnell, Dillon, Griffith—one has only to run over the later name to realist* the type. Of Collins it has been said that he was the only lead Irishman since O'Coimcil that had a smile in him. In truth he was a grc! boy, with all a boy's merrinegs, inexhaustible energy, and liveliness. In politics he was somewhat out of his field. His training was inadequate; his education imperfect. Temperamentally, too, he had something of the peasant in him. When an intellectual man such as Griffith would hold firm to a principle and perceive the fatal consequences of compromise. Collins could see no harm in a "deal" if only it could, avert an immediate evil. Thus his pact with de Yalera just before the recent elections was made against Griffith's advice.

Yet at bottom he had great natural sagacity. At the Peace Conference in London his was the strongest of Sinn Fein leaders be was flic most strongly imbued with the conception of Ireland 1 as a sister Mother Country with Great Britain of file British.

The Empire-, he hold, was equally Ire land's heritage, equally the creation of Irish emigrants, of Irish aims and Irish brains. At the time of the peace negotiations he openly proclaimed his vision of the Empire as a real League of Nations. In that future League tho idea of "Dominion stains" would cease to have meaning. Great Britain, Irelaud. Canada. Australia, and the rest would he all equal and freely associated partners. It was hifi firm belief that eventually the United States would also enter this League. On that day the scattered Irish race would he reunited just as much as the Anglo-Saxons. Physically, too. Collins belonged to a well-marked' Irish peasant type—tall, thick in build, yet athletic, broad-faced. pleasant in expression. Nature had given him a multiple dose of vitality and exuberant energy. He seemed to be able to do without sleep indefinitely. In the days when it is said that he knew every roof and chimney-pot in Dublin, he seemed • utterly tireless. Later, when he became a Minister, his passion for work kept him at has desk from dawn till late at night. Add the inordinate pugnacity of his ultra Irish character, boundless good humor and a rare gift of comradeship, and you have pretty well the whole make-up o' tliis remarkable man. He had little vanity. The popularity that Irish people poured out upon him he endured with difficulty, sometime* oven impatiently. Under the admiring glances and the outthrtist hands of hicoiiinllcss admirers, he would turn and twist with the self-conscious movements of a schoolboy; indeed, many a toopersistent courtier has been brushed astfle with tempersome words, quick and forceful, hissed out in the Cork accent.