The Irish Struggle

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XLIX, Issue 27, 6 July 1922, Page 9

The Irish Struggle

Thrilling Stories of the Days of Terror (Told by Piaras Beaslai.) Commandant-General Beaslai, interviewed by Mr. Charles A. Merrill, of the Boston Daily Globe, gives a thrilling account of the Irish struggle since the Insurrection, and challenges anyone to deny that Mr. Michael Collins was “the man who won the war.” It was Mr. Collins, he says, who organised the army and who planned nearly all of the escapes from British prisons, and the smuggling of men from Ireland to England and Ireland to America. It was Mr. Collins and Mr. Boland who brought Mr. de Valera safely back to Ireland after his escape from an English gaol. BEHIND THE SCENES : AFTER THE 1916 INSURRECTION. Mr. Merrill said that Commandant-General Beaslai only decided to give the interview when he saw in the newspapers of the secession of the Anti-Free Staters in the I.R.A. from the control-of Dail Eireann. Commandant-General Beaslai first met Mr. Collins early in 1916 in the rooms of the Keating Branch of the Gaelic League in Dublin. Although Mr. Collins had achieved no conspicuous place in the movement his human qualities had captured the friendship of all who knew him. On the day before the Insurrection he remembered Mr, Collins and Gearoid O’Sullivan (now Adjutant-General) who were “on the run,” decided to sneak through the streets to a teashop, and they derived grim satisfaction by making an appointment with three girls of their acquaintance for 6 p.m. the next evening at the G.P.O. — an edifice which they were well aware would then be a bullet-scarred fortress. The next day ho saw Mr. Collins was after the collapse of the insurrection. About 3,000 prisoners were marched to the largo gymnasium of the Richmond Barracks, The detectives, like a flock of crows, walked among them. It was with satisfaction that he watched them pass Mr. Collins again and again. It was evident that they knew nothing about him. ACTIVE LEADER. Having adverted to the fact.that Mr. Eamon Duggan and ho were sent to penal servitude and that he was one of the last to speak to Mr. T. Clarke, Mr. T. MacDonagh, and Mr. Pearse before they were shot. In 1918 the-Con-scription, Act had been passed Collins had become one of the active leaders of the Republican Army, which was very slowly recovering from the disintegration resulting from the surrender of 1916. Mr. Collins had taken over the position of Adjutant-General and Director of Organisation. More than any man Michael Collins was responsible for building up the new army on a sound military basis. “I had the honor of being associated with Collins on tho headquarters staff this juncture we were the Volunteers,” added Commandant-General Beaslai. “The extent and value of his work behind the scenes was known only to a few. But there was hardly a' single activity in the army of which Collins was not the inspiring force. “He was beginning to be known as the man who got things done. His favorite motto, ‘ Get on with the work,’ was going the rounds. With Collins was another young man, whose brains and unselfish devotion to his country were invaluable. -Richard Mulcahy (now Minister , of Defence) shares with Collins the glory of having won the wa.'. “The first meeting of the new Dail Eireann was held on January 21, 1919, when the Declaration of Independence was adopted. All but two of the members who were not in gaol attended. One of these two was Harry Boland. The other was Michael Collins.) Their absence was noli noted, either by the public or the press. It had been pre-arranged that other members should respond to their names when the roll was called. “Only two or three of us knew the reason for their absence. The reason was Eamon de Valera’s escape from Lincoln Gaol a week later. / ’ ( “Collins and Boland brought de Valera safely hack to Ireland. > • • ~ _ “De Valera and other prisoners had managed to get an impression of the key to the gaol door on candle wax. They were permitted to send to friends back,, home . what

looked like a humorous picture card. It showed a drunken man the preceding Christmas trying to fit a key to the lock of his domicile, under the heading, ( I can't get in,' and another picture cf the following Christmas showing a man trying to fit a key to a prison door with the heading, ' I can't get out.' From this tip a master key was fabricated in Ireland and smuggled into the gaol baked in a cake. De Valera, Sean Milroy, and Sean Mac Garry with this key opened a rear door of the prison and escaped into fields where Collins and Boland were waiting with an automobile. PLANNED DISGUISES. "It was Collins who planned to get them out of gaol, through England and across Ireland. He arranged about the places to stop and planned the disguises. "It was one of his strongest points, his cleverness in intelligence work, which finally led to his specialising in this activity. He became the army director of intelligence. "It was frequently said in Ireland that the Republican Army's success was largely due to the superiority of its intelligence work over that of the British. The credit belongs to Collins. The operations we carried out would not have been possible save for the information which Collins's department was constantly able to furnish about the enemy's plans and movements. *'When Robert Barton escaped from Mountjoy on St. Patrick's Night, 1919; when 19 other prisoners and myself escaped from Mountjoy in broad daylight a month later; when Austin Stack, four others, and myself escaped £rom Manchester prison, in broad daylight in October, 1919, Michael Collins was the leader in devising the relief. "When the question of resort to guerilla warfare came up for discussion, a large number of the members of Dail Eireann, and even of the Cabinet were not prepared to take the responsibility. "Michael Collins then accepted full responsibility, went ahead and speedily earned the attention and hatred of the British forces in Ireland. "I, myself, talked with a hotel-keeper (not a Sinn Feiner), whose hotel Collins frequented, and he told me that Captain , of the British Secret Service/ put down £4,000 on the table in front of him and offered him more if he would ring up a certain number the next time Collins visited his premises. "It indicates how loyally the people were behind us that of the hundreds of people in the humblest circumstances, errand boys, hotel waiters, cab drivers, chamber-maids, who knew Collins, and saw him daily in Dublin, nofc one. of them was tempted by rewards or frightened by threats into betraying him. "In plans for the smuggling of our men from Ireland to England and from Ireland to America, Michael Collins always played the principal part. I, myself, was smuggled between Ireland and England a dozen times. I did not have to do anything. I put myself in the hands of Collins and he made all arrangements. Anything he arranged always worked perfectly. He was in touch with policemen, sailors, postmen, all sorts of vital services, and he knew how to use them all for the benefit of the cause. TWO NOTABLE ESCAPES. "All through the most intense part of the war I was in daily contact with Collins. "On the night preceding bloody Sunday, November 21, 1920, Dick McKee, Michael Collins, and other officers, including myself, attended a meeting in the hotel. The meeting ended about .10 o'clock. I was standing in the hall talking with two men, one of whom was Conor Clune, who had come up from Co. Clare on private business. Clune was not connected in any way with the Volunteers. Suddenly there was a commotion in the hall, and some one cried out: 'Here are the "Black-and-Tans," we're done for, Pierce!' A body of Auxiliaries rushed the entrance and ran upstairs to the room where we had been meeting. There were commands of ' Hands up!' In the confusion, I succeeded in slipping down the passage covered by a man who was holding his hands up, and escaped into the garden in the rear of the hotel. There was no way out. I climbed into the yard of the next house and ran N through the stable to a back lane. There .was an armored car in the lane and Auxiliaries were on guard outside the back door. I saw the searchlights playing on the gardens. ■_".' "I got under the shelter of a wall and remained there,

unable to move hand or foot for an hour and a.half. Auxiliaries in their search came within a few yards of where I was but did not discover me. It was nearly 3 a.m. long after the British curfew hour, when the raid was" over, so I had to remain where I was until morning. I learned next day that Collins, with his usual luck had also escaped. "Poor Clune, however, was arrested, taken to the Castle, tortured and shot, along with Dick McKee. McKee had escaped from the meeting, but was captured later. It was the beginning of the full flood of the reign of terror in Dublin." After describing some of the reign of terror, Com-mandant-General Beaslai adds: "Arthur Griffith, acting President of the Irish Republic, was arrested: He appointed Michael Collins acting dent in his place. This fact has never, been revealed to the public. "On Collins' shoulders devolved the task of keeping the army and the Irish people firm against the terror, and he discharged the task so well that by the middle ,of December, 1920, Mr. Lloyd George began to feel that a campaign of terrorism would not succeed, and opened, through the medium of Archbishop Clune, negotiations for a truce on the same terms as those on which a truce was eventually concluded in July, 1921. "Mr. Lloyd George's terms in December, 1920, had been accepted by Mr. Collins, when suddenly a telegram from Father Michael O'Flanagan, calling upon Lloyd George for peace queered the pitch. Waving Father O'Flanagan's telegram in Archbishop Chine's face, Lloyd George said: ' This is the white flag; they are breaking.' ACTION OP FATHER O'FLANAGAN. "By his telegram Father O'Flanagan almost stampeded the Nationalist movementAinto an abject surrender. "Michael Collins steadied the country by a few lines calling upon the people to stand firm, and published in the Irish Independent, whose staff were threatened with death by the ' Black-and-Tans' for daring, to print the statement. "Father O'Flanagan subsequently visited Mr. Lloyd George and held private conversations with him. He (Commandant-General Beaslai) had nothing to say in criticism of Austin Stack or Mr. Kelly, but he challenged the right of Father O'Flanagan to attack them in the spirit in which he had attacked them." LONDON CONFERENCE. According to Commandant-General Beaslai, when the Irish plenipotentaries were about to depart for the negotiations with Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. de Valera stated at a private Session of Dail Eireann: "You must give these men the most whole-hearted confidence. Remember what you are asking them to do. You are asking them to win from the British Government in negotiations, what the entire might of our army is absolutely unable to accomplish." . ' He would not swear that was a verbatim quotation of Mr. do Valera's remarks, but it was very nearly verbatim. Mr. Collins protested strongly against being sent to London, but Mr. de Valera had insisted that Mr. Collins .<was the man who knew how to talk to Mr. Lloyd George. .• "The Cabinet member who insisted that the powers of the Irish plenipotentiaries must not be limited by the Dail was Eamon do .Valera." 1 , '.*• ■ Commandant-General Beaslai stated that after Mr. de Valera returned from America in January, 1921, Mr. de Valera, at a special meeting of Dail Eireann advised "easing oft" with the policy of physical force. Mr. de Valera was entirely, sincere in his advice. But Collins firmly, defended the policy of war, and Dail Eireann backed him by a large majority. V ..;.' ' , • ■ . The secret of the successful operations of the I.R.A. was due in large measure to the "flying columns," who, numbering less than 3,000 in all, bore the brunt of the active fighting. ■■ ( _ . N . . \ : . Two of the four men whom Mr. Lloyd George "blacklisted" after the negotiations of Archbishop Clune in 1920, . were Mr. Collins and Mr,. Mulcahy. These he refused :to give a safe conduct to. Who the third and fourth were was not stated, but they were all quite certain that the third must be Cathal Brugha. . • V, v . : -'

In December, 1020, General Tudor sent a request to Mr. Collins for an interview, and it was refused in emphatic terms. Last summer when it was determined to send a delegation to London it was stated that the decision not to send Mr. de Valera had been made by his own casting vote. Mr. Collins protested strongly against being required to go, but Mr. do Valera insisted and declared that they should bo given plenipotentiary power, pointing out that Dail "Eireann would have sufficient safeguard in the fact that the Treaty signed by the delegates would have to be submitted for approval by the whole Dail. It was Collins who adopted the system of reorganising battalions into brigades. The late Dick McKee (Commandant of the Dublin Brigade) who was taken to the Castle and shot on "Bloody Sunday," evolved the scheme of the flying column. The I,R.A. owed a great deal to the rail r road men. In. Dublin "the Guards" did. much street.fighting. English reports of fights in the country were ludicrous. A British report represented a small body of R.I.C. as being attacked by thousands of "rebels" led by Collins on a white horse at Burgatia House, near Clonakilty. What really happened was that about 30 I.R.A men bivouacked for the night in Burgatia House and planned to attack the police barracks. About 100 Constabulary surrounded the house and began to fire. The I.R.A. officer ordered his men not to fire uiuil the enemy was within visible range. The "Black-and-Tans" kept blazing away without any reply and began to advance in short rushes. The silence of the I.R.A. detachment puzzled the attacking force and the British began to wonder if there was anyone in the house. EN T OF THE FIGHT. Finally the "Black-and-Tans" charged up the avenue. Commandant-General Beaslai adds, "When they came within close range our men opened fire with deadly effect. Some of the R.I.C. fell, the others ran. In the confusion our men escaped without a scratch." Of course, Michael Collins was not there at all. The I.R.A. detachment was in charge of a youngster of . IS who had served in the British Army in the Great War. The flying columns got their sustenance from the people. These men, as a rule, drew no pay. • Their soldiers r. Dublin could not he supported in the same way, so they received money upon which to live. It was really ration pay. The British talked of murder gangs. There was not a man. in the I.R.A. whose activity did not require financial sacrifices, as well as the risk of life and limb. A man on whole time activity in the army was pa.d no more than he would get at his ordinary occupatim. They did this to eliminate any mercenary motives in joining the army. Officers of G.H.Q. were receiving salaeios at which a junior clerk in a New York office would turn up his nose. The salaries of Cabinet Ministers were mere sustenance allowances. Michael Collins, as Minister of Finance, had chat.ro of tho funds. Only in one instance did the British succeed in capturing several thousand pounds from the AdjutantGenerals' office. Collins moved about, he said, without a disguise, and took no special precautions for self-protection beyond cultivating the habit of riding an innocent looking bicycle and sleeping 'in a different house every night. Those who took tho most precautions were the ones most often light. Collins walked into hotels and public restaurants, male .appointments at street corners, and was held up and searched several times without being recognised. His hi 1 if? always pulled him through. Mulcahy had some of the narrowest escapes of any man in.the movement. On one occasion he just had time to pull on his trousers and escape through a window in the rear. Documents which he left, and which were found, were, what first impressed upon British how serious a menace the Irish Army had become. Among the Mulcahy documents were a plan for putting out of action the entire electric plant in Manchester. When the British returned to the .Castle and examined the documents they sent a detachment of soldiers to surround the whole district. Mulcahy dropped on to the roof of a house, whose occupants were Jews, and these Jews befriended him and got him safely away. .i