NOT AN ENGLISHMAN

Evening Star, Issue 18035, 1 August 1922, Page 3

NOT AN ENGLISHMAN

ERSKINE CHILDERS EXPLAINS. During a session o£ the Dail Eireann shortly before tho elections In Southern Ireland, Mr Cathal Brugha moved a veto of censuro of the President for disparaging the reputation of the Dail by attacks on certain of its members. He referred particularly to Mr Griffith’s attack on Mr Erskino Childers as “ a damned Englishman.’’ Possibly, he said, Mr Griffith know better than anyone in the Dail the valuable services rendered by Deputy Childers to Ireland. It was Deputy Childers who brought the guns into Howth and made Easter Week possible, Mr Erskino Childers, in a long personal explanation, said Mr Griffith find described him as an Englishman who had spent his life in the British Military Secret Service. In reply, he said be- was not an Englishman, in the true sense of the word. His mother was Irish, his home was in Wicklow, and ho had sworn allegiance to the Irish State. He had been educated in England, and in the process was Britonised: but he had not served in any military secret service in tho sense that might be inferred from the attack upon him. Ho had served as an intelligence officer in tho active part of the Army. It was true he fought in the South African War. like thousands of Irishmen. “I am sorry now that I did,” he added, “but ono cannot relive one’s life; one can oniv hope by the help of Providence to grow* from a wrong state of feeling to a right state of feeling'.” By a process of moral and intellectual conviction, he said, he had come away from unionism into nationalism, and by that path, like so many, had reached a republic. Eventually Mr Brugha withdrew tho motion.