THE AMERICAN COMMISSION ON CONDITIONS IN IRELAND

New Zealand Tablet, 22 September 1921, Page 7

THE AMERICAN COMMISSION ON CONDITIONS IN IRELAND

INTERIM REPORT

(Continued from last week.) CHAPTER IV—(Continued.) The British Terror in Ireland Article 46 of the Hague Convention states: “Family honor and rights, individual life and private property, as well as religious convictions and worship, must be respected. Private property may not be confiscated.” The British terror in Ireland would seem to us to violate not merely this article but all law of peace and of war, private and public, human and divine. In its long continuance, complete organisation, ruthlessness, and all-pervading character, it would seem to your Commission almost without parallel in the practice of civilised nations. The testimony of Mrs. Muriel Mac Sweeney, the Misses Walsh, Miss Craven, and others allowed us to realise the extent to which the sanctity of the Irish home is violated. A total of 48,474 raids by armed British on Irish homes in 1920, compiled from official Irish Republican sources, was presented to us. These raids would seem to take place usually in the night and their avowed purpose seemed to be in part to find secreted arms and “wanted” men. . - „ • “On the Run.”—The men. sought by the raiders were said to be ' “on the run,” some from arrest; others, as has been shown, from assassination by the Imperial British forces. Lord Mayor Mac Sweeney, “on the run,” saw his family but rarely and by stealth. Lord Mayor O’Callaghan testified that he had not been able to enter his own home for two years. It would appear from testimony already cited that the family of a father or husband, son or brother “on the run,” shared his peril even in his absence. Shelter in Ditches and Cemeteries. —And in some places, those who were not “on the run,” and the infirm and aged, the women and children, would appear to feel safer in the fields than in their homes. Mr. Derham testified that for a week after the sack of Balbriggan the townspeople' “spent the night in the country. They did not wait until night to go. When four o’clock, or evening came, you would see them going away to the country, stopping in the farmers’ stables or barns or haylofts or anything they could get, or in the ditches. Two-thirds of the people left the town during the week.” And, of a night in Mallow, Mr. Frank Dempsey testified : —- “There is a graveyard immediately behind the Roman Catholic Church and behind tjie. •Protestant Church, and quite a number of women and children spent the night sitting on the gravestones — the tombstones. One woman, Mrs. Connolly, who had a baby about three days previous to this — she had to get up out of bed with her baby, of course. She got up and took her baby and remained out in the graveyard with her,baby all night, and she got pneumonia and died. The baby is alive yet. Another old woman, who went to this graveyard got sick and died.” . y '■ What they feared could be appreciated from Mr. Morgan’s testimony of the- experience of his family at Thurles: . ~ •' A Night in a Home. —“On January 20, about 11.10, my wife was, in .bed, and my boy of five years was in the cot, I had put out the light and had got ready to go

to bed when I heard shooting going on in the town. When I - heard the shootng first, I ! thought it was only isolated t shots, and then 1 heard-heavy volleys. So I said to my wife, “We must get out of this room immediately' If there are any stray shots Ave shall be in danger.” We hastily got out bed and got down to a lower basement where it was farily good protection from the side and also from the front, because we were in the back, I went back and got the youngster out of his cot. I had to go “bn all fours lest a bullet should come in. I dragged him down, and had to go back for -some clothes to cover us. All that time the firing w,as going on heavily. And it got nearer and nearer. Just as I got inside the basement with the clothes I heard bullets hitting the house. There was a door there facing the ..street. The bullets came in tjnough the hall and swished by the door where Ave were We heard the glass going and the plaster falling off the ceiling. I placed my wife and the little boy flat on the floor. We tried to protect ourselves as well as we could. It was a miserable cold night. My wife, in her condition, being within two weeks of her confinement,. was in a terror-stricken state. We lay there. The firing continued. The heavy volleys we heard outside seemed to pierce every window" in the house. Then the firing moved back to town again. It lasted altogether about an hour, and it stopped. We remained in the same position, anxious to know if it would break out any more. In half an hour’s time it started again, but on the second occasion it did not last so long-only about ten minutes. VAe could, not stir from the position Ave were in because we did not know at what moment it would break out again. So that Ave had to lie on the stone floor all night.” The terror spread to homes not the objective of attack. The Rev. Father Cotter gave the following description of an evening in Galway: Evening in Galway .—“With the lights out in my room, I peeped out under the blinds and saw what, appeared to be about two hundred and fifty soldiers or police halt at the door of the hotel. Immediately after the order “Haiti” came the word “Fire!”; so they shot there for several hours through the street, terrifying everyone. I i my becl and lay under the window —it was a stone building escape a possible bullet.” And the terror would seem not to pass with the night. Daniel T. Broderick, an ex-American soldier, testified: Country Roads.“l have seen them [soldiers] travel along the roads there, and if a dog barked at their trucks —lorries, as they call them— that dog would be instantly shot. And it was a regular habit of theirs to shoot at houses adjoining the public road, and to take pot shots at cattle along the road as they went along.” Near the cities the highways would seem to hold both the terror and the refugees. Mrs. Agnes B. King testified that she went out from Dublin: “I went out to Balbriggan the day before Patrick Lynch was killed. It seemed to me that hundreds of Black-and-Tans” were on the road going out. As you approached the town, you met the people fleeing. Sometimes they were taking all they had with them. I met many women with children huddled about their skirts, fleeing from the town.” * ? The terror that runs on the country roads would seeim ‘vr abide m the city streets. Concerning conditions in Dublin October 1920, Mr. Denis Morgan testified: i y Streets Ton might be going down the main stieets any time of the , day and suddenly you hear a shout, Whoop, and suddenly both ends of the street are stopped up. Shots are fired over the heads of the bystanders and then everyone is searched. Now they are always accompanied by armoured cars carrying machine guns. The armoured cars drive up on the footpath where the people stand, so that they have to clear -out in all directs in order to escape. On almost any street of Dublin you can see these armoured cars going along with bayonets sticking out, and very often they fire shots, apparently to see the AAomen and people ' scream - and fly in all direc- • tions. • Laurence Ginnell, for many years a member for Dublin

i ;*^ te t s 6 t^ ing of such happenings on the "refusal to halt" and "trying to escape" shootings; ''

of the British Parliament, gave us this picture of the occupied city of Dublin in March, 1920: The streets were filled with fully armed soldiers marching about with fixed bayonets and bombs hanging at their belts. Often tanks, even in the daytime, rolled along. Aeroplanes hovered over the city of Dublin incessantly. There were soldiers at the railroad stations and at most of the bridges leading into the city. The people live in a state of military siege.” The Irish who live in this terror would seem also called upon to endure restrictions of their movements. It was stated in evidence that 7,287 Republican's had been arrested by the Imperial British forces in Ireland during 1920.; and that the populace still at large were by proclamation forbidden to enter or leave certain areas, to possess motor cars, to travel twenty miles by motor, or to be on the streets after a given hour, without military permission. This curfew hour, would seem to fall as early as five o clock in the afternoon, at the whim of some Imperial British officer. Violation of these ordinances may end fatally. Such restrictions deprive the Irish citizens of most organised and unorganised occasions of social or community life.

Religous Services ~ Several witnesses have given testimony on the practice of stationing fully armed soldiers or policemen in the Roman Catholic churches during services. John Tangney, former member of the R. 1.0., testified (corroborated by Daniel Galvin, ex-R.1.C.) as to orders issued to the police by General Deasey in the section of Tipperary where he was stationed in May, 1920 ; ' “These orders were that all policemen should go to Mass, in formation. The two in front were to take revolvers and the last two were to take rifles. The revolvers were to be worn with lanyards. The two with rifles were to keep their rifles at the ready with bullets in the breech until Mass was over. And when Mass was over they AAere to march through the crowds the same way. And if there was-any hostility, shown they were to shoot.” It was testified that religious services were profaned by the presence of military patrols in the aisles of churches in Thurles, Clougheen, Galway, and other places; that churches are surrounded during the services and the emerging congregations searched, and worshippers assaulted and arrested.

Deaths and Wakes There was evidence before us that armed men invaded sick rooms, birth and death chambers. Mr. Denis Morgan testified : “There was a case at Holy Cross. A girl had died and a wake was being held. At a wake in Ireland the neighbors assemble and sit up all night with the corpse. At the wake wafe a poor old simpleton, Mr. Rooney. He happened to go out of the cotpse house. He was killed outside tire door. The coroner’s jury verdict on Rooney as, ‘ wilful murder committed by the armed forces of the Crown.’ ” ' • Funerals Funerals in Ireland, according to several witnesses, have a bodyguard of soldiers that follow the mourners to the grave. Henry Turk, American sailor, gave the following testimony on funerals he had witnessed in Cork: “There is just one thing I would like to mention, if I could, and that is the most pathetic thing I remembered in Cork, in connection with the killing of the people over there, is that they usually combine the funerals. There are three or four of the men buried at one time and the bodies are carried, along the streets ..on the shoulders of their comrades. They are draped with the republican colors. Following the bodies come the mourners,' the relatives, and probably the members of their society. Then immediately following that is an armoured car, with machine, guns, and three or four lorries of heavily - armed men. .Each one has got a trench helmet on, and guns all. levelled at the people on the sidewalks and the corners. . “That is not an exception. Every funeral I have seen was carried" on that way.” ■ ’ Mr,- P. J. ' Guilfoil testified regarding a funeral he witnessed ; ' • -’ - ; /VO '~v -' "1.-

“There was the coffin coming up , the street , and the military on both sides of the coffin, which was covered with wreaths. . . . and as they passed the Windsor Hotel where I was staying at, the military took their bayonets and threw these wreaths off.” Mr. Guilfoil also gave testimony regarding the desecration of. tombs and the prying open of coffins by Imperial British forces, allegedly searching for concealed arms. It would seem to your commission that the Imperial British forces have made Ireland a prison; and have organised a terror to harass the citizenry even unto death — and beyond. (To be continued.)