DOES AN IRISH REBEL ORGANISATION EXIST?

Dunstan Times, Issue 3142, 6 November 1922, Page 8

DOES AN IRISH REBEL ORGANISATION EXIST?

The following message from the London .Morning Post's special correspondent in Dublin bore at the lieadJ of each page tlie words "Passed by the .Military Censor," and must (cautions the Post) be read with this reservation.

The orgies of nocturnal "Schrcekliehkeit'' to which we arc treated in the shape ol rifle firing are not unproductive, for while the battle rages loud and long among the chimney pots of Amiens street and the garbage scented "godknows" of the Coonibe, the wellappointed mansions of selected loyalists in the suburbs are being looted at leisure. It may be asked whether the rebel organisation has any larger object than to satisfy the "sansculottes'' lust lor loot, which naturally invokes the still more interesting question and if so, what. The answer is that they must have, and that it must be an organisation quite separate and apart from the Childers-De Valera-ian-Lyncb organisation, which was last seen to disappear with a pair of silver candlesticks and a loud yell of defiance into the MacGillieuddy morasses. It does not require a very formidable organisation to keep a rebel movement such as this is from dying of inanition. but it requires some. Somebody has got to decide that Amiens Street Post' Office shall be attacked on Thursday and not Friday, and somebody has got to pass the word round to "the boys. What is more to the point, somebody has got to keep a list of "the boys" told oil' to assist at the enterprise, so that anyone who remains away without sufficient excuse and Ivecomes an ornament of the National forces in the meanwhile can be summarily dealt with. i

Ono might gather from the way in which the rebel operations are conducted in Dublin that individual initiative was the order 1 of the day; that there exists l ai sort o'i' gentleman's agreement that every proprietor of a rebellious Mauser shall get up on tlie> washhouse root and loose it off the minute he hea:its some fellow-artists' loosing off his. No one who understands the Irish character believes for a moment that such an agreement would get a single rotund discharged. Your Gael is a, bom conspirator, but the initiative, like the. truth, is not in him. To get action out of him he must be a. member of an organisation, preferably a secret organisation full <y\' strange oaths like Shakespeare's' soldier, and it must be an organisation that concerns itself much less with telling bim what to db than with revenging itself horribly on hum if be doesn't do it. Have the rebels snob an organisation, a Counterpart of the 1.R.8., which the rebels declare is only another name for the Provisional Government, and to whose frequent denunciation* by the church they gleefully advert ?

If the rebels have their own secret organisation nothing is known of it. and little can be guessed except that the black women—the busy M'bans — have a large hand in it. It seems that we must postulate' a, central organisation, with political objects still active, in Dublin no less than in the country, as well a.s a hoterongenous colluvies of toughs and criminals who have no formal affiliation with the central organisation, but act under the directions of their own brigand-in-chief. These banditti obey the orders of the organisation, if at all. only because they are afraid •not to, or because it suits them and insures continued opportunities of brigandage. And this brigandage dovetails admirably witjbj the organisation's own designs.' which are to despoil and drive from the country the Loyalists to whom the Provisional Government must look for its revenues and whoso political support and advice is must ultimately seek. The 1.R.8. put the pre. iit Ministers in power, but )'( cannot keep them the ret. Only +ho fori, or Nationalists and Unionists vote can do that. Every Unionist or Nationalist despoiled and driven Imm the country is a vote lost to the Government and several votes won for the rebel Bolshoviki from among the loot-hungry populace. Anything done to indicate that Ihe rebels be still up and doing, warnings by the publicity department, no less than the. eur.vlhmic pop of unpremeditated parabella are good stuff from the- rebel poml of view. So the night will continue to be filled with music, and the gunmen will steal away 1,0 their heart's content.